DivaBlog

Social software is all the rage (and I have been one of the people pushing for blogging and other forms of non-traditional communication software at Sun). But I find I'm torn about participation in communities like LinkedIn, Orkut and the rest of the "tribes" you can join now.

Sure, I was in there with the best of them at the beginning, seeing how many friends I could find and being delighted whenever someone I worked with long ago would out of the blue show up with a link request...but now that all of that has died down I find I'm left with the daily decision whether to link to someone I *really* don't know.

Here's someone with a clever note attached to his request (which is expiring today). He seems sincere. He's just trying to get linked to as many like-minded people as possible. Isn't that okay? Isn't that how Open Source works ultimately (building trust with strangers through common interests, skills, mind?). But somehow it just feels creepy to be solicited for links by strangers in this way. Its like receiving a chain letter or something. On the other hand, what if this person turns out to be the next Sergei Brin? "Oh, yeah, I remember back when I tried to get a link out of you and you refused..."

What I would *love* to see is some kind of community where your friends could recommend friends to you and then at least unsolicited link requests would come with some karma or something attached. I think its gonna be awhile before I'll be pushing Sun to add tribe attributes to java.sun.com.

What do you think? Are the tribes working out for you? Do you accept unsolicited links?