Internet Nakedness
I created a LinkedIn account a few weeks ago. Today I got an e-mail asking me if I knew certain people that I could connect with on LinkedIn. There were six names. Two of them I recognized. One of them was the father of a kid my son played racquetball with a few years back. I don't have any online associations with him at all, except that he's sent me a few e-mails, and I've sent him some. He's not a Twitter or Facebook friend. The other one was someone I know on both Twitter and Facebook, but haven't e-mailed directly. Yet somehow, LinkedIn (a company supposedly separate from Twitter, Facebook, and Google) was able to connect me to these two individuals, recognizing that there was some connection between us. How did it determine those connections? From Gmail? (That might apply to the first one, but not the second.) From Twitter or Facebook? (That would apply to the second, but not to the first.) I don't know, I find this ability of companies to guess ...