The emerging real time social web - PICNIC08, Jaiku, Dopplr, Allofme.com, Second Life

Phil Oakey - Assymetry Incarnate

I’ll keep this one brief, as Dom managed to get his coverage up last night, and you can find a good write up here on Ethan Zuckerman’s blog. (Looking forward to seeing Ethan speak on Africa later).

Linda Stone  (very accomplished facilitator) starts off by playing a video that I’m prepared to bet you £10 you’ve already seen.

Surprising that it’s being rolled out in this setting, but on the off-chance you haven’t you’ll find it below, then click on ‘read more’ and get onto the meat of it all…

This segues quite nicely into Linda talking to the ‘ludicrous notion of friending’ and pointing out (much as LBi’s Warren Hutchinson and Steve Barber have been doing for a while), that our online identities are getting both confusing and a little out of control.

So, bring on Jyri Engestrom of Jaiku (part of the Google Borg since last year) to talk to the same theme of peripheral social vision and mobile SNS that we touched on LBiQ 2.

Jyri’s good - very good, and incredibly personable. Nothing groundbreaking here though. His 20 minutes - entitled “What beach balls and potatoes can tell us about social networking” - focuses on the need for a social object rather than just gathering groups around connections and generic apps (hello Facebook…)

All quite obvious, but the music example given is particularly good - showing how one object can have many facets. It’s something that LBi’s Gavin Edwards (guest blogging on this site later today if all goes to plan and he can actually get out of Luton to Amsterdam…) has been looking at for a while around HMV’s Getcloser.com strategy.

Then Jyri gets to his peripheral social vision riff because he is - after all - ultimately here to plug mobile SNS opps through Google’s Android (though apparently, as Linda puts it “You told me that your bosses told you that there was no way you could show us Android”).

Plugging or not, his final point is excellent: when considering a social networking opportunity simply consider three things:

- Your social object
- Your verbs (how do you present yourself? Consider eBay: “buy” and “sell” clearly visible on site as the proposition)
- Ensure you know your nodes

For Jaiku, of course, these nodes are location based and peripheral - and there’s a fantastic thought to end on which almost makes me less cynical about location based opportunities: “Imagine a world with as much peripheral information as World of Warcraft.”

Finally, it seems I’ve been remiss by not reading this - Jyri, a copy was Amazoned last night.

Then it’s on to Matt Jones, who I first met many years ago. I’d tell the story, but the term ‘razzle stack’ is deeply inappropriate for a professional blog, so I’ll settle for writing up the presentation instead.

Despite an initial technical failure (no slides…) and obvious illness, Matt’s a star. Again, a much more detailed write up from Dom over here, but it’s the notion of ‘friending’ that comes in for grief: “Consider friendship as harmful - have informational elationships.” There’s also a lot of reference to Merlin Mann - very much worth checking him out if you’re not already a fan.  

Of course, all of this fits well (quelle surprise) with Dopplr’s proposition of sharing travel intentions to increase serendipity.

Thinking back to Jyri’s three criteria, Dopplr’s so hip and on the money it hurts.

Oh, and a special mention to Matt for using a picture of Phil Oakey to represent assymetry. Best. Assymetry Slide. Ever. (or that might just be my mood at the time).

Then it’s time for Addy Feuerstein of allofme.com. Look, I’ll keep this brief and to the point - fantastically clever site, but it’s primarily just an aggregator proposition, it’s time consuming to use and - as we discuss with Andy Hobsbawm afterwards - can we think of a single real use case for it? No.

To me, it’s like Nokia’s lifeblog - and similarly, I’m just not interested. Pretty interface though….

Finally, we get Philip Rosedale of Second Life. Philip makes it very clear that he’s “jetlagged and stoned” and, as he proceeds to equate Second Life to the Burning Man festival and drawls on about ‘Maker Culture’, he reminds me of no one as much as my hair-stylist who did my last cut while similarly trashed and banging on about Burning Man.

More amusing than interesting. Well done, though, to Linda and Matt.

Awesome stuff.