5. online networking through www.last.fm

New Note 4

Ahoy

So since I listen primarily to Spanish music, I have found that it's considerably difficult to find people that listen to the same music as me.

However, there are some amazing resources that one can use in order to share music with other people online. Of particular greatness is a website called www.last.fm. This website tracks (almost voyeuristically) the tracks that you listen to on your computer and sends the metadata to the server. Then the server arranges your tracks, ranks them by most-listened-to artists, albums, tracks, etc. and displays these charts on your homepage.

What's great about last.fm is that it also analyzes the music that other people listen to and finds your musical "neighbors," therefore connecting you with people that listen to the same music.

Naturally, a lot of Spanish people have gotten in touch with me through last.fm and have noted how strange it is that someone who lives in the US listens to so much Spanish music (note that your nationality is also made known on last.fm). I have gotten into deeper communication with a number of people that I have met through last.fm.

I really don't enjoy giving out my MSN to them because I know that I'm never really going to talk with them. I personally find it difficult to talk with someone that I don't have any physical relation to because it's difficult for me to understand and grasp their personality through such a "cueless" medium. Nevertheless, I have in a few occasions given it out to them and I've maybe talked with one person I met through last.fm outside of the website.

Our relationship formed on two obvious factors - proximity and common ground.

In terms of proximity, our relationship forms because we enjoy listening to the same artists and when we look at the top fans of an artist on last.fm, we tend to see the same people over and over again because they listen to similar music. The fact that we see each other so frequently in artist lists online definitely facilitates familiarity with other people on the internet. Since we see them several times on these spaces, we identify with them more and are more likely to make an attempt to contact them. The neighbor feature is especially conducive to this effect. When we see people on our profile in our neighbor list, we are immediately attracted to them. And when we see them over many weeks, we really start to feel proximity to these people. The affirmation from a third party that there is definitely common ground creates a proximal attraction between two people on last.fm (and the internet in general).

On the second criterion, common ground, it is obvious that we share the same interests in music. Since we like the same music, we get an opportunity to share what we like and introduce others to new artists. This opens the floodgates of online communication. Shortly from talking about Spanish music, talk turns to that of culture and personal lives. We exchange the details of our academic and social lives and compare them to life in our own countries. All this communication is facilitated by our common ground. Since we associate with each other, our guards lower a lot so we feel much more comfortable talking to them because we feel like we know them a lot better.