Rate Your IM Popularity

aicrules writes "The internet has long been a safe haven, and thus a play-field-leveling force, for the less socially adept to create a network of friends to share in fun, games, and conversation. However, it appears as if the influence of the social ladder is creeping its way in. While it will certainly lend itself to the abuse that any online scoring system faces, AimFight is the new place where people can go to check their popularity against others." From the article: "Your popularity is based on who has you on their buddy list. There's a complicated algorithm at work here. Your score is measured to the third degree, in the sense of the 'six degrees of separation' game that seeks to link anybody on Earth to any other person through no more than five friends. Say a couple of your friends, A and B, have you on their buddy lists. A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score. That's because she doesn't have as many people on her buddy list as does B, who has 16. Your friend A is clearly not as well-connected as your friend B. Not unlike life."

Comments

Without the silly flash interface

[DosBubba]

http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=SCREENAMEON E&name2=SCREENNAMETWO

Just plug in the screen names.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[RingDev]

http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=BillGates&n ame2=SteeveJobs No wonder why MS > Apple, Steeve's got no friends! -Rick

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[DosBubba]

I'll explain:
"success=1" Both names were found.
"score1=533" Score of the first name
"score2=213" Score of the second name
"height1=99" How high to make the graph of user1
"height2=39" How high to make the graph of user2

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[battamer]

or: http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=%5Byourscre enname%5D E&name2=%n If you send that link to someone in AIM, it will substitute thier screenname for [%n]. Saves a bit of effort.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[ballwall]

Finally I can write the plugin for GAIM I've always wanted: Filter IMs from unpopular people.

Heh, seriously, someone is probably already hard at work writing something like this using this interface. Sad sad world... :)

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[timster]

Odd, I would prefer the opposite -- to filter IMs from the popular. Most of my friends have scores like 130.

Quality over quantity, man.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[ciroknight]

Isn't this whole concept a dupe of BuddyZoo.com, which was on Slashdot two years ago?

Sounds like an ad-ridden dupe to me.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[JenG2417]

Actually AIM fight seems very different from Buddy Zoo. First off, Buddy Zoo is static, Aimfight is dynamic and counts your score based on only users that are currently signed online. So it TRULY shows how connected your network is. I could have 1,000 screen names on buddy zoo marked as friends, but that doesn't mean much if they never sign onto AIM anymore. Secondly, AIMfight allows the user much more privacy. It does not give out screen names that have you listed as friends or allow you to see who has you buddy listed, or even allows you to see friends that you have in common with other people. AIMfight is merely a real time score that depicts how connected you truly are.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[PriceIke]

Might help if you spelled Steve's name right. Or is "Steeve" some obscure joke that I'm not cool enough to know about?

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[OpenSourceOfAllEvil]

And why should I or anyone care? Anyone so desparate for validation that needs or wants this is no one I want to know.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you only say this becuase your score is low. Very, Very low. I'd be surprised if anyone had you on their buddy list at all.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[ashot]

I figured it out too, but what was with that actionscript assembly? Is that some sort of tool they are using to prevent code stealing?

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[SuperWebTech]

Does AIMFight only consider how many people are on buddy lists? It would be more accurate if it tracked a person's active online time and the amount of time they talked. A person with fifty people on their list who only gets on an hour a week should have a lower score than someone with a dozen AIM friends who talks to them all the time.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[ashot]

no, it has nothing to do with who is online, the difference is its owned by AOL and they have all the data whereas buddy zoo only has the data of people who have registered with them (fraction)

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[Omniprogram]

how did you manage to get that link (without flash) anyways?

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[ZingoZango]

http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=stevejobs&n ame2=billgates

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[DBergere]

#!/bin/sh
if test $# -eq 2
then
response=`curl -s "http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=$1&name2=$ 2"`
noamp=`echo $response | tr '&' ' '`
noeql=`echo $noamp | tr '=' ' '`
echo $1 = $(echo $noeql | awk '{ print $4 }')
echo $2 = $(echo $noeql | awk '{ print $6 }')
else
echo Usage aimfight [screenname1] [screenname2]
fi

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[Anonymous Coward]

What could this mean? http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=vi&name2=em acs

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[heov]

yes, it has everythign to do with who is online. your score is based on ONLY those CURRENLTY ONLINE. if 50 ppl have you listed right now, vs 40 in 10 minutes, your score will go down immediatly. and yes, buddyzoo instantly loses cause you have to submit your buddylist.

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[ashot]

you are right, I am wrong.. we'll, I'm partly right, but yea..
this is more interesting. I'm going to write a script that will keep track of a screename and generate a plot, showing daily/seasonal popularity fluctuations. =]

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[RingDev]

Woops, there is an inside joke about a guy called 'Steeve' but I was not intending to use it. Just me being fat fingered.

-Rick

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you give us a link to this script? I'd like to set it up. Will it generate an HTML page and images like stats/log analyzers do?

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[ashot]

I use a plotting device on my client, so you'll have to take care of the plotting yourself (you can use an online plot service: http://www.softintegration.com/chhtml/lang/lib/lib ch/plot/cgi_data.html). This script will aggregate the data for you and spit out the current contents everytime:

#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib
import cPickle as c
import time

sn = "screename"

try:
scores = c.load(open("scores.pickle"))
except:
scores = []

s = urllib.urlopen("http://www.aimfight.com/getFight.p hp?name1=ashot&name2=%s"%sn).read()
sc = int(s.split("score2=")[1].split('&')[0])
scores.a ppend((sc,time.time()))
c.dump(scores, open("scores.pickle",'w'))
print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n"
print "\n".join([str(x[0]) for x in scores])

remember to remove the space from the url that slashdot inserts

Re:Without the silly flash interface

[JenG2417]

"How do I win?
Your score is the sum of the current number of people online who have you listed as a buddy, out to three degrees. This means the score is constantly changing, and the winner of the battle will constantly change with it. "

It says it right on the page that the number is based on the amount of people WHO ARE CURRENTLY ONLINE back three degrees from your buddy list. The concepts are similar, yet completely different.

The BIG difference is that AIM fight does not give out any other screen names for things like people who have buddy listed you or common buddies.

Missing option: No-gottum IM

[ackthpt]

No IM, No Cell Phone, just peachy working on having friends in the local, physical world.

So if we're supposed to be getting away from this, what's with the Friends thing on /. ??

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[Bonker]

I must suck since I don't use IM.

Strangely, I still seem to be able to get laid whenever I want.

Hmm... Seems that my Geek Card is expired. Not sure I'm going to renew.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[rAiNsT0rm]

No IM, tried it twice and found it to be the most invasive annoying technology I've ever used. As far as cell phone, I have a pre-paid T-mobile for basic use but that's about it. I also don't have many friends... but that doesn't bother me as I tend to be a bit solitary and quite enjoy it. I think this always connected stuff is a bit out of hand. Last Weekend I was at State College (Penn State Alum) at the arts festival and every single person on the street and in bars is on a cell phone. two people walking together down the road both on cell phones... four people sitting at a bar together, all four on cell phones. Why even go out? What do people get from this? I guess this fad missed me by one generation and jeebus am I glad.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[Anonymous Coward]

Strangely, I still seem to be able to get laid whenever I want.

Be able to hire a prostitute at will does not prove you are not a geek.

Also, judging from your Anime addiction as evidenced on your website, it would appear you were just given a lifetime honorary Geek membership, and therefore your Geek Card will never expire.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[sp0rk173]

Strangely, I still seem to be able to get laid whenever I want.

You just choose not to, right?

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[sp0rk173]

Typical Cellphone conversation amongst those you saw:

Females
"Yeah, I'm at a bar by Penn State. Yeah. Uh huh. This weird frumpy looking guy is staring at me. Yah, I guess it's my skirt. Anyway, your place tonight? Sounds good. I need a good pounding. See you then!" Males

"Soo...we still up for tonight? Yeah, I can't wait. What...the...fuck. Some fat nerdy looking guy is starting at me. I think he...wants my ass? Yeah, baby, I know you want my ass. Just like I want your ass...and I KNOW i'll get it later tonight . Alright, see you then. Bye."

See, "normies" use cellphones to get laid. It's that simple.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[iamhassi]

Strangely, I still seem to be able to get laid whenever I want.

wives and cousins dont count... unless they're 2nd cousins...

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[rAiNsT0rm]

Wow you must be proud. I'm 25, not quite frumpy and have no problems getting laid without having a cell-phone glued to my ear. Why even go out in a group only to all be on your cell-phone talking to *other* people? I seriously just don't get it I would love for someone to explain to me why I would want to be on a phone in a loud/crowded bar while I'm WITH four perfectly good friends present - all also on their phone.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[Mad Merlin]

So if we're supposed to be getting away from this, what's with the Friends thing on /. ??

*looks over at his empty friends list on /.*

Oh, that thing.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[Lemmy Caution]

After a year or two, wives count, trust me.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a political statement...

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[pswayze]

It counts, so long as it's not your wife.

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[stoborrobots]

*looks over at his empty friends list on /.*

Well, with a comment like that, what else did you expect?

Re:Missing option: No-gottum IM

[Anonymous Coward]

Who wouldn't? All this coding to do, yet so little time... Gotta prioritize!

E-pen fights on AOL

[RingDev]

This aught to be good for a laugh.

-Rick

Re:E-pen fights on AOL

[RingDev]

Someone's E-pen was threatened, so he's moding all funny post's as overrated. Incase said 'overrated moder' reads this post, please mod it 'Troll', or if you must, Troll and Overrated.

-Eixk

why is this under hardware?

[jabella]

just curious.

highest score i've seen so far is in the 20,000 range.

Re:why is this under hardware?

[angrist]

Just dropped in a couple of mine .... turns out my brother scores 97455, rating in the top 5%

damn that kid needs a life

Re:why is this under hardware?

[JPriest]

Mine is 20,623 :P

Re:why is this under hardware?

[caino59]

my sis is 52,409 - ranking her in the top 5% as well

as she definately has a life....sheesh...

Re:why is this under hardware?

[ackthpt]

Maybe because it got such a good score with the eds.

Re:why is this under hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

buddy of mine is in top 5% with 70615

Re:why is this under hardware?

[Shkuey]

Friend who has worked for AOL for years and years ranked top 5% at around 105k. I, on the other hand, apparently suck at around 5k.

Re:why is this under hardware?

[cavemanf16]

My sister scored over 85000, ranked herself 90000+ amongst ALL AIM users, and completely blew my measly score out of the water.

Re:why is this under hardware?

[q-the-impaler]

I have two: one for work and one personal. My work name creamed my personal name: 58,295 vs 33,709.

I can't say I really AIM all that much anymore, though.

Re:why is this under hardware?

[iphayd]

The screen names aol, aim, and bob are in the top 5%. Anything in the top 5% shows a ranking too, which appears to be how many you are from the top of the list.

"aol" has a score of 65161 and a rank of 143491, which means there are a lot more screen names more popular than it.

Now, what screen name is number 1?

Re:why is this under hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

482,229
sayanythingmax

Re:why is this under hardware?

[EggMan2000]

Infocombot 155,873 AIM top 5%

Re:why is this under hardware?

[Fahrvergnuugen]

I figured I would be pretty pimp because I have a lot of people contact me via aim for stuff that I'm selling or renting (mostly car related stuff on the vwvortex). I ended up with about 20,727

Anyhow, I checked my sister's score... 47,236. What a slut!

of course then it occurred to me that most of her high school friends have 17 aim accounts each...

Re:why is this under hardware?

[The-Bus]

My girlfriend's is over 25,000.

(Insert Tired Joke #2522 here)

Re:why is this under hardware?

[avronius]

You think maybe your sister can loan me some of her contacts?

I re-activated my account this morning and it ucks to be at 0...

Re:why is this under hardware?

[jjares]

One of my contacts is an aol internal support team, and he has 477,789, ranked 1165, I wonder how many the 1st one has

Re:why is this under hardware?

[avronius]

*sucks

Re:why is this under hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

it just "occured" to you, eh? never logged in as your sister? eh? not even to test? maybe to message her friends? eh? fahrvergnuugen? eh?

Re:why is this under hardware?

[IdleTime]

Hmmm.. Interesting... I got:
Score: 125207
Rank: 4752

Probably stems from the fact that we use aim intensively at work.

Re:why is this under hardware?

[Dolly_Llama]

My girlfriend's is over 25,000

In a row?

Re:why is this under hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

damn pickup lines are getting stranger and stranger

Hardware?

[un1xl0ser]

How is this hardware?

Re:Hardware?

[Nytewynd]

Sometimes people refer to trophies as hardware. Clearly, the person with the highest score gets a trophy.

Re:Hardware?

[ghee22]

damn you.. u beat my comment by 1 minute.. my karma will never rise and i'll be stuck reincarnating on earth forever.. [sigh]

Re:Hardware?

[ch-chuck]

that'll be corrected in the dupe

Re:Hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'm gonna go back to playing with my penguin.

Sooo, *that's* what you're calling it these days!

Still no friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang, and I thought online no one knew I had no friends.

Re:Still no friends

[netdur]

on my messenger! I have 13 persons
1) beyonca (you won't believe her real name)
2) middle-famous pr0n actress
3) hollywood movie's author
4) famous skin doctor
5) my gf
the rest are web masters, local friends and nerds

how do you rate me?

Hardware?

[ghee22]

Shouldn't this be placed in IT? I wish we had more "Linux" articles, all the ones that make it usually end up on the front page. This is great but it's always a little surprise to see one hiding. Ok, I'm gonna go back to playing with my penguin.

Top 5%

[Anonymous Coward]

Failed to mention, is a special disclaimer/logo shown when you're ranked within the top 5% - it will display where you rank, in addition to your fight score. :)

The real winners

[otter42]

So who's going to win this?

Why, the zombie hackers of course. I imagine that their ICQ buddy lists must be light-years long.

Re:The real winners

[ZephyrXero]

I do seriously wonder what's the point of such a service? To make people feel good about themselves by being told they have lots of friends or will it be used as a security messure to make sure it's not just a spambot trying to add you to their buddy list? That might actually be useful...

Re:The real winners

[Nytewynd]

Actually, it isn't just how many friends you have. It is how many friends your friends have. That means as long as a geek latches on to a popular person, they can be popular by proxy.

Re:The real winners

[cavemanf16]

It's to prove that the younger you are, the truly more 'hip' you are. For instance, my younger brother by 4 years is a *little* more popular than I am, while my sister who is 10 years younger (18yrs old and on her way to college) ranked in the top 5% of AIM users! Yikes! She blew me out of the water. But c'mon, we all had more friends during high school and/or college than we do as we grow older. Grandma and grandpa's all over the US would score in the bottom 0.1% of AIM users simply because a bunch of people from their generation are dead now.

Still, it's a fun use of an interesting algorithm.

Re:The real winners

[It doesn't come easy]

Interesting...need to correlate this score with zombied computers...see how it stacks up...

Re:The real winners

[otter42]

Of course, if I'd read the article, I would have seen that it's only for AIM.

I tried it out. My score was 8. Of course, in France, everyone is on MSN. I only know two people on AIM, and they're in America.

Re:The real winners

[Otter]

I do seriously wonder what's the point of such a service?

It's a) a clever hack and b) fun.

Re:The real winners

[AyeRoxor!]

(18yrs old and on her way to college)

pix?

kthx.

Re:The real winners

[fupeg]

Of course, in France, everyone is on MSN

Ouch. Yet another reason why France sucks.

Re:The real winners

[d34thm0nk3y]

That means as long as a geek latches on to a popular person, they can be popular by proxy.

Sweet, just like High School!

Re:The real winners

[cavemanf16]

Here ya go!

Re:The real winners

[Photar]

Well, I have a score of 141, and I have a friend with a score of over 7000. Whats up with that?

Re:The real winners

[kinglink]

yes but only this time you won't have to get called names to be "popular".. or at least I won't, I hope.

Re:The real winners

[tbischel]

I think they've got the second level and beyond messed up. To me, it seems if you were on a bunch of smaller lists instead of bigger lists, you have a larger market share with that person. I have a couple accounts, one where I have sn's I have no idea who they belong to anymore... and another smaller buddy list with people I care about.

Re:The real winners

[blogeasy]

In this game, imaginary friends actually do count unlike real life where having imaginary friends could be detrimental to your health.

Re:The real winners

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, its how many people listed YOU as a friend. You listing others has no effect on your own score, only on others. So, you're only popular if a popular person latches on to you.

Re:The real winners

[Fjornir]

Fucktard.

Re:The real winners

[AyeRoxor!]

Oh noes! Sum-wun didint get the joke!!!

OK

[Shut the fuck up!]

Outside of 13 year olds, Who the hell gives a flying fuck about their IM popularity?

Re:OK

[thryllkill]

Idiocy is not limited to those in their early teens.

Re:OK

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Outside of 13 year olds, Who the hell gives a flying fuck about their IM popularity?
Ummmm- the advertisers targeting 13 year olds.... The "tweens" are a huge demographic for advertisers, so the site lords can laugh all the way to the bank...
Could I be really popular if I allowed every female buddy who contacts me unsolicited from Asia/Europe to join my buddy list?

Re:OK

[WhiZa]

...but you did check to see your score?

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like someone's AIM Fight score is pretty low...

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I always have my cell if someone needs me. The difference is, is that I know who is calling and the caller does not know whether I am there or not, so I have a choice.

Uh...how is this any different exactly? I don't know about you, but I have never been forced to answer an IM, and I have never been unable to identify the person IMing me. A cellphone is just as instantly avilable as IM, if not more so.

Re:OK

[badasscat]

Outside of 13 year olds, Who the hell gives a flying fuck about their IM popularity?

Maybe people who aren't cynical, boring assholes?

Jesus, some of you guys really need to lighten up. This is an office time-killer, that's all. I've sent it around to a few people I used to work with and still have on my IM list and it amused us for five minutes or so. What's the friggin' harm?

btw, I suck. I'm at 4,195. Every single person on my buddy list beats me by about five to one. Do I care? No, but it was fun to check out.

Re:OK

[Scaba]

Speaking of Jesus:

Jesus
Score: 213230
Rank: 3915

The Beatles
Score: 1006

Who's more popular now, eh?

"Not unlike life"

[Anonymous Coward]

"not unlike life"?

Yes it is! It's on a damn computer. You can't see, hear, smell, or touch the other person.

This is just another nerdy pissing contest.

Re:"Not unlike life"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't see, hear, smell, or touch the other person.

which is sometimes a good thing. Life isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

popularity is like....

[LiquidMind]

...bragging about yourself and it's totally unnecessary. If you're really that shit hot, people will find out eventually - no need to advertise it.

Only works for AIM of course

[jandrese]

This fight is for people who aren't technical and are in the US. I score very low because most of my friends (and their friends) are on ICQ.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[drsquare]

Er, you can use AIM outside of America. And if 'technical' people use a system based on anything other than the people on it, they're idiots. Anyway I thought MSN was the more popular messaging system?

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Markus_UW]

I went straight from ICQ to MSN myself, never even tried AIM. My only interest in this is since now the AIM-rats will have something to do other than annoy me on IRC Channels, etc.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[digidave]

IM popularity is really a group thing. Myself and everybody I interact with are on ICQ. I've never had anybody ask what my MSN or AOL screenname is. It's just the sort of crowd I run in, I guess.

People pick their IM client based on who they know. If their friends are on MSN, they'll be there too.

Clients like Kopete, Gaim and Trillian allow connecting to several at once, so at work I have ICQ and the office Jabber server setup in Kopete. Many others use these features to talk to MSN, ICQ and AOL people without needing to worry about which IM client a certain friend uses.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Goalie_Ca]

This fight is for people who aren't technical and are in the US.

You expected nerds to be popular???

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Ark42]

I'm pretty sure ICQ and AIM are more or less the same now. You can log into just about any AIM client with your ICQ number as the screenname, and the same password. You can add ICQ people to your AIM buddy list and AIM people to your ICQ list. You can compare two ICQ numbers using that AIMFight tool, so I assume it does follow the list of buddy connections for both networks when adding up the numbers.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Kethinov]

Uh, ICQ is owned by AOL now, chap. And neither AIM nor ICQ segregate based off country, nor is there any difference in the technical skills of the users.

Now, if you just want to be an elitist and advocate a better protocol, feel free. But I would suggest you stop advocating ICQ and start advocating Jabber. :)

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Baloo Ursidae]

Yes, it seems AimFight would be better as JabberFight, since Jabber will show not only your Jabber contacts, but your AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, IRC and Gadu-Gadu contacts as well. Nice idea very wrongly executed.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Baloo Ursidae]

AIM and ICQ's interfunctionality is fickle and brittle at best. Jabber's AIM and ICQ interfunctionality Just Works(tm).

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[bobdinkel]

This fight is for people who aren't technical and are in the US.

Not true at all. I know several German AIM users. And most of them beat me in an AIM Fight. What makes you think this is limited to people in the US?

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Ark42]

With Jabber, aren't you saying that you have two accounts logged into two servers, with one program then? I still use the ICQ client (2003b) and I can add AIM screennames to my list just fine. No problems chatting with AIM people at all. I can also log into iChat on my test OSX box with my ICQ number, and it works all the same from there. The only major issue is certain client-side functionality is different between people using ICQ and AIM, but thats the client, not the networks fault. Point being here, AOL likely had to do nothing special to include both ICQ numbers and AOL screennames in the 3rd degree of friends searches, so ICQ numbers work just fine in the AIMFight.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[jandrese]

It's not like there was ever a questionarre you had to fill out for either client. It just happened that the technical and foreign users tended to choose ICQ while everyone else went with AIM.

Protocol wise they're pretty much a wash. The main difference in my mind was that AIM doesn't store messages when people are offline and it LOVES to pop up windows in front of whatever you're doing.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Luke-Jr]

Yeah, real nerds would be using a standards-compliant IM program and insisting others who want to talk to them also use it.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Luke-Jr]

Unfortunately, it's impossible to implement on a truly global level without assuming a centralised server (XMPP is somewhat p2p among servers) or privacy violations.

I guess someone could write a server-side plugin to allow a request for a user's "score" via XMPP and that server attempts to fill in for non-local references via a "partial score" request or such..

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Kethinov]

I agree, I used to be a strong advocate of ICQ over AIM. But then I discovered Jabber. It's everything ICQ is but without the proprietary central server.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[Baloo Ursidae]

Exactly. You'd have a slightly different problem to overcome, but I imagine it would fall down to whoever gets best known if someone implements it for Jabber. Sort of like how each server probably has it's own JUD, but also likely operates a gateway to the Big One at Jabber.org.

Re:Only works for AIM of course

[TheoMurpse]

Well, MS instant messenger is used by 100% of the Japanese, Chinese and Korean people I have met the year I've been here in Japan.

When I meet people, I get asked two things:
Keitaibangou wo oshietekurenai? MSN wa? (Please teach me your cell phone number. What about your MSN?)

It reminds me of how, in the US, many people say "I'm going to google it", using "google" as a verb meaning "to search". I would suspect it's because international character support is spotty in AIM (not to mention that the A in AIM is for "America"). I haven't used the official client in 6 months because Gaim handles the Japanese fine, while the official client failed it.

Have things changed?

How?

[Momoru]

How do they find out who has added you as a buddy? Is this some open database somewhere? Anyone feel free to clue me in on the details? It would be neat to see who exactly has you as a buddy (ex girlfriend still stalking you? etc)

Re:How?

[jdavidb]

Please tell me buddy lists aren't public data. That's not something I was aware of at all. It seems like that would lend itself to certain spam abuses.

Actually, it seems like the fact that that does not occur is evidence that buddy lists aren't public. So how does this work?

Re:How?

[RUFFyamahaRYDER]

I wrote a little something in PHP that takes someone's screen name who clicks on a link to my page in my AIM profile. Other than that you can set up links using a site like IMCHAOS that will grab people's screen names who clicked on your link.

That's the best you can do AFAIK.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL doesn't let you do this. MSN does though.

This only works because it is an AOL product so they have access to info that mere mortals don't.

Re:How?

[thegamerformelyknown]

It's run by AOL anyways, so I imagine it's all secure and such...

Re:How?

[DustyShadow]

If you look at the bottom of the page, it is owned by American Online. I'm pretty sure they have full access to the AIM database =) This "news" post seems very much like an advertisement to me.

Re:How?

[dknj]

Seriously, at least click on the god damn link for aimfight. You will see a giant Copyright (C) 2005 America Online. Oh wait, lets click on What is AimFight? And you get this:

Who made AIM Fight?
Two AIM programmers with a little bit too much free time on their hands. They're both mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and nonviolent people. Go figure.

Please mod parents down :(

Re:How?

[scsscs]

The site is owned by AOL, so it has access everyones buddy lists.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do they find out who has added you as a buddy? Is this some open database somewhere?

No, they have access to the database because of that little line at the bottom of the page that says "© 2005 America Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved"

Re:How?

[anderiv]

If you notice the copyright on the bottom of the page, this is run by AOL, so they're pulling the data directly from the main AIM db.

Re:How?

[Chris Karcher]

The tool was written by two AIM employees, who presumably have access to the information of EVERYONE who is signed on at a given time. It would be cool if they could also just give a raw number of how many people have you on their buddy list.

Re:How?

[Peyna]

You can set up AIM to only accept incoming messages from people on your list.

Spam solved.

Re:How?

[tgrimley]

I was looking around and couldn't really find anything. From the FAQ on the website, aimfight is written by programmers working for aol, so they have access to that info.

Re:How?

[Larry Lightbulb]

So do the terms and conditions for using AIM include that they can do anything they want with the database?

Re:How?

[RealityMogul]

As somebody else pointed out, the site is run by AOL.

BUT... couldn't you use this to find out if you're on somebodies list? Run a fight against somebody and get their score. Then sign off AIM and run the fight again to see if their score went down. Repeat a couple times to verify its you that affected their score. Note: I have not personally tried this... yet.

Re:How?

[Momoru]

Ah but its still a pretty cool app though

Re:How?

[Momoru]

That wouldn't work, it goes by who links to YOU, not the other way around, so if you check your score, wait for the other person to sign off, then look at your score again, that might work better. But since it goes by degrees of seperation, that wouldn't be too reliable, and if you have numbers like some people i've found (20000+!!) it may be impossible.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't care if people are online or not.

Re:How?

[Ark42]

Buddy lists are stored on the main AIM server, so it probably doesn't matter if anybody is signed in or not. You are still on peoples lists and people are still on your list, even if your computer is off.

Re:How?

[e03179]

"this is an example of some of our new AIM server APIs that we expect to make public in the near future"

from an AOL IM dev a few days ago.

Re:How?

[j-tull]

Untrue! Check out: http://www.aimfight.com/whatisaimfight.html where you'll find: "Your score is the sum of the current number of people online who have you listed as a buddy, out to three degrees."

I don't have any.

[elgee]

I have no friends whatsoever. At least not human friends.

AmISnotOrNot ?

Re:I don't have any.

[SamSim]

If nobody knows you exist, how can you be said to exist? Descartes' version: AmIOrNot?

Re:I don't have any.

[Really Wannabe Geek]

From their FAQ: "Well, although some of us might feel a special closeness to certain bots, it's important to remember that bots aren't real people and therefore don't count as buddies. You probably shouldn't try to date them, either."

:)

Well that was unexpected

[doublem]

I guess those high school bullies really did peak in high school.

I'm incredibly popular by this measure, and one of the jerks who tormented me is a virtual unknown!

Karma, it can be a bitch.

Re:Well that was unexpected

[pHatidic]

Similarly, I noticed that all the girls I'm friends with are vastly more popular than the guys I'm friends with. And it seems that as breast size increases, popularity also does. The sad thing here is that I'm not even trolling, try it for yourself.

Re:Well that was unexpected

[jinzumkei]

wait, wait, wait. You are waaay more popular on AIM than he is and somehow you think YOU win?

Re:Well that was unexpected

[doublem]

Well, all but three of my AIM contacts are people I know in real life.

Re:Well that was unexpected

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that the jerk in question probably doesn't care to have his real life friends on his AIM list. Most of them probably don't even have an AIM account. The only conclusion one could draw from this is that you have more friends with AIM accounts than the jerk.

This doesn't mean your more popular. It only means just that: you're more popular with people with AIM accounts. Interpret that how you wish, I'm just sayin'...

Re:Well that was unexpected

[Misgiven]

I only wish I had girls who are friends with big breasts....

Re:Well that was unexpected

[Anonymous Coward]

>as breast size increases, popularity also does.

A guy was told to marry by his 30th birthday, or be cut out of the immense family fortune. He narrowed it down to three women.

The first was a blond nurse who swore to take care of all his needs every night. The second was a brunette actress who said she'd play any role he wanted. The third was a redheaded aerobics instructor who said she'd sign a prenup and wear a dog collar.

Q: Which one did he marry?

.

.

A: The one with the biggest breasts, of course!

Re:Well that was unexpected

[jinzumkei]

Really? Let me borrow a pen, so I can write that down on the list of things I give a shit about.

Re:Well that was unexpected

[doublem]

Either way, using AIM to measure popularity is just plain silly.

Re:Well that was unexpected

[doublem]

If you don't care, why are you:

a. Reading this thread
b. Replying to it?

Sheesh. I try to make a joke about how silly it is to use AIM "friends" as a measure of popularity, and people take it seriously!

Re:Well that was unexpected

[Luke-Jr]

By his 30th birthday? Seriously, unless he's marrying women much (5-10 yrs) younger than him, she'll have an increased risk of breast cancer-- women are supposed to have had their first kid by mid-20s...

Hmph.

[idontgno]

I'd rather be feared than loved. Where's my "AIMFight" that shows how much I inspire fear and loating in my IM circle?

Re:Hmph.

[superstick58]

I'd rather inspire fear and loathing in las vegas.

Tell me about the fucking golf shoes!!

BCS in charge of this?

[th3mp!r]

To me it sounds a little like the Bowl Championship Algorithm. They should also do polls to see who everybody on AIM thinks is the most popular person, and then...oh I just love ripping on the BCS.

Re:BCS in charge of this?

[Recovering Hater]

While I appreciate college football as much as the next person, you do realize that we are a total anomoly on Slashdot right? Sports don't exist in this realm. As a matter of fact these posts just ripped a hole in the space time continuwhateverabob...

Re:BCS in charge of this?

[th3mp!r]

Yes I do realize this, but it was the first thing that came to mind. I couldn't resist.

This sounds really cool...

[g0bshiTe]

Oh never mind, I'm not 12 anymore.

Re:This sounds really cool...

[Seumas]

Actually, I found it kind of interesting, but not for popularity.

I did a little search on my accounts and compared them to each other. I was most interested in the account I've had for about seven years that AOL shut down out of nowhere for no reason with no explanation (and they wouldn't help unless I became an AOL subscriber).

My main account these days is around 3,000 on that scale.

The account I've had for seven years, but haven't been able to use for almost two years now, was 23,000 on that scale.

Just goes to show that if someone where to just yank away your email account or AIM account or phone number out of nowhere, you potentially lose a lot of contacts and communication. Even if you retain contact lists, the retention rate when you switch contact methods is never complete.

Re:This sounds really cool...

[digitalsushi]

Yeah, sounds really cool. "How could we get america's list of screen names for spamming?" "ugh... try any-thing?"

Time for whitelisting.

Defeating the purpose

[Iriel]

It's kind of sad really. Originally, the internet was a place that you could create your own little pocket universe and not care about how many friends someone else has on their buddy list as long as you have somebody to chat with.

On the other hand, with the internet becoming nearly ubiquitous, it's hard to keep out the trends of real life social stratum now that everybody's on.

Oh well. I guess I go back to being a hermit :) </bemoaning_my_fate>

Re:Defeating the purpose

[JoshRosenbaum]

Good News Everyone!

Once the laws start pouring in, we'll create the Virtual Internet inside the Internet, where porn will once again rein free, and nerds will be nerds rather than 13 year old girls!! Either that or Internet2 which the Universities use will become the new Internet of nerds, and everyone will switch over later.

Nerds!

[endeitzslash]

Everyone knows that popularity in real-life is based on whether you're on the football team and how many girls have held still long enough for you to nail them!

Now would you like fries with that?

Quality

[demachina]

As in many things in life its quality not quantity that counts. Having 100 blithering idiots on your friends list, who also have a 100 blithering idiots on theirs doesn't score in my book. In fact its a net negative versus having 10 people who have a clue and have something to say, because the 100 idiots can bug you all day every day and are just wasting your tim.

Re:Quality

[tgrimley]

The thing about tim is, once you lose it, it is gone forever.

Re:Quality

[pinchhazard]

a href="http://www.livejournal.com/userpic/26316484/ 152786">http://www.livejournal.com/userpic/2631648 4/152786

Re:Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

And as we all know, a tim is a horrible thing to waste.

The summer that never ended..

[EvilStein]

myspace being bought out, the growing popularity of all these online "social networking" sites (read: online ego jerkoff sessions, basically) and now this?

Ugh. More & more 'tweeners that don't know squat about computers except how to click & install Napster and AIM.

I'm saddened at what the Internet has become.

Re:The summer that never ended..

[Xshare]

Hey, I use myspace, AIM constantly. I'm not a tweener that doesn't know squat about computers, just if you use those sites, programs effectively, they can be a great asset as a way to reach a mass medium of people. My band, for example, uses Myspace excessively and have even booked shows with it. AIM, let's just say if I didn't use it, my phone bill would be sky high.

Re:The summer that never ended..

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, what makes me sad is that elitist dipshits like you seem to take so much pleasure im reminiscing about how "your" Internet was before all the "kiddies" got onto it.

No one gave you the right to decide who's allowed to connect to it, that's what makes the Internet great. It's accessible to lots of people.

Re:The summer that never ended..

[EvilStein]

From what I've seen, you're the exception, not the rule. ;)

BTW, have you use garageband.com at all for band stuff? They're pretty cool too.

Re:The summer that never ended..

[Scutter]

how to click & install Napster

I remember Napster. Wasn't that used to trade music or something a few years ago?

Re:The summer that never ended..

[Angron]

Seriously! The internet should only be for people who are really into computers! That way only intelligent people would be online - you know, people whose activities I consider to be worthwhile. Then I wouldn't have to deal with idiots online! Yeah!

Re:The summer that never ended..

[mpathetiq]

I book bands at a club in downtown Toledo, OH. Pretty much every band that plays for us has a MySpace site. It's a great way to find bands as well as listen to what they sound like before offering them a gig.

The bands without a MySpace page are definitely the exception now.

Re:The summer that never ended..

[wintermute740]

"I'm saddened at what the Internet has become."

You are!? How do you think Al Gore feels?!?!

isn't that scopring reverse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't being on the list of someone with less buddies be worth more?

If some guy has 200 "friends" on his list then it's obviously not hard to know him.

But the guy with only 6 people is obviously more exclusive and thus knowing him is more valueable.

Re:isn't that scopring reverse?

[tgrimley]

But the guy with only 6 people is obviously more exclusive and thus knowing him is more valueable.

or a loser?

Re:isn't that scopring reverse?

[un1xl0ser]

Wow, you must have a really shitty score to come up with some bullshit like that. :-P

Re:isn't that scopring reverse?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people you know doesn't really guage if you are a loser or not.

Everyone in a housing project with 40,000 people obviously knows a lot more people than a CEO who lives in an exclusive gated community and takes a private jet instead of the train....

There are plenty of people who want to know me but I don't want to know them...

The loser says "You want to be my friend? Cool!"

I say "Umm, thanks, later..."

Re:isn't that scopring reverse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think the bigger your buddy list is the more of a fuckin' loser you are.

What kind of loser asks you for an instant messenger account? Get real.

Ah, this makes perfect sense.

[clandestine_nova]

I'm sure it will be a great success; everyone knows that your relative worth is measured by your ability to convince hundreds of strangers to add you to a list.

What is the point, really? What is the use? Why would anyone actually do this, other than to be nonsensically elitist and braindead?

Direct link to AIM database?

[alex323]

Aimfight must be directly linked to AIM. How else would it get the number of users on your buddy list? Personally, I wouldn't want someone to be able to access my private buddy list. If aimfight isn't related to AIM and they have database access, I would be scared. (Unless of course there is another way to go about calculating the score.)

Re:Direct link to AIM database?

[rogueuk]

There's no need to be scared. The write up doesn't mention it, but aim fight is "owned" by AOL. To AIM engineers wrote it and it's heavily linked on http://www.aim.com/

Oh great, more ePenis-waving

[BlackCobra43]

As if HotorNot and its various demonspawns weren't enough

Similar program?

[Chris Karcher]

Wasn't there a similar tool a while back that showed you how 'e-Popular' you were on AIM? The difference with that tool was that it could only calculate your popularity based on other people who also signed up, so it wasn't as good an indicator.

screenname auction

[Se7enLC]

I was going to give up my old ScreenName to get a better one...

but I'm thinking with a score of 18245, I should sell it on eBay instead

Oh I get, Slashdot changed their format,,,,

[dfn_deux]

On my system it says something about "stuff that matters" in the upper right corner of this site...

Re:Oh I get, Slashdot changed their format,,,,

[FuckTheModerators]

Upper right?

Are you reading this through the back of the monitor?

Old News

[UMhydrogen]

Is there a reason why all these slashdot posts are coming here days after they appear on digg? This was on digg like 8 days ago.

Re:Old News

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can't get all your stories from boingboing and the register,that would be boring.

AIM popularity, not IM

[c0ldfusi0n]

It's only for AIM, doesn't take into consideration MSN messanger, Yahoo, ICQ, RendezVous, Jabber or any other protocols. I'm sure i'd fare better than 1780 on MSN.

Re:AIM popularity, not IM

[jinzumkei]

No need to make excuses man, we all like you and believe you are very popular.

Re:AIM popularity, not IM

[c0ldfusi0n]

Thanks man, what's your AIM?

Complex algorithm?

[mnmn]

The editor is not a coder.

Well at least I'm lucky

[randomshinichi()]

Let's just thank our lucky stars that it's not on MSN. Yet.

the new...

[danielDamage]

Am I chat or not?

Wrong method of scoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it be counted by how many people have you on their buddy list? Measuring popularity by having friends with huge lists doesn't mean squat.

Random nonsense

[ahem]

So, just on a whim, I decided to see what things were more popular:

apple (6293) vs orange (7389)
coke (3830) vs pepsi (4274)
snoopy (10653) vs garfield (3791)

and finally...

bush (2884) vs freedom (1422)
bush vs iraq (1241)
bush vs democracy (3)

and most telling of all
bush vs decency (0)

Re:Random nonsense

[Adam9]

You might want to try Google Fight instead.

I can see the script kiddie virus already...

[BinaryLobster]

It adds 30+ names to your IM buddy list that you can't remove, and then prop'o'gates to everyone in your buddy list.

____

If everybody was a rocket scientist, we'd have more uses for rockets.

Algorithms

[cynic10508]

There's a complicated algorithm at work here.

Translation: "We're not really sure how we got it to work. Basically we just randomly fiddled with things until we got an acceptable output." Much like the time-test C programming technique of adding/removing * and & to pointers until it works.

Re:Algorithms

[Anonymous Coward]

Omg, that's so true. I do that all the time.

what I want to know is

[pair-a-noyd]

who are the 144 people that have me on their lists?
And why and how? I have less than 6 "buddies" on my list and am considering dropping half of them.

Who gives a shit about being popular anyway? I consider IM to be a horrible nuisance and a pita.
I only have it because I don't have a home phone and I despise talking on my cell phone. When someone "rings me up" it better be important. For the most part, I don't want to talk to anyone.

Re:what I want to know is

[Misgiven]

You sound like a pleasant person to know.

Score

[Atlantic Wall]

does everyone else's score have a hyphen in front of it "-1000000"

I liked this game better when it was called...

[Pheersome]

BuddyZoo

Re:I liked this game better when it was called...

[HarvardAce]

Except that with BuddyZoo, you had to upload your buddy list to the site, so it could only calculate based on the data that users voluntarily uploaded. This site, on the other hand, was done by AOL and therefore has access to ALL buddy lists!

An interesting note on BuddyZoo and degrees of separation -- it was created by one of the creators of Synapse, the other co-creator being the creator of thefacebook.com, with whom I worked on a small project several years ago.

Re:I liked this game better when it was called...

[Pheersome]

Except that with BuddyZoo, you had to upload your buddy list to the site, so it could only calculate based on the data that users voluntarily uploaded. This site, on the other hand, was done by AOL and therefore has access to ALL buddy lists!

True, but BZ also does more interesting things with the data (cliques, visualization, etc).

An interesting note on BuddyZoo and degrees of separation -- it was created by one of the creators of Synapse, the other co-creator being the creator of thefacebook.com, with whom I worked on a small project several years ago.

He's also a high school acquaintance of a good friend of mine from college :P

oooooh!

[middlemen]

another new way for geeks to check their popularity!!! interesting!! :)

Isn't that kind of backwards...?

[hayh]

A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score...Your friend A is clearly not as well-connected as your friend B

It seems to me that A should add more to my score than B does, because A is more selective as to whom she considers her friend.

It's like being A-listed (pun intended).

Try It

[RealityMogul]

Looks like tubgirl is more popular than goatse.

Worklists make you popular

[cornjones]

This will be wildly scewed by people who use IM for work. In my experience, most workplaces use MSN but I am sure some use AIM. I have dozens of workmates grouped by their functional area. According to this, I am really popular. THere are people here at work that have 100s in their lists, since they are on my list does that make me cool?

Re:Worklists make you popular

[deliciousmonster]

no.

Re:Worklists make you popular

[not-enough-info]

THere are people here at work that have 100s in their lists, since they are on my list does that make me cool?

No. RTFM. It only makes you cool if hundreds of people have you on their list. I'm sure the payroll, IT, and PR are the most popular people in your company. Just the ones dumb enough to make their SN public that is.

Re:Worklists make you popular

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Not cool. Connected.

Re:Worklists make you popular

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to manage a deal my company was doing with AOL years ago. One of the little tid-bits I picked up about AOL culture was the fact that because the public and employees had equal access to aliases on aol.com, you could tell the seniority of an AOL employee by their screen name. If they were bob@aol.com they were among the first employees in the company, predating the first AOL service. Also they could presumably buy their own island.

http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=joe&name2=b ob

How the hell...

[Anonymous Coward]

does this fall under Harwdware section??

Privacy implications?

[mehtajr]

If you have an AIM account, they have your birthday, email address, geographic location, and now an index of people with the largest social circles. What's to stop them from using that same information to create lists of "influential people" and sell those lists to marketers?

Re:Privacy implications?

[over_exposed]

They don't have my (real) birthday or geographic location (unless they get it from a geographical IP search). If they have an e-mail address, it's either not mine or one that I haven't used in years. Besides, they had all of the "friend score" info before they released this tool. Think about it. Do you really think AOL didn't run these stats a few times before this program was released? I'm sure they've been crunching these numbers for years and maybe even selling them. Now they're just letting us get a glimpse of the results. Stop being so paranoid and go add some more people to your AIM list.

Re:Privacy implications?

[Zammo]

What if I don't want my 'popularity' published?

Re:Privacy implications?

[kinglink]

easy.. No one believes people on IM = Influencial. It's like in High School. There's the popular crowd, but while they are influencial in the School (AIM) world, that has no bearing in the real world.

I have a contact list of 4100 or so, my father probably has a much smaller list.. but I'm just a programmer, my father used to be a vice president on wall street (Retired).

Bottom Line: Just because you have a lot of people on your AIM list != influence/popularity. (Being on a lot of other people's lists would at least give more data)

And who says the personal info on AIM is correct or up to date, my AIM stuff, is probably almost 10 years old now.

Should we be impressed?

[gstoddart]

So this is just ranking people based off the number of people who you link to/link back to you?

Big deal. What if my only contact list for my IM was Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, ESR and Richard Stallman [which, it isn't =]?

I also wonder how many people really want their full contact web used for such things -- maybe they expected it to be private or something.

Re:Should we be impressed?

[Fred Ferrigno]

What if my only contact list for my IM was Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, ESR and Richard Stallman [which, it isn't =]?

One might assume that those people, being rather important in other ways, main regular contact with a wide variety of people. Perhaps they perfer other forms of contact such as email, but I'd wager they do talk to a lot of people. Thus, their buddy lists (if they had one) would be very large. Your score would be improved because of it.

To make this better, they could also record the frequency of conversation between two individuals. If you talk a lot to person A, you're connected very closely to them and their popularity rubs off on you more. Person B, who happens to be incredibly popular, but only talks to you when they need computer help won't contribute as much to your score. For example:

p[me] = sum(c[i]*p[i],i=0..buddy_list_length)
c[i] = time spent chatting with person i / total time person i spends chatting
p[i] = person i's popularity

I think that would give a much better approximation for your real "popularity". I would also get a much lower popularity this way. I don't really talk to anyone on AIM, though I have many people on my buddy list.

I'm really curious about the data behind this. How many buddy lists am I on? Who's added me without ever IM'ing me? Who removed me years ago? Who keeps me on their list even though we haven't spoken in just as long? I have a relatively high score for the number of people on my list and for the number of people I actually talk to. My friends must have a lot of people on their lists, but I suspect there's a lot of overlap. Are screen names double counted?

Yet More Random Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

ahem (334) vs. insightful political opinion (0)

This one hurts

[Atlantic Wall]

Ouch! OpenBSD (4167) vs. Linux (7356) i need a bandaid!

What does this have to do with fighting?

[Chris Karcher]

When I first went to the site, I expected to see something cool like buddy list monsters fighting to the death, but all I got were two lousy bars...

Screennames??

[myukew]

Can't anybody choose their screenname at will? This thing would be much better if it used actual ICQ numbers, not screennames. Like this, popular screennames have insanely high scores. Try 'god' or 'hotchick' or 'jesus'...

Re:Screennames??

[Ark42]

AIM screennames are unique strings, while ICQ has unique numbers. You can enter ICQ numbers in the AIMFight tool it looks like, but entering a string would be looking for the AIM screenname. AIM and ICQ are basically the same network now, and since the unique ID for ICQ is a number, most AIM clients only show that number as your screenname, ignoring the nickname you can attach to your ICQ number.

BS?

[digitalgimpus]

I had only a few hundred this morning, now I have 3000. How can that really be? I haven't talked to anybody on AIM in ages. /thinks it's just rand() // doesn't really care anyway. /// good time killer though, props to the AOL dev's for something really fun.

Re:BS?

[gommai]

I had only a few hundred this morning, now I have 3000. How can that really be?

From the "What is AIM Fight?" page:

If your score happens to be in the top 5% of all AIM users online, we'll show you where you rank in comparison to the others in the top 5%.
If you don't see your rank, it means you're not in the top 5%. Remember, not ranking doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means that people who have you listed as a buddy might not be online.

So apparently it's all based on who has added you to their buddy list, and is online at the moment. The score sounds like it should change quite often.

Re:BS?

[digitalgimpus]

Hundreds to thousands is rather significant. It doesn't sound very likely that so many more people are online now.

About all who know me already were online this morning.

Re:BS?

[TechnoPops]

Hundreds to thousands is rather significant. It doesn't sound very likely that so many more people are online now.

Not really, because the way your rank is calculated doesn't seem to be dependent on how many people have listed you specifically, but how popular your friends are that listed you, and then how popular they are, and so forth (out to three degrees). Check out the diagram on the "What is AIM Fight?" page for a fuller explanation.

"Social Ladder"?

[NineNine]

However, it appears as if the influence of the social ladder is creeping its way in

Well, what about all of us smart enough not to use IM of any kind? Where do we fall on the "ladder"? Really... IM is only *really* ubiquitous among kids and the really sad, pathetic, lonely adults. Sorry to say, but this isn't much of a pissing contest when it's between 12 year old girls, and 42 year old single women that weigh 300 lbs and have 10 cats and participate in medieval fairs/sci fi conventions.

Am I wrong? Are there very many "normal-ish" people who use IM? I don't know a single person that uses IM of any kind.

Re:"Social Ladder"?

[CDS]

IM has become an ESSENTIAL part of my work. We pass code snippets, ask each other design questions, and even share pieces of screenshots ("I'm seeing something really weird. Here is a shot showing the anomoly" etc...)

IM has the advantage of being slightly more immediate than email, yet can be freely ignored if you're busy with something else. When you're concentrating on something important and someone sends an IM, you can just hit ESC and close the window. That's a bit more difficult to do with a ringing phone...

Also, IM has the advantage of automatic logging. Everything I send or receive is logged on my PC (with the option for manual deletion). I can go back and refer to an answer later. You can't do that with a phone conversation either.

All in all, my work would be much more difficult without IM.

Re:"Social Ladder"?

[Peyna]

I think a lot of "normal-ish" people use IM. However, most of us use it as a telephone and/or e-mail replacement. Why waste time picking up the phone to see if a friend can meet up later when you can just drop an IM and they get to it at their convenience.

E-mail is nice for longer messages that are important.
IM is nice for short messages and/or short conversations.
Telephone is nice for urgent message and/or long detailed conversations.

Perhaps you're the non "normal-ish" person for failing to see how IM can be beneficial to a lot of people.

Other examples of uses include contact with family and friends over long distances. Cellular telephone and long distance plans cost money, IM costs as much as your Internet connection.

Re:"Social Ladder"?

[mcb]

Yeah you're a little out of touch. I'm a senior in college and everyone I know uses AIM, and has since freshman year. This includes both nerds and 'popular' people.

In fact the 'popular' people generally have way more contacts and seem to get im'd nonstop all day.

I wonder if...

[TobyWong]

You get a bonus multiplier of 10x if you have Kevin Bacon in your friends list? :x

Interesting random names...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just thought about tapping keys randomly and got some interesting results...

Name 1: sadasdasd
Rating: 702
Name 2: asdasdsad
Rating: 596

Interesting...just by randomly tapping 3 keys

On another note...YourMom is ranked 14664 with a rating of 193873

Well yeah it only works for AIM

[EtherAlchemist]

As far as I know, AIM is the last IM client you can't spam members of. That's probably the real reason behind this.

I used to use ICQ until the ability to leave messages waiting spawned the worst spam ever on an IM client.

I've used AIM since 98 or 99. Know what the total number of unsolicited IMs I've received to date is?

0

Re:Well yeah it only works for AIM

[Anonymous Coward]

That is funny... In 5 years of using ICQ, AIM, Jabber and MSN, I've had this many unsolicited messages (roughly):

ICQ: 5
AIM: 15
Jabber: 0
MSN: 0

I got all 5 msgs on ICQ around the same time 2 years ago too, IIRC. For AIM, I get one once in a while. I'm more worried about my email to be honnest.

Re:Well yeah it only works for AIM

[jez9999]

And you think that's because of the offline messaging feature?

Funny, that's one of the things I really LOVE about ICQ and YIM. And, btw, i've also received zero unsolicited IMs. ON YIM.

No, I suspect ICQ's downfall was probably the UIN system. Is it easier to write a script that guesses a load of screennames to fire off ads to, or just use the value of an incrementing counter?

Re:Well yeah it only works for AIM

[Rallion]

Yeah, the UIN system is terrible. Screennames are a lot easier to remember than huge numbers.

After six years or so, I've finally forgotten mine. I remember "2067"...and then parts of my SSN start creeping in.

Re:Well yeah it only works for AIM

[kyouteki]

I always confuse my UIN and SSN, too. They're both the same length and use some of the same numbers.

Re:Well yeah it only works for AIM

[Luke-Jr]

What's funny about your comparison is the AIM and ICQ are the same thing. Yep, just enter your ICQ # in the official AIM client and it'll work. Likewise, the reverse should be possible if you hack up the ICQ client to accept non-numeric "ICQ #s"-- then you can start leaving offline messages for AIM lusers too!

Re:Well yeah it only works for AIM

[Luke-Jr]

I have mine memorised and I don't even use it-- 11653284. Of course, I also have pi memorised to 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399, but I actually "use"/recall that...

Random Tests

[AnotherEscobar]

• Slashdot -vs- CNN (CNN Wins, Slashdot... what a loser)
• FOX -vs- CNN (Fair and Balanced rules. Extending this, Slashdot still the loser)
• Me -vs- You (as expected, I win. you loser)
• And so on...

Seems pretty random to me. Then again, I dont have an AIM account to test against

Nobody expects

[RealProgrammer]

their Spammish AIM position!

IM Popularity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is, of course, inversely proportional to actual popularity.

Score calculation hidden...

[javaxman]

They don't really say how they calculate the score, do they? "Your score is relative to other AIM users?" What the hell does that mean? Why isn't it just the number of third-degree connections, what's wrong with using that number?

That is truly weird. I swear I only ever, ever IM with my wife. Just so she won't have to bug the secretary here at work, really. And yet, my score is over a thousand. I must be in the buddy list of some seriously indescriminate folks. Like spambots or something...

My wife has two accounts, one of which has two-thirds the score I have, and one which really *should* be defunct ( she closed an account fairly recently, thus the screen name is locked up, not taken, and should only be in the buddy lists of a few people who failed to remove it ). It still scores a 20. If it was even in a few lists, you'd think the score there would be higher. I mean, we know teenagers... do you have a minimum score of 20 or something?

Why am I even thinking about this stupid-ass thing? I don't know. I guess I'm wondering who would bother to put my AIM address in their buddy list since I almost never IM anyone.

Re:Score calculation hidden...

[Zarel]

They don't really say how they calculate the score, do they? "Your score is relative to other AIM users?" What the hell does that mean? Why isn't it just the number of third-degree connections, what's wrong with using that number?

They do say how they calculate the score, and it does use the number of third-degree connections. Right on aimfight.com, if you click "What is AIMFight?", the second FAQ answer is:

Your score is the sum of the current number of people online who have you listed as a buddy, out to three degrees.

It seems to me...

[aNonniMouse]

...that since you're on person A's list and he only has 3 people, you're much more important since your name is on such a exclusive list. It's like being invited to a party with a hundred people going. What difference does it make whether you show up or not?

Re:It seems to me...

[Koiu Lpoi]

Either that, or A has no friends. Or only use AIM sparingly. Please, write an algorithm to distinguish these situations.

On Yahoo

[Kyont]

OK, my AIM score is zero, but I promise I'm super-popular on Yahoo chat ... you insensitive clods!

Re:On Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

All those 15 year olds on their webcams love you that much, eh? I thought yahoo closed those chatrooms down...

Who can beat 55,782

[Anonymous Coward]

Ranska311=55782, now everyone add it to your buddy list to inflate your score.

Damn

[bahwi]

I'm a loser.

stratus

[milktoastman]

It's kind of funny that they made this service. My girlfriend annihilates me. But, more relevantly, what do people think about this related to the socio-chromatic theories of old school mind man Steve Wigents? Do you think we'll get bit-wise escalations and digital "hormone" trips? When you "lose" a fight, does a hierarchial rung "slip," or are you merely taking a social declination route?

more proof linux wins

[w0ss]

Linux:7273 Windows:2460

Just one question...

[mpontes]

Besides 16 years old American girls, who the hell uses AIM? Because I don't know anyone in real life who uses (or ever heard of) AIM.

Can't this be hacked?

[Locke2005]

Does anybody have a script for creating hundreds of AIM logins, then adding me to the buddy list of each one? I can be the most popular guy on the internet! Muahahahaha!

Popularity or Stupidity?

[mcmediaman]

I wonder if this "fight" was truly designed to measure your online popularity, or the number of internet users stupid enough to use an America Online product.

Javaaimbot vs. Infocombot !!!

[EggMan2000]

Talk about clash of the titans these two aimbots are neck and neck.

171,494 to 157,090

Although, I've never gotten either to work. :(

My response

[tacokill]

WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?!?

[seriously, this is the most asinine story I have EVER read on /.]

wait wait wait.....

[keith_nt4]

A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score. That's because she doesn't have as many people on her buddy list as does B, who has 16. Your friend A is clearly not as well-connected as your friend B. Not unlike life."

3 is less than 16? When did that happen? Good thing you spelled that out in a complicated formula. Thanks.

This is not new

[liryon]

This sort of thing is not new, in fact it has been done before. Buddy Zoo has been around for at least 3 years and does the exact same thing; although, the algorithm may be different (I have not checked) the idea is exactly the same.

Buddyzoo?

[qodfathr]

Sounds a lot like www.buddyzoo.com, which has been around a Real Long Time now.

Re:Buddyzoo?

[The-Bus]

Well, you need to register on Buddyzoo. The pro is that it gives you a lot more data. This is just the simple, no-frills version.

Think your popular?

[ShyGuy91284]

If you found a name (whether it's yours or not), post it if you think it's popular (at least in the top 5%). I'm curious as to how popular a name can be found. Plugging in "aim", I got 66160, ranked 141495. Who can beat this by a long shot?

Odd...

[AnObfuscator]

The algorithm must take into buddy back-listing, too.

I checked my current screen name against my previous screen name. My previous name (which I haven't used in YEARS) beat my current one... even though my current name has all the buddies my old list had, plus tons of new ones. The thing is, many of those names are people I haven't chatted with in years, so they probably don't have my current handle in their list...

otherwise, this result makes little sense.

Harness the power of slashdot

[hoborocks]

Let's post our current popularity - Chances are, given enough people, we'll find #1! (even though it's changing constantly, it's changing at small rates)

Screenname: fooupoou
Score: 57249
Rank: 177015

too bad this is horribly flawed...

[EdelFactor19]

as good as this is, for anyone who actually cares about this stuff, theres is one major problem... merely because you are in someones buddy list doesnt mean they ever talk to you or you talk to them lol... many of us are guilty of this, often at college for example, you just sorta throw in every name you get and you dont weed out the obsolete ones you dont talk to anymore or never have talked to and such. Theres a large chance that the person who only has three other people on his list talks with those 3 people a lot, so much so that you could argue that his "bandwidth of connectivity" or total communication could be greater than the loser with 250 buddies, who barely ever even talks to a single one of them... granted thats a little extreme but i think my point is pretty clear. But perhaps they are being smart and only considering two way links as a connection so that someone with 200+ names on his list, few of whom have him on theirs, wouldnt add to the score... also, how does it handle if you put yourself on your own buddy list? fun with loops? of course i really don't give a damn either way :-p just thuoght id make a point / see if they or anyone else had thuoght of or noticed this

Geeks Only Ones Popular

[ranton]

Looks like on a rating such as this, only unpopular introverts will be rated as popular. If you have too many friends in the online world, chances are you havent made enough friends in the real world.

I can tell this because I scored WAY to high on this test :-(

The best part, hands-down:

[Marc2k]

From the "What Is AimFight?" section:
What can fighting really prove? Using a complicated algorithm, AIM® Fight crawls through the depths of the Internet to answer the all-important question that plagues us all blah blah

Yee-ikes, traversing a tree is wicked hard. I'm glad I never had to learn to do anything like that in...oh, say..Comp Sci 1.

Re:The best part, hands-down:

[Anonymous Coward]

They also teach it in SARCASM101

Re:The best part, hands-down:

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

You are being a tad simplistic. The challenge and "reward" of AIMFight was not achieved simply because they figured out how to "traverse a tree"... it's because they took all that data and aggregated it some interesting way. I'm not saying it's rocket science, and I have no idea how complicated/good their algorithm and results actually are, but give it a bit of credit.

Sigmund Freud

[Kamiza Ikioi]

And just what do you think Freud would have to same about comparing your list length to other people's list lengths?

Where would these guys rate ...

[joelsanda]

This kind of stuff always makes me wonder where the following people would rate, prior to actually becoming famous and well known:

• Albert Einstein
• Sigmund Freud
• Bill Gates
• Stephen Hawking
• steve Jobs
• Carl Sagan

Presumably, these folks were known for their relative anti-social behavior because of their passion for what became their life's work. They were 'anti-social' only when compared to those who have no life's work but have many IM contacts.

An interesting longitudinal study would be to document - what I think - is a corresponding decrease in one's chances of becoming famous for one's life work and the number of IM contacts (or perhaps even not having an IM installed!)

Another wasted post

[Trivial Pursuits]

News for nerds ? -- Alright. I`ll give you that. Stuff that matters ? Hardly. We now take you back to your regular scheduled programming. Do it, please.

dynamic

[mdmarkus]

It's more of a measure of dynamic popularity. It goes by who's currently on line. So if your friend who knows a billion people drops offline, your score drops accordingly.

other duke matches

[MyDixieWrecked]

Firefox: 4111 / Explorer: 909

porn: 2043 / Christianity: 32

good: 8902 / evil: 10238

georgewbush: 15423 / johnkerry: 4999

*sigh*

correlation between AIM friends and REAL friends?

[Orion83]

This seems to be an indicator of how much time you spend chatting on IM with complete strangers more than anything.
I compared 2 of my ex-girlfriends. One is incredibly social, cool, and successful, and rated a 40.
The other is quiet and inroverted, and her first "boyfriend" was a creepy 46 year old guy that she met on IRC. She scored a 1098.
'nuff said

AIM Fight Golf, anyone?

[RM6f9]

My score: 849
That was mildly entertaining...
Briefly...
Oh, well, back to work.

Not very accurate...

[publius1234]

I just did a fight between Chewbacca and HanSolo, and HanSolo won.

higher score

[Neuroelectronic]

The screen name OK has a score of 30k some

Re:I got a 1

[CorporateWhoremone]

My cell got a 1 beat that! The only Buddy list that has that name on it is. Granted the reason I have it is b/c I don't always want to talk to people! So I succeded in being unpopular...on AIM

Liar

[Anonymous Coward]

blah blah. filler

IM

[sewagemaster]

i simply refuse to use IM most of the time now. first, most people now use msn, which has no offline messaging support. when i go online, i dont want people to bother me while i'm doing work. (btw, what's the use of the DND mode if you're busy but dont want people to msg you? why not just go offline?)

then all of a sudden people on my list thought i have blocked them eventhough i just don't use msn anymore.

with all these unlimited long distance plans, i'd much prefer to call the person. takes less time to get the message across, because i just can't stand waiting 7 minutes between each IM response from the person i'm talking to anymore.

Re:IM

[Luke-Jr]

Um... MSN is still a form of IM. Sure, it's not standards-compliant, but neither is AIM.

Highest Ranking Name

[rk_cr]

Does anyone know who the highest scoring names are? My friends and I attempted yesterday to find what names might be high up on the list - the highest we could find was "your mom", which was closely followed by "jesus" (which, incidentally, totally beat "god").

The Algorithm

[suwain_2]

A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score. That's because she doesn't have as many people on her buddy list as does B

I'm not sure I agree with the thought process.

In my opinion, if you're an AIM whore and have your buddy list full, you might have lots of people on your buddy list, but not talk to most of them.

On the other hand, I know people with about ten people on their buddy list.

Therefore, if you're on a shorter buddy list, chances are higher that you actually converse with them.

Déjà vu!

[kiddailey]

"I'm saddened at what the Internet has become."

Replace "Internet" with "BBS" in that phrase, and you'll see nothing but good ole' history repeating itself :)

Other Interesting Matchups

[headroll]

Man v. God 31223 / 63910 Also God has a rank - 149510 (created for top 5%) Nature v. Nurture 337 / 0

Re:Other Interesting Matchups

[Fletch]

"your mom" is ranked at #6673.

Bill Gates beats Steve Jobs

[gurutc]

Bill Gates beats Steve Jobs, sadly Linus Torvalds a distant third.

Are you asking for a CHALLENGE????!!

[NoData]

Actual AIM transcript from convo I just had (names changed to protect the unpopular):

3:04 PM
[him]: http://aimfight.com/
[him]: i challenge u
3:05 PM
[me]: hahah...ok, what is this?
[me]: im putting in our names
[me]: what happened?!
[me]: i lost?!
[him]: u lose buddy
[me]: why?!
[me]: i must train harder!
[him]: i'm moving on , 3 down
[me]: i was sucker punched!
[him]: read the faq , it's cool
3:10 PM
[me]: haha...so, basically, it's a popularity contest.
[him]: yep
[me]: well, shit dude, i could've TOLD you i'm not cool. you didnt have to smack my ass to find that out.
[him]: lol
[him]: i'm an empiricist
[him]: what can i say

Oh come on!!

[Cigarra]

What's wrong with the freaking flash interface? You are like MORE OF A MAN because you work your way around those nasty flash interfaces?

Re:Oh come on!!

[ashot]

no, but now one can call the service from another (possibly flash) web application (until they release their API anyway).

Quick Perl hack

[jcuervo]

Sorry it's fugly, I'm still waking up. Slashdot's formatting ain't helping, either.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use LWP::UserAgent;
use CGI qw(:param);

die "usage: $0 <aim_sn1> <aim_sn2>\n" if (@ARGV != 2);

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->env_proxy;
$ua->timeou t(5);

my $q = 'name1=' . $ARGV[0] . '&name2=' . $ARGV[1];
$q =~ s/([^=\&\w])/sprintf "%%%x", ord $1/eg;

my $r = $ua->get('http://www.aimfight.com/getFight.php?' . $q);

die $r->status_line if (! $r->is_success)

$cgi = CGI->new($r->content);

%score = %sn = ();

for (0, 1)
{
printf "%-12s: %d\n", $ARGV[$_],
$sn{$ARGV[$_]} = $cgi->param('score' . ($_ + 1));

$score{$sn{$ARGV[$_]}} = $ARGV[$_];
}

if ((keys %score) + 0 != 2)
{
print "\nTie!\n";
}
else
{
print "\nWinner: ", $score{(sort keys %score)[0]}, "\n";
}

Re:Quick Perl hack

[ForumTroll]

It's not your fault it's ugly that's just the effect Perl has on anything. ;-)

Re:Quick Perl hack

[kd5ujz]

corrected a few typos for you, hope you dont mind. Filled in a missing semicolon(line 17) and changed timeou t to timeout ( line.10)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use LWP::UserAgent;
use CGI qw(:param);

die "usage: $0 <aim_sn1> <aim_sn2>\n" if (@ARGV != 2);

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->env_proxy;
$ua->timeou t (5);
my $q = 'name1=' . $ARGV[0] . '&name2=' . $ARGV[1];
$q =~ s/([^=\&\w])/sprintf "%%%x", ord $1/eg;

my $r = $ua->get('http://www.aimfight.com/getFight.php?' . $q);

die $r->status_line if (! $r->is_success);

$cgi = CGI->new($r->content);

%score = %sn = ();

for (0, 1)
{
printf "%-12s: %d\n", $ARGV[$_],
$sn{$ARGV[$_]} = $cgi->param('score' . ($_ + 1));

$score{$sn{$ARGV[$_]}} = $ARGV[$_];
}

if ((keys %score) + 0 != 2)
{
print "\nTie!\n";
}
else
{
print "\nWinner: ", $score{(sort keys %score)[0]}, "\n";

}

Re:Quick Perl hack

[jcuervo]

Thanks, appreciate it (the "timeou t" thing was Slashdot being lame).

There was some bug in the sorting order I ended up fixing, too. I'll just throw the current version up here.

Now for the debt-collectors version

[e2d2]

If this was decided by debt-collectors that are somehow linked with you I would be the most popular guy in the Western hemisphere.

Next to the US government of course..

Reverse buddylist lookup

[fulldecent]

AIM Fight can be abused to determine whether a given person has you on their buddy list.

Exploit details:

The involved screennames are: You, Crush and Extra. The goal is to determine if Crush has You on her buddy list.

• Find Crush's score and Your score.
  
• Add Crush to Extra's buddy list.
  
• If Your score goes up one, Crush must have You on her buddy list. Otherwise, the night just got a little bit colder.

Note: to check the score, visit: http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=x&name2=SCR EENNAME

Once gaim-remote gets out of infancy, I could write a frontend to this whole process.

Re:Reverse buddylist lookup

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? This is based on who has You buddy listed, and who is online.

Re:Reverse buddylist lookup

[fulldecent]

OK. Some corrections:

Crush needs to be online

It works best at a time when there is low signon/signoff activity, ex: in the wee hours

If Extra has many online friends linking to it, that helps.

God destroys Satan....

[elchican]

Try doing God vs Satan. God totally dominates. But I guess that all depends on which God has that nick registered.

Re:God destroys Satan....

[elchican]

Actually... Matthew, Mark, and John all pwned God. Luke was the only unpopular one. What a loser.

Potential for abuse?

[Escherial]

So, wouldn't be trivial to extract a list of registered screennames using this interface? I'm sure this'll be a paradise for IM-spamming scripts, as it'll take all the work out of finding valid (used/popular, even) screennames.

buddyzoo

[Anonymous Coward]

www.buddyzoo.com did this a long time ago...

ICQ

[Shads]

You can also use your icq# to get a popularity rating based on that.

I Win!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on more buddy lists than anyone else you know...but it's only because so many people want to remind themselves to avoid me when they see my screenname pop up under their user-created buddy list group, "Assholes"

Haw haw haw

no, "actual score" Re:Score calculation hidden...

[javaxman]

From the same page you're talking about, the What is AIM Fight? page :

What does the actual score mean?
The higher your number, the more online third-degree connections you have. Your score isn't an exact number of your third-degree connections. Rather, it shows how many connections you have relative to other AIM users.

Which I agree completely conflicts with the answer to number two. So which is it, the exact number of third-degree connections, or how many connections you have relative to other AIM users? On inspection, it looks like the first, but then what does this "actual score" answer mean?

So....

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any way you can extract a list of who has you on their buddy list?

Well, I don't give a flying f*ck about popularity

[Rinzai]

Thus far I've managed to become a rich, fat bastard without being popular.

The need to be popularity is some kind of disability, and there ought to be a 12-step program for it. Preferably the 12 steps lead someplace other than in my direction, and are minimally followed by at least 2,500 more steps.

Down and Out

[EZLeeAmused]

Finally, wuffie!

What about the latins?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every spanish person I know is on MSN and only MSN. Just because my only friends are wetbacks means i'm not well connected? Nigga please.

AIM Fight Score Survey

[Talaria]

And you can take a survey about your AIM Fight Score at What is Your AIM Fight Score? on the Aunty Spam site.

Not quite correct

[adrenalinerush]

Say a couple of your friends, A and B, have you on their buddy lists. A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score. That's because she doesn't have as many people on her buddy list as does B, who has 16.

Actually, it's not how many people are on your friends' lists, but how many other people's lists they are on. Just because friend A has 16 people on their list doesn't mean they are on many people's lists.

What it has become?

[camusflage]

I'm saddened at what the Internet has become.

Dude.. This is just another step of the Eternal September, lo nearly twelve years ago now.

AIM: Hardware?

[Rayaru]

Um, out of curiousity, why is this hardware news? Seems slightly misplaced. AIM Fight is a cool idea though, even though my score is pretty low.

This isn't hard to understand.

[StarKruzr]

"I also don't have many friends... but that doesn't bother me as I tend to be a bit solitary and quite enjoy it."

This is why you "think this always connected stuff is a bit out of hand" and "found it to be the most invasive annoying technology I've ever used."

Clearly IM is not a "killer app" for you at all, and you would never have a use for it. Try to consider it from the perspective of a more social person.

Bass ackwards computation

[PMuse]

Say a couple of your friends, A and B, have you on their buddy lists. A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score. That's because she doesn't have as many people on her buddy list as does B, who has 16. Your friend A is clearly not as well-connected as your friend B. Not unlike life.

No, this is very unlike life. The calculation of your popularity should be based on how many people like the people who like you, not on how many people the people who like you like. For example, using 2 degrees of separation only, under the current scheme:

Y's buddy list has y entries
A's buddy list has 3 entries, including Y
B's buddy list has 16 entries, including Y
therefore, Y's score = 3 + 16 = 19

This model suffers because as B arbitrarily adds people to B's list, B inflates the scores of everyone on the list. B can skew the results for the whole userbase just by adding more and more buddies to his list (including bots, fake accounts, people who hate B, etc.).

But standard popularity is based on having well-liked people like you. A better model would be:
H is on the buddy lists of 2 people (J,K)
J is on the buddy lists of 3 people
K is on the buddy lists of 16 people
therefore H's score = 3 + 16 = 19

The score is the same, but the only way for H, J, or K to increase the score is to get more people to like them (i.e. to buddy list them).

Intel scored 666

[qtcp]

Coincidence?

2947....

[greymond]

Wow I am an Online-Loser apparently. Oh wait...I do post on /. that could have something to do with it...

Flawed in execution.

[ThisIsForReal]

So, if I want to be the most popular, I beg others to add me to their list. Since those who will add you to their list are just as willing to add others to their list, anyone willingly participating in this race to popularity will find themselves all in a tie very quickly as the nodes in degrees of separation emerge. Very soon, the "players" (ugh...sigh) will isolate the node, get themselves added, and everyone will tie. A better method would analyze one's inclusion on a buddy list divided by that person's buddy list size. Not that I really care about this pointless article and it's profound impact on my life...

Gah i hate this sort of stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

What has our society come to? Gah rate your buddies??? make it stop! This sort of stuff is just totally ridiculus and causes people more pain and feel inferior than it is a help in any way, just stay away! its just pointless crap.

aim IM

[klept]

The article is by Microsoft, the product AIM is by AOL. Judge for yourself whether it's worth it.

Bwahahahahaha!!!

[Master of Transhuman]

"Your popularity is based on who has you on their buddy list. There's a complicated algorithm at work here."

Complicated? Nope - zero minus zero equals zero in my case. No buddies = no buddie list = no popularity.

Wonder why?

Maybe it's because anybody who has to check a popularity rating Web site to determine his popularity is such a loser I don't want them for a buddy anyway.

Plus I don't take morons as "buddies" - which lets out approximately 98-99% of the human species.

I cut slack only for babes - but since they don't cut ME any slack, I don't have any of them either.

JUST TRY TO BEAT THIS SCREEN NAME!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, anyone think they can beat this screen name ranking??

"john" will crush you all!!!

Friendster may have met its match...

[who's got my nicknam]

zefrank http://www.zefrank.com/ has a funny video about exactly this kind of thing...http://www.zefrank.com/smallworld/