The foaf:OnlineAccount class represents the provision of some form of online service, by some party (indicated indirectly via a foaf:accountServiceHomepage) to some foaf:Agent. The foaf:account property of the agent is used to indicate accounts that are associated with the agent.

See foaf:OnlineChatAccount for an example. Other sub-classes include foaf:OnlineEcommerceAccount and foaf:OnlineGamingAccount.

One deployment style for this construct is to use URIs for well-known documents (or other entities) that strongly embody the account-holding relationship; for example, user profile pages on social network sites. This has the advantage of providing URIs that are likely to be easy to link with other information, but means that the instances of this class should not be considered 'accounts' in the abstract or business sense of a 'contract'.