SUKRATA

An interesting Facebook ‘friend’ suggestion

I know how most of the social networking sites (like Facebook) make their connections.  There are primary connections like people you went to high school or college with.  There are secondary connections like friends of friends.  Then there are connection suggestions based on location and ‘likes’ and all kinds of other things.  It’s actually pretty cool and impressive.

One of the recent Facebook ‘friend’ suggestions stuck out though.  It was a guy I lived next door to over 5 years ago.  He still lives in the same place, but we are in a different city.  We haven’t contacted each other since we left that address and I haven’t googled or facebooked or otherwise searched for him.  He is not connected on Facebook to anyone I am ‘Facebook friends’ with.  Additionally, I did not list my address with Facebook, nor did my wife (who we’re connected as spouses on facebook).  If our address was on Facebook, I would still be impressed that they went so far as to match us back to old addresses and dig up neighbors.

Nevertheless, they suggested him as a friend.  I’m still curious and interested in how they dug that one up.