websites like and seemed like interesting internet toys but not much else. Upload some information, link to your friends, then... what? I didn't really see the point.
It comes as a surprise, then, that I joined , a social networking site for college students, and a bigger surprise that I find it entertaining. I can see what interests I share with my friends and classmates (even those from high school); find others with similar interests; or just randomly click a few layers deep in my social network and see who or what I find. Something about gigs of interrelated, hyperlinked, searchable data makes the computer scientist in me quiver with joy.
I am pleased to see that the site is still growing and improving. It only recently came to Purdue, and just today I noticed some additions to the fields it collects. One improvement I'd like to see is an API. I would love to be able to send a request to the site and get back an XML file containing information on my social network. For example, I could have my website request the URLs of all my friends' websites that my site would then link to. Even better, instead of using my local people pictures, I could just code a PHP page that requests the friend's profile picture and creates a dynamic image like I did with the picture thumbnails and stats graphs. Stuff like that would take the interconnectedness inherent to the application one step further. Plus, it would be very, very cool.
