Many factors go into the "people you may know" features on networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin; things like having a lot of mutual connections and being from the same school or workplace are probably pretty important, for example.
It's fun to think that maybe there is something more. Sometimes, it seems that certain "people I may know" are in fact people who have snooped around my profile...especially in the case of sharing few or no other kinds of connections. For Linkedin, I can think of two examples of these rather interesting "people I may know":
1. The father of the valedictorian of my 2010 high-school graduating class, with whom I share no connections and do not have any degree of connection with (I was the salutatorian
).
2. The girlfriend of a guy who spent an uncomfortably large amount of time chatting with me in the past few months. We likewise share no connections, though she is indicated as a 3rd degree connection of mine.
Most other suggestions share at least 2 connections with me and share other features such as being from the same college and major.
Okay, so maybe this is juvenile and silly detective work, especially for a professional site like Linkedin. But it's kind of neat to think about nonetheless.
What kinds of interesting and/or creepy suggestions have you received on Linkedin, Facebook, or other networking sites?
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