Virtual Networking and a New Standard for Online Profiling

Leading up to the Ad Tech conference in Chicago next week, all participants received an invitation to create a virtual profile of themselves to help maximize their experience at the conference.  There is a fantastic feature in the profile setup area that will weight your various roles, industries, and interests based on the relative importance that you assign to each.  What a great way to allow users to explain themselves during a profile setup in some way other than the confining drop-down lists pervasive in most online profile setups.  What if some of the traditional registration processes for "free" online services such as webmail or content subscriptions incorporated a similar model?  The information they could generate to help target and segment their audience for advertisers would be invaluable.  Of course, it all depends on getting the user to give up these details for a good cause ... in this case, the "cause" of maximizing my networking time at Ad Tech next week was well worth the time.