So, as Stephen Downes noted last year in his article The Semantic Social Network, the technologies of content syndication (such as RSS feeds on blogs) and social networking (such as Friendster and Orkut, or - more recently 'incidental' social networking hit flickr and 'mososos' like dodgeball) are merging. Interesting.
I know I'm far from the first to think this, but we now, us bloggers, have a good bit of metadata about ourselves readily available on the web. In my case, not just my blog (I've been googled a few times lately, which is nice/weird), but also my flickr photos, my del.icio.us links, my to-do lists (for a privleged inner circle - like my wife), what music I'm listening to (if my audioscrobbler account ever gets configured properly by me...). Anyone who was sufficiently bored could find out quite a lot about me and maybe get some sort of vaguely accurate idea of my 'essence' if they spent enough time reading my blog, seeing what I am linking to, what music I'm listening to, and so on.
This might be enough to make many people paranoid, but I am naive enough to enjoy all this transparency, and besides, if I *really* want to keep something secret, I just don't put it on the web. But anyway, there's all this metadata about me (my 'personal info cloud', if you will) available for all and sundry to look at. And then I got thinking about how online dating works...
The reason for this is that I recently (well, last year) designed the front-end for dating/flirting website phlirtz.com. (Check it out!) It's fairly close to the way that most people are doing dating sites - you describe yourself (maximum 4000 characters - no pressure), say what you are looking for, list your interests (favourite films, books etc), outline your lifestyle and appearance, upload a few photos which hopefully show you in a good light, and hope for the best. It's better than the usual lonely hearts column since at least you get a whole web page to describe yourself, and people can see what you look like, and so on, but couldn't we improve on it still further?
If you have a large amount of metadata about yourself online (and thanks to the explosion in popularity of blogs and services such as flickr this may not remain the preserve solely of geeks for much longer), then wouldn't it be great if you were single and looking for a partner with similar interests, if they could access this info about you - if you permit such access. And wouldn't it be *really* cool if you could make this information available out there in the real world? Where you actually walk right past people who might be your perfect partner, if only you knew it. How? You know, with smartphones and Bluetooth and free wifi and xml.
So, when you have one of those fleeting glances on the escalators in the tube and afterwards wonder what might have been, that need not be the end of it. If both parties were signed up to a mososo dating agency they could be transmitting their own personal data clouds and using pattern matching to highlight any likely matches that they come within bluetoothing distance of. (With Playtxt.net you can manually set your location postcode via SMS and will be informed if any other playtxters are in the area. That would work, too.) I think this is clearly the future of dating, as long as folks are comfortable about exposing themselves to strangers in such a way. I personally think that this is a good thing to do - I'm all for transparency (within reason), the dating game is a market - a meet market, and as we all know from Cluetrain, Markets are Conversations.
How exactly would it work? I imagine that you have some sort of checklist of interest, favourites etc, which can be syndicated through wireless (Bluetooth/WiFi) and some clever markup language like wltm.xml. Then some sort of pattern matching software on the users' smartphones will notify both users when a potential target is in range, and allow them the ability to choose whether to ping the other to get more info. This would presumably include contact details, since potential datees on the escalator might not want to meet there and then, and a photo of the user so you can put a name to the alert. In essence, a more information-rich version of the lovegety idea.
So, if you are a Neutral Milk Hotel liking, nature-loving, Apple-using, vegetarian, karate-enjoying cat-hating singleton looking for someone with similar tastes and interests (long walks in the park, kicking cats' arses...) metadating could be just what you need. Of course, it doesn't need to be restricted to those seeking companionship and/or love/random sex with strangers. You could find out if anyone in your area fancies going to see a band you want to see that night, for example. The opportunities are literally limitless. I'm aware there may be some worrying Big Brother panopticon-type considerations, but I'll let the tinfoil hat brigade worry about them.
[note: I hope to post more often on topics relating to social networks/network theory/small worlds/emergence/social software/mutual synergism/web of life/open source design/folksonomical zeitgeists and so on. I've avoided it thus far since I am far from expert in the field and don't consider myself much of an essayist. But then I figured what the heck! I'm really interested in the stuff, and I can learn faster through interaction with others than just reading books in isolation. Hopefully you'll find some ideas amusing or stimulating enough to comment, maybe even start a few conversations. Rather than just me banging on into the void...]
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