A couple of weeks ago, I’d mentioned to my wife, Heather, that it’d be nice if there were “one stop shopping” for all of the social networking sites. It seemed ridiculous to me that you have to log in to each and every social networking site that you belong to. Heather thought it was a great idea, so I did a little research to find out if such a service already exists. As you’d expect, I found several startups that are taking a shot at the problem.
A few days later, one of my co-workers, Chauncey, at my current contract gig told me about his great idea; a portal site to provide a single place to access all of your social networking sites. Cool! This guy is a young, hot-shot coder who has no business being in cube farm and he’s thinking about the same sorts of things I’ve been thinking about! Anyway, I told him about my discussion with my wife and about the things I found, but unfortunately, that seemed to temper his enthusiasm a little (that’s not what was intended).
Along the way, I’d been playing around with some of the Twitter social networking data (everything is XML) and came across something that I thought would be very cool (as yet undisclosed idea inserted here). A couple of days later, I discussed the idea with Chauncey; he thought it was a great idea as well. Now, we’re both working on simple prototype to decide if we’re on to something worthwhile. It’s funny how those things work out.
This morning, Heather gave me a “heads up” about an article on ColoradoStartups that discusses vertical social networks and social network aggregators. It’s a great article and validates many of the things I’d observed. Even though I’m a bit late to the game, it’s nice to get some validation that my thinking is going in the right direction. Regardless, I think David Cohen provided plenty of ideas (or clues for ideas) for the next round of TechStars applicants (of course you'll have to execute as well).
I have no business spending my time outside of Georneys (because I have no time), but I just couldn’t resist this latest little foray, and now I have a partner in crime.
