By Beth Bacheldor

Dec. 1, 2006—Just as Friendster and MySpace can spur social interaction in the virtual world, Timelines, an RFID-enabled social-networking system, could bring together people at conferences and other events in the real world. That's the hope of Someth;ng, a London-based interactive-media company that developed Timelines, an "automated scrapbook system" that documents people's movements and interests, then shares that information among attendees, speakers and sponsors so they can network with each other during and after the event.

Earlier this year, Someth;ng tested Timelines at b.TWEEN 06, an interactive- media conference held in Bradford, England. Roughly 100 attendees who agreed to be tracked were given badges embedded with Wavetrend's Ultra Long Range RFID tags. Wavetrend RFID interrogators, installed on-site, tracked their movements, such as which sessions they attended. Attendees could also click buttons on their badges, which activated an RF signal that was picked up by a nearby interrogator, to "bookmark" interesting points during presentations, which were all being recorded on audio.

Timelines matched up attendees based on their movements at b.TWEEN 06, an interactive media conference.

The Timelines software collated the RFID data, and attendees could go to a conference Web site to find others who, for example, attended the same sessions or bookmarked the same areas of interest. The software also periodically matched up conference-goers based on their movements and bookmarks.