A brief introduction to Yenta A brief introduction to Yenta I have implemented, and am continuing to improve, a system called Yenta . It provides privacy-protected, distributed, automatic generation of clusters of users who are interested in similar topics. This is a sort of coalition-building or matchmaking system. These clusters then serve as the basis for introducting users to each other.
Users can send messages to particular other users, or to everyone in the cluster.
Every user runs their own copy of Yenta, and the various Yentas communicate with each other, arranging introductions and passing messages. Personal information is tightly protected, without requiring large amounts of trust either in the network or in any Yenta not under your own control. The eventual goal is the ubiquitous distribution of Yenta across the Internet. I'd like to advance the state of the art in building distributed, decentralized, multi-agent systems. There are a number of problems to be addressed in making these sorts of applications, especially if one cares about protecting people's privacy at the same time.