When I picked up my 91 year-old grandfather last night from his apartment to bring him back to our house for Thanksgiving dinner, he had a page clipped from the NYTimes magazine in hand.
“It’s about martinis. They don’t use vermouth anymore! I want your dad to read it.”
My grandfather really likes martinis. In fact, most memories I have of martinis involve some combination of my dad and grandfather either preparing, drinking, or talking about starting on their “second half.” I wasn’t surprised that he had taken the time grab this article with my dad in mind.
When we got back to our house, Gramps gave the article to my dad telling him to read it when he got the chance. My dad said thanks, looked it over, and then started preparing martinis.
When I came downstairs this morning, the martini article was sitting on the kitchen counter.
I was suddenly struck by something very poignant. If I had found an article about martinis, it probably would have been in the online version of the NYTimes magazine (in fact, that article is here). I would have emailed it to my dad, not clipped it out.
But my grandfather, despite a successful mechanical engineering career and constant tinkering with electronics for his old cars, has no interest in the world of computers and the internet. When he reads an article, it’s in the paper version of the paper. We he wants to share something, it’s related to a topic he really cares about. And the person he shares it with is someone he knows will get a kick out of it.
Sharing, however, requires tearing out, driving over, and presenting the article to the recipent, with a verbal description of why the article is being shared: “You should read this because it’s a about martinis. They don’t use vermouth!”
This morning, the article was already buried under an emptied bowl of Goldfish, a pair of gloves, and a wooden spoon. It was just like an email that gets pushed further and further down in your inbox, gradually forgotten after the momentary thrill of entertainment.
Even though the mediums are changing, sharing is still the same deep down. It’s just about getting the good stuff to the right people and sharing they joy.
Combined with the ability to share with individual people, Google+’s introduction of “circles” makes fine-grain sharing possible for every conceivable piece of media you could ever want to share with anyone.
But choosing who to share with takes a lot of work. First, you’ve got to decide “who cares?” Then, if you haven’t already shared with everyone, you have to scroll and click through lots of menus to select the cirlces/people to share with. It’s kind of a pain.
The anecdote
I was at a friend’s birthday party this weekend and took this photo:
It’s a pretty silly photo, and while I had a clear idea of who would also think it’s silly, this group of people wasn’t encapsulated in single Google+ circle. It would have been an annoying amount of work to momentarily extricate myself from the party and choose each person/circle to share with. Furthermore, in my continued attempt to avoid causing other people FOMS (Fear of Missing Something), the last thing I wanted to do was share the photo with “All Circles.”
The growing utility of “where”
Google has been working hard to integrate their Maps, Latitude and Places applications. Not only can you use Google Maps to “check-in” to a venue on Google Places with Google Latitude (THAT sounds confusing!), you can also get reminders to check-in when you’re at specific locations, or even be checked-in automatically.
(Google Maps, Google Places and Google Latitude are naturally intertwined since they’re all based on location. If you’re not familiar with the differences between them, here’s the basic gist:
- Google Maps shows you where stuff is and how to get there.
- Google Places is a directory of that stuff—businesses, restaurants, stores, etc.—with reviews, ratings and photos.
- Google Latitude lets you privately track your own location, share it with friends, and check-in to places.)
One solution: Their powers combined
Imagine this: when you show up at the bar for this birthday party, Google Latitude automatically checks you in (via the device in your pocket). Your friends show up, and they’re also automatically checked in. No one’s check-ins are shared with anyone else; they’re kept private and just recorded in your personal location history.
A little while later you take a photo. Your device asks if you want to share the photo with the friends who are also checked in to the bar with you. Simple, easy, quick and relevant.
Relevance through proximity
Consider the assumption being made here: when you’re checked in somewhere at the same time as your friends, you’re probably hanging out with them. The photos taken are probably relevant to what you’re doing together, so why not just share them on the fly?
This isn’t a new idea; in fact, it’s very similar to what Color is trying to do. However, Color’s approach is to make every photo taken with the app public to whoever else was there with you. This is fine since it’s known from the start that everyone can see everything, but it’s not appropriate for private events.
One issue with Facebook that Google+ strives to solve is that not all “friends” are created equal. In some cases, friending someone on Facebook is nothing more than a mutual acknowledgement of existence on Planet Earth. You’re not actually planning to hang out, and you might never see each other again. But maybe it was fun talking that one time at that party at that guy’s place, and you friended each other on Facebook to “keep in touch.” (Don’t question this logic; it happens all the time, and no one knows why.)
Google+ brings the task of explicitly organizing your friends into groups to the forefront. Yet even this is an inexact representation of real-world situations, proving to be even less useful with in-the-moment photo-sharing. What if everyone in your “Best Friends” circle wasn’t there when the photo was taken? Do you still share with that circle? Is it worth making that last person feel bad that they weren’t there? I still try to avoid FOMS, but Facebook proves that most people LOVE bragging and showing the great time you didn’t have with them.
Better use of location might help solve these problems.
Disposable cameras at weddings
Being prompted with a list of nearby “friends” (in both time and space) can be dangerous. What if you weren’t supposed to know someone was there? Google actually removed a feature that would automatically notify you when friends were nearby for this very reason.
There are lots of creative ways around this, one of which is to check into an event at a location (Gowalla lets you do this, Foursquare less explicitly so). Maybe everyone gets an invitation, and if they accept and check-in, they’re automatically added to a a guest list that pops up when you take a photo. That way, if you don’t accept the invitation, you’re not on the list, even if you’re at the venue at the same time.
It’s similar to being at a wedding with disposable cameras everywhere. Everyone shares the cameras to take photos, and then everything gets developed and shared with everyone who was there.
Gowalla and Foursquare
As mentioned, Gowalla already lets you create and check into events. From a product standpoint, Gowalla is much more focused on letting you remember and collect your experiences. They’ve fully embraced the “passport” design metaphor, and let you collect stamps for venues, states, countries etc. If you use it consistently, you’re creating a timeline of what you’ve done and where you’ve gone.
Foursquare, on the other hand, is more about sharing where you are with friends. It’s designed to maximize FOMS.
Neither of these applications offers automatic check-ins or fine-grain sharing capabilities. That’s where Google Latitude stands out, even though it feels much more utilitarian right now.
Tend towards simplicity
My hope is that, as a whole, these location technologies tend towards smart, automated ways of sharing that minimize privacy concerns and maximize relevancy. I don’t like choosing from lists or organizing my friends. I want to take lots of photos and know that it’s easy to share the images with the people that matter the most, without anyone worrying about the “wrong” people seeing them.
Focusing on location is one solution, but it will be exciting to see what else the community comes up with to tackle this complex problem.
