Blogs open doors for developers. Business software developers are learning what game makers have long known: Using Web logs and online tools to gather feedback can help strengthen products--and pull in customers. By David Becker [CNET News.com]
...Blogging has also become an important part of the development process for Dan Bricklin as he works on the SMBmeta specification, his idea for a giant online business directory that would open the Web more to small and medium-sized businesses. Bricklin, co-inventor of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, said his blog and other public communication conduits extend the possibilities for user feedback beyond beta testing, the traditional approach in which developers send early versions of a program to a select group of testers.
"I remember trying really hard to find beta testers by saving all the business cards I collected," said blogging pioneer Bricklin. "We had to find people, call them and beg them to be beta testers and mail them the software. We had to call them every week to see how they were doing.
"A Web log is a simple, inexpensive tool to get communication going and do it so much more efficiently," Bricklin continued. "It's unbelievable how much wider an area you get feedback from. What Web logs do is let there be more serendipity of ideas. I'm already finding bugs and looking at ways to do a better job based on what people have shared with me after reading the blog."...
"It was a conscious plan of communicating to people about what we're doing," said Mitch Kapor. "It's part of a long-term process of building a user community. Every process has its advantages and its disadvantages, but if you have an open process, you can get much better feedback, and you get stimulated by new ideas."...
"If you do this right, you've got early adopters, you've got evangelists, you've got a lot of early support," Kapor said. "The train has left the station and is gathering steam before you do a final release."
The article compares these cases of blog use with existing practices by game developers. My first job in tech was as a video game tester for Activision in high school. Gaming has long involved its customers in the development process, but as online gaming is at the forefront of communities for immersiveness it was a natural to extend this function on the Net.
What the article doesn't mention is the potential use of blogs within the development process, for communication between developers. This is already a vibrant happening within blogspace on open projects and is a natural behind the firewall.
The January sample of Blogmap.net, the first project to map and analyze the social network of an online community over time, is here -- revealing signs of creeping decentralization.
The maps below are of the Friendships of core of the Blog Network as measured by confirmed relationships within Ryze. Pete Kaminski helped with the data collection. Here is Valids Krebs' analysis:
In the 30+ days between December 2002 and January 2003, the Ryze Blog Tribe doubled in size, going from 90 members to 180. How did this change the structure and the centralization of the group?
Initially, we look at the internal structure of the group. We display a link between two Tribe members if, and only if, they both list each other as a "Ryze Friend". On Ryze, as in other on-line communities, friendship links are created with great ease, often someone lists another as a friend before they have even exchanged their first email! To minimize this explosion of 'possible' links, we look at only those ties where both sides have confirmed each other as a 'friend'. Even then, we feel that we have quite a few 'false positives'. But that is the data we have, so we work with it.
Interestingly, the 'core'[all confirmed ties between Tribe members] has not changed much over the period of quick growth. Although the Tribe as a whole grew by 100%, the core only grew by 50%. In December, the founder of the group -- Ross Mayfield, was the main hub in the group. In January he retains that position. All network metrics point to Ross as the leader of the group. Yet, the Tribe is not totally dependent on Ross. A network that is very dependent on one node usually fragments when that node is removed -- best case the network does not fragment, but the average path length between nodes rises noticeably. Neither of these happened when Ross' node was removed [ Sorry Ross, you are not as important as you first appear! ;-) ]. When Ross' node was removed the average path length of either network increased by less than 10% in both cases -- not a significant disruption of the network. The Blog Tribe would go on if Ross picked up his laptop and left. With new members coming in, the average network neighborhood expanded from December to January going from 22.8 to 28.2. Yet, the core, as a percentage of the total network, shrank from 69% to 53%. These signs of 'creeping decentralization' often appear in networks started by nodes who mostly know each other, but then are expanded by nodes known to only a few of the existing members.
The map to the left is the core of the Blog Network in December, just two weeks after its formation. Previously we mapped the Friend links (Friends on Ryze) and Blog links (Blogrolls) of network members. This captured the entirety of the Network and revealed that almost the entire tribe was two horizons (or degrees) from any point in the network -- the power of weak ties.
Another set of maps revealed the centrality of the tribe at its inception and located Network Members within their network of relationships.
The map to the right is the core of the Blog Network in January. Again, these are confirmed ties with a greater probability of a strong tie. Increasing the requirement for what is a relationship, such as basic confirmation, may change the properties of the network.
Zooming in or focusing on a cluster also simply makes it qualitatively useful. From just looking at the maps you can see growth as a moving picture, identify new hubs and relationships that could be formed to complement existing ones.
Within Ryze, a Friendship can mean many things to many people. Confirmed relationships point to some level of communication at the minimum. But at the least, its an explicit declaration. Two people saying they know each other to the world.
In Blogspace, the emergence of Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) XML vocabulary faces a similar challenge in defining what a relationship generically means. Eric Snowdeal points out the etiquitte of relationship declaration, or lack thereof, may be the primary barrier to FOAF reaching critical mass. This is an important point, mostly for our expectations.
FOAF will be widely adopted by the lowest common denominator of use. For example, Mark' Pilgrim's policy of any friend of FOAF is a friend of mine (email me and I'll relate to you). Bulletin Boards for the masses will not be widely used. It will primarily be a tool of organized communities and smaller groups. The rules of 7, 12 & 150 apply and social incentives lead to smaller group forming. Categories of relationships could help, but FOAF will start with smart groups with stronger ties (confirmed) when a purpose is provided. And tight formation of groups within secure environments avoids the slippery slope into the Omnihell of ubiquitous intrusiveness. Smaller groups can form their own etiquitte.
Next week we will broaden the scope and look at the external links of the Blog Network.
Enabling the Whuffie Economy since 2002: Affero's Open Source Reputation Software. Affero combines a peer based reputation system with a commerce system. It enables individuals to rate other individuals and make payments on their behalf. The rating system could be compared to the karma system provided on slashdot, although all member have equal access to rate others. Basically, any person can rate another person's contribution.
Also, the system doesn't come bundled with any particular forum or community platform, so any independent community host can integrate the services and individuals can share reputation across various communities. [Smart Mobs]
What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.
...We are inclined to think that genuine innovators are loners, that they do not need the social reinforcement the rest of us crave. But that's not how it works, whether it's television comedy or, for that matter, the more exalted realms of art and politics and ideas...
Darwin, in a lovely phrase, called it "philosophical laughing," which was his way of saying that those who depart from cultural or intellectual consensus need people to walk beside them and laugh with them to give them confidence. But there's more to it than that. One of the peculiar features of group dynamics is that clusters of people will come to decisions that are far more extreme than any individual member would have come to on his own. People compete with each other and egg each other on, showboat and grandstand; and along the way they often lose sight of what they truly believed when the meeting began. Typically, this is considered a bad thing, because it means that groups formed explicitly to find middle ground often end up someplace far away. But at times this quality turns out to be tremendously productive, because, after all, losing sight of what you truly believed when the meeting began is one way of defining innovation.
Not Your Father's Encyclopedia. Anyone can contribute an article to the Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia that relies solely on volunteers for its content. All that's needed is a little initiative. By Kendra Mayfield. [Wired News]
Wiki power is emerging...
"If you compare the products side by side ... we're not there yet," Wales said. "But a good encyclopedia article is going to be essentially the same today and 15 years from now. We'll catch up. We're not chasing a moving target...I think that over the next few years, it's going to develop into a world-class encyclopedia that will rival the Britannica."
Ben Trott is implementing a way for Moveable Type bloggers to securely connect to other 'friends'. It implements a FOAF (Friend of a Friend) scheme - which goes out and fetches a name, email and homepage URL and stocks it into a cookie. Then all sorts of new ways for blogs to communicate between each other automatically can be facilitated. This is sort of like - 'lite-weight' digital identity and shows that we're starting to go beyond just plan 'linking' to each other.
Of course having true identity servers is the ideal, but let's just hope that this journey to identity is not over, but just beginning.
Persistent digital ID's is a foundation building block needed for social networking and what I call 'the mesh'. Ben is starting to implement FOAF as a way for Moveable Type end-users to figure out who's commenting, linking and is part of one's inner social network. Once that 'inner group' has been ascertained, THEN it's time to do cool, new things with 'these people', their comments and other constants that are embedded in their blogs.
The most exciting thing is what comes out of all this.
Connecting people together (like Ryze and xxx) is one of the elements of infrastructure we need to build new kinds of on-line communities. Knowing who your friends, family and colleagues 'are' - come sright after knowing who YOU are!
Hopefully the FOAF API Ben is implementing will evolve to support open standard that others can build on top of and continue the spread of 'the mesh.
What do others think about this? I find Technorati even more useful given this handy bookmarklet I found on Teledyn. Here's how it works. Bookmark this link (In Internet Explorer 6, just drag and drop it on your "links" bar). Then click the new bookmark while reading some page to get a pop-up window of what other blogs are saying about the site you're viewing. [Seb]
I have been using this for a couple of days now...really useful for discovering and tracking conversations.
Tony Perkins responed to some comments on his post in Always On:
Thanks for the comments so far. Our goal is to find a diversity of bloggers representing the various always-on industries, geographic locations, and professionaql diciplines. I therefore enrourage anyone fitting these descriptions to email me directly through our email system. That is, click on my name, then click on "email" in my profile. AO is based upon freedom and diversity of expression. We have a simple rating system which will allow our readers to tall us what they think of different bloggers and blogs. The cream will therefore rise to the top. Give AO a try! We would be happy to entertain qualified bloggers, and throw them to our members.
This is encouraging. One of the early criticisms of Always On seems to be false. It may end up being a meritocratic community.
Tony Perkins of Red Herring officially launched the Always On Network today. Its a media company thats attempting to capture the rising tide of blogging. Its a free membership community site that aggregates news and will offer celebrity blogging spots to tech execs while allowing commenting from members.
The blogging community may at first resist the bastardization of the blogging medium. Always On is a closed community similar to LiveJournal, but differs by its broadcast and comment format. Its point-to-multipoint, not multi-point to multi-point. No RSS syndication, just the remote possibility of links.
It does invite open feedback and portends wider use of commenting and community by online media properties. But the value of weblog is editorial, and Always On seems to want to keep it in the hands of professionals and occasionally celebrities.
But the message is of value to all. Always On bridges blogging into a new community. Some great people will discover blogging, at least in rough concept, through this site. This is a good thing.
Where klogging meets moblogging 2. -- The deeper effects will come when it changes how people think about memory, privacy, co-working, and place.
Moblogging has the potential easily capture contextualized data. It may even enhance the value of personal interaction to eclipse costs of deploying people. This could be as simple as the decision to buy a conference's educational materials vs. send someone to experience the conference and contextualize it.
Or in the grander scheme unbundle the call center. There service is a commodity, supported at the cost of $65 per hour per employee, to the detriment of satisfaction. A portion of support could be unbundled and armed with Moblogging and other tools -- and redistributed to the field. The value of knowledge gained, beyond customer and employee satisfaction benefits, could justify the otherwise extravegance of actually providing help.
RSS Classifieds. rss classifieds. Rusty Coats: "Most of the RSS community is focused on content. That's great; so was the early Web. But feeding classified ads to aggregators is the next obvious step, and will prove to be hugely profitable for newspapers -- or whoever decides to do it first." [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
This is a real - rubber hits the road - pragmatic usage of RSS. Certainly a candidate for another 'micro-content' type.[Marc's Voice]
But the point is that its not content. Its a micro-service. This differs from a Web Service, which is machine-to-machine. A micro-service is machine-with-customer service conveyed via RSS.
What I found interesting about the initial LJ stats (thanks again, Seb) was that here you had about 1 million people engaged in the process of blogging within a relatively closed community. Although still dwarfed by blogging (Blogger alone has over 1 million users); its significant, simple, valuable to its users and growing. The demographic difference, the relative youth of LJ, compared to bloggers, was equally striking.
So here's my supposition: LJ is a closed community from which insular communication is an emergent property. Blogging platforms provide open communication from which community is an emergent property.
Since LJ is a community first (to join you have to be invited by an existing LJer), it provides the social infrastructure to support new and young bloggers. That coupled with the founding communities youth may explain its demographics. Just as LJ can learn from blogging about open communication, blogging can learn from LJ about community (and deploy mechanisms like Blogbuds for supportive ties).
But is that the real story? I contacted Eric Hancock, who mirrors his blog to both LJ and Radio. Eric is bridging two communities, some would call a community straddlers, perhaps the most valuable role according to social network theory.
I originally started posting to LiveJournal because a friend of mine keeps a journal there. After a while, I started reading more and more journals. LJ has an interesting community; very social, pretty interesting. There are nice 'blogging tools for LJ (I use iJournal, a nice, little client for MacOS X), as well as tools for Radio Userland to cross post automatically.
Eric provided a How to Do This:
Radio ships with a Manilla-Blogger bridge. It posts to anything that supports the Blogger API. I think, if you were so inclined, the Manilla-Blogger bridge could post to LJ, too.
Everyone has their own opinions of different communities and differences are good. But if you are inclined to bridge communities and expose differences its even better.
Kathleen Goodwin discusses the implications of weblogs as business tools [Meet the B-Blog]. The beauty of the weblog is that it is extremely cheap compared to any toher form of collaboration. But, does it have enough features to do the job? [MarketingFix]
The blogging in business meme is picking up. Here are the applications of blogging the article highlights:
B-blogs are highly strategic, here-to-stay desktop tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Think of the potential for your e-newsletter strategies:
Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation.
You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services.
Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts.
The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls!
Dave Winer suggests the You Know Me button added to pages with discussion-group features, is essentially an opt-in cookie that allows the user to manage the threads they want to follow. Like Ryze does, it should also open a set of communications options, such as "Mail me" new messages and links to instant messaging (which would then be integrated into the page -- here is Marc's emerging structure, as well). [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]
Ross Mayfield posted a graph on his site showing the age distribution of LiveJournal users (via LiveJournal Stats). That inspired me to look at the data for the ageless project. Though the sampling is obviously much smaller (ageless has less than 1,400 member sites), it's interesting how the age distribution differs. It appears the typical LiveJournal blogger is considerably younger than the typical 'ageless' blogger (not all ageless sites are blogs, though most of them are).
David Galbraith: "The three most successful eCommerce sites in terms of number of paid subscribers are Classmates, Match.com and Ancestry.com - this is not surprising, they are all about networks of people and so is the Internet."
James Hong: "I have a theory that the only companies that make money on the net are the ones that serve as 'routers' between two nodes in the decentralized space we call the web."
David Galbraith: Weblogs and bio's:. "In order to link weblogs to bios I am proposing a blogroll format of $name ($blogname): $one_line_bio (maximum 150 characters total). Where this becomes the headline link to either an XML bio or 'about me' page."
Did you know that LiveJournal is probably the largest weblog service around? Their users seldom read weblogs outside LiveJournal, which is what makes them less visible to outsiders. Here's a company profile from late 2002 which states that
LiveJournal boasts a total of 782,000+ users. Of these users, 64% are female, 93% are free accounts, and a large majority of the users are between 15 and 21 years of age. The 729,000 free accounts are made possible because of the 37,000 users that pay. When a user pays, they are contributing a little over $2 a month to pay for LiveJournal and the extra features they have access to.
In case you want to see the impressive growth curve, here's a little zipped Excel file for you: LiveJournalStats.zip, based on the data here. (Scroll down to line 625.) I've estimated that if their membership continues to double every year, their user base will surpass in number the population of Canada around 2008.
I don't know where the other 16,000 subscribers went, but its close to being $1M in revenue at 200% CAGR. Expect AOL, Earthlink and MSN to go after this proposition this year with their declining volume of dialup users. But at the $2 price point and 5% penetration, thats only a $48M revenue stream for AOL. So look for more features; the question is how isolationist their implementations will be.
A week ago I thought that we might see an uptick in the slope of the growth of Weblogs.com activity, as measured by the high water mark, in coming months. All it took was one little Supreme Court case to do it. The site hit a new high water mark yesterday that was more than 100 weblogs higher than the previous mark (during the MacWorld SF 2003 keynote; this is a hint that increased activity on existing blogs is a major driver of the high water mark). The figure of merit is now 2.8, back to where it was in October.
Right now its expimental. You can contribute your posts on this topic either through trackback or manually. Later I will let the whole Network know. If you have some old or new posts that relate to the Network, please post them on the exchange.
This is a great micro-service that fits an unmet need -- aggregating conversations. If you have trackback (still don't know how to do this in Radio), posting to the composite blog is automated. If you don't you can manually refer to the post on your weblog.
I am setting up a Topic Exchange for the Blog Network. Any Tribe/Network members interested in occasionally contributing posts that relate to the activities concepts of the network?
I got sick and tired of clarifying if the contents of email I send are public or not. This question is a natural when you are in blogspace. So I added the following line to my email signature:
this email is: [ ] blogable [ x ] ask first [ ] private
Jupitermedia Corporation today announced that its Jupiter Research division will be the first research advisory firm to offer dedicated research analyst Weblogs. The new Web site at features Weblogs authored by senior Jupiter Research analysts and will offer timely access to analysis on breaking news, events and announcements. Each analyst will keep a frequently updated Weblog that will include interesting links, running commentary, personal thoughts and essays providing thought provoking insight that will enhance Jupiter Research's products.
"The addition of the Weblogs allows us the opportunity to engage our clients in new ways and to share our insight with the world," said Jupiter Research Director Michael Gartenberg. "Launching the Weblogs continues Jupiter Research's history of covering, as well as embracing new Internet technologies," said Gartenberg.
Oddly they've even felt the need to start a weblog covering Online Advertising and Marketing - I mean whose going to read that? ;-) [MarketingFix]
One of my consulting clients and a friend of mine who is starting a new company share the same challenge. They are both startups looking to launch a new website and I pursuaded them to launch weblogs instead. The reason isn't just that its damn simple and cheap. Its the externalities of the process. When someone is engaged in blogging they are learning by doing, the tacit is made explicit. And they aren't doing it alone. No matter how niche their focus is they will find themselves in conversation clusters, perhaps with potential customers and partners. And these conversations, their words and their link structures permiate the web to attract searchers outside their sphere.
Dan Bricklin provides some great examples of how small businesses can use weblogs. Startups have even better reasons, as they usually have unique entreprenurial and expert voices. They have a real chance for, dare I say, thought leadership, as well as contributing to the diversity of the medium. I am reccommending to them that they start with a collaborative blog, where many employees are contributing posts. At first this may seem risky. Words can be damaging. But with all the electronic modes of communication, most any words can end up in the public sphere. And its better to have a dialogue on propriety early. A startup collaborative weblog provides an opportunity to build a culture that is conscious of what it shares while encouraging sharing.
The initial opportunity for these startups is to create something dynamic and valuable to engage the world. But once the process of production takes root, participants will demand internal weblogging. At that time both companies will have grown a little and have more need for internal sharing. And the real benefits will take hold.
Shared consciousness is fuzzy stuff, but what we know truly matters. Blogging is a huge part of the new social fabric that is knitting itself all around the world of ends that comprises the Web.
I wrote about that in my Release Early Release Often post back in June 2001. There's a matrix there, borrowed from John Seely Brown, that sorts explicit and tacit knowledge into personal and social quadrants. What makes blogs so powerful, I think, is that they feed socially held tacit knowledge (what we know) with an abundance of explicit (what I know) stuff.
Here's what JSB said, long before weblogs showed up:
In essence the Web augments the knowledge dynamics of a region, increasing its diversity (serendipity) and expanding its learning resources by leveraging local expertise — in a lightweight way — for mentoring. More generally, it enhances the fluid boundaries between knowledge production and knowledge consumption and between the local and the virtual. The Web helps to build a rich fabric that combines the small efforts of the many with the large efforts of the few. It enables the culture and sensibilities of the region to evolve, not only by enriching the diversity of available information and expertise, but it tightens the feedback loops of bootstrapping. It increases the intellectual density of cross linkages. And it enables learning to happen everywhere‹a learning ecology. And the lurking (or informal benchmarking) that happens in local hangouts can now get augmented by the Web, one feeding the other. In other words, a self-catalytic system starts to emerge reinforcing and extending the core competencies of the region.
He goes on to predict weblogs...
...This is also, I believe, the idea behind smart mobs, moblogging and the transformation of companies from the forts they were to the social organizations they have to become if the best-learning (and best-teaching) employees are going to bother working for them...[The Doc Searls Weblog]
Good Experience: The Good Experience Review of Bits, 2002/2003. The biggest technology story of 2002, in my opinion, was the exponential increase in the number of bits and bitstreams engaged by Net users worldwide. Not just sp-m mail, which got the most attention, but all bitstreams. [Tomalak's Realm]
6:25:31 PM comment []
Blog Tribe Grows
The Blog Tribe is now listed as one of the largest networks on Ryze. 164 members. Gotta get that next map out.
10:42:31 AM comment []
Job for Smart Mobs
China blocks weblogs This disturbs me more than blocking sites. Its blocking social networks that form a social society.
Books by Duncan Watts, Malcolm Gladwell, Albert-László Barabási, and Mark Buchanan have all popped up on All Consuming. But although we are talking a blue streak about small worlds, scale-free networks, connectors, social internetworking, and the strength of weak ties, I have a feeling we're still mostly preaching to the choir -- namely, each other... I can't wait to see how the blogosphere will transform -- and be transformed by -- the worlds of law, government, journalism, medicine, science, and the arts. [Jon Udell]
The two-way Web is being printed on HTML pages, distributed over the RSS network, and woven together with links. The WYSIWYG writing capability that I saw in the Netscape and Microsoft mail/news clients five years ago, and that Ingo and Greg are drawing attention to again, still isn't woven into the fabric of the two-way Web the way it needs to be...
My concern, rather, is that we'll get hung up once again on applications and protocols, and miss the big picture...
...It's about the evolution of our species toward shared consciousness. When I started tinkering with the then-new Radio UserLand 8, about a year ago, I got fired up again with the vision that had inspired my book. I saw, in the emerging blogosphere, a next opportunity to reach critical mass -- by which I mean a world in which transparency and information-sharing are the rule rather than the exception...
So why worry? We inhabitants of the blogosphere are living in a kind of a ghetto. My social networking experiment last May demonstrated how clubby this world is, and I concluded the writeup with a plea for diversity:
There is a certain sameness to a lot of the blogrolls I see. Many of those first attracted to blogging share interests in software and networking. To a first approximation, blogspace today is a community of like-minded people. But we're starting to see hives emerge. Among Radio bloggers, for example, clusters of lawyers and academics have appeared.
It's useful to identify yourself with a cluster of like-minded people. It may be even more useful to locate clusters of differently-minded people whose activities complement your own. Jenny Levine, for example, is a gateway to a world of librarians who see information technology very differently than hardcore techies do.
...[cites a referral log]...
These are email referrals from (mainly, I presume) librarians who read about my LibraryLookup project in the Search Engine Watch newsletter, or were referred to it by friends who saw that newsletter. These folks are probably not normally readers of weblogs, and certainly not writers of them. This was a crossover event.
Jon makes some significant points I tried to make lately. The best bloggers have yet to blog. Tapping into other communities outside the blogosphere through weak ties brings numbers and diversity. Weak ties form strong ties, virtual or in-person. The tools and perception of networks will grow, but this fundamentally about the building of a network society.
The code parses a starting URL builds a map matching links to URL feeds using several heuristics. The rational is that if you have an RSS feed you are likely a blogger therefore you are included in the map. This does exclude some notable sites and may include some non-bloggers but it gives a pretty good initial picture.
This is the first image map of my local neighborhood to a depth of three links removed. Now that I have all this information at my finger tips the interesting thing is what can I do with it and what other relationships can I start to determine and visualize.
Physical space and blogspace are converging, one could say, and people are trying to figure out why.
Moblogging [Joi Ito] constantly transmits your physical presence to your weblog. Which is damn cool, but I hesitate to transmit my presence to everyone. My Mom subscribes to this blog and yesterday she learned I was heading to MacWorld and emailed me to drop off some coffee on my way. That's fine and kind of cool. But I am not ready to defend myself against Moblog crime -- revealing presence can be a weakness. I need access control on my blog, and not just for Moblogging (Joi notes that most rely on obscurity)
Peter Merholz's post on blogging media by geography (like Gawker), prompted Dan Lyke to open a discussion on hiking and blogging. As Adinaput it, "Dan Lyke suggested a geo-linked hiking blog: "a big collaborative map that'd have information that no single map publisher can put out right now" (also see Blogmapper, which lets you associate blog entries with hot spots on a map, and Blogchalking). Euan has created a private blog to record his hikes. Adina also noted, Other nifty applications would turn this around and create blog entries for a place -- a spot on a hiking trail or a restaurant.
Something similar already exists, originating from the GPS hobbyist world -- Geocaching.
The sport where YOU are the search engine.
A GPS device and a hunger for adventure are all you need for high tech treasure hunting. Here you can find the latest caches in your area, how to hide your own cache, and information on how to get started in this fun and exciting sport...
Geocaching is a relatively new phenomenon. Therefore, the rules are very simple:
1. Take something from the cache
2. Leave something in the cache
3. Write about it in the logbook
Where you place a cache is up to you.
I have actually been on a Geocache hike. You look up a cache page on the site where you read about the hike, coordinates and goodies. Then use your GPS to find it and add something to the cache. Then when you are back you log your experience at the cache's page. It was a great adventure to bring my kid on.
Geocaching is huge: there are over 25,000 caches and 65,000 registered users. Not bad for an adventure game.Geocaching.com makes its money by being a source for gear (Market research firm Allied Business Intelligence projects that the global sales for recreational GPS equipment will rise from just over $2 billion this year to $2.5 billion by 2004 and more than $2.7 billion in 2006 [Merc]) and recently by planning brand corporate events. What works about this model is that it doesn't get in the way of conversations.
There is a large network of active geocachers who are already, in effect, blogging. The opportunity for people experimenting with new geoblogging concepts is creating real activities like geocaching. But even further, to tap in and serve this existing community.
Taking the picture (and hence not pictured) Paul Peissner
The second annual Macworld bloggers lunch was a success. Old friends caught up with one another, I met some folks that I've only read online, and we enjoyed a break from the crazy show floor at the Yerba Buena Gardens. We apologize for anyone that we left back at the convention center shortly after 1PM. We were a hungry bunch. We will have to catch you next year. [Jason Shellen]
Great to see Doc and Phil again, meet Jason in person and meet new _real_ people.
The blog buddy-system has me introducing new bloggers to old ones. What's great about the culture of blogging is the willingness to help others. But what stinks about it is self-styled placement in a hierarchy that doesn't exist. Luckily there is more of the former than the latter.
Look, nobody cares how long you have been blogging or what kind of traffic you have. We are not competing for audiences nor mass acclaim. In absence of a reputation system nothing keeps these egos in check. Don't get me wrong, when you do and build over time its an accomplishment. But please remember you are creating a culture, and culture shouldn't be a barrier.
Today I launched a buddy-system for bloggers at the Blog Tribe. And the response has been amazing.
Lots of experienced bloggers have signed up as Mentors. Tech execs, programmers, writers, career counselors, marketeers, people who ran BBS' in the old days, academics, authors and consultants. Located in SF, Seattle, New York, DC, England, Germany, France or Argentina? You want help in French, German, Japanese or Spanish? We've got it. Heck, I could even wrestle up an Estonian if need be.
The Buddies who seek to be matched with Mentors are a diverse group as well, and the initial matching will be manual. As expected, we have more Mentors than Buddies initially, as it will take time to reach out to new people, especially in the Ryze community. We all have a friend who we would like or think should start a weblog. Here's your chance to tell them about a new resource (real people) to help them get it going. Have them email me to connect.
Back when I was a Boy Scout camp counselor we used the buddy system for teaching swimming. Nobody in the pool without a buddy. And when the wistle blew and we yelled "BUDDY CHECK" everyone was supposed to hold their buddy's hand high. That way, less people were unaccounted for, let alone drowned. Strength in numbers, one at a time.
Speed things up. Projects can be executed in a day, updated in near real time.
Scale large. Big networks, with hundreds of thousands of people, can be mapped.
Itirate. Time lapse studies show a network's dynamics. Now longitudinal trends and changes can be revealed.
Ingratiate SNA. SNA tools become polite, less intrusive by using existing digital artifacts and debris.
More, better, faster... So the net amplfies SNA both quantitatively and qualtitatively...
The world of microcontent has a role in this....That's why I want blogging and metablogging tools to embrace microcontent metadata and substructures; the better to support new contexts. [a klog apart]
One of the challenges in getting people from truely different walks of life to take up blogging is finding a mentor. Most new technologies require informal network support. While blogging tools are becoming easier to use and you can find help on a message board, its something else to have someone to give you technical or cultural advice from the outset.
With the Blog Tribe we have lots of people interested in starting weblogs from very different backgrounds and locations. I am thinking of starting a Blog-buddy System, which lists tribe members willing to mentor new bloggers. While this would be a great cultural practice in blogspace in general, we have a unique opportunity to help the Ryze community and demonstrate its effects to blogspace at large.
This is hardly a new concept, my daughter had a buddy in kindergarden from the 5th grade, and they are great friends.
If you are a tribe member and would be interested in potentially being a Blog-buddy, please email me or note so in the comments field.
The social network map is in Daypop's top 10. What's interesting is how this meme is being spread through its own social network pattern, beginning with Tribe Members, through hubs like Dave, Meg, Doc and SmartMobs, and now tipping to popular, but not mainstream, distribution. This is the tipping point in action.
But let's talk Gonzo Marketing for a moment, is this engaging in conversations? The feedback is still coming predominantly from those with stronger ties, Tribe Members, just one degree of seperation away. But the feedback is great and dialogues will ensue.
Here are some of the best comments in order of which we may enhance the project:
Euan on Data Collection: I was writing on my own blog that the internet needs more cartographers and less architects! Is there any way the rest of us could extend the map?
Ton Zijlstra makes the key point that we need a moving picture: It would be great if we could make sort of 'snapshots' of the networks as time proceeds. But I think this is only feasible if you can automate the data collection process further.
Andrea posts eloquently on the need for directionality: One aspect may still need some tweaking: The representation makes no difference between one-way relationships and those that are based on reciprocity. Someone who has all the luminaries on his blogroll but whose contribution for whatever reason is not very visible will seem just as connected as someone else who is widely read and recognized.
seb further comments on directionality: Horizons are not the same depending in which direction you follow the arrows. If you have a big inbound horizon you are highly visible and possibly influential. Many people know you. If you have a big outbound horizon you see a lot of landscape. You know many people. The two are different.
Ben Trott is 
