Social Net’s core idea is to use patterns an physical proximity over time to infer shared interests:

Social Net is a novel interest-matching application that looks at patterns of collocation over time to infer shared interests between people. When two people are frequently observed near one another, Social Net searches for a mutual friend to introduce the two. In this way, Social Net strikes a balance between the affordances and capabilities of the technology (i.e., the ability to detect long-term trends of collocation between people) and the natural ability for people to mediate interpersonal interactions (e.g., deciding if, when, and how two people should be introduced).

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