Four Click Freedom

The path the card takes in one day can be as complex as you are.  Lets skip into the future for a second and pretend newspapers were able to hang on and not completely die out.

The newspaper you received today will have your name address and Clickcard number on the mailing sticker.  When you get back to the breakfast table and pour yourself a cup of orange juice you will find as you flip through and read the headlines, that all the stories and all the ads are actually quite interesting.  It might actually take you a little longer to get through the paper this morning because so much of the information is relevant to you.  This is because this newspaper was personally printed for you based on your profile from Clickboards.net.  You will feel happy to know that all those direct mail specials and early bird sale items you see in the paper have been already sent to your profile even before you picked up the paper that morning.

So it’s off to work and time for a coffee.  Well you are a regular at Time Coordinate Cafe, and its Friday.  You know what that means, this is your sixth cup of coffee this week and you have used your Clickcard each time so this one is going to be free.  They are even going to give you a discount on your muffin because you found a Clickboard online that you saved yesterday using your Clickcard.

Your just getting to work and you realize that printer is out of ink.  You can go to the store but you have work to do, so you instead quickly go online to Officegizmos.com.  This is a usual place for you to buy office supplies and you know you have a folder of coupons that you saved which have been sent from them to Clickboards.net.  You managed these coupons into this folder so you know when is the best time to make a purchase and use the coupons together.  You make your order and it asks for your Clickcard number.  When checking out you notice that you saved $15 on the ink, pens, paper, and folders that you just added to your cart.  This is a pretty good start to your day.

At lunch you and one of your colleagues head to Old Four Rivers.  You know a lot of people that go here for lunch and they are part of your Clickboards.net account.  Your hungry so your order the ribs.  Wow, that was good.  The waitress comes and takes your Clickcard and credit card off to the register to pay the bill.  When she comes back you notice that you got your meal at half price.  Your lucky today.  Five other people you know ordered the ribs in the last week.  That earned your group a half price meal and you were the lucky one to get it.  Awesome.

At work again, you check your Clickboards.net account.  You want to check in and see what kind of business purchasing activity your competitors in your network are up to.  You see that there is a lot going on with people investing in advertising.  You think this could be the time to do the same.  You go back to your profile and change one of your business interests towards possible advertising deals.  Tomorrow you will come in to check one of your folder in boxes to see if there are some deals that could make advertising a real interest.

Time to go home, you want to stop by the grocery store to pick up a few items for dinner.  When you get there you quickly go over to the Clickboards.net Kiosk and swipe your Clickcard.  You see from the morning paper that there are some specials on tomatoes, beef, and cheese, that you want.  You tap those and exit.  This info is sent to Clickboards.net and it sees that you are probably going to be interested in lettuce, onions, and potatoes.  You once answered that you like to make taco salad so it adds these items to your short term account.  You go ahead and pick up some milk like you do everyday along with some taco shells and hot sauce.  When you check you swipe your Clickcard and pay.  The specials for the day were taken off and the best prices from all the local grocers was found for the lettuce, onions, and potatoes.  For the milk you got some points and a coupon for the next time you buy hot sauce.  You look at your receipt and you see the cents off on all these items.

Happy you head home and make dinner.  Later that night you are watching your iTV.  With your iRemote bla bla bla (Too much in the future)…

Before you go to bed you get back on Clickboards.net and manage your account a little.  You break down your incoming savings into different folders and then spot one that you know your friend Billy would like.  It’s a ten dollar discount at Banana Banana.  You just bought some shoes there that he really liked.  So you forward the coupon to him.

It’s good to know that the newspaper the next morning is already being tailored for your morning reading and orange juice.

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If anyone out there is starting to be dismayed by Social Networks, you are probably not the only one.  First of all, you have to have a different network for everyone you know.  Some people you don’t want on your MySpace for sure, some people you call friends and want them on your Facebook, and still others you only want to have a professional network with them on LinkedIn.  And then all those other networking sites like Twitter and Friend Feed can really seem like a joke to most people unless they are really close to you.

So what is a social network looking for? A bridge between all of these.  Although many of these allow you to cross reference your contacts along all these networks, that is not what people are looking for.  People don’t want to be pigeon holed by their boss about what they did on the Fourth of July, and they don’t want there friends to be out of their loop because their professor wants to keep in touch in a marginally sensitive way.

So what can people do to stay connected to everyone.  That is a very tough question.  People have to be rewarded for being in touch with one another.  If I am connected to someone on the fringe, well that should benefit me right?  Shouldn’t I be able to invite every single person in my gmail contacts to join some network of mine, one without boundaries?

The answer is yes.  How?  Well believe it or not we all have a lot in common.  I think the most important thing we do is purchase items.  This requires most of our concentration and effort when designing who we are.  The second most important thing we do is design our resume and profile.  I say resume because that used to be the old way of telling someone who you are.  Now you can have online resumes that link to all your other profiles, and if you really believe in your blog that too.

So what platform can bring these two together.  I believe it is Clickboards.net.  First and most important, you once again create a basic profile and that is it.  Second you use your Clickcard.  Like some credit cards, your shopping history will be cataloged.  You can then be rewarded for sharing the same interests as those in your network.  So the more people in your network the more likely it is you will be rewarded for having a common interest.

This could be the movie you go see, the theater you see movies, the restaurants you visit, the happy hour bar you go to, the office supplies you buy, the advertising you buy, the websites you visit, the clothes you buy, the ingredients for food you cook at home.

The more you interlink yourself with your community the more you save.  Thus you are rewarded for anyone that is in your network.  There fore even connecting to those strangers brings you rewards.  But remember it is up to you to set your privacy and filters.  But the rewards are yours.

The truth of the matter is that most people aren’t carrying that many cards anymore.  In fact the idea of so many cards may be outdated within the next few years.  There are thoughts in the US for having a federal ID that you would carry around.  This card is so advanced you could load the information from all your cards, drivers license, credit cards, reward cards, passport, AAA, all onto one card.

Yes this is still a card, but what I am saying is that there may be no need for a Clickcard in the future.  All this could be stored on your car key or mobile phone.  So the card is actually becoming outdated.

The point here is that most of these universal cards, keys, and phones will have a display on them for management purposes and probably GPS location so you will never worry about losing them and probably automatic locking features.  The beauty here is that the Clickboards can be sent to these devices.

I’m not saying you will be harassed every time you walk by a McDonald’s for a cheeseburger.  Actually only things that you have already stored at your Clickboards.net profile will be sent to you.  So if you are out shopping and you are at the Galleria, you could get reminded that you acquired a $50 gift certificate at Banana Republic.  Well then, it is now worth my time to go look around there.

Oh and when you check out, you’ll just pass your pager sized key over the register to pay and save.