apophenia

social software entries

May 19, 2007

"Significance of Social Software" in BlogTalks Reloaded

Last fall, i spoke at BlogTalk Reloaded. They've turned a bunch of our talks into full papers packaged and published as a book titled: BlogTalks Reloaded. My piece is The Significance of Social Software. I look at the culture surrounding, technology of, and practices embedded in social software. It was a fun keynote and it's a fun piece in print so i hope you enjoy!

The Significance of Social Software

Category: social software

Tags: talk

Posted by zephoria at 1:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

May 1, 2007

Twitter questions (curiosity is killing me...)

Last night, i pinged a handful of friends to ask them about their Twittering. And... of course... since they're bloggers, they started blogging my questions and their answers. So, of course, i realized that i should just probably blog my questions for any and all to respond because i am a curious little critter.

I'm not sure what i'll do with others' thoughts yet - it may turn into a blog entry or an essay or one of those terrifyingly academic articles that i write. Consider this to be exploratory where i poke around to understand some of the dynamics. No one has to answer all of the questions, but any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

First, the practical question. Can i quote you?
[ ] Yes, and you *must* use my real name.
[ ] Yes, but please use a pseudonym and don't use any identifying information.
[ ] No, please just use this for your own weird thoughts.

1. Why do you use Twitter? What do you like/dislike about it?

2. Who do you think is reading your Tweets? Is this the audience you want? Why/why not? Tell me anything you think of relating to the audience for your Tweets.

3. How do you read others' Tweets? Do you read all of them? Who do you read/not read and why? Do you know them all?

4. What content do you think is appropriate for a Tweet? What is inappropriate? Have you ever found yourself wanting to Tweet and then deciding against it? Why?

5. Are your Tweets public? Why/why not? How do you feel about people you don't know coming across them? What about people you do know?

6. What do i need to know about why Twitter is/is not working for you or your friends?

Category: social software

Posted by zephoria at 11:58 PM | Comments (33) | TrackBack (0)

February 5, 2007

about those walled gardens

In the tech circles in which i run, the term "walled gardens" evokes a scrunching of the face if not outright spitting. I shouldn't be surprised by this because these are the same folks who preach the transparent society as the panacea. But i couldn't help myself from thinking that this immediate revulsion is obfuscating the issue... so i thought i'd muse a bit on walled gardens.

Walled gardens are inevitably built out of corporate greed - a company wants to lock in your data so that you can't move between services and leave them in the dust. They make money off of your eyeballs. They make money off of your data. (In return, they often provide you with "free" services.) You put blood, sweat, and tears - or at least a little bit of time - into providing them with valuable data and you can't get it out when you decide you've had enough. If this were the full story, _of course_ walled gardens look foul to the core.

The term "walled garden" implies that there is something beautiful being surrounded by walls. The underlying assumption is that walls are inherently bad. Yet, walls have certain value. For example, i'm very appreciative of walls when i'm having sex. I like to keep my intimate acts intimate and part of that has to do with the construction of barriers that prevent others from accessing me visually and audibly. I'm not so thrilled about tearing down all of the walls in meatspace. Walls are what allow us to construct a notion of "private" and, even more importantly, contextualized publics. Walls help contain the social norms so that you know how to act properly within their confines, whether you're at a pub or in a classroom.

One of the challenges online is that there really aren't walls. What walls did exist came tumbling down with the introduction of search. Woosh - one quick query and the walls that separated comp.lang.perl from alt.sex.bondage came crashing down. Before search (a.k.a. Deja), there were pseudo digital walls. Sure, Usenet was public but you had to know where the door was to enter the conversation. Furthermore, you had to care to enter. There are lots of public and commercial places i pass by every day that i don't bother entering. But, "for the good of all humankind", search came to pave the roads and Arthur Dent couldn't stop the digital bulldozer.

We're living with the complications of no walls online. Determining context is really really hard. Is your boss really addressing you when he puts his pic up on Match.com? Does your daughter take your presence into consideration when she crafts her MySpace? No doubt it's public, but it's not like any public that we're used to in meatspace.

For a long time, one of the accidental blessings of walled gardens was that they kept out search bots as part of their selfish data retention plan. This meant that there were no traces left behind of people's participation in walled gardens when they opted out - no caches of previous profiles, no records of a once-embarassing profile. Much to my chagrin, many of the largest social network sites (MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, etc.) have begun welcoming the bots. This makes me wonder... are they really walled gardens any longer? It sounds more like chain linked fences to me. Or maybe a fishbowl with a little plastic castle.

What does it mean when the supposed walled gardens begin allowing external sites to cache their content?

[tangent] And what on earth does it mean that MySpace blocks the Internet Archive in its robots.txt but allows anyone else? It's like they half-realize that posterity might be problematic for profiles, but fail to realize that caches of the major search engines are just as freaky. Of course, to top it off, their terms say that you may not use scripts on the site - isn't a bot a script? The terms also say that participating in MySpace does not give them a license to distribute your content outside of MySpace - isn't a Google cache of your profile exactly that? [end tangent]

Can we really call these sites walled gardens if the walls are see-through? I mean, if a search bot can grab your content for cache, what's really stopping you from doing so? Most tech folks would say that they are walled gardens because there are no tools to support easy export. Given that thousands of sites have popped up to provide codes for you to turn your MySpace profile into a dizzy display of animated daisies with rainbow hearts fluttering from the top (while inserting phishing scripts), why wouldn't there be copy/pastable code to let you export/save/transfer your content? Perhaps people don't actually want to do this. Perhaps the obsessive personal ownership of one's content is nothing more than a fantasy of the techno-elite (and the businessmen who haven't yet managed to lock you in to their brainchild). I mean, if you're producing content into a context, do you really want to transfer it wholesale? I certainly don't want my MySpace profile displayed on LinkedIn (even if there are no nude photos there).

For all of this rambling, perhaps i should just summarize into three points:

If walls have value in meatspace, why are they inherently bad in mediated environments? I would argue that walls provide context and allow us to have some control over the distribution of our expressions. Walls should be appreciated, even if they are near impossible to construct.
If robots can run around grabbing the content of supposed walled gardens, are they really walled? It seems to me that the tizzy around walled gardens fails to recognize that those most interested in caching the data (::cough:: Google) can do precisely that. And those most interested does not seem to include the content producers.
If the walls come crashing down, what are we actually losing? Walls provide context, context is critical for individuals to properly express themselves in a socially appropriate way. I fear that our loss of walls is resulting in a very confused public space with far more visibility than anyone can actually handle.

Basically, i don't think that walled gardens are all that bad. I think that they actually provide a certain level of protection for those toiling in the mud. The problem is that i think that we've torn down the walls of the supposed walled gardens and replaced them with chain links or glass. Maybe even one-way glass. And i'm not sure that this is such a good thing. ::sigh::

So, what am i missing? What don't i understand about walled gardens?

Category: social software

Tags: walled_garden myspace

Posted by zephoria at 10:40 PM | Comments (35) | TrackBack (0)

October 30, 2006

December social software events

Yo young researchers! UNC is hosting a Social Software Symposium December 8-9. I unfortunately cannot go to this but i would strongly strongly encourage all researchers in the field to do so. This is mostly for researcher types but industry folks are welcome with special permission. It will be absolutely fab and Fred Stutzman rocks.

That said, i will be attending Le Web 3 in Paris the following week (December 11-12) after a (desperately needed) vacation getaway. I would be ecstatic if folks would come join me in Paris for some great social software conversing right before the holidays. (I certainly plan on doing some Christmas shopping between the sessions in addition to eating some yummy yummy food.) For all of you Americans, this is a great opportunity to think about social software beyond the norms of the US and there are some great speakers from North America, Europe and Israel attending. And besides, PARIS! (Did i mention Paris???)

Category: social software

Posted by zephoria at 1:03 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

August 7, 2006

number games and social software

Over the last month, i've been driving Mimi's Hybrid on and off. One of my favorite things about the Hybrid is that it tells you how many MPG you're averaging over time. I find myself driving around town trying to maximize that number, getting uber excited when it goes up and super sad when it goes down. It reminds me of when i used to try to maximize my miles per hour when going from Boston to New York only this is more environmental. Yet, it's not the environment that i'm concerning myself with - it's all about number games in the same way that people obsess over every pound on the scale or the calories in every bite.

Then i was thinking about Tantek and Jason raving about Consumating. I love the fact that it's a lot of cool geeky people but i can never get over the lameness that i feel when i log in and look at my score. And yet, i can't be bothered to answer the questions that make me feel all uncomfortable in the hopes that someone will like my answers and rate me higher. It's a catch-22 for me. Yet, i totally understand why Tantek and Jason and others absolutely love it and why they go back for more.

And then i was thinking about the people on Yahoo! Answers who spend hours every day answering questions to get high ranks. It's very similar to Consumating only it's not all embarassing because it's not really about you - it's about the answers. There's no real gain from getting points but still, it's like a mouse in a cage determined to do well just cuz they can.

This all reminds me of a scene in some movie. I can't recall what movie it was but it was about how you just want to be the best at *something*, anything... to have something to point at and say look, i'm #1! The validation, the proof of greatness! Even if that something is problematic attention getting like being the #1 serial killer. (Was it Bowling for Columbine?)

I started wondering about these number games... They're all over social software - Neopets, friends on social network sites, blog visitors, etc. Who is motivated by what number games? Who is demotivated? Does it make a difference if the number game is about the group vs. the individual, about one's self directly vs. about some abstract capability?

Are there some number games that work better than others in attracting a broader audience? I'm thinking about Orkut here... if the game is to get as many Brazillians on the site as possible, you only need a few obsessives to be the rallying forces; everyone else is part of the number game simply by signing up. So there are tons competing in the number games but only a few invested.

Does anyone know anything about how these number games work as incentives?

Category: social software

Tags: numbers games

Posted by zephoria at 11:45 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

July 14, 2006

from architecture to urban planning: technology development in a networked age

Last week, i had drinks with Ian Rogers and Kareem Mayan and we were talking about shifts in the development of technology. Although all of us have made these arguments before in different forms, we hit upon a set of metaphors that i feel the need to highlight.

Complete with references to engineering, technology development was originally seen as a type of formalized production. You design, build and ship products. And then they're out in the wild, removed from the production cycle until you make Version 2. Of course, it didn't take long for people to realize that when they shipped flaws, they didn't need to do a recall. Instead, they could just ship free updates in the form of Version 1.1.

As the world went web-a-rific, companies held onto the ship-final-products mentality in its stodgy archaic form. Until the forever-in-beta hit. I, for one, *love* the persistent beta. It signals that the system is continuously updating, never fully baked and meant to be organic. This is the way that it should be.

Web development is fundamentally different than packaged software. Because it is the web, there's no vast distance between producers and consumers. Distribution channels cross space and time (much to the chagrin of most old skool industries). Particularly when it comes to social software, producers can live inside their creations, directly interact with those using the system, and evolve the system alongside the practices that are emerging. In fact, not only *can* they, they're stupid to do anything else.

The same revolution has happened in writing. Sure, we still ship books but what does it mean to have the author have direct interaction with the reader like they do in blogging? It's almost as though someone revived the author from the dead [1]. And maybe turned hir into a kind of peculiar looking Frankenstein who realizes that things aren't quite right in interpretation-land but can't make them right no matter what. Regardless, with the author able to directly connect to the reader, one must wonder how the process changes. For example, how is the audience imagined when its presence is persistent?

I'm reminded of a book by Stewart Brand - How Building Learn. In it, Brand talks about how buildings evolve over time based on their use and the aging that takes place. A building is not just the end-result of the designer, but co-constructed by the designer, nature, and the inhabitant over time. When i started thinking about technology as architecture, i realized the significance of that book. We cannot think about technologies as finalized products, but as evolving architectures. This should affect the design process at the getgo, but it also highlights the differences between physical and digital architectures. What would it mean if 92 million people were living in the house simultaneously with different expectations for what colors the walls should be painted? What would it mean if the architect was living inside the house and fighting with the family about the intention of the mantel?

The networked nature of web technologies brings the architect into the living room of the house, but the question still remains: what is the responsibility of a live-in architect? Coming in as an authority on the house does no good - in that way, the architect should still be dead. But should the architect just be a glorified fixer-upper/plumber/electrician? Should the architect support the aging of the house to allow it to become eccentric? Should the architect build new additions for the curious tenants? What should the architect be doing? One might think that the architect should just leave the place alone... but is this how digital sites evolve? Do they just need plumbers and electricians? Perhaps the architect is not just an architect but also an urban planner... It is not just the house that is of concern, but the entire city. How the city evolves depends on a whole variety of forces that are constantly in flux. Negotiating this large-scale system is daunting - the house seems so much more manageable. But 92 million people never lived in a single house together.

[1] Note to Barthes scholars: i'm being snippy here. I realize that the author's authority should still be contested, that multiple interpretations are still valid, and that the author is still a product of social forces. I also realize that even as i'm writing this blogpost, its reading will be out of my control, but the reality is that i'll still - as author - get all huffy and puffy and try to be understood. Damnit.

Category: social software

Tags: architecture urbanplanning techdevelopment

Posted by zephoria at 11:40 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

May 13, 2006

Cluster Effects and Browser Support (IE-only social software is idiotic)

The number one justification i get for Internet Explorer-only support is that 90% of the population uses it. Let's assume that to be true (even though only 52% of this blog's readers use IE5 or 6). This argument rests on two assumptions:

1) An individual uses IE (and ONLY IE) on all computers that they use.
2) The only browser that matters is the individual's browser.

When users cannot use an application as they move between work and home computers, between personal and school computers, etc., they get disincentivized. Yet, that's a minor problem compared to #2. When it comes to social software, i'm not just concerned with what browser i use, but with what browser my friends use. I may not be concerned directly, but i need them to play along too to get validated and to make it fun. I don't want to invest time and energy into making profiles or blogs that my friends can't access for functional reasons, especially if there are alternatives that everyone can access.

You need cluster effects for social software to work. I need to be able to convince my most exploratory friends to try it with me and i need them to get super excited about it. Once i get them going, then i can convince the rest of my friends to follow along. If i can't convince them, then i quickly lose interest and stop trying to convince everyone else in my social world. Not only does this make it hard for me to play along, it makes it hard for my close friends that i turned on to play along. Because if i lose interest, why should they keep spreading it to their friends? Etc.

For entertainment, let's play a probabilities games... Let's assume an even distribution of IE use (which is not true) and random friend connections. Let's assume the average teen has 40 AIM buddies (low), but that only 10 really matter. In other words, 10 specific people are a critical baseline for my desire to become an active participant. (Note: the self-motivation to try it about early adopters does not take into consideration whether or not my friends will play along.) There's a 34.9% (.9^10) probability that all of my close crucial friends are on IE. Let's say that i'm in that important 35%. For it to take hold, all of my friends need to participate and pass on the enthusiasm virally. The probability that all of my important 10 friends are also in that critical 35% is... TERRIBLE (assuming random friendship connections). As network effects take hold and interest spirals, there will be critical nodes who simply don't participate for structural reasons. That is bad bad bad for significant growth and sustainability.

Of course, in reality, browser use is not evenly distributed, friendship networks are not random and it's not clear exactly how many crucial people one needs to participate. (Translation: the probability game was for kicks - a real analysis would require modeling network spreads and calculating stickiness.) There are likely to be quite a few IE-only clusters, but there are also likely to be quite a few clusters where crucial nodes use Firefox/Safari. (There are also likely to be a few where there are other browsers, but frankly, these are typically the geek networks that most mainstream developers are happy to write off.)

The important thing is that when you think about browser-access, you cannot simply think in terms of "90% market" because there's a decent probability that many of those 90% have critical connections to people who are in the 10%. You need to think in terms of clusters, not individuals, because it is clusters that will make your application work. People participate when all of their friends can.

Corporations force this through regulation software, but this is not how consumer markets work. Launching a beta of AIM Pages on IE-only is foolish at best. Sure, a lot of people will try it, but if their friends can't play, they won't really get into it. Meaningful activity won't spread unless entire clusters can play along. (Trying it out by creating an account is not the same as being active.)

Getting social applications going requires a baseline.... That baseline is that everyone can play along so that there's no structural barrier to network spread. This is why mobile shit is so hard to get off the ground. This is why getting people to download applications for social interaction is such a barrier to participation. Replicating this problem on the Internet is foolish at best. It doesn't matter if you're launching in beta - first impressions really do matter. If you're targeting an audience that's IE-only (like corporations), go for it. But if you're trying to go after a mainstream, younger audience, you're being idiotic if you think you can get away with not supporting Firefox or Safari. (And besides, if you're AOL, what on earth are you doing supporting Microsoft hegemony?)

Update: Apparently, AIM Pages is supposed to support Firefox, although i was unable to really do much and i have not bothered going back nor have i had time to file a proper bug report list. Folks in the comments have had better luck. My points about IE-only still stand, although they apparently should not be directed at AIM Pages. Of course, it cannot be a good thing that i found the site so broken and buggy that i believed it did not work in Firefox at all...

Category: social software

Tags: AIMPages browsers

Posted by zephoria at 3:57 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack (0)

May 11, 2006

anti-social networks legislation

Earlier, i spoke about how the MySpace panic was likely to cause legislation proposals. Today, Congressperson Fitzpatrick proposed legislation to amend the Communications Act of 1934 "to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms." This legislation broadly defines social network sites as anything that includes a Profile plus an ability to communicate with strangers. It covers social networking sites, chatrooms, bulletin boards. Obviously, the target is MySpace but most of our industry would be affected. Blogger, Flickr, Odeo, LiveJournal, Xanga, Neopets, MySpace, Facebook, AIM, Yahoo! Groups, MSN Spaces, YouTube, eBaumsworld, Slashdot. It would affect Wikipedia if there wasn't a special clause for non-commercial sites. Because many news sites (NYTimes, CNN, the Post) allow people to login and create profiles and comment, it might affect them too.

Because it affects both libraries and schools, it will dramatically increase the digital divide. Poor youth only gain access to these sites through libraries and schools(1). With this ban, poor youth will have no access to the cultural artifacts of their day. Furthermore, because libraries won't be able to maintain separate 18+ and minor computers, this legislation will affect everyone who uses libraries, including adults (2).

This legislation is horrifying and culturally damaging. Please, all of you invested in social technologies, do something to make this stop.

Update: (1) - in looking into what American youth were not using MySpace, i found that it was not nearly as popular in rural communities as in suburban and urban environments. In discussion with other researchers, i found that a lot of poor kids only have access to the Internet through school and public settings (libraries, Internet cafes in cities). While urban libraries have not been blocking MySpace, many rural libraries (and schools) have been blocking the site. Even though the teens have heard that it's really cool, they haven't been able to join because of the filters.

(2) Few libraries have enough computers to make 18+ rooms which means that it has to happen on a per-access level. The way that libraries currently ban sites is through filters that work across the entire library. It is possible that there could be logins for all library users, but this would eliminate anonymous/private web access and most librarians seem to oppose this approach. Implementations that would block minors but not adults are much more onerous on libraries, although theoretically not impossible, just unlikely.

Final note: This legislation will not protect minors, but it will continue to erode their (and our) freedoms. There are so many amazing things that teens do with social technologies. To lose all of this because of the culture of fear is terrifying to me. I found out about my alma mater talking to strangers online in the 90s. I learned about what it means to be queer, how to have confidence in myself and had so many engaging conversations. Sure, i found some sketchy people too, but i learned to ignore them just as i learned to ignore the guys who whistled and honked from their cars when i walked to the movie theater with my best friend. We need to give youth the knowledge to know the risks of their actions, the structures to be able to come to us when something goes wrong and the opportunity to grow up and connect to their peers. Eliminating cultural artifacts because we don't understand them does not make our lives any safer, but it does obliterate so many positive interactions.

Category: social software

Posted by zephoria at 12:48 PM | Comments (31) | TrackBack (0)

March 21, 2006

Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?

People keep asking me "What went wrong with Friendster? Why is MySpace any different?" Although i've danced around this issue in every talk i've given, i guess i've never addressed the question directly. So i sat down to do so tonite. I meant to write a short blog post, but a full-length essay came out. Rather than make you read this essay in blog form (or via your RSS reader), i partitioned it off to a printable webpage. If you are building social technologies or online communities, please read this. I think it's really important to understand the history of these sites, how users engaged with them, how the architects engaged with users, and how design decisions had social consequences. Hopefully, my essay can help with this.

Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?

I do want to highlight a section towards the end because i think that it's quite problematic that folks aren't thinking about the repercussions of the moral panic around MySpace.

If MySpace falters in the next 1-2 years, it will be because of this moral panic. Before all of you competitors get motivated to exacerbate the moral panic, think again. If the moral panic succeeds:
Youth will lose (even more) freedom of speech. How far will the curtailment of the First Amendment go?
All users will lose the safety and opportunities of pseudonymity, particularly around political speech and particularly internationally.
Internet companies will be required to confirm the real life identity of all users. At their own cost.
International growth on social communities will be massively curtailed because it is much harder to confirm non-US populations.
Internet companies will lose the protections of common carrier which will have ramifications in all sorts of directions.
Internet companies will see a massive increase in subpoenas and will be forced to turn over data on their users which will in turn destroy the trust relationship between companies and users.
There will be a much greater barrier for new communities to form and for startups to build out new social environments.
International companies will be far better positioned to create new social technologies because they won't have to abide by American laws even if American citizens use their technology (assuming the servers are hosted outside of the US). Unless, of course, we decide to block sites on a nation-wide basis....

Category: social software

Tags: friendster myspace moral_panic

Posted by zephoria at 1:19 AM | Comments (36) | TrackBack (0)

March 13, 2006

glocalization talk at Etech

Last week, i gave a talk at O'Reilly's Etech on how large-scale digital communities can handle the tensions between global information networks and local interaction and culture. I've uploaded the crib for those who are interested in reading the talk: "G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide".

This talk was written for designers and business folks working in social tech. I talk about the significance of culture and its role in online communities. I go through some of the successful qualities of Craiglist, Flickr and MySpace to lay out a critical practice: design through embedded observation. I then discuss a few issues that are playing out on tech and social levels.

Anyhow, enjoy! And let me know what you think!

Category: social software

Tags: glocalization

Posted by zephoria at 12:50 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

February 26, 2006

AirTroductions

When American called me up to tell me i'd made Gold, i groaned. It was official - i spend too much time in airports. This is of course magnified by the fact that i spend too much time praying that the person sitting next to me is at least relatively sane, doesn't smell too badly, isn't carrying some sneezable illness and doesn't cry during takeoff. Of course, i have had good experiences on flights. In fact, i've had great ones. When working for V-Day, i sat next to a woman interested in what we were doing. I told her all about what was going on and at some point, we exchanged business cards. She sent me a check for thousands of dollars to support the cause. Of course, what i'd really like is to have more great ones. I love running into people i know in the airport or finding other interesting humans. I will never forget when Jimmy popped up his iTunes to find that Clay was somewhere within the airport. Or when i Dodgeballed that i landed and found Iggy had too. Or when i plopped down next to Jesse Jackson. Strange moments.

Social software *should* be able to help but there are so many barriers to this. You need to articulate too much and who has time? Still, as broken as they are, i'm interested in exploring the tools that might lead to entertaining interactions or at least to the development of better systems to do so. One of the ones i'm curious about is AirTroductions. Yeah, it kinda has dating overtones to it, but i'm still curious if it'd ever work. At the very least, who else is en route to Etech or SXSW or IASummit when? I have to imagine that lots of folks i know will be passing through the same airports in the next month. Anyone else willing to give it a try just to see?

Note: one of the options is: "someone who won't talk to me at all (I just want to read/sleep/work)." You don't have to be stuck sitting next to a chatty person even if you want someone to share a cab with at the airport. You also don't need to change your seats to use the service - i intend to use it just to find out who else is in the airport with me.

Category: social software

Posted by zephoria at 4:38 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

February 17, 2006

Bradley Horowitz is blogging!

Bradley Horowitz (one of my bosses over at Yahoo!) has the most interesting things to say about the emergence of social technologies. Because we felt as though he should share this brilliance, Jeremy and i have been on his case to blog for quite some time. Now he's gone and done it! Yay!!

In his opening post, he addresses how sites like Upcoming.org, del.icio.us and Flickr will scale, talking about value creation and the need to recognize that not everyone needs to be a producer for these things to work. In triangle form, this means:

Anyhow, check out his blog to read more brilliant insights...

[Oh, and all of you bloggers out there... get your bosses to blog... it's quite a hoot!]

Category: social software

Tags: bradleyhorowitz yahoo

Posted by zephoria at 2:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 5, 2006

a funny dodgeball moment

Last night, i landed at Oakland and decided to announce that i was there so that i could switch Dodgeball back to SF and hear what folks were up to even though i was feeling quite asocial. Just as i received a confirmation email saying that people got my message, i got a message from an old friend announcing his presence at OAK. Now, normally, i don't drive to the airport but i was running uber late last week so i called up this kid and asked if he was just arriving and if he wanted a ride back to SF; he was totally taken aback and laughing - he had just come back from an interview with Red Burns (ITP, where Dodgeball was created). It was particularly hysterical because while i've passed him on the streets in SF, i really haven't hung out with him at all since college. (Why is a longer issue involving issues of confidence and head space.) Driving back to the city, catching up, he got a call from a girl i used to hang out with freshman year in college - she was living in the city and wanted to see a movie. The end result was that i got to catch up with a whole group of college folks that i hadn't seen in years. I have to admit that it was utterly wonderful to see this group and realize that i am back on solid ground again.

While Dodgeball has certainly been useful in social settings, this was the first time i had the opportunity to see it be useful beyond just the basic bar hopping scenario. It reminded me of a time when two friends realized they were in an airport together because they saw each other's music on iTunes. I think that funny points of synchronicity is only going to get more interesting as technology become mores infused into society.

Category: social software

Tags: dodgeball

Posted by zephoria at 11:20 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

January 30, 2006

discrimination in gaming: World of Warcraft bans queer community

I had finally broken down and ordered World of Warcraft to check out the social dynamics. I still detest gaming but i decided that i wanted to know what is going on. And then the news broke that Blizzard bans (advertising) queer safe space (on WoW) on the basis of it being sexual harassment. Even though i agreed to check out WoW, i cannot support an organization that discriminates on the basis of sexuality, especially when it's for idle curiosity. I will be returning my game to Amazon once it arrives and i will not be joining WoW.

I've already heard on numerous occasions that there is intense homophobia within the chatrooms on WoW and this had already made me quite uncomfortable. But Blizzard's response is just disgusting. How can they call a queer-friendly guild sexual harassment given that this is an attempt by the queer community to create space? Furthermore, there's so much sexism in the chats (aside from the creatures) that no one from Blizzard can actually argue that they are preventing sexual harassment. I can't help but wonder about the state of other forms of discrimination and prejudice within the system (particularly since "race" is critical to the narrative of WoW). That said, i don't care enough to find out - i can't justify spending personal money on a company with these values.

This is a nice little reminder that most gaming companies are not actually progressive in any way shape or form. I respect the importance that gaming has had in youth culture (and for adults for that matter) but it still pains me to watch systematized prejudice executed in code and culture. Yuck yuck yuck.

For those who are curious, there's a great discussion over at Terra Nova. Tx LawGeek.

Update: Jason Kuznicki has a fantastic Open Letter to Blizzard Entertainment that does a much better job than i do addressing this issue. As has been noted over and over again, queerness is an identity not just a set of sexual practices. By silencing people's identities and not allowing people to have bigot-free spaces, Blizzard is upholding a level of discrimination that far outweighs the _potential_ sexual harassment that might occur if people's sexualities were known.

Category: social software

Tags: homophobia WoW

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January 18, 2006

help me restore my Flickr data

Unfortunately, last week, an error occurred over at Flickr resulting in the destruction of my Flickr account. (Don't worry - this won't happen to you!) Although the team did everything they could, they were unable to retrieve recent contacts, groups, favorites, tags, messages...

I need your help in getting data back, particularly in terms of contacts... If i used to be your friend/contact, can you take a look at your account and re-add me? If you sent me a message via Flickr, can you send it again? If you had a photo that i favorited and you remember, could you remind me? If i was in a group with you, can you let me know?

The Flickr team is working hard to make sure data boo-boos never happen again, but you may want to know that you can order DVD backups of all of your photos in case you tend not to have second copies of those photos.

I'm so sorry for the hassle...

Category: social software

Tags: flickr

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November 29, 2005

Attention Networks vs. Social Networks

(originally posted on centrality)

Network analysts often speak about (un)directed graphs. In essence, this refers to whether or not someone you know knows you. If reciprocity is required by the system, it's an undirected graph. The vast majority of online social networking tools assume that users are modeling friendship and thus if you're friends with someone, they better damn well be friends with you. As such, they use undirected graphs and you are required to confirm that they are indeed your friend.

Well, what about fandom? Orkut actually put the concept of fan into their system, but in order to be someone's fan, you had to be their friend first. Baroo? I've noticed that Friendster introduced fans, although it is not consistent across the site; the system decides who is celebrity. I can be a fan of Pamela Anderson but i cannot be a fan of Michel Foucault or Henry Jenkins. While i can understand that the former is clearly a Fakester, the latter is actually a real academic with a Friendster Profile that i genuinely admire (far more than Ms. Anderson). Even on MySpace where bands have a separate section, i have to add them to my friends; i cannot simply be fans.

The world is not an undirected graph and very little about social life online is actually undirected. Many social relations are unequal; they are rooted in directional graphs - fandom, power, hierarchy. So why do we use undirected models?

Of course, there are many systems that have directed graphs. I can read blogs by bloggers who who don't read me; blogrolls are directed. I can have friends on LiveJournal that do not reciprocate. I can subscribe to del.icio.us feeds of people that i admire without forcing them to do the same. I can make a Flickr user a contact simply so that i can watch their photos. I do all this because i know the world is not undirected.

Part of the problem is that we've built a model off of social networks instead of attention networks and there's a very subtle difference between the two. Attention networks recognize power. They recognize that someone may actually have a good collection of references or be a good photographer and that someone else may want to pay attention to them even if their own collections are not worthy of reciprocation. Attention networks realize that the world is not an undirected graph.

There are many good reasons to use attention networks in systems instead of social networks. Do you really want to force people to get permission to subscribe to public material of someone else? Do you really want to put people through the awkwardness of having to approve someone that they don't know simply because one person respects the other? Of course, the awkwardness of social networks does not disappear simply by having directed graphs. Reciprocity is still an issue whenever the networks are performative (visible as a statement of connection). This is most apparent in the blogging community where people feel insulted that they are not included on the blogroll of a blog that they read regularly. Thus, people feel the need to perform a relation of someone that they do not read simply for good social measure.

Attention networks are far more visible when people actually use the network for some purpose. Friendster networks are meant to be performative first and foremost. There's minimal cost to having more friends. It may foul up your gallery searches but, really, does it make a difference if you see 4,325,935 people instead of 4,311,266? Attention networks like LiveJournal and Flickr combine the network with the subscription process. You want to keep your Friends page clean and to only get information from people you care about. Of course, LJ also recognizes that there are times when you need plausible deniability. It allows you to create a separate group of LJ folks that you actually watch (separate from your "friends" list). The subscription process is inherently a process of attention relations, not friendship.

Of course, the computation needed for directed graphs is much greater than for undirected graphs. Is that the main reason that most services require reciprocity? Even when it's not the best mechanism for the system? Or are there other reasons why folks are obsessed with undirected graphs?

Category: social software

Tags: attention_networks

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November 5, 2005

the power of social structure in World of Warcraft

Earlier this week, i was talking with Joi about his "research" on World of Warcraft. He was telling me about how some of the social norms get maintained by members in the community (and particularly within guilds) and how newcomers learn the social structure.

The thing about World of Warcraft (and many other MMORPGS) is that people who fail to work within the social structure get penalized. Most tasks cannot be done without collaboration. Guilds are the formalized version of groups that gather to complete tasks and the most effective way to achieve within the system. Achievements have a measured component - leveling, possessions, honor points, ranks, etc. Pissing off one's guildmates is foolish because it results in being left out of quests and other group activities needed for advancement. Also, since most quests require groups to work together seamlessly, people practice. They also get to know each other and joke around because the level of intimacy is super helpful in team building. Personality compatibility is necessary both within a guild and also essential when guilds team up with one another.

Joi told me about a teenager who was fucking off and how members of the community reprimanded him. He told me he thought it was a fantastic environment to learn sociability, to learn team work and to figure out how to compromise. The structure and incentives were so explicit that even the most socially clueless individuals could work out what they needed to to do advance.

I'm very proud to be a feminist, but a pro and con of feminism is that it destabilized social structure. There was a time when women knew what they were expected to do. They could hate it, resent it, rebel against it, but the norm was there. Those norms were hugely oppressive to women but they also provided a framework to work within. Today, we have no structure and i live in a mecca of people trying to "find themselves." How do you build an identity from scratch without having it pre-defined? For many, this seems to be a hard task. Personally, there are days when i revel in my ability to escape gendered norms and then i dream of being a Hollywood-image 1950s stay at home mom. Even in my chaos, i realize the power of structure.

I think that it's fascinating that some gaming systems have worked hard to create a formalized structure such that people know their positions and can visibly see how certain actions help them ascend. Are we building structures in our virtual lives because they are easy to compute? Because we desperately desire a structure where we know the rules? What does it mean that many active gamers were the types of individuals alienated historically for being socially deficient? What does male dominance in gaming mean given that men historically defined the social structure? Is it possible to build structure that is not oppressive?

Category: social software

Tags: MMORPGs WorldOfWarcraft gender norms

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November 3, 2005

what is "social software"?

"A lot of programmers, seem to me to think that the whole point of social software is to replace the social with software. Which is not really what you want to do, right? Social Software should exist to empower us to be human... to interact... in all the normal ways that humans do." -- Jimmy Wales

Clarification: Sorry for the earlier version without the full context - i didn't realize how badly it would read. I didn't mean to suggest that Jimmy thought that social software should be about replacing the social with the software, but that he was criticizing what had emerged with the techno-centric development of tools meant to help with socialization in the last couple of years. I'm soo sorry for implying anything else (and thanks to the wonderful commenters for making me realize that i boobooed).

Anyone who wants to hear the full audio of Jimmy's talk should check it out here

Category: social software

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September 20, 2005

quote of the day

"Beta means never having to say you're sorry" -- Ryan Shaw

Category: social software

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September 15, 2005

social and connected individuals

Anne Galloway: In my dissertation, I discuss the prevailing tendency of "social software" to define "social" in terms of connected individuals. This privileging of individualism, I argue, not only demonstrates cultural and class biases, but also points at some of the limitations of network models of interaction. To focus on connecting individuals along the lines of shared interests and practices is indeed a type of social interaction, but it shouldn't be confused with public value. Even when artists and designers choose to focus on the "public" dimensions of "social" software, they often resurrect the sense of public implied in the "collective," a form of anti-structure if you will, and sometimes a remarkably insular and homogenous one at that. In many cases, "social" software involves technology "for" the people or technology "by" the people, but only rarely do the two come together. Network models are uniquely amenable to connecting and maintaining such discrete pieces in part because they manage or control the types of connections that can be made, and so public wifi networks and other open or hackable architectures are never public in the sense of being "for" and/or "by" everyone.

::bounce::cheer:: Yay!

Category: social software

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August 23, 2005

Why Microsoft-only development is foolish business logic

Any company that focuses on Microsoft-only platforms may gain access to the vast majority of Internet users but in doing so, they also secure Microsoft hegemony.

I'm always stunned when companies who compete with Microsoft support only their platforms, only their protocols. How many companies develop only for MS operating systems, only for IE, only for Outlook? The logic is often practical: the primary target group uses MS and it costs too much to develop on multiple platforms. This should make practical economic sense, right? Wrong.

Companies keep competing on a product-by-product basis, forgetting that they need to be competing on a paradigm level. And forgetting that they need to be competing collectively, not individually. By creating a product that only works on Microsoft, you solidify Microsoft more than you compete with them. You may be competing on a product level, but in the long run, you've done Microsoft more good than harm and you've just made your competition more difficult. You've given people another reason to stay on Microsoft. Why? How can this possibly be good business logic?

The majority of the world _is_ using Microsoft-only. Think about everything that is pre-installed: browsers, calendar, IM, text editor, music player, ... It takes a lot of effort to switch any one of those applications. And yet, when IE stopped development, people started to do so. Started. It can happen, but it's a huge uphill battle. Anyone who has taken the scary jump to switch to Firefox or OSX should be rewarded by being loved and cherished by all in competition with Microsoft, not punished.

People always ask how Microsoft survives when their products are not nearly as good as their competitors. Most people argue monopoly, but while that plays a role, i'd argue that it's mostly because the competitors are securing Microsoft's position as leader, reinforcing their power within the tech industry, and giving them the ability to dictate the standards. They do so actively whenever they only support Microsoft, whenever they make it harder for users to switch.

At FOO, i was stunned to see quite a few PCs - i'm used to a Mac-only influencer crowd (although Macs still dominated). When i mocked the PC owners, i received a consistent chorus - i used to use Macs only but then i started working for XYZ big company and they don't support Macs - i need to use Outlook, i need to use IE, VPN doesn't work on Macs, ... What killed me was the number of people who work for Yahoo and Google who said this. ::smacking forehead:: You have to be kidding me!

This week, Google launched two Windows-only properties to compete with Microsoft. Not only are they ignoring a key early adopter/influencer crowd, but they're helping discourage mainstream users from trying non-Microsoft products. Why? And why not work together with other companies who are competing with Microsoft?

I still believe that supporting influencers is necessary, but i'm now convinced that you also need to support anyone who has taken the initiative to switch away from your competition. Furthermore, you don't have the right to espouse open standards if you continue to only build on top of only one closed one. You need to give people choice beyond just the application at hand. Openness isn't simply about open protocols concerning one application, but about open choice to mix and match layers through and through.

Please, if you're building an application that is browser/OS/platform-specific, please please please think about this. Think about how your limited development focus secures hegemony of other layers that will continue to haunt your layer.

Note: this post is heavily influenced by a discussion with Ryan Shaw

Category: social software

Tags: microsoft competition hegemony

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August 21, 2005

FOO Camp - Are you a werewolf? Yes OR No!?!?

I had the privilege of attending FOO Camp this year and i have to admit it was an utter blast. I had the great fortune of having a partner in crime in the form of Miss Jane. She's so amazing at inciting people to play and i'm so in awe of her so the opportunity to collaborate with her was glorious (although i'm totally intimidated by her ability to turn everything into a game). For our "demo," we created a Zen Scavenger Hunt to explore the ideas of supergaming and social play. Jane explains the rules on her blog. In short, people are told to gather 12 objects and then we hand them a list and they have to find the objects listed amongst their twelve. Here was the list:

A problem (2 points)
A non-scalable solution to object #1 (3 points)
A scalable solution to object #1 (6 points)
A new mobile Web 2.0 platform (demo, please) (3 points)
An experiment in nanotech bioengineering gone bad (3 points)
A self-replicating machine (demo, please) (7 points)
A passenger amenity from the first commercial space flight shuttle (2 points)
A working tele-operated object (demo, please) (7 points)
A tool for collaboration (3 points)
A relic from the battle between the monkeys and the robots. (P.S. Who won?) (3 points)
Edible computing (demo, please) (6 points)
FOObarred TM Anti-Surveillance Device (4 points)

The folks who played were MAGNIFICENT. There were nanotech tooth cleaners, whiteboard wikis, edible tape... and then there was the dirty sock. Oh dear the dirty sock... Poor sock.

Also, with Jane's instigation tendencies in full force, each night involved extended games of Werewolf. Thank goodness for play... i ended up getting to know so many people that i wouldn't have thought to talk to otherwise. It broke clique structures and gave people a level playing game to actually get to know one another. Amazing really.

I have definitely decided that Werewolf is necessary for future events in this space. Folks in the Bay Area are going to gather to work through the best form of Werewolf for groups and i can't wait to see how those iterations affect future conferences.

In addition to play, i did attend sessions and engage with people about ideas. I tried to go to things that i knew little about. The biotech/nanotech stuff was fascinating even though so much of it was over my head. I also went to a few where i could contribute - creating passionate users, public/private masks, taxonomies. I also had 1-1 conversations that went pretty deep. For example, Jimmy Wales and i dove deep into Wikipedia and that was completely mind-opening. That conversation alone made the entire weekend worth it to me.

I also held a session about the ways in which (real, not articulated) social networks connect to innovation and why diversity (intellectual, cultural and biological) is critical for everyone invested in technology. I'm going to work on a longer post about that one shortly. But the session was intended to get people thinking about how their social structures affect their ability to innovate. It helped motivate people to think about their own networks and how they learned from people entirely unlike them. It also created a brilliant conversation about conference organizing, bridging outside of your known relations and taking network effects seriously.

....

On a separate note, i want to take a moment to address the opening of this post. It was a privilege to attend FOO and i know that there are bad feelings and elitism critiques. I can truly understand both perspectives and i know that O'Reilly is trying to be transparent but that in that transparency, there are also hurt feelings and self-doubt. And this makes me sad and frustrated because i genuinely don't know what the appropriate response is. I was uncertain as to whether or not i should document this event because some told me that it was irresponsible for me to attend an "elitist" event. But i chose to do so because good things did come of it and i wanted to record that. And i wanted to share the game that Jane and i did.

The problem with privilege is that much is gained from it. Ever since i went to college, i've seen the value of privilege. Politically, i've never believed in just tossing it away but trying to use it as an opportunity to engage with people about the core issue of privilege. This is why i did the session on networks and diversity - it let me address the topic without ranting; it let me educate and motivate people using their own self-interest as the key.

Unfortunately not everything is scalable and i don't know how what should be done. I am very stoked that there was a second camp - BAR camp. And i definitely think there's an interesting model in there. What would it mean for people to simultaneously organize lots of hyper diverse events? The trick would be to really mix people up - create a good balance of network cohesion and diversity. You don't want to simply scale one event - not only because of physical space but social structure space. FOO is already too large and i know that O'Reilly is really uncertain of how to deal with success on that front. And besides, more would actually dilute the interaction. I only got to meet a fraction of people that i wished to meet because there's a limit to the number of deep conversations possible in a short period of time. But the problem with multiple events is that people have to volunteer to organize them and engage people's trust. That's hard work.

Category: social software

Posted by zephoria at 8:48 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (1)

August 14, 2005

Wikipedia used for viral marketing

Check out this Boing Boing post on using wikipedia for viral marketing. Of particular interest is a quote from one of their readers:

I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or "leaks" embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).

::cough:: Clay! Comments???

Category: social software

Tags: wikipedia marketing

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August 6, 2005

finding fascinatin