Simon Morris's Blog

April 2008 Archives

Anti-Social Networking

For a while now I've been mulling over an idea for a new type of social network, one which is actually social in nature and not just name. The key to my idea is harnessing the ad-hoc connectivity of wireless mobile devices to move the network out into the real physical world. It's a curious little idea which, like most curious little ideas, involves a lot unknowns which have to be worked out. The aim is to bring like-minded people together, be they fans of the same sports team, devotees of Opera, potential love interests or employees and their ideal employer. Oh, and once they've found each other it can recommend a restaurant all parties will enjoy (with a small referral fee, no doubt — even I know you need a revenue stream!)

Mind you, everyone seems to be jumping onto the social networking bandwagon at the moment, and just because I find my idea interesting, doesn't mean the great unwashed masses will. If I had more killer business instinct I'd be land-grabbing a chirpy domain name in all its ".com", ".org", ".co.jp" variants, and readying my bank manager to receive the millions as they start rolling in. As it is I'm happier just to get a basic prototype working, to see if it actually works as a concept.

As software increasingly moves on-line the consumer (we are told) benefits from the added flexibility. But the developer has to jump through more hoops just to get a basic prototype up and running. Time was when you compiled your binary and passed it around on a floppy to your friends. Now you have acquire a server, install and configure it, register a domain, pay for bandwidth...

It's a lot of messing just to test out an idea. Fortunately Google have come to the rescue with the launch of their Google App Engine, promising to get rid of the pain so I can concentrate on the code. But what am I giving up in return for this shortcut?

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