Biz Stone, Genius, is tapping into the collective subconcious...

Last night I had a dream that Google launched a Personals service and this was the logo. Then I realized I could fly and started a whole new thing. But I remembered the Google part. Weird.

Seth Godin, has been thinking about online dating too.

In the last twenty-four hours, I've read about the big services launching huge ad campaigns, I've seen stickers on store windows and heard about people using services like Match.com. Must be a trend. [...]

What's this all about? And why should we care?

Well, if we add to this phenomenon the huge growth of monster.com (and the death of the newspaper classifieds) its seems as if personal marketing is now officially important.

You market yourself to get a job (not wait to find a classified for a job you're qualified for and actually want.) You market yourself to find a mate (not wait until someone finds you in a singles bar or adores your cute little dog in the park). What used to be the exclusive province of Coca Cola or Amway is now at the heart of just about everyone's life.

Marketing, after all, is about putting a product out there and finding an audience for it.

So...

When you market yourself, are you boring? Invisible? Easy to pass up?

Just as companies have no choice but to depend on the Purple Cow, on remarkable products and on word of mouth, I think the lesson of all this personal advertising is NOT that you can advertise yourself to a happy home and job, but that it's ultimately word of mouth that's going to make it work. It's word of mouth that points people to your singles page or word of mouth that forwards your resume to the right guy. The difference now is that this digital word of mouth (call it an ideavirus if you want) is aided by a personal web site with your religion and desires on it, or a hotjobs website with your Linux skills outlined. [more...]

So let me bring this back to a few of my themes:

1. Weblogs are handy for branding. For work. And for life. Casting your self upon the marketplace of ideas.  
2. A blog's links show, build, and exercise social networks. Google likes this.
3. Matching engines scoring compatibility of every combination in an n-n space. Zippy, where Oracle grinds to a halt. ELISE, iXmatch, NCorp, Triplehop, Burning Glass. But they need at least partially structured data.
4. RSS 2.0 supports adding structure. 
   • Personal profiles: I want [love, romance, security, walks in the park], I offer [conversation, laughs, cuddling].   
   • Professional profiles: I want [work near me, comp plan X, benefits Y], I offer [ability A, experience B, skills C, reputation D]. Traditionally packaged as résumés, CVs, and career profiles.

So if you want love and money, build tools that add structure to blogs, RSS, and RSS readers.