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“older people are sticky” – or, how will generation m do with social networking?
Archive for October, 2007
I’m in the market for a Xobni invite if anyone has one… willing to trade for a ThinkFree Premium or GrandCentral invite! ;-O
Technorati tags: xobni, thinkfree, grandcentral
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great rundown of 2.0 sites related to healthcare and medicine
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online community for docs
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patient forums
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Outlook power tools. anyone have a spare invite?
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crowdsourcing the keitai-on-steroids japanese way. how cool is that!
I have been exploring online communities much more actively over the past month or so. I have been a bit player over time, and have trapsed in and out of them, but I’m now on a mission. Prompted by a promised Facebook group that didn’t seem to go anywhere, I (finally?) created a Facebook account for the Office 2.0 Conference. I can’t say that I’m a Facebook addict like some, but it has seriously opened my eyes to the platform aspect of online communities. The development ecosystem around Facebook is fascinating, but that’s another post.
I then discovered MotionBased and the marriage of that with Facebook in MyMotionBased. I am becoming an active runner thanks to my wife introducing me a few years ago and some enthusiastic friends at work (hi guys!). I picked up a Garmin Forerunner recently… then discovered MotionBased. Wow. Dangerous tools in the hands of a geek. Not only does MyMotionBased give you wicked cool 3-D visualizations via Google Earth:
But you can even view animations of runs, and dot racing to “compete” against others. All of this, courtesy of docs at the MotionBased wiki (note: need to create user page).
So this has me thinking about what do people really want from an online community?
I want to discover new running routes. I want to be able to compare myself against my friends. I want to be able to share running experiences with them when I run apart from the group – show them my successes and struggles. I want to keep enjoying my hobby, even when I can’t be out there doing it. I want to play with feeds and APIs.
But that’s me, not everyone. What do you want from online communities?
Sidenote: it’s a good month for dreamjobs, unfortunately for them I am happy at my current employer. MotionBased is hiring web developers.
Technorati tags: garmin, motionbased, running, community
If you have not yet read One Red Paperclip, then do so. It’s a fantastic story of how Kyle MacDonald started with one red paperclip and traded his way up to a house. For one thing, this is just a fun read. Kyle’s writing style is very casual, fluid and most important of all, genuine.
But the great part of Kyle’s story is not the things but the people and the process. Kyle writes about how the whole point was to make connections with interesting people, and make people’s lives better along the way. He turns downs trades that are more materially valuable in favor of trades that are more genuinely valuable. Kyle gets it.
How often is that a criteria of yours in your interactions with people? Do you trade your time/skills/money/opinion/knowledge for the gains of others? Something to think about.
I loved this book, but not enough to keep it so much that I won’t keep it. In the spirit of the paperclip, I would like to trade my copy for a book that you found interesting or insightful. Leave a comment (preferable) or ping me if you have an interesting book that you would like to trade. We would both pay book rate postage so it might come out to be a slightly cheaper way to get a book, but that’s not the point. It will be a more interesting way to get one.
Technorati tags: books, trading, one red paperclip, kyle macdonald
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good for you scott! awesome to see people combining their passions with their passions
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now able to proceed to class action status… a big move.
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just in time for TC 10 race photos!
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not sure about unbiased, but interesting nonetheless
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nice rundown of the oracle bid
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here is a great thing to *not* do when you want to engage a community
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“Right now, I would grade MOSS 2007 a B- in terms of it being a social computing platform”
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“we are amazed by JavaLand’s suburban API sprawl” seriously. even *I’m* getting sick of java bloat, and that’s saying a lot
Scott Mark 
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