Please welcome our first guest blogger, Bud Caddell. Bud is a Strategist at the New York based digital think-tank, UnderCurrent. Bud will be popping in to the Loopt blog every now and then to share his musings with us. Bud will also be joining our CEO and founder, Sam Altman, on a panel at SXSW on March 17. Stay tuned for more details.
Live Action Roleplayers, or LARPERS.
Once upon a time, the internet was supposed to be a great homogenizer. With common information, in common places, we were all supposed to become one mass audience – ripe for the picking.
But the same was said for television, and radio before it (and someone promised me a jet-pack).
When will we learn?
It's true that the internet's promise is one of connection: whatever our appetite, we can find others like us offering the means to satiate that hunger. As human beings, we're accustomed to defining our peer groups through exclusion as well as inclusion; so we use our tastes and fan preferences in these mediated spaces to make strong connections among the like minded. Generally, the more obscure the area of interest, the closer we feel to our fellow fans. Because of this, we find the most emotionally positive response from organizing around our niche tastes (no one understands a Trekkie like another Trekkie). The internet didn't invent fandom, it's just helping fan communities be more organized and empowered than ever before.
When you're a fan and you feel connected to something larger than yourself, you invest your time and attention in exchange for social currency. You offer up participation in the hopes of finding and growing those special connections. The more you study fan communities the more you see that these groups are demonstrating complex behaviors even before technology rushes to keep up. Case in point, skateboarders were exchanging videos of themselves long before YouTube or Break (even before Al Gore invented the internet). But when YouTube came along, they embraced the technology wholeheartedly. The behavior existed long before technology made it easier and more addictive.
So with each new jump in technology, I'm less interested in mass application and more interested in how our LARPERS in the woods will use it (or fan communities in general). Mapping their behaviors to emerging technologies can be a great exercise in considering what's next. And now we find ourselves with a sophisticated device that fits in the palm of our hand and enables us to connect the web with our physical location in the world. If you consider the power of tightly connected groups and their obsessions, there's no limit on what you can offer.
Take for example Free Runners. Free Runners use a combination of acrobatics and gymnastics to traverse cityscapes in feats of absolute aerial and terrestrial insanity. Free running takes place in large urban areas where obstacles are common. Even though Free Running stresses creativity more so than traditional parkour, Free Runners are incredibly disciplined; their artful movements require a good deal of strength and mental focus.
Like skateboarders before them, Free Runners love to upload videos of themselves doing what they do. You get to show off, share new moves, and generally blow peoples' minds. And like skateboarding, Free Running is quickly becoming the new cool sport to co-opt in commercials because it's relatively new and it's a global phenomenon (K-Swiss, Vodafone, Coca-Cola). And one more time, like skateboarding, merely using free running in your ad won't buy you credibility for long with that growing crowd. You have to stand for something more and provide entertainment, utility, or a service.
Luckily, we've got technology. You can already upload and geo-tag videos to YouTube. And mobile devices like my iPhone are great at playing YouTube videos and assessing my physical location in the world. So where's the Free Running app sponsored by Red Bull or Gatorade or Amp or Adidas that unlocks a Free Running world around me? As I stand in front of a park and hold my phone out in front of me, why can't I watch clips of my local free running friends? Why can't I have a friend video me right there with my phone to upload to YouTube and be instantly accessible? Why couldn't my video battle other videos from the same park in ongoing localized competitions? And why can't I (as someone who in reality has no ability to free run) just download the app and go crazy exploring my city and the fanatical people that live here?
It may sound like an obscure use of available tech, but go look at the video views on YouTube, look at the attention the sport is getting; its obscurity fueled mass interest. And then consider that this one specific use could be applied across the spectrum of other extreme communities: skateboarding, cycling, snowboarding, and graffiti.
There's so much that can be done with mobile and location based services; but who can you reach that will miss you when your gone?
I hope I at least get you to say, "hmmm."
Feedback