GetGlue – Get It

GetGlue is a check-in based social network that, much like Foursquare, rewards users for signing in to a variety of activities.

Whether it’s listening to your favourite band, watching a TV show or button mashing, you can pick up ‘stickers’ for checking-in and become a respected member of the community be providing reviews or advice to other users. Naturally there are also iPhone and Android apps to allow you to check in on the move.

My only gripe about GetGlue is that there is no tactile recognition when you are selecting options or checking-in, something that I’m sure will be looked at in time.

What’s more, GetGlue has a recommendation engine to give you new things to listen, hear and play.

Unlike Foursquare, there are a far greater range of unique ‘stickers’ to earn for TV shows and a few for bands too.

What I really like about GetGlue is that it is genuinely quite fun and can become seriously addictive, two key ingredients in growing a social network userbase.

GetGlue hasn’t yet started to take off in the UK, but given the growth on social media pervasiveness, it is only a matter of time before this social check-in service gets the wider attention it deserves.

As ever, you can follow me at getglue.com/geetarchurchy, as if you couldn’t guess :-)

Facebook Whitewalling

Facebook Whitewalling is an emerging teen technique to control Facebook privacy: it is the act of logging into Facebook, but deactivating your account each time you logout, then re-activating it when you login, and then deactivating it again when you logout, and so on.

This is a trend that Danah Boyd has recently identified.

The idea is that, without an account on Facebook, you can’t be tagged in any images or other users status updates or check-ins that you don’t want to be.

This means that you control what presence you have on the social network.

It is, actually, a pretty ingenious way of putting power back into the hands of the individual users. What’s disappointing of course, is that Facebook doesn’t have an explicit “don’t tag me!” function already built in. Maybe this new user behaviour will see this shift.

Interestingly, Drew Benvie is experimenting with this and recently wrote about it here. I’m really intrigued and will be watching keenly to see what he makes of his extremely interesting process.

Team Dynamics

I have often thought team, as a word, is more symbolic than tangible.

It is one of those that is used in unnecessary phrases, a word that becomes a cliche.

However, no matter how big or small your team, creating an atmosphere that exacerbates ‘team’ as a reality, rather than a concept, is key.

The Internet has bred a group of people who believe in team and pluralism, not ‘i’ll and individualism. These are the people developing new technologies and concepts that will change our perceptions and actuality.

Those who seek to divide and put in place artificially constrained structures do nothing but inhibit growth and evolution of culture, a move designed to limit and control what they do not want to understand.

It is understandable.

But, it is behind the collaborative times we find ourselves in.

People, as they do, will find their way. A team will select, analyse and work through it’s way, regardless of barrier.

I do not believe in restrictions or constraints, just an unwillingness to learn, be educated and adapt according to what loss ahead. It can be changed, but it takes more than cheerleaders to alter the result of an obvious game.