From friend to friend worldwide

Friendships have changed as a result of social media. It’s quicker and easier to people and stay in touch, but the downside is that offline friendships receive less attention. Yet, a travel experiment by Yuujou has shown that people around the world still maintain ties to others in non-digital ways.

According to the six degrees of separation phenomenon, all people are six social connections away from each other. Does this theory still apply to the digital world of 2019 where everybody is linked with hundreds of so-called friends on Facebook and other sites? What would happen if you actually went on a journey travelling from one friend to the next? To find out, two three-person teams set off in opposite directions from Berlin without any scheduled route on their way to Japan. They were given one important rule: they could only travel from one friend to another.

Huge interest in the project

This unusual idea came from Corinne Eisenring, an award-winning TV producer of travel documentaries, and her sister Yvonne. The idea became reality thanks to support from Oliver Herren, founder of Switzerland’s largest online retailer “Digitec Galaxus”. These three all came together in July 2018 to found Yuujou AG and plan the project, which they realized together with a team in Zurich and partners around the world.

International casting sessions were held online to choose the travellers, which began in November 2018 and exceeded all expectations, with over 30,000 people applying from 167 countries. A jury chose the lucky few during a multi-stage selection process: Panos Polemitis from Cyprus, Paula Savelkoul from New Zealand, Jed Kenny from South Africa, John Sebastian from India, Renata Millington from Brazil and Joey Briggs from the USA who beat thousands of applicants to each win one of the highly sought-after places. They were joined by Yvonne Eisenring, best-selling Swiss author and presenter.

No small undertaking

For a long time, it seemed as though the experiment would fail. Team East zigzagged across Eastern Europe while Team West headed through Brazil. But after 100 days, both teams did indeed make it to the other side of the world in Tokyo. The experiment was a success! The participants documented their trips and passed the content onto the team in Zurich for multimedia editing. This digital storytelling concept enabled the community to experience the journey in real time.

Corinne Eisenring is speaking at Connecta Bern about the Yuujou travel experiment and how its digital content was created.