Liz Lawley leadsa a discussion of issues around how we organize ourselves online. She points out the the hostility toward conversation built into the architecture of this room. She points out that a significant portion of the audience consists of people who see one another at conferences frequently, while the rest are not a part of this permanent floating conversation. (She’s posted a bunch of quotes relevant to the topic on her blog.)

Tina Sharkey of AOL says they try to avoid getting into the middle of the conversations.

Joe Hurd formerly VP of BizDev at Friendster, asks if social software is very much a US thing. Friendster never really took off in Japan, he says, because there is a cultural reluctance to put a lot of information about yourself online, and even more reluctance to make your social network available online.

Tina: Comfort is such an important factor.

Q: The new language of IM. which I see my daughter using, excludes me.

Q: (me) Liz began with a quote from Churchill about us shaping our buildings and then our buildings shaping us. So, how can we shape the software so it doesn’t exclude entire cultures, especially within a global company? Or is it that software has to have some shape, so someone should be excluded?

A: Pay attention to what your users want. Give your users the tools so they can shape their space. [Ok, but the shaping happens at a fundamental level: You have a profile or you don’t. You can use multiple screen names or you can’t.]

Tina says rather than aggregating content, we can aggregate people and the content will follow. E.g., Stowe mentions LastFM (?) that lets you find other people with similar music tastes. [And social groups have formed at del.icio.us around people who use the same tags.]

Liz: There’s also the tyranny of the crowds: “Everyone is linking to that so I should also.”

Q: Large communities are fragile. What keeps communities robust and dynamic? And if you look at Xanga – 23M users, but no one talking with anyone else – it’s not a community of affirmation.

Joe: You keep giving new capabilities, e.g., photo uploading.,

Liz: My students say that a lot of these sites are fun for two weeks, but then there’s nothing left to do there. LiveJournal works because there’s always new content. [Is FaceBook an exception?] [Tags: corante SocialSoftware CoranteSSA]

[Tags: corante SocialSoftware CoranteSSA]

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