Collective Detective Blog Archives

Happy Collectivus Day 2011!

A year ago today, we turned on the Collectivus prototype and boxes began showing up on doorsteps all over the US and Canada. Inside these boxes were our Rubber Duckie Thingies and instructions to take them places and enter their encounters. What an interesting first year it’s been for our Thingies.

Some Collectivus factoids from year one:

• January 26^th, 2010: The Collectivus Prototype is Launched.
• About 600 Rubber Duckie Thingies are in circulation.
• Thingies invaded SXSW in Austin, TX and made lots of new friends
• Four Continents have been visited: North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia
• Thingies rode through 28 states in the US: Florida, Virginia, Arizona, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Nevada, Texas, Colorado, California, Missouri, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana
• Thingies went Canadian and visited British Columbia and Ontario
• Some notable cities people have traveled to with a Thingie include: Sydney, Istanbul, Dubai, Milan, London and New York City
• In the far, far away category:
  • Charlie is the Thingie who has traveled the furthest, going 8723 miles on his trip from Austin to Los Angeles to Sydney.
  • In second place was Tuffy at 7496 miles who went from Austin to Lisbon to Düsseldorf to Milan to Stockholm
• Thingies have attended: soccer games, baseball games, the Winter Olympics, trade shows, and frequent bars among other places

We think that’s not too bad a start for our small, bootstrap project.

In year two, expect to see exponentially more Thingies out in the wild, powered by an all-new application with some new and interesting features. We’ve taken the data we’ve collected, your feedback, the state of the rapidly changing social and location gaming landscape, and used it to develop our next version.

In the meantime, if you have a Thingie in your possession: Pass it on! People who have had a Thingie encounter previously will be the first to get the opportunity to try out the new Collectivus. So all of those Rubber Duckie Thingies have just become “Beta Invites.”

Thanks for making Collectivus: Year One so much fun!

Photogenic Thingies Now on Flickr

One of the things that’s caught us by surprise is how popular taking pictures with Thingies has turned out to be. Of course, one of the reasons we launched Collectivus so early was to learn things like this, so we know what kinds of features to focus on as we iterate.

So while we work on that, we want to point out that all you shutterbugs can now also add your photos to our newly created Collectivus group on Flickr. Here you can add photos to the pool and share with other’s your made skills with the camera. Tagging photos with "collectivus" and "thingie" will also help everyone track them down.

Join our Collectivus Flickr group today and help us get started in creating a photo collection of Thingie encounters.

Have You Seen Our Thingies?

Collectivus

Collective Detective is happy to announce the first public release of Collectivus, a new social location experience where you can literally take it or leave it. While many social location sites focus on having people "check in" at a location, on Collectivus, people help tell the story of Thingies and check them in at stops along their journey.

Collectivus is about the unseen connections between people as they help Thingies get from place-to-place. It’s part game, part social discovery, part exploration and we hope very entertaining.

The adventure of Collectivus is what you make of it.

What’s a Thingie?

Oh yeah, Collectivus Thingies™ are items that travel around, encountering new people and new places. We’ve launched with Collectivus Rubber Duckie Thingies™ as our first series, many of them are on their way to a first encounter with someone, somewhere right now.

How does it Work?

It’s easy! Each Thingie has a unique code on the bottom of it. When you encounter a Thingie, simply enter the code on Collectivus site, tell us where you encountered the Thingie and a little about your encounter. That’s it.

You can also see who else is encountering Thingies and search to see if there are any Thingies near you.

But Wait, There’s More!

In follow-up posts we’ll talk more about the back story of Collectivus and talk more about some of the current and upcoming features. We’re just getting started, so please check back for more features, announcements, and news.

You know you have many choices when it comes to fun social location activities. We appreciate you checking us out. If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions, please drop us a line.