Do Talk to Strangers

Instead of just helping you connect online with your offline friends and acquaintances, a crop of burgeoning social media companies want to mine what they see as more useful relationships—the ones between people who might not know each other, but share a common location, interest, or friend. In a less-connected era, they would have likely remained unknown to each other. But capitalizing on digital networking—and the resulting boom in data—these companies are betting that they can turn unfamiliar people into sources of value for each other and, ultimately, for advertisers.