Social sites almost always face the familiar (and intimidating) cold-start problem. Essentially it boils down to a chicken and egg problem – how are you supposed to find clever ways to bring people together when you initially know almost nothing about them. People have grown weary of filling out the tired “My Favorite Book/Movie/Sandwich is…” lists so it’s interesting to see other ways companies go about getting information from people in order to better match them up with others.
Trusted Places , a social cityguide in the U.K., takes a more visual/tactile approach, letting users drag and drop different foods (Yay! Peking Duck!… Boo! London Broil!) in order to quickly build up a profile of tastes. While not perfect, I appreciate the attempt to make this somewhat mundane problem a little more playful.
Try it out here.