The explicit definition of who is your friend within a social network is created by you. If Facebook forced you to be friends with everyone in your town, or school, or family then odds are you wouldn't want to use it. However, Facebook and other sites do offer suggestions as to who you may want to be friends with. Facebook will sometimes even give you a brief reason, such as the fact that you both went to the same high school.
In this paper, the authors discuss their recommendation widget, "Do You Know?". It combines information from the social network and outside of it to make recommendations that are viewed one at a time with the reasoning behind the choice. DYK is available for IBM's employee directory (all of the authors work for IBM), and 6287 users were logged during its initial test study. Overall, employees were happy with the tool, and provided feedback to the designers. The main point of question was the "No Thanks" button, which served as a way to permanently remove a suggestion. Some users were unsure as to just what it did (i.e., did it tell the person you rejected them?), and others never even noticed it. You can see a sample of DYK below.
Discussion:
Why is IBM concerned with friends, anyway? It seems strange to me that they would put an emphasis on the connection between employees while in the workplace. Now people can go through DYK while playing Mafia Wars 2.
But seriously, the idea behind DYK is cool. If people who have worked on projects together or have similar interests within the company can find each other and communicate, then they are more likely to feel a tie to IBM and fellow employees. Also, they may be able to collaborate on future projects together by finding compatible team members. Other social networking sites could learn something from this idea. Facebook likes to pull recommendations just from FB info, hence I get suggestions for people who go to A&M. Thanks Facebook! I definitely know that one girl from the 40,000+ who attend school here.
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