I'm pretty firmly in the "Ye gods, do friend/product/service suggestions ever annoy the crap out of me," camp, myself. If there were a way to opt out of your own information being shared, and if it was presented quietly on a page you had to seek out and navigate to, though... I suppose I could see the utility in it?
("Had to navigate to" as opposed to an ever-present infobox, that is. [Look, Facebook. The fact that my mother's friend's daughter is now a co-worker of the girl who constantly verbally and physically assaulted me in middle school is a somewhat amusing example of what a small world we all live in; and I genuinely hope that she's having a happy and wonderful life. But I'm never going to "friend" her, no matter how long she languishes in the corner of my screen. Also not adding my roommate's sister's boyfriend's mom; I've heard stories about that woman.])
Of course, most of the metrics that would be useful to me strike me as things that would cause disproportionately high server load. (Specifically, the only data points I'd really care about are mutual friends and shared interests. "You and [this user] share 57 listed Interests!" "You subscribe to 23 accounts that [this user] also subscribes to!" "3 people on your reading list are members of [a community] that lists 7 of your interests as its own.")
If Dreamwidth chose to take this on, I'm sure they'd do it better that most services do, but it all feels vaguely problematic and wow this is a long comment, considering that my well thought-out and considered opinion on the matter is: "Meh."
no subject
("Had to navigate to" as opposed to an ever-present infobox, that is. [Look, Facebook. The fact that my mother's friend's daughter is now a co-worker of the girl who constantly verbally and physically assaulted me in middle school is a somewhat amusing example of what a small world we all live in; and I genuinely hope that she's having a happy and wonderful life. But I'm never going to "friend" her, no matter how long she languishes in the corner of my screen. Also not adding my roommate's sister's boyfriend's mom; I've heard stories about that woman.])
Of course, most of the metrics that would be useful to me strike me as things that would cause disproportionately high server load. (Specifically, the only data points I'd really care about are mutual friends and shared interests. "You and [this user] share 57 listed Interests!" "You subscribe to 23 accounts that [this user] also subscribes to!" "3 people on your reading list are members of [a community] that lists 7 of your interests as its own.")
If Dreamwidth chose to take this on, I'm sure they'd do it better that most services do, but it all feels vaguely problematic and wow this is a long comment, considering that my well thought-out and considered opinion on the matter is: "Meh."