When it comes to staying in touch with friends, what tools do you need?

I'd like to chat with one friend (Direct Messages). I'd like to chat with more than one friend (Chat Room). I'd like to have a place where we could all share our thoughts in longform format (blog/notebook). I'd like to keep track of cool stuff we find around the net (link aggregator).

And I'd like to choose whether my "clubhouse for friends" is public (anyone can see & join), private (anyone can see but needs approval to join), or secret (nobody can see it and they need to be invited to join).

If I were really being ambitious, I'd want a contact manager where I could make notes about my friends.

On top of that I'd love to play games and have shared high score lists that pull in details from my contact manager.

Everything would work with everything else.

The cool news?

That's all available right now.

And it's all done with tools that you own 100% without the need of 1000 engineers to spy on your information.

Pretty cool, right?

Totally different than what we're used to.

It's so different, that most people don't think it's useful or needed.

I think I'll leave those folks plugged into the Matrix.

Best thoughts,
~Jonathan

PS: I've had lots of people ask me about how I make so much stuff (articles, videos, talks, etc) so quickly, how I get on 200+ podcasts, how I get business coming to me, etc. My answer? I think of myself as a "Personal Media Company" with infinite visibility & distribution opportunity (with the internet). If you're interested in building your own Personal Media Company, hit reply and let me know. Why? I'm considering putting together a whole course that covers branding, "content marketing", sales, delivery, influence, copywriting, video creation, etc. If there's enough interest I'll build it, but if not no sense building it! (Gotta keep the market happy; give the people what they want!)