MIT Asks: What’s your web-persona?
The uber-creatives at Brand Flakes point us to this MIT Media Lab project run by Aaron Zinman. Simply type in your name and its search and categorization software will attempt to define your internet persona. This works better if you have a reasonably unique name and a decent web presence.
With me, it was reasonably accurate – my most prominent web categories include: Online, Management, Social Media, Education, and Professional. It caught some of my Legal and Medical interests, but it misjudged a bunch of other things (sports??). Hey, it’s fun. Try it.
I got put under sports for some reason as well. And apparently I beat the wife I don’t have…and I’m in the military.
I really don’t think I like this thing.
I does strange things doesn’t it… I’m not even sure what a practical purpose would be. Amazing they let you keep that long hair of yours in the military!
My MIT web persona is really drab and way off. I really don’t deserve a big sports score, but there’s another Jobe Roberts out there that’s into rugby or Ozzy football so I guess it’s picking up the ‘global’ Jobe Roberts persona. The group of us look way more boring than that rich textured result you got. I have to beef up the diversity somehow. I need to score higher on my eco friendliness and spiritual nature. I would rather see more labels such as ‘weirdness’, ‘php-guru’, and ‘off-the-grid’.
Being able to add more context than just your name would help – your home city, employer, etc. My high sports score comes from hockey player Patrice Brisebois…
Even LinkedIn does a better job at organizing search results prioritized on links to your known communities.