Monday, December 11th, 2006

The New York Times Magazine!

Somehow we managed a small mention in today’s New York Times Magazine’s article on new ideas (the 6th annual year in ideas, nonetheless). The piece, on “Homophily“, talks about how this love of the same has played into social software. It concludes:

“To counter the seemingly universal trend toward homophily, Torkington invited his readers to figure out how to create “serendipity.” One information-technology specialist described a feature he would add to Facebook called “the Stretch,” which would help students “find a group of people a little different” from themselves. Someone else brought up the online book cataloger LibraryThing’s UnSuggester, which identifies the book least likely to share a library with the book you mention.”

Fame! (David Pogue, do you read the magazine? Do you want me to send you a copy?)

The best part – usually, Tim and I come across LibraryThing mentions from advance warning, vanity searches online, or emails from readers quick on the uptake. This one was great because we both found it on our own, and independently!*

*I make do with the online version during the week, but reading the Sunday New York Times in print is luxury. Even if it takes the whole day to read – picking up and putting it down to run errands, answer emails, make dinner, sew Christmas stockings (I’m a holiday/domestic genius today) – and if that means I don’t make it to the Magazine until 10:30pm, it’s worth it. Particularly worth it when I happen across LibraryThing on the bottom of page 52. As Tim said, “I was just reading along, and thinking ‘this would be a good place to mention Libr—OH MY GOD!'”

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