Overclockers Club

How much do you and your friends have in common? Do you play the same games, listen to the same music, read the same books, and listen to the same music? How about your Internet friends? As social networking sites, such as Facebook, allow people to befriend others with wildly different tastes, researchers want to know if these Internet friends influence each others tastes, or if we stay with those already like us.

Researchers at Harvard University, funded by the National Science Foundation, have followed a cohort of college friends for 4 years on Facebook. As everyone was listing their favorite music, movies, and books, it was possible to see how these changed due to the friendships. What the researchers found was that the original interests of the people greatly influenced the friendships they made. Basically, if two people share a taste in music or movies, they are more likely to become friends than if their tastes differ. Curiously, the taste in books did not have an influence like music and movies, but the researchers suggest this could be because people cannot read books together, while they can share the experience of music and movies.

Once friendships are made though, the researchers found tastes did not easily spread among friends. For example, an interest in alternative or independent music would not diffuse, though this could in part be because a taste in such music is valued for differentiating one from their friends. However, classical and jazz music would be shared between people, but such an event is the exception, not the rule.