My name is danah boyd and I'm a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. I received my PhD from the School of Information at UC-Berkeley. I live in Boston, MA. Buzzwords in my world include: public/private, identity, context, youth culture, social network sites, social media. I use this blog to express random thoughts about whatever I'm thinking.

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AIM Fight

One of my favorite articles is Cobot in LambdaMOO: A Social Statistics Agent. After people complained that the robot was learning about the community but not giving back, it was programmed to answer questions about the statistics it gathered. Things spun out of control because people found out that they were less cool than their friends. Competition ensued. It’s a classic case of why statistical information about social hierarchy is not always so good for community or relationships.

I thought of Cobot when i saw AIM Fight, a service that lets you put your AIM account in against your opponent’s to find out who has a higher score (a.k.a. popularity rating). So what are you going to do about your coolness score?

(Tx Joe)

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2 comments to AIM Fight

  • AIM to the Left, AIM to the Right, AIM to the Center, Fight, Fight Fight

    I love instant messaging. You can carry on a conversation with someone while you both are working or cooking or listening to completely different music or engaged in other activities that fall under the very broad category of “having a…

  • AIM fight

    Are you as popular as your buddies? Find out on AIM fight. Preliminary analysis indicates that I am pretty cool, but honeyfields is super-cool. (thanks, d)…

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