happen_io

I'm surprised no one has brought up that it depends some on what your real name is. Some names are more searchable than others, and some names are unique where others are shared with lots of people. If you are the only "Klandon Forzuth" on the planet then your online activities are much more easily found than if you are one of a million "David Smith"'s.

And sometimes people want to avoid being pre-judged, so Saheed may want to use a psuedonym when participating in an online discussion about 9/11 regardless of his views.

If your name because something of a brand or source of credibility, you'll probably want to use your real name. But if you're well known in one domain but want to participate in another domain without the baggage of the other domain, you may want to not use your real name. Same reason why some writers use different names when they write in different genres, even if it's not secret that they use multiple names.

I suppose there are several famous people participating in online activities that we are all unaware of because they don't use their real names. It's like avoiding being mobbed by fans on the street.

It you have an abusive spouse or stalker, you may not want to make your online activities so easily discoverable using your real name.

So it's not just because people want to be rude that they use a pseudonym. It's more complicated than that.

This is a big reason why we created http://happen.io. Facebook mimics real-world connections and puts them in cyberspace, but studies show it makes people feel more isolated. We wanted to create something for people to improve their real-world connections, not just their digital connections.

Happen.io makes it so that individuals can add their own events (like parties, celebrations, nights-out, family get togethers, club meetings, block parties, etc) and post them for others to find and save in their own list. Events can be public or private, for a group or not. It's mobile optimized so that people can use it on the go, not cooped up in their apartment.

It doesn't take much to feel a sense of connection. I think it really just takes a few good friends and a few groups to feel a part of. But a lot of people are missing that, and sites like Facebook and others sometimes turn into a place to show off how great their life is, not a way to meet new people or find real activities to do with others.

Why can't there be a place that just shows you things going on near you that others are invited to? With all this tech to connect people, how come people 100 yards away from each other never meet or get to know each other? How come it's so hard to find something to do or people to be with outside a list of your facebook friends? Why isn't there a place for an regular person to post their activities and events so that other regular people can find them and make new friends?

That's what we are trying to make happen at happen.io. It's sort of a long-tail event platform. There's already eventbrite for ticketed events, but this is for any event, including small get-togethers. And there's facebook and other event sites that use facebook's social graph, but that makes it so you only see events of your friends, not just whatever may interest you regardless of who set up the event.

It really is a disappointment in this digital world we become more connected to devices but less connected to each other. We need to turn that around.