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?)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.