A team of Microsoft Researchers have released a Facebook application designed to explore metadata and the logic related to tagging. The app, called Collabio (a combination of collaboration and biography) is a basic game that asks users to tag each other with descriptive keywords.
At first glance, Collabio’s Facebook app doesn’t seem to be anything special. Users simply guess what keywords best describe their friends, and if their answers match those left by others, they get more points – there are a number of other games available on the platform that do nearly exactly the same thing.
But while most of these applications simply toss the input into a database, Microsoft’s reasearch team has much greater aspirations. In a news bulletin on the project, the team explains that the project may help develop advancements in “personalization or expert matching”, serving as an experiment in both psychology and social interaction. You can see the progress of the experiment here.
The new project further strengthens the bond that Microsoft and Facebook have forged with eachother, which has included massive search and advertising deals. Of course, Collabio doesn’t see any money changing hands, but you probably won’t see a MySpace version any time soon.
