Interconnected Mini Links

Bridging social capital and mobile phones reducing crime

TunA- A Mobile Music Experience to Foster Local Interactions

makes good mention of social capital

Links on Cyberspace and Web Sociology

via del.icio.us/cshirky

Smart Mobs on Orange's Push To Talk implementation

which includes a Goffman-like tentative-approach/encounters system: "It will be possible for one person with his cell phone to call and discuss with a group of persons simply by dialing directly in one touch to this group that you have gathered in your addresses-file. Before joining them simultaneously, you will be able to see on the screen cellphone via smileys if a person is already receptive or not. Via this service, you can create your own groups."

Etcon session- Untethering the Social Network

"or What Happens to Social Networks in the Untethered Wild. Panel: Howard Rheingold, Mimi Ito, Scott Fisher, danah boyd, Joi Ito" -- loads of nice comments about tentative, Goffman approaches in Japanese phone calls.

need2know.co.uk

"Whatever you need2know about, this is the site for you. From information about your health and relationships, to finding out the facts about law, this is where you can find out what you want, when you want it. Click on and get your head around what's on the web." Looks like it's aimed at teenagers, possibly boys. Could be interesting to look at research around this for the mentoring project? (Timebank)

Gordon Brown mentions social capital

"The chancellor also used his speech to say more needed to be done to boost mentoring schemes as a source of help and advice. 'I wonder, for instance, whether - whilst taking consideration of child safety issues - we could not explore more innovative ways of recruiting people to be mentors and of course helping people in need of help,' he said. He suggested lessons could be learned from the success of websites like Friends Reunited and EBay in creating social networks." ...which is what the Timebank people had said to him the day before.

Five geek social fallacies

and their consequences (eg, people getting offended; Friendster). They are: "Ostracizers Are Evil; Friends Accept Me As I Am; Friendship Before All; Friendship Is Transitive; Friends Do Everything Together". I'm not sure it's just geeks -- I've noticed this in people who are gregarious but have rather blunt social skills (although they are highly friendly). Maybe it's common among people who have had to deduce social skills themselves?

Fiona Romeo- on the Womenspeak Consultation

"I am most interested in the Womenspeak consultation, which was designed to enable women survivors of domestic violence to submit experiential testimony to a group of parliamentarians interested in developing policy. Identifying and recruiting women survivors of domestic abuse for this consultation required extensive outreach, and the use of the internet as a medium for this sensitive consultation topic was the source of two problems: accessibility and security." It's the gradient to participation again. Lengthy, important post. Probably should bring this up in the Timebank work.

Clay Shirky's reading list for his class on social software

Kevan on the tentative interactions in OK Cupid, like Glancing

"They've also introduced precisely the sort of tiny, deniable communication that Matt Webb's been enthusing about - a quantum-sized method of initial, hesitant contact (the 'woo') that can be painlessly ignored if the recipient isn't interested. ('Woos aren't really anything. Spend them wisely!') Very nice usage within a social-networking context; I can see this spreading everywhere." Not quite deniable though.

Codifying relationships; self-monitoring behaviour being more common with women

Joi Ito's wiki- LinkedIn- lengthy discussion on the social networking site

Social Gaming Interactions- Part One- A History of Form

via corante/many

references Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades. Talks about three forms of socialisation: Freeform (a chatline is left in a game); Competitive (like tabletop games); Cooperative (players working together against the system).

http://www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/HTML/v1/bartle.html -- Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades

Terra Nova- Empirical Framework of User Motivations

actually tests the classic article Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades on different player types in MUDs/MOOs and comes up with a componentised typology instead.

Lengthy and detailed post about Dunbar's number 150

and where there are tipping points for other group sizes, and why those size arise. Really interesting from a group dynamics perspective. Short answer: That 150 takes maximum time budget to maintain. Which is an interesting point. Why *do* we try to get the biggest group possible? Or even, do we?

Clay Shirky on situated social software (small groups, for places or times)

http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html -- the essay

Clay Shirky- A Group is its Own Worst Enemy

how groups are different from just individuals, and what you have to design for in virtual communities (have members in good standing, for example).

Clay Shirky- Social Software and the Politics of Groups

barriers to membership, goals, different moderation (political) strategies

Clay Shirky- Communities, Audiences, and Scale

saying that groups of different sizes have different characteristics. A good starting point.

What social software takes as axiomatic, and the paradigm cycle

that when people get together they start to create social capital (okay, just do each other favours), and they like to work few-to-few.

Slices of the social software conversation, and trying for a definition

"Try and ground all of this; try and explain social software to someone who has a background in evolutionary psychology/ dynamics of group decisions, and it's very hard (as discovered a few nights ago). What's the objective? So I'll ramble:"

http://www.sylloge.com/personal/2003_03_01_s.html#91273866 -- the elements of social software, still useful

Group activity as push or pull

"Pull is undirected or atelic. Think about how evolution works, or an idle conversation. Push on the other hand is a goal-oriented, industrial process. It's directed or telic."

Social rhetoric

"Just as rhetoric presents a methodology for telic conversation (conversation abstracted to be directed), social rhetoric can present a methodology for telic community or teams (a group abstracted to be directed). Social rhetoric has the properties of being available for anyone to use; able to operate within a restricted environment; of being able to handle ambiguities, exceptions, and what happens when individuals operate in a way that isn't immediately handled by the rules (so instead of rules it's a network of incentive fields). Now deriving social rhetoric is the hard part. I have three suggestions."

Thoughts on the Work Foundation's Social Software Seminar

"what properties do successful technologies have that we can harness and steer to not just communities but directed groups? Second. In the main the new media have only be used for one-to-one and one-to-many, and even the www has just democratised broadcast -- but the capability is there for many-to-many communication; how is this to be done?"

http://interconnected.org/notes/2002/11/Social_Software_seminar.txt -- notes

Sociology of the Mobile Phone- list of online papers

via del.icio.us/anne

Many-to-Many have set up a Social Software Reader and Social Software Timeline

shaping up to be fantastic resources

http://www.socialtext.net/m2m/index.cgi?social_software_reader -- Reader

http://www.socialtext.net/m2m/index.cgi?social_software_timeline -- Timeline

timelines always start with Engelbart or Bush

Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community

via old hydesign

lengthy, good. "Identity plays a key role in virtual communities. In communication, which is the primary activity, knowing the identity of those with whom you communicate is essential for understanding and evaluating an interaction. Yet in the disembodied world of the virtual community, identity is also ambiguous. Many of the basic cues about personality and social role we are accustomed to in the physical world are absent. The goal of this paper is to understand how identity is established in an online community and to examine the effects of identity deception and the conditions that give rise to it."

Danah Boyd's Etcon 2004 session- Revenge of the User (social network problems)

eg sites can't discriminate between ties and weak ties.

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4948 -- session details

Abstract: "Social networking has invaded all aspects of social software. From blogrolls to Buddylists, people have learned to negotiate implicit networks in everyday digital interaction. Yet, in a re-popularization of a 1997 fad, social networking has achieved popular and technological prominence in its explicit form. Dozens of sites have emerged to address how social networks can help people connect to have sex, find jobs, sell cars, and waste inordinate amounts of time. While creators are professing that they have a business plan in their back pocket, users are consistently challenging any and all expected behavior. In return, creators are playing whack-a-mole against unwanted actions to appease venture capitalists. Will masochistic users keep returning? Drawing from ethnographic research on Friendster and other social networking sites, this talk addresses the tensions that have emerged between creators and users as both work to understand the emerging social and technological boundaries. While technological solutions to social problems may be the easiest answer we can envision, it is precisely these social actions that teach us the most about the architectures we are developing."