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06 Jan, 2010 – 15 comments
free idea: social time machine
At every demarcation of time, we look back. We sift through our memories for those bookmarks… for those vibrant moments, and we blur the rest into our periphery.
Now with so much of our social interaction tied to digital means – why aren’t we collecting our actions for posterity in a more accessible form? Why can’t I look back ten years and see the sites I visited, friends I accepted, content I created, and content I shared? Why can’t I look back to see the seeds of a new friendship or the first movements within a new social networking site?
You could start by simply capturing profile data, connections, and content per social platform at a daily or weekly interval. This would give you a pretty full picture of your online social life over time. I’d hire a fellow like Nicholas Felton to design the data display.
And I’d charge for this service. How’s $99/year to start?
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I love that idea!
Two key points in my opinion : data and mood. I want to have figures about my past online social life, but I also want to feel what I was feeling at that time.
I think the term for this is “Life logging”.
And to capture everything besides social media data, check out http://daytum.com/
Johannes,
I think life logging is probably the closest example of what I’m thinking. I love daytum, but it doesn’t allow me the opportunity to look back and say, Nov. 1, 2003, what did I do that day? What was I interested in? Or.. when did I meet you on the internet? When did we first start exchanging conversation and what has that looked like since?
We’ll be doing something along these lines in the coming months – stay tuned!
Antje
Story of My Life
http://www.storyofmylife.com
@Bud: So you’re looking for “social life logging” then?
Btw. have you seen this book about “life logging” (without the social)? hhttp://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-E-Memory-Revolution-Everything/dp/0525951342/
isn’t that what b*logs* are for?
This form of logging could tell us more about ourselves and provide powerful data to online companies that could make use of it.
Bud:
Here’s my attempt to propagate and amplify your idea for the genealogy & family history community:
http://blog.genlighten.com/2010/01/10/genealogy-startup-idea-preserve-and-curate-my-social-media-for-future-generations/
Bud:
I was followed on Twitter today by a startup named Eternos (http://beta.eternos.com) that looks to be trying to implement a lot of what you suggested in your post.
Hello, I’m with eternos.com
We’ve been working on this for sometime now (longer than I care to admit). We currently log your Twitter stream, Facebook feed, Gmail, Picasa content, blogs and RSS feeds.
This data is set to a timeline scrollable by your age, day, month, and year. We do offer a search, unfortunately we can’t index encrypted emails without compromising security, so no email search (for the time being).
For those that aren’t comfortable with social networks, we offer direct file upload and a video journal.
We’re definitely in Beta*. I look forward to your feedback, Mr. Richardson’s has incredibly helpful.
*Security is solid, your connection is encrypted and your data is encrypted on our servers; we are tested daily by McAfee Secure.
Regards,
Eric
eternos.com
http://www.rememble.com
Close. Something to build on?
Take a look at http://timehop.com/.
I really enjoy looking at what happened a year ago.