Att skicka runt roliga filmer och länkar med mejl är nutida artighetsgåvor:

"Forwarding a quirky email or an amusing link or video attachment to colleagues may seem innocent enough, but it is the modern equivalent of ritual gift exchange and carries with it similar social implications, say US researchers. (...) forwarding emails plays a vital role in constructing and maintaining modern social ties, despite the phenomenon receiving scant attention from social scientists.

Forwarding a genuinely amusing or interesting link to a friend, for example, shows that you are thinking of them and are aware of the sort of content they like..."
New Scientist: Email forwarding amounts to ritual gift exchange, 12 juli 2005

En sådant värde-laddat beteende är frestande för många att dra nytta av:

"The power of email-mediated social networks has, of course, already been identified by marketing firms, who often try to exploit them through "viral" marketing campaigns. (...)

Gross says email-forwarding networks could prove useful in other ways. He points to a software project called Forward Track, which can monitor email forwarding chains, making it possible for political groups to keep track of those who have forwarded a political message to friends.

Microsoft has also developed software to map the networks created through email forwarding. A prototype program called Social Network and Relationship Finder, or SNARF, can be used to create a picture of the social and business networks constructed through email communications."

Det där låter lite oroväckande. Och "snarf"? Jag antar att namnet är medvetet valt för att provocera:

"Initially, in the realm of programming languages, snarf meant to grab a large document or file and use it without the author's permission."
Webopedia

Microsoft verkar dock mena att det är ett sätt att aggregera kollektivt beteendet för att sortera mejl och identifiera spam. På tisdag (19 juli) ska man demonstrera det vid en "Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2005":

"Social Sorting for E-Mail Triage
E-mail triage is the process of going through unhandled e-mail and deciding what to do with it. E-mail triage can quickly become a serious problem for users as the amount of unhandled e-mail grows. We will present our findings on how people handle e-mail and demo the SNARF (Social Network and Relationship Finder) prototype showing how social metrics calculated for a person’s e-mail can be used for triage. For more information about the Community Technologies group, see http://research.microsoft.com/community/."

Snarf kommer också att demonstreras vid Second Conference on Email and Anti-Spam vid Stanford University, 21-22 juli. Läs under Accepted papers


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