OkCupid, Libraries, and Participation 2.0
In reading the materials for this week, I’ve been thinking back to my time on Match.com, which I then abandoned for OkCupid. If you opt for advertisements, OkCupid is free, but more importantly, it’s accurate and fun. Now I know that its accuracy and enjoyment level is because it is the ultimate 2.0 dating website. Whereas Match is very much like a Facebook profile, OkCupid allows users to blog, comment, give awards, ask questions to the community, chat, create quizzes, etc.
I found that the most impressive feature was a collection of 2000+ user generated questions. After answering these questions, OkCupid will then compare your answer to everyone else’s answers, which rates you on various features of your personality. You might be more outgoing than the average user, less tidy, funnier, etc. These questions would also be used to determine your likeliness of being friends/enemies with other users. Eventually, I would look at someone’s quiz results before I even bothered reading the profile because I knew that the profile could simply be a “Performance” much like Pearson described — whereas people usually answered questions honestly.
Now that I’m more aware of the ingeniousness behind including all these 2.0 features, I’m wondering if libraries can copy the OkCupid model. Could all these features be incorporated into library services? I think that the answer is yes.
The purpose of a dating site is helping a user to find a compatible person. The purpose of a library is to help a user find compatible information objects. Tomato, tomata right? Information professionals could model a library catalog after OkCupid. Why not have user profiles where library patrons can review books and find more books that interest them through recommender systems? One objection might be privacy, but unlike Casey, I believe that privacy is becoming less and less important. Users want to publicize, or “perform.” Anonymity hinders followers, feedback, and all forms of social connection. The same users who might dislike performance-based, customizable services are probably the least likely to take advantage of them anyway. Traditional library services would need to be maintained for these users. However, anonymous accounts could always be an option.
So where does this leave the information professional? How would the information professional participate in an OkCupid library? I would argue that for information professionals participation should be in the form of creating a space for participation: an information professional should be a facilitator and a moderator.