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February 12, 2006
Flying social networks
Here's an idea I came up with at 36000 feet over Canada - North of Winnipeg. Something for Ross perhaps.
A transatlantic flight from Europe to the West Coast takes around 10 hours. 10 hours where a community has been dynamically formed to sit in a metal tube and spend that time in various phases of sleep, eating, watching movies and perhaps even working. Add to this dynamic community a readily available WiFi connection (we'll see that on more flights soon) and you have potential - potential for an in-flight Wiki.
Set up a flight-specific Wiki - clean slate - at the start of the flight. Give everyone on board free WiFi access to the Wiki (I saw enough laptops and other devices on my flight) and see what happens.
- Ride sharing from the airport to downtown
- Tips from returning residents for vistors ("eat there", "don't go there")
- In-flight personal home-pages ("I'm in Seat 54B and looking for some fun tonight")
After the flight, the airlines could then just add the Wiki to a growing farm of flight-Wikis - to form a kind of expanding knowledge base.
In-flight entertainment 2.0.
Posted by Matthew at February 12, 2006 10:33 PM
Comments
Matthew, can you really imagine 300-odd people clacking away on laptops for 10 hours, with no escape??? I like flying exactly because I'm out of touch with everyone and everything. Am I getting old? ;-)
Posted by: Martin Little at February 13, 2006 01:54 AM
Someone has a business idea for this already--airplane dating (http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2594).
Posted by: Marsh at February 13, 2006 08:03 PM
One more: http://www.lifehacker.com/software/social-networking/airplane-social-networking-airtroductions-154642.php
Posted by: Frank Koehntopp at February 15, 2006 11:39 AM