PARIS — On his eight-hour flight to New York from Switzerland last month, Jeff Jarvis, a well-known blogger and journalism professor, found himself seated next to a woman eager to discuss the finer points of management theory.
“Normally, it would have been fine to chat, but I had work to do,” he said. When, after a while, the conversation failed to find a natural end, Mr. Jarvis resorted to the road warrior’s tried-and-true trick: He donned his headphones.
Mr. Jarvis, whose book “Public Parts” argues about the virtues of engaging with people online, conceded that such experiences made him wary about doing the same in an airplane setting. “So often we do sit next to utter strangers,” he said. “And the lottery does not have great odds.”
But what if those odds could be improved with access to the information that passengers already share about themselves online?
This month, the Dutch carrier KLM began testing a program it calls Meet and Seat, allowing ticket-holders to upload details from their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and use the data to choose seatmates.
The concept is a step beyond the not always successful efforts a few years ago by some airlines — including Air France, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa — to build “walled” social networks out of their existing frequent flier memberships.
Mr. Jarvis, whose book “Public Parts” argues about the virtues of engaging with people online, conceded that such experiences made him wary about doing the same in an airplane setting. “So often we do sit next to utter strangers,” he said. “And the lottery does not have great odds.”
But what if those odds could be improved with access to the information that passengers already share about themselves online?
This month, the Dutch carrier KLM began testing a program it calls Meet and Seat, allowing ticket-holders to upload details from their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and use the data to choose seatmates.
The concept is a step beyond the not always successful efforts a few years ago by some airlines — including Air France, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa — to build “walled” social networks out of their existing frequent flier memberships.
Would you feel comfortable picking and knowing who you were going to be seated next to on a flight? Would you feel more compelled to engage with your seat mate knowing they chose to sit next to you or vice versa?
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