Mathemagenic

Azeem Azhar / Stefan Glänzer / Max Niederhofer: Does blogging suck?

not many notes as I was reloading

• an interesting study of correlation of blogger characteristics with growth of 26 communities in different countries
• quantitive data (want to see the slides)
• qualitative
  • three types of epitaths ("leaving notes") and correlation with returning
  • mobile blogging: heavy start and then drop-of; if heavy usage is for weeks, then it stays

Nico Lumma "The German Blogosphere - some facts and figures"

• Interesting stats and implications re: German blogs, find presentation

Michael Schuster "Applying Social Network Analysis to a small Weblog Community: Hubs, Power Laws, the Ego Effect and the Evolution of Social Networks"

• community "connections"
  • comments - 40%
  • blogroll - 40%
  • stories - 20%
• incoming links
  • 20% blogs have no links
  • 60% blogs have less then 3 links
• linking is necessary for the discovery?
• community pressure from A-list blogs is something that turns people away: linking practices of A-list bloggers define the interconnectedness of a community

Questions/comments

• Numbers of password-protected blogs
• 10-30% of hosted blogs
• Numbers of weblogs: should they be calculated relative to the population?
• Effects of media attention on growth of weblog numbers?
• many new weblogs, but most drop-out fast
• practices?
• How to encourage people to blog?
• Practices?
• types of bloggers?
• closed communities
• clusters of German blogs are platform based (not in other countries?)
• try to be part of local community and to strengthen it: why professional blogs?
• ask questions better -  communities vs. social pressure

This post also appears on channels BlogTalk and weblog research

Juan J. Merelo / Beatriz Prieto / Fernando Tricas: Blogosphere community formation, structure and visualization

• Maps as projections, multiple projections are possible
• Evolution of communities
  • where and how weblogs travel over time
  • future trajectories

You need to see the presentation for it...

Talked to JJ yesterday, they have some tools available for a use... have so many ideas for joint work...

Markus Oswald / Brigitte Roemmer-Nossek / Erich Gstrein / Markus F. Peschl: Enhancing Blogs with a Dual Interaction Design

• Implementation case: virtual communication among a class of trainees and among their coaches during on-the-job training
  • Two panels in editing modes: topic-based visual navigation + editing window
  • Results
    • Coaches didn't expept the tool (not many, mainly to communicate with trainees, but not between each other), trainees did
    • Weblogs worked better than discussion forum and chat in two previous cases
• The tool also used in other cases

I wonder if success is due to the "dual" design or something else?

• I asked later: seems that it's not much of the interface

Mikel Maron: Weblogs and Location, beyond the limits of physical and virtual space

• Nice ideas and applications for geocoding in blogs
• Location.root for Radio and plug-ins for other tools

Questions/comments

• Hospitality that makes gurus?
• Links vs. content: how they are correlated?
• JJ: mapping communities based on links vs. based on content would give similar results.
• Don't think so (re: links are not only about content, but also sign of relations, which are more than content connections)
• Where would you place you next dollar?
• Brigitte: consulting for organisations
• Dialogue vs. desire of being found: moving weblog as a result of someone finding it
• Anonimity in public vs. intranet (re: Elmine's power differences)

This post also appears on channels BlogTalk and weblog research

Torill Elvira Mortensen: Dialogue in slow motion  –  the pleasure of writing and reading across the web (see notes and links)

All bloggers assume the other

We are hardwired to accept the existence of others and to communicate with them

• Communicating as a need
• Connection with Emergence: sells communicating with each other

What makes us different from sleem molds is the sophistication of our needs and tools we use

Blogs are between oral and written communication: oral immediacy and informality, written persistence and formality

• We expect turn-taking as a given right and not one of the possibilities

We need to start learning to live with different modalities

Tezt as a play between authors and readers: in between blog posts, in the space created by links

• Space between texts could be compared to sidewalks (re: Emergence again + city metaphor ;)
• Blogger strolls slowly through the city: you don't understand neighbourhood by driving through it

You can choose the level and the mode of this game (commenct and trackbacks are for hard-core blog players :)

Loved this talk: as a beautiful interplay of ideas, conversations, examples and themes in the blogosphere

This post also appears on channels BlogTalk and weblog research

Stephanie Hendrick / Therese Örnberg: The blog as an immersive space: Moblogging Jokkmokk 2004 (presentation, handout)

(Co)Presense in weblogs: interaction, immediacy, immersion, intimacy, involvement, individual user preferences

Dispersive presence

• indication of shared space (cognitive blending)
• social interactions
• sensory input
• asynchronious

Blends build the spaces...

Can't wait to see the paper...

Lisbeth Klastrup: 'Live'-writing: weblogs and the coverage of reality

• The web as a reality show...
• Blogs as reality-TV: diary weblogs are interesting as reality-tv
• When and how the web is live?
• liveness - when media dissappear...
• Deixis: language code of liveness, language people use to point to here and now...
  • examples of elements of blogging representing liveness: spelling, posting real-time, lack of body control, etc... -> think of tools to analyse weblogs
• "Liveness" is a stylistic feature and conscious strategy of some blogs

One more paper I want to read.

Elmine Wijnia: Understanding blogs: a communicative perspective (slides)

communicative symmetry between partipants <- ideal speach situation

ideal speech

• equal access (objectivity)
• not power differences (intersubjectivity)
• participants act truthfully (subjectivity)

information flow patterns

• allocution - traditional media
• consultation - traditional web-site
• registration - questionnaires
• conversation - internet forum

Conditions

• possibility to interact
• provide enough context
• caveat: power differences in organisational blogs are real threats to communication

Finally, I've got some understanding of Habermas :) One more to read

Ideas/questions:

Why in so many cases weblog use doesn't go beyond webpublishing?

• Multiple channels
• Do people need the richness?

Tools additions to make rich uses of blogs?

• multiple channels
• awareness of people looking at your weblog
• streaming? (check with Stephanie)
• easy tools are not that easy, making them easier...

See also: notes by Stephanie Hendrick, Therese Oernberg, Elmine Wijnia, others at BlogTalkNotesPanel2

This post also appears on channels BlogTalk and weblog research

Stephan J. Schmidt / Matthias L. Jugel: Bottom up Knowledge Management with Weblogs and SnipSnap (presentation)

These guys do some interesting work with SnipSnap (integrated weblog/wiki solution) in Fraunhofer, but they talked mainly about bottom-up KM (which is kind of "common knowledge" in the blogosphere) and failed explaining the interesting part (what exactly they do, how people are motivated and the rest of details).

Daniel Dögl: "Zoomblox - A Universe Of Topics From Children For Children" (slides)

A great example what could be done with weblogs if you care: weblogging tool for kids, well thought interface, architecture and policies (should be on at www.zoombox.at somewhere autunm 2004).

Jörg Kantel: Turn Your Radio On or Tweaking And Tuning Your Weblog

Funny and entertaining talk on weblogs as an alternative media. Hope the presentation will be online, because it's a lot of interesting things that I don't want to type :)

Jon Hoem: Videoblogs as 'Collective Documentary' (presentation, presentation notes)

Two traditions: vogs (Adrian Miles) and moblogs; lots of interesting stuff after. Since talking with Adrian I'm getting an idea that videoblogs can be actually one step closer to be used than I thought before...

Questions

• I asked what types of user studies they do. As far as I can there is much user studies, most just guided by their own perceptions on what users want...
• What is a critical mass of people you need blogging to move it on in the company? We have to redefine what is critical mass :) Obviousely it's not in numbers...
• Memory: achirves, wikis, documentary - is it unexpored area of blogging?
  

Other notes: Anu Gupta, Martin Roell, wiki: BlogTalkNotesPanel1

This post also appears on channels BlogTalk

Mark Bernstein talked The Social Physics of New Weblog Technologies. Inspiring and very much "hypertext" talk where slides live their own life independently from the talk.

Some highlights (I'm not going to write detailed notes anyway :)

• So far much of weblog research has been trying to convince the academy that weblogs matter. Why not conduct research that matters to weblogs?
• "There is nothing on my PR radar what it more important than blogosphere."
• Fast feedback loop...
• Does blogging changes writers? How?
• Research methods: don't reach for the obvious...
• Fast feedback loop
• client-side architectures - ideal for habits
• server-side architectures - ideal for spontaneity
• Studying practices: daily writing - habit - personal tools
• Going beyond studying novices?
• How much weblog costs: labor is the main costs? Understanding weblog economy
• Ethnography of flame wars
• "If you miss an opportunity to do ethnography the only thing you can do is archaeology"
• Simulation studies on blogrolls; how weblog have resisted evolving to broadcast
• "habitual linking practices"
• "Today's news wrap tomorrow's fish"... what is a way to engage our archives into continues conversations

This post also appears on channels BlogTalk and weblog research

I'm somewhere in between - feel like writing down things and at the same time not wanting to spend time on it since life interactions are so much fun :)

BlogWalk 3.0 went well: lots of new people, good conversations and walking around Vienna make a great mix. It's too late to write a summary, so just notes for myself (sorry for being cryptic):

• more thinking on community discovery
• conversations bounded to a community: social visibility, overlapping reading lists, shared thinking space, expectations and trust
• actions: strong ties, trust, shared space, leadership (re: why weblogs are not good for actions)
• awareness networks vs. action networks
• multiple weblogs or multiple categories?
• pKM action points

See notes by Suw, Adalbert (also photos), Lee, Anu, Markus, Sebastian, Ton, Elmine...

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk