Thanks on Thanksgiving: Social Graph Style
I decided to be part of the status quo and write a “thanks” post as it’s Thanksgiving. Other than being extremely thankful for my amazing wife and our newborn son, I’m extremely thankful for my health and all of the opportunities that have crossed my path.
Technology has allowed me to keep in touch with dozens of people I’d not normally speak to on a daily basis. Because of the connections (both direct and indirect) created, many opportunities have come my way for investment, friendship, consulting, networking, mentorship, and otherwise that I wouldn’t normally have.
The image on the left is a screenshot of my facebook social graph, as produced by the TouchGraph application. The top 50 relationships I have by Touchgraph’s algorithm’s are listed. While you can’t really see much in this very small image, I’ve linked to the larger one here.
I’d like to personally thank the following people for pushing my intellectual curiosity further this year (2008) and for providing some sort of opportunity (that’s probably too confidential to post). If you haven’t met these folks before, you probably want to get on their radar screen:
Charlie O’Donnell, Andrew Sispoidis, Joe Zawadzki, Brian O’Kelley, Nat Turner, Zach Weinberg, Barry Lowenthal, Brandon Berger, Nat Westheimer, Michael Galpert, Howard Lindzon, Roger Ehrenberg, Morty White, Thatcher Bell, Fred Wilson, Chris Fralic, Bijan Sabet, Steve Thibodeau, Jon Bond, Aaron Reitkopf, Erich Wasserman, John Battelle, Omar Tawakol, Satya Patel, Noelle Weaver, Andrew Parker, Brad Burnham, Josh Stylman, Greg Verdino, Joseph Jaffe, and Grant Lyons.
Besides my family and health, the most important thing to me is being intellectually stimulated and my friends above are doing amazing things and I’m thankful for knowing them. Please note that I did not mean to leave anyone off the list, I may have overlooked a few people!