Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Monday, September 15, 2003The Evolution of Online Presence
One of the reasons I've been so quiet....
One of the reasons I've been so quiet recently is I've been working on a piece of software called Glancing. It's intended to enable, online, the everyday, background noise of affirming social transactions amongst groups of friends. It's by no means finished, but I've got far enough to know that it's pretty much going to work, technically and socially.
I've written a short hypertext on the rationale and thoughts behind it, covering the theory and details of the functionality, interface and purpose: Glancing notes. It's a bit of a braindump, and I'll welcome any feedback (also pointers to places that need clarification/explanation) or thoughts.
This is pretty interesting in that Glancing recognizes that there are different scales of social interaction. By helping to provide a escalation path, conversations are likely to start spontaneously; build to a more intensive, structured engagement; and then diminish. It also acknowledges how the context of group size -- and control over the composition of the group -- impacts the nature of conversation.
Our own project -- the Water Cooler -- incorporates similar concepts. However, our conversation-starter tool is aimed at a slightly higher level of social engagement (more than IM but less than a Groove collaboration intensity) for a narrower audience (entrepreneurial problem solvers).
