That didn't take long...

About 20 minutes later, Terence was no longer... Seriously, they don't give you a lot of time to prove that you're interesting, famous, or important!

Social Biography Experiment

Today at work, we decided to run a little experiment. My friend Terence said he wanted to open his life up for editing through the magic of Wikipedia. After creating a blank page with his name on it, he started filling in details (so far, completely accurate) about his life, but we're encouraging everyone we know to create a far more impressive biography for him with ensuing Wikipedia edits. I will add my own shortly.

While fundamentally this goes against everything that makes Wikis good, we're hoping that it grows in that way that only viral internet things can. A new form of non-factual infotainment will be born. Now, we've already been made aware by Wikipedia that the page was the target for rapid deletion because they didn't know who he was... but we've jumped through the first hoops, and can now watch it bloom...

Without further ado, please help us write the life story of Terence Yip.

A Connector? Me?

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell has come up a few times in our 506 course. When discussing social network, I mentioned that there was a chapter about it in the book, and sure enough it was referenced in one of our other readings. In every group of people, there are some who are better at making and maintaining social relationships. Gladwell calls those people connectors. In some of our discussions, both in class and elsewhere, classmates identified me as a connector, and I agreed. I take my socializing very seriously.

So I decided to find out if this is actually true. Am I a connector? Gladwell tests this by giving subjects a list of 250 surnames. Counting how many people you know with those surnames gives you an indication of how "connected" you are. The average for college students was 21. The average for professionals in their 20s and 30s was 39. My number was...

27.

Frankly, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for a huge number, but alas, it was not to be. The list of names came from a Manhattan phone book. I genuinely believe that if the list had come from a Canadian phonebook the results would have been different. I'm just making excuses. I'd be interested in trying it with a few lists and comparing. Maybe there's a research project there... for another time.

The other thing that it could indicate is that being a social butterfly doesn't make you a connector. That could very well be the case here. There are a lot of things that could change the results, but for now, I'll just have to be content with being well below average.