Every time I scroll through my list of ‘Friends’ on Facebook, I inevitably come to the same (somewhat depressing) conclusion: I have absolutely no idea who many of these people are. This is mostly my fault – my standards have always been pretty low when it comes to accepting inbound requests, and I never kept up with assigning them to appropriate Friends Lists. But there’s also the fact that Facebook doesn’t do much to automatically differentiate between friends and acquaintances (while it does filter your News Feed based on who it thinks you’re interested in, there isn’t a way to automatically generate a list of “good friends” versus everyone else).
Meezoog, an Israeli startup backed by veteran VC Yossi Vardi, is looking to help differentiate between acquaintances and close friends. Today the company has launched its own social network at Meezoog.com that attempts to determine how strong the connections are between users by analyzing their relationships on other sites across the web (it also asks you to manually input your relationship with each friend, but this isn’t required). The site presents a number of “paths” connecting you with each friend in a manner similar to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, that helps users determine the degree of “social trust” they have with each user. At this point it’s too early to tell how well the system works, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Besides its social network, Meezoog also plans to offer Facebook and OpenSocial applications that allow users to estimate the nature of their connections with their friends, even if they aren’t on Meezoog’s network. This cross-network analysis is probably the company’s best shot at success – while Meezoog may be able to establish its standalone social network in some regional areas, it will have a very hard time directly competing with established networks like Facebook and MySpace.
Other companies have tried to do similar social connection strength mapping, including Linking Universe.
Great idea but that design! Looks like an ad for feminine hygiene products. Can you add theming for those of us that aren’t 45 year old women?
Not sure about the site layout either
What a smart idea !
how do I get in ????
Why would I bother leaving FB for this? Good idea in retrospect, but it’s too late.
I’m using http://fonet.mobi for thier social networking. I can delete any friends from my friends list and it delete my name also from my friends list. So, if he wants to add me, then he has sent another request to me .
This is a mobile site and it has a very simple interface.
Thats cool they have a robot speaking for the presentation !
they should just build their app for facebook or myspace instead of creating their own new social network.
fail
this is a great idea. everyone should try it.
Great idea; but too late to market to matter.
Would (have) help(ed) if they’d spent 5-25k of their VC funds to buy a nice, relevant, memorable (read: real words) domain; as this one is, frankly, terrible.
Meezoog means “who is a couple” in Hebrew. I knew immediately from the name that it was Israeli.
What the above article fails to mention (and I only got by looking at their website) is that Meezoog isn’t trying to be FB – they’re going after eHarmony – Meezoog is an online dating site. Taken from their About Us:
“Meezoog.com, a new and innovative social club, introduces a fresh approach to online dating.”
In this way, Meezoog makes total sense. What better way to online date than to know how this person fits in your network?
Jason – Did you actually look at the site before writing this article?
> What better way to online date than to know how this person fits in
> your network?
You do not understand men.
Entering Meezoog, i almost instantly understood its actually uses a social network in order to match between people (online dating?) why isn’t that mentioned than?
Considering that, its a rather good idea; especially if i would like a recommendation on a potential date from someone who knows the girl and not waste my time.
How do Meezoog make money?
Anyway, cool!
Good Luck
Awesome idea. Might do well…
But…
Can someone please tell me who does their site design?
A very good idea. Linkedin is also plagued by the same problem. At JobsByRef.com we have attempted to fix this problem for professionals.
http://www.jobsbyref.com
I think most guys would rather *not* date their friends’ friends (gross), and prefer to meet ladies outside their existing network of friends.
That’s why bars and Match.com are so popular.
Hmmm… i think there’s a SERIOUS and basic logical flew in the concept. Let me explain:
Let’s do a lil scheme:
PersonA PersonBPersonC
(where the weights are predicates connecting the people, with given weight-values of X and Y respectively)
Their assumption is that from this, you can conclude and *calculate* the following:
PersonAPersonC
(where weightXY is the calculated value, based on the given scheme before)
Which is simply NOT true!!
Note that weight means weight specifically in “taste” related things, etc., because such factors are not transposable and cannot be “delegated”.
Thus, the logic is good only for 1st level friends and that’s where it stops.
It IS a good idea to add meta-data about 1st level friends in social-networks, such as the information they collect, maybe, or even better defined set of meta-data fields.
i wish the guys the best with all my heart, but i think they should change their paradigm completely: if they want to deal with matching – there are much, much better methods; if they want to do meta-data over social-networks – they should adapt accordingly….
seems like the diagrams i tried to draw didn’t come out because i used illegal characters…
so here they are again
1st diagram:
PersonA —weightX— PersonB —weightY— PersonC
2nd diagram:
PersonA —weightXY— PersonC
To be honest – great idea, but I don’t know if this should be its own social network rather than an add-on to Facebook and LinkedIn only… could also be interesting to put it to use in expert networks like Gerson Lehrman Group. I look forward to reviewing it this week.
By the way, Meezoog in Hebrew means ‘merger’.
If you’re into Israeli startups, check out VC Cafe (http://www.vccafe.com) and join the VC Cafe Network on LinkedIn (http://www.link...com/e/gis/41522),
Pud got it the nail on the head ” most people would not want to date their friends”………their standalone social network=FAIL……..they should concentrate on their applications.
Finally somebody admits that the 300+ friends are not real mates
I do agree with VC Cafe. It simply makes no sense to launch a new network just because somebody has programmed something which could turn out to become a nice add-on. Additionally, I don’t really understand how they are going to collect the sn external data about relationships. My suggestion: It would be great to have a strength-o-meter which measures the strengths of relationships by looking at picture commenting, private messages, etc. between the users internally.
Well, they already do!!!
They have a proximity gouge…
Who cares if you don’t know the people you add to facebook? Strangers are just friends waiting to be met!
Talk to your 500 facebook friends – you might be amazed about how much you have in common with people who is completer “strangers”.
I Agree
what a clever idea. the Israelis seem to generate such good stuff.