Spock: The Logic of People Search in a Web 2.0 World - Getting Personal
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While perusing Shatner's profile, I spotted an interesting feature; I'm still not entirely certain how it works. If you click on the link for contact info, this is what you get:
Now the JavaScript box I popped up by clicking on the link that says "What are private notes?" The answer was "Private notes record information that only you can see. Not even William Shatner has access to these notes." If I understand this correctly, I can make my own notes about someone, and only I can see them - rather like an online address book, but on steroids.
It's a nice little feature, and I could see it being used in many different ways. In his review, Tim O'Reilly talks about how his job involves finding the right person to write on a topic, or give a talk at a conference, and how he and his colleagues have to keep track of people. "When we're planning the invitation list for an event, we're often poring over a spreadsheet - and asking ourselves, who was that again?" The one-page profile can jog your memory - and if you've added some private notes, you can approach that person in a way that jogs their memory too. "Hi Matt? Tim here. Remember that panel you moderated for us on the different kinds of search engine spam for that conference last July in San Diego? We're doing one in Chicago in June this year, and we were wondering..." Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea.
More mundanely, you could use the feature to make notes about applicants you've had for a particular job, or people you might like to recruit for particular projects. With a little thought it's easy to figure out multiple uses.
Now if you click on the link for contact info and the person has claimed their profile (more on that in a bit), in addition to the grey box you get a white box for public information. This is information that the owner of the profile has decided to make public. As near as I can tell, they can make certain information completely public, and choose to reveal other information after they have added you as a Favorite (and there's a button in the white box labeled "Request to be added as Favorite").
Next: Settings and Claiming a Profile >>
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