Very funny post today on Everyday Goddess:

Seriously, LinkedIn has this has this function where it says, Hey, you might know these people! And I almost always do.

Yeah, they’re friends of friends, but out of all the friends that a friend of mine has, how does LinkedIn pick my ex-boyfriends, some guy I dated, a graphic artist I met at a gallery opening, and the one colleague from a huge past company that I actually do know? Seriously, they’ve got some kickin’ smart technology going on over there.

The truth is, of all the questions I get about LinkedIn, this is one of the most consistent ones. People are just fascinated by People You May Know (that’s the name we gave to that particular application).

One of the things I love most about working for LinkedIn is that the primary problem is all about people – their professional reputations, their relationships, and the activities based on them. We are in such early stages of understanding and capability.

In any case, I thought the last line was funny.

Seriously, they’ve got some kickin’ smart technology going on over there.

Definitely something that every engineer wants to hear. 🙂

And no, I’m not telling you how it works.

Update (10/24/2008): Hi everyone.  This post continues to traffic from time to time, and sometimes fairly hostile comments.  As a result, I’m closing down the comment thread here, since this was meant to just be a fun observation of a user response, and not an in-depth analysis of the feature or social network functionality in general.   This is my personal blog, and I’d rather keep it that way, so please direct any additional comments about the feature itself to the main corporate blog.   Thanks.