MySpace and StreetHive Pair Up
While there is a lot of interest and discussion around the concept of “Web 2.0”, I think the real big leap is being missed in this discussion. The Internet has had a profound impact on how we communicate, transact commercially, and record our history, but I think the biggest impact is what will happen when this is all available to us at anytime, anywhere.
An example of this is social networking. Right now MySpace has been fun to connect people that are both friends or meeting each other online. It allows people to communicate, share pictures, illustrate and share their life. But, for the most part, you are tethered to your computer to really participate in these activities. While I know that Helio, AT&T, and others have made some good strides to make these transactions accessible from a mobile phone, it’s far from taking advantage of some of the opportunities available today with the mobile cellular infrastructure available in most countries.
The big leap is when you start combining the location based services with existing online social networking models. Take for example Street Hive. This new service allows you to see where your friends are and what they’ve been doing through notes they’ve left on the system through their phone. These can include pictures and text. Integrate this with “myspace” and you see a more live illustration of your friends lives that they’re sharing with you.
This is just the beginning though. The real value comes in sharing your expertise with your friends, family and colleagues. A good example of this is Yelp. Yelp is a site that allows individual users to rate and review various services such as restaurants to the local plumber. But, again, you’re tethered to your computer or a static mobile site.
The leap is when you are able to walk down the street, indicate to your phone you’re looking for a restaurant and you’re not only connected with what’s around you, but where your friends have gone, what places are their favorite and which one you’d like the best based on your preferences such as where you flag a particular friend as being good at recommending the best restaurants. Then, when you pick a place, you take pictures of who you’re with, the dish you loved and give it a rating yourself in real time, not after you get home to your computer.
If you’re only thinking about AJAX and fancy new user interfaces for your old web site, you’re missing the really big leap that is coming. I for one, can’t wait!
on June 24, 2007 | Comments (1)
Comments
Web 2.0 != AJAX.
Words and phrases I associate with Web 2.0: folksonomies, user generated content, web as a platform (the new OS), fancy UI's.
Also AJAX doesn't necessarily mean javascript and sparkly UI elements. More and more it's referring to a _platform_; we're beyond LAMP. I'm talking about the combination of high level languages like Python and Ruby with frameworks like Rails and Django. Add CSS, DHTML and a dash of JavaScript and you're starting to get the picture.
But you're right, the future is in location-aware mobile platforms. iPhone + Safari = pretty darn near close to the platform of the future IMHO.
Ever read O'Reilly Radar? It's right up your alley.
Posted by: Sean Fioritto | September 27, 2007 03:44 PM