SxDSalon: A group blog on social interaction design

When social search gets personal: ChatRoulette, Peerpong, Aardvark

A couple of items in the news this week got me thinking about the social search space. But not from the usual angle. We have all heard about ChatRoulette by now, and of the random acts of human exhibitionism that take place there. Well, apparently some of those random encounters were too good to let go of. And so some visitors have taken to the a new Missed Connections to find people they met on ChatRoulette. Cue “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for....

When social search gets personal: ChatRoulette, Peerpong, Aardvark

A couple of items in the news this week got me thinking about the social search space. But not from the usual angle. We have all heard about ChatRoulette by now, and of the random acts of human exhibitionism that take place there. Well, apparently some of those random encounters were too good to let go of. And so some visitors have taken to the a new Missed Connections to find people they met on ChatRoulette.Cue "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Yeah, by U2. And maybe that should be ...

Learnings about web ratings systems

“The Wisdom of Crowds” is one of the driving principles of Web 2.0. The idea, explored in James Surowiecki’s influential book, is that decisions made by large numbers of people together are better than decisions that would have been made by any one person or a small group. This principle has powered the wide adoption and success of tools including including Google, collaborative filtering, wikis, and blogs. One common technique, following the Wisdom of Crowds principle, is ...

ChatRoulette, I’m watching you (watching me)

Thus at bottom the message already no longer exists; it is the medium that imposes itself in its pure circulation … the universe of communication … leaves far behind it those relative analyses of the universe of the commodity. All functions abolished in a single dimension, that of communication. That’s the ecstasy of communication. All secrets, spaces and scenes abolished in a single dimension of information. That’s obscenity. The hot, sexual obscenity of...

ChatRoulette, I’m watching you (watching me)

Thus at bottom the message already no longer exists; it is the medium that imposes itself in its pure circulation ... the universe of communication ... leaves far behind it those relative analyses of the universe of the commodity. All functions abolished in a single dimension, that of communication. That's the ecstasy of communication. All secrets, spaces and scenes abolished in a single dimension of information. That's obscenity. The hot, sexual obscenity of former times is succeeded by the col...

Norm(s)!

Over the years as I’ve made a study of online communities and other forms of sociality, I’ve discovered (of course) a lot of other people doing important research work in the field. When we started writing our book I reached out to one such friend, Gary Burnett, a professor of communication and information who’s been doing excellent work in precisely this area. In fact, not two years ago we appeared together on a panel at a Grateful Dead conference at U. Mass where we spoke abo...

ChatRoulette, hall of mirrors

I told myself that I would refrain from posting today, having perhaps posted too much last week. But sometimes a post simply gets stuck, and like a ditty on spin cycle, begins writing itself. There’s naught then to do but wring the thing out. Alongside buzz on Buzz last week there was also the much less polished but in ways more magnetic attraction of tiny video phenom ChatRoulette. There’s little to say about the service itself, for it’s really just a couple w...

ChatRoulette, hall of mirrors

I told myself that I would refrain from posting today, having perhaps posted too much last week. But sometimes a post simply gets stuck, and like a ditty on spin cycle, begins writing itself. There's naught then to do but wring the thing out.Alongside buzz on Buzz last week there was also the much less polished but in ways more magnetic attraction of tiny video phenom ChatRoulette. There's little to say about the service itself, for it's really just a couple webcam windows on a page. But it occu...

There’s Gold in that Heather: my Tummelvision video, and gratitudes

My appearance on last week’s live Tummelvision show with Heather Gold and Kevin Marks is up. We talked about Google’s Buzz, which at the time was only a few days old and not yet “fixed,” and social interaction design applied to conversation tools like twitter. And we took a pre-recorded question from fellow tummler Deb Schultz . I had a blast. Unfortunately, I only barely touched on social interaction design in general. But we applied it in principle to ...

There’s Gold in that Heather: my Tummelvision video, and gratitudes

My appearance on last week's live Tummelvision show with Heather Gold and Kevin Marks is up. We talked about Google's Buzz, which at the time was only a few days old and not yet "fixed," and social interaction design applied to conversation tools like twitter. And we took a pre-recorded question from fellow tummler Deb Schultz . I had a blast. Unfortunately, I only barely touched on social interaction design in general. But we applied it in principle to some examples of interaction on social med...