Glancing - a software application from Matt Webb of Interconnected.  A small application that makes your computer a more social place allowing for a simple social transaction like glancing that can lead to greater bonding within a group.  I like the concept - and the metaphor of agency for a computer rather than a robot. 

"Glancing: An application to allow ultra-simple, non-verbal communication amongst groups of friends online.

It's a desktop application that you use with a group of other people. It lets you "glance" at them in idle moments, and it gives all of you an indication of the activity of glancing going on.

A group is intended to be less than a dozen people. A person may belong to several groups simultaneously by running separate instances of Glancing. Groups are started deliberately, probably by using a www interface, and people are told the group secret so they can join (a "secret" is just a shared password).

Concept

I was thinking about this about three months ago... We already have quite a lot of social software, but it's all fairly blatant. What's the smallest scale of social interaction that can take place online?

I'm fairly convinced that a social group needs many scales of interaction to remain healthy and bonded. I'd heard of transactional analysis and it seemed to have a good model for the social interaction thing: a social interaction is an exchange of "strokes", and at its simplest level, that stroke is just saying: "I'm OK, you're OK".

It's an assertion of presence: "Here we are".

The analogy I'm thinking of here is a group of people sitting working at their computers. Every so often, you look up and look around you, sometimes to rest your eyes, and other times to check people are still there. Sometimes you catch an eye, sometimes not. Sometimes it triggers a conversation. But it bonds you into a group experience, without speaking.

Would it be possible to build software like this? That's what Glancing is intended to do (there are more implicit assumptions in this): To model a group of people online who occassionally glance at each other, which is a small social transaction. This is done using a group model which stores the glance state: High if people have been glancing recently, low otherwise.

The idea is if you give people software which can carry their interactions, they'll bootstrap the social stuff off of that. So people will interpret for themselves what 'high' or 'low' glance state means, and what function is fulfils for their group when it's online."

Sounds really neat !

I'm thinking of an office environment - your boss makes a ridiculous comment - and you must keep a straight face - glance at your group of buddies online - and hey you might just feel you're not the only one.  Or your colleague's getting some flak - and you just want her/him to know, i'm with you, pal - and you can't find the right words for it - send him a glance. 

Not sure though that i'm entirely comfortable with the term Glancing for this application - glancing can have negative connotations, often vitiating the I'm OK, You're Ok position.  Not sure too if this is universally true or more specific to Indian culture.