[yanghan]

Interesting. The problem you addressed about interacting with new people in a comfortable way is a problem we're trying to tackle at Uni+ http://uniplus.me

Right now we automatically match users similar to Facebook Graph, but we do it specifically on things people care about - people nearby who share your interests, hometown, classes, industry, etc. Our app is also university-only at the moment to filter out the creeps. We've also recently experimented with a location-based group chat feature in order to promote local interaction.

I wouldn't categorize this issue in the same domain as Facebook though. Facebook is about two things -- sharing and friends. There's a mental divide between the friends and strangers, so users would never use it to meet new people. There's already platform to share things between strangers (reddit), but a platform to "interact" with strangers (which is what facebook used to do, but with friends) still has yet to emerge.

[dvt]

This is an awesome idea :) I was literally talking to my sister about maybe doing something extremely similar as we were grabbing an early dinner last night in Westwood in Los Angeles (we both attend UCLA).

Fantastic idea, and good luck to you sir!

[yanghan]

Thank you, that's great to hear! We've just launched and started to see promising results. Hope to make it more mainstream some day!

[kingkawn]

I meet new people via Facebook all the time, and have since I joined in 2004. That never changed, even if the narrative about what the site is supposed to be for did.

[hayksaakian]

To me at least, Twitter serves that role. The asymmetrical follow model makes sense.