Max Gladwell

The distinction between the online and offline world is becoming less and less clear. Is the World Wide Web taking over the World? Or is it the other way around?

“If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” –Morpheus

The question boils down to this: are you online or offline? If you’re reading this, the answer is pretty obvious. What’s less clear is how and when you go offline. Are we ever technically offline? And by “we” we mean those who blog, Twitter, text, and use smart phones. Or have we entered a permanent online state that isn’t too far removed from the idea set forth in the Matrix movies? That’s the essence of this enquiry.

Since the Web 1.0 era, there has been talk of so-called convergence, which referred to the merging of the Net with television. More generally, it refers to the convergence of any two technologies. What we’re seeing now, though, is the convergence of technology with reality. Our reality is being digitized and our digital world is becoming reality. Welcome to the new and improved Matrix.

Ten years ago, the line between online and offline was clear. When you were at a computer that was connected to the Internet, you were online. When you shut down that computer or walked away from it, you were offline. We tend to think of the online-offline distinction in this way today, but it’s not that simple. Thanks to technologies such as smart phones, mobile broadband, public WiFi, GPS, online maps, Web 2.0, and so much related software, many of us have entered a permanent online state. If we’re browsing the Web on our iPhone or using some handy iPhone application, we don’t go offline just because we close the browser and put the phone in our pocket. If only it were that simple.

But we didn’t get to this point overnight. It’s been a steady evolution as each of these technologies developed alongside and in conjunction with one another. The following are several examples of how we’re mashing up the online and offline worlds, often rendering them indistinguishable from one another. In this Matrix, there’s no need to be hard wired with a dagger-like connection to the brain. Because you’re already connected.

Google Latitude & Sense Networks: The Matrix Infrastructure

We featured Google Latitude in our most recent newsletter with links to the coverage. This new service enables you to track friends (and be tracked) in the real world using your cell phone and Google Maps. It’s similar to BrightKite, which we’ve used since its private beta. We haven’t found Brightkite tremendously useful, though it’s nice to be able to text a restaurant or location and have it generate a Tweet about your location with a link to the map. Google Latitude goes much further by tracking you online in real time as you move about the real world. As with most online-offline mashups, it needs a video to really illustrate how it works:

There are all sorts of privacy settings with Latitude, not to mention privacy concerns. Nevertheless, just as Google gathers “anonymous” data about our comings and goings on the Web, it can now be done in the real world, and that data can be applied in very similar ways.

Another company that exists specifically to crunch, analyze, and utilize this type of data is Sense Networks. The company was recently featured in an excellent Business Week article: Mapping a New, Mobile Internet.

To understand what Sense is doing, it’s easiest to think about—what else?—Google. The search engine has dissected the behavior of Web surfers, including which sites they visit and which they link to. With this knowledge, Google proceeded to develop a map of the influence and relevance of billions of Web sites. It’s the heart of its search and advertising business.

The effort under way now, at Sense and other companies, is aimed at creating a similar map of the physical world. Think of each bar, restaurant, arena, or street corner as a Web page. Each person who goes there has, in a sense, “voted” for the location.

It’s no surprise, then, that “some companies are rewriting their business plans based on the possibilities for location-based services,” as the article notes. One can only assume that entirely new business plans are being written as we type. When traffic and other types of behavioral data can be applied to the real world in the same way it’s applied to the online world and when these two worlds are merged, it’s going to create an entirely new set of business models and professions. Instead of SEO and SMO we might have RWO (Real World Optimization), which will optimize traffic to your physical location. Just as an ad network can serve us an ad on a website based on where we are and where we’ve been, we’ll become accustomed to getting the same thing on our mobile devices based on our history of navigating both the real and online world (which are now one and the same). By and large, it will be a good thing because it will create efficiencies. We’ll get what we want, when we want it, at the best price, no matter where we are.

It’s no wonder Second Life is failing. The First Life is virtual enough on its own.

Meetup: The Networking Matrix

The Meetup online community exists exclusively for the purpose of getting people together in the offline world. The following video details why and how this works, and we’ve also written about it in reference to Clay Shirky’s TED presentation.

If we think of the real world as a parallel universe to the online world, where brick-and-mortar locations match up with their respective web presences and our homes (or the rooms in our homes) correspond to our various online profiles, Meetup enables us to export a group of people from the online world to the real world. The analogy also works for downloading or uploading, though it’s not clear which is actually happening. Indeed, just as we might export a database file from one program to another or download it from the Web to our hard drive, Meetup groups are being transferred from the digital Internet to the analog Internet. Yes, there are multiple analogies at work here, and they carry forward into the other examples.

According to the video, “Meetup.com is about using the Web to bring people together offline.” In a vacuum, the distinction is clear: from the Web to the real world. Looking at where we’re now headed, though, that line is disappearing.

Zumbox: The Mail Matrix

We wrote about Zumbox in December when it quietly entered its public beta. The official announcement followed in February, and since about that time we’ve been consulting for the company (disclosure). The comments on our original post captured one of the key challenges for this all-digital postal mail system. Those comments amounted to, “Huh?”

It appears that the Zumbox real world/online world mashup is not the easiest concept around which to wrap one’s head. There’s no video to illustrate the service (though we’re told there will be one in the near future), so we’ll recap in the context of the New and Improved Matrix.

Zumbox created an online mailbox (a Zumbox) for every street address in the U.S., more than 150 million in all. CNET pointed out that it’s like having an e-mail inbox for your house. That’s one way of looking at it, though the comparison to e-mail can tend to confuse. The Zumbox system or platform exists exclusively online, but it’s a mirror image of the actual world. As far as the United States Postal Service (USPS) is concerned, it’s a parallel universe. And because it syncs up with the real world so well, Zumbox enables real world mail flow–paper mail being printed and shipped from one street address to another–to flow online without the paper. And since it’s the real world online, the mail sender doesn’t have to make any adjustments in terms of addressing. The mail that companies send each day is still sent to the same street addresses, only it remains in its native format (digital), and it gets delivered to a Zumbox as opposed to a mailbox.

Once you understand the mechanics of Zumbox, it’s then possible to imagine how it can be applied beyond the obvious. By and large, our street addresses are public info. If you’re not explicitly listed in the White Pages, mail can still be sent to “Resident”. You may even receive mail addressed to former residents, and we’re all familiar with the hand-delivered menus from local restaurants. Even if it’s not clear that you live there, someone does, and that opens you up to all sorts of mail. Indeed, if someone sends mail to your address, the USPS is bound by law to deliver it. You have no say in the matter. So while Zumbox represents a paradigm shift in how mail is sent, the true value for people is in how mail is received. There’s an element of control that doesn’t  exist with either the USPS or e-mail.

And by opening this new online communications channel, where digital information can be sent from street address to street address (one-to-one or one-to-many), Zumbox has opened a new universe of possibilities. In large apartment buildings, a resident can send a notice to the entire building in seconds. Schools can send mail to an entire district. Restaurants, bars, yoga studios, markets, accountants, Apple stores, and theaters can send promotions to an entire radius. Politicians can send information to an entire constituency. And vice versa. You can send a digital letter with an embedded video to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. You can block that politician or bar, never to receive mail from them again. Plus, your mail is presorted. You won’t have to sift through “special offers” to find important mail.

Many have complained (theoretically) that Zumbox is just another way to send spam or junk mail. On the contrary, it’s the first and only way to control it. Will you get an unsolicited offer that you don’t want via Zumbox? Yes. But you already get them every day via e-mail and USPS with little or no ability to stop it. So it’s like the argument that plug-in electric cars still produce emissions in lieu of the fact that the power largely comes from coal and natural gas. This is true, but it’s such a dramatic improvement over burning gasoline and diesel because electricity is so much more efficient and we can more easily transition those sources to clean renewables. Likewise, Zumbox creates efficiencies not just through digital delivery but in how we’re able to control and refine the mail flow. It decentralizes the power and gives us all more control.

Skout: The Dating Matrix

In terms of the chasmal disconnect between the online and offline world, you’d be hard pressed to find one as vast as dating. In the offline world, it happens in bars and other public places, where we engage in rituals as old as mankind itself. In the online world, it’s something akin to online shopping. A company called Skout has now created the Matrix of dating.

Skout OUT is a new product that embeds online dating in actual bars. “The project was dubbed Skout OUT and essentially wants to blurs the line between online dating in the virtual and the real world by installing an interactive touch screen at 10,000 social venues (clubs, bars, etc.) all over the U.S. – starting Q2 2009 – that should help singles connect with other singles around them.”

According to founder and CEO Christian Wiklund, “We are connecting the virtual online dating world with the real world. Skout OUT enables singles at clubs to ‘see’ not only available singles at their location, but also singles in other nearby venues as well as Skout mobile phone users.”

Twitter: The Messaging Matrix

By enabling Twitter updates from your mobile phone via SMS, Twitter became a de facto pioneer in online-offline mashups. It’s built into the Twitter DNA, and we’ve been leveraging it ever since. When we’re at an event or attending a panel discussion and there’s a live Twitter feed displayed on a screen with a designated hashtag, the real and online worlds are merging. The live and online audiences are interacting based on what is being discussed.

As previously mentioned, we use Brightkite to send Twitter updates about our precise whereabouts in the real world, which is powered by Google Maps. More recently, there has been speculation about location-based Twitter features.

According to TechCrunch, Twitter CEO Evan Williams described the following in a recent interview: “When asked about possible future features for Twitter, he reportedly said that one of the things being considered is an extension that lets people know what’s happening in their immediate vicinity. That would basically mean that Twitter could actively ping users about local events that are going on in their neighborhood, in real-time, based on the location they’ve indicated. As an example, Williams says users could be alerted to the fact a fire is burning a few streets away from where Twitter knows (or thinks) they are.”

With Twitter’s open API and mobile application platforms like the iPhone, there’s no limit to the ways in which the 140-character messaging platform can be integrated with the real world and vice versa.

Given all of the above, what other types of Matrix mashups might we see? And what others have we missed? Feel free to speculate in the comments.

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