UC-Berkeley will be hosting BlogOn: The Business of Social Media. An all-star cast of speakers are coming to talk about blogs, social networks, syndication and whatnot. Basically, it looks like a great gathering for those interested in social media.

Furthermore, they have discounts for bloggers and i’m very psyched to announce that they have scholarships for students and economically-disadvantaged bloggers. I wish more organized events recognized the importance of getting bright minds involved who don’t have the economic freedom to usually participate in these conversations.

I had an love affair with RSS. When we found each other, it was as if we were meant to be together forever. Our passion was strong and intense. But as our relationship settled, new truths emerged. Our critical tendencies got the best of both of us and we found the faults in each other and pushed them until they hurt. We found each other wrapped in a difficult, abusively addictive relationship. At the peak of our insanity, we were spending 6 hours a day together. It was not healthy and thus we decided to part ways.

In the separation, much was lost in the process of regaining self-control and stability. We had many friends in common; they are much harder to reach now. Just as in any breakup, there is a sense of losing one’s mind. I’ve lost touch with certain information flows, certain cultures. But i feel so much relief in finding that i am a person, to let down my addiction and to work on being whole again.

When we were together, i didn’t realize how one-sided my perspective on people was. Together, we only saw a limited segment of the world. After our separation, i have been able to return to my roots, to step back and find grounding.

I am certain that i will always long for the beauty of our relationship, but i will never miss the feelings of guilt for not engaging, the feelings of intensity overload the cruel pain of being a true information junkie.

[Note: just saw Doc’s post that RSS is opt-in authenticated email. I wonder if my RSS burnout has anything to do with my email burnout?]

Reflecting on Matt Webb’s post on designing social software, Ryan Shaw realized the significance of one of his lines: “Outside the context of [their creation], most of the weblog posts just don’t make any sense.” He argues that this is a pretty damning criticism of blogging as a serious alternative to journalism.

If i think of my own posts, very few are ever written to be used elsewhere. They are set of rambling commentaries based on what’s in my head and the only relevant context is me. The information that is useful to others is often the information that is part of an ongoing dialogue. Of course, it’s frustrating when you try to collect those thoughts. They require a massive rewrite to be truly valuable long-standing. What is it about this format that doesn’t permit us to collect our efforts into a coherent package? I mean, for centuries, professors turned lectures into books. Of course, they required editing too.

I don’t think of what i’m doing as journalism, but i do recognize the problems with persistence of information. As far as whether or not this is a damning critique…. i wonder if journalism is better off in a dialogue? I wonder if that means it’s a different kind of journalism? I mean, as much as i go back and read old newspapers, the information has a social/political context that’s really hard to get when you read back. So, even if the text makes sense, that doesn’t mean a lot isn’t lost. (Ah, Benjamin on translation….)

When you’re communing with like-minded souls, you feel like you’re accomplishing something…

Oh, love to the Clay. In deconstructing the role of social software in the Dean Campaign, Clay teases out something very important: talking amongst yourself is not action. The digital world magnifies homophily (birds of a feather stick together). You can find like-minded souls and never have to interact with anyone who is different than you are. You can feel like you’re doing something by preaching to the choir. This doesn’t make change.

Of course, this realization also makes me ::cringe:: I was moaning to a friend about how much i loathe trying to formalize my Friendster material, about how i’m soooo tired and cranky about thinking about this space. He was like, of course you are. You’ve justified blogging as writing and feel like you’ve been there, done that. But you haven’t. He’s right. The rigor of academic writing is a whole different ball of wax. My blog is simply rants, not analysis, predictions, theory. It might be sometimes useful to business people, but mostly, it’s fodder for the entertainment of folks i know. And it’s of no use to future designers.

As a few astute readers noted, i haven’t really been going into detail about “what does this mean” and “where is this going.” It’s true. I need to back away from that in the blogosphere right now, focus on formally getting this material out the door. Living in clear homophily is dangerous for me right now.

Chandrasutra is a writer interested in the issue of differentiating blogs. She has a great piece talking about the elements of blogging, collecting different discussions on the topic.

Here are some fascinating blog survey results.

(via Dina)

It’s dreadful how backlogged my INBOX is, but i’m trying to go through it a bit right now. In it, i found this link trying to differential bloggers from diarists. In it, online diarists are considered the drama club at a high school while bloggers are the yearbook staff (or perhaps they are the A/V staff).

Of course, this did *not* help me resolve my identity. Darn myself for way too many extra currics… who would’ve known that it would destroy my ability to properly label myself online?

I’ve been blogging in some form or another since 1997. Early renditions of my blog were explicitly personal and shut away via .htaccess files for my friends to read. This rendition has been explicitly public and thus the content has a very different tone. For the most part, i only publish that which i think would still be socially acceptable 20 years from now. I rarely publish my opinions or my thoughts beyond the highest meta data. There are many instances when information is presented in a way that those who know me know how to read between the lines and know what actually happened. But even that is rare.

I don’t even mention friends’ names, unless i’m discussing their professional work. One place where this bothers me is in my listing of links. The list of blogs i read is much longer than what is listed on the sidebar. That list is comprised of the blogs that i read which are really meant for the public at large, instead of just for friends. Although many of my friends’ LJs or diaries or blogs are very public, i just don’t feel right linking to them off of my site. It’s a weird negotiation of what’s appropriate.

Of course, what humors me the most is that those growing up blogging and journaling will take this all for granted and think it to be natural, rather than my panicked uncertainty of what’s appropriate. How strange.

One of my colleagues was trying to measure blogs (how many, how often, etc.) and i warned her that she had to first develop a concrete definition of a blog because i didn’t know of any. Apparently, last week, Jill Walker proposed a definition of a blog for Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Also, read Andrew O Baoill’s response. His response is particularly interesting because he argues that blogs always exist in a community context. Thus, blogs are not simply about the production of information, but the role of the reader.

How Are Communication Agents Different From Those Who Publish Blogs? is an interesting comparison essay by Robin Good