As a member, you had a “handle” and your “real identity” was typically a paramount secret. You lived and died in the community under the tone and content of what you typed (or on your legendary nefarious skills).  The “SysOp” of the BBS was God.  If you violated the mores of the collective user base, you could face the unthinkable consequence of deletion; this was execution with limited shot at resurrection.

One of the unique pre-internet components of the BBS scene was the fact that most people on a given BBS were also members of your local community.  Because you had to dial-in to a BBS, your choice of communities was limited by those with a local phone number.  Unless you were versed in phreaking you simply couldn’t dial long-distance BBSes.  With the exception of a few close friends, you had no idea who else in your town was a member of the BBS scene, but you were connecting with them every day.

Yet every so often—maybe once or twice a year in an exceptional BBS community—a proposal would circulate for an event in the “real world” in which members could get together.  For me, these “real world” events took the form of a peculiar gathering called “BBS Bowling,” organized by a Florida BBS known as The Adventurer’s Inn (1986 – 1994 R.I.P.).

Imagine a gathering of people with limited social skills who have never seen each other face-to-face, ranging in age from 13 to 70, descending upon a small-town bowling alley.  We called one another by our handles.  New users demurred to old users in all things, and the caste system was loosely preserved.  “Profiles” were not a component of online communities then. There was total shock when you had to reconcile the image you conjured of a fellow user in your head (based on their writing) with their physical reality.  It was disturbing and wonderful, and it added value back to the BBS world once you had been invited to an event.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately in the context of “hyperlocality” and the internet.  What we now call “hyperlocal” in internet terms is in many ways just recognition that there’s an inherent potential value in limiting your focus to the user base in your community.  People have always organized themselves into passion groups online, and they are further organizing themselves now by location. 

But there’s still a catch.  The internet is a great way to make connections with people all over.  You may have 100 friends in the world, and none of them live within 20 miles of you.  The downside to online passion groups and social networks is how we’re often absorbed by the technology.  It sucks that we don’t get out more often.  Sometimes the internet helps us plan events (and instant messaging provides impromptu meetings), but our connection to other people is completely dependent on our connection to the network, which until recently has meant sitting at our computer.  Many tribes, many passions, but translating them to the offline world is still cumbersome. 

Translating passion groups and social networks to the offline world is on tap to be one of the next big shifts.  Mobile devices are becoming more sophisticated; the craze for the iPhone was not based on its exceptional reception or battery life.  It wasn’t a matter of the MP3 player, even.  It’s the first mobile device to truly begin to approximate our internet culture in an ultra-portable package.

The tribe is coming to the real world.  Google’s recent acquisition and expansion of Dodgeball.com suggests some of the ways mobile technology is going to be used to allow people out and about in the world to recognize their fellow tribe members.  While Dodgeball is dependent on text messaging, city availability, and a comprehensive database of venues in your city, it’s one of the opening volleys in the impending hyperlocal-meets-passion tribe shift.

It is not hard to imagine the next wave of iPhones integrating full-scale GPS (take that, you early adopters!).  Let’s imagine that clever developers then combine this with a Facebook Widget which allows you to selectively display your position on a Google Map.  Organize those broadcasting iPhones into passion tribes (or channels), and bingo, you’ve got the tribe on the street.

What are the implications?  The possibilities?  More conversations?  Heightened elitism?  GPS contextual advertising?  Secret clubs, businesses and restaurants?  Luxury brand trunk shows available only to members of Versace’s tribe in Manhattan, published only to mobile devices?  A bridge between Second Life and the first?

Standing armies?

Watch out, MySpace may turn out to really be the 8th largest nation on the planet.

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