There are interest based connections such looking at a user profile and finding their interest, or clickstreams. I was wondering what alternative methods are out there of connecting people with a more in depth understanding of social psychology. What is it that we find interesting about people besides  their interests. What about the way they think? Can a way a person thinks be defined?

 Dating sites in the past like eHarmony or Match will give you a personality profile, to try to match you with a compatible personality type. The problem with these is that a person can't really define themselves. A person can't really rate themselves from 1 to 10 on if they get angry easily because of personal biases and the difficulties of giving ratings in number forms like that. How about video games? Does anyone think a video game can be used to define this? If you play a video game, and watch other people play the same game, you'll notice that people have different methods of solving problems. People will react differently on a fundamental level. They get frustrated at different parts, their emotions change, their reactions and the way they think can be measured. I've written a post about this. Any opinions?

http://tougicells.blogspot.com/2007/01/social-networking-and-video-games.html

 

 

I think I heard something about a patent being taken out for analysing actions in games (especially MMO games like World of Warcraft or Second Life) to create a psychological profile for the purpose of targeted advertising (seems everything is for advertising purposes now)

So if you spend a lot of time talking to people, ads for mobile phones, or if you explore a lot, adverts for hiking gear or something.. or simpler stuff like adverts for pizza or coffee if you've been in the game for 2 hours straight.

Doesn't seem plausible to me - I don't like hiking because my feet get hurty but in a game, exploring the place can be useful

there is a site called Wakoopa that does this

" Wakoopa tracks what kind of software or games you use, and lets you create your own software profile. Ready for you to share with the world. Why? Because what you use on your desktop is who you are!"