I saw Jules Hughan tweet this video earlier this morning and marked it to watch. I’ve done that, and it’s a great little 3 minute clip. It’s of Path founder and CEO David Morin.
The video was great, because Dave talks broadly about where he sees social technology and the internet going. He talks about how we’re moving on from the PC era into a place where the mobile is the most used and valuable tool in a persons armament every day, and that it informs different behaviors not possible on a PC. Many of those behaviors are related to keeping in touch with a smaller group of important friends and family.
Path, he says, is built for the favorites list from your contacts. Having a simple tool available, like your mobile phone, makes it much easier to keep in touch with those that are closest to you – family and close friends. I wrote about my own experiences with Path a little while ago and I’m still finding it excellent today.
I think we’ll see this same progression in enterprise technology. At the moment, many companies are coming to terms with the social graph that exists within them for the first time. Morin says that Facebook has now pretty much mapped the social graph for everyone, which would seem to be true. Once that’s complete, he says, it creates space for more intimate uses of technology to remain relevant in each others lives; not just connected.
In an organisational sense, we see this with friends that remain close after working together or colleagues continuing to share in a community of practice once they leave a particular workplace. We’re not there yet, but it’s important that we continue investing in building out the social graph within organisations because it will ultimately allow for more intimate relationships to flourish inside them.
The Squiggly Line 