Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Social Good and Web 2.0

A new ride sharing service to and from New York City airports is attracting some attention for its online platform, hitchsters. I remember a couple of similar efforts have been floated the last couple of year for commuting and national ride-sharing; commuterlink and ridester. These types of Internet services, though plausible, seem to never quite get off the ground. While the community and social good from these services are clear, overall these websites never attain any critical mass and are generally pretty localized.

This seems so odd.

Web users are willing to date online, manage their banking, order groceries and books and intimate apparel, even rent movies and pay bills. Yet, somehow, we can’t quite turn the corner for sharing a ride with another person when the arrangement is facilitated online. If we are unable to build an online connection to share a vehicle, it seems fair to question whether we can build anything else more structured, impacting or longer lasting. This challenge strikes at the very root of those that see Web 2.0 as a method of fostering new communities and modes of discourse.

Amongst the positive examples cited above, the common thread seems to be connecting with a base physical experience or need. Think about how this impacts cultural institutions. In order to build powerful collaboration and community tools, it is first necessary to identify the interactions and activities that already exist and would best port to an online medium. Image tagging or social networking, while amazingly powerful activities online, do not carry a natural compliment in most peoples’ visit experience to cultural institutions.

I applaud reinvigorated effort to bring offline collaboration and social good to the web, but it remains to be seen if these can truly be successful. The execution is the key here. For the user, the benefit must be clear and the payoff immediate. As the O’Reilly Radar recently pointed out, “one of the secrets of success in Web 2.0 is to harness self-interest, not volunteerism, in a natural "architecture of participation." This will hold doubly true for commercial and cultural sites that seek to build community not only online, but offline as well.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

CommuterLink is actually alive and doing quite well!! And our services are still free. We provide free online carpool & vanpool formation assistance, comprehensive door-to-door transit itineraries, and emergency ride home program for car and vanpoolers, and we even have grant programs for businesses for employer commuter benefit programs. I encourage businesses and all commuters to log onto our website www.commuterlink.com and see for themselves it's free, there is no obligation, and you can save money especially as gas prices continue to increase.

Jake said...

Ridester is alive and doing well too! We just formed a partnership to offer all of our members FREE roadside assistance on any trips shared via our service. Ridester.com is the best way to find or offer rides between cities.

Admin said...

Yes, thank you all for your comments. I did not mean to suggest the services were not functional or viable, just that they have never balooned into a national phenonmenon as many online/offline services have.

And there really isn't any reason they should not gain greater adoption. As you both point out, in this age of environmental concern and rising fuel costs, these services have amazing potential.

Yet, while the potential to serve peoples' needs and promote the public good are high, somehow the online platform isn't delivering as well as it has for other commercial purposes. The long-term remains to be seen, but I am advocating a renewed examination of how sharing and social good are promoted on the web. Perhaps the models of commercial entities are not viable.

Thanks for reading and keep up the good work.

Unknown said...

Hey Chris -- I loved the post, and was wondering if you had an email address I could reach you at. I'm at jason@hitchsters.com -- would love to respond a bit more at length about your post, and listen to any ideas you might have for improving our site!

- Jason Lin (VP of Strategy for Hitchsters.com)

BuyMyStuffPlease said...

There's other great rideshare websites. My favorite is GishiGo ( www.GishiGo.com ). It has many great features inherent to it's design. Inclues ability (like some of these other's) to "filter" people on those free/anonymous Social Networks. Really hate the BS from an anonymous stranger who wants this and that ... When they refuse to invest 99cents and exchange identity, that's a good filter. So I do both, GishiGo and the social networks like Craigslist and MySpace, etc.

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