A while ago, I posted an entry imagining the next generation of Rss Aggregators and blogging engines that would in effect, create a better social network than Frienster, Tribe, etc…

Looks like efforts were already under way. A commenter pointed me to XFN, aka the XHTML Friends Network which presents a simple way to express relationships through hyperlinks. Very interesting.

After applying XFN tags, you can head over to http://www.rubhub.com and have them index your site. Entering a full or partial URL in their search engine will bring up a relationship results page. This page lists sites that link to the specified site and all the sites to which the specified site links. With each link, the search results also dislay the relationship (for example: Acquaintance).