Comments on: Sparky232221 is My New BFF: A Foray into Social Networking, Not Just Social Media

By: Adam Darowski

Adam Darowski — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:09:22 +0000

The key about last.fm is… I don’t have to change anything that I do as part of my day to day activities. I just listen to music as I always have. They process the algorithms in the background and introduce people to you. Maybe it’s not fantasy football for audiophiles… maybe it is eHarmony.

a more useful social tool than having a list of friends who have merely stumbled across your page and like your picture

Yeah, but… one of the coolest things WAS your picture.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:56:52 +0000

Being the “subject matter” in Adam’s original post I’m drawn to add some comment to his observations.
I agree with his myspace / flickr sentiments and view last.fm as having a different type of attraction to these “people” sites – my online persona is fairly anonymous with the music saying who I am rather than pictures, words and some thrown in quirkiness or pretentiousness. I might not get millions of hits or a network of thousands of friends, but that’s not what I think Last.fm is about.
It’s power to pair myself & Adam, listening to the same music on opposite sides of the planet, is something that would have required many hours trawling through other social networking sites making friends whereas last.fm only requires you to sit and listen whilst it does all the social networking for you.
To me having 10 people you can truly relate to and count as musical peers (cheers for SSP tip by the way Adam) is a more useful social tool than having a list of friends who have merely stumbled across your page and like your picture.

By: Adam Darowski

Adam Darowski — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:52:14 +0000

Kind of a mind-blowing proposal a bit, but at some point, you have to wonder what all of this true personal preference sharing could lead to.

Think of all the data that The GOOG has. What if they start buying up companies, like say, Last.fm (though they were recently bought by CBS, so that won’t happen until Google buys CBS… half kidding)? Now they have our search preferences, our music preferences… let’s buy NetFlix. There’s our movie preferences. At some point this can populate a damn good model of what society as a whole… likes. And that could revolutionize marketing and advertisement.

A technology like OpenID that could link all of our social profiles together would help this along. There are tons of profiles out there… if you can start tying them to one individual identity, it lets you know infinitely more about that person. Sure, I know that my Last.fm pal Mark likes Teenage Fanclub. But linking social accounts could tell me what he searches for on the web and what books he reads, etc. Then you can find out even more if a person is similar to you.

Albeit still vague, it’s an interesting concept.

By: mark

mark — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:46:36 +0000

Interesting approach. I’m still way down the learning curve on all of this. I do keep an eye open for like minded individuals, usually stumbling upon them through surfing forums or finding links to pictures in their project archives.

I wonder if what you are on to here, could be linked to a genetics study? Match musical tastes, (or anything really) to some genetic or social variable(s). Could you envision some new visual mapping application that could overlay and draw upon the information from these social media networks? I’m not entirely sure of what I’m proposing, it’s just a thought that there is a possibility of something bigger built upon what you’ve found.

By: Nick Peters

Nick Peters — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 03:48:40 +0000

I agree, I don’t use those sites to make new friends, but rather I like to check out what my friends like and to discover new things. If a friend bookmarks something interesting, I’ll check it out. If a friend listens to a band I’ve never heard them, I’ll check them out (I’ve heard a lot of great bands this way). In the case of last.fm and neighbors, it’s a great way to find new music since you know these people have pretty similar taste, but music taste does not define the person, thus me never befriending them (unless it’s a cute girl )