The Purple Tiger: The Sociometric Badge

The Sociometric Badge (also known as the Smart Badge) has been developed by researchers at MIT. Its aim is to facilitate networking at corporate and academic events. Instead of the traditional exchange of business cards, which can often get misplaced (or a burden if one gathers too many), the Smart Badge automatically gathers information on interactions in real time. The badges recognize each other with IR based on the face-to-face interaction of their users. The information is then transmitted via a 2.4 GHz radio to a central badge that is connected to a computer via USB. The computer then creates a database of the interactions recorded. One of the effects that the MIT researchers working on the project hope to achieve is the discouragement of people who go to corporate events and end up talking only to the people from their company. This will encourage greater interaction amongst people from different businesses, as people will now be able to concretely see their own interaction patterns. The badges also analyse proximity and voice data, to determine patters within specific interactions (who’s leading the discussions, etc.). Also, an accelerometer detects if certain people are more prone to moving around frantically in a conference. The Sociometric Badge is currently safe in its position in that it doesn’t face a lot of threat of new entry into the field. Its first ever field testing was at a Tokyo conference on January 17^th of this year. However, a similar product, also developed by an MIT company, the nTag, has been on the market for over five years, and has seen no competition enter. The nTag is inferior in that it doesn’t use voice and proximity data. There is currently no word of other companies seeking to enter the market with similar products. Also, the main technologies that the Smart Badge uses are IR and GUESS (a graph exploration system). The bargaining power of the suppliers is very low. IR is by no means a new technology and the MIT researchers have plenty of firms to choose from. The GUESS system is relatively new, but is a free software with wiki components. It is distributed under a GPL licence. By combining an old technology with a free new one, the researchers at MIT have been able to keep their product costs low, allowing them to be competitive as they try and push the Sociometric Badge into the business-oriented market.