So I was thinking in the shower (where most of my strange ideas emerge) this morning about a viral phone-chain. Here’s the rough:

1. Setup a Web site called “viralphonechain.com”
2. Allow people to enter their location, name, phone number, etc. as a Nationwide call-chain member.
3. Vote on a date and time where the calls would occur (9AM PST?)
4. Start the call-chain on the West coast with one person calling the next person on the list, with the hopes that enough people have signed up to get a West coast call finishing on the East coast.
5. Keep all calls under 1 minute.
6. Create an interface on the Web where the first person logs-in, receives a single phone number, a name, and a code to give the person they call (eg: Bob Smith, 206 555-1234, code # 13908).
7. The person calls the number, introduces themselves, and tells person #2 the code number.
8. Person #2 logs-in to the Web site, enters their code, and receives the next number, name, and code.
9. Continue this process until we reach all members and the call finishes at a destination the East coast.
10. Allow members to post video and audio of their calls and whether or not they successfully contacted their number.
11. If a number is not reachable, a button should be available on the Web site that would generate a new code and a new contact, until a successful call is made.

I haven’t come up with a reason why this project should be undertaken, other than an interest in whether or not it could be done. Perhaps a phrase should be carried along with the calls, such as “Come here, Watson. I need you.”

Any takers? I imagine the ad revenue would be sufficient, and what if we could get sponsors, or even some celebrities mixed in. Since each member would have no idea who they were calling until they entered their code, it would be cool to mix in, say, Ellen Degeneres. Perhaps this could be an on-going project, with the first iteration being US-based numbers, the second being Worldwide, and the third an effort to make a coast-to-coast call where no-one would be placing a long-distance call (say, based on zipcode?)

Of course, security concerns already hit me like a brick, like what level of ongoing privacy would be offered to participants since they are revealing their name and personal phone numbers. If the project got big enough, perhaps we could hide the actual phone numbers in a Sprint-sponsored pool of numbers?