I got a PR email the other day from AIM, asking

EVER WONDER HOW POPULAR YOU REALLY ARE? THE AOL INSTANT MESSENGER (AIM®) SERVICE HAS THE ANSWER

New AIMFIGHT.com Site Lets AOL® Members and AIM® Users
Gauge Their Online Popularity, Compare Buddy List Ranking With Friends, Colleagues and AIM Users Everywhere

Dulles, VA July 18, 2005 Are you the social center of the online universe? Do you covet the pinging sound of popularity and importance? Today, American Online, Inc. and the AOL® Instant Messenger(TM) (AIM®) service unveiled a new Buddy List ranking feature and Web site that let users once and for all answer the burning question: "How Popular Am I?"

Live today, AIMFIGHT.com (www.AIMFIGHT.com) lets AOL® members and AIM® users see how connected they are to the online community at any given moment. By entering their AOL or AIM Screen Name, as well as that of a friend, users can square off against their buddies to see just how popular they really are, and compare Buddy List rank.

We have seen a lot of this sort of gaming in the early days of the social networking explosion, when people would attempt to become the 'most connected' at orkut or LinkedIn.

In an accompanying description of what social networks are, the AIMFIGHT site is pretty good, and pretty funny.

I checked who was more connected, Greg Narain or me, using the 'boydstowe' and 'madmonknyc' handles. I dominated!

Of course, it would be a lot more easy to just put the numbers on the buddy list, like other attributes. In my ongoing Nerdvana rant, I'd like all these sorts of social attributes to be on the buddy list entries, but in a case like this it's even more obvious that it should be displayed there, instead of this silly AIMFIGHT screen.

What I would like to do with this underlying circles of friends and friends of friends information is to be able to make my own attributes public: where I am geographically, recent blog posts, my availability, or whatever. The implicit social network latent in the instant messaging network is just crying out to be tapped, and not for silly games like this: it's the future center of the online universe if someone at AOL, Google, MSN, or Yahoo wises up to it.