A match made in cyberspace

Call Center CRM Solutions, Aug 2000 by Tehrani, Rich

My best friend in college, Harris Sugarman, is a trivia fanatic. He is the kind of person you always lose to in Trivial Pursuit, no matter how much you study or who helps you. Harris' field of expertise is entertainment and Hollywood. Name any movie, any actor or any film director and Harris will know all relevant details about what or whom you were referring to.

After college, Harris moved from our home state of Connecticut to Georgia, where I would get a chance to visit him on occasion. On one such trip, I spied Harris reading an issue of Premiere magazine, a publication devoted to the film industry. I didn't think much of what Harris was doing until I noticed he had a notebook open and was taking notes on what he was reading. I thought to myself, "Now I know why this kid always annihilated me in Trivial Pursuit." Further examination, however, showed that I was mistaken... Harris wasn't taking notes, he was doing something much more obsessive.

It seems that Premiere magazine always lists the latest movies showing in theaters and includes rankings given to the movies by various critics. Harris decided that he too would rank the individual movies on the list and when he was finished, he would compare his rankings against the rankings given by each critic. Over time, Harris was able to determine which critics had the same movie taste as he. Armed with this knowledge, Harris was able to predict which movies he was predisposed to like, based on certain critics' opinions. I queried Harris, quite suspiciously, as to whether such a ridiculous scheme could work, and he swore that it worked well for him.

That was over 10 years ago and to be honest, I never thought this incident was significant nor did I think it would ever be something I would reference again.

However, a few weeks ago, a similar event took place that I again thought I would never need to further reference. This time, I was using Napster.com to download some music. Napster fascinates me. The very concept of being able to download music from around the globe over a network of computers is so new and so amazing that the technology must have myriad business applications. So I logged onto Napster's site to give it a whirl to see what ideas it might generate. Nothing really exciting happened as I began to search for some music online. That was until I was working late one day in the office and I remembered that I had a disc in my home CD player but not in my car. I felt like listening to a particular song at that moment, so I found it and began to download it. Thirty seconds into the download, I saw a Napster instant message appear on my screen. "Hey, what's up?" is all it said. I noticed the user was the same one from whom I was downloading the song. I, of course, ever so grateful that this stranger was sharing bandwidth, processing power and, of course, music with me, wrote back "Thanks for the song." "No problem," my newfound cyber friend responded. He then asked where I lived. I responded, "Connecticut, about 40 minutes from Manhattan." It turns out my friend lives in Brooklyn, NY Although I had an absolute avalanche of work to contend with, I thought it would be fun to have a virtual chat with a person I didn't know.

Somehow, the fact that we liked the same music helped me bond with this unknown user. I had the feeling that this person was looking for new friends, and what better way to find potential friends than to look for people who have similar musical tastes?

My new cyber friend began recommending other songs in his collection and asked me about my favorites as well. I was astounded by what was happening. I was supposed to be working, but this stranger seemed to have so much in common with me that I felt compelled to communicate with him. It was as if an old friend had called to speak with me and the polite thing to do was to speak with him for a while. In fact, long after the download was over, we were still chatting.

In effect, Napster has become much more than just a vehicle for exchanging music; it is the ultimate virtual community maker. There is no need to enter chat rooms of similar interests; all you need do is download a song from someone who happens to be in the mood to converse and in a few seconds, you've made a new cyber acquaintance.

The previous example of my friend Harris shows that if you can measure your taste in a particular area against others, you will eventually find people who have similar tastes. Once you've identified your "taste soul mates," you can collaborate with them and more easily determine whether you are likely to enjoy a certain album, movie, book or work of art. To illustrate this concept, whenever I go into a record store and find either an employee or another customer who seems to have music tastes similar to my own, I usually end up buying three times more music than I had planned. Before I finished this column, I took a trip to my hometown Tower Records and left empty-handed. I was in the mood to buy some new music, but no one seemed inclined or available to suggest any good songs to me. The last time I entered the same store, I went with a friend who shares my musical taste and ended up with 10 CDs, and leaving $160 poorer.