We Feel Fine and I Want You To Want Me: Case Studies in Internet Sociology

   Sep Kamvar, Stanford Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering

Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Stanford University February 27, 2009

The past few years has seen a tremendous growth of public human communication and self-expression on the web through blogs, social networks, online dating sites, and social media in general.  This offers a great opportunity for artists, sociologists, and computer scientists to study human nature at a scale that has not been possible before.

This talk explores 2 projects that I have done, that collect large amounts of data of self-expression on the web and analyzes and visualizes that data.  The first project, called We Feel Fine, explores human emotion through the lens of blogs.  The second, called I Want You To Want Me, explores the search for love and self through the lens of online dating profiles.

Sep Kamvar is a computer scientist and artist.  His research focuses on information management in large-scale adaptive networks such as the web, peer-to-peer and social networks. His artwork tends to use large amounts of data and accessible media in the study of human nature.
From 2003 to 2007, Sep was the head of personalization at Google.  Prior to Google, he was the founder and CEO of Kaltix, a personalized search company that was acquired by Google in 2003.  His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Art in Houston.

View this talk on line at CS547 on Stanford OnLine or using this video link.

Titles and abstracts for previous years are available by year and by speaker.