[uf-discuss] XPN: Xhtml Professional Network - idea

[Steve Ganz]

On Thursday, January 25, 2007 5:53 PM Chris Messina wrote:
 
> Take a look at XBN -- we brought up this idea awhile back on 
> Tara's urging...
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/2qa5pc
> 
> There's also more there generally about the idea of "professional"
> relationships. I favor a moderate advancement of professional 
> relationships, especially in the context of hResume...

> Let's see if we can advance the topic this time around.

Thanks for re-posting this, Chris. I don't know how I missed it the first
time around. About a year ago, when I was playing with hResume for the first
time[1], I found the need to extend on XFN and came up with space seperated
values like: rel="employer former", rel="employer current".

Now that I'm working at LinkedIn, I can see the need for other definitions.
For a real-world example, LinkedIn defines the following relationships (this
is taken directly from what we present to the user for LinkedIn
recommendations):

#  Colleague: You've worked with Joe at the same company
  - You managed Joe directly
  - You reported directly to Joe 
  - You were senior to Joe, but did not manage directly
  - Abdul was senior to you, but you did not report directly
  - You worked with Joe in the same group
  - You worked with Joe in different groups

#  Service Provider: You've hired Joe to provide a service for you or your
company

#  Business Partner: You've worked with Joe, but not as a client or
colleague
  - You worked with Joe but were at different companies
  - Joe was a client of yours

Obviously, what LinkedIn calls a Colleague in the description above
translates to "co-worker" in XFN and what we call a Business Partner
translates to "colleague" in XFN. Right now, we currently use XFN to markup
a user's contacts as rel="contact". We want to expand XFN usage in the near
term so that a contact at the same company is marked up as a
rel="co-worker". But it would be great to have some additional values to
work with. 

Beyond the professional relationships, a relationship that we define at
LinkedIn is that of "classmate". I see this in use at a number of social
networks. I think rel="classmate" with variations of "former" and "current"
would be very useful.

- Steve

[1] http://steve.ganz.name/blog/2006/01/hresume.html