Facebook for the uber-wealthy (top 200) is coming.
TopCom is being officially launched in late January at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It is basically a customized, ridiculously secure version of tibbr, a platform developed by Tibco as a kind of combination Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, texting, and Skype. It is a private social network, essentially — in this case, for world leaders.
With tibbr, in addition to following people, you choose and follow subjects — issues, crises, topics of discussion, upcoming events. You don't have to remember which people you're supposed to include on an e-mail about a subject, because they're all following it. You just post your message and the right people see it. You can talk one-to-one or to everyone who's following the subject. When you use tibbr, you get the feeling it's one of those innovations that five years from now we're all going to think we've used forever.
Ranadivé's company created the TopCom version specifically for the World Economic Forum, the organization founded in 1971 by the German economist Klaus Schwab, which gathers together the world's business, intellectual, and political leaders to discuss common issues. Because the organization has a hierarchy, so does TopCom: The top two hundred WEF members — basically, the people who run the world — can speak to one another on a given subject, and then they can choose to loop in members from lower tiers (experts, academics, etc.) as needed, widening the pool of knowledge on whatever problem is on the table.
It is, Schwab says, a "Facebook for global leaders." For example, Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda can post a video of himself — viewable only by the top two hundred — asking for help because a major earthquake has caused a tsunami that's approaching his country. Minutes later, Schwab would see the message and call for an immediate videoconference among the appropriate world leaders to get Japan aid in the quickest way. CEOs of companies that have facilities near the impact site — there's a Nissan plant close by, for example — could join forces for evacuation and figure out how to address interruptions to their supply chains.
http://www.esquire.com/features/vivek-ranadive-profile-0212
= new reply since forum marked as read
I needed that laugh.
