Start a new topic

Tags for profiles to find more people like you

Is there any way there could be a feature added where people can add a tag, preferably multiple, in their profile under their name and basic info that describes what the profile is for and what they mainly post? And while selecting their profile tags, tags related to selected tags could also be suggested to help narrow down descriptions? 


For example, tags like 'art', 'photography', 'coding', 'science', etc could be great base tags. Users can also select those tags when exploring profiles to find more people whose profiles are similar and post things they want to see. 


Related tags could be suggested to narrow down on a persons specific genres, styles and topics. Tags recommended would be a fixed selection controlled by user suggestions and staff, not by an algorithm.

Some examples could be 'movies', with related tags being 'reviews', 'recommendations', 'horror', 'romance', 'documentaries', etc. 

For more examples, here's a few of my own ideas from the 4 examples given in the previous paragraph.


Art: 'illustration', 'cartoons', 'semi-realistic art', 'traditional art', 'animation', 'art tutorials'.

Photography: 'wildlife photography', 'flower photography', 'black and white photography', 'fashion photography'.

Coding: 'video game coding', 'coding tutorials', 'python coding'.

Science: 'science experiments', 'chemistry', 'biology', 'physics'.


People can choose to add these tags to their bios or not and multiple can be added if a person posts about multiple topics. To prevent clutter on the tag systems, tags would need to be approved by staff (so they can also monitor any suspicious activity or topics being added on the site) or have been already been added in/approved. 

People could follow profile tags to have profiles recommended to them when scrolling the home page. But this would only be occasional (every 10-50 posts, could be a setting customised or turned off by users) and be a small, non-intrustive  window to prevent cluttering their page. Simple text like "hey, this profile posts in your followed tags!" and the suggested profiles picture. 


People can also block tags so they can curate their searches better. Selecting the 'art' tag but blocking the 'horror' tag for example can help them avoid being recommended horror artists. Having a NSFW tag to block can also help minors or SFW accounts have only other SFW accounts recommended to them. The NSFW tag could also be automatically blocked for users who sign up as under 18 and can not be unblocked until their 18th birthday, if there is an age option added. 


Searches and recommended profiles are not curated by algorithms like Twitter but instead how many of the users followed profile tags they post under and how old the profile is. Blocked profile tags being excluded would help make searches safer and closer to the users interest. This way, newer users can gather an audience without being drowned out by algorithms favouring more popular profiles. While searching, users can also select which of their followed tags are switched 'on' to be recommended. So searches can be more or less narrowed down. But they can not disable blocked tags from the search page. 

An example. Someone follows the 'vintage', 'vintage toys' and '2000s' profile tags. They can select whether they want both 'vintage' and 'vintage toys' to be recommended, as someone may have 'vintage toys' in their profile but not 'vintage' and vice versa. In search, they find a recent profile of someone uploading small videos and photos of vintage toys from the 2000s they've been buying and collecting.

Profile tags would be seperate from tags and would not be especially specific. Someone can tag their profile as 'cooking' but wouldn't add the specific cookbooks used in their profile tags. They would instead, keep it to the tags included on the posts themselves. 


I think this can help create and nurture communities similar to other pages without relying purely on algorithms like Twitter. Art communities can be useful to artists who want more inspiration or commissioners who want more artists to commission for art projects. Films communities can be useful for people who want casual film recommendations and/or reviews so they can watch the films in their free time, etc etc. 


5 people like this idea
Login or Signup to post a comment