It's Social Networking on steroids. The latest wave of technological advancements involves taking social networks mobile. I was very excited when I coined the term Mocial Networking (Mobile Social Networking), until I discovered this website where someone seems to have coined it before me. There's also another site that has adopted the word "mocial."
I'll elaborate on my understanding of mocial networking, as I've defined it. Mocial networking is web 2.0 but on an extremely mobile platform. The best way to engage in mocial networking is to have a GPS-enabled cell phone. With that, you can use sites like Kakiloc, Trackut, Socialight, Fring, and Bliin. Altogether, these sites allow you to place geo-specific digital sticky notes with text and pictures that provide information or opinions about specific locations, and are permanent to the specific location from which the user uploaded it. Also, these sites allow friends of yours to track you in real-time as you travel anywhere in the world.
People you designate as your friends can receive permissions to track your whereabouts at all times using Google Maps. The sites mentioned above can even tell your friends the speed and direction you're traveling, as well as where you're going if you designate your destination ahead of time. Of course, you do have control at all times over who you want to see what...
This is very awesome technology, however there are concerns about people abusing it. For example, tracking gullible minors (or even adults) for purposes of abduction.
Regardless, Stef Kolman from Bliin says that the risks associated with mocial networking aren't any greater than with traditional social networking (1.0/2.0) methods.
What do you guys think? How likely are people to abuse this new, exciting technology?
Monday, November 5, 2007
Mocial Networking
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2 comments:
Besides young kids and stupid adults getting abducted my main concern is that our generation has absolutely no concept of privacy anymore.
We...
-Twitter about what we're doing at every moment.
-Have away messages up when we're away from our computer.
-Forward our calls to cell phones
-Put all of our pictures, videos, thoughts, emotions online
And now we're giving away our location at all moments.
It's not that any of them specifically are bad things, it's the use of all of them constantly. Perhaps soon we'll announce each bathroom trip with detail!
With the advent of better cell phone technologies which make the web more accessible (such as Apple's iPhone) or new mobile software (such as Google's new cell phone venture) the presence of "Mocial" Networking will permeate society like never before.
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