In our omni connected era, people seem to have no qualms in telling us what they are doing and where they are. But what I’m starting to see in digital forums is people starting to tell us where they’ll be, what they are going to do, and what they intend to buy. Event organising forums, pinterest pages, wish lists, I’ll be here this Friday style tweets…. But the one that really sticks out as a massive opportunity for me is an on-line an open diary. Yes, it would require radical transparency. Yes it sounds kinda crazy and risky, but maybe fully public diaries can give back some control to the user by being removing the middle man social media marketer. A kind of open source arbitrage to fight back against the data industrial complex. Such a radical flip could give people back their power and allow self monetization. Most users of social media are currently being sold by stealth, and sold with a large amount of guess work. Why not take it to the next level and go open source on our future locations. With an open source diary we could sell the benefits of sharing our intended activities and let traders compete for our patronage and attention.
This is a startup idea I’ve got on my radar. Would you sign up to it?