fooWHO: social bookmarking with a pinch of eHarmony
fooWHO is kind of like Reddit, with a questionnaire and algorithm to help figure out your likes and dislikes.
A new site named fooWHO grabbed my attention earlier today. It pitches itself as a delivery service for links and stories that are "just for you." The site bases this presumption off of a rather lengthy personality test that you fill out at your leisure, consisting of questions in a dozen different categories, ranging from arts and entertainment all the way to your taste in automobiles and their transmissions. The remainder of the service is very similar to Reddit, with a front page of popular stories and a pool of submitted links that can be rated up or down. The hope is that you will be able to discover new links that are both popular to everyone, and a smattering of those that match your tastes.
Once an item is rated, fooWHO will break down which personality types it's the most popular with--based on the highest number of people who have answered a certain question the same way. From there, you can click on the question to find links people have voted on with the same disposition. There's a very exploratory nature about it.
One of the most innovative, and perhaps necessary, features of fooWHO that I really wish would makes its way into a service like Digg, is giving trusted members (read: heavy users) editing privileges for story titles and descriptions. If Wikipedia has proven anything (well, maybe not lately), community editing can work if judgment and reservation are used.
In the meantime, fooWHO is missing some key add-ons to help grow out the site and aid users in adding links--like submission tools and ways to promote items on blogs and Web sites. I still prefer Reddit, Digg, and Del.icio.us for serving up new and interesting links over fooWHO's system, but recommendation engines like StumbleUpon have proven that the wisdom of the crowds can be harnessed effectively with a little user elbow grease.
