One of the challenges in using social media services such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Jaiku, Facebook and LinkedIn is figuring out who to follow.
There’s certainly no lack of choice but it’s difficult picking people if you’re looking for friends/followers other than people you already know. In particular, what’s missing are tools that give you insight into people you might want to friend/follow based on specific interests.
Let’s say, for example, you want to friend/follow people who are passionate about travel. How do you effectively find people within various social media communities that you may want to follow?
Within Twitter, there Twellow but it’s difficult to navigate and takes too much time to sift through the results. Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like there’s this kind of feature in Friendfeed, Jaiku, Facebook and LinkedIn, although Facebook and LinkedIn offer recommendations on connections with other people within your networks.
As result, most people build replicates of the communities they’re already part of. It provides a good base but if friend/follow with the same people in every community, it could get pretty dull after awhile. It’s like going to different parties, and the exact same people are at each one.
What would be great is a smart social recommendation tool based on interests. This could be done using information that you provide within a profile, or by doing a search using keywords, categories, location, etc.
It would hopefully generate new and different people to friend/follow – people that you would never have found through your existing network or word of mouth. This took would expand and open your horizons and networks in new and exciting directions.
As much as I would hate to give away an amazing start-up idea (it strikes me as an idea that Y Combinator would do), what I’m describing is a smart social media recommendation service (aka SmartSocial), or an aggregated social media search tool.
Here’s how I think it would work: the user would register and provide information about themselves and all the social media services that they belonged to. Then, they could do a search on a single network or multiple networks based on keywords, categories, etc. that would scan each of these social networks, and come up with recommendations on who to friend/follow.
So, what do you think? Would it strike you as useful/valuable, and it is a plausible service?
Technorati Tags: facebook, jaiku, linkedin, friendfeed, Twitter
Who and How Do You Follow/Friend People?
One of the challenges in using social media services such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Jaiku, Facebook and LinkedIn is figuring out who to follow.
There’s certainly no lack of choice but it’s difficult picking people if you’re looking for friends/followers other than people you already know. In particular, what’s missing are tools that give you insight into people you might want to friend/follow based on specific interests.
Let’s say, for example, you want to friend/follow people who are passionate about travel. How do you effectively find people within various social media communities that you may want to follow?
Within Twitter, there Twellow but it’s difficult to navigate and takes too much time to sift through the results. Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like there’s this kind of feature in Friendfeed, Jaiku, Facebook and LinkedIn, although Facebook and LinkedIn offer recommendations on connections with other people within your networks.
As result, most people build replicates of the communities they’re already part of. It provides a good base but if friend/follow with the same people in every community, it could get pretty dull after awhile. It’s like going to different parties, and the exact same people are at each one.
What would be great is a smart social recommendation tool based on interests. This could be done using information that you provide within a profile, or by doing a search using keywords, categories, location, etc.
It would hopefully generate new and different people to friend/follow – people that you would never have found through your existing network or word of mouth. This took would expand and open your horizons and networks in new and exciting directions.
As much as I would hate to give away an amazing start-up idea (it strikes me as an idea that Y Combinator would do), what I’m describing is a smart social media recommendation service (aka SmartSocial), or an aggregated social media search tool.
Here’s how I think it would work: the user would register and provide information about themselves and all the social media services that they belonged to. Then, they could do a search on a single network or multiple networks based on keywords, categories, etc. that would scan each of these social networks, and come up with recommendations on who to friend/follow.
So, what do you think? Would it strike you as useful/valuable, and it is a plausible service?
Technorati Tags: facebook, jaiku, linkedin, friendfeed, Twitter