Signal Patterns, makers of scientific-based social web apps, have just released a Facebook app whose goal is to help you find new friends based on an in-depth personality assessment algorithm. This app matches people based on their unique personality traits - not just "rough" personality types. If that sounds a lot like some dating web sites you've heard of...well, you're right. Signal Patters is essentially offering eHarmony for Facebook except instead of love connections, they hope to offer you a better way to find friends. The question is, is that something we need? ]]>
To be fair, the Signal Patterns app isn't just a way to find new friends - you can compare the results of their personality matching tools to your friends as well. However, if you do compare the results with other users of the app who are not your friends, when the app emerges from beta, you'll be able to "friend" those people from within the app.
Your Signal Patterns Results:
But Isn't Facebook Is For "Real" Connections?
What was great about Facebook, at least back in the beginning, was that it grew out of real-life relationships. College students, then high schools students, and eventually everyone else were able to enhance their real life connections through this social network. Unlike MySpace, where many people got into the habit of collecting friends, Facebook became a more private and more accurate reflection of a person's social connections. Even today, many Facebook users turn down friend requests of people they don't know - especially if they're not even accompanied by a note explaining the add.
Those who have been on Facebook since high school (or younger!) also often speak of needing to clean out their friends list to remove those people who aren't in their lives anymore. For them, Facebook is an online reflection of the people they are really keeping in touch with and not a way to amass the most friends in order to appear popular. While this is obviously not true for everyone, in general this is, in fact, one of the big differences between the ways that many use or have used these networks.
Perhaps it's just growing awareness of how much personal information is revealed online or perhaps people just became tired of adding friends just for the sake of adding friends or maybe it's that people finally saw the value in just having their real friends connected online, but whatever the reason, fewer people today are looking to find and add strangers to their friends' lists - in fact, this behavior tends to be associated with "sort of creepy" behavior, as one Gen Y'er recently told me.
Do We Need Personality Matching Tests?
So where does that leave an app like Signal Patterns? At best, it's the most scientific personality quiz you've ever shared with friends. It goes beyond personality tests like the Myers-Briggs that divides the population into a small number of personality types. With a matching score with MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), 1 in 16 of all people would be "like you," but with Signal Patterns you find others who are more similar to your than over 99% of the population.
In addition, there's also a "music personality" survey available where you can apply this same type of detailed scientific discovery to finding others who have the same musical preferences as you do.
While it's true that a certain segment of the online population loves quizzes, the question still remains - are you interested in finding new friends like this?
]]>