How does the Internet see you?14 May 2012
DCfeature

Personas, developed by Aaron Zinman of the MIT Media Lab says, “It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity”.

I had to give it a try! Below are the results of the members of our team as well as both the current and previous presidents of the United States.

My first thought when I saw this program at work was the targeted advertising technology in the film, Minority Report. I felt a bit exposed while the program scrolled through all the information online affiliated with a specific name.

Although it is a bit unclear on what criteria the categories are defined, I found it interesting that we could be categorized into such divisions. I was curious about how accurate these results were and, unfortunately, Personas cannot distinguish an individual from another with the same name. Regardless, below are the top 3 relevant categories affiliated with each name:


Alan Finch

  1. Illegal
  2. Online
  3. Management


Amanda Kao

  1. Online
  2. Sports
  3. Domestic


Brian Lemond

  1. Politics
  2. Legal
  3. Education


Chris Fohlin

  1. Online
  2. Education
  3. Fashion


Chris Goodhue

  1. Online
  2. Sports
  3. Domestic


Christian de Botton

  1. Sports
  2. Family
  3. Social


Dale Suttle

  1. Education
  2. Musical
  3. Family


John Szot

  1. Online
  2. Art
  3. Genealogy


Pritika Nilaratna

  1. Online
  2. Music
  3. Art


Sasha Konovalova

  1. Sports
  2. Professional
  3. Genealogy


Barrack Obama

  1. Politics
  2. Social
  3. Family


George Bush

  1. Accident
  2. Sports
  3. Politics

See how the Internet sees you: Personas