I really like this little infographic on “How News Travels on the Internet” (even if infographics make me think USA Today which is *not* a good connection). This is definitely one sphere of blogs. Of course, i immediately thought about creating my own infographic (except that i despise infographics) on “How Gossip Travels on the Internet.”

The thing is, things twist all around when you do that. The “Dark Matter” becomes the SOURCE, personality tests become the “Dark Matter” and “Offline Media” become the “Traditional Big Media.” Plus, instead of having greater/lesser blogosphere based on visits/day, you have hipsters/dorks based on internal perceived fashion (note: everyone thinks that *they* are the hipsters and that everyone else are the dorks so these graphs are inevitably individual-centric). What’s important though is not getting to some “MetaNews” but affecting Friendster Profiles and getting loads and loads of support in the comments. That way, everyone knows that you’re gossip is way more valuable than anyone else’s. And then, of course, there’s Gawker.

Also, Chandrasutra pointed me to this fun Village Voice piece called Blogging Off. It’s all about the social disasters due to blogs. (For example, how much have you given up daily chatter with people cause you know what their doing cause of their blog?)

My favorite line: “There were four or five of the blog-free in attendance (all of whom admitted to being on Friendster, however, which is basically just a gateway drug [to blogging]).” Hmmm…..

I had a analogy moment today. I’ve been talking to more people who don’t identify as bloggers but who self-proclaimed bloggers label as bloggers because the activities are seen as the same. I’ve heard this rhetoric before. From dykes and lesbians.

A lot of dykes engage in activities that lesbians would recognize. Lesbians call dykes lesbians and dykes rebel against that label. Lesbians roll their eyes at the dykes, failing to understand what difference the dykes feel.

The difference is that identity labels are not simply based on activity. Identity labels are a way of self-identifying with a culture, a set of practices, and a set of values. Even when dykes and lesbians engage in the same practices, the dykes don’t see themselves as part of lesbian culture or embodying lesbian values. Part of this has to do with gender identity; part of this has to do with politics. And of course, the boundaries are not so cleanly rigid. Some people identify as both dykes and lesbians, depending on what fits at that moment for them. But there are also quite a few on extreme ends (see Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival).

One assumption about dykes and lesbians is that they just sleep with women. What about tranny boys/bois? Or what about the various self-identified dykes who have sex with bio boys… but whose only sex practice is anal sex where the girl penetrates the boy with a strap-on? It’s not exactly “straight” as most people would recognize…

So, how does this translate to blogging/journaling?

We have a tendency to label people based on their activities. Yet, identity is self-prescribed. Outsiders can certainly label people based on behavior, but to engulf them into their identity simply because of shared practice is dangerous for all. It means that the two groups who might otherwise share a commonality have a repulsion because one feels oppressed or devalued because the other has tried to enforce a foreign label onto them.

What are the implications for bloggers/blog tool creators to see people who identify as journalers and try to enforce that label on them? How does this affect tool design, community understanding and cultural development? Although i’m only just beginning my interviews, i’m already fascinated by the subtle differences in what people identify as valuable. Both groups talk about community, but the kinds of support and the relationship between the community and the text seems to be different. More motivation for interesting work.

PS: If you’re going to be at SXSW and would love to do an interview and you identify in this spectrum, let me know!

Ben Chun asked me an interesting question about graphical smilies last night and i thought that someone out there might know.

IM clients, freemail clients and BB software very commonly uses smilies. They turn textual smilies into absurd graphical ones, sometimes even animated ones. Yet, each client renders its own version of the smiley. Thus, even if you are using AIM, the type of smiley you will get will depend if you’re using the AIM client, iChat, Fire, etc. and whether or not you turned on conversion in the first place. How much do the differing renders affect how people read what is being said?

Of course, all i could do was ask more questions. He’s asking how the technical artifact affects the impression given. I’m curious how the way smilies are read differently because of cultural and individual context. For example, i was suprised to get an email from a woman i met in Mexico *filled* with smilies. They were jumping off the page. What communities use smilies regularly and why?

How much of the smiley representations are functionally textual and how much are they adornments, kinda like the tchotchkes that people add to their phones? Are they used to express emotion, to reframe the actual text?

We’re curious if there is any research on this (or if anyone has any insight).