Social Business Network platform Ecademy has positioned their feature to find and meet 'people similar to you' as I recently discovered. As I wrote in the blog on the 28th of April (here) Ecademy uses keywords in the profiles to describe who you are and what you want. Then, the 'find people like me' button can search other profiles and return those who have things in common. The more keywords in common, the higher the score.

It itself not an uncommon social software feature, and to my surprise they have added an automated banner on the homepage which selects (presumably at random) someone from the results list that 'has a profile like me'. The idea is good, yet I have questions about the value of this feature for me. Take this example.

Just now I was recommended Tom Smith because he has things in common with me. When I started to look at his profile, I found that there were just two keywords (of 50) that he shared with me (incidentally, "social software" and "virtual communities"). The other 48 did not resonate very much with me. Going back to the homepage and refreshing a couple of times, other names popped up and I checked their profiles likewise. Very little in common - it seems that
Ecademy is trying to use the power of volume in their attempt to create networks of people rather than quality (or perceived quality I should say). Tom Smith was not even on the list of people that 'look like me' when I forced to show a list - meaning he has less than 17% in common (...) which appears to be very much true.

The quality of this selection process can be perceived as quite shaky because Ecademy does not know which keywords are more important to me than others. I would contact Tom for his 'virtual communities' keyword but not if we shared 'tapas' in common. It's just that these keywords represent who I am and what I want, yet the engine does not discriminate between the two. Splitting the list would be much better. Ryze started off with that quite well (I have...) and (I want..) but did not implement an engine to link people with that. Perhaps it can come still, Social Business Network platforms are on the move and they go very fast.. they just have to stay away from the volume..