Update: According to Becky, Coffee and Power Product Manager, the restrictions that prevent un-sponsored users from doing work will soon be lifted. She says, “I think everyone understands why we want to create a gated community, but I think we need to do more thinking about how people prove themselves worthy of entering the gate.”

A Note: Sensational headline is sensational. I want it noted I have lots of respect for coffee and power, but I think the subject presented is worthy to discuss.

I logged into Coffee & Power this morning and found that people in the public chat were discussing something that has been on my mind for a while now. How does one get flipp’n started utilizing this service? Do I honestly have to buy in to start participating in this economy of small jobs and independent workers? With exactly $28.95 in my checking account at this point, I’m incredibly broke. What do I do?

What is Coffee & Power?

Coffee & Power, as it explains itself in a single line of meta-data, “is an online marketplace where people can buy and sell small jobs. Get something done, right now!” So its a sort of classified ads marketplace catering to independent professionals and those who need their services. Users can post “wills” and “wants,” a will being an offer of services, and a want being a request of services. When signing up, you can build your profile with your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, a social feature that ads a little extra sense of security to the online transaction.

As I understand it, Co-Founder Philip Rosedale derived inspiration for Coffee & Power off of his successes with Second Life, a virtual world inhabited by the avatars of the very same users who are able to create and modify virtually everything in the 3D environment. Users are able to use their own real-world money to buy the currency that powers what is a unique and booming economy within the Second Life Universe. Coffee & Power is an attempt to realize this kind of economic model in a “Real World” setting.

With the rise of the mobile worker, the increasing popularity of co-working spaces, and the continuing development of the so-called “web 2.0″ world, Coffee & Power is a really exciting idea. Personally, I’m excited to see it take off, and hope it does really well. Especially if they keep opening up more Workclubs, their free co-working spaces.

Sponsorships

About a month ago, I got an email from coffee and power about a big change they’d just pushed to the site.

Hello , We built Coffee & Power with the desire to help empower and connect mobile workers from around the globe. With this in mind and in an effort to create more trust and a tighter community, we’re excited to announce our new sponsorship feature. How it Works In order to have full access to the Coffee & Power marketplace, you will need to be sponsored by an active C&P user. By sponsoring members of the community who you have had a positive work experience with (or who you know personally), you’ll help us build a better community of workers. To kick things off, we’ve done some early sponsorship of some of our most active mobile workers.

Read more about sponsorships on the Coffee & Power Blog.

At this point, though I had been looking for Wants that I could fulfill, I hadn’t had the chance to do anything yet. I knew immediately that I wouldn’t be one of the automatic sponsorships, but didn’t realize the full extent of how this impacted my intentions to start participating more often in Coffee & Power.

The Employers, and The Employed

To make what could be a long story short, it turned out that without being sponsored one could not fulfill a Want, nor post a Will. What I found in the public chat room this morning was the following:

TutorDan: How do I get sponsored?

Seems like the whole sponsorship deal is such a hassle. How do you expect people to join the site if you have to get sponsored to SPEND MONEY to get a service?

RajatVash:  I agree. Haven’t been sponsored yet, and I don’t know how to!

bastiandantilus:  I’ve spent money and I’m not sponsored. It’s all in how you do it.

TutorDan put it like I had been too polite to say it. In order to be sponsored, Coffee & Power proposed that you complete a transaction, but prevented un-sponsored users from any transactions but those wherein they paid another user for a service, and were unable to provide a service themselves and get paid. But then, even bastiandantilus had hired someone and – as it would seem – the person they hired didn’t sponsor them.

Who do you Trust?

If I give it honest consideration, I really do understand the intentions that were behind the introduction of sponsorships in the coffee and power marketplace. Trust is not something to ignore, especially when you’re trying to get people to trust their money to a website to use to hire remote strangers to do work for them. But when trying to create a community of people who are confident in each other, who do you trust first?

Though there are thousands of different arrangements under the sun, the typical fashion in which two parties execute a transaction of currency for services is to first perform the services, and then pay an agreed amount for services rendered. In this model, the service provider trusts that she will be paid upon completion. As every consultant or contractor knows, inherent in this model is a venerability where the service provider could find themselves unpaid for work they’ve done. Indeed it is so prevalent that it permeates the culture in ways such as the popular blog Clients From Hell.

The way Coffee & Power’s sponsorships are set up, the system seems to cast doubt upon service providers, but why? Is the concern for the quality of work they might produce? If so, I don’t understand how hiring another user off of the site would demonstrate anything to this effect. What do you think?

They look like they get along... but are they Facebook-Friends?

Google developed Google Plus around this idea, that not everybody you connect with is a friend, some are colleagues, some are family, some are your baseball buddies. Of course, even this is lacks perfection. Relationships are fluid, yet the computers that run the internet are mechanic-yes-or-no-strict-definition-type creatures.

Recenlty, in a conversation thread on webdoc, I was reminded that though Facebook – being the site that brought social networking into the light of popular culture – is the one that get’s the blame these days, being the site that brought social networking into the light of popular culture, it’s been happening for a while.

Remember your first friend on MySpace? Tom? (These days, you can circle him on google plus – he’s actually got a few insightful things to say, even if they’re at times hetero-centric) By being automatically included in every new user’s friends lists – Tom was redefining friendship before MySpace members even had time to call the concept into question themselves.

What kind of friend will put themselves in your life without giving you a say in the decision? Who wants to be at your party but refuses to speak to you, or anybody, for that matter? (What kind of friend sells your ‘space’ to Rupert Murdoch?)

(I made comments. Make sure to click above to see them.)

I realize some of the habit’s I’ve developed call into question if I’ve been affected by such a thing myself. I’ve had lengthy discussions about my use of the word friend, and how I apply it. In conversation, if I find the need to define someone by their relationship with me, I’ll default to saying “My friend.” So though I may not consider someone close, I will refer to them as a friend. Doesn’t that make sense?

To me this was always completely logical. For example, if I was introducing a person I just met recently to someone I’ve known for a long time, I would say, “This is my new friend John.” It seemed uncomplicated and amicable. Though, maybe it’s an example of me instinctively adopting the socio-digital vernacular.

How do YOU use the word friend? How do you define it? How has that changed over time?

I was there a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon the profile of a single straight male who spent an almost angry bit of his profile text lamenting people’s obsession with their phones. He said he finds it upsetting that people put their phones above friends and family. It was only a small paragraph, but in the middle of the first section of his profile were the words:

I think it is a shame how many people put their phone above their friends, family, and ESPECIALLY their child when they are asked what 6 things they can not do without in life. Even my ex-wife seems to think her IPhone is more important than my daughter.

On OkCupid, a person is prompted to list six things they could never do without. So apparently, it upset this fellow when the first item on a list was a phone, or if a phone showed up anywhere before friends and family.

Now, this is the thought I had;

It seemed particularly tragic, and I’m sure frustrating, that his daughter comes second to a piece of technology in the eyes of her mother. However,  In most cases, that piece of technology derives it’s value not from what it physically is, but how it actually represents our friends and family. Is there any redeeming value in the fact that an obsession with the phone is, in most cases, a social one?

I do acknowledge there are those whose social priorities are unbalanced, putting always those distant in front of those present, yet I think when looking at a list of “6 things [someone] couldn’t do without” you can’t really tell how they behave in regards to what their phone may represent.

The question becomes; is the phone a way to connect with people, or do you alienate yourself from them? It’s the same debate people have with the use of social networks, however in the case of the phone you’ve got it in your pocket, and it’s ever present, and ever asking for your attention.

What is your perspective? Am I missing something or do I have it right on?

Comment below using whichever credentials you prefer, be they Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, or your own URL.

I spent Foursquare Day today checking in just about anywhere I legitimately could. I was caught up in the excitement of what had been declared an official holiday in NYC Starting in Rockefeller Plaza, and needing to get to Christopher St in the West Village, my friend Rachel indulged my need for Foursquare venues and walked with me to the Times Square.

Rachel’s patience continued when I noticed that there was something peculiar about the pictured ad. Suspicion became certainty as I called the phone number displayed on the advertisement, and my dial pad became a remote control for the giant screen across Broadway and 7th Ave.

Using my phone, I scrolled through different examples of what someone could do on their phone, using Sprint’s 4G network.

Sprint took ad space, and used it to crate something that benefited it’s audience. Really cool, super effective. Win.

What do you think of an interactive ad?

The other day, I asked my friends a question with the new questions feature on Facebook: Windows or PC?

Understandably, many of my friends were confused. The most popular answer was actually neither option, as the majority of respondents selected the response: I’m not really sure what you’re asking.

The fact is, though I asked a question, I sought very little information. I was making a point. The traditional inquiry of which my bewildered friends had become accustomed was “Mac or PC?” and it was the inherent misnomer in that inquiry that I was attempting to highlight.

A Mac is a PC

Look, I realize it’s no big deal. Of mountains and molehills, I’m the culprit. None the less it has for many years been a personal pet peeve of mine. Macs and PCs are NOT mutually exclusive items. The acronym PC stands for Personal Computer, and while personal computers are often perceived as those machines running the Microsoft Windows Operating system, the term in fact refers to any small sized computer intended for use by an individual. In fact, the first commercially successful personal computer with a desktop-like user interface as we know it today was the Apple II, predecessor to the Mac as we know it today.

So, back to my question. The correct answer to the question as I intended it was “Windows” in so much as “Windows” is the right way to refer to Operating System that is Apple’s rival. However, I suspect many of my clever friends selected for themselves “PC.” knowing that though they were on an Apple machine, running the Macintosh Operating System, it was actually a personal computer, and correctly identified it as such. So Huzzah to these friends.

What do you think? Do you cringe for thee same reasons? Do you think it’s no big deal? Do you think I’m wrong? Tell me I’m wrong, I dare you. Comment below.

Now here’s the shocker. In the last five months, I’ve spent most of my free time at the intersection of 7th Ave and 23rd Street in Manhattan – at a Starbucks. A large part of that is due to the fact that it’s really hard to find any alternative in Manhattan, but just as large a part is the people I know are going to be there.

Months ago, having made friends with a regular at this location, I began to frequent the place myself. As the time I spent at this Starbucks increased, the frequency with which I saw familiar faces did as well. Today, I have a variety of friends at Starbucks the same way I had a variety of friends at School as a kid. I don’t have contact information for all of them, but I look forward to seeing them as I return knowing that they’ll show up sometime soon. By way of becoming my social hub, Starbucks earned my loyalty.

Any digital social endeavor requires this very same element to see real success. A brand that becomes the context in which it’s target market is making connections, be it with the brand itself or other community members, is a brand that will see an increase in brand loyalty and advocacy. Conversations and genuine relationships are the secret to social media. Now, of course it’s nothing is that simple, but I see this as the core piece that many people too often forget. Far to frequently a twitter profile become’s a small businesses micro-propaganda feed, and they loose sight of every actually connecting with people.

Question? Concern? Disagree? Comment below.