Regina Lynn at Wired News is often asked where to find better porn. Thankfully, the brave new world of Web 2.0 is ready to find the answers for her with a wisdom engine for smut… Wonder if Michael and Pete will cover this?
The result is the fledgling MoSex Index (NSFW), an attempt to combine the best of social content with “taste networking.”
“Our social content engine is similar to Digg or Reddit, where members can post content and others can rate it. Based on content thresholds, who is doing the rating, karma and reputation, links make it to the homepage,” Daniel [Gluck] says.
“But — and I think this is an extremely important aspect of the project — we’ve also incorporated a collaborative filtering element. On other sites, you rate or (don’t) rate; we have a degree of rating based on a 7-point Likert scale that adds weight to your like or dislike. We take that intelligence and form ‘taste profiles,’ which combine to form ‘taste networks.’ When people in your taste network find content they like, that content gets recommended to you.”
The MoSex Index is barely launched, and like any community-based project, its usefulness will depend on the quality and quantity of its membership. So far, the user group has been small, with 70 testers posting links and adding ratings.
“Even with the small group, we’re seeing semi-accurate predictions, on a broad scale, of what users might like,” Daniel says. “Just with our museum staff, we can see who is most similar to whom. That’s one of the aspects that’s been most interesting to the staff, seeing whose tastes match.“
Update: Realised I hadn’t commented on this — which seems a little smug/prudish/unsatisfactory/lazy in retrospect. What happens is, you do the test and finally get through to the filth index. Then you rate the links given on a 1–7 basis. That’s quite sophisticated compared to digg, etc. where it’s a simple thumbs up. Theoretically, given a large number of users and large amounts of content, it could result in a pretty complex and accurate analysis of your tastes.
Two problems though, as I see it. (a) Digg is already getting lots of spam posts from people desperate for traffic and I can’t help but think this problem will be even worse in this field; (b) I’m not so sure people are very good at analysing (or admitting to) what they like. I’ve just read Blink, and while Gladwell doesn’t cover porn, he does discuss speed-dating and our inability to describe the people we really fancy.
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Rob — deleting your post as I don’t think you meant to write about this story.