Seems like today was somebody's birthday, but I can't remember whose.

You ever notice how you can run into some people all over town all the time and never run into other people even when it seems like you should?

What makes that?

Bruce Schneier recently linked to a study that analyzed the networks of people who have accounts on social networking sites such as Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. The researchers found that when users were de-identified, they could re-identify them in one system based on their connections through other social networking sites. The findings don't surprise me. I think our networks are fairly localized, even on the boundless Web.

But in real life? How to explain never running into someone who you know is nearby in contrast to running into others who seem to have no business being in those places? Take Newton, for example.

Maybe when you share similar tastes, even if you are very different people, you increase the likelihood of bumping into each other. In my case, I see the same people in different coffee shops all over town—even in neighboring towns! It's become so bizarre that I joke about starting a Facebook group called, "I always look for _____ when I enter a coffee shop." Also in my case, I find that I bump into the same people online, year after year. In the mitochondria of my Internet connections, we can trace our heritage back to 1997 and, seemingly, Anita. Consequently, my sense of the Web is that it is small and frequented by an intimate community of prolific folks. I know this isn't true, but in my view, the same information is recycled, retweeted, tracked back, what have you, by the same people repeatedly.

Yvonne once told me a story about a couple who desperately wanted to be together but forces conspired to keep them apart. She said that their schedules never matched up and a number of timing mismatches convinced their parents that they weren't a good match. Fate will push you together, she said. If you try to be together and fate keeps pushing you apart, it's not a good match.

I think about that sometimes when I see people trying hard to be together and the resulting togetherness represents only a fraction of the effort devoted to the trying. Why force things when there's so much serendipity?