Adding people into the FOAF web

If someone makes a new FOAF file, how do they get it into the web of data that is spidered by FOAF harvesters?

The process is similar to the web itself: you get it linked to. In FOAF, the property rdfs:seeAlso is used to make the link.

If your file is already spidered, and you want to introduce a friend's, you might add in to your FOAF file:

  <foaf:knows>
    <foaf:Person>
       <foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:myfriend@example.com" />
       <rdfs:seeAlso 
          rdf:resource="http://example.com/~myfriend/foaf.rdf" />
    </foaf:Person>
  </foaf:knows>

If you've not used rdfs properties elsewhere in your FOAF document, make sure you have declared the rdfs namespace:

  xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"

If your friend's FOAF file is digitally signed then it will help FOAF processors know the owner of your friend's file.