Matterdata

Tags: matterdata, socialwhois

So, I’ve had this concept in my head for quite some time. I’ve been holding it back in the fear that someone might “steal” it. I don’t have enough resources and time to devote to a project like this. If it’s a great idea and someone does use it, then yay. I’m somewhat a communist (if that’s even the right word) when it comes to ideas. If my idea is used by someone else and I can use it, although it makes that someone else rich, I don’t care.

If we think how we have been organising information on the web, it has been done through metadata such as tags. It is simple keywords that describes larger pieces of data. It has been very very useful to say the least.

So, it got me thinking. Why can’t one extend the idea to degree of “tagging” people? We ARE becoming apart of this new web. Why not start tagging us for ease of use? This way, we can much more easily meet the people we WANT to meet.

I like to call it matterdata. Matterdata is the extra pieces of information that define who WE are. Matterdata is the metadata of humans.

Now how will we tag people? There is a new site that is starting with this “process” called socialwhois which I blogged about before. You are allowed to define your own matterdata. While I like this concept, I think matterdata should be assigned by what we do: by our everyday interactions.

Our everyday interactions can’t easily be integrated into the online world (not yet). It should be defined stuff like “keywords” in your Twitter, your most listened to artists on last.fm, the groups you are in on Facebook, the photo tags from Flickr, the videos you liked on YouTube, etc.

Ideally, in the future, there should be more points of “interaction” or gateways where everyday data can be fed into this cloud to better define who you are. Spend lots of time at a local coffee shop? Buy lots of car magazines? There is no way to gather this matterdata.

My idea, is to create such a site that gathers all this “current” matterdata from sites and then try and develop websites/technologies to gather more matterdata. My ultimate goal with this site is so that if we move around this global world, we can much more easily integrate with our local society/environment. Although we think globally, we are still local creatures. With this matterdata, it could easily compare you to the people are most like you in your immediate and global surroundings.

Won’t that be a much more enriching, fulfilling and human experience?