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How Much Do Friends Cost?
A couple interesting items in the news this morning. First, Yahoo introduces a social search engine, which allows users to share their personal web indexes and links. Secondly, a new program called "Social Fabric" allows you to visualize all of your friends and shows you graphically which relationships you've been neglecting. If you haven't heard, this is part of a larger movement called "clanning", and it's the wave of the future.
"Clanning" is a term coined by marketing whiz Faith Popcorn (Google cached site here) It's the notion that what we as humans really want to do is group together and interact. I'm a big believer in clanning, as my first start-up venture (five years ago) was a tool for finding and filtering your communications from only your friends. It would have killed spam, for one thing, and provided us a simpler means to talk to one another. But that and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee.
Back then, clanning was kind of a buzz word. The importance of clanning today is easy for anybody to see. Internet chat rooms, blogs, and yes, social programs allow users to connect and converse on any topic imaginable. Just his week two of my friends asked me to join a site called "LinkedIn", which looks like an automated social mixer. And then there's the high school and college reunion sites that have sprung up, offering folks a chance to reconnect with their old comrades.
Clanning is big bucks, no doubt. And I believe we're going to see more and more of it over the next couple of years. Where would I invest my money? Portable software tools combining multiple strategies. For instance, there's probably some really cool stuff you can do with RSA, RSS, X.500, BitTorrent, tunneling, P2P, and XML. (Didn't get the buzzwords? Never mind. Whatever the new product will be will have some kind of neat name -- LaserFire or something.)
Gotta go. My Groove popup is flashing. Must be some new work just in from the office.
I think 'clanning' is our society's way of using technology to bring back what people used to have fifty years ago. Man is a social creature and we have allowed hectic schedules and technology and even fear isolate us from the world around us. Seven years ago I joined a writing group, and we are still great friends, though our writing interests have changed. We keep up with each other's kids, families, and worry when we don't hear from one another. I look forward to seeing more of the same.