OK… i’m staring at my INBOX and once again being genuinely overwhelmed by how many messages i have yet to respond to. Many of them are because of this blog and because of folks related to the social networks space. I feel icky having not responded to people because i mean to, but i’m barely breathing myself.

So…. if i were to say that we all gather for a dinner, who would be game? I’m not proposing something formal here. I mean, hell, all of those social networks “forums” and “panels” were just overpriced social networking events anyhow, right? How about just making a large reservation and talking/eating/drinking?

I’m thinking maybe November 11th or 12th? Would this interest anyone?

Well, the Halloween party was last night and dear me oh my. We got wind of another party being cancelled while we were setting up and we kinda held our breath. But sure enough, we got *slammed*. The place was completely full by around 10:30/11. By midnight, we had to take time off from letting people inside. That meant that there were people on the street clamoring to get in. This was not good considering the cops see crowds and break up parties. The folks at the door tried to get the crowd to disperse, but it couldn’t be kept up and the crowd kept growing. It took a bunch of strong folks physical effort to keep people at bay. Folks were on top of cars, screaming, raging drunk. Inside was another level of drunken chaos. I was trying to keep the entrance way at bay. Needless to say, we got broken up. By like 1:30ish. But honestly, i have to say phew. It was just absolute madness all night; over 900 people went in and out of that door (obviously not at once). The decorations were great, the music was great, the haunted house was awesome. But that was just a bit too much. And i forgot how much i can’t stand overly drunk frat boys; too many of them yelled at me because we wouldn’t let them in without a costume.

After it was all over, we cleaned up (way too many beer bottles) and actually got to chill out. It was so nice though because the whole community was there and so it was such a good way to spend time with friends – chaos over, friends left, yum…

Oh, and a couple of meta thoughts on the night…

1. No one takes your meanness seriously when you’re dressed like a half-naked fuzzy bunny.

2. How many times must i learn the hard way that easy access to scissors and hair dye is dangerous, especially when i decide to get creative with only a few hours left before the party? They say that the average person can learn any bit of knowledge after 8 times of repetition. Apparently, i’m very deficient at this type of knowledge acquisition.

John Perry Barlow has a few words on Burning Man and The State of the Counterculture 2004. If you identify with either BM or subcultures, you *must* read this. As with most of Barlow’s writings, this is hands-down brilliant and can be summed up with:

“If someone like Karl Rove had wanted to neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and passionate members of his opposition, he’d have a hard time coming up with a better tool than Burning Man.”

From the CACM Newstrack:

A recent study of 300 firms in the U.S. and Britain- the world’s two largest instant messaging markets- found that foul language, gossiping, and office gripes are commonplace in IM missives; in fact, rarely are they used for actual business-related functions. Over 65% the office workers surveyed used IM for personal reasons during work hours; nearly 80% admitted to gossiping about coworkers; and 64% slammed or schemed against management. Almost one-third of the respondents admitted to making “sexual advances” over IM in the workplace. “While (IM) has proven itself as a productive business tool, our research validates that its free-flowing and unmonitored nature is creating enormous legal liabilities, and compliance and productivity issues for organizations worldwide,” said Steve Mullaney, of Blue Coat Systems, a California-based secure proxy appliance vendor who conducted the survey. The findings also showed U.K. respondents are more blatant in their IM usage than their tamer U.S. counterparts, primarily because 71% of the U.S. workers believed (correctly) that their IMs could be traced.

Aren’t all communication channels far and away more frequently used for gossip (i.e. network structure maintenance)? I mean, this seems to represent F2F too, thus should it be surprising that it’s occurring on IM too? Of course, i doubt that they’ll kill F2F in the workplace, while they may kill IM.

The Media Lab just put together a new consortium called Viral Communications. When i first heard the title, i became super psyched – someone is finally studying digital virality heads on! But alas, it seems that the focus is to create technology that permits virality rather than actually trying to figure out what makes things viral online. Is anyone other than Jonah Peretti studying meme spread and virality?

Tonight, when you see all of those people dressed up as cute furry animals out at the Castro or romping around town, you may think that they are all innocent, or trying to make the kids happy. But little do you know about the fun they have behind the costume. So, are you wearing fur tonite?

A while back, i was grumbling about the not-so-social focus of information retrieval and a rocking woman wrote to tell me about social informatics (with lots of resources). I must look into this further…. [Oh, and one of my classes just switched focuses for the remainder of the semester to be concerned with social technology… i am a very happy camper.]

Hot or Not folks just launched a neat little YASNS site: Yafro. My favorite is that they have this bit at the bottom called “Friend Trends” that lets you see all of the new F-o-Fs, testimonials, etc.

OOhh. It’s Not What You Know is the first site to integrate a visualization tool into your network. When you login, click on “Network” and you can see your version. Mine:

In questioning if i was a blogger, i started wondering about conceptions of audience in blogging.

Somewhere i once read that there are two types of bloggers. The first produces material in a journalist-esque fashion. They see their audience as public and are always a bit surprised when those close to them read their stuff. The second produces material in a journal fashion. They see their audience as private and are always a bit startled when the world reads them.

I’m definitely in both camps, or neither. My audience is primarily me. Even my best friend doesn’t read my blog. In fact, most of the people that i truly think of as only friends (and not also colleagues) never read my blog. I’m always absolutely surprised to go to a party and be told about my blog. I’m also surprised to hear from strangers about my blog.

What is an audience? So, while i say that my audience is me, that’s not really true. Most of the tone of this blog is veiled. It’s pretty non-controversial. It’s fairly boring. I don’t write about my adventures, my sinful engagements or my emotional trials. Sure, folks make guesses about me as a person based on my content, but that’s often misleading. For example, the reasons that i pay attention to drug and sex and teenager culture have quite rich explanations, but it’s easy to make assumptions. I allow that slippage though because i don’t want to appear so wholesome. Thus, the i know that the constructed identity is biased and i often encourage that bias

Audience is *so* essential. There is no way to present information without understanding who is reading it, what their biases/experiences are, and how you are being read. We write in a void, unlcear of how people are reading us. We write to the ether, yet i take for granted so many assumptions about my audience. I assume that i’m speaking to educated, conscientious people with like minds… i assume i’m preaching to the choir (but all readers of misbehaving will know that i’m learning this lesson the hard way).

In order to blog, we need to either define our audiences on our site (locally controlled context creation), be totally low self-monitors, or be really consciously uncontroversial. Usually, i tend towards the latter. I’m a complete high self-monitor and security through obscurity isn’t working… somehow, i stopped being obscure.

I worry about this aspect of blogging. Will bloggers just be the low self-monitors and those of us who don’t put our vulnerabilities forward? What’s the impact of putting your vulnerabilities forward. Have others gotten hurt?

Hmm…