I’ve launched a social documentary and travel blog called “I’m Here. You’re There.”

As the world continues to transition into new media and social networks along with the technology and applications that support this community, there have been a lot of questions brought about as to how the era of friending, joining, adding, tagging, locating, etc has changed the way we all relate. Does it enhance relationships or has being a friend lost its value?

The past five years has seen a boom of these networks and applications spring up, with a champion of each year. 2009 being the Year of the Tweet. Possibly in the near future, children will forget astrological signs and the Chinese Zodiac and move to this new calendar.

“What year were you born?”

“I’m a FourSquare.”

Definitely possible.

I recently had an opportunity to explore the social nets from across the country, being able to talk to a variety of people who use it to really see how the social network is a social network. Are all those friends that you have on Facebook really friends? Are the followers on Twitter really following? How do all these people use those fabulous tubes they call the interweb to communicate? Push? Pull?

In the spirit of the adventure, I’ll be documenting as much as possible through the medium itself via writing, pictures, video and location based services and compiling an archive of what I find (or don’t find.) I’ll be doing it mostly as stream-of-thought writing and ideas as they pop into my head or as I come across them. Keepin’ it oven-baked fresh.

It’ll be a trip.

A lot of the trending for new applications, technology and social nets has always been the early adopters who build buzz and provide feedback both positive and negative. What intrigues me are the stats that show about 10% of users provide 90% of the content, most recently with Twitter. This holds true for real life as well. Leaders and Followers. People who set plans, organize events, get the people together.



It’s the class of Social Instigators.



These are the people who are changing the face of communication. How we speak to each other, share news and information, how we organize and how we connect. Social Instigators keep us in touch with what’s happening. Follow the right people and you’ll be in the know. And this happens both online and off. Technology has just brought it to a different medium. So it should be no big surprise about the 10/90 split for any new tech. How many friends do you know in real life that actively pursue or coordinate everyone else. The planners of the group. Facebook, of course, is a platform that breaks this model. A continuous broadcast of status updates is like a visual loud bar, but even there you get the Social Instigators who are planning the next big event and inviting everyone along or touting some new tech or adventure.



Social Instigators keep us moving forward, wondering if we should buy, get, respond, download, go to or watch what is happening around us. Are you a Social Instigator?

With the impending rollout of Facebook’s virtual currency, revenue can now be generated with real dollars beyond a traditional advertising model. Granted, their virtual gifts are an enormous revenue stream right now. Virtual economies have been around a while and extremely successful. World of Warcraft has been the biggest beneficiary with their system. So viable, in fact, that in 2006 the IRS was discussing taxing virtual money. Gold farming became what seemed one of the hottest jobs around almost in competition with real world careers.

With Facebook moving toward this model and their ever expanding universe of millions of users, there is a ripe opportunity for them to become the end-all-be-all one-stop-shop for anything and everything. Amazon is the name that currently holds that title, but with the recognition that recommendations from friends about products and services holds a very high value, a Facebook status update could be a game changer for the newest soft drink, hand bag, concert ticket or otherwise. Micro-economies can begin to spring up via the already huge app platform similar to the Apple model, but also for a variety of other goods. Fan pages can be turned into store fronts. Julia Borstin at CNBC’s Media Money discusses the capture of that all important credit card in her article.

I think if Facebook can get people to save credit card information on the site, it’ll yield huge returns. Facebook users will have to trust the site with their credit card information, the way they now trust iTunes. But once the information is safe and secure, think about the potential!

Optimally they would allow to hand it over or not, based on the fact that you can earn credit into you FB account rather than having to spend anything. Turning the chatter of community into the chatter of “you gotta have this” will be an interesting turn for FB. It will be a game changer for the paper money trade. Knowing that US taxpayers spent$848 million on having the US Treasury print new coins and dollars in 2008 alone along with the metal and trees used, going paperless isn’t such a bad thing. A massive adoption of the FB currency platform and it’s subsequent buying abilities through Facebook Connect will challenge not only traditional means, but also the likes of PayPal and Amazon who may have the money and the webeconomy respectively, but not the combo. It’s like when chocolate met peanut butter and gave us Reese’s. We didn’t know how good it could be until it happened.

I’m not sure how many people were surprised with the most recent announcement that GM is declaring bankruptcy. I wasn’t. Seeing it happen to Chrysler and with the past year of turbulence within the economy, the old ways of a century year old industry was bound to be rattled to its core. Big oil and gas has controlled the way we commute. There are many more efficient ways to travel and alternate energy methods. Finally more light is being shed on these alternatives with the Obama administration.

One big change in thinking is to look at the auto industry like many of the tech startups that are around. Social networking enthusiasm, ability to share information and play with it via Open API should be adopted by the bigs in Detroit. Take the best technology and harness it into a package that everyone would want. Apple did it with the iPhone. Why can’t it be done with a car? Wired covers this idea as well in this month’s issue.

I recently saw a Tesla Roadster pull out from the Classic Car Club in Manhattan and thought about how amazing it was to see a vehicle move in near complete silence except for the sound of wheels on pavement. A lot of research and innovation went into that vehicle which has also now spawned the affordable Model S. A startup mentality to an old industry.

Maybe the collapse of the auto industry will bring about a Phoenix rising from the ashes. I hope it also doesn’t collapse the alternatives to gas-guzzling vehicles. The auto industry jumped aboard the Hybrid vehicle path a little too late and gave up on the electric car. Technology and it’s first version is not the end version. Look at Google. Technically they are still in beta as are their products. Facebook is in a quarterly change lately with interface. But subsequent versioning enhances and moves us forward. Now is the time to for innovation and change. And exciting change it should be seen as.

It dawned on me this morning on the subway how the world of automated voice and authentic voice continues to diverge. The Outer Voice (automated messages via phone, subway or transport hub announcements) and the Inner Voice (your personal voice broadcast through email, IM, Twitter, Facebook and other media.) Systematic announcements and orders versus free verse and open discussion. Personally, there’s nothing better than having a conversation when hanging out with friends in person, but as the world booms with tech advancements, the Outer and Inner Voice are diverging.

Station announcements are handled two ways:

MTA spokesperson Gene Sansone said in 2006 that, “Most of the orders are given by a male voice, while informational messages come from females. Even though this happened by accident, it is a lucky thing because a lot of psychologists agree that people are more receptive to orders from men and information from women”. [from Waepedia]

So the velvety, hypnotic, yet sterile women’s voice is making her informational announcements and I realize how much we are exposed to the automation of voice. Most customer service calls are now initially handled by the automated voice prompt either by way of speaking to it or by pressing a number. Sometimes the automated voice is more understandable than a real operator. The issue with general announcements handled by the automated voice is that after a while, the brain becomes familiar and used to the messages. Granted there is more clarity in the message than some scratchy or muffled speaker announcement, but hearing the same set of voices is a little like sheep following the herder.

Here’s a nice list of how different countries handle various announcements.

On the other hand, the Inner Voice is one where we can broadcast our our voice across the channels be it through blog, microblog, txt or other means, along with the traditional phone call, which seems more and more like a rarity these days. But it’s such a vast difference to hear the open broadcast of automated and to see the personal broadcast on your mobile or computer. The open dialog and the underground dialog. I’m curious to see where these two directions end up and what voice we give them both.

I’ve been in NYC over a decade now and one thing I am continually amazed by is the transportation. Both in good and bad ways. It’s more of a headache than anything else. Traffic, packed subways, train delays with no explanation, flight delays and cancellations, crowds, etc. Teleportation unfortunately won’t be around in the near future (sorry Scottie!) so we have to make due. But why? There are so many inefficiencies. In Europe, people nearly riot if a train is a minute off schedule.

The subway system in NYC finally rolled out new trains. They’re great. Unfortunately a lot of the tracks they run on are in bad shape and usually under construction or maintenance. Not to mention “Hey, love the new cars? Sweet. Well, we’re patting ourself on the back and us execs are taking a huge bonus. By the way, to do that we need to increase the fares. Again. And yeah, next year too. Love, us (from the beach sipping gold. Yeah, it’s real gold!)

The PATH system has been hyping all these system improvements for the past few years. New subway cars, station improvements, quicker commute. Great they’re spending much of that budget on telling us about it rather than getting it in place. Nice that they they’ve replaced the big old tube TV’s displaying useless information with flat screen TV’s displaying useless information. I believe it’s been about 7 years with the promise of bringing arrival and departure time to those systems.

A flight of mine was cancelled recently due to “the threat of rain.” Planes can’t fly in rain now? Hmm. Since when can weathermen predict the weather. The air traffic grid is so congested that they’re looking at new ways to distribute it. NYC accounts for almost 70% of the delays across the nation when weather gets bad. Wired has a great article on redesigning the skies.

But why redesign the skies? Why rollout a new subway car? Patchwork it seems for the inefficiencies. Why not look at new technology? Maglev trains have been around for year. There are even plans to build a NY to London maglev that can travel 4000mph. Yup. 4000. Imagine hopping on a train and and hour later having lunch in a different country. Or even NY to LA in 30 minutes. Now that’s speed. The technology is there. Trains have been around for more than a century and a half. Automobiles a century. Jet engines have been around for 50 years. All with only slight improvements. But look at the leaps. Seems every 50 years there is a jump forward in travel. I think we’re long overdue for the next phase.

In the land o’ plenty, aka US and A, we have a surplus of so much stuff that we could technically supply certain things for the good of mankind. Take corn for example. There is so much in surplus that it is turned into high fructose corn syrup and dumped into everything. Just check out King Corn. Why not make corn a free commodity to feed the world?

Technology is a little tougher, but look at all the gadgets around us. Imagine if iPhones were free? One laptop for every child? What happens to all the other laptops that aren’t bought by consumers? If technology were free, innovation and the socialsphere would blossom probably exponentially beyond the amazing things we have now. Opening up the 700mhz spectrum for free wifi would be great as well, but knowing Verizon, they’ll charge an arm and a leg for the 4G service in 3 years.

My quick 3 reasons why things aren’t free.

1 – There’s no control of the masses
2 – A need to be paid in a monetary society
3 – If everyone has it, it’s not unique (supply and demand)

Starity – achieving clarity, or an a-ha moment, through staring at something.

Glarity – achieving clarity, or an a-ha moment, through glaring at something. It could also be something so glaring that one achieves clarity. Ex: The picture was hung so glaringly crooked that John couldn’t help but realize it needed fixing.

“Financial reporting should work the way that an iPod works,” Hoffman says. “It should just be elegant and simple.”

Why isn’t it this way. The more I’ve been reading, seeing and hearing about the financial collapse, the more I’ve been wondering about this. The Zeitgeist films put a lot into a framework. The book 2012 had some eerie foreshadowing when it was written a few years back. And this month, there are two great articles in Wired this month. One on the formula that helped lead to the collapse of the market and the way that transparency can lead to recovery.



Why isn’t the financial world designed better? My feeling is that there is a massively ripe fruit hanging low on a branch that this new generation of developers, programmers, UI, IA’s, designers and social networkers – The Creative Class – can take advantage of. Creating a new way to see the numbered world. Think of Neo and seeing the Matrix. The massive amounts of data put into visual form can bring clarity and understanding to an otherwise daunting subject. Making analysis easier, even fun. Think of how Nick Feltron gorgeously designs his annual reports.

Bringing that kind of sensibility into the black and white world of the financial sector would have a huge impact. There’s already a start with XBRL tags to help siphon data into manageable chuncks. If blogging changed the way news is reported, now is as great a time as any to do the same to the finance sector.

Another wonderful case of truth being stranger than fiction. A Florida woman called 911 three times after McDonald’s employees told her they were out of McNuggets. Three times!!! I guess McNuggets are vital to life. The kicker is the dispatcher asks the woman if she spoke with a manager to which the woman responds about the employee she spoke with “She say she are the manager.”

*pause*

Wow. Have a listen for yourself and enjoy the wonders of language. And a good laugh.