I caught up with an old colleague this week that I hadn’t seen in years.

We traded stories and did the ‘where are they now’ thing and talked about how we had taken the career paths we had. As diverse as those paths were and the different businesses that we’re in, we ended up on the topic of social media. Amazed at the power, yet still respectfully wrestling on how to fully capitalize.

As an aficionado of great consumer electronic products, he quickly brought out his iPhone and showed me an app from Smule, the Sonic Lighter . He fired it up and I saw a very real looking natural flame flicker on the screen, that waved back and forth with the movement of the iPhone and the flame even flickered when you blew on it … kind of cool, but I quickly dismissed it as a novelty at best. The big ‘so what’? Then he connected the iPhone to the network, and with a view of google earth, he said, “check it out, these are all the Sonic flames ‘burning’ in the world right now”. The world? Right now?. It was amazing to see at that global level. He navigated to north America, zoomed down to a street level view of the city, and there was ‘our’ flame flickering on the map. A couple of blocks over, another flame. I’ve been in the GPS industry and around technology for many

Then he connected the iPhone to the network, and with a view of google earth, he said, “check it out, these are all the Sonic flames ‘burning’ in the world right now”. The world? Right now? It was amazing to see at that global level. He navigated to north America, zoomed down to a street level view of the city, and there was ‘our’ flame flickering on the map. A couple of blocks over, another flame. I’ve been in the GPS industry and around technology for many years so that part I got.

And we all remember the hype around LBS apps and the press on ‘find the nearest Starbucks’, but the concept struggled on a number of fronts. Yet now,  there it was. A global, ubiquitous platform of iPhones which provided a medium for these colored flames – A community, so simple, yet so powerful. Most of what we’ve seen with the iPhone to-date is at the personal or consumer level and centered around entertainment, but there are B2B marketers all over the world salivating and looking to take advantage of this reach.  As a B2B Marketer, are you going to be one of the pioneers.

BTW -As real as the flame appeared, it’ll never replace the waving back and forth of the good old bic flame at a great concert ….. now I’m just dating myself.