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The Internet Communications

Rate Your IM Popularity 332

Posted by Zonk from the i-thought-the-internet-was-to-get-away-from-this dept.
aicrules writes "The internet has long been a safe haven, and thus a play-field-leveling force, for the less socially adept to create a network of friends to share in fun, games, and conversation. However, it appears as if the influence of the social ladder is creeping its way in. While it will certainly lend itself to the abuse that any online scoring system faces, AimFight is the new place where people can go to check their popularity against others." From the article: "Your popularity is based on who has you on their buddy list. There's a complicated algorithm at work here. Your score is measured to the third degree, in the sense of the 'six degrees of separation' game that seeks to link anybody on Earth to any other person through no more than five friends. Say a couple of your friends, A and B, have you on their buddy lists. A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score. That's because she doesn't have as many people on her buddy list as does B, who has 16. Your friend A is clearly not as well-connected as your friend B. Not unlike life."
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Rate Your IM Popularity More

Rate Your IM Popularity

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  • Without the silly flash interface (Score:5, Informative)

    by DosBubba ( 766897 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:48PM (#13137022)

    Just plug in the screen names.
  • No IM, No Cell Phone, just peachy working on having friends in the local, physical world.

    So if we're supposed to be getting away from this, what's with the Friends thing on /. ??

  • why is this under hardware? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jabella ( 91754 ) * on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:49PM (#13137032) Journal
    just curious.

    highest score i've seen so far is in the 20,000 range.

  • Still no friends (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:49PM (#13137043)
    Dang, and I thought online no one knew I had no friends.

  • The real winners (Score:5, Interesting)

    by otter42 ( 190544 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:50PM (#13137052) Homepage Journal
    So who's going to win this?

    Why, the zombie hackers of course. I imagine that their ICQ buddy lists must be light-years long.

    • Re:The real winners (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ZephyrXero ( 750822 )
      I do seriously wonder what's the point of such a service? To make people feel good about themselves by being told they have lots of friends or will it be used as a security messure to make sure it's not just a spambot trying to add you to their buddy list? That might actually be useful...

      • Re:The real winners (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Nytewynd ( 829901 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:57PM (#13137133)
        Actually, it isn't just how many friends you have. It is how many friends your friends have. That means as long as a geek latches on to a popular person, they can be popular by proxy.
      • It's to prove that the younger you are, the truly more 'hip' you are. For instance, my younger brother by 4 years is a *little* more popular than I am, while my sister who is 10 years younger (18yrs old and on her way to college) ranked in the top 5% of AIM users! Yikes! She blew me out of the water. But c'mon, we all had more friends during high school and/or college than we do as we grow older. Grandma and grandpa's all over the US would score in the bottom 0.1% of AIM users simply because a bunch of peop
      • I do seriously wonder what's the point of such a service?

        It's a) a clever hack and b) fun.

    • Interesting...need to correlate this score with zombied computers...see how it stacks up...

  • OK (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Shut the fuck up! ( 572058 )
    Outside of 13 year olds, Who the hell gives a flying fuck about their IM popularity?
    • Idiocy is not limited to those in their early teens.
      • Outside of 13 year olds, Who the hell gives a flying fuck about their IM popularity?
        Ummmm- the advertisers targeting 13 year olds.... The "tweens" are a huge demographic for advertisers, so the site lords can laugh all the way to the bank...
        Could I be really popular if I allowed every female buddy who contacts me unsolicited from Asia/Europe to join my buddy list?
    • Outside of 13 year olds, Who the hell gives a flying fuck about their IM popularity?

      Maybe people who aren't cynical, boring assholes?

      Jesus, some of you guys really need to lighten up. This is an office time-killer, that's all. I've sent it around to a few people I used to work with and still have on my IM list and it amused us for five minutes or so. What's the friggin' harm?

      btw, I suck. I'm at 4,195. Every single person on my buddy list beats me by about five to one. Do I care? No, but it was f

  • Only works for AIM of course (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) * <kensama@vt.edu> on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:52PM (#13137065) Homepage Journal
    This fight is for people who aren't technical and are in the US. I score very low because most of my friends (and their friends) are on ICQ.
    • This fight is for people who aren't technical and are in the US.

      You expected nerds to be popular???

    • As far as I know, AIM is the last IM client you can't spam members of. That's probably the real reason behind this.

      I used to use ICQ until the ability to leave messages waiting spawned the worst spam ever on an IM client.

      I've used AIM since 98 or 99. Know what the total number of unsolicited IMs I've received to date is?

      0
      • And you think that's because of the offline messaging feature?

        Funny, that's one of the things I really LOVE about ICQ and YIM. And, btw, i've also received zero unsolicited IMs. ON YIM.

        No, I suspect ICQ's downfall was probably the UIN system. Is it easier to write a script that guesses a load of screennames to fire off ads to, or just use the value of an incrementing counter?

    • I'm pretty sure ICQ and AIM are more or less the same now. You can log into just about any AIM client with your ICQ number as the screenname, and the same password. You can add ICQ people to your AIM buddy list and AIM people to your ICQ list. You can compare two ICQ numbers using that AIMFight tool, so I assume it does follow the list of buddy connections for both networks when adding up the numbers.
    • Uh, ICQ is owned by AOL now, chap. And neither AIM nor ICQ segregate based off country, nor is there any difference in the technical skills of the users.

      Now, if you just want to be an elitist and advocate a better protocol, feel free. But I would suggest you stop advocating ICQ and start advocating Jabber. :)
    • Yes, it seems AimFight would be better as JabberFight, since Jabber will show not only your Jabber contacts, but your AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, IRC and Gadu-Gadu contacts as well. Nice idea very wrongly executed.

  • I don't have any. (Score:5, Funny)

    by elgee ( 308600 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:53PM (#13137075)
    I have no friends whatsoever. At least not human friends.

    AmISnotOrNot ?

  • Well that was unexpected (Score:5, Funny)

    by doublem ( 118724 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:53PM (#13137084) Homepage Journal
    I guess those high school bullies really did peak in high school.

    I'm incredibly popular by this measure, and one of the jerks who tormented me is a virtual unknown!

    Karma, it can be a bitch.
  • I'd rather be feared than loved. Where's my "AIMFight" that shows how much I inspire fear and loating in my IM circle?

  • This sounds really cool... (Score:5, Funny)

    by g0bshiTe ( 596213 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:55PM (#13137093)
    Oh never mind, I'm not 12 anymore.
    • Actually, I found it kind of interesting, but not for popularity.

      I did a little search on my accounts and compared them to each other. I was most interested in the account I've had for about seven years that AOL shut down out of nowhere for no reason with no explanation (and they wouldn't help unless I became an AOL subscriber).

      My main account these days is around 3,000 on that scale.

      The account I've had for seven years, but haven't been able to use for almost two years now, was 23,000 on that scale.

      Jus
  • It's kind of sad really. Originally, the internet was a place that you could create your own little pocket universe and not care about how many friends someone else has on their buddy list as long as you have somebody to chat with.

    On the other hand, with the internet becoming nearly ubiquitous, it's hard to keep out the trends of real life social stratum now that everybody's on.

    Oh well. I guess I go back to being a hermit :) </bemoaning_my_fate>

  • Nerds! (Score:4, Funny)

    by endeitzslash ( 570374 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:55PM (#13137098)
    Everyone knows that popularity in real-life is based on whether you're on the football team and how many girls have held still long enough for you to nail them!

    Now would you like fries with that?

  • Quality (Score:3, Informative)

    by demachina ( 71715 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:55PM (#13137099)
    As in many things in life its quality not quantity that counts. Having 100 blithering idiots on your friends list, who also have a 100 blithering idiots on theirs doesn't score in my book. In fact its a net negative versus having 10 people who have a clue and have something to say, because the 100 idiots can bug you all day every day and are just wasting your tim.

  • The summer that never ended.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <spamNO@SPAMpbp.net> on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:55PM (#13137100)
    myspace being bought out, the growing popularity of all these online "social networking" sites (read: online ego jerkoff sessions, basically) and now this?

    Ugh. More & more 'tweeners that don't know squat about computers except how to click & install Napster and AIM.

    I'm saddened at what the Internet has become.
    • Hey, I use myspace, AIM constantly. I'm not a tweener that doesn't know squat about computers, just if you use those sites, programs effectively, they can be a great asset as a way to reach a mass medium of people. My band, for example, uses Myspace excessively and have even booked shows with it. AIM, let's just say if I didn't use it, my phone bill would be sky high.
    • how to click & install Napster

      I remember Napster. Wasn't that used to trade music or something a few years ago?
    • Seriously! The internet should only be for people who are really into computers! That way only intelligent people would be online - you know, people whose activities I consider to be worthwhile. Then I wouldn't have to deal with idiots online! Yeah!

  • screenname auction (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Se7enLC ( 714730 )
    I was going to give up my old ScreenName to get a better one...

    but I'm thinking with a score of 18245, I should sell it on eBay instead
  • On my system it says something about "stuff that matters" in the upper right corner of this site...
  • Is there a reason why all these slashdot posts are coming here days after they appear on digg [digg.com]? This was on digg like 8 days ago.
  • It's only for AIM, doesn't take into consideration MSN messanger, Yahoo, ICQ, RendezVous, Jabber or any other protocols. I'm sure i'd fare better than 1780 on MSN.
  • The editor is not a coder.

  • Random nonsense (Score:3, Funny)

    by ahem ( 174666 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @02:02PM (#13137181) Homepage Journal
    So, just on a whim, I decided to see what things were more popular:

    apple (6293) vs orange (7389)
    coke (3830) vs pepsi (4274)
    snoopy (10653) vs garfield (3791)

    and finally...

    bush (2884) vs freedom (1422)
    bush vs iraq (1241)
    bush vs democracy (3)

    and most telling of all
    bush vs decency (0)

  • Algorithms (Score:4, Funny)

    by cynic10508 ( 785816 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @02:04PM (#13137207) Journal

    There's a complicated algorithm at work here.

    Translation: "We're not really sure how we got it to work. Basically we just randomly fiddled with things until we got an acceptable output." Much like the time-test C programming technique of adding/removing * and & to pointers until it works.

  • A, who has three people on her buddy list, doesn't add much to your score...Your friend A is clearly not as well-connected as your friend B

    It seems to me that A should add more to my score than B does, because A is more selective as to whom she considers her friend.

    It's like being A-listed (pun intended).

  • Looks like tubgirl is more popular than goatse.

  • Worklists make you popular (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cornjones ( 33009 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @02:09PM (#13137253) Homepage
    This will be wildly scewed by people who use IM for work. In my experience, most workplaces use MSN but I am sure some use AIM. I have dozens of workmates grouped by their functional area. According to this, I am really popular. THere are people here at work that have 100s in their lists, since they are on my list does that make me cool?

  • So this is just ranking people based off the number of people who you link to/link back to you?

    Big deal. What if my only contact list for my IM was Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, ESR and Richard Stallman [which, it isn't =]?

    I also wonder how many people really want their full contact web used for such things -- maybe they expected it to be private or something.
  • I had only a few hundred this morning, now I have 3000. How can that really be? I haven't talked to anybody on AIM in ages. /thinks it's just rand() // doesn't really care anyway. /// good time killer though, props to the AOL dev's for something really fun.
  • You get a bonus multiplier of 10x if you have Kevin Bacon in your friends list? :x

  • They don't really say how they calculate the score, do they? "Your score is relative to other AIM users?" What the hell does that mean? Why isn't it just the number of third-degree connections, what's wrong with using that number?

    That is truly weird. I swear I only ever, ever IM with my wife. Just so she won't have to bug the secretary here at work, really. And yet, my score is over a thousand. I must be in the buddy list of some seriously indescriminate folks. Like spambots or something...

    My wife has

  • Damn (Score:2)

    by bahwi ( 43111 )
    I'm a loser.
  • Does anybody have a script for creating hundreds of AIM logins, then adding me to the buddy list of each one? I can be the most popular guy on the internet! Muahahahaha!
  • Talk about clash of the titans these two aimbots are neck and neck.

    171,494 to 157,090

    Although, I've never gotten either to work. :(

  • Buddyzoo? (Score:3, Informative)

    by qodfathr ( 255387 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @02:29PM (#13137519)
    Sounds a lot like www.buddyzoo.com, which has been around a Real Long Time now.
    • Well, you need to register on Buddyzoo. The pro is that it gives you a lot more data. This is just the simple, no-frills version.

  • The algorithm must take into buddy back-listing, too.

    I checked my current screen name against my previous screen name. My previous name (which I haven't used in YEARS) beat my current one... even though my current name has all the buddies my old list had, plus tons of new ones. The thing is, many of those names are people I haven't chatted with in years, so they probably don't have my current handle in their list...

    otherwise, this result makes little sense.

  • My score: 849
    That was mildly entertaining...
    Briefly...
    Oh, well, back to work.

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