Jacob Grier

I admit that this hasn’t been a great year of dating for me, but please: may I never, ever, ever get this desperate.

Actually, this could be a really good way for certain people to meet each other for all I know, and I think it’s great that the Internet makes this kind of thing possible. The more I think about it, they could have a really good idea here if they didn’t limit themselves to Ayn Rand junkies. Perhaps a site like All Consuming could become an effective matchmaker by correlating what its users are reading or have in their collections.

Here’s another way to do it, based on the Friendster model: users create the standard profile with personal information and photo, but then instead of linking to other users they link to cultural artifacts (favorite books, music, movies, etc.). The software could then display the other people who have the most shared links, with optional filters for sex, age, location, whatever. There may not be a woman out there who likes libertarian politics, evolutionary biology, Batman, Nietzsche, Meet the Press, and Paul Simon, but if there is I would love to meet her. Such a site would probably be the most viable way to make that happen.

Amazon.com even provides an efficient way to identify individual items. Everything they sell already has a unique ASIN number that would cover most books, music, and movies. Links to the various items could generate sales for Amazon, so there’s a quid pro quo for using their data. Associate referral fees could also accrue to the website, possibly making it financially self-sufficient. Standardizing things like TV shows and works of art/artists would be a more difficult task, but a doable one.

If this website (Culturster? Artifactster? Tastester? None of these names has a good ring to it, so let’s dispense with the Napster derivations) is ever made, it would be good for more than just matchmaking. It would also be good for discovering other things a user would be interested in based on the selections of people with similar taste.

So there you go, Internet entrepreneurs. Take the idea and run with it. I won’t even ask for a share of the profits if I get a girlfriend out of the deal.