I'm not a frequent Facebook user but I log in at least once a day. The first person on my list is a girl I am dating who is about a -2. I am the second person on my list also at about -2. About 30 more people have a negative number. The remaining people (about 500) are all a positive number. I don't even know who many of the people are at the bottom of my list.
It is interesting to note however that my brother is a frequent Facebook user and his first person on his list ranks at about a -26, and EVERY SINGLE person in his graph is assigned a negative number. Despite this, he still doesn't know who a lot of the people are on the bottom of his list.
Other things I noticed:
- Some people that I barely even know but just became friends with are ranking highly on my list. I imagine this is because I probably viewed a bunch of their pictures after being friends, combined with the fact that I don't often view profiles of people I am friends with.
- Some of my more recently added friends have the same exact value.
I wonder how much information could be extracted about the algorithm by creating a dummy community of people and connecting them together, then recording the results. I imagine much of the algorithm could be reverse engineered by this if anybody were up to the task. I will probably work on it if nobody else does and publish my findings.
EDIT: Explained what I was trying to say better, fixed grammar.
That's a possibility. The post that Keith Adams made however refutes this, but it is still possible that he is wrong/mistaken or that the first_degree.php was changed after he left Facebook.
I should have been more clear. Keith seems to indicate that views from other users don't affect your first_degree.php. I disagree, here was my process:
I built a dummy account in incognito that is friends with with my regularly used profile (A) and a profile owned by a friend of mine (B). All friend requests were made from A & B TO the dummy. I then checked the first_degree.php of the dummy, as expected, me and my friend were first. Perhaps not surprisingly, the next people on the list were the intersection of A & B 's friend lists.
Now I logged back in to A, knowing that B wasn't searching for the dummy, and searched for the dummy a few times a day for a couple days (I learned about first_degree a couple weeks ago).
Checking the dummy's first_degree showed that friends passed A & B had more of A's friends.
My guess is that Keith is right in general. I might not be able to move myself up the ladder of the dummy, but I can change the Facebook Social Graph by changing my viewing behavior. The machine generated list uses that graph to determine first_degree. Even if it's indirect, it means first_degree can be influenced by searches of others. Or I'm wrong!
I also thought that other people's interactions with me are a part of the algorithm for this same reason. However, the reply by Keith Adams seems to suggest that is not the case, and that they are just "machine generated guesses" which weigh into the algorithm.
Quick question. How do you get a Google account with a username in format firstname@firstnamelastname.com? I would love to convert my Google account over to this format. I own a domain name that I would want to be the domain portion of the email address. Tired of using @gmail.com.
Also, be aware that they recently limited the free product to 10 accounts per domain. Likely not an issue for anyone wanting to us @firstnamelastname, but others might find that information useful.
You can send and receive emails using your domain with Gmail's interface by going to Mail Settings in Gmail and then Accounts and Import. Then go through the processes of Send mail as: and Check mail using POP3:
Aw man, I just made a new Yahoo account and tried to do this and then realized Google Plus is not accepting new invites.... oh well.
I recall when Gmail was invite only and a lot of people wanted invites. People were even selling invites on eBay for a while!!! LOL... not for much money but still... it just goes to show that people will do anything for even a tiny bit of money.
So we will see how Plus works out. I am still unsure what to think about it, but either way, it seems cool. I just wish I could get an invite myself!!! :'-(
Google tried to recreated that invite scarcity with Wave as well -- didn't work out too well for them there.
Seems like the odds are pretty good that by the time they open it up to everyone, the hype will have died down. I understand the desire to scale up slowly, but this invite-only model is getting annoying.
