July 14th, 2009
Sex Positive Socializing Online Arrives
If you’re ‘textually active’ online looking for relationships on social networking and dating sites, finally you have a new option. Despite all the hoopla around the brave new world of Facebook, match.com et al, it’s actually the same old industrial scale meat market for most people. As the chart above and the brief video below show, online dating isn’t performing for people.
Sam Lawrence, the brilliant marketer who did so much to raise Jive Software’s profile during the launch and growth of their Clearspace (now ‘Social Business 3.0′) software as their CMO is launching an exciting new venture today, this time as CEO.
‘Black Box Republic‘ is a new consumer oriented company ‘focused on reinventing the online relationship market’ which is emerging from stealth mode today and which also appears to have particularly good timing.
The word SEX is immensely complex and personal but the reality is we are all seeking intimacy at various stages of our lives, either overtly through dating services or socially, or covertly by hoping that meeting friends of our friends will turn up someone with whom sparks will fly - with whom ’sex will happen’ to use Black Box Republic’s line.
To quote today’s press release:
“The sex-positive creative culture is made up of tens of millions of people who don’t have issues with their own sexuality or that of others. They gather at mega events like Burning Man, Love Parade, Electric Picnic and Afrika Burns, as well as thousands of smaller regional and local meet-ups. Blackbox Republic will be a members-only experience that will unite the sex-positive community and give them a personal, private and secure way to connect online and in person”.
“Sex-positivity is the newest social movement on the heels of other social issues like race and gender equality,” said co founder April Donato, Black Box Republic’s vp of community relations. “It’s a growing population fueled by the ‘open-minded’ Millennial generation, who — just in the U.S. — will reach over 100M people in 9 years.”
Sex Will Happen
As I wrote last week (when I had no idea about this company incidentally: I was briefed last Friday by Sam and April) Facebook appears to be stumbling under its own weight and lack of clarity around privacy. The idea of this new format is very much about your social journey rather than the destination of finding sexual happiness - the site is focused on respecting you and your friends.
What in the world does all this have to do with enterprise collaboration and the business use of Web 2.0 technologies you may be asking, the usual subject of this blog?!
One of the realities, after all the analyst aggregation of data about social network vendors offerings, opinions and theories by onlookers and associated marketing hoopla, is that a fundamental, foundational fact which runs throughout life before participation in anything - most of all intimacy - is trust.
A commonality of all Web 2.0 style interaction is in how experiential it is - you can’t fully understand it unless you’re actually experiencing the power and contextual value through use.
Any form of collaboration is intensely personal - it means letting go and trusting that the information you share, and by definition the power you have, will ultimately return value to you.
This is as true socially in your personal life as it is in a work situation. We’ve all been there - the noisy bar full of obnoxious people and the sinking feeling of wasting a night out, the participation in an online work space dominated by snarky colleagues destroying any sense of cameraderie or creativity. This typically results in the bar being ‘last month’s hip place’ and empty collaboration spaces online.
The goal of Black Box Republic is to provide a social place where people are ‘vouched for’ - they are who they say they are - and to provide the online support structure for the non judgmental ’sex positive’ community for whom sexuality isn’t an issue (and may not even be of interest to them).
A Next Generation Social Community Focused On Trust
The Black Box concept aims to provide several elements missing from current social networks including a gifting and ecommerce element - there’s a little bit of the ‘velvet rope outside the exclusive nightclub’ about this venture with quality over quantity an important component.
Some reading this may find these ideas are very out there: don’t forget Enterprise 2.0 and online business collaborative networks were born out of Web 2.0 innovation including current social media poster child Facebook. The cultural patterns which shaped that generational explosion of connectivity haven’t slowed down and we may be seeing the birth of the new generation here.
Anyone actually using collaborative software in business knows how vital groups are - groupings of users around specific interests and projects hidden from other users by permission model. I see this thinking applied here on a personal level, applicable to your life and respecting your social needs.
This more granular approach enables a deeper integration with your intensely personal life, safe in the knowledge that it won’t be exposed to the world without your explicit permission (unlike those pictures of you in a fountain wearing a Tutu on Facebook you though only two friends could see).
Watch this one closely and get involved if you’re curious, it could shape up to be a gravitational shift in the way we think about our online personality and interactions.
Oliver Marks provides seasoned independent consulting guidance to companies on the effective planning of 'Enterprise 2.0' strategy, tactics, technology decisions and roll out. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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