Liked the BBC report about the French social networking site Peuplade, and the aim of the site to use the technology to get people to interact in different ways than the norm. Of course you don’t need social networking technology to do that (hence why I live in Barking with a Brazilian from Taguatina?) but for a lot of people it can help! Plus also points to the limits of such experiments (translating online freedom to real world Parisian reality):

“Peuplade was born out of a sociological experiment which aimed to turn on its head the way we meet. Founder Nathan Stern said: “The idea from the start was to create links between people who shouldn’t really meet, who don’t really have an affinity, who aren’t part of the same group or network. How do we do that? We go beyond group status and membership and create accidents, chaos. And when you come to these Apero de quartier for a while you develop a familiarity among people who you previously not think of belonging to your world.”
Rules of engagement

“Apparently there is a science to this sort of social engineering. One rule is that breaking the ice is often easier on the net. Another is if you are hosting a party of people who have never met, choose a tiny venue. It seems elbow-to-elbow people are forced to get along. >As a spoon to stir the melting pot

“Peuplade is admirable, but it has not really caught on in Paris’s really rich neighbourhoods, and the Apero de quartier visited by Click was mighty white. But who said this novel website and pillar of the community has to cure all of society’s ills in one night?”