Origins:
I have an interest on my profile page, "spiritualized®". Most people, of course, have the more simplified "spiritualized" listing. It occurred to me that perhaps, maybe even sometime way down the road, LJ could implement a "fuzzy search" for interests, so that users could find other people who have similar interests, but might list the interest slightly differently. That's the reason people use the interest page, after all, right? I dunno. Anyway.
Implementation:
It would appear as third section on the interests page:
Relevant Communities:
...
Interested Users:
...
If you like this, you might check people who have the following interests, as well:
(list interests that match the fuzzy search, like "spiritualized®" for "spiritualized"), and vice versa.
I don't know much about the heuristics of fuzzy logic, but it would be a neat addition, if someone had the time and/or interest to add it.
I wondered even more about having "meta" words for interests, to aid in any sort of fuzzy matching, but figuring out how to implement that is a whole different world of hurt.