I have been using Basecamp to coordinate project work in Corante for the past few months. I haven't stopped long enough to refelct on it. but I intend a longish piece on that over the Xmax break.

The fine folks at 37 Signals -- who built Basecamp -- are getting ready to launch a new project, called Hugster:

Jason Fried

[from 43 Things "Hugster" Preview (Signal vs. Noise)]

This is essentially a real version of a Goal Page. A Goal Page lists the goal ("get an apple powerbook" in this case), some of the people who want to do it, other things that these people are doing, and then weblog-comment-like entries from these people about this thing they're trying to do. On the right there's also a list of people who have done it and whether or not they'd recommend doing it.

And then there are the ads.

Looks like an interesting experiment in social tools. The goal angle intrigues me, on a social activism level.

Which reminds me: the best thing about the Votes, Bits & Bytes conference at Harvard last week was (after the time spent with the wild and funny Halley Suitt) was the presentation by Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder and CEO, Meetup.org. The initial concept grew from his reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, and the desire to counter the hollowing out of American civic life. Meetup has been growing explosively, and not primarily in the political domain which is about 15% of all meet-ups. The photos he showed of groups meeting all over -- the Pug Owners groups ("Pugs are the new Chihuahuas!"), The Hungarian Speakers of Albany, and so on) -- are a testament to the service's drawing power.

And apropos to the Hugster preview, Scott waved his hands a bit at the end of his keynote, stating that Meetup is at work on a federated model of group interaction, so that those interested in PR Blogging or Philately in Boston can coordinate and collaborate with similar groups elsewhere.

Bottom-up social media, where the content/passion starts at the edge and ripples upward/inward, creating order and power as it goes.

Very cool. I am going to have to watch these phenomena very closely.