Examples of Useful Social Broadcasting in Real Life?

I know that “social broadcasting” is generally used to describe the specific behavior of streaming audio or video to the members of your social network, but I’ve co-opted it (more than a few times in my entries here) to convey a broader concept of social status-sharing: One of transmitting information bits relating to where you are and what you’re doing, specifically for consumption by other people (as opposed to the strictly existential stuff).

I’m not sure yet if this is a useful distinction from plain ‘ole social status-sharing. There’s a nuance that I’m trying to tease out — broadcasting is for consumption; consumption leads to knowledge; knowledge implies action.

Consider these real-world examples that sort of get at where I’m trying to go:

* A submarine sends out active sonar pings in order to map out its surroundings or localize targets. By doing so, though, the sub also broadcasts its location to everybody within listening distance, which is a range far outside the limits of its own perception — it can be “seen” much farther than it can “see.” In the sub’s case, this is an undesired consequence, and it’s why subs don’t send out pings when they’re trying to be sneaky.

However, this leads to a more prosaic example of how broadcasting can have useful side-effects…

* A car uses its headlights while driving at night to illuminate the road for the driver. By doing so, it has the secondary effect of making the car easier to detect around blind corners, because its light beams also tell oncoming traffic, “Hey, a car is coming around the corner in a few seconds.”

It’s a very specific example of the secondary use of headlights, helping others see you — though in a manner far different than during the daytime.

* While we’re on the subject of cars, they have are plenty of other broadcasting tools: visual indicators like brake lights and turn signals (I hear people still use them); audio indicators like horns (plain and musical), and even the sound of the engine and exhaust (both for ego and safety — we’ve heard the visually-impaired protest too-silent hybrids, and as the motorcycle types insist, “loud pipes save lives.”)

Proximity, Proximity, Proximity
Now, these real-world examples of social broadcasting are specific to location and presence, and as such, they’re limited by proximity. Which is usually a good thing, as it helps manage information overload — stuff that’s close to you is amplified in importance, and stuff fades in importance and intensity with distance, until stuff that’s too far away to matter is invisible.

Online, the proximity isn’t based on geography, but social “distance.” (Of course, geography is a factor here, but skip that for now.)

Trying to map the offline behaviors to online ones (and vice versa) often leads to absurdity, as demonstrated by the “Real Life Twitter” video, where we see the worlds of physical distance and social distance collide. It ends up being a comedic take on the kind of verbal broadcasting that we normally associate with the outbursts of an emotionally-disturbed or mentally-ill person on the street (another form of social broadcasting).

Anyway, I’m not sure what the point of all this is yet, other than to reiterate the power of geography as it relates to social networks, and the huge, huge potential upside of location-based services (which we all knew, anyway). So I’ll just end this with a question: Does the idea of “social broadcasting” that I’m trying to pin down make sense? Is it a useful concept, distinct from social status sharing? Is there a term for it already?  (“Geographically-aware social status-sharing?”) Please leave a comment and help set me straight.