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I wonder if this can be exploited for business networking purposes. Simply choose a person in your "network" and ask them to introduce you to one other person t

by jiggy2011 12y ago

I wonder if this can be exploited for business networking purposes. Simply choose a person in your "network" and ask them to introduce you to one other person they know and repeat with the new person.

jgmmo 12y ago
Like Conspire? https://www.goconspire.com/welcome https://www.goconspire.com/welcome
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  That seems too planned, it assumes you have a specific person in mind. What I mean is asking for random introductions until you meet someone influential.
jdmichal 12y ago
I wonder whether people would tend to introduce you more influential friends, over less influential friends, as a kind of status display. You could potentially "climb" faster than a random walk would.
- lsc 12y ago
  All of the guided "ask X to introduce you to Y" systems that I have seen are... poorly implemented. The thing is, asking for an intro is complex; it depends on your relationship with the person doing the introduction, and with their relationship with the end target, and with how beneficial the potential relationship between the introduced parties is perceived to be. You have a limited number of "waste your more important contact's time" tokens. You get more when you successfully introduce someone who is useful to your higher-status contact, The odd thing is, even in an unsuccessful match, where you introduce two people and they don't establish a relationship they both find pleasant, if you connect a lower-status contact with the higher-status contact, even if the match is unsuccessful, you are still seen to have done your lower-status contact a favor, even though you have annoyed the higher status contact, so if the lower-status contact is someone you want to curry favor with, it might make sense to introduce them even if there is a lower probability of them forming a mutually profitable relationship with the higher-status contact, but normally it's a matter of "how interesting is the potential relationship between the two people I am introducing," which takes some thought and often times means not making the introduction. The upshot here is that I'm not going to just right out introduce two of my contacts. I mean, I will if I think they can have a beneficial relationship, but I generally feel pretty weird when someone directly asks me for an intro to another specific person, rather than 'Hey, do you know anyone who is good with X" - because with the latter, I can talk to each person individually, and I can silently drop the whole thing without telling the other they were rejected, whereas if X asks me to introduce them to Y, and either Y says they are not interested or I think I would annoy Y, then I've gotta reject X, which can be awkward.
dangayle 12y ago
Isn't that what LinkedIn does?
- dangayle 12y ago
  Who downvoted this? This is exactly what LinkedIn does. You ask to be connected to a third party through one of your pre-existing connections. If you get connected to someone with a huge network, you can then connect with even more people without jumping through LinkedIn's hoops, or paying for their service.
autokad 12y ago
i dont see how that would introduce you to someone influential. yes, someone influential is 6 degrees away from someone you know, but there are like 5 billion people in those 6 degrees. no? with what is said above, it would seem to suggest that after enough people, the person you are introduced to is irrelevant to the first person who started introducing you to people.
VLM 12y ago
"for business networking purposes" Why not online matchmaking / dating? Not being in that market I have no idea if this already exists, if not it sounds like a great idea for a startup. Or if it already crashed and burned that would be interesting to hear about. So ... guys ... I have this unattached sister in law, kinda athletic, professionally employed, owns her own house, she is about as much of a PITA as her sister, aka my wife, so if I can put up with my wife you should be able to tolerate her little sister ... From historical experience my attempts setting up blind dates between my SiL and guys I know, have all gotten shot down by my wife, aka her sister, with what summarizes to "WTF were you thinking". Assuming a similarity between matchmaking and business relationships, this might indicate issues with peer to peer connection building. At least a meta-moderation facility is likely needed. Also if A sets up a hot date or business lunch between mutual friends B and C I could conceivably lose both B and C as friends if they hate each other. So in a game theory perspective the guy who does the least matchmaking comes out furthest ahead, right? But the purpose of the site was to do matchmaking, at least in theory and in PR. Although the real purpose would be to sell subscriptions and ads. I think I'm seeing another problem here.

jgmmo 12y ago

Like Conspire? https://www.goconspire.com/welcome https://www.goconspire.com/welcome

jiggy2011 12y ago
That seems too planned, it assumes you have a specific person in mind. What I mean is asking for random introductions until you meet someone influential.

jdmichal 12y ago

I wonder whether people would tend to introduce you more influential friends, over less influential friends, as a kind of status display. You could potentially "climb" faster than a random walk would.

lsc 12y ago
All of the guided "ask X to introduce you to Y" systems that I have seen are... poorly implemented. The thing is, asking for an intro is complex; it depends on your relationship with the person doing the introduction, and with their relationship with the end target, and with how beneficial the potential relationship between the introduced parties is perceived to be. You have a limited number of "waste your more important contact's time" tokens. You get more when you successfully introduce someone who is useful to your higher-status contact, The odd thing is, even in an unsuccessful match, where you introduce two people and they don't establish a relationship they both find pleasant, if you connect a lower-status contact with the higher-status contact, even if the match is unsuccessful, you are still seen to have done your lower-status contact a favor, even though you have annoyed the higher status contact, so if the lower-status contact is someone you want to curry favor with, it might make sense to introduce them even if there is a lower probability of them forming a mutually profitable relationship with the higher-status contact, but normally it's a matter of "how interesting is the potential relationship between the two people I am introducing," which takes some thought and often times means not making the introduction. The upshot here is that I'm not going to just right out introduce two of my contacts. I mean, I will if I think they can have a beneficial relationship, but I generally feel pretty weird when someone directly asks me for an intro to another specific person, rather than 'Hey, do you know anyone who is good with X" - because with the latter, I can talk to each person individually, and I can silently drop the whole thing without telling the other they were rejected, whereas if X asks me to introduce them to Y, and either Y says they are not interested or I think I would annoy Y, then I've gotta reject X, which can be awkward.

dangayle 12y ago

Isn't that what LinkedIn does?

dangayle 12y ago
Who downvoted this? This is exactly what LinkedIn does. You ask to be connected to a third party through one of your pre-existing connections. If you get connected to someone with a huge network, you can then connect with even more people without jumping through LinkedIn's hoops, or paying for their service.

autokad 12y ago

i dont see how that would introduce you to someone influential. yes, someone influential is 6 degrees away from someone you know, but there are like 5 billion people in those 6 degrees. no? with what is said above, it would seem to suggest that after enough people, the person you are introduced to is irrelevant to the first person who started introducing you to people.

VLM 12y ago

"for business networking purposes" Why not online matchmaking / dating? Not being in that market I have no idea if this already exists, if not it sounds like a great idea for a startup. Or if it already crashed and burned that would be interesting to hear about. So ... guys ... I have this unattached sister in law, kinda athletic, professionally employed, owns her own house, she is about as much of a PITA as her sister, aka my wife, so if I can put up with my wife you should be able to tolerate her little sister ... From historical experience my attempts setting up blind dates between my SiL and guys I know, have all gotten shot down by my wife, aka her sister, with what summarizes to "WTF were you thinking". Assuming a similarity between matchmaking and business relationships, this might indicate issues with peer to peer connection building. At least a meta-moderation facility is likely needed. Also if A sets up a hot date or business lunch between mutual friends B and C I could conceivably lose both B and C as friends if they hate each other. So in a game theory perspective the guy who does the least matchmaking comes out furthest ahead, right? But the purpose of the site was to do matchmaking, at least in theory and in PR. Although the real purpose would be to sell subscriptions and ads. I think I'm seeing another problem here.