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« August 2003 | Main | October 2003 » September 30, 2003fakester.comfakester.com: reality is optional If you could be anyone, what would you be? Category: friendster Posted by zephoria at 9:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) September 29, 2003a song about FriendsterFirst, Friendster became a common vocabulary word in certain subcultures. Now, it has become part of the chorus in a song: "I saw your new boyfriend on Friendster..." Category: Posted by zephoria at 4:53 PM | TrackBack (1) ratemyteachers.comIn recent days, schools have been getting more and more outraged over ratemyteachers.com. The site allows you to anonymously rate your high school teachers and express discontent. Of course, no teacher deals well with anonymous feedback, particularly in the form of a public site. That said, we've all been through the hells of high school and there's nothing more entertaining than voicing our aggrevation. Category: youth culture Posted by zephoria at 4:25 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0) September 28, 2003tranceport...When i was writing my Master's thesis, i listened to one album perpetually. I had just had most of my CD collection stolen when i went away to the woods to write. The CD player there didn't play burnt CDs so i listened to Son Kite's "Minilogues" for a week solid. And somehow, i continued listening to it for the rest of my thesis writing. A full summer of the same CD on repeat. Thus, when i went to listen to them spin this weekend, i was totally taken aback by how quickly my mind reverted to thesis mode, simply by hearing them spin. In a matter of moments after they hit the stage, i was working through various problems in my thesis, trying to solve missing components. Very strange audio association... Category: reflections & rants Posted by zephoria at 7:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) September 25, 2003visual tricksCheck out this image:
You know that it's a viusal trick... but you still try to focus. Painful, eh? Category: Posted by zephoria at 11:52 PM | TrackBack (0) September 24, 2003alphabetizing and crankinessI'm a bit cranky today. I'm usually very happy to look at new social networks services and share my thoughts with site creators, but i'm *really* tired of having the same automatic grumbling reaction concerning one issue: the ordering of sex identifiers during sign-up. If you're going to alphabetize everything else in your sign-up, alphabetize sex. Male / Female is only a clear reminder of who you value in your system. I can deal with the abuse of the term gender, but c'mon now.. give me one good reason for not alphabetizing sex terms other than cultural sexism? So, if you're a website creator (or know of one), (let them) know that this practice is really insulting. Companies currently making me cranky:
Companies who get it:
[Note: "Prefer not to say" is very appreciated in sites not dedicated to dating... Because what's the importance of sex other than reminding the user that you're selling their data to advertisers?] Update: The worst abuse is MySpace which not only assumes male/female but in asking you who you are looking for, it inverts it to say woman/man. Very male-centric. Category: Posted by zephoria at 5:18 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) the unsexy listNerve just put up a list of the top 50 unsexiest things, including: Friendster.com. For a few months, it was a secret cute-kid sex party. Then all your exes heard about it. Then Courtney Love got on it. Then strangers started insisting you'd shared some magical experience with them outside Tuscaloosa. You told them you'd never been to Tuscaloosa and that they must have the wrong person. Then they told you your pet hamster’s name from when you were five and you started shaking. Category: Posted by zephoria at 4:22 PM | TrackBack (0) dating/business.. another axesIn meeting people to date, the generic "you" is theoretically looking for one lifetime partner. S/he wants to be introduced to many candidates and feels little consequence if things don't work out. Worst case scenario: two of them meet and call you a shit. In meeting people for business purposes, you are motivated to connect with many people who provide you a diverse but meaningful social network. You have limited time to engage with people, so you must choose wisely and then slowly massage that relationship, particularly if the person you want to know cares little for you. The people you meet in business are often intertwined so you have to play nice from the getgo. These are two totally different ways of operating your social network. Yet we think that the same architecture makes sense. Hmm. Category: Posted by zephoria at 1:05 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) September 23, 2003friendster in the newsI used to be good about posting news articles about Friendster, but i've been dreadful lately, mostly because very few say something new. --sigh-- Of course, CNews seems to have a small obsession, fueled by the spread of rumors. Ah, yes, the power of gossip to keep anyone in the public eye. It's kinda a funny twist on social networking, no? Gossip keeps friends connected; rumors keeps individuals connected with the press. Maybe "press" should be a Fakester.... [Oh, if you have articles that i should post here, either add them to the comments or send them my way.] Category: friendster Posted by zephoria at 11:45 PM | TrackBack (0) Cash from contactsCash from contacts is a BBC article that discusses LinkedIn's model of letting the have nots have access to the haves. Cash from contacts The way the old boy network does business is being given a high-tech makeover. A growing number of Silicon Valley start-ups are emerging to help individuals and companies cash in on who they know. One of those is LinkedIn, an online invitation-only networking service based in Mountain View. Chief executive Reid Hoffman told BBC Online using the internet speeds up a user's ability to access contacts and to make more connections that he or she would have done in the real world. He says in four months LinkedIn has grown from 100 members to 23,000 and predicts more than a million people will be logging on by June 2004. The service spans 110 industries from computers to catering and sports to medicine in over 75 countries. It also boasts an 80% success rate in users making a positive connection via the network. But Mr Hoffman acknowledges that LinkedIn's future relies on the old fashioned-way of bringing 'haves' and 'have nots' together. Matching up "The 'haves' are essentially people who have resources, who have jobs, they can hire people, they can invest in companies," he says. "They have to be linked up to the other people who want to do business with them to create new business. "And so what I realised is what the 'haves' care about is trusted introductions, someone coming to them through someone they know. "Now rather than playing a round of golf for four hours, the Internet lets us make those connections more effectively and more quickly." Tina Mitiguy used the service to land a job after six fruitless months of going to seminars, talking to everyone she knew and registering with online job sites. It was only when a college friend invited her to join his professional networking group on LinkedIn that things changed. "When I think back on it, it was an exciting day. About a week after posting my resume, I got a call and a call is always better than an email," she says. "A few days later I went for an interview and landed a job as director of member services at a start-up called REd Medic which was exactly what I was looking for in the technical medical field." Business solutions What LinkedIn claims to do for individuals, Spoke Software of Palo Alto claims to do for business by leveraging employee contacts to help close a deal. While LinkedIn's service is built from the bottom up with members submitting contacts, Spoke's software works from the top down pulling contacts from workers' e-mails, buddy lists and electronic calendars. A connection can only be made if the contact gives permission, but numbers alone are useless in a company with hundreds or thousands of employees. CEO Ben Smith told BBC Online the beauty of the product is that it maps relationships between people. "We are not so much focused on getting from one person to another as discovering who people know and why and leveraging that to provide insight, access and influence for people who are using our software." One such company is Determine Software of San Francisco. CEO Scott Martin says: "We've had a couple of examples with prospective customers where we had an enquiry come to us. We then backtracked to see if we knew anyone in that company so we're not just blind responding to this request. "And in those cases where we made that contact it was very beneficial to us to have that inside coach say 'yes, this is a real project and I will go in and be a reference for you.'" Cash boost Spoke's Ben Smith says in today's fast-paced economy using who you know can translate into real dollars and cents. "We are seeing a 26% improvement in pipeline productivity because when you get right down to it, what business is about is accessing relationships and information through relationships. "It's not how great a presentation we give, but how great is the information we have to shape that presentation that often closes a deal or doesn't." The venture capital community is recognising the value of these networking operations and loosening their purse strings. Spoke has reaped over $9m in venture capital funding. Reid Hoffman claims about 15 venture firms want to invest in LinkedIn, proving his business model fits a world where no-one has a job for life anymore. "The mobility of people changing companies and industries over their career is an overall trend. "As long as that's the case this kind of service is essential because the way you cross that is when someone will take a risk on you and the reason they will take a risk on you is because they have an endorsement from someone they trust." Category: yasns Posted by zephoria at 12:37 PM | TrackBack (0) September 22, 2003my inner child
My inner child is ten years old!
Category: Posted by zephoria at 9:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1) the value of pressLast night, i was on a panel at the Hillside. Afterwards, someone asked me how i managed to cram a whole lot of theory into 8 minutes. The answer was simple: the press. I've found that the press is one of the best bouncing boards for working through academic ideas. They ask silly questions, have totally different motives, and are so far outside of academia that everything seems new and interesting. Other academics are jaded, too involved in the details and otherwise unable to provide that fresh perspective. I've given up paying attention to how they might quote me, because i don't care; i simply enjoy the conversations. Last week, i was talking to a reporter. She asked me a question about what makes interacting with people on something like Tribe or LinkedIn different than Friendster. This prompted a little a-hah moment. Dating is all about people matching.. people meeting other people. Classifieds are all about people connecting with *information.* Say what you want about the effectiveness of meeting people online, but the Internet has certainly been successful at connecting people to information... for almost everyone. And the Internet has definitely been successful at helping mediate relationships that already exist. Even when you break down the kinds of relationships that form on Friendster, you start to realize that Friendster is most useful as an information gathering tool. (Yeah, yeah... a people DNS.) Familiar strangers. Headhunters using it to look up people. Tracking down old friends. Information, not necessarily socialization. Of course, information about people is far more fascinating than information about random objects. But getting information about people doesn't necessarily prompt a desire to interact with or engage them. Must process more, but when i said it out loud, i realized that the dichotomy of people/information is a really powerful axes for reflection on these tools. Category: Posted by zephoria at 6:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) September 21, 2003knwoledge managementDina Mehta has an interesting entry called Social Networks and Brand Identity where she describes Kapferer's Brand Identity Prism (a combination of 6 internal & external characteristics that comprise a consumer's reaction to a brand). It seems as though she's doing a lot of crunching on ideas in the knowledge management space. Most of what she focuses on are the more business-y approaches, but her entries are a reminder that i need to learn more about the academic theories underlying knowledge management ('cause that's the type of information management that i want to be playing with). Category: Posted by zephoria at 11:26 AM | TrackBack (0) September 20, 2003data on FakestersBefore i left for vacation, a wonderful woman sent me a set of survey data she collected on 61 identified Fakesters (mostly Pets). Having lost track of my email during that period, i forgot to post it. The survey isn't that serious so it's mighty fun to read and there are some humorous quotes. Category: friendster Posted by zephoria at 10:28 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) September 19, 2003irritated by processWhile Berkeley is far more like Brown than MIT could ever dream to be, one thing drives me batty: there is way too much of the Northern California process, self analysis shit in the classroom. I just sat through 2 one-hour classes where over half of each class was devoted to process, analysis of the professors (section) or self-analysis by the professors (lecture). We're no longer in the first week of school so i have *no* patience for this. I'm also having a really really hard time dealing with the slowness of speech of most professors. Out of all of my professors, one of them is a New Yorker/total East Coaster. He talks as fast i do, makes no apologies for it and demands that you keep up just by his assertive manner of speaking. It's odd how refreshing this is for me. (And added bonus is that while he can do the whole post-structuralist speak, he keeps it to a minimum instead of trying to validate his existence through incomprehensible combinations of discourse words.) As most of my SF friends are actually natives of the East Coast, i forget how much the slow-paced, process-centric Californian tendencies drive me up the wall. I just want to plow through the material. If i don't get something in the first round, i'd rather repeat it than think that a slow version will allow for better comprehension. That never works for me and by going slow, my mind wanders. I think i need more sleep. Category: reflections & rants Posted by zephoria at 3:28 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) Jonathan bailedFor anyone intending to attend Sunday's talk to heckle Jonathan instead of me, please note that you'll have to redirect your tomatoes as Jonathan seems to have bailed. Category: Posted by zephoria at 3:15 PM | TrackBack (0) September 17, 2003Cybersalon on Habits of the HeartIn case you want to hear me babble: Cybersalon: Matchmaking for Love and Money, Online and Off September-21 Note: for anyone who had hoped to go to this talk to heckle Jonathan instead of me, you'll need to redirect your tomatoes as Jonathan has seemed to have bailed on the panel. Doors open at 5.30; discussion starts at 7. A $15 donation is 5.30 - 9.00 PM Directions: From the Bay Bridge or Oakland and points south, take the Category: Posted by zephoria at 5:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) would you pay $5?Folks keep asking me for my honest opinion on last evening's MIT/Stanford Venture Lab panel and i keep avoiding this, but peer pressure works so well. First, one must dissect the purpose of people's attendance. In theory, the goal is to see a panel of experts talk about the business issues around the "social networking space" (even if some panelists want to pretend as though there is no "space"). I may not have an MBA or any entrepeneurial experience, but i'm not so naive as to think that there is any expert on the business end of this phenomenon. Everyone is riding on theories; there are no success stories to say how this is going to work, how this is going to make money. Since everyone's bank rides on their theories, suddenly there are experts because when you lack data, you need to back your ideas with confidence so as to encourage others to do so as well, thereby increasing your likelihood of succeeding (business is a strange world to me). Thus, we had a panel of five people who have a lot invested in making this work, and particularly in making this work for them. Now.. let's look at the audience. Why on earth would you pay $30 to hear a panel of people who have a lot invested banter about something that has yet to pan out? One of the audience members answered this reflection when she turned to the audience, asked how many grad students were in the room and whether or not they would pay $5 more to get a list of who was attending. The room was filled with people who also wanted to see and be seen. Of course, to be seen, you must also be heard, so most questions were also about being seen, not reflecting on what one was hearing. [Of course, i'm a part of this absurdist drama as well since i went to watch and analyze and to show face given that i've been dreadfully busy. Plus, i wanted to get a sense of what was missing in preparation for the remake of this play on Sunday.] Unfortunately, very little of the panel got into the content of the topic. Instead, it was a pure dance that would've made Goffman proud. The interaction ritual between panelists was full of snide remarks and ego cutting (or soothing); it was like watching a geek version of a wrestling match... (of course, i wonder whether it was more like the WWF than a set of professional wrestlers... performed or realistic spite?) I will say that Jonathan has become much better at responding to sarcastic cuts in kind and even better at dodging the opponents. I should note that prior to the panel's dance, Reid gave a 20 minute talk with interesting data for those who might know the space. In the talk, he had one nugget that got me thinking. He noted that Jonathan believed that people have one social network; Reid countered that they have multiple. Perhaps those of you who know me know that their disagreement brings up one of my buzzwords in a flash: faceted. (Yes, yes, don't roll your eyes.) People maintain a coherent social network. The multiple contexts in which we interact create facets in our social network that we know how to maintain quite meaningfully. We certainly reach out to different people for dates than we do for jobs, but that is not a segmentation of our network into convenient chunks. Instead, we manage what is appropriate when. We don't want to maintain multiple networks; we want to maintain one network that we can facet as we see fit. This is a trick that no one in this "space" has figured out yet. This means that we don't always want a public network, because we're not always willing to collapse those facets. (More to come on this topic, i'm sure...) Anyhow, as you can see, i quite enjoyed myself, but i always do enjoy good entertainment full of outrageous actors and an interactive audience. Oh, and in case you want to actually know more about the content, Stewart Butterfield is far more concrete than i have been. Other versions of commentary: Category: Posted by zephoria at 4:39 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1) V-Day Online OrganizerI'm trying to find my replacement for V-Day. If you know of anyone in New York that'd be interested, let me know! JOB TITLE: Online Organizer (Part-Time) LOCATION: New York, NY REPORTS TO: Executive Director WORKS MOST Worldwide and College Campaign Directors, Executive Director, SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES: - Manage and update and sometimes build the V-Spot (The V-Spot is the internal site for all of our organizers. It is a HTML/PHP/mySQL system) An ideal candidate would have (in the order of priorities): - Good communication skills, patience and politeness V-Day is a virtual organization. The Coordinator works out of his/her home office which should be in or around New York City. COMPENSATION: competitive salary and benefits based on experience Eligible candidates should send a cover letter stating why they want to work for V-Day and their most recent resume to jerrilynn@vday.org. V-Day will directly contact candidates if an interview is desired. About V-Day: V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop worldwide violence against women and girls including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sexual slavery. V-Day stages large-scale benefits and produces innovative gatherings, films, and programs (such as the upcoming 2004 documentary “Until The Violence Stops;” community briefings with Amnesty International on the missing and murdered women of Juarez, Mexico; The December 2002 V-Day delegation trip to Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan; The Afghan Women's Summit; The Stop Rape Contest; and The Indian Country Project) to educate and change social attitudes towards violence against women. Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of "The Vagina Monologues" to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities. In 2003, over 1,000 V-Day benefit events were presented by volunteer activists around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls and raising $4 million. The V-Day movement is growing at a rapid pace throughout the world. V-Day, a non-profit corporation, distributes funds to grassroots, national, and international organizations and programs that work to stop violence against women and girls. In its first year of incorporation (2001), V-Day was named one of Worth Magazine's "100 Best Charities." In its first six years, the V-Day movement has raised over $20 million. The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina.
Category: Posted by zephoria at 1:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) September 16, 2003frustrated with information retrievalFor the last few weeks, i've been trying to appreciate the information retrieval material that is being thrown my way in my classes. For those who don't know, i'm housed in a department called "Information Management and Systems" (i.e. what happened to librarian sciences as it evolved). I'm utterly fascinated by how people construct and maintain information, most notably *social* information. What categories do we create to relate to others? How do we construct models of social information in our heads? How do we access this? Needless to say, this isn't the focus of my classes, but i'm trying to overlay my goals onto the material and find some sort of appreciation for them. [My efforts remind me of my experiences with history classes in middle school. I despised history because i couldn't make it relevant. At one point, a friend of mine told me to twist my perspective, to think of history as one giant storybook with fascinating characters. He suggested that i tried to figure out the motives and goals of the characters. Although my school focused on dates and memorization, i latched on to the material simply because i fell in love with the storybook.] All the same, i'm finding myself utterly frustrated. All of the information retrieval work focuses on this external data, how to categorize it, create meta-data around it, access it, etc. In the process, it gets further and further removed from the structures of the mind. The goal is efficiency and the approach is often to create systems that seem most computationally logical and than to figure out how to make humans be able to access it. While these researchers acknowledge that people need to have immense skills to follow this protocol, their approaches still seem so foreign to me. Of course, i find myself trapped to this as well. I had to critique SecureId the other day for a fellow researcher. This was a wonderful task because i'm a bit embarrassed by my naivety on that project. People are dreadful external categorizers. But, i just keep getting stuck on how bad people are at externalizing what they do so effectively internally that i cannot appreciate these attempts to do so. I need to figure out the proper "story" so that i can find this material interesting instead of just getting caught up in my irritation at their attempts. Category: academia Posted by zephoria at 4:52 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) am i a suicide girl?Now, i get a lot of odd messages on Friendster, which often humor me. Since i know way too many people on the damn site, many people think i'm collecting friends and ask me to add them. I ignore these, but they make me smile. Actually, i rarely respond to anyone who writes me on Friendster (no time..), but i utterly love reading what people write. In the last few weeks, a new trend in requests has emerged in my personal account: i keep getting messages from people asking for my suicide girl page, asking if i am a suicide girl, asking for my porn site, etc. At first, this was a bit startling (although i have to admit that i was secretly honored since i adore the Suicide Girls). For those who don't know, most of the Suicide Girls are "Pin-up Punk Rock and Goth Girls" (a.k.a. a really hot soft porn site for the younger funkier market). Many Suicide Girls and other women with sites are on Friendster because 1) it's fun; 2) they can connect with their friends; 3) it helps them connect with more people who may be interested in their site. [It's important to note that many of the Girls neither advertise their site nor their identity as a Girl.] Browsing through such women's portraits, i realized something. Many of them have collections of friends that consist of young punkster friends and older white businessmen.... So do i. Interesting. [Not so private note.... Clay - your identity play is fucking with my identity play.] Category: Posted by zephoria at 3:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) the idiot savantAbe's latest reflections on Friendster are fantastic. He iconifies Jonathan as an idiot savant, accidentally stumbling on brilliance. [Side note: the notion of Friendster as the product of an idiot savant makes me deliciously happy as my dear friend used to pound a mantra in my head during college: don't attribute to maliciousness what you can attribute to stupidity. Perhaps a rephrasing is due... Don't attribute to brilliance what you can attribute to luck.] In his entry, Abe argues that Friendster's success is going to be hard to top, that its growth must be analyzed and that much of it can be attributed to Friendster's simple no-nonsense style. He does directly attack my point about Friendster fading, which makes me think that i need to readdress it since i still believe in it, but also believe in what he is saying. The problem with Friendster (in its current incarnation) is that it has little motivation for people to return, manage their network or otherwise keep coming back after the fun wears off. Unless Friendster figures out how to address these problems, it will fade. To do so, Friendster needs to evolve beyond a dating-only model, which seems unlikely. That is why i see Friendster as fading and others emerging. Of course, an alternate course would be that Friendster figures out that it cannot squeeze a square peg into a round hole and adjust its model. Somehow, the savant part of Abe's conception is dropped here. I *definitely* agree that conversion is dreadfully impossible. But i also believe that conversion implies that the best model is to maintain an articulated network. I think that's going to continue to be problematic and i think that the next evolution of these networks will have to address that head-on. That said, i also know that the dating model does not appeal to everyone and that there is an age cut-off on Friendster that allows for a larger market than Friendster currently addresses. I definitely think Friendster will be around in a year, but i don't think it will be the same tool. I think that it will be a dating site with limited appeal and a lot of folks who had "been there, done that." Of course, i'm speculating like the next person and will enjoy being proven wrong. Category: yasns Posted by zephoria at 12:26 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) September 15, 2003collection of YASNSCynthia Typaldos is compiling a list of all of the different social network software services. Perhaps of interest for those in the area. Category: Posted by zephoria at 1:45 PM | TrackBack (0) codifying relationshipsLiz is pondering the issues around explicitly codifying relationships and i couldn't agree more with her musings. In a state of confusion about how to label people, we often just give up. This isn't just something that happens online. How often do i try to express my relationship to someone and get all confused. One word certainly doesn't clarify those complications, but i still find myself making up a closest approximation, but not one that i would write down in stone. Also, given the rich relationships that i have with people, i often adjust my description of my relationship with a person depending on the audience. Let me flesh this out with some examples. The most obvious is the newly dating couple who hasn't really determined what their relationship is. So, what's the likelihood that one is to exuberantly tell her best friend about her new girlfriend? Probably high - there's a bit of bragging enthusiasm / want of support. What's the probability of her telling her mom about her new girlfriend? Probably low - she doesn't want to have to deal with the yes, mom, another one.. no this one's different conversation. Same relationship but with problems codifying it. Also, codification assumes that our terms are consistent and imply the same thing. Does friend mean the same thing to everyone? Certainly not. I have quite a few friends who i've learned that "friend" means anyone that they've met. Some codes have a definite meaning, but the implications are not given. For example, she is my mom. Well, in my case, my mom and i are pretty good friends, engage with each other for advice, etc. My mom is also my friend, but the 'mom' label trumps the friend label. Yet, the implications of a mother/daughter relationship are not consistent and thus one cannot assume much by simply hearing that relationship. Liz is also dead-on when she asks what the point of codification is when we have that model internally anyhow. For most people, there is none. What's the value? Doesn't it cause more social trauma than it does any good? Don't get me wrong - i'm constantly explicitly codifying information, but i don't think that this is normal behavior. [I am, afterall, an academic whose eccentricity is just part of the process.] Finally, i appreciate Liz's pointers to my commentary on sex and self-monitoring. Marginalized populations are constantly trying to account for how they are being perceived, if they are getting information across as intended and adjusting what they say accordingly. They don't have the privilege to just be whoever whenever whereever. They must determine the appropriate information at the appropriate time. Sex is just one axis in which this plays a part. The most blatant example for people is around gay identity. If you're gay and you lack the privilege of class (overeducation counts here), what's the likelihood that you will pronounce your sexual preference as you go for a job? Is this deception or simply trying to be unclear about your identity for your own protection? Self-monitoring. You determine the social situation and adjust accordingly. That same person is not going to hide his identity when he's at a gay bar. Category: social software Posted by zephoria at 8:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1) September 13, 2003Cybersalon on Habits of the HeartHere's another gathering for the interested. (I will be on this panel, offering quite a different perspective - i suspect - than is normally presented.) Cybersalon: Matchmaking for Love and Money, Online and Off September-21 Doors open at 5.30; discussion starts at 7. A $15 donation is 5.30 - 9.00 PM Directions: From the Bay Bridge or Oakland and points south, take the Category: Posted by zephoria at 4:56 AM | TrackBack (0) September 10, 2003my iPod killer appWhen i got my Mac, it came with an iPod for a few extra dollars (ah, student discounts). Since my computer two computers ago crashed with all of my MP3s, i haven't bothered to re-rip them. I listen almost exclusively to online radio when i'm listening to music off of my computer. Thus, i couldn't think of a reason for why i might want an iPod, but for $30, why not? So, i scratched the darn thing before i even figured out how to use it. I didn't have a single MP3 to put on it and i certainly didn't want to go through the process of ripping my CDs again. So i procrastinated. Eventually, someone was telling me of an amazing Infected Mushroom live set. This finally motivated me to download Limewire and track down a bunch of live DJ sets from Israel. Thus, my iPod quickly turned into my little reminder of when i had enough of a life to go dancing. Well, i was reading a friend's blog today and s/he mentioned listening to NPR recordings via Audible.com. Having missed every "This American Life" for god only knows how long, i was curious. In i wandered, where i found the perfect little gift for my iPod. Not only did they have copies of NPR reels, but they have tons and tons of books on tape. And not the kind of books on tape that i've grown accustomed to renting at trucker stops (how much Louis L'Amour must one read.. i'm still damning my 5th grade history teacher for that one). No, they had a copy of most of the "to be read soon" books on my for fun bookshelf. What finally convinced me was realizing that Eric Schlosser is reading his own books! Since "Reefer Madness" is high on that list, i decided it was a must do. I've found my iPod killer app... Category: digitalness Posted by zephoria at 11:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) hatesterI got an invite for hatester from a rather prolific and entertaining personality in the social networks space. I couldn't help but smile and sign up. Category: Posted by zephoria at 8:40 PM | TrackBack (0) beautiful visualizationsA friend of mine just blogged proce55ing: Processing is a context for exploring the emerging conceptual space enabled by electronic media. It is an environment for learning the fundamentals of computer programming within the context of the electronic arts and it is an electronic sketchbook for developing ideas. [Key troublemakers include Ben Fry and Casey Reas (both of whom are brilliant)] Category: visualization Posted by zephoria at 12:25 AM | TrackBack (2) September 9, 2003Friendster as neocortical prosthetic...Multiple people have responded to my 150 person limit post with arguments about how the web should help increase our ability to connect and expand this number (most notably Tom Coates' Friendster as neocortical prosthetic...). Tom's right in that those who perceive our brains as a computer see technology as an opportunity for augmentation, parallel processing style. This is where i fundamentally believe that humanity matters. Keeping up social relations is not simply about remembering everyone you've met or having a structure to keep track of them. It is also about having the time and ability to manage those relationships, keep information flowing, etc. Social networks are not simply about people that you can store to use as appropriate. Thus, i don't fundamentally believe that an augmented version of your network will give you the tools necessary to maintain more meaningful contacts. Of course, i'd love to be proven wrong. [Direct note to Tom's post: i'm not actually trying to justify why i'm not an anomaly; i'm trying to express why the numbers don't make sense in the context of an articulated social network that spans time.] Category: Posted by zephoria at 10:58 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1) friendster populationI was guessing that the average age on Friendster was 28 and that it was 50/50 (fe)male. I wasn't far off. In the Anchorage Daily News, Jonathan reported that the average age is 27 and that it's 52% men. A friend in need may be a friend online Sunday, September 7, 2003 By Josh Niva Anchorage Daily News Mandy Yam has friends -- lots of friends. Hundreds of thousands of friends, in fact. She has best friends, fair-weather friends and friends she hasn't even met yet. These friends reside in high, low and in-between places. A 21-year-old journalism student at University of Alaska-Anchorage, Yam has been a dedicated member of the Friendster.com community since May. In that time, she's reconnected with an old high school pal, stayed connected with a group of college friends in California, made an unbelievable number of new acquaintances and even found out she's connected to a celebrity. "I'm one degree away from Flubber," Yam said with a chuckle. "How did that happen?" It's easy when one's personal network of friends totals more than 300,000, as Yam's Friendster account did last week. "And I just invited six more people (to join) today," she said. The world is not only more connected, it's a friendlier place thanks to Friendster, a free "social networking" Web site that has the cyber-universe atwitter. More than 1.6 million users have joined Friendster since its launch in March, and it has quickly become a pop culture phenomenon. "We definitely intended to create a really cool service that everyone could enjoy," said Friendster creator Jonathan Abrams from his Sunnyvale, Calif., office, "but it's still overwhelming when it takes off like this." Abrams developed the Friendster idea after following the trend of popular yet "random, creepy and anonymous" dating sites. "In real life, you meet people through your friends," he said. Unlike dating sites, Friendster is a "relationship-optional" site that is truly "friend-friendly." Friendster users create, browse and communicate through detailed personal profiles, which include basic statistics and likes along with pictures and even testimonials written by friends. Users can only browse profiles within their "personal network," which is developed through existing friendships. Users build connections by inviting others to join as friends. Once a friendship is formed, a personal network expands by adding the friends' collected friends. (Think six degrees of separation, only Friendster connections go four deep.) That's not to say Friendster isn't an effective matchmaking tool. Yam said a friend in California met her boyfriend using Friendster, and Abrams gets e-mails all the time about successful Friendster hook-ups. Yam and Cheryl Basto of Barrow, Alaska, have each made another type of special connection using Friendster. They have had cyber reunions with long-lost friends. Yam found an old friend who lives in California. Distant cousins tracked down Basto, 29, who recently tracked down a friend who moved to the Philippines five years ago. "That's the really cool thing, and we've heard a lot of that," Abrams said. Abrams said the average user age is 27, and the community is composed of 52 percent men. Abrams was Friendster's first registered user and now has 155 friends and a "pretty big" personal network. "But the whole idea is quality, not quantity," he said. Tell that to Yam, who has compiled an impressive list of 55 friends and built a personal network empire of 327,685 connections. She said 45 of her "friends" are "close friends"; none are strangers -- even Flubber. Friendster itself is growing by the thousands each day. Abrams said 550,000 users joined the community in the past month, and his staff of "less than 10" is having a difficult time keeping up. The site has suffered technical glitches due to the user overload, and Abrams is so understaffed he's forced to handle much of the company's marketing and public relations duties. With any popular trend comes backlash, and Friendster has faced plenty. One common complaint among many users is people who collect friends and personal networks strictly for statistical or ego reasons. "I don't like that some treat Friendster like a competition," Basto said on an e-mail. "I saw someone with 141 friends -- 141? Geez!" Yam added. Other user complaints come from the rash of "fakesters" who create bogus profiles or upload phony pictures. The Friendster staff hunts and deletes any suspicious profiles daily. There has even been a handful of spoof sites developed in recent week, such as Enemyster, Fiendster and Introvertster. It's also been reported that Friendster will soon charge users to navigate the site. Abrams said that's only partly true. The company is considering charging a monthly fee for users to communicate with others who aren't friends (probably less than $10), but Abrams said posting profiles, browsing and messaging between friends will remain free. Category: friendster Posted by zephoria at 6:12 PM | TrackBack (0) 3 degreesMelora Zaner from 3 degrees came to speak at Intel about the Net Generation. She had a variety of interesting approaches to the Neg Gen and since i can't find a meaningful reference, my notes from the theoretical hafl of her talk are contained within. Net Generation: 12-24 (broken into 12-17 | 18-24 ... aka home or not) The NetGen's prioritization of communication forums is interesting. Face-to-face dominates. Next comes cell phone (SMS or not). Next IM (usually AIM). Then email. Many had Live Journals which are more valuable as a form of communication than email. Email is assumed to be tracked by parents; cell phone conversations are not. Email is for dealing with parents. If there's going to be asynchonous behavior, use LJ (group commenting). NetGen only on IM when available to talk. Otherwise, it's rude to be on IM; log off if you can't talk. Away messages are not valued to them. MSN is perceived as staunchy and old, not where your friends are. Friends are at AIM. NetGen will use things that seem much "older" (i.e. older siblings like it... 17 Mag when 12, Cosmo when 17). Friends are the most influential in tech usage. Melora broke the NetGen into five categories along axes of "adult orientation" vs. "peer oriented" in terms of behavior and pressure. Isolator: 8-15% (low adult, low peer). Delinquents, drug dealers, outcasts Non-Teen: 15% (high adult, low peer). Geeks, dweebs, academics. Small social networks. Mostly men. Explorer: <10% (low adult, high peer). Group that pushes the edge, follows passion. Activists, rebels, freedom fighters, horse lovers, etc. Heavily female influenced. Interests-driven. Status Quot: 25-35% (more adult than peer). Preps, normals. Well-rounded, goal oriented. Often exhibits signs of adult stresses. Visible: 30-45% (more peer than adult). Social, well-known, pleasure seeker, charisma, large social networks. Fashion-driven. On a Saturday night, the visible would be at a party, the non-teen would be at home and the explorer would be pursuing a passion. Mass adoption starts with the explorers, peaks at the point between the visible and the status quo and dies by the time it reaches the non-teen. The sweet spot for determining success is between the explorer and the visible... the "visible leader." MTV focuses on "visible leaders" with 10% focused on explorers for tests Socializing is not communicating. The NetGen's online social network included people who are only online (i.e. fellow LJs). No desire to meet these people offline. Online is heavily 1-1 behavior... NetGen deeply desires small group organization online. [Note: without a publication, it's really hard to tell how accurate this is. I don't know her sample size or method for getting this information, but i do think that it's something to think about.] Category: digitalness Posted by zephoria at 4:11 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (7) September 8, 2003axes of info storageIn class this morning, one of our professors was talking about geographical information retrieval. Information is stored in association with a given place and thus by searching for that place, one can find information. [Note that while the professor was talking about documents, and professional ones at that, i immediately translated everything to think about social information, as that's my bent.] There are two ways to think about information. One is simply through the lens of the material; the second is through the lens of the experience of that material. Most material is associated with an event. Even along the lines of document creation, there is the location of which the material is created and experienced in addition to the location in which it might reference. This made think that much information is actually expereienced along three axes: place, time, person. For any given set of information, it may be experienced in multiple places, times or across multiple people. Information impacts place; it is not just situated there. It impacts the history, the vibe and perhaps scars the space itself (marks on the wall). Information is often felt to be ephemeral in time, as we cannot return to a given time to experience it. Information fundamentally impacts the people who experience it. They store that experience, that information and incorporate it into their identity. Also, they are likely to recall versions of that information/experience later, regardless of its accuracy. When we talk about information retrieval, we're talking about reconstructing the history, removing a set of information from the time/place/people who experienced it into a current situation. Time fundamentally changes. But what does it mean to have data stored with place and people instead of in a collected repository removed from those contextual bits? Should what be retrieved simply be the factual elements of information, or the more experiential? Can we have impact retrieval? Category: academia Posted by zephoria at 12:47 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) flash mobs in doonesburyToday's Doonesbury comic has a great reference to flash mobs:
Category: Posted by zephoria at 8:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) Social Networking: Is there Really a Business Model?For those interested in hearing talks in the Bay Area, here's another one perhaps of interest: Social Networking: Is there Really a Business Model? (sponsored by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab). Reid Hoffman (Linked In) will be speaking and the panel includes Jonathan Abrams (Friendster), Andrew Ankar, Ross Mayfield (Socialtext) and Cynthia Typaldos with Tony Perkins as moderator. Should be fun! Category: Posted by zephoria at 12:31 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) September 5, 2003the 150 limit and social upkeepWhen anthropologist Robin Dunbar wrote about a 150-person cap in one's social network, he was not referring to 150 people in one's lifetime. He was saying that people can maintain up to 150 weak ties at any given point in time. [And that tie maintenance is directly related to gossip upkeep and brain size, just as monkey tie maintenance is directly related to grooming and brain size.] When i have 200+ friends on a site like Friendster, i'm not a social networks anomaly. What is actually being revealed is that my articulated network goes beyond the relationships that i currently maintain. While a high percentage of my friends and associates are on Friendster, not all of them are. There are quite a few relationships that i currently maintain that are not represented there. Additionally, many of the relations represented are outdated or on hiatus, not because i don't love or appreciate those people, but because we are not geographically colocated or our personal situations have created a situation where time to connect is limited. This doesn't mean that i don't love and appreciate those people, just that they're not part of my current situation. I say all of this because it's another factor of why an articulated representation is not equivalent to the network that one is actually maintaining. By su |
