Let’s start a few years back...
In the beginning, the World Wide Web was all about links - a system of hyperlinks connecting documents across a worldwide network of servers. The interface used to browse these interlinking documents evolved from a terminal (think DOS) type screen to the first Web browsers.
The evolution to the Web browser opened the gates for a far more visual experience. This (rather dry) Web of documents rapidly evolved into a juicy visual Web of photo galleries, news articles, brand websites and, of course, banner adverts. Then in 1998 two geeks from Stanford University decided the Web could do with a bit of indexing. There was just too much information out there, it needed to be searchable. The era of search was born. The world rejoiced.
The next major evolution came along when the Web started to become more social. It had evolved into a space where anyone who had access to it could create for themselves a virtual platform from where they could stand and share whatever they had to say with anyone who cared to read it. On top of that, readers were able to comment and add their own views. Yes, blogging certainly had a huge influence on what some called the participatory Web, a Web where anyone could become a publisher of content (blogging platform "Blogger" launched in 1999). Other publishing platforms caught on too though - Wikipedia (2001), Flickr (2004), YouTube (2005). The era of Web 2.0 was born. The geeks rejoiced.
Meanwhile in February 2004, Harvard sophomore student, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (aged 20 at the time), launched a site called Thefacebook to the students at Harvard. Although it was more of a social student directory, users were able to write comments on fellow students' pages. In September 2006, Facebook.com (the "The" was removed) opened its doors to the world. And the world flocked to it like pigeons to a pile of seed. The era of social networking was born. 500 million+ people have now rejoiced.
And this is actually where this article starts (I'm a bit of a waffler sometimes). It's all about the evolution of the status update Scott, stick to the brief!
Ok, so there's Facebook exploding through massive growth worldwide. Users were finally able to stalk others from the comfort of their own desk, tag themselves in photos, poke friends and throw sheep at them (remember that?). It was all becoming rather comfy in there. You could even tell the world what you were doing by updating your status; in fact you didn't update it as much as you just edited your last one. Your personal status was tucked away on the top right of the page and was written in the third person "Scott is writing an article". Updating your status message became quite a popular thing to do. I recall the early status updates being somewhat of a novelty. It was all about trying to be as ridiculous as possible.
Right, let's put Facebook to the side for a moment.
Let's talk Twitter. Twitter gained mega-traction because it did one thing very well - status updates. In fact this is the only thing it set out to do. It asked the question "What are you doing?" and gave the user 140 characters to share their status with anyone who cared to read it (pretty much like blogging, well micro-blogging).
Twitter user numbers shot through the virtual roof and are currently creating over 50 million updates per day. That's a lot of noise!
So now, back to Facebook.
They saw the power of the status update and have evolved it quite far from what it was. Logging into Facebook today, you would have noticed that the big text box top and centre asking you "What's on your mind?". There's no more third person "is". It's a free-text box that allows you to share anything you want, text, links, videos, and photos. And it's working well for them. Last reports were that Facebook users are creating over 70 million status updates per day. SEVENTY MILLION! The era of the status update has been born. Celebs, over-sharers and virtual brand personas rejoiced.
The new kids on the block - Foursquare, Google Latitude and Gowalla.
In much the same way Twitter began, location-sharing services have started to gain early levels of traction. These services exist to share with your followers, friends and/or family, where you are at this current point in time. So instead of just "Scott is writing an article" it now has more context "Scott is writing an article at the QuirkStation" with "the QuirkStation" being automatically added to the status.
As more and more smartphones are becoming location aware, these services are becoming more relevant and easy to use. Updating your status on Twitter, you're now able to automatically stamp your location into the meta data of your tweet. The era of location-aware status updates is currently being born. Over-sharers are over the moon.
The momentum of this era has received a massive boost with the fairly recent announcement by Facebook of their latest service "Facebook Places". Currently only available on iPhone in the USA, this tool is well positioned to bring location services into the mainstream spotlight.
Location-aware status updates bring huge amount of opportunities to brands, especially those with physical retail outlets. All of a sudden there's an extra layer of data between consumer and retail store. Foursquare calls it the "Check-in". I might be writing the article at my local coffee shop and share with my followers what I’m up to. With a location stamped onto my status update, the coffee shop knows I was there. They're able to start gathering insight - they know what time I was there and what I was up to. They're also able to offer me incentives for being there (a free cup of coffee perhaps?). Take the coffee mega-chain, Starbucks. They used Foursquare (to fairly decent effect) to incentivise people to check-in to their stores, rewarding those top "check-in'ers" with a discount on a new product.
It's certainly early days for the location-aware status update, but taking a look at how quickly the Web has evolved from a text-based, more academic experience to an interactive consumer publishing platform where millions of public status updates are made every day, the era is nigh. Coupled with the massive growth in smarter, location-aware mobile phones - it's pretty much an inevitability.
The question is, though, where is the over-share line? Is telling the world where you are not one step beyond that line? The same question was asked when status updates first hit the scene and look at those numbers. As I said, it's an inevitability.
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Nice article Scotty! Although I would be pretty wary about who gets to know where I am. (friends, businesses, wives/girlfriends, The Godfather etc)
Wither regard to the social over-share line...welll let me just say that this is probaly as infinite as our human intelligence...which is not that great judging by the stuff that some people share. The only people that draw the share lines are people you work for, annoyed social circles..or people who control your access to the internet (ie. China)...and even these folk can be circumvented.
There is no "over-share line" in my view (there is always an audience for little bit more social info)...although sometimes I personally wish their was.
Posted by Smallz on 2010/09/08