Yes, of course, everybody is talking, writing based on his own experience. But now I’m listening to Scoble.
Malleable social graphs and mini-mobs: why Facebook could destroy Foursquare and Gowalla with one check in
o_O Brbrbrbrbrbrbr
His view is that LBS working in conjunction with social networks are designed to make decisions for you. Oh, maybe! But it is relevant only in situation when someone is not prepared to make his own decision… that person inevitably needs some sort of medical aid. LOL
I thought that the beauty of LBS is not in sorting out information for me, not in hiding certain bits of information from me based on what they think I might like or dislike, but in giving me access to a complete set of information and allowing me to make up my own mind.
For whatever reasons, Scoble views both Social Networking and LBS as a certain mechanism that would predict your preferences based on previous knowledge of your personality. Do you see the point? That is the most dangerous view. Because this is not what people want from Social Networking, it is not what people want form LBS for sure. It is what marketing people want to know about other people. It is what marketing people want to get from Social Networking and Location Based Services.
He misinterprets two rather simple things: 1. what people actually want and 2. how they use LBS. Being in the marketing himself no wonder that he substitutes his own goals and objectives as a marketing person assuming somehow that everybody else must have the same ones. But most of us are not in the marketing at all. Marketing people obviously want clear prediction based on certain previous knowledge. But that is not why people are on Social Networks, why people using LBS etc. etc. etc.
The beauty all of that, particularly LBS is not in limiting information about where I am, what is around me, but in allowing me the most complete access to the information about this location that is available.
So don’t tell me what you think I want to know! Give me the complete set of information, give me an access to the information you’ve got so I make some interesting perhaps surprising even for myself decisions and discoveries (oh! I never knew this was that near. Oh! I never knew I wanted it! Oh, I always wanted to look at this building but never remembered to make this turn and now when I am so near it… etc).
He views this whole thing as a machine that predicts and makes decisions. This is bloody convenient for all whose why are in the business of push-marketing. Because that would create 100% relevant push-channels based on previous preferences of the particular individual. This way they are able to make very reliable predictions on what that person might be interesting in buying. And based on this you can push-market your product. Push-market, push-market, push-market… as oppose to PULL! as oppose to the situation when someone suddenly decided that he wants something NEW and goes searching for it.
What he suggests is completely dismisses the ability to search, the ability to find something new. He views the subject, the agent, individual as totally passive – push-marketing subject. That is his problem. He can’t allow that individual to make his own decisions, to access to the whole set of information. To be successful marketer you need focus your potential customer - that is precisely what he does and what he want from Social Networks and LBS.
Good, good then! I agree that possibly this is the only way to make money out of it, but consider that most people don’t like that. And if the whole system would be structured around this only idea people will start hating it. They will just run away from there. Period.
Next. He assumes that people may only be interested in people like themselves which is obviously wrong. Because it was written in literature “the opposites attract”. Most of the time I don’t want to look at someone who is exactly like me because I’ve been bored with myself long enough already. I want to see someone different. Why people are interested in each other? It’s a very complex matter. Sometimes, yes, sometimes, you can be attracted by similarity, by synergy but only by a certain aspect of synergy, not by complete sameness of another individual.
This is not what stays constant. You can’t say I always attracted to people who are 15% the same as me in terms of my dress preferences, 20% the same as me in terms of my political views and 60% the same as me in terms of my food preferences. ROFLMOA
…
Sorry, my dear readers, but I can’t continue my writing – Scoble’s vision of LBS future draws such phantasmagoric pictures in my head that I can’t stop laughing. :)
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