For at least five years, we’ve been working with the same operating logic in the consumer technology game. This is what it looks like:
There will be ratings and photos and a network of friends imported, borrowed, or stolen from one of the big social networks. There will be an emphasis on connections between people, things, and places. That is to say, the software you run on your phone will try to get you to help it understand what and who you care about out there in the world. Because all that stuff can be transmuted into valuable information for advertisers.
That paradigm has run its course. It’s not quite over yet, but I think we’re into the mobile social fin de siècle.
-Alexis Madrigal, “The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future”, The Atlantic.
As ennui builds and geolocal mobile apps get freakier (man, Highlight was the last straw), SoLoMo’s soil will be fertile for seeds of disruption. And to think, they didn’t even really have time to nail down a super-simple business model. Things are moving so quickly now!






