CORRELATING PRIVATE AFFINITIES

Is Microsoft entering the online dating industry?

According to this patent that was filed in 2009 and recently discovered, Microsoft is seeking to patent a “private affinities” dating service of the type Microsoft describes would be a system where you would be a member of the service and describe your most private likes and dislikes, i.e. you really liked wearing velvet (as opposed to the description in the patent of two comic book lovers) but wouldn’t normally expose that part of your personality online but in this dating service scenario revealing this “like” would only be shown to others that shared the same “like” of wearing velvet.

Now, I can see this being a premium ad-on to the popular MSN Messenger service, or maybe a stand-alone service. Time will tell. So far Microsoft is quiet about their plans on this “Private afffinity” dating service, but the future will reveal all.

Here’s the first part of the description of the “service” in the patent application:
One or more computer storage media having a system embodied thereon including computer-executable instructions that, when executed, leverage a private affinity in order to facilitate or enrich relationships, the system comprising:a cryptography component that receives a profile associated with a user, the profile including a set of private affinities that describes the user and that are cryptographically protected from public inspection, wherein protected from public inspection is defined by a degree of authorization that exceeds a level of authorization required to access the underlying profile;a matching component that compares a private affinity from the set to a disparate affinity included in a disparate profile associated with a disparate user in order to identify a matching affinity that correlates with the private affinity; anda notification component that generates a message that indicates the matching affinity has been identified, the message including a request to publish to the disparate user revealed information included in the profile.

Read the patent filing here. Apple Quicktime plugin may be needed by your browser to view the documents drawings (rather odd, but still…) with a G5 tiff viewer installed. I couldn’t get any images to display in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari browsers, even after installing the plugin for each. Any recommendations or screenshots of the images by you would be greatly appreciated.

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