American in Spain

OMGICU

October 8, 2009

Today I stumbled upon a website that is rather incredible. The technology to run it is utterly unremarkable. What's amazing is that the internet is becoming so ubiquitous that such a sight is possible at all. The site is called OMGICU, which is teenager/text message language for "Oh my god, I see you". The way it works is that, when you spot a celebrity, you submit a sighting report to the site, saying who you saw, where you saw them, and what they were doing. Obviously only a small percentage of the users of the site, mainly those living in Los Angeles and New York City, will be submitting sightings. The key is the service that minority will be providing for the other curious majority. The whole point of the site is that you can follow a celebrity that you are a fan of, and get real-time updates of what they're up to. Amazing! This is just the tip of the iceberg for this kind of application. With every city dweller having a GPS-enabled camera phone with an internet connection with them at all times, absolutely anything that happens in public that the general internet population would like to see will be broadcast and available.