Library clips

In a previous post I shared my thoughts on how the free form systems allow value to emerge that doesn’t happen in specifically task designed systems.
Systems that are formed or designed for a function are great in achieving a process, these are refered to ERP systems, or as Ross Dawson calls them “Easily Repeatable Process”. But sometimes they are too rigid and don’t allow for exceptions or workarounds, so you end up with people having word document notes, that aren’t shared properly…BTW a wiki is the perfect communal workaround (heuristics, rule of thumb) tool.

But besides this Ross Dawson mentions that the competitive edge is not in these ERP systems, as any company can use these, the edge is free form unstructured tools that let content emerge, patterns manifest and reveal themselves, analysing these patterns tells you a lot about what’s going on.
So it’s not just about getting things done, having a freeform space also teases out all this valuable stuff that may happen to have more applications than just the task at hand, this is know-how that can be re-used and built upon. This stuff may not have an immediate need but it’s shared anyway, someone may react creating new insight.
Networks not only let you publish and communally share notes and opinions, but they enable you to connect with people and discover, and this is where the effectiveness and value exists. It’s all about creating an environment for stuff to propagate and flourish, I personally think this is very organic and more like an ecosystem.

Jay Cross mentioned this in a blog post a while ago about formalising informal networks. From his post:

“Those of us who nurture purposeful social networks are like the landscape designers at new college campuses who don’t build walkways immediately. Rather, they see where students choose to walk and pave those pathways. You end up with pathways where people want to walk. McKinsey is more like the architect who begins by uprooting the trees on a building site because “it’s easier to design on a blank piece of paper.”

Another aspect besides the emerging path (macro), is the content that makes it up (micro).

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the task based perspective of sharing information was not appropriate in a few ways…people don’t like to be told, how is it related to their explicit job, what’s in it for me, how do I locate it, etc…

Also to blame were the tools, nowadays it’s so easy to publish a blog post:

- very simple freeform text box, and hit submit
- blog posts don’t have to be polished, the blog post format is synonymous with spontaneous, rough edged publishing
(mostly because the next day another post will clarify or supersede, or you are reacting to news and want to throw up something quickly, same goes to responding to discussion…and just the fact that personal thoughts and opinion can be published like casual conversation).

Now compare this with a Document Management System (DMS):
- write a word document, which is synonymous as a formal format
- because of this you may leave out personal know-how, or experience-type information as you feel you shouldn’t waffle in a presentable word document (this is a pity as this waffling is where the tacit knowledge is).
- then you have to upload the document and fill out some meta-data
- who will now know that document is there…no-one…so then what’s the use
- it’s static, how can the document grow with discussion and lead to new insight

Blog posts are not narrow, they don’t just contain the final answer, this format is conducive to your workings out, how you got there, the scenario, all these idiosyncrasies and peripheral things, whereas a document in a DMS is more narrow and formal (issue-solution).

As you work on a deliverable you make blog about your insights and thoughts along the way. Someone you don’t know in another office may read this and contribute some of their insight. This opportunity to leverage the social capital has made your work: easy, better, saved you time, save you money, lead to another decision, think about other tasks you may need to do, point you to a contact or someone’s else’s work, etc…
Either way, since you are sharing stuff along the way (putting yourself out there), your end product becomes better for it as you are tapping into the wisdom or crowds.

One day if you are having an issue with something, you may use some of the know-how contained in a past blog post to apply to your situation, even though this blog post is about something else, it may have some general info, clues or leads that you can apply to this new issue.
If this were a document it may be more formal, more narrow and focused, not containing any know-how that could be applied to other issues.

Blogs have a sense of place, a face, a subscription mechanism, interaction…all this coupled with its simplicity makes it more worthwhile to blog, in turn others blog, and you connect and tune into knowledge flows.

The more personal publishing, and reacting to each other, the more it becomes a thriving market…it’s not just about sharing anymore, it’s creating value, it’s educating and learning off each other. It’s self assembling, self organising, and self rewarding (people that read and react to your content makes you feel valuable…inturn rewarding).

The renewed motivation for what I just mentioned above comes from an excerpt in a post form e-gineer:

“The time taken to correctly phrase thoughts and distil ideas is unavoidable, but can be minimised by changing our expectation of shared content away from “finished product” towards “work in progress”. Publishing information early and often (rather than infrequently and completely) moves authorship away from essays and succinct conclusions towards sharing of insights and decisions. The ultimate method for sharing without increasing work is to move the work in progress into an open environment (share everything by default).”

Jordan Frank has the macro view on why the control and structured approach doesn’t scale, he riffs on Andrew McAfee, David Weinberger, and displays this quote from Bill Ives:

“The irony of enterprise 2.0 is that you actually get more control because the free form nature of the tools allow the business people to decide on where structure occurs, not the people who make the software.”

More from Jordan:

“Enterprise 1.0″ approaches sought to consolidate and centralize information onto singular ECM or DM systems with one search box and what became lots of “need to know” (vs. “can know”) silos (in the form of specifically permissioned files or collaborative workspaces) within the big centralized system.”

He points to Sandy Kemsley’s post on David Weinberger’s keynote speech at FF08:

“He looked at how many projects, typically physical projects, require a much greater degree of control as they increase in size, but contrasts that with the web, which has growth only because of the lack of control. Control doesn’t scale.”

More from Sandy’s review:

“All contents are also connections: everything leads to everything else, creating a wonderfully messy mass of interconnected data. The web, of course, excels at creating connections because of the basic premise of linking: we create hypertext links on pages to make connections that are important to us. The user revolution, therefore, is not just about us creating our own content; we also control the links, hence control the connections between content and the organization of that content. Digg, Twitter, your RSS feeds and other socially-created sites create our new “front page”, replacing the newspaper of old: why would you read someone else’s idea of what’s important, rather than self-select what you’re interested in reading?”

I’ve posted before on what I think the differences are between social networks and communities of practice (CoP) in regards to the blogosphere, and groupings (slicing network data by a field).

My post, km 2.0 enablers: blogs, wikis, and social networks gets into how networks are more versatile than CoPs, as well as the proliferation of informal networks.

Does this mean the CoPs and groups will soon lose traction to social networks?

Read this engaging comment from a post on the Dave Snowden’s blog:

“…with the advent of ‘web 2.0′ tools some people (eg Dave Snowden, Nancy White) are positing that perhaps people don’t need to engage in CoPs anymore to fulfill their knowledge needs - they can mash-up applications and have ‘knowledge nuggets’ delivered to their virtual doorstep without ever venturing out. I can’t remember where I read this but someone claimed that the more connected a person is, the less he/she is likely to engage in CoPs, in this new scenario.”

I agree that the new individual centric networked web has wooed people from communities and forums, as people like the freedom of their own soapbox, there are no restrictions or rules and you simply connect to the rest of the blogosphere.
Instead of a community hub page of resources and discussions, we have the individual enaging in a network, collecting their own links, publishing their own thoughts and having discussions in comments and trackbacks.

So we have a distributed way of connecting, instead of hanging out in one place…people create their own web or network.
This is exactly what has happened on the web, rather than searching the web for a page with lots of links, we instead just connect with others to find what we need.
If I’m after some KM info I just search my KM folder in my Reading List, or ask a KM expert in my social network (Facebook, Pownce)…I wish the blogosphere was my proper social network.
This enables informal networks to occur over a more formal community, it’s not as much about a destination as it is a flow of information that comes to you, plus there is the discovery factor.

Another thing is that being part of a network exposes you do a lot of different content, whereas a CoP is restricted to a topic…CoPs would do better in a network of communities.

The obvious feature of individual centric personal networks is that you always have a place to dump your tacit knowledge (blog), and this gets shared with others by default. Previously you would need to find a CoP to publish into, and if there wasn’t a topic, then the information continued to just reside in the person’s head.

Plus you can subscribe to information or people and bookmark or save all the stuff that comes your way, creating your own collection of information rather than a communal collection.
But wait, it’s a lot more dynamic than that, it’s kind of communal in a different way, your act of collecting may be the latest news to someone else. If you bookmark into a network you get to see others who have bookmarked the same page, used the same tags…never ending people and content discovery.

Sense of Purpose

I tend to agree that lots of community type content is dissolving into social networks, but not all.

This may be so for personal interest, but what if you have a group of members to discuss stuff that’s dedicated to a group purpose or goal, and one place to keep all this content. And if the group dissolves after achieving its objective, we need a place for this object to live, just like a book in a library.

My wife networks in Facebook, and came across a group about a famous share house she once lived in England. That group page has thriving discussions, photo’s, posted items, it’s amazing…everyone is sharing stuff into this one pool.

Some people used the Groups “Posted Items” feature to post a link to one of their photo albums that lives in their Facebook profile.
Some of the discussions topics are about finding people, reunions, etc…

You really need a group space for this type of purpose, this just wouldn’t work as a network, to fulfil these knowledge needs you need a communal place, a place to hang out.

The irony is that these people found each other via the social network.

Social tools like Ning are still communities, as they are based around a topic and have forums to discuss.
But within this community are network features where you can blog, add and message friends. All this means is we have our own identity, and knowledge flow, just like a network, but all the content is based around a topic…so it’s a network within a topic community.

What would be good is if all Ning communities were federated, meaning with your identity you could roam around and join several communities, and create a general friend list, etc…
This is possible with CollectiveX, this is a whole lot of federated communities (each community does not have blog nor networking features)…I guess Google Groups are similar.
Clearspace is similar again, but this time you only have one blog, where you can choose which community you would like the post to appear in, as well as appearing in your profile.

Ning communities are set up to scale for the individual; as a topic starts getting loaded with massive amounts of content, you have the benefit of adding/subscribing to just the blogs or content that interests you…you use the network features to make sense or filter what important to you from this community.

Considering all the benefits we get out of social networking (information comes to you), there is still a need for CoPs and groups sites.

I guess the defining factor is a place to engage in a group purpose and list the members who are going to achieve this goal, it’s more about the group than the individual. Most of the time it’s a website with a forum, ie. a place to store and make visible your materials, and to also discuss.

Communities are usually set up to achieve something, not just personal growth.

There was a case in my city of an independent pub (where lots of bands started) being taken over by mainstream interests, in a case like this a group is set up. Interested parties become members, you have a place to list documents and research, photo’s, a forum to discuss, a news blog to announce the latest, and perhaps even personal blogs.
This group has a purpose and it needs a destination (identity), when something like this happens a Facebook group is created, it can’t work in a distributed way, how do people know it exists.

For example how would the Data Portability group on Google Groups ever work in a social network or the distributed blogosphere…it would go nowhere. Instead as a group it has a place where people can visit, it has members (each with a role) come together to discuss and write documents, it has an agenda, you can announce events…people coming together in one place to achieve a group goal.
Google Groups was the solution, but others such as CollectiveX, Ning, Clearspace, Grou.ps, Groops are just as good, if not better.

Groups have members each with a role, whereas a social network is just you and the rest. You are a member of a group in order to help achieve a goal. Whereas the goal of social networks is to tune into relevant information, publish, discover, and connect all for your own needs, and no-one elses.

If the community goal is to gather information on a topic (like a communal clearinghouse), and that’s all, then I can see social networks or the blogosphere encroaching into this territory. Less people tend to join a plethora of communities when they can just join one social network and their distributed blog network to be in the know. But as mentioned a CoP is good to be able to distill all this information in a library (which could be a wiki) or a regular document library.
Even still some social networks have group features as a way to organise content into one channel, the content is not there because people happened to use the same tag, it’s been put there on purpose, as a member-based group or channel. This is relying on human curation to make the group content precise or exact, plus you may have discussions on this group page.

If the community has members with designated roles, and they are trying to achieve an objective, then a place to gather and distribute all this information is needed in a group environment. These specific reasons are why CoP’s or communities will always be needed, and will not totally be wiped out by social networks.

An example is the Ignite Realtime use of the Clearspace group service.
How else would you achieve a way for people to ask questions and support without a group page?

On the other hand networks are powerful

The publish/subscribe model in the blogosphere or social networks is where we read and interact with our social filter. Why do I have to be a member of various group pages when I can tune into this information elsewhere from the one spot. Groups are limited to people who know about them, whereas there’s so much more you can tap into in the blogosphere or a social network, and you can satisfy varied interests from the one spot.

I publish and subscribe to blogs (this is a type of network) this social filter satisfies my topical hunger, as well as the comments discussion. I bookmark great posts in my social bookmarks (where I can also discover posts).

All without needing to join various groups I am getting what I want, I’m engaging, publishing, sharing, discussing, and collecting…in the end I have an archive of what I have done.

There is the consideration that some people may not take part in the blogosphere or networks, they may just like to join groups, as this is less messy and simple approach, without having to ground your feed and propogate into a new world of networks.

Why would you join a group, if you can get all this information from the network anyway?

Why not just set a tag as a watchlist, as a way to accumulate topic based photo’s, you can also discover people this way and subscribe to their profiles, you can write on their blog posts, favourite to your photo collection,etc..?

In this network approach you are getting all the topic interest you want and are also discussing with author’s as well as discovering new people and content, and saving content.
You have just formed a network, there are no members yet you are still getting what you need from each other…this is exactly how the blogosphere works, only in the open web, not within one service.

But, what if…

What’s good about a group page is a visitor or new comer can land right into a topic, find people and content straight off the bat, it’s a very easy starting point, it’s all done for you, whereas with a network you have to grow it.

What if the network is so big that it would take a long long time to discover the right people and content, a group is a way to communally make a friend list and content archive, it’s a way to attract all the right people and content into the one pool.

What if the CEO asks can I see stuff our social capital has gathered on “sustainability”.

In a network there is no one-stop shop, there is no member based group where people are collecting and sharing information and having discussions.

He might ask, then how do I use this thing to find something out?

You basically have to take part to get the benefits, a network is not a topic hub webpage, it’s more scattered…slowly you add friends (blogs), and the content you are after comes to you, it’s like magic, only you create it by simply taking part.

It’s a very informal type of way to tap into a share information, it works perfectly, people get what they want, they can now make sense of the enterprise by connecting with people, instead of directly with content, they can now get things done.

But what if I want to know about “sustainability” without having to find these blogs and friends, I don’t want them as my social filter, I just want to drop in every now and again.

This brings me to aggregation…

Place vs Aggregation

Even though networks enable us to be connected to all sorts of information, authors, topics, interactions from the one great pool that you tune in and pull to yourself, what about distilling your information or collective information into a topic page, or a clearinghouse. Since social networks are of a distributed nature there is no actual place, whereas a CoP or group is a go-to place for topic information.

The other thing is you can only have conversations by trackbacks and inlinks, the good thing is the whole network can take part, whereas groups may also have blogs (to a closed set of people or perhaps not as much exposure), but they also have forums which are slightly different than blogs.

Not having a destination makes it hard for newbies to get started or to reveal where the topic information is located. Where do visitors go to see information on a topic? Do they need to engage in the network just to reveal what’s underneath?

But all is not lost…I mentioned groupings earlier which is slicing a field of data in a social network.
If the CEO wanted to drop in to see what the latest was on a topic called “sustainability”, we could search the network and it would ideally create a topic page on-the-fly. The results would show content by:

- blog source tags
- blog post tags
- bookmark tags
- expert people tags
- document tags
- photo tags
- podcast tags
- wiki tags
- video tags
- Q&A tags
- etc…

NOTE: blog posts that link or trackback to each other within a topic could be shown as an assembled thread.

This way we have created a search based conceptual topic page, where we can find content, and then interact with the content by leaving comments, trackbacks or messaging an author…all this without a group and members existing.

The topic tag cloud would seem to resemble lots of communities, but really it’s just aggregation.
In the social network we are seeing patterns that emerge, whereas a community group is defined from the start…in fact the power of social aggregation enables like people to discover each other, which in turn may decided to create a formal community.

The essence of tag aggregation is the emergence of patterns, looking at a tag cloud can tell you what people are actually talking (what matters to them, their views and experiences in the world or enterprise), and what they are most/least talking about. This is really tuning into the collective tacit knowledge and being able to deal with what “really” matters.

Is aggregation enough?

I really like this idea of networks where individual participation in the pub/sub model gives great personal gains, but when you aggregate this there is even more personal gain in discovery. It is also a public gain as anyone can visit a tag topic page and see what the bee hive has achieved without even knowing they are doing it.

Let’s visit a topic tag page like “sustainability”:

I see blogs about “sustainability” as the authors have tagged there blogs with this term
- a self made blog directory, you would see the latest post from these blogs
- problem is that these author’s may write posts about other stuff as well, so some content may be off topic (spam)

I see blogs posts tagged with “sustainability”
- your blog may or may not be about this topic, but some of your posts may be, so you tag these posts with that term

Same goes with photo’s video’s, etc…

But is this enough?

What about stuff that’s about “sustainability”, but has not be tagged that way?

What about blogs or posts or photo’s tagged “climate change”, etc…?

Maybe this tag topic page could have related tags, and showcase a little of this stuff?

Formalised aggregation

You could make this on-the-fly aggregation topic pages or destination pages more formal:

- you could add a forum and events
- you could have a gardener weeding out posts, and planting in posts missed by the aggregation
- you could have some related tags as a more more serious component

This ends up being a more serious topic page, as it has an owner or a curator, it’s also a place to gather and discuss on the forums…but it does not have members like a traditional community.

What if you want a group page called “Great Australian atheletes of the 90’s.”

Tag topic aggregation isn’t going to be able to do this, the title is too sophisticated for tags.
- you could make a page to aggregate multiple tags eg. athlete, sport, 1990, Australia

But what about those photo’s and blog posts that would fit here but haven’t been tagged with these tags, and what if this page collects the tag “sport” but it’s not about Australia, or it’s not in the 1990’s, etc…

Aggregation has limitations!

Whereas official groups explicitly choose to place stuff in a designated place, so the content is always on topic and precise.

Integrated networks and groups

Another approach is when you get the beauty of being in a network but you can also be part of a groups as well (Facebook doesn’t integrate these very well, they are almost like separate products).

That is, you have a profile page with your blog posts, photo’s, etc…and you are also a member of groups.

When you make a blog post or add a photo about “sustainability” this appears in your profile, but you can also choose to send it to the “sustainability” group…this is the best of both worlds.

Only thing is people that don’t know about the group may have potentially good content the group is missing out on, this is the innate drawback of more open groups, but if they are integrated with networks there is more chance for discovery of your group from people buzzing around the network.

These groups don’t really have an agenda or goal, it’s just about coming together to group like photo’s, blog posts and discuss in a forum.

The perfect example of this is the art network RedBubble, similar networks that let you post content from your profile to your group are Groops, Tumblr, Clearspace, etc…

Check out the Redbubble group Australian Landmarks and Icons, it has members, and the content these members have chosen to share from their profile page.

It would be good to not have to be a member, and just be able to send your content oa any group as well, but then it may get a bit wayward, and there is no-one to clean it up.

Auto tagging

Auto-tagging is similar to tag aggregation, lots of people even have this on their blogs eg. ZoomClouds, Jiglu…also in News Readers eg. WizAg, MyFeedz…also see TagCrowdMake cloud, tagurself, etc..

A more professional tools is Calais from Reuters, this will auto-tag content into facet pages.

More tools

Wiki’s are starting to become more robust communities with the introduction of forums in Wetpaint and conferencing in PB wiki…either private or public these wiki’s can/are be member based.

Pownce is not quite a community, it’s still a individual centric network, so it would not be used as a CoP, but it’s great as an informal network.
I can publish: text, links, files, events, and the recipients can be: public, my friends, a set of friends, or an individual.
I think Pownce would thrive in the enterprise, this really relates to my informal network post.

Also see Plaxo Pulse which is kind of similar to Pownce (it also has status updates and profile aggregation).

Tangler is similar to Google Groups, only in a network environment, you become a member to a discussion forum, which is both chat and a regular forum…you can also have rich features like video embeds.
But it’s not only about topic discussion groups, since it’s a network you can also add friends and chat with them.
You can also embed a Tangler forum on any website. This is great as you don’t have to visit the group to participate, you could interact via another website where the forum is embedded, even better would be to do this from your startpage like Facebook.
Another way to look at it is that you could turn your website into a simple CoP by enabling a forum widget.

Zimbio is promoted as wiki magazines, where each magazine is a member-based community or group on a topic, here is the Barack Obama wikizine…also see Fanpop (check out The Office fan page), and Hubpages to a lesser extent.

Summary

I won’t go through the pros and cons again but I will say there are many different ways to make topic pages, from a formal member group to a by product of aggregation due to individuals participating in a network.

5 methods:

- Formal group
- Tag aggregation
- Formal aggregation
- Integrated networks and groups
- Auto tag

There are different reasons on choosing an approach, they are not quite alternatives or substitutes for each other. If you want a group or practice (achieve something together) that has an agenda, role structure, goal, directive then a formal group like a CoP is the tool of choice. If you want to see what is really going on in your enterprise, try a network approach, tag aggregation clouds speak volumes.

In the end I think Integrated networks and groups are the most well rounded solution where you can achieve a lot more. You get the beauty of networking from your individual perspective and also be able to have an organised member based group that has a a group goal (in contrast to self oriented), and they integrate where you can post content from your network profile to a group.

For a definite comparison on the workings of Communities and Social Networks, check out a post by Ed Mitchell.

Related:
Aggregative or emergent identity? Rethinking Communities
BHP Billiton axes its Knowledge Networks

TweetSpeak - listen to tweets (mac only), an alternative is to use an RSS to audio service like Talkr, feed2podcast, Botcast, odiogo, xFruits, etc…

Twitter Packs - a directory of Twitter users by topic, location, company…try autopacks to follow a bunch of people in one go.

Twittershare - a desktop widget where you drag a file (max 10 megs), type your tweet (direct, reply, or regular) and send…look out Pownce
Also see Tweetafile. [via RRW]

Tweet What You Eat - a food diet diary that asks “what did you eat today”.
Follow the user twye, when you want to document something you eat send a direct message and this gets stored in your diary at the TWYE site.
eg.
d twye yogurt cup
d twye Diet Coke:40 (a number after the colon refers to calories)
d twye 2 beers, cheese burger, fries (comma’s separate enable to enter multiple items)

Here’s my diary - you get search, a feed, stats, etc…

Twixtr - this is a photo blog, but it’s also similar to Twitter as you have followers and following. You can view a public and a local timeline, and a friendmap. A new update is simple, just enter some text, a location, and a photo. You also can get it to automatically post to Twitter and Facebook. For other simple photo blogs check out Tumblr, NowThen, Utterz and more. Now if I could post by email or mobile web, I’d be happy. Come to think of it Twixtr is very very similar to Tumblr.
[via TC]

This got me thinking, I’d like to see a blog option for a lot of the bookmarking type services eg. YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc… These services enable you to collect stuff, when bookmarking for example an item to Flickr why not have the option to send it to your Flickr blog.

Just say your business unit uses a CoP for all it’s documents, and discussions (blogs, forums, Q&A).

NOTE: Community software doesn’t have to be used by a naturally occuring community (a space for people with like interests), there’s no reason why a business unit (BU) can’t use a CoP. It would be the exact same tool, but you may change the name to Business of Practice.
Some BU’s use a bunch of folders in the Document Management System (DMS), there’s nothing wrong with adding social tools to this environment.

Anyway, a few posts ago I briefly alluded to the question…

Are Communities of Practice (CoPs) good for on-the-fly discussions with non-Members?|

A quick scenario…

You are on a conference call with a few people from various business units, the topic or purpose is something to do with your business unit.

Usually, if this conference call was just with your business unit, you could later on pursue the conversation as a forum topic. CoPs (blogs, forums, etc…) are great as an asynchronous way to update and discuss with each other about what’s happening.
In fact the last team call I was on I found that everything that was said could of been discussed in a forum, or announced in a blog. I’m not saying you don’t need conference calls, but I am saying that in-between conference calls, we can still be announcing, sharing, discussing stuff.

NOTE: if you want to keep the conversation going in a synchronus way, everyone can go back to their desks, and have an IM conversation open. This IM conversation can also be archived or moreso stay intact so it could be resumed the next day or more.
Not sure if some CoP services have inbuilt IM, but it would be a good idea to copy that chat in a document and stick it in the CoP, or at least be able to link to the chat archive.

Anyway, back to my question…what about non-members of your CoP…

Since the conference call with other business units was about happenings in your BU, the minutes would be kept in your CoP. The participants from the other BU’s have read access to your CoP, but not write access.
If you want to continue the conversation once the conference call has ended, it can’t really be done in a CoP forum, as these people from other BU’s would have to become members…and it’s not right having to become a member for just that reason, these guys may not want to be members at all.

But your BU would want this conversation to be archived in your CoP, next to the minutes, so what then…

The alternative is to use some sort of external forum or email collaboration like 9cays, and then be able to put a link to this external conversation in your CoP.
Even though the content is not in your CoP, at least you can link to it.

What do others do to collaborate with non-members?

Do some CoP services allow for this type of situation?

I see an all-in-one social network like Facebook as an RSS Reader plus a whole lot more , adding friends is like adding subscriptions to your RSS Reader.

These social networks also have publishing, whenever your friend writes a note, posts an item, it will appear in your newsfeed (similar to an RSS Reader). Infact whenever they do anything (eg. updates status, add a photo) it appears in your newsfeed.
So when you subscribe to a friend you are subscribing to their lifestream (in saying, lifestream, I mean all the stuff they collect and publish within Facebook).

RSS Readers are more about reading, not publishing, but you can still achieve the same thing…instead of just subscribing to someone’s blog, you subscribe to their lifestream (if they have a lifestream RSS feed promoted on their blog).

Plaxo Pulse is similar to Facebook, but equally about the lifestreaming stuff that happens outside of Plaxo Pulse. It will stream all the outside stuff you do, and also all the inhouse stuff you do like; status, messages (notes), links, video, etc…

But wait social network newsfeeds have more…

So far I call this the friendstream portion of the newsfeed, but what your friends (subscriptions) publish and collect isn’t the only stuff that appears in the Facebook newsfeed (and to an extent the Plaxo Pulse newsfeed).
It also documents stuff your friends do to others, eg. Abby and Michelle are now friends, Shay commented on Neil’s post, Neil tagged Abby in a photo, etc…
In my post Centralising distributed social networks I call this “on to others” stream.
Then there’s stuff others do to you, called the “on to me” stream.

You can’t get this activity type stuff in an RSS Reader like Google Reader as it’s not a social network.

Newsfeeds could be RSS Readers

A social network newsfeed or a lifestream like friendfeed, ziki and others are not exactly an RSS Reader, they are more just a river of news stream, but if you could have your friends listed in a subscription pane and mark/unmark read items, then you have more of an RSS Reader on your hands.

NOTE: this is not to be confused with Spokeo which is an RSS Reader that specialises in the fetch/subscribe process. It finds your friends profiles and allows you to quite easily create a RSS Reader friendstream without having to be in a social network.

NOTE: Micro-blogging like Twitter is a social network, and the Twitter stream is like an RSS Reader river of news, only it doesn’t have typical reading functionality eg. subscription panel, mark read, etc…

Whether it’s an RSS Reader or a social network lifestream or a social network newsfeed, we can be in touch with what’s going on in the world via our social filter.
The added advantage of a social network is that we can direct content to sets of friends or individuals, and this doesn’t have to be published content, this can be “hey take a look at this link”. Since we are adding friends rather than subscriptions, we can send private or public messages to our friends.
The only interaction with an RSS Reader is to be able to leave a comment on a blog post, but in a social network we can do this and more, we interact directly with the author.

RSS Readers let you track blog content published to the masses, whereas a social network can also be this, but the masses are your friends, and you can also direct stuff to select friends.

I guess RSS Readers are uni-directional and social networks are bi-directional…and content can be just for a selection of people.

The point of this post is that social networks have more intimate benefits and could incorporate RSS Reader functionality.

And, in contrast, similar RSS Readers like FEO, are taking on a social network approach.

A distributed approach

I can’t wait to see what happens with the DISO project, I posted not long ago on blogs as a distributed social network…mind you it doesn’t have to be blogs, it can be any website that is able to accept a plug-in.

At the moment I can :
- blog in my standalone blog (need an RSS Reader for updates)
- blog in a social network (usually has an inbuilt watchlist or newsfeed, or you can use an RSS Reader) eg. Vox, Twitter, Facebook
- if my blog is not my only content source I can aggregate my content into a lifestream social network eg. Ziki (usually has an inbuilt watchlist or newsfeed or friendstream, or you can use an RSS Reader)

How can I blog or lifestream, but not have to be confined or limited to the friends within that blog or lifestream social network?

What if I could still blog like I do now, outside of a social network, but still be able to add friends.

We could do this if each blogger plugged in a file to their blog, this way it doesn’t matter what software you use, you can still be connected.

When I plug in the file to my blog I get a few network widgets that appear in my sidebar:
- add John as a friend
- leave a public message
- leave a private message

To request a friendship ie. make a connection, you can use OpenID. Then I can go to the requesters OpenID page and check out who they are (their content sources, credentials, etc…), if all is OK, I accept the request.

Who knows, maybe OpenID can be the plug-in product! Maybe it’s not a file, but some code.

When someone visits my blog they have to login, then these widgets will display their content, then you will be able to leave a message.
If someone leaves a private message, I could read it in my blog admin page, I could also get an email notification. I would also get notifications in my blog admin page if someone left me a public message, or requested a friendship.

My blog admin page would also show a list of all my friends, this could also be seen by other registered users on my blog homepage.
If I want to see the latest content from all my friends, again my blog admin page has a newsfeed or similar type of RSS Reader.
If I want to message (private/public) a friend I do it from my blog admin page…this also keeps an archive of all sent and receive messages.
If I want to visit a friend, I click on their avatar from my friend list, and it takes me to their blog homepage.

I’m not sure if this is what DISO is about, but this would transform a blogosphere into a social network (and an RSS Reader), but the difference is that this social network doesn’t live anywhere, the only interfaces are blog homepages and blog admin pages. Something like this is the only way we can connect with each other and still use different products/services.

This plugin doesn’t just have to work with blog, perhaps your FriendFeed lifestream is your homepage…this way I can be a Wordpress blog user and add a FriendFeed user as a friend, or a Twitter user as a friend.

This social network doesn’t have a homepage, it’s just a plugin to whatever you use as your homepage (eg. your blog), you are not a member of anything.
This means that people who just read content cannot join, as where would they read the content if you have no website, it’s all integrated into your blog admin page.

What would this mean for RSS Readers and social networks like MyBlogLog?

Firstly if everyone I subscribe to in my RSS Reader had the plug in, then I could drop my RSS Reader.

My blog becomes my RSS Reader and also newsfeed reader (”on to others” and “on to me”), and my blog also becomes my social network, which allows me to communicate and connect with others, therefore having no need for MyBlogLog.

Not sure if this can be done, and it still requires everyone to have the plugin, just like how social networks require everyone to join.
But at least with the distributed approach the content you publish, your friends list, and your friend communications is all your data…you own it, it’s not at someone’s website, it lives at your homepage.

Patrick Lambe picks up on a post via Beth Kanter about Benjamin Greenberg’s slidedeck on the benefits of internal blogging.

A few of the slides mention when email is more appropriate than blogging and vice versa, and Patrick Lambe riffs on this:

“The more we can siphon off the non-time sensitive stuff into channels that are more suited to them, the more we’ll be able to calm the raging torrent of email that threatens to drown us.”

Well put…social tools are not a total replacement, there is a time for their use, if the information is not time pertinent, and not private, and intended for a lot of people, then blogs are perfect…and of course it’s a public archive…and unintended people may come across and be able to add something of value.

I’ve posted a few times on blogging vs email, my main concern is that instead of sending a broadcast email you blog it, but what about those you want to reach who are not subscribed.

The internal enterprise blog I use enables me to see a list of people who are subscribed to my blog, this helps in the confidence that I know it will reach all relevant people.
These people will receive the new blog post in their email client…they can choose to reply (leave a blog comment) right from that email.

Since I can post to the blog by email, another option would be, adding the blog address and the recipients who are not subscribers to the blog, in the to: field, this way I can still capture my intended audience with one post.

Publishing a post by email (with the blog address in the to: field) is a great feature, the simplicity of blogging for those addicted to the email client format…plus blog comments via email.

This brings social tools to where people are comfortable…slowly people may take to visiting the blog, but at least we have step one of spoiling them by bring the blog to the email environment.

In a past blog post I mentioned that perhaps a manager can subscribe an email group to a blog, this way people have no choice of receiving blog posts. This sounds harsh, but they would be receiving this content as email anyway. And there should be a way to change the default setting to not being able to unsubscribe.
I’m just talking about team updates and releases…this is content team members need to see.

The only reason this could get annoying is in a group blog, but as long as all bloggers stick to the topic of the blog, posting “must see” content (for all people to see) that is pertinent to your job, then that’s OK.
Information that is just for a few people can still be done in email, or better still a more specific blog.
NOTE: blogs are not the only new way of information exchange, an enterprise version of Pownce would enable conversation between a select few, which is archived in a central space. You could even use an informal community space, which would have blogs and forums.

I’ve also mentioned before an OPML package that is catered to your job position eg. someone joins the organisation as IT Support…they are then given an OPML (a batch of RSS feeds you can subscribe to in one go). They are instantly in the loop, they can visit the archives to see what was going on in the past.
Or as mentioned before, someone new is put into email groups, and in turn these email groups are subscribed to various blogs.

A great quote from one of the slides:

“We decide when we tune into information rather than having to let it interrupt our work.”

The slidedeck talks about setting aside a time to visit the blog, as mentioned earlier some blog platforms don’t just post notifications, they also include the content, and a reply will leave a blog comment…in turn others will receive an email with the content of the comment, and so on. You don’t have to save these emails, as it’s all in the searchable blog archive.

Here is the slide that really hits home about, email vs blogs for discussion, this type of communication is where blogs shine:

I won’t bother going into the more clean discussion we have using blogs over email, it’s really self evident.

I think blogs shine for announcement/release posts as well.
At work we get an email about server down time etc…now we have so many servers for different products that we are always getting these emails. I read them then delete them, but then if I want to remember one of these emails I can’t as I deleted them, and I’m not about to start collecting these type of emails.
Whenever I want to be reminded of the status of a server, or the stage of a release, I could just visit the blog…plus I could ask a question in the comments.

Now since everyone in the organisation needs to receive this content it’s not a good idea that this blog has subscribers. Instead a broadcast email can be sent to the office and to the blog email address as well, this way recipients get one email only, and the email is posted to the blog as well.
NOTE: the email will always have a link to the blog homepage, saying if you have a question click here to leave a comment.

Now if someone leaves a comment, only the blog owner will get an email notification, and the commenter can choose to receive comment notifications for that post only.
Sure if the whole office was subscribed to the blog it would be easier, just post and people will get content in a new email, but we don’t want the whole office receiving comments…this type of thing is suited to blogs with a smaller subscriber set.
NOTE: The given here is that if you subscribe to the blog, you are also subscribed to comments…with some platforms you have to subscribe to comments separately.

Whenever the server manager wants to see past downtimes, they have a whole log of this stuff in the blog archive. Perhaps the IT server team could be subscribers to this blog, so multiple people can deal with general comments, and also they can use the comments to discuss the job duty between themselves.

I see 7 types of blogs:

Office - announcements/news/releases

Project/Business Unit - announcements/news/releases

Smaller teams - announcements/news/releases

Activity - share/correspond/updates

Work (group/individual) - eg. support tips

Interest (group/individual) - eg. topic blogs

Personal (private/public) - a person’s log on their experience, thoughts, feedback, etc…

Email is great as it allows very simple unstructured free form correspondence, but it doesn’t do the discussion, and archiving part well at all. Blogs are just as simple and unstructured, its forte is publishing, subscription, longevity, etc…in fact here is 10 reasons why blogs are better than email.

Blogs are not the only social tools that can have more impact than just relying on email, check out: Instead of sending an email…

Here are three blogs posts about internal blogging:

Project Blogs, Email, and Dual Collaboration Channels (adoption)
Project Management Blogs - How to Run Your Project on the Web (types)
How to use Blogs in the Workplace (approach)

Here are some posts about why email is strong and how it can help web adoption:

Email is critical to Enterprise 2.0 and Office 2.0
Email: The Good Enough Collaboration Tool

Forums

I’m not going to go into the differences between blogs and forums, but just say an email discussion has just started about a topic like “project folder structures in the document management system”…more people keep creeping in and out of this conversation, most people only know half the discussion, etc…

When a topic of discussion begins in email, the knowledge worker must set up a quick forum so the discussion can be centralised…this isn’t a task, this is how a worker gets things done, and the tools have to be as easy as email (most forums can be done by email anyway).

This can be done in a Community of Practice (CoP), but then some people in the discussion may not be members of the CoP. On this occasion it’s not really a full on CoP, it’s just a place to have this 2 month discussion, an on the fly forum is perfect for this.

What about a blog.?

I see blogs more as publishing with comments, whereas I see a forum as specifically a place to discuss. So sure you can do this in a group blog, or distributed blogs, but for this situation or intention, a forum is best.

Here is the slidedeck:

A couple of days ago I posted on the various micro-blogging services, but I still have more to say…this post is more specifically about how the various services deal with conversation.

Like blogs, micro-blogging is about publishing, only more spontaneous, and usually within a social network. Sometimes this limited publishing space is called presence posting as you only have enough space to say something like: where you are or what your doing or will be doing…but really this space can be used for any type of content. What makes micro-blogging so spontaneous is that it is mostly coupled with mobile access, whether that’s mobile web, SMS/MMS or email. This mobile access is why it was perhaps first talked about as presence posting…when you are on the go, you can publish your agenda and availability.

Micro-blogging is not only about publishing, it’s also about people, and just like the blogosphere, there is conversation.

Let’s examine some brief differences and how each service presents conversation.

Jaiku

LIFESTREAM
Jaiku has profile aggregation which sets it apart from Twitter and Pownce.

You can make a spliced feed from all your profiles using FeedDigest, and then use Twitterfeed to enable Twitter to lifestream like Jaiku, but I prefer keeping up with friendstreams and microblogging apart. Reason being is I find it hard enough keeping up with my Twitter stream, and if these included content from elsewhere it would just get in the way.

In saying this, Twitter is an excellent candidate for lifestreaming, if they implemented it, we could have another tab in the user page:
- My Twitter stream
- My Twitter stream with Friends
- Friends
- Replies
- My Lifestream
- My Twitter stream and Lifestream
- My Friendstream
- My Friendstream and Friends Twitter stream

It would be good if Jaiku could separate the profile aggregated content into a separate lifestream, or if we could at least see just micro posts in one stream.

ICONS
Jaiku has icons for each post…this gives more context of presence or location.

CHANNELS
Jaiku also as a channels feature where you append your post with a (#) tag and it will also appear in a channel.

LOCATION AWARENESS AND AVAILABILITY
If you use their download phone app:
- it can even locate your current location using cell towers
- locate closest friends using Bluetooth
- share your calendar
- share your ring profile availability

So as we can see Jaiku is about profile aggregation, micro-blogging, channel chat, and I can see with Google’s help it’s really going to differentiate itself in the presence/location awareness game, for more see:
Mobile presence : Iotum-Talk Now and “The Swarm”
Mobile motion presence and location awareness

I can see greatly why Jaiku can still do well against the Twitter darling, as it has some different uses that Twitter doesn’t offer.

CONVERSATION
Every item in Jaiku has comments, even the lifestreaming items.

When you make a comment, this also becomes a post in your stream, this means comments appear in two spots, under the original post and also in the stream.

Jaiku user page
- displays a users posts and comments
- doesn’t display content from their contacts (this is called “Overview” in the dashboard view)
- doesn’t display comments made to your posts as posts themselves, you have to you click under each item to see comments

In all your public page when seen by others doesn’t give a clear picture of conversation.

Dashboard view
- displays a users posts and comments
- displays content from their contacts (Overview)
- displays as a new post in the stream when someone leaves a comment on one of your posts or someone else’s post

The dashboard view gives much more of a notion of the conversations taking place…not sure why the public user page can’t be the same.

Another thing I like is, not only do you get the benefit of conversation in the stream (as a comment is also a post itself), but comments are also aggregating under the initial post…others can catch up on the conversation in a tidy thread.

What would be good in the dashboard view is to have a tab to another stream to just see a list of comments people have made on your posts. This is a good idea incase you haven’t used Jaiku in a couple of days, and want to catch up with what people are saying to you. Then again this is what email alerts are for, just like when you get new comments on a regular blog.

Is this really conversation at it’s best?

I’m not too sure, in this instance conversation happens around objects (posts)…unless you post something, no-one can comment you.
Conversations thrive when it’s people to people, which is lacking ie. in Jaiku you cannot post and push it to someone (like IM, SMS, email, etc…).

With Twitter you can ping another user with a private or public post, this is what makes Twitter conversations more thriving as it doesn’t have to be based around objects (posts).

Twitter

Twitter has two differentiating features: replies and direct messages.

As mentioned Jaiku does not have private messages, and it does not have public messages either, if you want to ping a person, it has to be in the context of one of their posts (leaving a comment), so this really makes Jaiku more like blogs, only micro-blogs within a network of friends. And the stream is kind of like an RSS Reader river of news as you can see your friends posts streaming past.

Another difference with Twitter is besides your contacts (friends or people you follow), you also have people who are following you, kind of like seeing how many times you are subscribed to within the Twitter system.

Twitter user page
- updates (your stream)
- with others (your stream and your friends stream in one stream)

NOTE: replies appear in your “with others” stream

Dashboard View
- recent (your stream and your friends stream in one stream)
- archive (your stream)
- replies (public tweets sent to you)

NOTE: replies also appear in your “recent” stream, as well as replies your friends make to their friends (you can limit this to just mutual friends)

CONVERSATION

Twitter has a feature called direct messages, this is kind of like email or private messages in most social networks, it basically enables you to send a friend a private message, these are read in your sent box and inbox.

First I’ll make it clear, Twitter posts don’t have comments!

Twitter’s winning feature is @replies…this is the public messages feature. I don’t know why it’s called replies, as it’s not only used in a reactive way, you can use it to initiate a shoutout.

This feature really makes Twitter a conversational tool, just as much as a publishing tool.

If you want to send a message to another user (whether they are your friend or not), you just append the message with “@name”
eg. @abby are we going to yoga tonight?

This will appear in your “you and others” stream or as Jaiku calls it “Overview” (as mentioned this view is not available in the public user page).
It will also appear in another stream called “replies”, this displays all tweets with @yourname in it.

Now, coincidentally if you see a tweet you want to comment on, you just send an @reply post.
This could be a tweet that has caught your interest or it could be a shoutout (reply) tweet that someone has sent you.

What happens is that tweets that begin with @name have a link at the end of the tweet labelled “in reply to”, clicking this will take you to the initial tweet that is being replied to.

But this is really not so all the time, any tweet that begins with @name will link to the last tweet of that person.
If I send a @name tweet as a shoutout
eg. @abby are we going to yoga tonight? the end of this tweet will have a link to abby’s last tweet which may be eg. what a great sunny morning. This really has nothing to do with my tweet I’m sending her, they are not related whatsoever.

The other problem is even if you are replying to a tweet, what happens when the user makes more tweets before you get to reply.

I say eg. @abby are we going to yoga tonight?, then I make another tweet eg. people talking loud on the train. Then abby tweets @johnt yoga sounds good. The end of abby’s tweet will link to my tweet about people talking loud on the train…this just isn’t right.

Twitter’s initial focus was command posting by SMS, problem is you can’t send a reply targeted to the ID of a particular tweet, and a shoutout isn’t targeted to anything, it’s an initiator post.

So 3 things:
- @name can be used for shoutouts and replies
- a @name post will link to the last post of the person you are replying/shoutout to
- Twitter replies/shoutouts seem to be more progressive chat (like IM) rather than just object focused comments.

Sure the conversation can be easily followed as it happens, but you can’t really look at past conversations as there lacks a threaded feature.

CHANNELS
Like Jaiku Twitter has a 3rd party service called hastags that enables channels.

Pownce

FILES
Pownce is not just text you can also send files

CONTENT TYPE
Pownce has templates for content type eg. text, links, files, events
- you can later filter content by type

CONVERSATION
NOTE: comments you make, and comments others make to you, appear as new posts of their own, as well as appearing under a post…this is like Jaiku.

NOTE: Pownce doesn’t have lifestreaming

Pownce User Page
- user (your stream)
- user with friends (your stream and your friends stream in one stream)

Dashboard View
- default setting is “all notes and replies”
(your posts, your replies as new posts, your friends posts, your friends replies to you as new posts)

What Pownce has over Jaiku is:
- in the public view people get to see your content, and friends content in one stream…this is only available in the Jaiku dashboard view.

But the issue with both Pownce and Jaiku is:;
- comments you make, and comments others make to you don’t appear as new posts in the public user view, this only happens in the dashboard view
- in saying this, in the public view, you can still read comments by clicking the comments link that live under posts.

What Jaiku has over Pownce is:
- comments your friends make to others, doesn’t appear in either view (dashboard view only for Jaiku)

But where these two services shine is that the comments are also accumulated (just like a blog) under a post, this way a conversation is all neat and tidy…as mentioned Twitter has a problem with distilling conversations around an object.

But Pownce is different…

You can group your friends into sets so you can just post to a set of people, you can also post to individuals…your public page will only show posts that you have made public.

When you post in Pownce you have a choice of audience:
- public
- all my friends
- a set
- private (an individual)

This means you can send a shoutout to one person, but it’s not in public, it’s more like Twitter direct messages. This lacks the conversation market effect of Twitter, but nonetheless you can shoutout.

Your public user page will only show posts you and your friends send as “public”

Within your dashboard you can filter for content:
- all notes and replies
- notes
- replies
- private notes (can’t specify an individual)
- non-public notes
- sent by me
- sent to a set

You can also filter below, but you can’t do something like show me all events posted by me:
- messages
- links
- files
- events

This is what really sets Pownce apart, the fact the you can have content aimed at all different people and groups within the same filtered stream. With the same service you can engage in both a formal (public, all friends) and informal (sets, individuals) network.

Conclusion

Twitter is a conversation market, whether you’re in your dashboard or your public page, anyone can see a stream of the conversation, items you see:
- your posts
- your friends posts
- your replies/shoutouts
- your friends replies/shoutouts to you
- your friends replies/shoutouts to friends you have in common (you can even set this to include friends you don’t have in common)

Pownce and Jaiku have these 5 features above (excluding replies for a comments mechanism) only in the dashboard view (exception is that Pownce doesn’t show comments your friends make on their friends posts).

But the main reason that makes Twitter more of a conversation market is that conversations can be more like chatting, they don’t have to be in the context of an object (commenting on a post), instead it’s more person to person, kind of like a chat room or a public IM conversation.

Whereas with Jaiku and Pownce conversations are around an object (the micro-post), this is just like the blogosphere.

As mentioned Twitter is replying or shouting out to a person, whereas the others are around an object, Twitter also has direct messages so you can chat in private.

In saying this Pownce allows you to send a post to an individual or a set of people, and that individual or someone from the set can send a post back or reply, so this makes it both a conversation around an object or a person (or set of people), only it’s not displayed on the public user page, in other words you can’t have a conversation with an individual in public…I like that you can do this in Twitter as it makes it viral, you can jump into conversations.

But then Pownce is the tool of choice for trust based informal networks, the fact that you can use the same system to post to: public, friends, a set of friends, or an individual makes it very versatile.

The “set” feature (organising friends in groups) is not really that much better than email conversations.
When you post to a set, each recipient will see who else got the post. When a recipient replies, all initial people get the post. This is exactly like email (to: field, reply to all).
At this stage I don’t think you can include others in the conversation, the post can only be forwarded (just like email). Reason for this is the recipients are based on the initiators set of friends, it’s not a communal channel.
But the good thing is that the conversation is archived.

More

Tumblr falls into a similar category as Jaiku:
- profile aggregator
- friend stream view
- upload files
- 3rd party comments
- re-blog posts (unlike Jaiku)

Plaxo Pulse seems to be a combination:
- profile aggregator
- friend stream view
- comments
- re-share posts
- post and filter stream by contact sets (like Pownce)
- private messages
- comment wall
- status update (like Facebook)

As far as conversations go Plaxo Pulse is more similar to Jaiku and Pownce than Twitter.
But, unlike Jaiku and Pownce comments are not shown as new posts in Plaxo Pulse.
You can filter a stream by content type, but since comments you make are not posts of their own, this means you can’t filter content by comments you have made. I would like to be able to collect comments in a stream, just like Pownce, or Twitter for that matter (Pownce doesn’t further filter to “replies just by me”, instead it has both; replies others have made to me, and replies I have made to others).

Plaxo Pulse has status updates (like Facebook), but unlike Facebook people can leave comments on Plaxo Pulse status updates.
But you can’t filter by this content type, ie. see a stream of just status updates.
Similar to Facebook you have micro-posts (eg. notes, posted-items), Plaxo Pulse calls them (Messages, Links, etc…)

Plaxo Pulse also has lifestreaming.

So what are posts in Jaiku, Twitter and Pownce more similar to:
- the Plaxo Pulse posts or the Plaxo Pulse status updates

Other conversations

We have been talking about explicit conversations, another perspective is keeping up on a conversation about a topic, where people are not directly having the conversation with each other.
An example of this is Twitter tracking, where you can track occurrences of a word/s eg. california fire.
Several Twitter search engines have a word burst type feature to see the latest posts with the term eg. “fire”.

Then, as mentioned we have Channels, in Twitter’s case a service called hashtags…now this is posts about the same topic, not just posts that have a word in it, it’s more about aboutness. But still this is not explicit conversation, it’s stuff on the same topic.

Trackbacks

Coming back to explicit conversation…what is a trackback or inlink in micro-blogging?

In the blogosphere you can leave a comment on a blog post, or publish your own post and ping (trackback) the blog post you are talking about, so the person you are pinging is notified that you are contributing to the conversation from your own blog. The person you pinged will have a link to your post in the comments section of their blog post, it’s almost like leaving a remote comment.

If you don’t ping that person (trackback), they may still find out you have talked about them, as you may have linked to their blog post. If this person organises themselves to be notified whenever someone links to their blog, they will see your post and read it as part of the conversation.
I posted on these distributed conversations a long time ago…the main deal was being able to distill this stuff.

The other thing is because the blogosphere is not a social network where you add friends, or just look at the public page, you won’t really know these conversations are happening. The blogosphere is distributed, but let’s see if we can make it into a distributed social network.

How do trackbacks relate to microblogging?

JAIKU
- there isn’t a way to write a post and ping another post, to let them know your post is conversing with them.
- there is no way for someone to know if someone is trying to converse with them
- the only way is leaving a comment (I suppose when you leave a comment, it also becomes a post…it’s like doing a trackback the other way around)

POWNCE
- same as above
- after I write the post, I could use the “forward” feature to forward it to the person I’m talking about, but only if they are on my friend list
- instead I could write the post, and just send it to them, instead of making it public, but then the public is out of the loop in this conversation…and again the person must be on my friend list.

TWITTER
- this works more like trackbacks
- I can write a post eg. @abby is a cool dancer too - and abby will be notified I’m talking to her or about her
- I’m not really pinging one of her posts like in the blogosphere, instead I’m pinging her

Once again Twitter shows that it is an all round conversational tool, as much as it is a publishing tool…it really blurs the boundary of status, blogging and IM (chat).

Related

How I use the various micro blogging services
FAQ: Is decentralized Twitter just IRC?
Prologue - WordPress based distributed Twitter
The Evolution of Personal Publishing

First I’ll say that most micro blogging services are within a network environment and are set up to not only publish but to also converse, and some even are profile aggregator streams or lifestreams.

There is also a blur on what micro blogging actually means…other terms used are status, and presence.
eg.
Plaxo Pulse and Facebook are more about status.
Twitter and Jaiku are more about presence.
Tumblr and Pownce are more about micro-blogging…but then Pownce doesn’t really look like a stand alone blog. Actually I can’t define Pownce…you are publishing, and the posts can be longer then Twitter, but they are usually not too long like Tumblr, you can also send files, and posts can be directed to different sets of people. I see Pownce more o