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Ask HN: How does Google and Facebook do friend recommendations?

4 points by inthewind ↗ HN
Today I was dismayed to see a notification on my partner's Android device, which read along the lines of: 'Do you know Joe Bloggs'. Joe Bloggs being me. I'm not sure just how Google has joined the dots.

My partner has a Nook HD with a Google play store account. Mainly to download Google apps for Android, they also use the on board Chrome browser. I have a Gmail account, but I have never sent mail to their Gmail account or the other way around (they don't use that account for regular mail). My partners primary email account resides with another email provider, and is accessed through the on board Nook email client.

They have also installed the Google Keyboard and Facebook apps. Though I don't use Facebook. Neither of us have Android, Microsoft or iPhone smartphones.

18 comments

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msoad
Where did you see the recommendation message? Facebook or Google Plus?
inthewind
Sorry I'm not that offay with Android. I think it was a system notification, a 'Google' one. I doubt it was a Facebook one. And my partner doesn't use Google+ actively as far as I know. They may have stalked me, I'm not privy to their surfing habits.

They don't really use their Google account for anything but Google play, but it could be tied into their Chrome browser/profile somehow.

A long shot could be that we both visited the same *.wordpress.com site today.

inthewind
I mistakingly signed up to Facebook with a work email in the past. And noticed many work acquaintances appearing in Facebook's: do you know lists. Which I can only attribute to other people sharing their email address contacts with Facebook, and Facebook holding onto that data.
inthewind
This shows that Facebook have already have you as an entity in other people's networks before you have even joined Facebook. I guess you can cement yourself within those networks by adding them as friends, or saying that you know them.

I guess they also watch to see who you look up, and from that see if there are any connections between those that you look up, those friends might appear as further recommendations.

It can be quite spooky sometimes. The interesting thing with that account is that I never friended anybody, so it's interesting to see who comes up in their list. Some appear quite random, but others I recognize.

bmarker
Can we instead have a discussion about recommendation "engines"? I've been interested in writing one for fun but I have no clue where to start in learning about them. Can someone point me in the right direction, maybe a Coursera/OCW course?
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CWIZO
I'm always surprised when I see people say stuff like this. For me every recommendation on every social network was more in the line of 'SELECT user FROM users ORDER BY RAND()'.

I guess I'm doing something right.

anxiousest
Usually via graph, a "six degrees of separation" sort of thing, you don't have to directly contact each other, but it's enough to contact some of the same people to assume a connection. Also similar use patterns or geo locations (ip location or profile input indicating physical proximity) can be taken into account. I don't have intimate knowledge of their algorithms so I don't know about any other factors they might use.

I find it quite amusing that you're "dismayed" at a system working properly :)

inthewind
I think it would be a breach of privacy using geolocation data.

The reason I'm dismayed in this instance is that I can't work out how the connections are being drawn.

anxiousest
I'm just guessing.
inthewind
Aught wrong with a guess, but that one could get quite creepy pretty quickly. Say you were at a small conference in a small building in the one room. And Google started to suggest those around you as friends - that could be quite useful - but equally it could blow someones cover.

Also you spot a large car with tinted windows nearby, and suddenly Google is suggesting that you might know a certain someone that maybe in that vehicle.

You might loose your privacy if you were living in a block of flats and this were the case.

Certainly an interesting idea as to whether they do use your geo-data.

Now I'm pretty sure that profile data such as where do you live, or publicly printed location data could be used. I.e. with Facebook, it's probably more likely to hook you up with people that are geographically close - but I'm speculating here too.

anxiousest
I was thinking about less granular grouping i.e city or state level.
inthewind
A good question in itself, would be where do you draw a line. At what radius would you feel comfortable?

I'm posting from foo to a bar forum. Will bar tolerate someone from foo?

rankam
I would think, similar to Netflix or Spotify, that they would use machine learning algorithms (ensemble technique) to perform collaborative filtering.