Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

Instant Posse

More musing on posses.  There are “posse dates” that are set up in advance.  There is “instant posse” formed within the same day, or even the same hour.  And I suppose there are “post hoc” posses where people meet in a bar or a meetup group and decide to form a posse for the future…

Hey, Dave Winer, perhaps we could implement this smart posse/instant posse idea on a blogging service platform.  Consider the following:  Each subscriber would get a blog, and the blog could be used for their evolving thoughts about whatever—which would be much more informative than even the richest responses to the Match.com questions.  We could start the blogging off by suggesting questions or creative writing exercises that folks might do to kick start their blogging.

We may need to modify the blogging software/services.  Actually, perhaps what we need is not an add-on to one blogging platform, but some systems of feeds and links that can be attached to anyone’s blog..

In any instance, people need to be able to easily deal readily with four aspects of the posse experience:

(1)Location: 

Zip code and neighborhood (for places like New York or Boston). Neighborhood should include neighborhood where I live, but also neighborhood where I am going to at a given time.  So I could signal, “I will be in Palo Alto on August 3 and would be available for a posse in the evening.”

(2) Time: 

Variables could include “I like weekend posses” or “I will be available tonight for posses between the hours of midnight and five AM.”  I could also allow for preferences as to how spontaneous or planned I like to be, such as “I am willing to consider instant posses with people I have already decided I’d like to be with—just send me a text message on my cell phone with our posse nickname, a posse time, and a meeting place, and any other information (e.g. dress to get wet).”  Or “I like to schedule my posse times—let me know a week or so in advance and I will be there.”

(3) Affinity: 

Theme descriptions and idea exchanges—which perhaps is accomplished by blogging plus some search capabilities.  Matching tools, including profile searches (“I’m looking for females and males who are up for street theater followed by dinner”), collaborative filtering (“people forming posses like yours also chose…”), and self selection (“I’m forming a posse around the following wild idea.  If you are interested, let me know.”).

(4) Posse management:

Permissions, time preferences, subject preferences.  Notification tools, for example, posses could be pre-formed—and then cell phone texting addresses exchanged, or simply cell phone numbers exchanged, so that at the appointed time a call could be made to assemble the posse.  Also, reminders could be semi-automatically generated a certain interval before the posse is to form.  Posses should probably be able to be merged, so that super-posses can be brought together.