Skye's Blog of Doom

A few nights ago I was listening to the CBC Radio podcast "The Best of Ideas" series on the life of Karl Polanyi, the author of The Great Transformation. I wasn't familiar with the book but it has a very interesting perspective on the dissonance of the market economy and society. I won't go into detail about the theory (go get the podcast yourself) but it got me thinking about society and the Internet, and the rise of social networking (Friendster, MySpace, etc), RSS aggregators, sites like eBay and craigslist, flickr, and the hundreds of accounts the average Netizen has on all the large and small websites they visit. I suddenly realized there was a whole new kind of service that could be implemented in the brave new Web 2.0 world, one that seemed too simple to be true. I've been looking around and I don't see anything quite like what I've got in mind; exciting, but it's still early going.

I'm working my way through the Mashable blog and Wikipedia's list of Social Networking Sites for starters. Another thing to consider is the recent Friendster Patent # 7069308 on social networking. It seems like the patent is way too broad but who knows? Anyway, I'll let Rupert Murdoch's lawyers battle it out for me, I doubt I'll be targeted even if it takes off.

Anyway, stay tuned; it shouldn't take too long once we're settled down in Vancouver to get a proof of concept site up and running. Can't say much more that that for now. I think this idea might even be NDA and patent worthy!