Here is a promising idea from Cesar Brea who is exploring mashups and other web 2.0 applications. He writes in Graphic Friendships about the concept of using tagging behavior to find people of similar interests.
“Here's how it would work. The proximity between me and any other user in the system can be calculated according to the frequency with which another person uses tags I also use. This happens on two dimensions -- one is how often another person has used each tag I've used; another is the overlap between the tags we use, regardless of tagging frequency. So if a person is in my "high-high quadrant" (we're both using the same tags a lot), maybe I'd be interested in subscribing to the other person's bookmark stream. This might be especially true if "a lot" is defined absolutely for the other person, if only relatively for me, so I can filter out the great Long-Tail unwashed. "Show me people who have used my top ten tags 100 times or more."
Cesar has done work in contact network systems in the past so it is not a surprise that he looks to what web 2.0 can provide in this space. I look forward to see how the concept progresses. Cesar is working with Solution Grove on the effort. Also, check out their mashup demo.
Here is some followup on the idea in graphic friendships part two.
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