Proto-cal

Here's an idea for a social networking application that I'll likely never get around to writing but which I'm jotting down here because I like the concept and this will be a useful reminder to me in future. I'm basing my criticisms of the genre on Friendster in particular since it's the only application of this ilk I've any experience of.

The problem I see with something like Friendster is that it's essentially voyeuristic in nature. It might encourage you to browse through your chain of friends, and provide tools for narrowing those to a subset with similar interests as your own, but it offers little beyond that. Of course you can send messages to other users, even to groups of friends, but that does little to counter the inherent passiveness that permeates the concept. I believe the missing piece of the puzzle is a means of encouraging people to get off the net and to go and interact with the real world. Friendster doesn't give it's users this push as far as I can tell.

What I think would be worthwhile is a combination of something like Friendster and a calendar application. The basics of Friendster would remain, but I would make the calendar at least as much of a focus as the list of friends, if not the primary focus. The purpose of the calendar is to encourage you (and everyone else) to organise events. The events you organise become visible to your direct friends and their chain of friends (within a small degree of separation). Similarly you can view events organised by others in your social circle. Each time you log in, you see what new events have been organised by your chain, in your area, as well as those that are due in the near future. By focusing on public events, rather than one-to-one messaging - it hopefully neatly sidesteps the problem of being co-opted into becoming a dating site. I do like the idea of something that encourages interaction in the real world - which is surely the point of such applications, and I can conceive of it being useful amongst a small circles of friend, for maintaining a shared public diary.

It's an idea that feels right to me. What do you think?