"...and then I put it in the bin"
Had our first digital Show & Tell last night and it went down a storm. Thanks to everyone that made it along – hopefully you all found something interesting in the mix to take from it.
For those that missed it, here’s a quick list of a few of the topics of discussion that we went through and associated links.
Facebook Places vs Foursquare
Facebook launched their new geo-social networking features that will eat Foursquare & Gowalla. Mainly because of their pre-existing 500 million users. Some frightening (and unsurprising at this stage) further erosion of privacy boundaries by Zuckerberg & co on this one. Watch this space.
(US only at the moment but see it in action here )
Facebook & Coke IRL
Nick showed us video of the real-life social networking by Coca-Cola & Facebook.
The future? Really?
Diaspora
http://www.joindiaspora.com/
If you missed this one a while back, four students announced their plans to build an open alternative to Facebook, one where you retained control over all your data. Facebook but with privacy – imagine that. They advertised for $10,000 in start-up capital and so far have raised over $200,000 in crowd-sourced funding. Latest news is that they’re 3 weeks from launch…
The Fridge
On the anti-Facebook kick, I stumbled across The Fridge recently. A social network with no profiles and total privacy. The whole thing works on the premise of groups that are invitation only and content is only visible to group members. So, as Julian put it, you can interact with your church bell-ringing group and your BDSM group and neither will know about your involvement with the other group.
123people
Check out http://www.123people.co.uk and see how effective it is at building a picture based on what’s out there on the web. This is why Google CEO Eric Schmidt reckons we’ll be changing our names in the future as the only way to escape your online history.
Arc Touch mouse
Oooh.... curvy
(See here and here)
We also saw some pretty cool new hardware from Redmond that has the tech gadget blogs abuzz… check the snazzy pics above. Dave C & Nick got to play with the only 2 in the UK the other day.
Next Show & Tell in about 2 weeks or so, so keep an eye out for any interesting stuff…
Tags: facebook, geo-social networking, Innovations, Microsoft, privacy, show & tell, social media
Awesome. thanks for the Fridge callout! The Fridge is exactly that. easy to manage little mini Facebooks for your friends, family, coworkers, events, and other groups…
for those times when you want the functionality of facebook without being on facebook!
No problem, Austin. It’s a great concept. I’ll be interested to see how the Fridge develops. Best of luck with it!