Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
Refining A Digital Dunbar Number
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 09/21/2008 - 16:30A little over a year ago, I wrote about a digital dunbar’s number.
Dunbar’s number, “the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships”. This is typically set at 150, based on the size of the neocortex. However, it doesn’t take into consideration that when you are working online, you can page in and out sets of people, so while your neocortex may only be able to maintain stable relationships with 150 people at a time, using a good digital rolodex, that number can expand considerably.
This raises a new question. Is there a Digital Dunbar’s Number? A number at which point you start getting overwhelmed with spam or declaring email bankruptcy?
It would seem as an expanded Digital Dunbar’s Number would be based, in part, on how well social media tools interoperate and allow you to organize your contacts. Unfortunately, so far, they don’t do all that well.
I explored the interconnectivity of different social media tools a bit last month. Rafe Needleman explored a similar idea this week as he pondered if we were heading towards a crisis in personal syndication overload.
So, we see continued refinement of various microblogging and life stream management sites. Laconi.ca seems to have constant development. New sites seem to emerge every day, and older sites, like Twitter and FriendFeed are coming out with new layouts.
FriendFeed now has features to show the best of a feed and the ability to add items to different feeds. I’ve been doing something similar by using rooms in FriendFeed. One group of friends are people that I know who are interested in blogging about progressive politics at a statewide level. Another group is people that I know who use Twitter from Connecticut and Rhode Island. I’ve set up rooms so I can see what they are saying, in the context of their groups.
It seems as if I’m not the only person interested in this. On Twine, yet another attempt at organizing social media, I was pointed to an article on TechCruch about a group of Mom’s using Twitter and using Ning.
I had a good discussion about this using another social media tool earlier this week. It seems like the tool that many of us want is something like this: Take something that gathers contact information, such Plaxo Pulse, Spock, Spoke, LinkedIn, etc.. Have it include the ability to group people, probably ideally by tags. Have it pull together all the social media for a person within a group, or with a common tag. Ideally, a user would be able to do it for people that are in a persons own universe, or across the whole universe, the way del.icio.us or Flickr handles tags. For the media gather, it should automatically eliminating duplicates, such as what happens when I use sites like ping.fm, posterous, or hellotxt to send my message to multiple sources. Then it should present a nice consolidated display, where comments can be added that are sent back to the original site as well as being posted on the consolidated feed.
Is that really too much to ask? With such a tool, we could see a giant increase in the possible Digital Dunbar’s Number.
Social Media for the Common Good
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/20/2008 - 09:42It is popular these days for people bash social media as the domain of the self-absorbed. Critics ask, “Do thousands of people really need to know that you ran out of toothpaste this morning?” Yet this reflects a very narrow understanding of social media.
As an example, let’s look at two different non-profits that are making good use of Social Media.
The first site I want to highlight is Climb Up, So Kids can Grow Up, a project of the American Foundation for Children with AIDS. I learned about this site from change.org where I was asked to participate. I’m not a climber, so I am not attending any climbathon this weekend.
However, I have been running an ad about that for the past several months. People are encouraged to ‘climb, hike, run or cycle up the structure of their choice, anywhere in the world” in an effort to “increase awareness of the pediatric AIDS pandemic and raise funds for life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) medication, food, and medical and humanitarian supplies to children affected by HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa”.
I was invited to participate in something that I wasn’t even paying attention to. I found a way to participate that met my current needs and hopefully have added a little to their efforts.
Then, yesterday, I received a message on Utterli, formerly known as Utterz about the Red Cross’s social media efforts.
I checked out the message on Red Cross Chat and wanted to highlight it here. It encouraged people to change their avatar yesterday to a Red Cross volunteer. In some places, it is important for me to keep my avatar distinct from other avatars, so I chose to keep my avatar in my standard format, but simply added a small Red Cross on my sweater.
They also asked people to post widgets. They provide two different widgets. One is too wide, and the other one is too slow. I’ve added the slow one for the time being, but I’ll probably drop it soon. It would be good if they could provide customization options for their widgets, but I didn’t see any.
They also asked people to play PSAs and or videos of disaster responses. They have a lot of great videos, and I encourage you to check out the blog post. I selected just one:
The post ends off with a pointer to online tools which includes a link to The Red Cross’ Social Media Links page. That page includes not only the link to their Twitter stream, but also a link to the twitter stream of nearly a dozen people involved in media at the Red Cross. This is a great example of how none profits should use social media.
In both examples, the organizations used social media to invite people to participate, and provided different types of participation In both cases, I participated a little bit this time, and am more likely to participate in future events, perhaps at a deeper level in the future.
Confronting the Blank Page
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 09/14/2008 - 19:23I’ve done a lot of writing today. Most of it has been for mailing lists, and nothing seems to fit for the blog. Other stuff that I’ve written will make a good blog post when I have some time to sit and think and pull it all together. Yet other than an automated post from ma.gnolia, I haven’t written anything for the blog today, and I feel compelled to do so.
Both yesterday and today, I wrote some long detailed personal emails that I was fairly pleased with. They required some serious thought and good wordcrafting. It felt good to write that way, and I’ve been thinking about my posts on the blog recently. Some of them have caused me to think as I put my words together, but a lot of them have been pretty light.
To a certain extent, that is okay. If I was having serious, weighty discussions all the time, I’d probably be even more boring. Yet I like to engage in serious discourse when I can.
I’ve also been speaking with the folks at sezWho, trying to get their post and comment rating system working more reliably on Drupal. They seem to have fixed most of the problems, although there are a few outstanding minor problems.
With that, I’m starting to get people to rate my blog posts. My welcome blog post has received six ratings, for an overall rating of 4.0. There really isn’t much of anything in the blog post, and perhaps people are using it to rate the blog overall. My most recent Wordless Wednesday post also received six ratings with an overall rating of 3.8. It was a picture of a German Chocolate cake that Fiona and I made for Kim for her birthday. As is common with Wordless Wednesday posts it received a fair amount of comments as well.
Yet my more serious post, the day before about discussions of the nature of authority on a mailing list that I’m on, received three ratings, for an overall score of 2.3. It received one comment, which didn’t really address the main theme of the post. Yet this post stimulated great discussions on two different mailing lists. I wish people who disagreed with what I wrote would leave comments about what they disagreed with, instead of simply giving it a poor rating. I also wish that sezWho would make it easy to see who has given which ratings, and what other posts they’ve rated. Without this, the ratings seem arbitrary and don’t really help to build either community or help further the discourse. I’ve suggested this to the folks at sezWho and we’ll see if this comes in a future release.
So, I sat down, I didn’t have a clear direction of where I wanted to go with today’s blog post, but, in order to stay with at least a post a day, I managed to crank out something. I hope it was interesting and/or informative. For me, the discipline of forcing myself to post every day, has been beneficial, and I think I’m improving as a writer because of it.
What do you think? What should the balance of light and serious posts be? How do we build community and discourse around our blogs? Do you have goals or other things that help you write regularly, or improve your writing?
Ike
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 21:25As Hurricane Ike approaches landfall, I’m spending a little time following what people are saying in Twitter. In particular, using Twitter Local I can get all the tweets from people within twenty miles of Houson and withing twenty miles of Galveston. The Galveston tweets are sparse and don’t say much right now, but the Houston tweets have a lot to say.
The Houston Chronicle has a special section on the hurricane, which is sending out updates to their twitter page. ‘Curfew ordered in La Porte’, ‘Humble Emergency Operations Center open and ready’, ‘POWER OUTAGE UPDATE: At least 164,000 without electricity’
Looking more closely, there are interesting comments: “CenterPoint Energy has said that it expects some places to be without power for at least two weeks.“ So, how do you cope with this? There are lots of good suggestions. One that caught my attention was “Cook meat on a gas stove or barbecue grill and start eating it right away. Share with friends and neighbors.”
While the recommendation may have more to do about not wasting leftovers since you can’t refrigerate them without power, there is a more important message underneath that. We are at our best when we all look out for our friends and neighbors. The list goes on to say, “Embrace good old-fashioned entertainment like games, story-telling and conversation.” This too, echoes the importance of being in community, of looking out for one another.
Another note, illustrates what people are in for: “All first responding agencies (fire law enforcement and medical) will cease operation at the onset of 50mph winds. “
Meanwhile, others are finding other ways of dealing with the coming storm. “Getting drunker and drunker as I await Ikey”, “ike-hurricane is giving me a giant headache” “West houston is like a ghost town - looking for the hurricane parties in my hood” “Walking dogs in 40 mph winds - ike is going 2b nasty” “DAMN! The wind is really now blowing hard here in west Houston! Power outage around the corner!” “Done laundry, got food, full gas tank, cash in pocket, generator works, gas stove, time to relax and watch TV till Ike takes the power out!” “things they’re doing at my family's: semi-filling gallons w water 2 freeze, will put ice gallon in fridge when power goes out 2 keep cool”
Assorted Updates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 20:38I’m spending time catching up on emails, following the Democratic National Convention coverage on sites like the Friend Feed DemConvention room, and generally tweaking and mucking with computers, websites, and so on.
PVR
Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that I purchased yesterday for a project that involves recording parts of the Democratic National Convention coverage. Today, I tried moving the connection back into the office. In the process, I was asked if I wanted to update the software on the video stick.
The software uploaded relatively smoothly, but it took a few tries to finally get the new version loaded and configured. However, when I did, it managed to find lots of digital stations. So, I believe I can now get the HD broadcasts I couldn’t get before. In addition, I managed to reconfigure the wiring and I can load watch and record the television from my office.
I’m sharing some of the videos I’m recording and I spent a bit of time nailing down the best format to use. The Pinnacle PCTV stick supports ten different formats:
DVD 640x480 It takes 47M per minute. Great quality, but too big. DVD LP 640x480 28M per minute. Again, very good quality, but too big. SVCD 640x480 19M per minute. Okay quality, also too big. VCD 321x240 10M per minute. Okay quality. This is my second choice for formats DivX Home 720x480 31M per minute. Very good quality, but too big. DivX Portable 352x240 7M per minute. Okay quality. This is the format I like best. DivX Handheld 144x176 1.5M per minute. Okay quality. Small screen. Not bad for the space. Mpeg4 PSP 320x240 6M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod low 480x352 12M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod High 320x240 12M per minute. Poor quality.
Comments about this site
Recently, one person noted that my welcome message said that previous blog entries were listed on the left. Well, they were, until I upgraded to Drupal 6. Then, I moved things around a little, so the list of articles are now on the right.
Another person commented asking if I knew that I had two different comment systems running. Yes, I know that. I actually wrote a bit about it in this blog entry. I may end up pulling SezWho soon. It slows down the site and doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve contacted SezWho Tech Support and they were going to look at the issues, but that was a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything since.
I should also note that I dropped a lot of underperforming widgets. My site has always been a bit slow because I like to test out any widget that comes along and I’m always slow to remove them. These widgets slow down the site. Now that I’ve removed them, the site may be a little faster.
The Tiara
I was asked if people who pledged to give me EntreCard credits had followed through and some have, some haven’t. Yes, the tiara was small, but it was all that I had. Yes, the girl standing next to me is my daughter Fiona.
Using Social Media
Also, today, I received my first real Shelfari spam. A lot of people feel that Shelfari is spam in and of itself. Miss Anita Weluha wanted to know if I liked the same books as she does. She also wanted to know if I could help her transfer $5 million.
I also received an email from Twitter, letting me know that Sen. Barbara Boxer was now following me. I wondered if this was really part of her organization, or if it was some random spammer. Later, I received an email from “Friends of Barbara Boxer” highlighting her new Twitter account.
Now, its time to get back to paying closer attention to the convention and all the coverage.
