The Inner Workings of “People Similar to You”

The beginnings of this socially-driven future are taking place at Google and Facebook, as well as the thousands of smaller app companies that study social data. At the center of this bubbling cauldron of development are two crucial questions. The first is, “Who matters to you?” We covered that subject in Chapter 2, “The New Influences in Search and Social Media,” when we discussed tastemakers and Google and Facebook’s desperate quest to figure out whose opinion you trust the most in each category of life. The second question is, “Who is similar to you?” An algorithm that accurately matches up people with common characteristics is the holy grail among the big tech companies, because it essentially breaks us loose from the closed circle of friends we currently belong to, exposing the vast universe of connections beyond it. The difference between today’s social media and a social media with a working “people similar to you” algorithm is like the difference between your music library and your music library powered by Pandora: one simply stores all your favorite songs, whereas the other constantly ex....to new songs. We need both. I believe that when you bring like-minded people into your life, a kind of magic happens. Suddenly you have not just your own life experiences guiding you, but others’ as well, and you discover wonderful new things you didn’t know existed.