Social media is progressing in a direction where the SM application controls your information – not you. This is a game that you cannot win unless they let you win. Social Flights changes the rules by letting you control your own information. As such, we are growing in popularity among entrepreneurs who are looking for a game they can win playing by a new set of rules.
Social Flights is comprised of 2 components; Social Flights Corporate and Social Flights Travel Tribes. The corporate application provides vertical integration while the Travel Tribes provide horizontal integration. Each is hugely dependent on the other, but the travel tribe is where the value is.
Vertical Integration involves information technology; the collection and formation of system data. This is the information that helps groups stay in contact with each other giving the origin community a portal into the destination community (and vice versa) for a given flight. This helps airplane operators schedule flights, and it helps communities become attractive to entrepreneurs and other communities.
The horizontal integration is where information originates and terminates. The Travel Tribe disseminates information on the ground at both the origin and destination. What happens in a Travel Tribe, stays in a Travel tribe.
The most important aspect of data and information control is the ability to restrict it from communities who are not part of the transaction. Nobody else can know where you are going except you and the airplane operator – that’s what makes the game private. Nobody needs to know how much you are paying for a hotel room or travel service except you and the service provider – that’s what makes the game valuable. Nobody needs to know what you are doing on the ground except you and your friends – that’s what makes the game social.
A Value Game depends on the control of information. If someone else controls the information – they control the Value and there can be no game. They also control the use of information and the information technology. Don’t take this point likely; whoever controls the use of the information also controls the technology (vertical integration), not the other way around. Technology is deployed to the game – the game is not deployed to the technology. So, if you control the game, then you control the usage and the deployment of the technology; i.e., you control the value.
(Diagram credit and reference: Seven Faces of Information Literacy in Higher Education by Christine Bruce)
