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December 31, 2003

roleplaying in social software

Roleplaying in social software is not contained to just Friendster. I remember being quite humored to find that both Saddam and Dubya had LiveJournals during their tiff. This morning, i got a note from a fellow researcher, Anindita Basu, responding to my postings of Live Journal statistics:

oh, reminds me-- i meant to respond to your post about lj stats. i'm not sure about this, but i don't think they're taking roleplayers into account in their stats, and they're (or rather we're) probably throwing numbers off. that's what i'm looking at now, research-wise. blog-based roleplaying. communities appropriating online technologies to co-construct stories. there are a lot of young teenage girls who've set up blogs as harry potter characters, for instance, saying they were born on july 31, 1980 like harry potter and live in the UK. so male/female numbers are off as well as ages and locations. besides the whole harry potter community, there are a bunch of others, including buffy, lord of the rings and even pop icon based ones. i'm not sure how many are out there, if the numbers are significant enough to skew their stats out of their million users, but it's something to take note of.

I have *no* idea how many roleplayers exist within the world of LJ, but i'd bet that it's no small number. Yet, all too often, these subcultures go unnoticed by the larger tech world. This behavior is quite reminiscent of that vast community of fan fiction and slash fans. When i started working with Henry Jenkins, i was astonished to hear how many people produced fan fiction online. For those who don't know what fan fiction/slash are, imagine watching a TV show (like Buffy) and then writing back stories about what is really happening behind the scenes. Using the characters from the show, people would produce thousands of subplots, stories of the characters when they were younger/older, etc. Slash is a particular subform of fan fiction where underlying homoerotic/sexual subplots are revealed. Before the net, people were using zines to write fan fiction. Now, fan fiction writers from all over the world are connected via the Internet.

Fan fiction is a fascinating form of participation in media consumption. The audience participates on a deeper level, engaging with the characters and building a community of like-minded folks who help each other with writing, personal struggles, etc. Not suprisingly, quite a lot of fan fiction is created by individuals trying to work out their own demons.

Of course, here's where the lawyers have a field day (oh, Creative Commons...). The first issue is not surprising... Some have charged that this reappropriation of characters violates copyright/trademark. But, here's a beaut...

Often, teens are using fan fiction to explore their sexuality. When 14-year olds write fiction about sex, is it child porn? Even worse, when 14-year olds write about imagined sexual encounters with teachers (i.e. in the context of Harry Potter), is it pedophelia? Henry is having a field day looking into these claims. But it certainly puts a nice twist into the process.

Btw, for those who find this topic fascinating, definitely read Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins. Oh, and Henry blogs in collection at Technology Review.

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December 30, 2003

developing digital and physical architecture

Bless Ross for pulling together all of the conversations that emerged from Cory's 2004 wish. After pulling together the strands, he offers his own perspective and i particularly like his commentary on openness and control.

When we refer to the regulatory forces that include "code," we're almost always referring to Lessig and his book of that title. In it, he references code as the architecture of the digital world. It's a great metaphor, but perhaps we should consider some of the physical issues that surround physical architecture. [If there are any architects out there, pipe in!]

When an architect designs a physical space, there is rarely iteration. I don't mean to suggest that buildings don't learn; of course they do. What becomes extensible about a physical architecture is how it can be repurposed. See, the designer, creator and constructor of a physical architecture usually turns over the creation to the users. This is not to say that there's not a manger of physical architectures, but the manager is rarely the creator. At most, the manager calls upon the constructor to fix or alter something. Seriously, how many architects are there that obsessively design, fix, maintain and control a building?

The distribution of creation, control and use of physical architectures is a truly distributed process. Many architects are probably a bit horrified by how their constituents use their constructions, but they don't play wack-a-mole with their users (although it is funny to imagine the ghosts of architects past coming out of the walls screaming that a painting is NOT supposed to be placed there). And users are certainly never fully pleased with the creators. I can't tell you how many Media Lab students damned I.M. Pei and that darn artist who made it impossible to get light in the building or create a feeling of connectivity.

It's funny because we don't ask architects to iterate on their creations based on use, but we do ask that they create structures that allow for a variety of different uses. When they don't, their creations become outdated and unusable. How much of this applies to code?

While the metaphor of code as architecture certainly makes some sense, there are lots of ways in which software architects are not similar to physical architects, both in how they treat their creation, its longevity, its users, etc. But perhaps there are some ways in which they could learn from one another...

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December 29, 2003

Kuleshov effect and remix culture

One of the weirdest things about December and May is that my brain is always so full of academic concepts that they somehow manage to get integrated into many conversations. At the Creative Commons party, i found myself talking to lawyers about the Kuleshov effect and its relevance to remix culture. Or more accurately, the problems that emerge because of it...

Lev Kuleshov was a Russian filmmaker. Because of the political climate of Russia, he was left without access to actual film. Instead, he constructed films by splicing film and telling his story in a collage-esque manner. In addition to his style of film, he's known for something called the Kuleshov Experiment. In this experiment, an image of a man's face is shown juxtapositioned with various other images immediately following. Viewers thought that the man's emotion changed even though it is exactly the same shot.

This creates an interesting dilemma for remix culture. What happens when an artist's construction is repurposed to convey something different than intended? Does an artist have control over the context in which their material is used? How might this affect how people are willing to distribute their material?

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December 28, 2003

social norms are not behind other points of regulation

In weaving a response to me, Joi connected my arguments with Wendy Seltzer's commentary on the norms of publicity.

In reading her argument, i found that i take issue with some of her assumptions so i'm putting them here for discussion.

We early adopters know how referer logs work... We know how to write .htaccess files, or at least whom to ask for something similar, if we want better (though still not total) privacy. We've internalized the norm that conduct not marked private is public.

There is no doubt in my mind that the self-referential "A-List" blogger knows this and WANTS their conduct to be public, but there is a second form of early adopter that is getting swept away by the blogging phenomenon. Live Journalers and other pseudo-private bloggers were also part of this. Many of them do not know how to work an .htaccess file or even manage the LJ Friends lists. Over and over again, i run into people who are outright shocked that their material is on Google. For them, their website is not public; Google is public. And they don't understand how their private ramblings ended up on Google.

As technologists, we have a tendency to mock this population, arguing that it's their own fault for being stupid. Well, this is foolish. The technology is not being devised by them or for them. They are getting swept away by decisions in many ways propagated by the A-List blogger-esque community that WANTS to be public, seen and heard. Furthermore, when they do realize things are public, they often don't care so long as it doesn't affect them locally. This is not because they are stupid but because the mass populous does not fear Big Brother and that is their conception of why they should care about privacy. In many ways, us technologists do a disservice to the population when we ask them to rebel against these technologies because of how institutions might treat them. They WANT to sell their data for the chance of winning a Porsche. They WANT the Easy Pass because they don't think that the government cares; they're law-abiding, right? People care about local vulnerability... things that will affect them personally. That's what Garfinkel and others have noticed that people perk up when their identity is stolen or when their boss finds out about their digital behavior. People don't think about how the technology is evolving because it's not evolving in a direction that meets their needs. Thus, it is unfathomable.

I wondered at first if privacy tensions would ease as more people became more technically sophisticated, but I'm inclined to think that gaps in understanding will just move with the tech, and social norms will follow still further behind.

I think it is quite dangerous to believe that social norms are "falling behind." Social norms aren't behind; they're baffled at the direction in which things are going. They're pushing for a different direction and they aren't being heard. People are using technology to meet their needs, but they are not prepared for how the architecture is pulling them in a different direction.

Arguing that social norms can fall behind suggests that there is a hierarchy to the four points of regulation. Those points are valuable in discussion because they provide tensions. Social norms pull in different directions than the market, the law or the technology. This does not mean that it is behind. Quite often, social norms leapfrog everyone else. For example, social norms pushed Napster into creating an architecture that challenged the market and the law. It wasn't that the market was behind, but that it was pulling in a different direction and with a new tension, things need to be worked out.

Thus, rather than thinking about how social norms are behind, i truly believe that we should be understanding why social norms are pulling in a different direction. What does this say about the population being served by the technology?

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graffiti archaeology in Wired

Yay Cassidy!!! Cassidy's Graffiti Archaeology project was just featured in Wired. For anyone in San Francisco, Cassidy will be speaking at the upcoming Dorkbot on January 14 at False Profit - come check it out!

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December 25, 2003

The Year in Phrases: Friendster

While i don't have a lot of respect for Fox News, i'm quite humored that they included metrosexuals and Friendster in their year in phrases:

Friendster: Like an online dating site ... but for friends. The site allows people to form networks with their friends, their friends' friends and so on, and is largely used as a hook-up vehicle for single, urban 20-somethings. Several celebrities have confessed to being Friendster addicts, and the site was so popular this year that it was often impossible to sign on.

Category: yasns

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December 24, 2003

competition vs. collaboration: events, people & ideas

An old lover of mine once told me that there are people who talk about events, people who talk about people and people who talk about ideas. Combine this with collaboration vs. competition and here is another set of axes along which we can consider bloggers.

A friend of mine conveyed a story to me of an incident when he and another pundit blogger were talking about a concept. Suddenly, they both had a look in their eyes, read clearly by each other as a battle cry to see who could blog about it first. Time and trackbacks are the classic weapons used by pundit idea bloggers. They want to get their ideas out there, validated and linked to. The pundit blogger is competing for attention, for validation, for uniqueness.

The sociable blogger talking about life is not in a race against time or for greater trackbacks. S/he knows that there are a million different perspectives, all of which are valuable. There is no one truth, only opinions. What makes an event or a person or an idea more valuable in this community is that variety of different opinions on the matter, the variety of different perspectives. Together, as a community, this brings life to something.

There are two different ways to talk about events, people and ideas and you see this played out by bloggers. Some events are discussed because each parrt of the community wants to bring life to their perspective on the matter. Nowhere is this more true than something that affects everyone differently. Take 9/11. Everyone blogged/journaled about it, each with their own voice. What was powerful was to get a fleshed out view of the event from so many different perspectives. Some events are published in competition. How many bloggers do you know who speak of a private event to prove that they were there, to draw attention to their status?

There are a variety of reasons for which bloggers talk about people. Bloggers show their respect and adoration through links to other people (or their ideas). Bloggers compete with others through similar mechanisms. In some cases, bloggers mock others to prove their self-importance, to increase their stature. The list can go on and is awefully similar to RL. Just as we name-drop in RL, we name drop on blogs.

Then there are ideas.... Blogs are a public forum. For some, they are a publishing forum. As such, people want their ideas to be unique and first. For others, it is a space to flesh out ideas and thus they put their ideas out there to be discussed, improved upon and dissected. Others put their ideas out there to help shape other known theories. The latter two approaches are collaborative while the first is very much competitive.

Anyhow, cross collaboration vs. competition with events, people and ideas and you have an interesting lens through which to consider different blog posts. Of course, most bloggers cannot be simply labeled as competitive or collaborative, but a combination of both. Still, there are trends, and this helps explain some blogging habits.

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die puny technologists

On Die Puny Humans, a selection of folks have created statements for 2004. I was pleasantly surprised to read Cory Doctorow's call to the toolmakers of 2004:

Stop making tools that magnify and multilply awkward social situations ("A total stranger asserts that he is your friend: click here to tell a reassuring lie; click here to break his heart!") ("Someone you don't know very well has invited you to a party: click here to advertise whether or not you'll be there!") ("A 'friend' has exposed your location, down to the meter, on a map of people in his social network, using this keen new location-description protocol -- on the same day that you announced that you were leaving town for a week!"). I don't need more "tools" like that, thank you very much.

Now, i don't know much about science fiction, but i read it once in a while to understand the models that technologists are trying to mimic. When i asked Cory about the relationship between scifi and technology, he told me that scifi is not supposed to be prescriptive. Scifi is modeled after what exists today and is not a representation of the future. Quite often, very little in the way of technology is fully fleshed out. In this regard, he's quite accurate. Even his own Whuffie (which i hear about in way too many meetings on reputation) is barely detailed in "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom." Still, while scifi shouldn't be prescriptive, many technologists interpolate the ideas presented and flesh it out to be beyond problematic. Often, they have the nerve to refer to the fiction books as their model for why it is a good idea.

Given his role as a science fiction writer, i'm quite pleased to see him call out to technologists. All too often, the omniscient technologies that appear in the science fiction novels are not representations of good things, but embedded in a discussion of the pros/cons of changing social interaction through technology. Take Cory's Whuffie and his examples of people scorning others because they are not worthy enough of interaction. C'mon now. All of us geeks have experienced a form of that, being chastised for not being cool enough, good looking enough, whatever enough. Why on earth would we want to develop a technology that encourages that? Oh, right, because if _we_ build it, we can be the ones in power, right? Hrmfpt. Seriously now, such a creation creates a whole new level of social awkwardness, new hierarchies that constrain us. Just because it's an idea for a novel does not make it an idea for life.

So, in fleshing out Cory's call to technologists, i'd ask all technologists to consider not only what problems a technology solves, but what new ones could emerge. Start thinking like a writer or an abuser of technology. Imagine how people could misuse a technology to hurt others. Consider who gains and loses power from such technology. It's a fascinating exercise and far more fulfilling than just thinking about who benefits from something. And besides, then you won't always be thinking "but the users shouldn't do THAT with this technology."

Category: digitalness

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December 23, 2003

location tracking

Many bloggers post about where they are as they travel - especially the business people and the wandering backpackers. Well, for those who love to be tracked, Yuri put together a simple location tracker for MT. If this sounds like something you'd like, use it and give him feedback.

[I, for one, like to hide... but i know that i'm not entirely normal.]

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inappropriate blogging

As i meet more and more of the uber-bloggers, i continue to get more horrified as they play out their catty games in a public forum. It's one thing to critique a product, an idea, someone's politics and philosophies. It's another thing to pull up private matters into a public forum or to mock people's struggles to overcome their own self-defeating habits. What's worse is that i watch bloggers write this material to elevate their own position in the eyes of the person they are mocking. So counterproductive and insulting.

I've been trying to tease apart the difference between LJ folks and the uber bloggers (particularly those who blog about people, not simply ideas/links). At first, i thought it had to do with content, but the more i think about it, the more i think it has to do with audience. At this point, i expect journalers to talk about their STDs, their cheating, their love life and all other made-for-Jerry-Springer content. But i expected public bloggers who make a name out of blogging to be a bit more sophisticated. Unfortunately, their content is often just as catty, only its self-importance tries to make it seem otherwise. The bloggers want the whole world to see their opinion of other bloggers... so that the hierarchy is created publicly. Thus, rather than just creating personal content for friends, the bloggers are going for others' public throats.

Erg. I'm a bit too cranky from reading my RSS feed this morning. Of course, here i am, feeding into the flurry by talking about what i observed in a meta-fashion. I just don't feel right directly pointing at people. But seriously, if you read this and you write about other people, think about it for a moment. Get out of the "this is truth" mentality and really question how others might read what you just said. Is it really necessary to lambast people's personal shit on a blog meant for the world to see? It makes me cringe and it's not even about me!

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December 22, 2003

dark side of digital utopia

The BBC is reporting on the dark side of digital utopia, revealing the underground behavior that has emerged in SIMS Online. Alphaville has generated child prostitutes, sadomasochists, mafia thieves and shadow governments. Lesson in life: give people freedom and everything will not be all cheery, no matter how hard you try to configure it that way.

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tracking conversation threads

More from Microsoft Research.... Gina Venolia (brilliant & awesome designer) is working on people-centric threading for conversations in mail. I can't wait to see what this looks like.

Publication on the topic: Understanding Sequence and Reply Relationships within Email Conversations: A Mixed-Model Visualization

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December 17, 2003

Jon Udell on LinkedIn

An entry of Jon Udell's today talks about the problems with LinkedIn, namely in defining relationships.

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live journal stats

For all of you researchers out there, BoingBoing posted that Live Journal is now publishing demographic data. It's probably not surprising that 63.5% of users are female and the mode age is 18 (with the median and mean a bit higher).

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urban tribes top five

Ethan Watters (Urban Tribes) went a little crazy with the top five lists. If you want to laugh, check them out...

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social networking overload

I read this article about social networking entering the enterprise and i couldn't help but hold my head in dismay.

I love social networks. They are a part of all of our daily lives and i'm in awe of the sociologists who have dedicated themselves for so many years to figure out how people negotiate them. But as more and more technologists take on the social networks meme, they continue to mutate the concept and thus destroy much of the underlying theory that relies on certain fundamental ideas about interaction.

For me, this creates a linguistic-conceptual nightmare. With every meme that emerges in the tech world, i'm amazed at how much gets attached simultaneously to one concept or phrase. Identity, blogging, social networks... My auto-reaction is to constantly and continuously unpack what people _mean_ when they use these terms. This has become quite challenging lately because the reason people collide them in their heads is to make metaphors work. I never realized how important these metaphors are to people's ability to construct technology.

The first two of my examples are easier than social networks. As a term, identity is often used to mean authentication. Sometimes, it is meant to mean social stature; sometimes, reputation; sometimes, the more classic psychological notions of one's id/entity. Blogging has come to represent people who blog, people who journal, people are embedded in the blogging culture (and lately, i've watched it get further extended to discuss anyone who updates a site regularly). [One thing that continues to amaze me as i meet self-described 'bloggers' is how often they don't realize that most people's goals in blogging are vastly different than their own...]

Social networks are harder to tease apart because it's the framework that's different, yet there is an expectation that the classic theories apply. Until new theories are developed to address the digital social network tools, it's quite a bit harder to unpack this concept, to discuss why it's different online than off. Of course, that's my job....

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airplane chaos

It's been a while since i flew on an almost empty airplane. The kind flight attendants told me that there were only 35 passengers in coach (and it was one of those planes with 7 seats per row). The business class folks were crammed compared to us in sardine class.

So, Joi wins... plane travel is much better with the proper equipment. The little Shure earphones (while still not entirely fitting my small ears) made the baby non-existent (as well as the flight attendants who were awefully confused by my inability to hear them as they hovered above). IMing on the toy up until takeoff felt much less offensive than my normal chatter-box approach to the airport. And love to the Mac with an extra battery. So, i lounged, read 1.5 books, listened to music and felt yummy getting off the plane, where i rented a car and drove for 4 hours revelling in the wonderfulness of I-95 (with new pavement). Of course, i got out at my usual Exit 40 CT stop (24 hour Wendy's) only to discover that ice still exists on the east coast and i still always find it and slip. Hrmpft.

It's funny... i'm having complete deja-vu. I'm back on the east coast, touring between family and friends in the middle of winter, driving up and down the coast and even my dear friend who through my goodbye party last year is hosting a potluck this year. Ah, nostalgia.

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YASNS tool barriers

Christopher Allen blogged notes on his experiences with various social network software tools, highlighting the barriers to entry and participation.

Category: yasns

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December 15, 2003

more F.I.S.T. statistics

Ryan (F.I.S.T.) did some more data crunching for me based on his network.

I will analyze them with greater detail later, but in short, 8% of Ryan's Friendster network identifies as queer (mind you, not everyone identifies because of it having to do with being in a relationship). 13.3% of Ryan's Friendster network is from Philippines. Anyhow, check out the numbers. Fun fun.

From Ryan:

"You are connected to 2,228,509 people in your Personal Network, through 278 friends." Highest ID number in the New People display: Nadiah (4527170) * 0.93 = 4,210,268 Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network: 53%

Danah Boyd asked me to shake a few more statistics out of my personal network, and I was happy to oblige her (but I would like a mention of F.I.S.T. in the thank-yous for your Ph.D. thesis, Danah :-) ...O.K. on with the show...

Straight vs. Queer (percentages based on then-current network size: 2,139,475):

Women looking for women (dating or relationship): 71,929 (3.4%)

Women looking for men (dating or relationship): 207,756 (9.7%)

Men looking for women (dating or relationship): 336,776 (15.7%)

and men looking for men (dating or relationship): 103,580 (4.8%)

...which means that over 8% of Friendsters (3.4 + 4.8) self-identify on their profiles as queer (gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, etc.). The figure is likely a bit higher because of all the queer folk who indicated that their status was single, married, in an open marriage, or "just here to help" (Ryan puts up his hand).

Photos on Profiles (percentages based on then-current network size of 2,143,637):

Men who have photos: 651,808 (30.4%)

Women who have photos: 572,371 (26.7%)

Total number of people who have photos: 1,224,183 (57.1%)

Where Friendsters Come From (percentages based on then-current network size of 2,154,381):

ranked from highest to lowest total number of friendsters according to their profiles... and a warning that these figures are biased by the fact that most of my personal network contacts are in North America...I'd love to see someone from Singapore or Malaysia do the same sort of statistics so we can compare.
Philippines: 286,699 (13.3%)
Singapore: 159,760 (7.4%)
Malaysia: 82,406 (3.8%)
United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland): 33,645 (1.56%)
Hong Kong: 20,666 (0.96%)
Japan: 7,176 (0.33%)
Germany: 4,687 (0.21%)
Taiwan: 4,225 (0.20%)
Indonesia: 3,949 (0.18%)
France: 3,395 (0.16%)
South Korea: 2,906 (0.135%)
China: 2,724 (0.126%)
Netherlands: 2,351 (0.11%)
Brazil: 1,896 (0.088%)
Ireland: 1,491 (0.069%)
Mexico: 1,303 (0.060%)
India: 1,085 (0.050%)
Belgium: 1,003 (0.047%)

Note that I can't do similar stats for Canada or the United States because Friendster requires that you enter a postal code as well as the country name for these two countries.

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all of your memories

Steven Johnson just wrote an interesting article in the NYTimes that is quite relevant to my latest commentary on Vannevar Bush, the Memex and trails.

Offloading Your Memories
By STEVEN JOHNSON

Published: December 14, 2003

Can your computer be enlisted to help you remember all the details of your life? In a way, it's already starting to do that. Your e-mail files contain a good portion of your personal communication, and your calendar software has a record of every dentist appointment and staff meeting you've had in the last few years. But while it's easy to track down an address that your colleague e-mailed you six months ago, it's a bit more challenging to reconstruct a joke your friend told you during a phone call sometime in the late 90's. So why not take matters a step further and record everything? Now that most of our information streams are built out of zeros and ones, it's vastly easier to capture all those bits for posterity: every phone call, every passing conversation, every book you read or face you see -- the totality of information that flows through a human life.

In the past year, a handful of separate research projects have surfaced, all sharing the same goal: offloading our memories to machines. Sunil Vemuri, a graduate student at the M.I.T. Media Lab, has spent the last two years wedded to a voice-activated microphone that makes a digital recording of every conversation he has and then transmits it to a computer, where it is cataloged and permanently stored.

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Similarly, Gordon Bell, a researcher for Microsoft, has created a unified database -- he calls it MyLifeBits -- that contains the whole package: e-mail, Web pages, the audio from his phone calls, the text of faxes he receives, home movies and so on. All the data in Bell's system are integrated into a single collection that would allow you -- if MyLifeBits becomes commercially available -- to sort through life in a variety of ways. You could review everything chronologically, of course, but you could also easily pull together every phone call, fax, photo and e-mail message involving your Aunt Marge. Or you could build more complicated queries, like looking back over 20 years and determining which friends you communicated with most frequently year by year.

In effect, what Bell and others are creating is TiVo for real life. Whatever flows through your perceptual systems can be rewound and queued up for viewing at a later date. Arguing with the barista over whether you specified soy milk in your latte? Trying to determine who actually came up with that brilliant money-saving idea in the staff meeting six months ago? No problem -- just go to the tape!

A skeptic might object that 99 percent of the information captured by these personal archives is useless, filed away on the digital equivalent of a cobwebbed library stack. And the skeptic would be right: think of all those spam messages and telemarketing calls you would record for future historians to be annoyed at all over again. But such an extreme ratio of noise to signal is a problem only if storing the data has real costs associated with it and if your ability to find what you're looking for decreases as more junk is added to the database.

The cost side of the equation is the easy part. Bell estimates that if you were to capture a relatively healthy daily diet of information -- 100 Web pages, 8 hours of audio, 100 e-mail messages, one-tenth of a book, 10 photos, 5 scanned pages -- it would take you five years to fill up an 80-gigabyte drive that now sells for approximately $100. By the time you maxed out that drive, you would be able to buy a drive with more than 10 times as much capacity for the same price, giving you 60 years of storage, competitively priced at one penny a day.

Of course, if you can't find what you're looking for, the dream of total recall becomes little more than fantasy. Are our current search tools up to the task of scouring 60 years' worth of spoken conversations for every reference to French philosophy or Yankees second basemen? In a word, no. But five years ago we were all complaining that we could never find what we were looking for on the Web. Now we have Google. There's no reason to suspect that a comparable needle-searching revolution won't happen to our own private haystacks.

If these personal archives do become commonplace, the outcome, after decades of dark prophecies about the end of privacy, will be a curious one: you will turn out to be the one recording your every move, not the National Security Agency or Equifax or John Ashcroft -- a surveillance society of one. We have met Big Brother, and he is us.

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nytimes: social networks

Here's a fun little NYTimes commentary on the emergence of social networks as a hot topic.

December 14, 2003
Social Networks

By JON GERTNER

Just a few years ago, the network was what people tapped into at parties or business conventions or what they called upon if the market turned sour or they were in desperate need of a job. In the time since, a coterie of ''network thinkers'' have begun to extend the language of the network -- ''nodes'' and ''hubs'' and ''links'' -- to phenomena ranging from the workings of the world economy to the possible spread of a dangerous pathogen. Several network theorists, most notably Albert-Laszlo Barabasi of Notre Dame and Duncan Watts of Columbia, have recently discovered that varieties of systems display a common architecture that governs their dynamics and structure. The way a cluster of neurons fires, for instance, has marked similarities to the way a disease like SARS travels the globe or the way a contagious idea disperses. Apparently, lots of complex networks look like lots of other complex networks (the Internet and the North American power grid, for example). And apparently the idea that everything is connected to everything else no longer seems so far-fetched.

Many software and Web applications now allow us to explore our nearly infinite social connectivity. The most hyped and widely known is Friendster.com, which went online in March and allows users to meet people up to four social degrees away. There is also Tribe.net, which started in late July and focuses less on dating and more on utilizing social networks for professional relationships, as well as Tickle (another dating service) and LinkedIn (another professional contacts service).

All are in hot pursuit of market share -- a good indication that treating the human community as a network may be profitable as well as innovative. Tribe's backers include The Washington Post Company and Knight-Ridder, and Friendster has a number of Silicon Valley's top venture-capital firms betting on it. Users see dollar signs, too. A new social network software application called Spoke, for example, allows businesses to mine their computer databases so that a company's sales force might tap into co-workers' relationships for contacts, thus saving them from the inefficiency of cold calling. Meanwhile, several Democratic contenders, notably Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, have used in-person networking sites like Meetup.com to amass contributions and arrange rallies. At last count, the Dean bloc on Meetup had grown from a small but enthusiastic faction to more than 150,000.

Some of the fledgling social-network companies may indeed mature into powerful business hubs like eBay or Amazon. Yet the more intriguing prospect, from a sociological standpoint, anyway, is whether these applications will actually transform our lives. Ever since the publication of ''Bowling Alone,'' we've been flooded with even more data about the end of community and lamentations for its return. At least in theory, a readily accessible social network would enable more of us to bond with people we regard as far less anonymous than strangers. The larger possibility, that plugging into our social networks might somehow remedy a profound national loneliness, is even more enticing.

What seems just as likely, however, is that social-network applications will further fracture life into disparate spheres -- the online and the offline. Jonathan Abrams (the C.E.O. of Friendster) and Mark Pincus (the C.E.O. of Tribe Networks) see their creations ultimately as a means to enrich offline experiences. But this fact is incontrovertible: technology has outpaced our physical ability to manage the social network. Duncan Watts, author of this year's book ''Six Degrees,'' has wondered whether our primitive ancestry gives us a hard-wired tendency to attend to only our immediate associates, like family and friends. Our online persona may be rich with friends and contacts; it may make us feel popular and deeply valued as we trade tips about the best Australian Shiraz or converse about the best way to get to Burning Man. But our offline persona still gets stuck in traffic on the way to the liquor store. Our online persona may manage a Web-based cocktail party of three degrees -- a party that would include our friends, the friends of our friends and the friends of our friends' friends. But our offline persona, juggling the demands of family and work, can barely return the telephone calls from the first degree.

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twitching from the internet

I spent a lovely weekend offline. While i was ecstatic to take a genuine break from my email disaster, i was quite humored to listen to friends who were less than thrilled to be offline - the twitches started early on. No wifi, no high speed, no cell phone coverage...

Then, upon going back to my email disaster, another group of friends told me about WiFi-SM. It's a device that sends electric impulses every time the news reports on violence and anger around the world. Little reminders to make you feel the global pain.

Somehow, i suspect that my friends who twitch from being offline would love these little connections to their blog world... This would definitely be the way to create a group of SM boys.... ::giggle::

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December 11, 2003

friendship amongst women

Thanks to Chris, i just found this UCLA study on how friendships between women are special. Hmm... given the state of my current stress, maybe i should go out and hang out instead of locking myself in my room.

Category: gender & sexuality

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cracking the social code

Here's a neat (older) article by Stowe Boyd on a few social issues that complicate the social networking software space.

Category: yasns

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December 10, 2003

a call to amazon, and publishers

As i swooned earlier, Amazon's decision to allow text-based search was brilliant. Unfortunately, not all publishers have agreed.

Currently, i am sitting amidst 15 (yes, i counted) anthropology, rhetoric and philosophy books. I own these books; i have read large chunks of these books, underlining points that were relevant then. But here i am, trying to construct a meaningful response to whether or not culture is an ensemble of texts (recursively), frustrated. Why am i frustrated? I am frustrated because i _know_ that the tool to find the various quotes floating in my head to support my argument exists, but that publishers have prohibited it. (A moment of silence for ignorance is bliss.)

Here's what i propose.

Amazon, you know what books i've bought, or at least a large chunk of them. You currently use this to successfully incite me to buy more books. Why not let me search _my_ books, regardless of the publisher's opinion?

One might ask why Amazon would want to do this. Silly, silly. This would motivate me to buy ALL of my books from Amazon, particularly those dense theoretical texts that are dreadfully indexed.

One might ask why publishers would want to do this. Why? Because i'm now keeping tabs of which publishers are cruel and am far more incented to buy books when i know that i can search them. This actually affected my decision between two anthologies last week.

The biggest uproar over Amazon's decision is one of copyright fear. Fine. I understand if a publisher is worried that the searchability of certain types of texts might discourage someone from buying the book, but in the purchasing of my books, i already have permission to the copyright. Now, i simply want easier access. Trust me, folks, if you can give me 'grep' on my books, i'll never switch to a digital format. The smell of paper is just too enticing.

::sigh:: Because of Basic Books and The University of Chicago Press, i'm back to screaming 'grep' at Geertz and Levi-Strauss. This could be a lot easier...

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repurposing 80s fashion

First, i am *not* thrilled that 80s fashion is coming back. I don't want to wear scrunchy socks, deal with shirts that snap at the crotch or ever see those horrid tight jeans with their roll-up ever again. And furthermore, scrunchy leather boots with heals is not attractive.

That said, most people know that i've been wearing jelly bracelets around my wrists for 3 years. This wasn't a return to the 80s. It was because i don't like seeing my neck or wrists without adornments and jelly bracelets were the first things that i could wear that didn't impede my typing - i could just push them back.

Well, apparently the press is hyping the idea that these jelly bracelets are sex bracelets and that if you break them, the person has to give you a sexual favor in return. Hmm.

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memories of non-existent events

'We can implant entirely false memories' is an intriguing review of the research of Elizabeth Loftus. Ideas about memory have always intrigued me.

I've been thinking about memory lately because i'm adamently opposed to the concept of trails put forward by Vannevar Bush in "As We May Think." I know that the construction of our past is not always the same as the actual reality, but i prefer it to the realistic portrayal of experience. Personally, i'm quite happy to not have easy access to the replay of mistakes made. I realize that the memories that i hold are not only the actual events, but the embellishment of the good and the dismissal of the bad. I have a tendency to store all of these details and emotions around joyful activities, while i conveniently forget much beyond the facts of negative ones. I tend to consider this a good thing, although it can cause problems when i cannot stay mad at someone, even when i should for my own sake. But, it always pains me to interact with people who only hold on to the bad.

This research makes me think crazy thoughts. If you can implant a memory, can you also eliminate memories? For example, what would it mean if someone conveniently forgot that they were abused. Would this be a relief? In what ways are memories a protective force vs. a limiting force?

Sadly, this all comes down to a philosophical debate about what is best for an individual and society. Do we believe in constructing 'happiness' or 'truth'? And what on earth does either one mean?

Category: social observations

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December 9, 2003

gonzalez supporters are stunning

In an attempt to spend the day writing, i turned off both phones and IM (and tried to avoid email, sorta). Yet, i did not expect the number of door visitors i would get today. Not only did the UPS delivery man ask me if i had voted, but i received visits from five Gonzalez supporters asking me if i had voted (one covered in Gonzalez stickers from head to toe).

I really wonder what this turn out will look like. Normally, rainy days for a non-Presidential election are a disaster at the polls. But the whole city is abuzz with election fever. Normally, when i go to the polls, there are very few people voting. Sadly, most of my neighborhood is ineligible to vote (or doesn't speak English so very well). Thus, i was pleasantly pleased to go to the polls this afternoon and find it !full! of voters (rare at 2PM). One cluster pleased me the most. The older ones didn't speak English but the younger ones were helping explain the process to them. This totally made my day.

One thing will be interesting... right after the first round of the mayor election, many Gonzalez supporters invaded my neighborhood to get people to register to vote. (Everyone in my neighborhood despises anyone situated in the Marina.) I'm guessing that most of those registered didn't speak English, and most of the discussions i overheard were in Spanish. I wonder how many of my neighbors were eligible and came out today for the first time.

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on friendstership

I really liked this blog entry concerning the Esquire article on Friendster.

(Yes, it's finals time.. that's the level of thought going on in my head.)

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December 8, 2003

absurdity is wonderful

So, i was a bit dazed after my exam today and i responded to my advisor's query with a rambling spillage of the process my mind was going through in response to his question. I realized after i sent it that i had answered the question three times, differently, most undoubtably causing confusion.

He responded with this link "to help get me through a bad week."

That made me giggle in that the world is bizarre kind of way. Sometimes, absurdity helps. Especially check out "Change."

I love people who see the world as a bit peculiar and absurdist. Speaking of which, San Francisco election tomorrow. Y'know... i think it's outright hysterical that the entire city is up in a tiff over a Democrat vs a Green. And what's even better is that none of my friends would dare vote for anyone other than Gonzalez. I love San Francisco.

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December 7, 2003

Friendster whore statistics

Ryan has been running statistics on his network on Friendster. (I've been meaning to do this, but he has far more patience than i.) "Friendsterwhore Institute of Statistical Trends (F.I.S.T.)" has run queries on musical taste, interests, sex, and a whole lot more. Based on 2,097,997 users, some of the simplest but still fascinating are:

• People who indicated that they were men: 862,398 (41%)
• People who indicated that they were women: 835,240 (40%) ... which means that 9% weren't really sure WHO they were...
• People who are "just here to help": 327,533 (16%)
• People who are looking for activity partners: 932,953 (45%)
• People who are looking for friends: 1,339,616 (64%)

• People who are looking for a date with a woman: 394,641 (19%)
• People who are looking for a date with a man: 298,385 (14%)
• People who are looking for a serious relationship with a woman: 289,652 (14%)
• People who are looking for a serious relationship with a man: 216,602 (10%)
• People who are single: 1,067,620 (51%)
• People who are in an open marriage: 48,444 (2%)

• People whose name is "Kevin Bacon": 33 (0.002%)
• People whose name is "George Bush": 28 (0.001%)
• People whose name is "Jesus Christ": 147 (0.007%)

"You are connected to 2,092,944 people in your Personal Network, through 266 friends." Highest ID number in the New People display: Rea (4283881) * 0.93 = 3,984,009 Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network: 53%

In all cases, the first number is the result when doing a search on my gallery; it is followed in parentheses by the estimated percentage of Friendsterspace that matches that result.

People who indicated that they were men: 862,398 (41%)

People who indicated that they were women: 835,240 (40%) ... which means that 9% weren't really sure WHO they were...

People who are "just here to help": 327,533 (16%)

People who are looking for activity partners: 932,953 (45%)

People who are looking for friends: 1,339,616 (64%)

"You are connected to 2,097,997 people in your Personal Network, through 266 friends." Highest ID number in the New People display: Celestine (4294446) * 0.93 = 3,993,834 Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network: 53%

A few more fun stats from the Friendsterwhore Institute of Statistical Trends (F.I.S.T.):

People who are looking for a date with a woman: 394,641 (19%)

People who are looking for a date with a man: 298,385 (14%)

People who are looking for a serious relationship with a woman: 289,652 (14%)

People who are looking for a serious relationship with a man: 216,602 (10%)

People who are single: 1,067,620 (51%)

People who are in an open marriage: 48,444 (2%)

People whose name is "Kevin Bacon": 33 (0.002%)

People whose name is "George Bush": 28 (0.001%)

People whose name is "Jesus Christ": 147 (0.007%)

And people whose name is "Ryan Schultz": 14 (0.0007%), hmmm, maybe we should start a very exclusive club :-) ....

"You are connected to 2,104,547 people in your Personal Network, through 266 friends."
Highest ID number in the New People display: Alvin (4307013) * 0.93 = 4,005,522
Percentage of total friendsterspace covered by personal network: 53%

(* ...and a voice from the back yells: "MORE STATS!" *)

Number of people who live in the New York City area (within 25 miles of Manhattan): 150,803 (7.1%)

Number of people who live in the San Francisco area (within 25 miles of the Castro): 130,341 (6.2%)

Number of people who live in the Los Angeles area (within 25 miles of Beverly Hills): 146,626 (7.0%)

...and number of people who live in the Winnipeg area: 1,375 (0.065%)

Number of people who list "wine" as one of their interests: 22,361 (1.1%)

Number of people who list "beer" as one of their interests: 23,066 (also 1.1%)

Number of people who list "milk" as one of their interests: 1,818 (0.086%)

Number of people who list "reading" as one of their interests: 193,545 (9.2%)

Number of people who list "shopping" as one of their interests: 108,703 (5.2%)

Number of people who list "sleeping" as one of their interests: 77,421 (3.7%, including Jonathan Abrams)

Number of people who say Celine Dion is one of their favourite singers: 3,174 (0.15%)

Number of people who say Barbra Streisand is one of their favourite singers: only 566 (0.027%)!

FINALLY... two relatively uninterrupted hours of friendster-time while all the West Coast people are sleeping off their Friday night partying :-) ... here are some stats from the Friendsterwhore Institute of Statistical Trends (F.I.S.T.) on the favourite music of Friendsters (hey, what good is a network of 2.1 million friendsters if you can't learn something from it???). Keep in mind that I couldn't do some searches: words too short ("U2", "Mya"), or words too common ("Michael Jackson", "James Brown"), or just plain ambiguity ("Elvis" pulls up both "Elvis Presley" and "Elvis Costello"; "Pink" also pulls up "Pink Floyd").

Radiohead: 65,131
Coldplay: 43,022
The Beatles: 37,898
Bjork: 30,673
Linkin Park: 23,971
The Pixies: 21,790
The Smiths: 20,892
Johnny Cash: 19,674
Weezer: 19,672
Eminem: 19,235
David Bowie: 19,173
Madonna: 19,144
John Mayer: 19,000
The White Stripes: 18,480
The Rolling Stones: 16,563
Bob Marley: 16,015
Outkast: 15,995
Beck: 15,824
Bob Dylan: 15,365
Nirvana: 15,319
Justin Timberlake: 13,233
Frank Sinatra: 13,019
Norah Jones: 12,928
Belle and Sebastian: 12,715
The Doors: 11,534
Prince: 11,257
Red Hot Chili Peppers: 11,065
Ani diFranco: 10,852
Sigur Ros: 10,485
Missy Elliott: 8,669
Britney Spears: 7,470
Christina Aguilera: 7,057
Death Cab for Cutie: 6,961
Johann Sebastian Bach: 6,378
Sting: 6,356
Oasis: 6,018
Sarah McLachlan: 6,017
Phish: 6,000
Liz Phair: 5,978
Ludwig van Beethoven: 5,976
Dixie Chicks: 5,865
Blink-182: 5,824
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: 5,814
Dido: 5,573
Joni Mitchell: 5,564
Moby: 5,189
Beyonce Knowles: 5,008
The Shins: 4,990
Marvin Gaye: 4,981
Avril Lavigne: 4,958
Elton John: 4,560
Fleetwood Mac: 4,484
Bruce Springsteen: 4,158
The Grateful Dead: 4,093
Frederic Francois Chopin: 4,032
Simon and Garfunkel: 3,608
Kylie Minogue: 3,539
Patsy Cline: 3,344
ABBA: 3,267
Aaliyah: 3,194
Celine Dion: 3,187
Dolly Parton: 2,813
The Eagles: 2,718
Aretha Franklin: 2,645
Cher: also 2,645
Mary J. Blige: 2,429
Sheryl Crow: 2,340
KISS: 2,329
Cyndi Lauper: 2,027
Shania Twain: 1,895
Whitney Houston: 1,870
The Carpenters: 1,632
The Bee Gees: 1,524
The B-52's: 1,167
Hilary Duff: 1,112
Dusty Springfield: 1,103
Barry Manilow: 888
Barbra Streisand: 660
Sixpence None the Richer: 575
Eurythmics: 560
The Bangles: 521
John Tesh: 362
LeAnn Rimes: 351

...and finally,
William Shatner: 92
Zamfir: 75

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blog survey results

Here are some fascinating blog survey results.

(via Dina)

Category: blogging

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December 5, 2003

configuring users

I've got my head buried in texts for finals and i realized how valuable one of my pieces would be for many technology creators, HCI folks and the like so i thought that i'd share it:

Grint, Keith & Woolgar, Steve. 1997. Configuring the user: inventing new technologies. In Grint & Woolgar, The machine at work: technology, work, and organization (pp. 65-94). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

This article addresses how technologists configure the user. In other words, what expectations do creators build into the technology and what are the implications when the users do not view the technology from the same perspective. It's a great article, teasing out why you can't expect users to do what you want them to, and why you shouldn't.

Technologists should *listen* to what their users are doing, not try to educate them to do what they want them to do when they give them feedback. When users are having difficulty doing something, it's not because they don't get it, it's because they read the technology in a different way than intended. Given feedback, the responsibility of a technologist is to try to see why this misperception occurred and try to fix the technology to shift behavior. Simply telling them that they're wrong won't do much good.

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December 4, 2003

animals everywhere

In response to my post on turtles, Joi posted about badgers. And then today, Xeni posted about bunnies, uncommon creatures, kittens, sheep, teddy bears, lemurs, and monkeys.

Dear me oh my... animals everywhere.

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December 3, 2003

presence in IM

I've seen this kind of post before.

E said that her instant messaging program lets her know when J’s computer has been idle more than a certain number of minutes, this being information she uses in her speculations about whether J is talking to, emailing, or having sex with the other woman.

I suggested the obvious: Delete him from the program.

She responded with the obvious: This is her only remaining connection to him.

But even the second time around, it's really important to think about this relationship between two people and a technology. Presence changes behavior, allows new ways of interacting with people. Yet, what are the psychological and sociological consequences of this? Fascinating.

Category: instant messaging

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# of friends & popularity issues

Originally, Friendster listed who the most popular people were in your network. Quickly, Fakesters such as Burning Man and Ali G rose to the top and the community worked to push them there.

Due to the tribes component, Tribe.net has not had the dramatic number of "Fakesters." Recently, they implemented a new feature that, at first past, seems to imply the same popularity contest. They indicate under every user's post the number of Friends that s/he has.

A brilliant discussion by the users has emerged over this topic, revealing why this is not identical to the Friendster phenomenon.

Some Tribe users clearly note that they find it sketchy for a user to have either too many or too few friends. The former makes them look like they need to collect friends for some personal reason and the latter makes them look like they are too much of a lurker with no friends. Of course, the numbers are read in line with how long someone has been on the site and the reasons for which s/he is here.

It's also utterly fascinating because it's a conversation about users challenging how they are perceived, how they perceive, how they are configured, how they present their identity. It's all done without the moderation or guidance of anyone - emergent reflexivity. Yummy - that's the best.

Category: friendster

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swim on iTunes

For all of you Ani DiFranco fans, "Swim" (a live version) is available at iTunes (as are many of her other songs).

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NOT a sociologist, NOT a geek

I was telling my roommate about the various feedback i've gotten from folks in my different fields concerning the NYTimes article. I've heard sociologists say that i'm not a sociologist and geeks tell me that i'm not a geek. This isn't news... i've been hearing it for a while. He reminded me of the quote that got me feeling like an imposter: "A sociologist among geeks and a geek among sociologists."

::laugh:: It is true. The geeks see me as a social scientist and the social scientists see me as a geek. And of course this is the space i inhabit since i've never known how to stand solidly in an identity continuum, if only to prove that it is a continuum and that i can stand in the middle. Of course, i always feel like i'm ducking punches in the middle.

Life is quite odd sometimes... it's amazing what pushes folks' buttons. I think that i'm moving towards an absurdist view of life faster than i should.

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drugs, drugs and more drugs

I don't know what my friends were thinking today, but every article they sent me was somehow related to drugs. [Hmm.. is that a hint?]

Research Ecstasy is Clouded by Errors - they were testing methamphetamine, not MDMA

Snortable Spirits - snorting Vodka without the liquid creates a quick high... this very much cclouds the bridge between "alcohol" and "drugs"

Search Engines Limit Ads for Drugs but Ease Rules on Sex

So, basically, three articles... one about the politics of drugs vs. sex, one about the blurring of the boundary between alcohol and hard drugs and one about the illegitimacy of scientific studies on drugs. Glad to know that everyone's boundaries are getting toyed with.

Snortable spirits: Alcohol without the hangover
The Ottawa Citizen
Sat 29 Nov 2003

Forget the shooter, here comes the snooter.

The inventor of a new machine that mixes alcohol with pure oxygen says
his Alcohol With Out Liquid (AWOL) vapour can give users an instant
high, minus the hangovers and calories that come with normal drinking.

Dominic Simler explains the invention, which he launched last week in
Britain, gives an instant "hit" that's "unlike anything you've tried
before."

"The oxygen with the alcohol gives you an unusual sort of buzz -- at
times euphoric and with a sense of well-being," he says.

Once inhaled through the nose or mouth, the alcoholic vapour is
absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs. Mr. Simler says the
drunk effect lasts for about 25 minutes.

He says his recipe is hang-over-free because it's not passing through
the same organs as a drink and the consumer doesn't need to inhale as
much alcohol to feel an effect.

(Mr. Simler says he is not sure if the device would allow a user to
evade detection on a roadside breathalyser test.)

Mr. Simler, who lives in London, says he's in the "leisure oxygen
market." The 30-year-old entrepreneur has done everything from oxygen
facials to oxygenated gyms and says he got the idea for AWOL from the
oxygen-bar concept.

Mr. Simler says he didn't understand why people would want to breathe
oxygen at a bar because it would "sober you up." He says it seemed like
there would have to be a better way of combining bars and oxygen.
there would have to be a better way of combining bars and oxygen.

Mr. Simler says the system is being marketed to the bar and nightclub
scene and those wanting exciting Christmas parties in Britain. Numerous
bars and nightclubs have shown interest in the product including some
in Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.

The AWOL system goes for about $3,400 Cdn and has two components. The
kit includes a diffuser into which you pour about 25 millilitres of
alcohol and a bottle of 68-proof absynthe for testing purposes.

The diffuser is hand-held and attaches to the AWOL oxygen generator,
which is about as large as a piece of carry-on luggage. The only thing
left to do is inhale through the mouth or snort through the nose.

The snort or inhale part is exactly what concerns Andrew Murie,
national executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Mr. Murie
says most people drink as a social activity.

He says with this new invention, a person gets high faster without
having to spend the time drinking the product. He says the machine
almost equates alcohol with drug use.

"I just can't see 99 per cent of the population wanting to do it that
way, and those that would use it, we need to be concerned about. It's
definitely a risk. Hopefully it never takes off," he says.

Mr. Simler says he doesn't condone misuse or abuse of alcohol with his
product. He recommends that people who use the contraption not drive or
operate machinery afterwards.

Like drinking, he says, individuals need to know when to stop.

Category: altered states

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December 2, 2003

what's in a name...

Today's worthless word of the day is "codswallop: nonsense, drivel; rubbish." This made me look up wallop (the name of the MS project) and learn that it means "to hit with force; to thrash soundly; to beat by a wide margin; to move with reckless or disorganized haste."

Sometimes, words just humor me... if you wallop with a cod, you get reckless rubbish that hits with a force. Hmmm...

Of course, i still like the fact that YAFRO stands for Yet Another Friendster Rip Off. Not nearly as eyebrow raising, and utterly to the point.

Category:

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panic just set in

I've been in school all of my life. School has *always* had finals right before the holiday of the big fat white man in red adorned by the green guys in tights. The shrinking of the days is always aimed at finals. And as much as i pretend to prepare for that period of the year, i'm never prepared. And thus panic sets in. Panic hit today. The next 10 days will be hell.

Category:

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graphic design is harmless, right?

Liz has a great article today on why graphic design is *not* essentially harmless.

All too often, technological/graphical designers have come to believe that they are working towards the *best* interface, as though there is a universal good. They fail to remember that design is culturally and politically situated. [If this is a foreign idea to you, check out some of the materials from Nancy Van House's course - social construction of technology, configuring the user, bias...]

Love to Adbusters.

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friendsters for (cyber) life

Here's a great feature-style article on Friendster that shares anecdotes similar to what i've seen.

Note the Buzzlife community memorializing one of its own through Friendster. (When you can search on Friendster again, check out Sean Wisniewski's profile.)

Friends for (Cyber) Life

By Eliza Barclay

Friendster Put The Buddy List on Steroids; Now It's Making The Leap From Your PC Screen to The DC Scene.

It's 1:30 a.m. and Ky has just rolled up to the Navy Yard club Nation to make his appearance at CüBIK, the new event organized by the world-famous weekly DJ event Buzz. Chances are that Ky knows more that a few people inside the club. In fact, it is likely that Ky knows over 100 of the people milling around with Red Bull and vodkas or water bottles in hand. Though Ky has lived in the area for 9 years, he has only been active on the DC nightlife scene for two years. One of the keys to Ky's social empire—aside from his outgoing nature—is undoubtedly Friendster.
Friendster is a web site that allows people to establish, link, and build upon their social circles through the internet. Founded by Silicon Valley-based engineer and entrepreneur Jonathan Abrams, the service is based upon the concept of six degrees of separation; members become electronically and then visually connected to their friends and everyone else within their friends' social sphere.

How It Works

Users register for free and fill out a profile with the option to include up to five photos. Depending on who has already joined or entered in their email addresses to invite them to join, Friendster automatically attaches friends' profiles to each other. The result is that in pulling up a profile, everyone connected to the individual is visible with their individual profiles accessible to their friends—users can see who their friends' friends are via their linked profiles and their friends' friends' friends and so on.
Beyond photos and profiles, Friendster offers a number of other features that distinguish it from most other attempts at web-based social networks. Users can send email to each other through the site without needing to type in an address, post testimonials visible to everyone about friends below their profiles, post messages to immediate friends on a bulletin board, and view everyone they are connected to in a gallery.
With well over a million users nationwide and thousands of new members joining every month, Friendster has quickly become one of most extraordinary examples of web-based word-of-mouth growth. The DC/Baltimore area is rumored to have the highest number Friendster users in the country (although Friendster's press office did not respond to confirm this). Friendster's massive progress has not come without its downfalls; its servers are often overloaded and hamper anyone—no matter how fast their connection speed—from accessing all of the site's services.

Friendster Extraordinaire

A 31-year-old originally from Houston, Ky is a self-proclaimed Friendster addict. Sometimes he stays up all night long browsing through his friends' profiles and some of the hundreds of thousands of people in his Personal Network. "Why am I doing this instead of sleeping? It's fascinating because it's real people. I can learn about my friends through their profiles," he said.
For Ky, a champion networker who joined the service in March, Friendster is an absolute goldmine. Ky has over 500 friendsters, but since the system more or less cuts users off at around 500, Ky's page only shows 495 of his acquaintances. Ky claims to know all of his friendsters, but he also claims to have met at least 250 of them since June. "I met over 1000 people this summer," said Ky. A devoted club and bar goer, Ky has networked and charmed his way through the maze of DC's nightlife scene, steadily accruing friendsters along the way.

A Perfect Match

On September 26, Friendster joined forces with Buzzlife Productions to co-sponsor a CüBIK/Buzz night at Nation. Club Five, owned by the same parent company as Nation, has also put on Friendster nights to encourage friendsters to come out from behind their screens and make real-life acquaintance with each other. Buzzlife Productions and Club Five have astutely noticed the natural correlation between the regular crowd that attends their events and Friendster users.
The original connection between the DC club community and Jonathan Abrams of Friendster was made in April after the murder of a Buzzlife employee, Sean Wisniewski, in Baltimore. Buzzlife contacted Abrams to request that Wisniewski's profile on Friendster be kept active. "We used Friendster to help us grieve for Sean. Many people wrote testimonials to memorialize him, and it enabled us to connect with his family and show them how important he was in our community," said Amanda Huie, PR and Marketing Director for Buzzlife Productions. Yvonne Sayers, a friend of Sean's and of Buzzlife, continued the friendship with Abrams and was able to summon Friendster's recent support of Buzzlife and Club Five events.
On the one hand, many Friendster members who also frequent DC's clubs knew each other before Friendster came along. (The site was officially launched in March 2003, but has been operating unofficially since late 2002.) Still, club promoters recognize Friendster's role of tightening an already tight-knit community of club goers in the DC area even further.
"As virtual communities grow, there seems to be a real fear about losing real life communities. With Friendster joining up with clubs to put on events, we are helping to bridge that gap by allowing people to meet in person in a safe environment," said Huie.
Huie explained that the Buzz email list has 3000 members, an indication of how important a role the internet plays in the Buzz following. Many Buzz devotees also regularly post messages to the Buzz message board to notify each other about special events and other developments in DC clubland. "Buzzlife is trying to create a community around music. Friendster works so well for us because it allows you to map your friends and make cross-references to people you may have met or recognize," said Huie.

Restricted to Clubbers?

Because Friendster offers users the ability to search within their Personal Network for people with similar interests listed in their profiles, it is possible to gauge the diverse pool of users within its 1 million + membership. But Friendster certainly owes some of its original success to already-established online communities like local club communities that have relied since their inception on the internet as the primary means of communication.
According to Simon Pattee, who runs the electro room for CüBIK/Buzz nights at Nation, "Friendster is definitely big within other music subcultures, but it is especially within the club scene because we are always online." Pattee noted that he was aware of the presence of a huge punk/electroclash community in Brooklyn, NY on Friendster.
Outside of music, Bill Luza, a DC-based architect and designer and a member of Ky's personal network, has noticed Friendster becoming popular within the architecture and design communities, even as a form of business networking. "In art and architecture where you are constantly looking at other people's work and need that interface, Friendster offers simplicity. It's an easy way to put up links to your work for other people to see," commented Luza.

Friendster for Mates?

Certainly, people utilize Friendster's networking capacity in a variety of different ways.
The email that goes out from Friendster members to potential friendster friends reads: "Friendster is an online community that connects people through networks of friends for dating or making new friends." But many would argue its uses extend far beyond dating and forging new friendships.
According to Troy Dayton of Boulder, Colo., another one of Ky's friendsters, Friendster's marketing scheme oriented towards dating may even be hurting its success. "There are definitely people who are turned off by the notion of Friendster as a dating service. I think Friendster is fantastic for getting to know the people I already know. I see different sides to my good friends' personalities through their profiles," Dayton said.
Luza, on the other hand, will chalk up his current relationship to Friendster. One night, Luza happened to see an unfamiliar woman hanging out with some of his friends, but was never introduced. Several days later, he saw her again sitting at a table at Gazuza in Dupont Circle with another mutual friend. When he returned to his office that day, he found a message on Friendster from the woman saying, "I saw you!" She had recognized and then located him via Friendster. "When people ask how we met," said Luza, "we sort of laugh and say, ‘Mutual friends!'"

Friendsters Forever

While the internet social world has been proliferating at an enormous speed, tapping into romance, business, recreation, education, and nearly all socially-oriented elements of life, there is still somewhat of a gap for many people who'd rather not participate.
Some perceive the cyber social realm as creepy or only suitable for desperate people unable to make connections in real life. For others, cyber society is a godsend for networking. Whatever the perception, there are few web trends that have engulfed so much of an entire demographic as Friendster.
The pool that makes up the Friendster usership is not an exceptionally diverse demographic— mostly white urbanites in their 20s and 30s—but many of them tend more towards alternative lifestyles and away from other cyber social scenes like Match.com. The Friendster empire seems to have been built via shared interests be it music, clubbing, the Burning Man festival in California, or more recently, professional interests like art and architecture. And, of course, it also has evolved from the pure power of friendship.
While Amanda Huie sees Friendster as an ideal way "to market and cement the bonds of the Buzz crowd," there are scores of other interest groups that are likely beginning to use Friendster as a networking tool in countless different ways. According to Troy Dayton, "Clubbers make up one group that has proved the concept of Friendster in and of itself, but I see it as having the potential to create exponential growth and have a huge impact on communication everywhere."

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Posted by zephoria at 11:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

turtles all the way down

Today, i was reminded of a parable that means so much to me. I remember the roots as being Hindu, but Google seems to have a million versions of it, so i'm not sure of the details. (What on earth do you do when Google is internally inconsistent? ::giggle::)

"The world rests on the shoulders of an elephant." "What does the elephant stand upon?" "The elephant stands upon the back of a turtle." "And what does the turtle stand upon?" "Oh, after that, it is turtles all the way down."

Infinite recursion, closed nonorientable surfaces. Everything is interpreted... interpretations built on interpretations. No beginning, no end. No eternal truth, only process. The perfect mantra for all of my techno-"soci/anthrop"ology discussions lately. Chew on turtles for a day and the world looks much more whimsical.

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Posted by zephoria at 1:16 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (4)

December 1, 2003

IM in the workplace

Ellen Isaacs has an essay on work she did with folks at AT&T on IM in the workplace.

My initial thought is that it's *great* that people are finally realizing that IM is more than just an organizational tool. My gut says that the earlier studies weren't wrong, but that things have changed. IM use has changed over time and adults are starting to pick up on the fact that it's better than email for many complex work discussions. (My CS colleagues & i knew this back in college as we did most of our projects over IM.)

One concern that i have over this study is this statement: "Only 13 percent of the conversations we monitored included any personal topics whatsoever, and only 6.4 percent were exclusively personal."

I have no doubt that people do a lot of productive interactions over IM, but my gut says that 13% having any personal topics seems very low. Even in normal working conditions, it's so common to start out an interaction with something like "how was your thanksgiving?" This is a social ritual that helps us relate to folks. It makes me wonder if these users knew they were being tracked and studied... or if they knew that their employers were reading their IMs.

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Posted by zephoria at 4:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (1)