Saturday, May 12, 2007

Social Map Project - Humansy

It's been a long time since the last update.

I've purchased the domain http://www.humansy.com for the "social map project". Wantsy has fallen off the map since the lead developer dropped out, with Humansy replacing it. I'm pretty close to chalking up Wantsy as a failure; I think the idea could have worked, but finding the right people to execute it has been tough, especially if their level of interest isn't high.

Anyway, work has started on Humansy. As of right now, we have the UI outlined in PPT (and html) with some database work being done. The goal is still the same; build the largest grid of user-to-user relationships. By analyzing the structure, we can assign each user a level of trust based on various attributes. Given the UI, it's also possible for users to assign complex relationship and group types very easily. This brings up the secondary goal.

The secondary goal is to add a layer of efficient communication between nodes. Since nodes can be categorized into complex relationships and group types, it's possible to reach out to an entire subset of people within your first degree (i.e. your family, your co-workers, your golf buddies consisting of family AND co-workers). It's also important to note that these people do not actually have to be in the grid to be part of it. I can upload and classify my entire address book, and not a single person needs to hit the Humansy domain.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I got the impression from your previous posts that you had got quite far down the development route with wantsy, is it definitely going to be abandoned?

A lot of the concepts you talk about such as mapping out different groups you interact with and providing communication via email/sms are used in phuser.com, a site that I have been helping develop. We still need beta testers if you want to have a play/poke around with the site.

Robert said...

I won't say definitely; you never know when ideas might resurface ;-)

I've signed up for the Phuser beta.