Social Media Cares

As Yahoo, Sprint, EMI, and a slew of other media giants collapse under the “un-recession”, users beginning to burn out on social media, and mysterious monsters chopping on cables buried deep in the Indian Ocean’s muck, let’s not dismiss entirely the utopian hopes we had for the World Wide Mess as far back as Y2K, during the 1.0 heyday. The 2.0 bubble may be on the brink of bursting but for now, as it floats through the cyber-sphere, still relatively impervious to the real-time woes of the brick and mortar world, here are some nifty little blips on the radar highlighting the internet’s nobler intentions. (Though, we’ve all heard where that path leads.)
Youtube -Will-i-am’s viral Pro-Obama video, borrowing on the Latino slogan “Yes We Can” has enough celebrities in it to give “We are the World” a run for its money. Hell, his catch-phrase, “We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For” bears an uncanny resemblance to that 20th century chorus. Let’s just hope the stockpiles of dreams gather less dust than those bags of misplaced grains.
Twitter – Elections: A mashup of Twitter and Google Maps featuring Twitter Pop Ups of netizens’ play-by-play accounts of the elections. Say what you will about Billary and Obama Wan Kinobi, the Bama-rama’s got the Twitter factor in his favor, and one should be careful not to underestimate the 2.0 generation’s impulsiveness and willingness to rush in where their 1.0 elders fear to tread. As I recall, America’s last Camelot did not end so hot, but as Reverend Jackson said, one must “Keep hope alive..”
Facebook – Smile for Cancer: If you can raise money for a cancer ward clear across the planet by simply uploading a jpg of your muggin’ pearly whites, and embedding it on your Facebook page, why not click your way to a clear conscience?
Godtube – Jesus 2.0: “Broadcast HIM” The internet, it seems, does have a soul. The thought of giving “Christi-uns” another tool to spread their haterade does not seem like something worth celebrating in these pagan “pages”. That is, until, like me, you scroll down past the pitch to the internet’s redeeming feature: the comments.
Buried there, deep beyond the “Godtube” sermon, proof of the web’s capacity to disarm – a paragraph-long diatribe that answers the eternal question: “What Would Jesus Smoke“? Apparently, cannabis.
The leafy treat poised for vending machine deployment across California was seemingly a biblical staple. Behold Isaiah 43:24: “I have not burdened you with grain offerings, nor wearied you with demands for incense. You have not bought any cannabis for me, or lavished me on the fat of your sacrifices.” (M’kay?) God and Martha Stewart would agree: this [shit] is good.
So, pipelines and satellites may snap and fall, fickle tweens may age and bore, and all the world be drowned in a mighty tide of melting ice caps, but chances are the internet will outlive all. And someday, when the mothership returns and Jesus clicks YES on our ultimate Friend-request, we can take some comfort knowing that we will be judged not solely by our cache-loads of Hot-or-Not porn.

Blog Nation

Outside.in, a location-based/neighborhood-themed social network released a list of the bloggiest cities and hoods in the country. A common preoccupation? Gentrification. Hmm. Check out the network and the story > Here.

1. Boston
2. Philadelphia
3. Pittsburgh
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Portland, OR
6. New York
7. San Francisco
8. Seattle
9. Chicago
10. Los Angeles

1. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
2. Shaw, DC
3. Downtown LA
4. Newton, Mass
5. Rogers Park/North Howard Chicago
6. Pearl District (“The Pearl”), Portland
7. Watertown, Mass
8. Harlem, NY
9. Potrero Hill, SF
10. Coconut Grove (“The Grove”), FL

Twitter Love

If you’re in my email address book you’ve likely received one or two or three invitations to join me on some mobile social network. Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, Mog, Flickr, Twitter – check, check, check…. There are more that I’ve tested – MeetMoi, Socialight – but the ones I’ve checked have weathered my notoriously fickle attention span and have become incorporated into my daily second/digital life. On Twitter, the micro-blogging application that allows users to ping the minutiae of their lives to each others’ lists of followers, most pings are painfully generic or self-serving (duh), ranging from witness accounts of local events, random celebrity sightings, job listings not posted elsewhere, to people looking for lodging. Now that I “Tweet” I actually SPAM less.
Occasionally, there’s something even a bit touching. This guy saw a girl on the subway, created a website devoted to finding the “NY Girl of My Dreams“, his link found its way onto Twitter, I passed it around to someone who forwarded it to NY 1 news, as many others likely did all over the place – and not only did the guy end up going on various news programs to discuss his search, today comes news that he actually found her.
If I were Twitter, I’d pay them to name their first child after the service that helped spread the word. Then, I would rent a muscle bound escort to pummel me and call me a bad, dirty marketing slut. Maybe I can ping someone on Twitter? BRB…

Ustream, iStream, We all stream

Ok, here’s the unveiling of my next video scheme. My sore, bruised, sensitive shallow ego bounced back from my editorial critique convinced that it was time to bump things up to another level. I will always love and cherish the printed word, but Gemini that I am, I cannot resist new doodads with bells and whistles and buttons and things.
So, combining my idea for reporting on music wherever I may roam, I’m jumping on the video streaming cluster fuck called LifeCasting. Don’t worry, I won’t be televising my bowel movements – well, maybe on special request. And I’m not strapping a mobile cam to my skull and streaming shots of me slowly growing cancerous outgrowths.
What I do intend to broadcast on the world wide web and its mobile channels is going to be purely music-related for now. “This is me DJ-ing in my boxers!! This is me listening to a new CD and thinking of something clever to say. This is me hustling the do ho at this club to let me in. This is me in the DJ booth with the world’s greatest spinner ever!!!” At least until copyright gestapo and overzealous publicists come hunting me down. Although, with my freelance Press Pass conspicuously tucked into my Kangol, I should be able to maneuver these overcrowded seas of See-Me/Love-Me media without much trauma. Until all the legal bugs regarding user-generated-content get worked out, pretty much anything goes. Hopefully, this whole User-Content hoopla won’t go the way of the 1.0 Dot.com bubble before I get… um, what is it, again???? Oh yeah – my 15 minutes. Lunchtime!

US patent number 6,618,593

Mobile social networking patent sold for US$2.6 million
From our reporter in Chicago.

Just before 3:00pm today the US patent number 6,618,593 was sold for US$2.6 million at the live intellectual property auction organized by Ocean Tomo (see our previous article about the auction here) at the Union League Club of Chicago. This US$2.6 million bid is one of the biggest recorded for intellectual property during a live auction.

The lot number 25 was launched at a US$1 million starting price by the auctioneer and was disputed for several minutes by at least 3 different bidders. It eventually reached its final price when a quiet man seated in the middle of the crowd raised its hand and topped the last bid by US$100,000. After the usual three warnings the hammer of the auctioneer closed this record sale, followed by a burst of applause from the 300 intellectual property professionals gathered on the auction floor.

A hot market
This patent covers a location based match-making technology. The system, working with location-aware devices connected to a remote server, allows users to make connections with other users based upon specified preferences and their distance. For example, a user can setup a profile indicating the types of people he would be interested in meeting. When he comes nearby another user matching this profile, a notification is sent to both.

The field of application of this patent is essentially mobile social networking and mobile dating. Both markets are soon to explode, especially in the US with million of users on the verge to shift from PC to cell phone to manage their digital social life. These mobile applications are the obvious next steps for websites such as MySpace, Facebook or Match.com. Several start up companies are already launching their services, for example Loopt, which we interviewed recently (see here ).

While the buyer’s name is not disclosed according to the rules of these IP auctions, one can imagine it might be a large online social networking portal wishing to lock the market with a strong patent, or a company specialized in the monetization of intellectual properties willing to license this promising asset to the various players on the market. But for now the only people making profit out of it is the group of inventors who filed this innovative patent seven years ago.

Thursday 19 April 2007

Ludovic Privat