Building eCommerce Applications

Chapter 16. The Convergence of Local, Social, and Mobile, Part 2: Social

Travis Robertson

This is Part Two in a four-part series on the convergence of local, social, and mobile. If you have not read the first part of this series, you might want to start there; I reference some things throughout this piece that won’t make sense without it.

For those who don’t really feel like being caught up, I’ll recap briefly.

Back in October, I was watching a video (http://ustre.am/5UOE) from the PayPal X Innovate 2010 Conference to prepare for an article I was writing. It’s a keynote speech from Osama Bedier, PayPal’s former Vice President of PayPal Platform and Emerging Technology. About twelve and a half minutes in, Bedier made the point that prompted my “moment.” And it was fleeting—for Bedier, the point was simply intended to preview a few other ideas before he moved on. But it’s continued to stick with me.

As a result, I wanted to write a series for the PayPal X developer portal covering the convergence of local, social, and mobile, and how it will ultimately shape our more immediate future. And for those who did not read the first article, the future I am going to cover is not the “flying cars”–style future, where I predict so far out it becomes ridiculous. Instead, I’ll focus on 1–2 years out.

But, for us to properly understand the future, we must first understand our past. So this article will cover the evolution of “social” and how we have arrived at our current view on the topic.

Briefly ...