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"A few years ago, it was not uncommon to hear search people talk about The Dark Web (also known as Dark Net or the Deep Web). \u00A0Basically, the Dark Web is  made up pages or files that are unreachable by search engines. \u00A0Examples  of this sort of content include information that sits behind login, or  pages without inbound links. \u00A0Some estimates put the Dark Web at about  400 times the size of the Surface Web (content indexed by search  engines).\r\n\r\nGoogle  has invested tremendous resources in lighting up, or indexing these  hidden pieces of content. \u00A0An example of their efforts was their 2008  announcement that they could now index the contents of .PDF files, a &amp;quot;feat that requires and an immense amount of processing power.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nWhy  would Google do this? \u00A0The short answer is fear. \u00A0The longer that  Google allowed such a massive amount of content to go unindexed, the  more exposed they were to potential competitors able to light up and  organize this information.\r\n\r\nFlash  forward to 2011. \u00A0We are now witnessing a similar dynamic, but the  battlefield has shifted from search to social. \u00A0Just as Google had early  dominance in lighting up a portion of the web, Facebook has early  dominance in lighting up a portion of the world\u2019s social graph. \u00A0But  much like the Dark Web, there exists network upon network not yet  graphed by Facebook, waiting to be mapped, organized, and optimized for  communication.\r\n\r\nThis is the unlit social graph, and this is where Facebook is vulnerable.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s talk examples.\r\n\r\nFor  years I have been looking for a solution to the pick-up basketball  problem. \u00A0I have a large-ish network of people that I play hoops with in  San Francisco. \u00A0This network has not yet been lit up by any online  service. \u00A0While most of these people are on Facebook, they are hard to  organize as I don\u2019t know many of their last names. \u00A0And furthermore,  even if I did know their last names, I would feel awkward friending them  on Facebook, as they\u2019re not really my friends.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s  a network, but it\u2019s not a friend network, not a professional network,  and not a work network. \u00A0This particular network is a place based network, aligned around various basketball courts in San Francisco.\r\n\r\nOver  the years, we\u2019ve tried to light up our hoops network, but haven\u2019t been  able to find the right tools. \u00A0We tried Google Groups, but it got  overrun by spammers. \u00A0A Facebook Group set up for this purpose never  really got traction.\r\n\r\nWe  tried GroupMe, but the push aspect wasn\u2019t appropriate, it needed to be  pull - find ballers when you\u2019re ready to play, not when others are ready  to play.\r\n\r\nJust last week, I read about a company called Sportaneous that is trying to solve this problem.\r\n\r\nUbiquitous smartphones and always on access to umbrella social graphs are suddenly making these sort of tools possible.\r\n\r\nAnd  the opportunity is far larger than pick-up basketball, or even sports.  \u00A0Every school is a network, every employer is a network, every bar is a  network, every office building is a network, every hobby is a network,  every neighborhood is a network, and at an extreme level, every shared  interest is a network, regardless of location.\r\n\r\nThis  doesn\u2019t even get at the disposable, or elastic networks as discussed by  companies like Nearverse and Color - people that happen to just be  nearby each other for a snapshot of time.\r\n\r\nAll  of these networks share two common characteristics. \u00A01) They are not  yet graphed in a mainstream way by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Jive, or  any other dominant, online social service; and 2) They are all mappable  with a smartphone.\r\n\r\nMuch  like Google moved decisively to index huge swathes of the Dark Web,  Facebook will almost certainly look at ways to better map some of the  relationships discussed in this article.\r\n\r\nBut that doesn\u2019t mean that there aren\u2019t huge opportunities for thousands of startups.\r\n\r\nAs  an entrepreneur, there is a lot to be excited about right now. \u00A0But for  me it doesn\u2019t get more exciting than finding and mapping the unlit  social graph."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/location/2011/04/06/the-unlit-social-graph/>