Does Facebook Play Matchmaker?

[easysurfer]

Facebook prides itself saying there's no way (at least that we know of) that a person can know you are spying looking at his/her profile. I'll take them at their word on this.

But, let's say, you pull up someone's profile, then does that increase the chance that your profile will pop up on their Facebook as a person they may know? Just curious as IMO, that seems the case and is admittedly, a bit on the creepy side if true .

[Redbugdave]

That's a good question. It would be good to know if it works both ways.

[MRG]

From purely anecdotal evidence, yes.

[Totoro]

Nobody knows, only Facebook. Maybe not even them (self-learning suggestion algorithm).

It would make sense though: friendship and knowing someone is a symmetrical relationship (except for celebrities), so why not use that as a factor in suggesting new friends?

What would also make sense is that Facebook occasionally throws in a low probability match (e.g. a distant co-worker, or just someone living the same city as you). To reduce the creepiness factor. "Facebook doesn't know anything, I never heard of so-and-so, and it somehow includes that guy from my old company I never even met!".

[chilkoot]

A while back I googled the name of a friend and one of the responses was a profile on LinkedIn. Based on info in the profile, this was a different person with the same name. Thereafter LinkedIn kept sending me e-mails suggesting that this person and I might know each other. So the technology is out there.
It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook's software worked tha same way.