There is another post from Stowe Boyd about the social dynamics in openBC. I think he is perfectly right: automatically aggregated neighbourhoods (matching interests wants & haves, location etc.) would be useful and would work much better as the current groups.
Just another thought- if the algorithm would not only analyze your but also your contact’s profiles (your contacts are a part of your personality), it would have a great side effect:
Today, people seem to add haphazardly any person to their profile that wants to make a contact. In fact, they are collecting contacts, the more the better. There is no incentive for users to keep their profile clean (means: deleting people from your profile from time to time). Thats bad for all others – you cannot rely on the contact information.
This would change instantly when there would be neighbourhoods as in last.fm. If you have only random information in your profile, the algorithm would return bullshit. You would keep it clean for your own benefit.