Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
Random Online Observations
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/26/2005 - 11:54I spend a lot of time searching the web for what is happening. I often check out Technorati to see what the top ten searches are. Yesterday and today, Kielle was a top search topic. SF Site reports “Kelly Eileen O’Guinn (b.1972) died on September 22. Known as Kielle, she was diagnosed with colon cancer four months ago. She was active in web-publishing and role-playing fanfic.”
There are wonderful tributes to her around the Internet. Years ago, I took an online class, Grief in a Family Context. It was one of the best classes I ever took. It seems as if there is room for lots of research in how people process grief, especially as we all become more interconnected via the Internet.
What's upcoming?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/23/2005 - 08:29Now, that Meetup has jumped the shark, we need to think about what’s Upcoming.
Upcoming is a new website, where can add events, tag events, and explore the social network of people attending events. Gregory Heller pointed me to this site via a CivicSpace mailing list. It will be interesting to see what sort of interfaces to upcoming emerge out of the CivicSpace community.
I went to Upcoming and found The Personal Democracy Forum was already set up as an event. I was pleased to see that xian had already signed up.
Meetup Jumps the Shark
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 04/13/2005 - 08:39This morning, the Meetup website lists 1,609,193 members worldwide, 193,981 Meetup groups and 5,439 Meetup topics. Digging deeper, you can find that there are currently 924 DFA Meetups, 773 Democratic Party Meetups, and 807 John Kerry Meetups. It also announces, ‘Important: Organizers will soon have to pay a small monthly fee on behalf of their Meetup Groups.’
Following the link, it says, “How much & when? The regular Group Fee is $19/month, but Organizers of current groups get a special 2005 rate of $9/month if they pay now.”
They mention, “How was this decision made? We polled thousands of Organizers, met them in many cities, and listened to you online. We chose the path that keeps Meetup.com most focused on you.”
I remember that survey. It asked how much people would be willing to pay for special services. During the survey, I commented that I thought this was a really bad idea. Meetup has gone on to act on the idea, and the response online seems to be that Meetup has jumped the shark.
So, where am I?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/14/2005 - 10:37It is Monday about 8 am in Austin Texas. I write this partly as a chance to ground myself. I’ve been all over the place for the past several days, meeting diverse collection of people and this post will recount a little bit of these travels.
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OSN2005
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/11/2005 - 09:07I am participating in Online Social Networks 2005, which started on Wednesday. It includes a forum which is mostly text, but has some graphics and links to audio and visual. There are conference calls, gatherings in an IRC channel and other events going on.
I will be a panelist in the ‘Tools for Online Activism’ forum. I look forward to that. For the time being, I’m simply trying to get through all the forum entries and add comments here and there.
