It’s now well established that networks work optimally, in the sense of transmitting information, when connected as a small-world.
Today’s invention is a tool which works on data from social networking systems such as LinkedIn.
This would scan the profiles of one’s connections and match the found keywords to those found for other personal subnetworks. The tool would then introduce one member from each of two matched groups, in order to make the sparse but longrange connections between ‘neighbourhoods’ which are characteristic of efficient networks.
This would actually result in more of the kinds of links to influential people which one hopes to make on signing up on such Web 2.0 websites.
Actually, it may not be necessary to do very much matching of interests. It’s probably enough to select individuals each with a large number of personal contacts, but with no direct friends in common, and introduce them to each other occasionally.