From Mike Lanza today…
I caught a glimpse of the future of mobile phone games this past weekend at the Come Out and Play Festival in New York City last weekend, and I’m very excited.
I played six “location aware mobile games” that made me run and walk like crazy, talk to dozens of people, and explore nooks and crannies of New York that I never would have seen otherwise. In other words, playing these games made me more physically fit, more social (face-to-face), and far more aware of the physical environment that surrounded me.
This is the polar opposite of the effects of today’s video games on children, who play for hours inside their houses without moving anything but their fingers, barely talking to anyone.
It’s a rare computer application that encourages more face-to-face interaction with people in real time and space. That’s one thing that sets Front Porch Forum apart. It’s encouraging to see others moving in this direction.
Congratulations to Justin (Front Porch Forum member) and his MocoSpace team. From Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch…
Mobile social networking startup MocoSpace raised a $4 million B round from existing investors General Catalyst, Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group and former eBay exec Michael Deering. The previous A round was $3 million in January 2007. MocoSpace is a mobile-only social network with two million members and serving one billion pageviews a month (from mobile phones). When we last wrote about MocoSpace in August, it had half as many members and pageviews.
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more