"Tell me what I want to know!": the effect of relationship closeness on the relevance of profile attributes.

The growing amount of personal information on the web raises increasing concerns about what and with whom we share information online. Nevertheless, little effort has been made in determining the relevance of the information shared with us or in filtering it accordingly. We conducted a study to identify the most relevant characteristics when seeking information about people and to scrutinize their differences among relationship types. To achieve that, we asked users to describe people (friends, acquaintances and famous people). Afterwards, we asked them to rate the perceived relevance of a carefully pre-determined set of attributes for each type. Results showed that their relevance varied depending on the relationship. As an outcome, we present the most relevant attributes when seeking information about friends, acquaintances and famous people and the major differences among them. We conclude suggesting how our findings may influence the design of interactive systems where such data is paramount.