Comments on: The Year of Discovering and Searching Potential Friends

By: yungbitz

yungbitz — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:18:14 +0000

looking for real friends to hold by the hand

By: you cant discover without promotion.

you cant discover without promotion. — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:55:59 +0000

[...] you cant discover without promotion. // I started this blog in the middle of 2007, and like all new bloggers, when January rolled around, I made a couple of predictions. I believed that 2008 was going to be The Year of Discovering and Searching Potential Friends. [...]

By: Joe Lazarus

Joe Lazarus — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:23:17 +0000

Micah, thanks for the tip. I’ll check that out.

By: Micah

Micah — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:38:11 +0000

@joe, there is a good conversation going on over at http://blog.adaptiveblue.com around friend hierarchies.

By: BlueBlog: Friend Hierarchy

BlueBlog: Friend Hierarchy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:28:58 +0000

[...] second point a bit: would you like to have your friendships surfaced, automatically, via existing trust relationships and have the level of the friendship defined for you, automatically, by how often you interact with [...]

By: Joe Lazarus

Joe Lazarus — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:13:40 +0000

Great post Micah. I agree that there’s a need for some sort of uber friend recommender. I plan to incorporate some aspect of this into the web app I’m working on, although my focus is more on content discovery than contact discovery.

I like the distinction Last.fm makes between “friends” and “neighbors”. I would like recommendations on forming connections with both of those types of contacts. Connecting to actual friends – the people you already know – should be fairly straight-forward. If the system notices, for example, that you are friends with Bob on Flickr and that Bob and you both have a profile on del.icio.us, it should recommend that you friend Bob on del.icio.us. Neighbors are a little more complicated to identify… recommending people who you have no connection to other than some shared interest (ie. you and a stranger happen to bookmark a lot of the same sites in del.icio.us). Oddly, I’m personally more excited about connecting with neighbors online since I have a lot of alternative methods for connecting with actual friends in the real world. For example, not many of my actual friends use sites like Tumblr. Meeting neighbors with those interests online allows me to connect with people online to discuss a topic that is mostly missing from my personal life.

By: Micah

Micah — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:18:52 +0000

Harrison,

I think Spokeo is a good social aggregator to date, and I should have included it in my post along friendfeed and socialthing.

It doesnt tell me whom I should be friends with, nor can I easily search through my friends content.

But I have been a user for awhile, and I like getting the updates.

By: Harrison

Harrison — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:45:26 +0000

What you are asking for is Spokeo: http://www.spokeo.com

It searches for your friends across the Web, and then it automatically updates you on their latest activities. Techcrunch has a detailed description on how it works: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....r-friends/

By: Kath

Kath — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:12:53 +0000

Great post as always.

My question…what defines a friend? Do you mean friend in the true sense of the word or acquaintance?

That is what I have been trying to wrap my head around.

Keep in mind I have several Twitter buddies that I feel are like friends….you included, Micah..even tho I have never met them and may not ever meet them.

That also brings to mind people I meet thru my blog. I am actually fairly close to many people I meet via my blog. The ones I have connected with in person have moved from ‘blog buddy’ to ‘friend’. The ones I haven’t met are still at the ‘blog buddy’ stage.

It might just be semantics when it all comes down to it.