How Many Friends Does Your Buddy Have?
The latest Skype profiles have some information on them that won't make everyone happy. With the upgrade to 1.4 Skype shows your buddies their "friends" count. So if you look up my profile you will find I have 289 currently. Some of you may want to opt out and not share this data. By contrast I think it is really a very exciting development. It also provides some new opportunities down the road.
I'd infer that when we start sharing buddy counts we also share an element of reputation. In the future you may only take calls from Skypers who have more than 25 people on their list. Otherwise they have to ask for an authorisation. You could probably choose the number. That adds an additonal hurdle for spammers. Similarly if I am getting a call from someone with a few hundred contacts they are more likely to be genuine. I also know that they are more likely to be able to bridge someone else into our conversation. Example in a dating environment, who you are talking to may be the matchmaker.
It's easy to see Skype is beginning to experiment with statistics (how many buddies) and later we will get info like how many buddies we each have online and the number we have in common. Some may even want to progressively expose that information. Oh, it also means that Skype will in one form or another invade the social and business networking space. When or if we finally get contact grouping it will be interesting to see... if I create a new group --- what new options that may bring in the Skype API. Will those groups names be exposed? I certainly hope so. It would create some new value.
Comments
How do you combat "contact farming" (skymmers, if we may call them that, opening hundreds of spam Skype accounts and adding each other to their contact lists)?
Posted by: angryman | October 10, 2005 12:59 PM
Hi, I considered the possiblity when I wrote the post. At the moment there is no API access to adding new users so each one would be done manually.
While you can have more than one Skype account on one email account I'd think if I started trying to register 100's over time Skype would at least put a break on that. Thus you would also have to coordinate with email accounts.
The best protection will be this buddy knows or is linked via your buddies x, y z. There is a spam problem there. However there are other ways to cure that too. eg. open a commercial channel and pay me for access. All other callers are no authorised and thus blocked.
Posted by: Stuart | October 10, 2005 01:45 PM
You mentioned "opting out and not sharing this data." I can't find how to do this within Skype v. 1.4.
To me Skype is a VOIP tool and not for social networking. If others want to list about their number of contacts, that is up to them.
Posted by: lost in the 530 | October 10, 2005 08:01 PM
Try Linkedin. you'll find people with 3000 trusted contacts and most of them are tools. meanwhile less 'active' networkers in the system have some real value.
Posted by: stephen | October 11, 2005 12:20 PM
I would like to know why is it that when I VIEW some of the Profiles of my contacts the number of contacts are given against the online/offline status of my contact.
While I see comething to this effect against the status of some of my contacts I don't see the number of contacts when I view my Profile from a friends computer. It looks like:
John
john.lewesky
X 19 contact(s)
(X is the status of the Profile, I see 19 contact(s)or similar figures against some of my contacts but I do not see it when I view my Profile from say, my brother's skype ID - why is that so? I have about 12 contacts on my list)
Gender: Male
Language: English
Location: Arlington, TX
Can you help in explaining this. I would like to see the number of contacts against my profile too.
Posted by: ssi | November 25, 2005 08:48 PM
How do i get the lists of buddies of my buddy.
Posted by: Crisk | June 11, 2006 08:55 AM