Two pieces of news lit up the Twittersphere here in Santa Cruz this week. One was the announcement that local geek hero Sol Lipman and his new team at Tomfoolery had a hot new business idea and $1.7 million. The Solster is back, and this time he’s got money!

The other breaking story was the release of Twitter’s new six-second video service, Vine. Everyone everywhere is blogging and Tweeting about this revolutionary product, but here in Surf City, local geeks all noticed the same thing: This is the rebirth of 12Seconds.tv, a Santa Cruz-based play headed up by none other than Sol Lipman.

I found out about Vine via Margaret Rosas (@mrosas), another 12Seconds alum, and Bartt Teuwisse (@bartt), now a Twitter evangelist himself. And over the past several days virtually everyone in my local network has commented on this development, many noting the weirdly perfect timing that finds it coinciding with the launch of Tomfoolery.

Twitter, Vine, 12Seconds, Tomfoolery—all these social networks can help people connect in new ways. All ask us to participate in media creatively, as makers, however modest our contributions. These communities we are building online are real.

A couple of weeks ago, the brilliant conceptual artist Ze Frank invited his online community to join him here at the Museum of Art and History, and hundreds came. It was real.

This issue of Instant magazine celebrates social networks as arenas of community. It celebrates the makers. We celebrate that social network that is the Santa Cruz tech community—the geeks and their allies. Join us!

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