On Friday I was bitching about the lack of websites that can import FOAF profiles. A lot of the popular ones like Twitter and LiveJournal can export them, but they don't seem to be able to import them and make use of the actual FOAF data. A portable file format only works when you can both import and export the data.
There are a lot of websites that export FOAF, Friend Of A Friend, data including: LiveJournal, Twitter, Pownce and hi5. There is a Facebook application that exports your Facebook profile to FOAF too!
FOAF doesn't appear to be dead in terms of exporting, but what about importing? That's the whole point of FOAF...to make your data portable so you can move it around easily. But I've searched and searched and I can't find anything on how to import my FOAF data into Twitter, or LiveJournal, or elsewhere. What's the point of freedom when I can't use it?
A simple example of how importing FOAF is useful: FriendFeed. It aggregates stuff from various social networks. I already have a list of online accounts in my FOAF file. FriendFeed, let me import that file and you can take care of the rest! I hate re-typing in all my account names so you can import them. It's annoying and boring.
