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Visualizing Your Digital Persona

October 13, 2009 •

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have released an online tool that  attempts to char­ac­ter­ize your dig­i­tal per­sona based on data min­ing of online resources.

Right now the tool is in the fun and exploratory phase, but it offers food for thought. Have you ever won­dered what your dig­i­tal fin­ger­prints might look like, if there were a way to rep­re­sent them?

For exam­ple, here’s an expres­sion of the dig­i­tal per­sona for Chris­tine Thomp­son (cour­tesy of Aaron Zin­man of MIT Media Lab):

christine-thompson-persona

This visu­al­iza­tion con­veys the impres­sion that there are many facets to Chris­tine Thomp­son – too many to be cred­i­ble, or rel­e­vant to me. The spe­cific facets of the per­sona shown here result from lim­i­ta­tions in this beta-stage tool, which casts too wide a net.

Why? The dig­i­tal per­sona shown above is actu­ally a com­pos­ite of the many peo­ple who share the name “Chris­tine Thomp­son.” This com­pos­ite set of impres­sions becomes very clear when you watch the data min­ing process in action (assum­ing your name is not unique to you). It’s amus­ing to see ref­er­ences to many other peo­ple who share your name, if not your per­sona.

The per­sona looks a bit dif­fer­ent when fur­ther qual­i­fied by the name of my con­sult­ing firm:

christine-thompson-ia-persona

But this rep­re­sen­ta­tion is still not accu­rate, due to the rel­a­tive impor­tance of news and music as key dimen­sions of this fic­ti­tious per­sona. Because I’m nei­ther musi­cal nor news­wor­thy, this must be a con­se­quence of my firm’s use of com­mon Eng­lish words in the com­pany name.

I wish there were a way to cal­i­brate and focus what dri­ves MIT’s data min­ing per­sona tool. If results were more accu­rate, it might be inter­est­ing to track progress over time to changes in your dig­i­tal per­sona. These changes might reflect shifts in the rel­a­tive impor­tance of key aspects of your online per­sona, based on the foot­prints you leave through blogs, prod­uct reviews,  news­wor­thy activ­i­ties, online com­ments, tweets, what other peo­ple say about you, and so on.

But for now, it’s just amus­ing.

Source (Cre­ative Com­mons license): creative-commons-license-aaron-zinman

Aaron Zin­man / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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