As networked social applications mature, they’re evolving more nuanced ways of constructing and maintaining an identity. Two of the major factors in online identity are How you present yourself, and Who you know.
How you present yourself: “Flourishing”
Flourishing is how we ornament ourselves and display ourselves to others. Think of peacocks flourishing their tail-feathers. […]

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I can’t believe I’ve been “blogging” for over seven years. How the hell did that happen?
Actually, I think it was longer — if I remember correctly, my first blog was on some service whose name I simply cannot remember now, until I ran across Blogger in 2000. Then I switched to there, using […]

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I looked at my blog (this thing I’m writing in now) today and the thought that surfaced, unbidden, was “poor old blog.”
I felt bad because I haven’t been writing here like I used to, so sure I get the “poor” part — poor pitiful blog that isn’t getting my attention.
But where on earth […]

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Julian Dibbell has a marvelous post about how game realities are symptoms — sort of concentrated, more-obvious outcroppings — of a general shift in economic and cultural reality itself. The game’s the thing …
Online Games, Virtual Economies … Distinction between Play and Production
And I’m arguing, finally, that that relationship is one of convergence; […]

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I only just heard about the Google Image Labeler via the IAI mailing list.
Here’s a description:
You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a two-minute period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to […]

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Via Jay Fienberg, via the IAI discussion list, I hear of this excellent post by professor David Silver about a talk Silver did recently on the Web 2.0 meme.
Silver starts out lauding the amazing, communal experience of blogs and mashups of blogs and RSS feeds and other Web 2.0 goodness, and then gets into […]

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Wired has a great story explaining the profound implications of Google Maps and Google Earth, mainly due to the fact that these maps don’t have to come from only one point of view, but can capture the collective frame of reference from millions of users across the globe: Google Maps Is Changing the Way We […]

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I finally got a chance to listen to Bruce Sterling’s rant for SXSW 2007 via podcast as I was driving between PA and NC last week.
There were a lot of great things in it. A number of people have taken great notes and posted them (here’s one example). It’s worth a listen either way […]

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My obsession with what I call the “game layer” aside, it’s interesting that the mainstream press are now reporting on how using “game mechanics” in business software can create more engaging & useful ways of working with data, collaborating, and getting work done.
Why Work Is Looking More Like a Video Game - New York […]

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This is delightful. A sort of logo for hacker culture. Not hackers as in criminals (hacker culture calls those people ‘crackers’ among other things) but hackers as in lateral-thinking technology heads.
The graphic … is called a glider. It’s a pattern from a mathematical simulation called the Game of Life. In this simulation, very simple […]

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Austin Govella puts a question to me in his post here: Does Comcast have the DNA to compete in a 2.0 world? at Thinking and Making
Context of the post: Austin is wondering about this story from WSJ, “Cable Giant Comcast Tries to Channel Web TV” — specifically Jeremy Allaire’s comments doubting Comcast’s ability to […]

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Gene puts up a very nice honeycomb diagram for thinking about the capabilities & focus of social software.
Social Software Building Blocks
While doing research for a recent workshop, I came across a useful list of seven social software elements. These seven building blocks–identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputation and sharing–provide a good functional definition for […]

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