Homophily in Social Software - O'Reilly Radar

The Washington Post has a brief article called "Why Everyone You Know Thinks The Same As You". In short, you hang out with people who are like you, a phenomenon known as homophily. This happens online, and indeed the Internet can lower the costs of finding people like you. But homophily raises the question for social software designers of how much they should encourage homophily and how much they

[walkinglint]

> But homophily raises the question for social software designers of how much they should encourage homophily and how much they want to mix it up. ... Doing this creates serendipity: pleasantly surprising the user.