Going beyond just friends on FB: A new type of online social interaction

[Lieutenant Commander Data]

Hi Guys,

I just wanted some quick thoughts. You know how on FB you get recommended friends-of-friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends (FoFoFo...)? Ever felt that this is limiting? Ever felt that it's about time, with all this technology, we could have computers telling us whom we should meet and supercharge our social interactions so that our realworld social interactions became filtered and enhanced through tech?

I mean come on, that FoF and FoFoF thing is really incidental anyway. What actually decides who we are connected to are the attributes that define us. I mean, our history. Where we studied. What we like, liked, did,... how we played. What we listened to. The movies we watch. The food we eat. How we live... More and more of this information is online on profiles like FB and LinkedIn. Isn't it about time, computer technology was applied to using this to reveal our hidden connections (of course only to the extent we wish to permit it), such that we see the hidden webs connecting us to other people, rather than having to accidentally, through a random convo, find such a connection as a matter of happenstance.

I'm talking about things like this:

• Tim who joins a new university, opens this app and suddenly starts seeing how this other guy, Fred, whom he sees at the cafe before lectures every Monday is as passionate about starting a mobile game design company as Tim is. Better yet, he's a hardcore programmer while our guy Tim is a more of an artist... The perfect founding team!
  
• Charlie who works at Pizza Hut opens his app and sees this girl called Sophia who loves kayaking and collecting stamps. Sophia also loves Morris dancing and posts something about a party and how she can't find a date who can Morris dance! Who would've thought? Charlie happens to love all three and never thought he'd find someone who did, and certainly not so close-by(!) because Sophia also happens to work at the McDonalds across from his workplace. Charlie asks her out on the app and they hit it off.
  
• Sally is crazy about dinosaur art and takes a second-year course on Theropod dinosaurs. On her app she sees this other guy posting about how he badly needs a collaborator for an assignment on theropod dinosaurs. The two of them work together and get an A.

What I'm talking about, folks, is technology that is aware of all the hidden connections that people in your everyday life share, and reveals it to us, so that meetings, socializing and collaboration isn't a matter of pure accident or serendipity. To give us control over some of our destiny. At least to the extent that we can be aware of our own hidden connections and go seek them out to find even more.

What I'm talking about is technology making the world a little bit smaller. As they say, there are no strangers. Just friends that haven't yet met.

[Deleted]

one huge problem with that is Privacy concerns. even though many people nowadays post any random crap about themselves on FB or twitter, you still got existing privacy laws on local, national and international levels that can work against such things.

apart from that, it does seem like a nice concept, and even though i'm opposed to facebook, i'm interested in it.

[Powerogue]

That'd be iffy to start off. Say someone figures out through this I share their interests in certain video games and has seen me before. They talk to me and I think "Who the hell are you?!" It'd be kind of creepy just meeting these people who suddenly know a lot about me.