My Net buddy is no stranger

Technobeat

In "meatspace" business and social networks, people tend to have both interests and acquaintances in common. When two strangers initiate a relationship, either social or professional, both are able to ask mutual acquaintances for informal referrals and testimonials.

That referral process adds a layer of protection to new relationships. The very human temptation to lie about age or accomplishment is less when both parties know that they have people in common. Rookie programmers don't claim to be members of the Microsoft Board and 50-year-olds don't claim to be 25 in these circumstances.

Conversely, classic Net communities and special interest groups are composed of random strangers with interests in common. The lack of referrals is a major factor in the messy Net relationships that have become part of urban legend. In a typical Net relationship, the parties have no acquaintances in common and must take everything on trust.

Net forums and communities are finally adjusting their models to accommodate the safety factors that lie in common acquaintanceship. Friendster (www.friendster.com) is probably the best-known of the new referral-based networks, though several others are intrinsically more interesting.

These new Net forums typically utilise the "degrees of separation" theory. Anybody can sign up and list themselves, offering details about hobbies, interests, accomplishments and professional backgrounds.

Members are asked to produce a reference list of friends, who may also want to sign up. These friends are then contacted by the site and asked to sign up. If they do, they list further friends and so on.

So far, not very different from the way traditional online communities work. The trick is that referrals are linked and used to control interactions. Members can only directly contact other members who are linked by four degrees of separation or less.

That is, A can only talk directly to B, if A knows C, who knows D, who knows E, who knows B. If a member wants to meet somebody outside this widening circle, he must ask for referral and introduction from common acquaintances who possess closer links. As in the real world, people match up and angle for introductions on friendster-type networks.

Friendster opened in March without any fanfare. It has over one million members and is growing by 20 per cent a week despite restrictions on referral. The site is still beta and hopes to charge fees for premium services such as mapping possible paths to desired introductions or suggesting good "fits" between people.

In an ingenious twist, some Friendster special interest groups are now listed on eBay for auction! For example, if you want to join a bunch of loosely connected "hipsters and musicians", you can bid to join the "sleepnotwork" group on eBay.

The killer app is that these models can be usefully applied to business networks. It adds a major degree of comfort when doing business with a stranger if there are clear links of common referrals.

Everything from competence to reliability and trustworthiness can be verified before choosing to enter a professional relationship with somebody on a community like "ryze" (www.ryze.com), "linkedin" (www.linkedin.com) or "ecademy" (www.ecademy.com).

This is more or less what we do in the real world except that being part of a thoroughly-databased Net community extends our reach immensely. I always thought I was unsociable until a friend referred to me to one of these business communities.

In a swift introductory trawl, I discovered that I belong to a charmed circle that includes the manager of a Polish retail-chain, an Israeli online translation services provider, the CTO of a Scottish VPN service-provider, the Mumbai-based managing director of a health insurance company and the CIO of a Fortune 500 company.

I know that each of this motley crew is approximately who he, or she, says he is. If I wanted to work with any of them, I could set up e-meetings where they could check my credentials. And, yes, memberships will cost money "" enough apparently to make for viable financial models during these deflationary times.