A funny thing happened to me on Facebook today.
There’s a recent feature in the profile section called “People you may know,” which keeps track of Facebook users who are friends with your friends; in essence, it aims to facilitate networking by cross-referencing friend lists.
For example : if person x is a friend of person y and person z, and persons y & z are friends with person w, it’s logical to assume that you also might be friends with person w. Facebook now offers a listing of such persons, in order to give you the opportunity to expand and update your lists.
But the really cool thing about this feature is when you discover that two of your friends from completely different spheres in your life have a mutual acquaintance that you never heard of. It’s a small world of course — six degrees of separation and all that — but we rarely find out just how close we all are save for the odd moment of coincidence. Now, with this feature, you will suddenly learn that your best friend from Halifax is buddies with your boss’ cousin, or that your ex-girlfriend’s sister hung out with one of your co-workers way back in CEGEP.
Not everyone likes the idea, but I for one think it’s mostly harmless. Who knows? You might even discover that the road rage dude you shared a cell with back in ’03 when you did that 2-year stint for aggravated assault turns out to be friends with this drugged-out carjacker from Verdun called “Needles” — the very same guy who sold you an ounce of £%¢@#$¤ powdered sugar instead of pure Nigerian H back in ’99.
I mean hell, I’ve been sooooo looking forward to getting back in touch with that guy.
Verbatim 