Up-and-coming mobile social network Brightkite faces some serious competition from a myriad of mobile social networks, all of whom are fighting to win the emerging mobile market. However, Brightkite has a few tricks up their sleeve that they hope will make them stand out from the rest, the most important of which is their ability to create a social network that merges with your real life
We love online shopping because we pay for real goods with what feels like virtual money (paypal or plastic) in an online world then real things that turn up at our door. It's perfect. We love our iPods because they ensure we have something physical to possess (in place of our former cluster of plastic CD cases or record sleeves) that makes sense of all of that weird virtual music that would otherwise exist as files on a server somewhere.
We often need tangible references to the real world in order to fully embrace the power of the virtual world. Facebook is so popular because we are playing a real role in our community whereas Second Life is a greater leap for most of us. It requires us to take on a different persona, live in a different world without reference to the things we know or own or understand.
Trend-spotters and futurologists talk of a time when social networks will be implicit in our daily lives. They will be like air. But in the interim, we are demanding they integrate better with our real interests.
Recent Comments