[uf-discuss] Marking Up Personal Profiles

[Michael MD]

>There are several problems with this:
>* Service providers usually require you to pay before you can contact 
>someone you've found or vice versa.

Such sites usually allow you to browse user profiles for free, but expect
you to pay to contact anyone so I think there is probably a need for a way
to specify the cost and methods used to contact someone. 

>Anyway, I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if you could publish your 
>profile anywhere you like, whether it be your own personal site or some 
>service provider, and your data could be found and searched by any 
>search engine.  There are already similar types of search engines for 
>searching blogs, sites with heviews, hResumes, etc.  So I'm sure it 
>could work for this too.

Certainly...

>The kind of information typically collected by these sites includes the 
>following (some of which can already be handled by existing microformats):
>
>* Name, DOB, Address , e-mail, photos (hCard, adr, geo)

+ cost of contact, method of contact, currency
+ is membership (eg of a personals website) required for contact and are
there extra costs associated with that?

>* Professional info: occupation, education (hResume)
>* Physical attributes: gender, race, height, build, hair colour, eye 
colour, etc.
>* Personal preferences: sexual preference, drinking/smoking habits, 
>diet, etc.
>* Other: Culture, religion, marital status, star sign.
>* Descriptions: hobbies, music, sport, reading, general interests, etc.

>Other microformats that could be useful for integrating with this would 
>include:
>* rel-tag. e.g.
>     <a href="..." rel="tag" class="gender">Male</a>,
>     <a href="..." rel="tag" class="sport">Swimming</a>
>

+ what they are seeking

What kind of people (if any) do they want to meet and what do they want to
do together with the people they meet.

Maybe there would be two lists of tags, one about themselves and one about
what they are seeking. (I think hResume probably needs something like this
too - for people seeking employment - what kind of work they are seeking?)
We may also need to think about how to make it less confusing for something
that only looks at rel-tag - eg Someone may put "male" in a list about
themselves and "female" in a list of what they are seeking but come up as
both in something that can't separate the two lists of tags!

>* XFN for keeping track of the contacts you meet
>* VoteLinks or hReview for rating the people you meet, would like to 
>meet or, perhaps, don't want to meet.

maybe a way to specify the relative importance of desired attributes of the
person/people they want to meet?  

>There may be privacy concerns with this type of data, but people are 
>already making it effectively publicly available through these sites. 
>Plus, the users are still ultimately in control of what info they do and 
>do not decide to publish.

That is important.
For sites with user profiles such as personals sites I think the privacy
issues are probably much the same as those that affect what they already
publish publicly on their sites.

>With all this data available, it could make it so much easier to find 
>and meet up with people.  With it published as microformat, I can 
>imagine the possibilities for mashups.  e.g. Using google maps to plot 
>people living near you with similar interests.  Integrating it with 
>Google Calandar or upcoming.org to organise meetings with people who 
>have similar interests in your area.

+ also any other sites people may visit to find others who share common
interests... such as music sites, events sites, forums, social
clubs/associations/etc and I'm sure plenty of others.

I think it's a good idea well worth looking into!