As we left the previous decade behind some two months ago, many a cultural critic commented that “reality” television dominated the entertainment scene in the Naughts. This staged form of entertainment proved inexpensive to produce and satisfied the voyeur, which we are loathe to admit to, in us all. Looking ahead, the coming decade in “entertainment” really is going to be real, dominated by strangers, and brought to us by the Web.
I don’t know about you, but for me, Facebook is essentially entertainment starring my friends and friends-of-friends, the pictures, the updates, the video snippets. Foursquare does something similar for the physical/mobile space, i.e. where are my friends, what are they up to, etc. Both services have friends in common, using technology to connect and peer in on people that you already know. The next step in this evolution is to peer in on, and in the process be entertained by, complete strangers.
Tip of the Iceberg
Chat Roulette is currently the best example of this emerging trend – http://chatroulette.com. The site allows users to chat via Webcam with random, anonymous people on the Internet. Created by a 17-year-old Russian late last year, the site is estimated to attract hundreds of thousands of concurrent users around the world.
Technology is Not an Issue
While chatting with a stranger online isn’t really a novelty, remember “chat rooms” circa 1995, using technology to look-in on and connect with strangers, particularly on the go, is a novelty. Imagine whole neighborhoods wired for video/audio. Where do I want to go tonight? What does the crowd look like? How long is the line? A service focused on San Francisco called Citysense – http://www.citysense.com/home.php -is at the vanguard of providing answers to these questions.
From their web site:
“Citysense was built to show you where the action is, right now. Using a billion points of GPS and WiFi positioning data from the last few years – plus real-time feeds – Citysense sees S.F. from above and puts the top live hotspots in your hand. You don’t even need to sign up, just go to citysense.com on your phone, download, and open. (The information is presented in the form of heat maps – see above.)
Citysense is an application that operates on the Sense Networks Macrosense platform, which analyzes massive amounts of aggregate, anonymous location data in real-time. Macrosense is already being used by business people for things like selecting store locations and understanding retail demand. But we asked ourselves: with all this real-time data, what else could we do for a city? Nightlife enhancement was the obvious answer.”
Sense Networks, Citysense’s parent, is based in NYC – www.sensenetworks.com.
While Citysense is technically sophisticated, the end product, by virtue of the data that it aggregates, is a bit crude. Imagine individual bars/cafes/restaurants/clubs/bookstores, etc. equipped with the modern equivalent of boardwalk photo booths with patrons uploading real time video commentary about the venue. (This “connected” modern photo booth could also be your phone. The booth would add a kitsch factor while also spitting out old school picture strips.)
Hyper-local video networks, i.e. the neighborhood as media/entertainment (SoHo Now), will emerge with businesses/individuals providing the live look-ins.
Those look-ins will be provided by consumer versions of enterprise applications such as Kyte – http://www.kyte.com/blog -that will enable individuals to stream live, mobile video to Facebook or any other site where an audience has gathered.
Wireless camera maker Dropcam – www.dropcam.com – recently launched a new iPhone application that enables owners of Dropcam’s $199 cameras to view live surveillance video from their phones. Users without a Dropcam can also view three publicly available cameras via the iPhone app, the Empire State Building, Interstate 5 in Del Mar, Calif., and Dropcam’s offices in SF.
Pennsylvania-based Tikaro Interactive – http://www.tikaro.net -has developed a series of 2-by-4-inch, velcro patches with a “mysterious commando” design on top and a QR code on the bottom. The code on each p8tch – www.p8t.ch – is a URL that can be scanned with a smart phone. Patch owners can set the redirect target of the URL to whatever page they wish.
An app from Swedish mobile software firm The Astonishing Tribe – http://www.tat.se/ – called Recogniz (it’s still a prototype) uses facial recognition software to identify a stranger. Once Id’d, a user would be presented the subject’s name as well as links to any social networking sites the person has provided access to. Currently, only people who have opted in to the service can be recognized, and the code only runs on Android smart phones.
New York-based Urban Signals – www.urbansignals.net – is an app explicitly made for the purpose of helping strangers meet strangers in the real world. (The service would be wise to partner with some of the larger online dating sites to help secure distribution. For Urban Signals to be of any use both strangers must have the app on their phone.) The founders sum of the service as follows:
“No more seeing someone on the street, sharing a smile, feeling a spark and walking away wishing you would have said hello…. no more missed connections. So… Go about your day. Turn on the radar and see who is out and about. See someone you like? Good. Send them a signal and see if they like you too! Feeling spontaneous? Then meet up right then and there.”
From my perspective, these and other services like them point to a not-too-distant future where we will be using our desktop and mobile phones to peer in on strangers and locations in our neighborhoods in much the same way that we currently keep up with our friends on Facebook, Foursquare, et al.
