Panoramio (or Photobucket, Youtube, etc.) networking?

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biostructure
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05 Jul 2011, 5:33 pm

Have any of you found that interactive media sharing sites, that are not normally considered "social" in the sense of Facebook or Match.com, serve you well as an aspie in meeting people?

I browse Google Maps a lot, and I often click on Panoramio photos of places I found interesting. It has occurred to me that this might be a way to find people who have certain interests. Like if someone had an interest in suspension bridges, they could look to see who tagged the locations of local suspension bridges on the map, and then browse those users' albums to see if there are pictures of other suspension bridges there. I actually don't know how easy it is to start online conversations with people on such sites, but it seems an interesting possibility.

Even beyond literal interests, I often feel I get more of a sense of a person by the sense of aesthetics in his or her photos than by the way he acts socially. Does the person photograph calm or busy scenes, are there other people in the photos, are there quaint country barns or surf shops, etc. I could potentially see myself liking a woman, for instance, purely off of the pattern I see in the pictures she takes.

Of course, this runs the same risk as when a hollywood star develops a romantic interest in another star based on the kind of movies he or she has acted in. Nothing external to a person really and truly IS that person. But I was wondering if any of you have tried to leverage the power of media sharing to develop some sort of commonality with people, whether friendship or romantic, due to the fact that social cues seem "opaque"?



FearOfMusic
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05 Jul 2011, 7:27 pm

I have thought about this with StumbleUpon before. Sometimes you come across a webpage that you really like and you can actually stumble through that users other likes/dislikes... I do this frequently. I have thought about trying to 'friend' some of these people on stumbleupon but I thought it might seem weird/stalker-ish. :?

Stumbleupon is a little more social than something like Panoramio though since you are allowed to send links with messages to your 'friends'. I think it makes communication fairly ASD friendly since the messages you send/receive are related to a webpage and it is more focused fact sharing.

Also... StumbleUpon has a really strange 'friend' system which I don't fully understand... which kind of makes me feel at home!


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