FOAF

FOAF is a standard mark-up language in order to create a description of yourself. As it is standardised it is readable by computers and can be used for searching people. FOAF-a-Matic is a service that allows you to create such a FOAF-file. The interesting thing is that in a FOAF-file you can also mention your friends and their FOAF-file. This will allow services to create a network of friends of friends, etc.

However FOAF seems to be yet another way to create a profile of your self. It would be much better to add a FOAF-structure to for instance a vCard like standard. However it is an important step towards a semantic web.