I always enjoy conversation with smart people. So when Jerry Michalski say he will be in Singapore, I grab the chance to have dinner with him. It become even more fun Andreas Weigend join us later. (Cory Ondrejka was also in town but he couldnt make it for dinner tonight). Together with some locals, Ming Yeow, Vivek Singh, Shaun Lee, dinner was a blast.
Topics went from US politics to local politics, from US to China and, from technology to business, crazy to fantastic ideas. So many ideas to blog about, so little time.
Anyway, let me share one portion. Shaun asked us what we think of Social Network and I replied with this idea.
The problem of Social Network is not the lack of it but there are so many to join. Each of them have its specific functions (or none at all) yet nothing do exactly what we need. So what would really be nice is if someone could create a Social Network that is just a platform but have open APIs that allows to plugin and expand the capability.
You want to build a social network for vacation, or you think you can do better than Linkedin, why build a whole platform and getting all the users to sign up again? Do that ontop of a common Social Network platform.
Beside able to create multiples social network and customize functionality, the open platform could allows plenty of innovation. For example, a email spam-filter based on how many degrees the sender is from you; or a addressbook that updates itself via the common Social Network platform.
This common Social Network platform is waiting to be build. The question is who is going to do it. While all agrees that it is probably easier for one of the existing Social Network (friendster, orkut, linkedin etc) to open up than for someone starting from scratch, Jerry added “they probably wont open up since they put too much value on the database”.
Crazy idea waiting for someone to do it :-)
This Business Idea is release under the condition “No need for permission nor do I ask for anything in return”. Good luck!
