Charred Tech

Talking to family a few months ago I predicted that social networking will begin to evolve shortly into something pretty creepy, not that it isn’t already. I explained that soon you will be able to look at someone’s social networking page, whether it be Facebook, Myspace, or whatever, and see what they are doing, where they are doing it, and even watch them do it. This was shortly after I read about Yahoo’s upcoming Fire Eagle project and began thinking about what social networking will be like say next year or so. Believe it or not my prediction has already come true.

Twitter began the first step towards this idea, and I just realized that my own Facebook, Blog, and Myspace pages are coming to this point. You may have noticed that most new startups these days can be all be linked together; my Twitter feed not only shows up on my Facebook page, but it’s also on Myspace and this blog as well. Thanks to all the connections I don’t have to go and update all three constantly with my status, which not only makes maintaining multiple pages easier, but also makes information more available. Right now you can go to my Facebook page and see my last tweet where I may say something like “I’m having lunch” this adds the “What I’m doing at the moment” function to the page. A few new startups have popped up lately and although still in beta they will be released to the public shortly, which will add a “Where I am” function to social networking.
Two of these startups are Britekite and the aforementioned Yahoo Fire Eagle. The idea behind these online applications is to let others know where you are at that exact moment. The execution is simple, the user visits the site, “checks-in” at a certain location, and that’s it, they’re done. I recently started a Britekite account and have been using it for the last few days, I haven’t been checking in as much as I probably should as I forget from time to time, but it may be something I use everyday once I get in the habit. With Britekite you can link your account with Twitter and in turn when you check-in at a location, a tweet is posted on Twitter, since Twitter is linked with Facebook you can then see where I am on my Facebook page. So there’s another check on the list of ways to make it easy to stalk me. Now you can’t watch me on my page, nor would you want to, but if I wanted to I could easily arrange it.

To let you watch me live on my page, all I would need to do would be to sign up for an account at Qik.com, setup my phone for streaming video, and stream the video right to my page(s) it’s become increasingly easier to do. Qik allows those with a compatible mobile device to stream video from their phone to their Qik page for others to watch, this is called Lifecasting, made popular by Justin Kan of Justin.tv fame. Right now most Qik users use the Nokia N95 phone but if you have a regular Windows Mobile phone you can do it to using available webcam software like Web Camera Plus from Ateksoft. The software is relatively simple, you start the application on your base computer, then start the program on your mobile device. You then input the ip address of the base computer and you’re ready to stream your life.

So is this the new social networking? Is this a little creepy? Let me know what you think in the comment section!