37Signal’s Highrise Has Social Networking Potential

I have been closely following the new contact management system being developed by 37Signals called Highrise. I am extremely anxious to get a beta invite, as I have been looking for a solution like this for awhile. To read a little about some of the awesome features go here and here.

While I have no idea if 37 Signals is thinking in this direction, I do believe the system could have serious social networking potential. I’ve said before that I consider LinkedIn to basically be an enhanced contact management tool i.e.the main use is to add people to your network that you have already met for the purpose of keeping up to date with them. Highrise could be a backwards approach to building a social network by building a shared contact manager that is useful with out having to have critical mass like a social network. People will already be inputting all of their contacts (aka network) and content around their professional lifes into the system. Eventually opening up this content into more of a social networking model could prove to be very compelling. Flip the switch and you have automatic critical mass.

37 Signals has a very large, and dedicated following. This combined with the serious need of an easy to use, web based, powerful contact management system leads me to believe the period of time to reach critical mass would be shorter. Is this something that 37Signals will do? I have no idea. But it could be very cool.

[tags]Social Networking, Social Network, Online Community, Highrise, Contact Management, 37Signals, Brian Balfour[/tags]