OpenSocial and Building Global Neighbourhoods

I often like to be one of the last voices on a topic as it rages through the blogosphere and news pages. I like to take some time to think through what it means or if it means anything at all. Google's OpenSocial is an example.  Being announced officially today has been a more earth-shattering topic this week in Silicon Valley than our Earthquake. Google says that as of this morning, the first day of the OpenSocial nnouncement, there have already been nearly 600,000 mentions. Already, there are clips speculating on the deaths of XING and Facebook.

OpenSocial is essentially creates a simple way for developers to run social applications in more places by opening the APIs of a great many Internet sites. This is, of course, as significant as everyone is saying it is.

So what can I add?  Perhaps, only a whiny little ego stroke. Fifteen months ago, I announced I was writing a book called, Global Neighbourhoods and renamed this site. My 'Big Idea' was that sites themselves would become unimportant as the power moved to small groups of users. The same people would find the same friends and share videos and photos and information and endorsements as thy bopped about from one site to another.  The size of a site would no longer matter.  Instead the small  circle of friends forming around a topic, would become the focal point and these friends would influence each other far more than any marketing campaign or ad network could.

Global Neighborhoods was supposed to be visionary. But, a great deal has happened since I started out to write it.  Facebook happened.  Now this. In between the two, a whole lot else.

The result is that the Internet is being structured around small circles of friends, usually containing no more than 400 people. There are millions of these global neighbourhoods.  In the not too distant future, there will be 10s of millions of them and they, by definition, will be self-governed.  They will have a great deal of influence iover what people buy, watch, listen to and read.  They will influence where we travel, how we get there and where we stay. They will determine, in some cases, who will get elected.

And mass merchants will have very little to do with it. Perhaps there will be new, micro merchants who are sensitive to Doc Seals, Intention Economy. Perhaps, they will become mass micromerhcants over time.

In any case, my plan to write a futuristic book, with my vision of what might happen some day, is already happening pretty fast.  Maybe next time, I'll try writing something with an historic perspective.


Technorati Tags: opensocial, doc searls, intentioneconomy

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Comments

[Rob La Gesse]

@Shel - you might think about something like "the story behind the story" instead of a purely historical book. The changes that have occurred over the last decade (cultural changes, ways to work with people, etc - NOT pure technology changes) that have allowed us to work with so many other people in other places - allowed us to get instant (nearly) feedback, expose our ideas to others BEFORE we spend a million dollars, find core competencies almost as soon as we need them and do ALL of this without getting on an airplane, or even meeting your partners face to face. THAT is a global neighborhood - but it might be interesting to detail how it happened two years ago, and how much easier it is to do that now. And perhaps wonder how much easier it will be in another two years.

With case studies, etc.

I've been in the computer business since 1979. And it has never been easier to make money, find people of like mind, throw bad ideas away, find money, find developers and PAY for things. Yes - salaries have increased - but overall, how much has the cost of building something like Twitter dropped since 1999? How did the global neighborhood contribute to that?

Sorry for the rant :)

[Internet Marketing Blog]

I'm all about OpenSocial!

[David Yeo]

Interesting post :) I think we are seeing the beginnings of merchandising in a social context. Companies selling online seem to be tweaking to get the right forumula - Ebay adopting social, Amazon come to mind. As we move towards the social web, I think a greater care is how will company monetize the so called small circles of influence that we see form on sites.