August 13, 2008:

outside.in, part of the bevy of emerging geo services (i.e. we know geo is big, but aren't sure what to do with it), surfaces "news" based on your current location. You can see what's going on within 1000 feet of you, in your neighborhood, or in your city. So far so good, but it turns out that most of what's going on right around me is less relevant than a lot of what is happening elsewhere (e.g. I don't care that a random person is telling another random person via twitter that they are at my local pizza joint).

This is all about the fact that while location is a very salient factor in my experience right now, it is much less important when compared with my social network. In other words, I (generally) care more what my wife is doing even if she's halfway around the world from me than what a stranger is doing at the bus stop across the street (unless what they're doing is particularly interesting ;)

This leads me to a thought: the farther away an information source is from me in relevance, the more likely I want that information in aggregate. So, I may not care that random person A is at Goat Hill Pizza, but knowing that 60 people think Goat Hill has great garlic bread has some value. There's a diagram in there somewhere, but no time to draw right now.