Err, that’s not how it’s suppose to go. As far as I remember, it’s suppose to be “show me who your friends are and I’ll show you who you are”. At least, that’s what I’ve always heard. But, back to the point - hopefully, you have heard this saying (or something similar) in the past. The concept or premise remains the same: I can assume things about you based on the company you keep.

Background

As we experiment and grow with social networking applications, there will be attempts to make personalized recommendations based on the tastes and experiences of people in one’s network. For example, if 5 people in my world have recommended the book Atlas Shrugged, the application would recommend I might enjoy it as well. (By the way, I do recommend it).

It’s important to note this recommendation is different than the “people who purchased this book also purchased a,b,c” cross sell recommendations (aka: collaborative filtering) that are prevalent in e-commerce sites.

In this case, recommendations based on your network, the recommendation is more personal, carries more credibility and might be more accurate.

Implementation

The code would need the ability to gather and process hobbies, interests, travel experience, likes/dislikes from people in your network. The recommended book example has already been provided. But, this could be taken much, much further. The application could make recommendations on what classes you might enjoy, movies, tv shows, vacation ideas, groups you might be interested in joining and so on.

The application could also pull tastes and experience from people (people to be determined similar) outside your network as well. In this case, the application might be add-on or augmentation to existing collaborative filtering solutions.

Privacy

Help me out here? I’m thinking the data gathering could be done in a way that still protects privacy. Or am I missing something?

Focus

* Company marketing and branding efforts could enhance their community development initiatives by developing specific applications for recommended ways to use their product, add-ons or partner products and services. And still, the application could gather from a variety of social networking applications. Am I thinking of a widget here? Is this the kind of application that fits into Open Social?

* Affiliate. Build it ourselves and recommendations lead to affiliate commissions.

Conclusion

After 13 years of coding, developing and hearing startup ideas, I don’t place much emphasis on my application ideas. I do respect when others want their ideas to be kept secret. But, for my ideas, I place emphasis on whether it can implemented and executed rather than the idea itself. Furthermore, this isn’t a game changing idea. I imagine there are plenty of people working this kind of product. In fact, Chris Anderson of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, doesn’t seem to care for the idea.

I learn from everyone I meet. Let me know what you think? Who is working on something like this? Or, should we build it? Or build a few of them?

Final Thought

Show me who your friends are and I’ll show you recommendations. I guess your recommendations for books, music, activities, etc. might be enlightening because they are being made to you based on the people in your network. It might be interesting in a stare-at-your-own-navel-kind-of-way. Will these recommendations further show you who you are based on who your friends are? Or, who cares, as long as the recommendations are worthwhile?