I think the concept is good hypothetically, but wouldn't work in practice. People are not that organized. Knowing beforehand where you are going to go and what you are going to do at various points in the future is hard enough to imagine, let alone consistently input into a computer, even if there is a value proposition as he points out. That's my thinking anyway.
You could do something that requires less effort on the part of the user. For example, extract future intentions from the content of existing "status update" streams.
"I just bought a used Ford" = "I need a mechanic in six months".
"I'm going rock climbing for the first time this weekend!" = "I need a chiropractor next week".
Etc...
Jokes aside, seems like this would be a fairly approachable mid-way between the existing system and the one proposed.
That's a good point. However, as you mention this data already exists on services like Twitter and Facebook, so I guess it just needs to be mined and analyzed.
This is exactly why systems like this never work out. One could argue that to-do apps like Remember the Milk would have cashed in on this if there was really a market for it. The problem is that, for most of us, our lives are the result of goals and objectives and a healthy dose of luck and randomness.
Like that old commercial pointed out, very few children say they want to "claw my way to middle management" despite the fact that's what happens to a lot of us.
I would expect a service like this to fail partly because people aren't that organized and partly because those that are would be underwhelmed by how things turn out. Nobody likes a service that makes you feel like a failure.
You're correct. Unless a new interface could be invented, there's far too much friction in the idea, and like any network, it's value is proportional to the number of nodes. Unless all of a person's plans are in there, the value falls quickly.
It's pretty simple to see this - few of us even keep our 'formal' calendar up to date, of meetings, calls and plans. Very few people keep their 'informal' calendar up to date. I, for one, never create a task called 'buy truck', 'plan holiday'. The important, high value items never need to be written down. The ones that get tracked and remembered are the low-value ones like 'pay electricity bill' and 'pick up worming tablets for dog'. And they're the ones with little advertising value.
That said, there is probably a specific vertical niche in here that could be expanded, but more of an add-on to an existing network like facebook than a stand alone. Something like a 'holiday planning' where people could post a future plan like a trip to the Maldives, and have their friends (and advertisers) provide input on what to do while you are there.
