Dave Morin

My good friends know that I am constantly churning out new ideas. These ideas vary, but are generally entrepreneurial, and more often than not related to companies, products, and the various flavors of marketing. Most of the time I try to infuse people that I hope will take the idea and do something with it (If only there were more than 24 hours in a day). I do this because I know that quarter of getting an idea “there” is spreading it. Another quarter is taking it to the top. Idea Champions are few and far between. They are the people that change people, organizations, and populations. They are the people that DO, the people that execute. Idea Champions are relatively sparse in a world abundant in antagonists.

That brings me to my next point: every idea has been thought of. Trust me. Someone, somewhere, already had the conversation that you and your buddy are drawing out on a napkin over beers. They just didn’t execute it. Sorry.

Now, that being said, I’m going to throw this idea on the table. Why this one you ask? Well, because someone is building it right now. A few have already kind-of done it. And, someone is soon going to get it right. Hopefully.

Right now you are reading this blog, checking your email, and talking on IM (at least if you are from my generation you are). So are a whole bunch of other people from your past, present, and future. There might be old high school buddies, friends from college. There might be someone right down the street from you online. They could be your next best friend. Your next love.

All of these people are online. Right now. But most importantly, they don’t know how to connect to each other. Friendster tried to connect these people, but alienated their userbase with bad features, slow hardware, and too many ads. Orkut and others jumped on the bandwagon and tried to replicate the Friendster phenomenon without making the same mistakes. Most of those sites failed too. They soon figured out that basing a social networking site on the phantom and transient community of the entire internet simply did not work. Although people felt pseudo-connected, they weren’t sure how they were going to use these online communities in their daily lives.

Along came thefacebook, they took the mistakes of the others and learned a bit. Lets give them a profile, create a completely relational database, give them one picture instead of several, let them connect to each other instantly. Most importantly, thefacebook sat down and realized the value of layering a social networking site on a physical community. College campuses.

My question is: why not a city? Why not San Francisco? Why can’t I add myself to the Cow Hollow section of a social networking site based on the neighborhoods of San Francisco. Why can’t my friends in Manhattan use one of these for New York?

One thing to realize is that the web is not going to stay completely private for much longer. ISPs are already beginning to keep track of much more information than they used to. Your address on the web is being tracked by just about everyone these days.

One final failure I see in all of these online social networking/community/forum/letsmeetpeople sites is a failure to miss the entire point of a community. To make a connection.

AOL built the most valuable network in the world with AIM. Their network is so vitally important to this population, it’s hard to quantify. As of right now, 782,974,723 instant messages were sent today. They have 35 million active users.

Putting all of these pieces together leads me to my challenge: Build me a social networking site that bring together cities. A site that connects me to people on my block. A site with profiles, neighboorhoods, connections between my friends, maybe even a family tree. But most importantly give me a FREE, and easy to use (read: GREAT UI) that doesn’t obscure the most important, vital, and visceral connection you can make with a person online: their instant messaging name.

Give me that. Bring together the largest networks in the world. Ground them on the physical community. Bring people and populations together.

As Nate would say: “Build it.”

If you don’t. Maybe I will.

(Yahoo?)

Here it is! The all-new, uber-cool, slightly sophisticated, davemorin.com/blog. After a couple of months of debate over what blog package to switch to, extensive testing of everything under the sun, and some persuasive collegues, I’ve chosen Wordpress. It took a weekend, lots of coffee, and some friendly competition with my roommate. I’m insanely happy with the transition and give huge props to the Wordpress guys for the amount of work they put in to evolve Wordpress to where it is today. If you want to learn more about Wordpress and how to migrate, check out my sidebar.

So, that’s that. You’ve got an all new design, and a simplified view of my world. I chose to go with a modified version of the famous Kubrick template which WP is now using as their default theme. You’ll also find a plethora of links on my sidebar to things I think are relevant: a blogroll of my friends and collegues, what I’m currently reading, and a blogroll of my favorite thought leaders(which you should take the time to read), the archives, and a few other cool resources. My sidebar will also begin to include links to things that I think you should enjoy, absorb, and think about. All of this will be updated much more often, on a continuing basis, than it used to be. Wordpress rocks.

You’ll also notice that there is a new section to the sidebar, catagories. These will undoubtably be an evolving project as time marches forward. Right now I’ve got a bunch of recent posts classified correctly, and I’ll move backward as quickly as I can. More than likely the archives will become more of a “best of” archive as I thin the content of the past down a bit and look forward to a more robust future in terms of content.

Those of you feeding off of me via RSS, nothing has changed. You still have access to my Feedburner feed (which is the one I recommend), as well as RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, and Atom. You can also access my new comments feed in both RSS 2.0 and Feedburner.

What is RSS you ask? Why should I use it? Find out here. If you don’t have an RSS reader, you should. Look into getting one for Mac OS X, Windows, or use the best web-based one here.

I hope you enjoy what’s on my mind, and what always seems to be yet Another Great Idea™.

What are your favorite blogs? Why do you like them? Do you use an RSS reader? You should. Hit my comments…I’m curious as to what your absolute favorite, and best, blogs are. My RSS reader is getting increasingly hungry, and I just ejected about 10 blogs that weren’t worth my time. Hit me.

Why does this entire state smell like one big flower when summer rolls around?

I’m nostalgic.

Approaching a year in California I’ve learned a few things: California really is a pretty cool place to be (never thought I’d hear that come out of my Montana bred mouth). I can understand why so many TV shows are based here (but is my here anything like SoCal here. doubtful.). Surfing is fun. Boardwalks are even more fun (at night. in santa cruz.). I used to dream of having a little log cabin in Jackson Hole, now I jones for a little place on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Punk music is brilliant. It’s a long drive from San Francisco to Tahoe, I don’t care what anyone here says, it’s a weekend trip. Life doesn’t get much better than flying up 280, windows down, sunroof open, enjoying the sunset while the sky turns that purple-blue California sunset color. Listening to the boats pull out of the bay never gets old. Having this much incredible food within 10 square miles is amazing (especially the sushi). Driving/Biking/Walking through the Presidio not only smells really good, but it makes you feel really good. Napa is one of the most beautiful places on the planet (their wine doesn’t suck either).

My heart is falling into San Francisco. I’ve learned a lot about California, and even more about life. But, that’s another story all together

This state rules.

I have been waiting for this for a year. They finally did it. You can now customize the number of articles, what articles you want where, and what sections you do or do not want to see. A simple enhancement to the best home-page on the internet, just made it even better. Brilliant!