Ask HN: App for finding your cognitive siblings?

Hey HN,

I have this idea: An app that lets you find your 'cognitive siblings' - people that share your viewpoints, interests, etc. based on (a subset of) your browsing history.

Would like to see if this is something worth building a prototype for.

Facebook, but for connecting with people that you haven't met yet. Twitter, but finding also 'non-famous' cognitive siblings.

The idea is a plugin, that records your browsing history and shows you people with similar histories that you can then connect with.

Do you think that would produce interesting sibling results? Why / Why not? Has it been attempted before - why didn't it work out? (Maybe leaving privacy issues aside here for now)

I think this is a pretty interesting idea.

Someone mentioned why not just follow subreddits. I noticed that subreddits are often a collection of the extremes of a hobby or interest. I would say that I'm a collection of interest that make up my unique personality, while subreddits often have people that are really deep into a specific topic.

One thing to note about your idea, is I've used apps in the past that connect you with people that you share interest with, but I often flake when it comes to actually meeting with people in person... I wonder if this is a common trend? I feel like I almost ended up using them as a self validation.... but never followed through much with meeting people.

This would either be a very good or very bad dating site. I'd like to be positive and say very good, but I've been online long enough to have concerns...:)

Hearing friends talking about flaking, I would say it is a very common theme. I would also think, that you may not want to meet up with that person, because either not in the same city, or because you may match with a lot of different people which also may change over time.

I also thought of it more like a self-validation thing, a source of more information, recommendations, etc. What you would get back may be an online conversation or a feed of relevant websites.

Because you somehow have to ferret out the ones who recur on many of those subreddits. "Oh look, bob123 is a regular on seven out of the nine subs! My cognitive sibling"