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I had this idea when I was employed at Facebook. I was even considering doing something similar to it on the Hackathon. I believe in your idea and if Facebook w
by kozikow 14y ago
I had this idea when I was employed at Facebook. I was even considering doing something similar to it on the Hackathon. I believe in your idea and if Facebook won't do, in my opinion it it will be big (I didn't see anyone there interested in picking up this idea, so I don't think they will).
Graph search solves part of this problem - on example you can search "Friends of my friends, who like tennis, programming and Game of thrones". The problem here is that it's awkward to contact these people - you won't message person "hey, I found out that we have similar interests, we may be friends". The whole problem is "breaking ice". The fact that you know who could be a good friend doesn't solve this problem, because you don't have a good way of meeting these people.
I had a few ideas how to solve it, any wasn't perfect. Core thought behind is that you usually meet new people not through internet, but either on parties or by introduction through common friend. Maybe you will have any use from them:
1. Facebook or your site could algorithmically organize events for people. But honestly I don't know if people would be interested in attending such parties. You would sign up for a party and Facebook would find ideal group of strangers, that according to some machine learning would be your ideal friends. Having enough data is is possible to make awesome selection, but I don't know if people would be interested in attending such parties. Some slight modification is organizing "lunches". Imagine you are working in big office or at big school campus. Then your site could find ideal people to eat lunch with.
2. This is slight modification of point 2. There are tons of public events and venues. You could suggest what are good public parties and venues where I could find the most likely minded people. This is probably the least awkward option, but it is also the least accurate in finding likely minded people.
3. Introductions. Likely minded people will probably be close to you in your social graph. There's a chance that you have common friend. He could get a suggestion from Facebook or your site - "Hey X, we found out that your friends Y and Z should know each other. Do you want to introduce them to each other?". But here I am again sceptical if people would do it.
4. Having option of posting a status to result of graph search query. Then you could on example post a status "Hey, who wants to play tennis?". Problem here is that to initiate a conversation another person needs to write a message to you. Messaging a stranger is always awkward and in my opinion won't work, unless there will be big mental shift among people.
I believe this is a big problem for a lot of people nowadays, especially introverted people not good at making new connections. I believe in you, good luck :).
- talhof8 14y agoThank you very much for your details feedback! Much appreciated!!! I'd love to talk further, if you'd like to as well, you can find me at contact AT interestin.co