full posts
Jyri Engeström - object-centered sociality
Excellent talk from Jyri centered around the question why so many social networking platforms fail. He explained how social networks emerge: networks emerge around objects. The representation of social networks in node diagrams are good at representing links between the people, but it doesn't explain what connects those particular people and others not. If you look at networks centered around certain dates, they look completely different from your network centered around your job. Jyri explained why a lot of people will have lost contact with friends in high-school. As soon as you leave school, the objects around which the network of friends are centered will dissolve (he refers to doing homework together, going out together). Without the object, the network will dissolve as well. He compared YASNS as Linked-In as a way of ladder-climbing. If you've reached the top, what will happen then? The platform is built upon a competitive model. In networks we sort of play, but not only in the competitive sense. New platforms should integrate more forms of play to be successful.
I have some difficulties with the term object Jyri uses. Is making homework an object? What would be an on-line object we play around? A tag in a physical space could be an object, but does a network emerge around the tag? In current YASN's many people 'tag' the place they live in, but are networks emerging from that? As current platforms already offer this type of tagging and they still don't seem to work, what is needed in the design of a platform to do make it work? I need to chew on this a bit longer, but it certainly is an interesting topic. Read Jyri's full argument.
Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia revealed
Some interesting number by the founder of Wikipedia:
- 522 people contribute more than 50% of the content
- 1474 people are responsible for 73.4% of the content
- 3 people are responsible for 1/3 of all edits in pages
Douglas Engelbart - 1968
We've been watching a demo of the early days of text editing and linking by Douglas Engelbart. Amazing that's the demo was recorded in 1968 and breathes a modern voice. Using headsets we still use nowadays, switching live via video conferencing, using multiple screens, showing what the system does and how it works. Man, he already invented the mouse . I remember the first home computer my father bought (Atari 800 XL) somewhere in 1985-ish. A PC with mouse came in the early nineties (and we were early adopters in our neighborhood). Amazing to see. Even more amazing is the fact that we've had live contact with Engelbart before and after watching the demo. Gosh, this is recorded 10 years before I even was born. Why did it take so long to become mainstream?
Meet Karsten
In Umea I met Karsten Kneese. He started out blogging, or rather keeping an on-line diary for his family and friends, when he moved all the way to northern Sweden. During BlogWalk I explained to him what in my view is blogging: invoking conversation. Originally he didn't have comment and trackback functionality, but after our conversations in Umea he switched to another platform with all the correct blogging tools, including RSS. I could only say welcome to the real blogging world, Karsten!
Post about Habermas
Now here is an excellent post by Marcelo Vieta about lots of questions concerning blogs and Habermas' theory inlcuding links to other sources on the internet.
