Monday, November 23, 2009

How Facebook suggests friends


A brief aside...

Today, after years of total neglect, I blew the dust and cobwebs off my facebook account and peered inside. Not a whole lot it had to be said; although there were a couple of images to the right hand side of the screen labelled as 'suggestions'.

These are, apparently, people that Facebook has decided that you might know - based (I assumed) upon mutual friends. So far, so good. But, in amongst the list of suggestions was a name that I recognised from a long, long time ago - Aleks Krotoski. She's (and I quote from her website) "an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity". But I don't know Aleks from this; I know Aleks because - at one point in a long distant past - I shared an office with her then boyfriend and bumped into her in a shop that sold cheap (but strangely tasty) Yorkshire pudding based edibles.

And that's it. That's how we know each other. How on Earth did Facebook know about this??? And she's not the only person from my time before blogging that peered at me from the murky waters of the 'suggested friends' page - people I've not even thought about, but who are somehow linked to me...

I'm slightly scared. Facebook appears to know more about me than I do myself...

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