Slashdot Mirror
Judging You By the Online Company You Keep
theodp writes "Network analysis uses data about your social network interactions to make assumptions and predictions about your behavior. The Economist notes the upside for companies looking to sell products. But don't forget about the downside, warns Adrian Chen, of living in a world where network analysis is used by financial firms to determine risky borrowers by looking at social ties, or by Internet businesses to determine which customers are more equal than others (nice to see Microsoft's back on the forefront of some tech!). So, did Mom envision Social Network Analytics when she gave you that you-are-the-company-you-keep lecture?"
I'm a PHP and Rails entrepreneur and all of my friends and associates are entrepreneurs too. I'm glad to be networked to them using twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and flickr. We've been working in this Starbucks since about 2002 but I know that sometime soon our ideas will take off and we'll all be millionaires.
From now on, I'm going to use a pseudonym here. If my employer knew I read slashdot, he'd probably expect me to fix the computers around the office or something.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
According to our files, you're Facebook friends with someone who has a credit score of 500, and who declared medical bankruptcy. Sorry, we have to deny your request for a mortgage.
Ironic given that you apparently do your programming in MS Basic.