Dave Winer calls the old wine / new bottle gambit.

Hats off to Dave Winer for calling the semantic shift from Social Network diagram to "Social Graph" a bit of monkey business. It just causes unnecessary confusion as the nomenclature is already defined - Scale Free, Small World networks for example.

Like many people I suspect, I was irritated* by its use when I read it, and just decided not to use the term - but if I can add a vote to keep the Social Network term, then here it is.

For at least 10 years I have known the representation of a social network on paper etc as a Social Network diagram (sometimes map) - why is that no longer appropriate?

Seems like he's in good company btw - Nick Carr agrees as well.

Postscript - even Facebook, the erstwhile Social Graphologers, use the term Social Network in their patents - could this all be about publicity then - surely not

*Note - another reason for irritation - as Dave Winer puts it..."Another problem with new names for old things is that it tends to push aside the pioneers and makes it sound like newcomers are not also-rans."