For Sweden, I think Lunarstorm (www.lunarstorm.se) or Playahead (www.playahead.com) is top of mind for the youngsters. Recently we’ve also had a really big growth in Swedish Facebook users. Datingsites are also big in Sweden, i.e Match.com and Spraydate.se.

Thanks Christian. It is interesting that the Swedish landscape is so fragmented.

I am sitting in Detroit at this moment working with an executive team that provides services to clients around the world. My job is to facilitate collaboration in a distributed, technology connected ecosystem of colleagues and Clients. I love this point in our collective technological history. The imagined sci-fi future of my childhood is emerging more quickly every day. I have collaborated for a long time with colleagues in India and Europe. The time and geography differences always play a huge part in the decisions on how to work together. Conference calls remove the geography factor but dimish the most effective, full and deep, communication that can be achieved face to face. Communicating in blogs, wikis, e-mail, chat rooms and text messages removes even the nuances of vocal intonnation from the communication equation but are great at capturing point in time thoughts.

A whole knew world of opportunities to learn from each other exists now, but at the same time that so many in the world are experiencing information overload, we are now faced with communication channel and information sharing channel overload. It’s like a virtual self organizing library that keeps on adding more reading rooms full of more and more people. The fine line between what to keep to yourself and what to share is interesting. A new “virtual etiquette” is emerging. It morphs from one community to another. bringing mutiple cultures together creates a confusion of interpretation and understaing of what is being communicatied, from time to time.

The point about “who is watching, is also very thought provoking”
I imagine what it would be like to have all the pieces of our world in one place.
I grew up in a Canadian family that had a very clear structure. That family is represented in Facebook, then there are the friends from the stages of my life, some of them are there, then there are the colleagues from the different places that I have worked, the different Clients from the many places that I have worked, the classmates from the various schools and courses that I have attended, students from the various courses that I have lead.
With all these relationships, it is very interesting to think that my Boss could talk to my Mother about me, I could talk to my bosses children directly (If I chose to do so), My cousins can see my friends, my friends can see my clients, my clients can see my family and friends. My current colleagues can see and meet my former colleagues.

These exponential connections remove me as the filter for the information that may be shared. It also removes me as the filter that validates that the information being shared is accurate and absent of added nuance.

If we knew that everone in our lives would be connected with everyone else, in our absence, what would that feel like? What would they say to eachother? That reality is now in social networks.

I found it very revealing when a friend recently found a colleague who had shared some deeply personal information on facebook. I had instant “privacy issues” for the person who had posted that information. They likely posted it at a point in time when only their immediate circle of friends were on facebook, now their colleagues and family are there. That deeper awareness of who is watching certainly changes my awareness of what I share in social networks.

If you ever played that game of sharing a piece of information while whispering from one person to another in a chain until the end person says the piece of information out loud, you learn that everyone hears, understands, remembers and then shares the same message differently. It’s as if you drop a rock into the ocean and watch the ripples move out from where you started that wave, every other person is like a small iceberg floating in this sea of communication, your wave will wrap around some, wash over others but as your wave passes, it wil be altered and reshaped before it reaches the next iceberg…and so on, and so on, the wave will never retain it’s original shape.

Enough for now.
Andy