Drivel:  I've been thinking more about weblogs as being the way to form communities.  Here is a defintion of community by Derek Powazek, author of Design for Community:  The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places:

"Web communities happen when users are given tools to use their voice in a public and immediate way, forming intimate relationships over time."

Unfortunately, we don't get to redefine the word "community."  A community is mostly commonly defined by its location, structure, process, values, and mores in sociological terms.  Communities on the Internet lack many of these attributes primarily because they are focused on a specific topic.

7:35:17 PM   comments ()  

Drivel:  I met with a friend yesterday who does consulting for software companies and enterprises.  We started talking about consumer software.  He believes that there isn't any money in consumer software because all of the major, mainstream categories of software are locked up by Microsoft, AOL, and Intuit.  He classified these categories as productivity applications ala MS Office, Internet access and online services ala AOL, and financial applications ala Intuit.  He beleives that any software outside of these areas will eventually get sucked into them and has a limited market potential in terms of installation bases of one to three million users.  We started talking about Radio and the potential of Radio to turn the Web into a writing environment for the consumer.  "So what if it does?", he said.  He was looking for the value proposition.  What is the value to consumers of writing and consuming other people's writing?  Is it pure entertainment value?  What is the value of the community aspects?  How do you define a community through writing?  For me, it has been pure entertainmnet so far.  It is fun and it feels good to write.  I have received marginal value from other blog writers that are interested in the same things I am because there is still no way to really connect with these other people and seek out more people with similar interests and values to grow a community.  More thoughts on this later.  This is interesting.

11:42:40 AM   comments ()