http://www.flickr.com/photos/hyku/
Social networks for grand challenges
or “Open Social has about 500 million users, Facebook has
around 150 million letʼs take them for a spin and see what
they can do for the world”
Chris Thorpe
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/
“How can we use this technology to
solve real-world problems?”
“Thereʼs been a lot of focus on silly consumer
applications, like throwing sheep”
>Tim OʼReilly
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
Don’t think Tim is asking for apps which cure cancer, or fix economies, we’d all just like to
see this massive user base for good

FTSE↓ + Social + APIs ?= WIN
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
so why is now a good time to think about grand challenges.
The combination of disillusionment with financial markets and large corporations,
accessibility to social and data APIs, easy to use tools for mashups and readily available cloud
computing may be the perfect storm for attacking some of the major challenges which Tim is
talking about
people want a say and want to be mobilized

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishymom/
we are a herd animal
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
And social tools can be a huge part of this
We are a herd animal. We are essentially the social ape. We cannot escape our biology and in
some ways that’suseful as if it didn’t there would be no social networks.
We respond to influence, we migrate from place to place within digital networks following
others. Let’s do something interesting with this behavior which people like Mark Earls
document so well

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sovietuk/
social proof/influence
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
and lets use this incredibly strong mechanic of social proof and influence, of wanting to do
the things others do
it’s always more tempting to eat at a restaurant with a queue, rather than an empty one
social networks surface activity constantly in newsfeeds and activity streams, we can harness
that for challenges, but how?

Chris has just achieved a really
high world karma points score
playing “For the Good of Mankind”
Can you beat his score?
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
This is obviously a made up example, but you can obviously see where I may be going with
this... would be nice to have a concept of world karma points

http://www.acesscity.co.uk/
Someone you know is helping to
map routes around cities based
on their personal view of
accessibility.
Tell us your story on AccessCity
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
AccessCity, project I’m proud to have been involved in. Started at Social Innovation Camp by
Domminic Campbell with a team of just 6.
Aim is to build a crowdsourced map of London from an accessibility standpoint which relates
to real time user-centric information. We’re aiming to send out MySpace users on missions to
map the easiest routes round the capital for people of varying levels of disability

http://www.acesscity.co.uk/
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
Geography is so important in solving real world problems, geography is not just maps, not
even just about three dimensional spaces, it’s all about your personal involvement with a
location and this can only be gathered by people not machines and by users not surveyors.
It’s also totally time based as anyone who tries to use Kings Cross station on a Friday night
can attest

http://www.acesscity.co.uk/
(OpenID + OAuth + FBConnect + API + SMS + Email) - TfL
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
First thing we built at SI Camp was an API so we could build many clients and get other
people to build those clients for us. All we need now is organisations like TfL to follow our
lead.
One major problem in solving grand challenges is in getting verified non-scraped data via
proper and free APIs. One way round this problem is to see the grand challenge to be
creating free high quality alternative data sets via crowdsourced means.

http://www.google.org/powermeter/
Your best friend used 5% less
electricity this month than he did this
time last year. Can you do
better?
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
The environment is clearly a great challenge to solve, just imagine a social application based
on Google Power Meter where you could claim which Power Meter was yours and compete
against your friends about how much power you’ve saved?

http://www.we20.org/
19 of your schoolmates have set a
date to sit down and discuss how
the world could be run. Can you be
the 20th person in their We20 group?
Be a part of the discussion.
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
Politics and active citizenry. We20. A wonderful idea from Paul Massey and others. Create
your own personal G20 meeting using MySpace, Facebook or in real life. Create your own
policies and then have people vote them up or down. The most popular policies rise to the
top and can be put in front of politicians
Their full site is launching very soon

http://www.openstreetmap.org/
these are protoypes, is anyone
doing this sort of thing yet?
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
Is anybody using this sort of mechanism to solve a grand challenge already? Several examples
I can think of. Open Streetmap is one of them. Social tools to produce a high quality resource
which solves a real challenge.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nick_bl/
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
Making high quality maps is a grand challenge. There are areas where it is hard to map
quickly enough or to a high enough resolution. There are areas where it is not financially
viable to map or politically dificult. Groups of volunteers can fix this.
One of the first things which they created was a highscore table. They now have approaching
100,000 people socially mapping worldwide.

Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
Obama for America iPhone app
See nationwide 08 Call Friends total and find our how your call totals compare to leading
callers
Oh my god, it’s a high score table... it’s a game of electioneering

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pdcawley/
“Obama for America
just launched an
MMO, and nobody
noticed.”
>Tom Armitage, infovore
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
Tom Armitage said it best, there is a leader board function from multiplayer games built right
into the Obama campaign
Hopefully the use of social technologies will be a feature of the Obama regime going forward.
Hiring the former Open Social evangelist for Europe for Google, Katie Jacobs Stanton to the
position of Director of Citizen Participation is probably quite a good statement of intent and
start
What about grand challenges that the networks themselves solve

lonely?
disconnected?
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 |October 2008 | Startup University
Future of Web Apps | 9/10 Royal Geographical Society
Possibly our biggest challenge in social networks is fixing loneliness and disconnection. It’s
no surprise that mothers when separated in the real world from peer groups through the
demands of new motherhood, and stigmatised by people’s view of breast feeding in public,
feel isolated
it’s no surprise that they’re turning to social networks in droves. the fact that they can be
social even if it is 1 handed typing in between feeds and that their social interactions can be
rich and yet asynchronous is an amazing thing for them

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smileygeekgirl/
netmums? the WI of the digital age
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 |October 2008 | Startup University
Future of Web Apps | 9/10 Royal Geographical Society
and if we could build a social network which was as long lasting and productive at building
support and friendship networks as something like the WI we’d all be building something that
could take on some truly grand challenges
netmums, support network, which helps parents understand what they are going through,
provides back up, provides services like blind dates for mums where they can meet other
mums near them

http://www.twitter.com/tom_watson
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 |October 2008 | Startup University
Future of Web Apps | 9/10 Royal Geographical Society
A grand challenge is always how we deal with loss. Suicide rates for instance are higher
within families where there has already been a suicide or death. People find it hard to talk.
Social networking can reach out to people at times of crisis and sadness, crossing divides.
Fixing that our modern lives are fairly asocial compared to those of our grandparents
I heard this news this morning via Tom’s stream. Like Tom I’m father and really feel for David
Cameron. This moved me more than anything this morning when I arrived here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogil/
machines for living?
or asocial spaces
Chris Thorpe | Terra Future 09 |October 2008 | Startup University
Future of Web Apps | 9/10 Royal Geographical Society
Over 6 billion of the world’s population live in this sort of place, one of Le Coubosier’s
machines for living with people barely knowing their neighbours despite the notion of
building in all of the services such as schools, health centres and shops. The density of
people is so great that the statistical chances of being able to recognise a significant
percentage of the faces you see each day are low.
We need social networks to solve grand challenges but maybe one of the grandest challenges
of all is helping people to be really social communities in urban environments. Local is a
challenge waiting to be solved

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carthorse/
p $100 @twestival
Chris Thorpe
http://twitter.com/jaggeree
Chris Thorpe |
Terra Future 09Terra Future 09 | Royal Geographical Society
I can’t think of a better image/example to end on. Amanda Rose, created a festival using
Twitter which raised at least a quarter a million to pay for clean drinking water for people in
developing nations. Doing all this despite more snow than we’ve seen in London for a while
and with just volunteer helpers.
How?
By just having an open ended idea sending an invitation to the world to connect and share
and create their own copy of that idea and to remix it and extend it.
All in 140 characters and in the public and influential view of the activity stream.