This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. It also comes from the discussion of the study results and surely needs more work.  Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

Next to non-personal relationships, blogging also enables the building true human connections;

..not pretend or unreal or virtual relationship, the real relationship, where you build up trust and affect and those powerful things that make people work together. Online. (Euan)

What exactly helps to establish and maintain personal relations via blogging? The insights from the research on strong and weak ties (Granovetter, 1973; see also Haythornthwaite, 2005, for a summary of the follow-up research) indicate that the type and frequency of interaction, as well as the number of channels used for it, are important, since stronger ties include frequent and more intimate interaction via a number of channels. While the study results do not provide data on changes in the frequency of interactions between bloggers when their relationships strengthen, they do indicate that those with stronger connections interact on multiple occasions, use different channels and communicate about personal issues as well as professional ones.

An additional view on the factors in the process of growing and maintaining a relationship is provided by Bonnie Nardi (2005), who draws on the research on instant messaging and face-to-face communication (Nardi, Whittaker, & Bradner, 2000; Nardi et al., 2002) to propose that communication includes relational aspects as well as information exchange. The relation between a pair of people creates “a state of communicative readiness in which fruitful communication is likely” (Nardi, 2005, p.91) and includes three dimensions of connection: affinity, commitment and attention. Those dimensions are recognisable in the study presented in this chapter.

According to Nardi affinity is achieved through activities of social bonding – touching, eating and drinking together, sharing experiences in a common space and informal communication – that make people feel connected with each other.

Three of the social bonding activities appear in the data. Although not easily supported by blogging itself, eating and drinking together is clearly important: restaurants are mentioned frequently as a place to meet other bloggers, “Having a coffee” is an important part of microblogging updates and it is food reviews that bloggers mention when talking about Bill Ives, not other items from his weekend blogging list that include, according to the header of his weblog, “art, music, travel, and food”.

Informal communication is supported by the personal nature of blogging: the freedom to choose what to write provides enough opportunities to share jokes, talk about hobbies or “pontificate about life, the universe and such” (Euan). KM bloggers refer to “personal details” on weblogs that help to get to know others, but those serve as conversation starters as well (it is similar in other studies, e.g. bloggers in the study by Lori Kendall (2007) report that posts with something amusing or trivial received more comments than others).

KM bloggers talk about their experiences of connecting to others in terms of sharing spaces: Dave refers to getting to know others in a way similar to how it works in a “common room in a university”, Brett talks about blogging as casual conversations at a water-cooler, Ton talks about “shared spaces” online, neighbourhoods and global villages, Martin appreciates others “coming” to his “place” to leave comments… My own blogging experiences resulted in similar feelings and multiple attempts to explain what might create them (for example, this one).

Commitment is another dimension that Nardi introduces as important. In the case of KM bloggers, expressing commitment to others is manifested through the effort of reading their weblogs (“they took the effort to read what I write”, Luis), repeated interaction and maintaining their own presence via weblogs and other channels.

Finally, capturing and monitoring attention includes, for example, eye contact or negotiating availability of others. In the case of bloggers, linking is often perceived as a sign of attention, and considerable effort goes into monitoring incoming links that help to find new bloggers or keep track of fragments of conversations between weblogs. While weblogs are rarely used explicitly for negotiating availability for an interaction (this is where other channels come into play), they do provide an opportunity to indicate one’s interest in communicating, via comments or linking to a weblog, and leave it open as to if, when and how much one wants to engage in a further exchange.

In creating relationships, publishing and interaction modes of blogging play a role. For non-personal relations to emerge and be sustained, the publishing mode of blogging is enough; in this case, uses of a weblog are informational. For establishing and maintaining personal relations, both publishing and interaction are important. Interaction through weblog conversations helps to develop and renew relations, but it does not happen all the time. Publishing mode (both, reading and writing) provides a backdrop for a relationship: sharing ones’ updates to the network without needing to worry about “spamming” others, developing knowledge of each other, feeling that others are “present” or monitoring when the right moment occurs for an interaction. The power of blogging in respect to networking seems to come from an opportunity to combine two modes with one tool.

***

Granovetter, M. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. Americal Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.

Haythornthwaite, C. (2005). Social networks and internet connectivity effects. Information, Communication and Society, 8(2), 125-147. doi:10.1080/13691180500146185 (public .pdf)

Kendall, L. (2007). “Shout Into the Wind, and It Shouts Back” Identity and interactional tensions on LiveJournal. First Monday, 12(9).

Nardi, B., Whittaker, S., & Schwarz, H. (2002). NetWORKers and their activity in intensional networks. Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 11(1-2), 205-242. doi:10.1023/A:1015241914483 (public .pdf)

Nardi, B. A. (2005). Beyond bandwidth: dimensions of connection in interpersonal communication. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 14(2), 91-130. doi:10.1007/s10606-004-8127-9 (public .pdf)

Nardi, B. A., Whittaker, S., & Bradner, E. (2000). Interaction and outeraction: instant messaging in action. In Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 79-88). doi:10.1145/358916.358975

• Papers on awareness
• #KM4Dev: Cynefin and dealing with complexity
• Enabling management oversight in corporate blog space

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

A closer look at the role of blogging in supporting networking between bloggers indicates two different uses of weblogs in that respect: weblogs are used for publishing and for interaction.

When attracting or finding others, getting to know them from a distance or staying in touch, the roles between blog writers and blog readers are distinct: bloggers write, readers learn from that. The relation is similar to one of a book authors and their audience: no need for reciprocity and direct interaction appear as an advantage, allowing bloggers to write “to the world”, since their readers can pick and choose what to read and what to do with it. The coverage of one’s life and thinking in a weblog is similar to the one of celebrities done by mass media; it helps to learn about the blogger, but does not really help to build a relationship.

When it comes to bonding through interaction blogging is different. During his interview Martin talks about weblogs as “alive, living, published now”, for him “it’s a conversation going on instead of publishing exchange” that gives the feeling that “people are there”. To have such conversation both reading and writing are essential; bloggers and their readers become participants. While some bloggers are more likely to “reach out” than others, once conversation started it is about give and take that comes from all parties involved, reciprocity and direct interaction become essential.

The study results indicate that blogging supports both, publishing and interaction. Blogging as personal publishing is about broadcasting to broad and often unknown audiences allowing efficient communication, while blogging as interaction is about engagement with specific others that builds shared understanding and enables bonding. While those two functions result in positioning blogging as a hybrid genre that has elements of personal webpages and asynchronous communication tools (Herring et al., 2004) I would argue that weblogs might be used as both at the same time.

Michelle Gumbrecht (2004, p. 2) brings the common ground theory to explain how addressing both, close friends and strangers, is possible in a single weblog post. She discusses one of her respondents, Lara, who blogged about “an ongoing personal situation that she needed to resolve, but she never detailed in specific”:

The sweeping generalizations (“I know that everything will work out in the end, because it always does”) and the undefined context of the situation illustrated that Lara believed that her intended audience (probably close friends) knew what she was referring to, she didn’t want to bare all of the facts to the entire Internet audience, or both. The manner in which she framed her post is key to manipulating what is termed “common ground”-the way in which people achieve mutual understanding [2]. Common ground is used generally within the confines of immediate social interaction, but the terminology is applicable here as well. Through accumulation-the manner in which common ground is constructed-Lara and her close friends accrued a great deal of shared knowledge through their previous encounters [4]. By virtue of this knowledge, Lara’s friends would be able to understand her posts without her going into excruciating detail. On the other hand, acquaintances and strangers are privy only to the surface information presented in the post. Without the benefit of shared knowledge and experiences with Lara, they do not have the inside track on her situation. In a paradoxical manner, Lara managed to maintain privacy within a public medium.

In similar way Ton discusses two roles that his weblog play in respect to networking. For people, he is already connected to, it’s a place to think aloud and to reflect, to get to deeper exchanges: “when I write my network is imagined audience”. At the same time weblog is a “gravity pull”, “a starting point for new relations”, that may or may not grow as a result of people stumbling upon his posts.

From this perspective, writing a weblog post allows communicating to both close friends and unknown others. Next to it, viewing blogging as publishing allows writing on “whatever I find interesting” for “whom it may concern”, impossible in direct interpersonal communication, knowing that friends will read between the lines and pick it up when relevant. If others react to a weblog post, it also becomes part of an interaction that contributes to bonding. The power of blogging in respect to networking seems to come from an opportunity to combine two modes with one tool.

• Networked identity
• BlogTalk 2.0: Panel 6 – weblogs and KM
• Blog changing way we meet people

This post is kind of related to the blog networking study, but please treat it as not very scientific thinking in a middle of the night. It’s on the study results in respect to presenting oneself through blogging.

One issue that is not really clear there is how intentional is shaping one’s own image through blogging: from one side, bloggers do make choices about if, what and how to write in their weblogs, from another – they seem to let things emerge through their writing.

Weblogs are easily viewed as a space for identity management (re:Goffman) where blogging is a frontstage performance set to impress the audience in a particular way. I feel that blogging is rather a backstage, where you can be yourself, even if it’s in public. Like in this post by Fa Martin-Niemi:

We moved into a new modern flat a few months ago with lovely views of the harbour and ocean.  All I could think about is what we could see.  “Oh, look from this window and this one and the deck…”  What I hadn’t thought about was windows work both ways.  So one day when I was walking home, I looked up and noticed my son’s bed was unmade and he had toys all over the floor.  It took a second before I realised that if I could see this from the road, then so could all of the hundreds of people who walk and drive by our flat everyday.

Now, I am thinking that blogging may be similar.  I love reading good blog posts.  “Oh, look at this one and that.  Did you read the one about…?  Let me send you a link”  So when I created this blog all I could think about is all of the great views I could see.  But of course, this blog like most are public so every word I write can be seen by anyone passing by.  Not just by the friends and commenters who I know about, but also the unknown lurkers who happen upon it.

The funny thing is you get used to it.  I didn’t start closing the curtains when I realised that everyone could see in.  I didn’t even start cleaning.  I just decided that it comes with the territory.  If I want to look out, it means that others can look in.  So with blogging I am not going to close access and change my writing.  In fact, I welcome the casual readers.  Hope you are enjoying it, dirty laundry and all…

In the comments to the post on presenting oneself through blogging there is a discussion on why bloggers in the study post personal details on their blogs and how they might deal with unexpected audiences. My intuition (=did not check it properly with the data) says that it’s more of the discovering over time that “it comes with the territory” – it’s not only ok to be yourself (and personal), it is essentially the thing that brings those unexpected connections that are so valued.

Being yourself (like with good friends) – vulnerable, personal, multidimentional – in public, you meet others.  If weblog is an attractor, a “gravity pull” (Ton) then whatever you project outside “people will appear who appreciate that” (Martin). You start to “chat with people as they were your friends” (Dave) and they eventually become your friends. You start performing, they become an audience.

So, in a sense, performance is counterproductive.

It also takes more effort than being youself, since multiple audiences collide in one space and a performance means you have figure out how to play multiple roles at the same time. And it kills unexpectedness, since the performance defines the audience.

This also explains, why there are so many signs of “it wasn’t intented, just emerged that way” and “if you try to sell via blogging things go wrong” attitudes between the interview lines.

Still, why there is a struggle of how personal a weblog should be? My guess – while you can be yourself with friends, you probably do not want to be naked with all of them and even if you do not mind, you probably wouldn’t do it in a public place.

• Dave Snowden
• Monica Andre
• My Friday 5: bloggers I’d love to meet

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome. A few specific questions are at the end of this post.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

Weblogs become online representations of their authors, who talk about weblogs as “the core” (Ton), “the record” (Dave), their online presence and a “long-term commitment towards yourself and your personal brand” (Luis), something that continues to represent them as they change (“I can change my job or interests, but the URL will be the same”, Martin). Euan provides an example of the role of blogging in that respect talking about someone he works with who does not have a weblog:

He is using Twitter and some other things… It feels like miasma – I’ve got nowhere I can point people to because he doesn’t got a blog and the other bits are too dispersed. So [the weblog] is like a core, a gravitational pull. (Euan)

The interviews bring several choices in respect to bloggers own presentation through blogging. First, they need to make themselves visible through writing to those they would (potentially) like to reach. Then they shape their writing to address the demands of different audiences that their weblogs expose them to. Finally, they just “let it be”: allowing their “true self” to be revealed through blogging and to be constructed by others.

In order to be present, to exist, bloggers need to be visible to others by writing their weblogs. For Luis the need to start blogging in public came from experiences of blogging internally and his dissatisfaction with a “half-way conversation” with KM bloggers who couldn’t see comments and links from his internal blog. He talks about the need to blog externally to have proper conversations, to become one of KM bloggers, “to build up a community of people to share”, “to help me to position myself as a thought leader within the field”. He says, “[blogging externally] allowed me to have a public face, a public voice”.

For Monica, it was important to be able to put her name on previously anonymous weblog once her authorship was discovered by a journalist and become known in her organisation. She talks about her own practice of checking weblogs of others to find out who they are and dissatisfaction of not being visible in the same way. She also provides an example of a need to become invisible when her former colleagues commented on her presence with them even after leaving the research group (that didn’t support her PhD aspirations), as a result of continuing to blog about her ideas:

I had mixed feelings, so I stopped posting work-related things there. [...] I felt used. (Monica)

However, writing a weblog is not enough to be present as a blogger, it is also important to use the language that potential audience will understand. Gabriela tells about creating a blog in English next to the one she wrote in Romanian to be able to connect to bloggers she met at a conference. Monica and Martin, who write primarily in Portuguese and German as a way to connect with their national audiences, talk about struggles to make choices between languages. For them connection with local audiences comes at a price of being invisible to their English-speaking network that they address once in a while by writing in English.

With a weblog one may be also present to different types of audiences: peers, existing or potential clients, and friends. Relations with those people involve different ways of writing and interacting that do not necessarily coexist well together, resulting in a need to shape the way one is represented by a weblog.

Martin provides an example by telling what led him to stop blogging 1,5 years ago, referring to the dynamics around his weblog as one of the reasons for it. In the German-speaking internet his weblog became “quite famous” and got exposed to a “different sphere of people”, who expected him to “be a pundit who knows everything”. From one side he wanted to play that role as it allowed him to get more business. From another side catering for these expectations in his weblog collided with the open and vulnerable style of blogging necessary for learning and networking with peers. At the certain moment there was too much confusion, so he decided to stop blogging. According to Martin, blogging for marketing purposes “has a different attitude and you get clash of the contexts”.

Even when blogging is supporting one’s business as in the case of Dave, it is important “not to push your ideas”:

if you say interesting things or link to interesting stuff people will come and talk to you anyway (Dave).

In additional to managing tensions that might arise around different professional uses of a weblog, there are also choices about the degree of revealing personal details of one’s life in it. While many respondents emphasizes the blurring boundaries between personal and professional, professional contacts and friends for both business in general and blogging in particular, they also limit the degree of exposing personal details in a weblog. Euan notes that weblogs “rely on you having an opinion and expressing it and it’s not the most easy thing in a work context.” Monica considers many bloggers she knows friends, not professional contacts as she observes the details of their lives that “only friends have a privilege [to see]“, however, she is also not comfortable revealing too much on her weblog: “I will not talk about myself. For me blogging and being in public are the same”.

Given the impact of blogging on one’s reputation it is tempting to think of it as a way to construct a favourable image of oneself. However, the interviews hint that while weblogs may be viewed by bloggers as their online representations, their uses in that respect may not be fully intentional and directed. Not only bloggers comment on networking as a side effect of blogging rather than an explicit purpose for it, they also seem to believe that there are limits of how much their image could be controlled.

For example, when talking about his weblog as a “trustworthy anchor point” for his clients, Ton explains that it works that way “because you can’t fake six years worth of blogging”. Dave, reacting to my comment about his experiences of presenting to big audiences says “keynote is a performance, blog is more intimate” and then tells about being surprised with “the degree you reveal yourself on the weblog”, sharing “half-formed ideas” and starting to “chat with people as they were your friends”.

Blogging under one’s own name as a professional might be one of the reasons not to “fake it” as others can eventually get into a closer contact anyway. For example, Euan tells about the temptation to become “more guarded” to address increasing business risks of blogging when getting self-employed and his decision against it: “it’s better if people know what I’m thinking before starting to pay me”. Martin, reflecting on his experiences says that now he would rather express what he thinks and “people will appear who appreciate that”.

In addition, bloggers are not only “revealing themselves” to others, but also exploring who they are, through their writing and reactions of people to it:

I existed and had a life apart from my existence, just because of the insights I put in the blogs I created… I also discovered things about myself I didn’t know… when more people started saying something about me. (Monica)

One can have a preferred image of oneself as a professional, but readers of a weblog construct their own anyway based on weblog writing, as, for example, with Nancy, who tells about others positioning her weblog as a “KM blog” or “educational blog”, when she doesn’t view it this way.

Participants view their weblogs as their online representations and also shape their actions accordingly. In order to “exist” for the audiences they may want to reach and potential connections to emerge bloggers not only need to be blogging, but also do it in a way connected to one’s name, continue blogging over time and written in a language that the audience can understand. While there they have to draw boundaries of what and how to include in their writing, they also let their image to be shaped by their writing and their audiences.

***

This is the part of the results that I’m most unsure of, so any comments are welcome. If you are a blogger I’d love hear how much what I say here is true for you personally.

Things that are not covered here, but would be interesting to discuss as well:

• how “my blog is my online identity” works for people with multuple blogs and mainly contributing to a multi-author blog
• how bloggers deal with addressing multiple topical audiences of their blogs – are there any struggles there?

I’m also thinking about this whole issue in respect to identity management and playing with a couple of ideas from Goffman (giving vs. giving off via the weblog, weblog as a backstage), so if you are into those things I’d love to talk.

• Blog networking study: participants and their networks
• Transitivity of blogging
• Blog networking study: getting things done

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

When connections are established weblogs provide a way to stay in touch regardless the degree of interaction between bloggers at any particular moment. Martin noticed that after he stopped blogging, reading other weblogs become even more important, “to see what [his contacts] are up to without having to interrupt them, to contact them directly”. Gabriela gives an example of former colleagues who are following her weblog to find what is happening in her life “without sending an email”.

When the participants talk about the weblogs they read regularly, those usually include weblogs of people they know well. “For the people I know I read to find out how they are going”, says Shawn. He does so to find out “if there is something important to ring them up” and tells that it often prompts “some other way of communicating with the person”.

For Ton keeping up with others’ “online traces” (blogs and other channels) helps to maintain a relationship. He emphasise the importance of trivial exchanges (e.g. updates on Jaiku or Twitter – “I’m having a coffee”) that create a sense of connection similar to the same type of exchanges with people in a close physical proximity. It is the similar for Luis, who says that Twitter provides a space to share “titbits on what I’m doing” resulting in a sense of “ambient intimacy” , while weblog is for “more elaborate thought” or Gabriela, who “keeps an eye on people via microblogging and other tools”, picking up their weblogs once in a while to read in more detail.

Ton suggests that once connections are established the intensity of interactions might decrease:

In the beginning you also have to show each other that you are making and effort, to may be seduce each other a bit. Network starts by giving [...] and part of it is an attention and an empathy; you have to make the effort first.

He tells that after a while it’s different, still an effort, but very different type of interactions:

Even if there is no interaction I still see the connection [...] I see other people coming online with their status updates [e.g. on Skype]. There is no real interaction, but I know that he sees me coming online as well.

When connections are established and there is less need to interact, weblogs provide a way to keep up with life and thinking of their authors without directly contacting them. However, many bloggers also stay in touch via other tools. Microblogging tools are mentioned often in this context; they are used for sharing mundane updates and details of everyday life, creating a sense of connections similar to those that appear when sharing a physical space with co-workers.

• Blog networking study: dealing with a network expansion and filtering information it bring
• Blog networking, blogwalking and being a boundary subject
• Blog networking study: getting to know others from a distance

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

When I ask about the role of blogging in making possible to do something together, Martin describes how relations grow from shallow to more deep, starting from a shared interest and then eventually building an image of someone as trustworthy. Others describe similar process of gradual engagement that builds a foundation for working together: the knowledge of common interests and shared context (Gabriela), “a feeling that just talking is not enough and there is a shared need to do something together” (Ton) and “trust which is crucial for collaboration” (Luis).

In addition, weblogs help to make a decision about “doing business” with a blogger. For example, while Nancy doesn’t keep track of how her weblog contributed to her business, she assumes it to be “a kind of screening device” where potential clients can check her background. Ton tells a story about a client worried that he would take a technology-driven approach to work on a case, who then became reassured it wouldn’t be that way after reading Ton’s weblog. Such “screening” might also work in the opposite way, as for Dave who “certainly used weblogs of some people to decide not to collaborate with them”.

Sometimes bloggers find difficult to isolate the role of their weblogs in working together. Shawn gives an example of getting to know Nancy through her blog and other online activities, inviting her to stay in his house when she travelled to Australia, and their collaboration that followed. He also tells about potential clients contacting him as a result of blogging to ask for a meeting: “it might turn into business or may not, it’s a beginning point”. For Ton joint work often had “started somewhere in a weblog” and then “spilled over to other channels”. For him meeting people in person before being able to work with them is essential; he has to “look in their eye”, to see “the whole person” next to knowing about their shared interests from blogging.

While meeting another blogger in person is often cited as part of the process that led to working together or a prerequisite for it, it is not always the case. Martin tells about several of “only online” relations that turned into joint work: “the way we worked together fits the image I’ve got from blog interaction, there were no big surprises”.

When it comes to doing the work, often a weblog is not a primarily tool to do so. For Gabriela “email or twitter is the easiest way” for contacting bloggers and not a weblog, which is “slower”:

When I don’t need a quick answer and its something related my blogpost, I leave a comment or write a post myself. If I have a concrete idea and want to put it in practice now, I use other tools.

Luis comments that embedding blogging into the workflow of day to day interactions is not easy: while email is part of work, blogging still feels as an extra.

For Martin blogging is good for learning and exploration, but “a different mode is needed” to get things done. He notices that for him it is easy to confuse work with online interactions, indicating that at times blogging might have a negative impact on work: “I have to pull myself out of conversations and learning to do my work [...] to get things done offline… to write that article…” He adds that for some jobs blogging might be a better fit, giving research as an example.

Euan suggests weblogs are good for supportive activities: “in a sense of establishing, sharing [...] they are great tools, probably better than face to face”, however, “in a context of making something happen there is a limit to how far you can go.” He explains that weblogs have a different rhythm: “if you want to set up a meeting you wouldn’t pontificate about life, universe and the such…”

While weblogs of the study participants are work-related, they do not necessarily document their work. Ton says his weblog includes reflective writing “on the edge” of what he is doing. He explains that does not chronicle what he does in his weblog since it would involve his colleagues and clients. He adds that he started to feel more free do to so after starting to work for himself (“they are completely my projects, so it says more about me now”) and, although content-wise his work didn’t change much, now he also needs “to be a bit more visible as an individual consultant”.

Working in organisational settings adds other concerns to blogging about work. For example, while Gabriela did field studies with IBM, she couldn’t blog about work as “smallest detail could provoke some damage”; she wrote about concerts instead. Euan talks about the challenges of blogging in a case when individuals are exposed to an audience “only in controlled circumstances”. He talks about writing while in BBC as “generalising the topic” that “it stays interesting without compromising anything.”

In sum, blogging provides a foundation for working together by allowing to choose with whom to work with and by building shared understanding and trust. When it comes to doing the work itself or reporting about it, a weblog is not necessarily the tool to choose since such work requires a different mode of writing and interaction and might not benefit from being visible in a weblog.

• Should be a good sign…
• My boyfriend or why I don’t make things instantly visible
• Blog-Headhunters

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

Next to an opportunity to learn about others from a distance, weblogs support interaction that may grow into a relation between bloggers over time. When Ton describes how interactions that start from comments help a relation to grow and strengthen, he talks about his weblog as a “gravity pull”: “it’s like they are entering your gravity field, falling towards you”.

Luis emphasises the importance of reacting to comments in his weblog as a starting point for an interaction (“last thing you can do is to ignore your comments”) telling that others appreciate the feedback. While Shawn also believes that interaction in the comments is important, he admits that he is not good in it as he uses his weblog mainly to organise his thinking rather than “as a network building or communication device if you like”. He tells that he is “not much of the typer” and leaves comments only if he “can add to a conversation in a constructive way” and then starts wondering what other people “read” into this behaviour. He also gives an example of Johnnie Moore, saying that his blogging style “seem to have the interaction going”.

Nancy echoes this point emphasising that engaging in personal connections (as opposed to “information relations” described in the section 1.5.1) depends a lot on personalities of people, as some as more likely to initiate contact and to “reach out”. Brett provides an example of others “reaching out”:

I’ve had people I’ve left comments on their blog and by doing that they discover mine and they initiated contact with me. [...] they commented on the weblog and followed it more closely [...] I guess [they were] more involved, did more steps for a relation than I did. I just commented once and they came to my site and commented frequently. To some extend it makes you feel an obligation almost to go back to theirs to read it more, to comment more. [...] I feel that I should look at their stuff more closely to see if I want to reciprocate.

Although initial contacts often happen in comments to a weblog post, at the later stage cross-linking between weblogs and trackbacks that notify bloggers about it becomes more important. For Luis linking conversations between blogs helps to “corroborate what someone else said” while also adding own experiences and sharing with others. For Euan permalinks that allow others to link directly to a weblog post “is another big thing” as “each of those little ideas could be linked to and that allows to distribute sense-making networks.” Martin describes conversations that “travelled around weblogs” as “collective intelligence” (“if we talk about questions long enough the idea would emerge somewhere”). In discussing how blogging helps to develop trust Dave talks about it as “fragmented frequent conversation” and draws parallels between blogging and the way human brains work:”We don’t tell stories to each other, we swap anecdotes and blogs are very similar to that”.

When I ask Ton about the differences between comments and conversations across weblogs he refers to the differences in format and length, as well as different types of conversations they enable:

…the comments are usually short-lived, [...] they are immediate responses to the blog post. And a blog conversation spread between weblogs goes on longer. And you can connect it to more things since if you would add links to six different blog posts in your comment it would probably be classified as a spam.

However, he thinks that those different weblog conversations are part of the same process, talking about difficulties of reconstructing paths one follows between comments, people, what they write.

Interaction via weblogs often serves as a starting point for getting in touch via other channels. Shawn suggests that “if someone got the weblog, they are inviting people to contact them” and adds that this is usually the case when he attempts to contact other bloggers by email. He adds that when contacting another blogger, the fact of both blogging creates a commonality, even if content is very different – “I am a blogger, you are a blogger, we should catch up”. Brett calls it “an instant credibility”:

Even if I don’t know someone just the fact that I saw something on their blog, posted a comment, asked a question and they see that I have one. It establishes almost an instant credibility: that this person is worth the time to respond, to read, as to say.

Gabriela explains that having weblogs that provide the context and the history of previous interactions makes contact easier: she feels she can “tap into knowledge of fellow bloggers without [providing] any details”.

Many participants talk about connecting with fellow bloggers via multiple channels. Gabriela gives an example of Jack Vinson, KM blogger she’s never met in person, and says they are mutually connected on different channels. Shawn is not constantly interacting with other bloggers via the blogosphere, saying that if it happens it’s often an email, phone or meeting in person. Luis talks about enhancing his connection with KM bloggers by knowing about their day to day life from Twitter.

For Martin other, more personal channels are needed to get to know others really well “to have a more secure exchange which is not public, to be vulnerable”, which is difficult to do in a weblog “once you become an A-lister”. Ton adds that for those relationships that are established via weblog, most of more personal communication happens via other channels (email, Skype, sharing photos and videos).

Meeting in person is often an important part of the process of building a relation: bloggers tell stories about making an effort to meet other bloggers or synergies of connecting in person after discovering that those they knew via blogging were actually in close physical proximity.

When bloggers meet the history of their interactions comes into play. Luis talks about meeting Bill Ives for the first time, while knowing him via weblog for several years:

It was amazing. [...] It was like two old pals talking about KM and picking it up where we have left it in the blogs.

Euan gives similar example:

First time I met Doc [Searls] there were hugs and smiles and really energetic enthusiastic conversation in a restaurant. And we said at that time that others in the restaurant had known that we’ve never met each other they would think we were mad.

Ton explains that meeting in person brings a relation at a new level. He gives an example of meeting Chris Corrigan and how walking in the forest having “the same conversations” they would have online, created a deeper level of understanding:

Rereading his postings I now hear his voice, but I also know in what kind of context he wrote it, and this additional information helps me interpret what he means on a deeper level.

Martin has similar experiences: “[realising] that they actually have a body helped to appreciate their writing more and use their writing more effectively”.

However, Dave is not sure meeting in person is good or bad after getting to know each other online, as some people “create a different persona in their blog” and meeting in person might results in “identity structure shifts”. When I refer to other bloggers who are eager to meet in person, he tells it depends on a scale: “I can’t afford the time to meet everybody I track or listen to”.

Interacting via multiple channels over time does not only help the connections grow and strengthen, it also contributes to the development of shared understanding and a sense of community. “And then you are talking not about silos [...], but interconnected complex network of blogs”, where bloggers know whom to go to for help or an advice (Luis). Gabriela talks about other bloggers as “permanent support network”, “a sort of fraternity” that she can rely on.

While first interactions between bloggers often happen via weblogs, as relations between bloggers grow they engage with each other via multiple channels. In that respect conversations created by linking between weblogs play a special role: those “fragmented frequent conversations” support both collective development of ideas and strengthening the bonds between bloggers. Over time meeting in person and other channels are added to the mix to continue blogging conversations, to interact in more private and secure settings and to get to know others better. Over time those interactions create a foundation that might enable bloggers to collaborate to get things done together.

• Tagging four things
• Monica Andre
• Making methodological choices

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

Weblogs provide an opportunity to get to know their authors “from a distance” (Martin), to learn about them to be able to decide on engaging further or not and do so without a “commitment of giving time and attention to the relation” (Nancy) and to allow others “to build up an opinion without knowing you” (Luis).

In this process a weblog provides a representation of a blogger through their writing. It not only gives others an impression of “who you are and what you do”, but also allows to “get an introduction of your community” by seeing who comments (Luis).

Shawn suggests that weblogs provide “some level of reputation”, exposing people and their interests:

It is not explicit; you intuitively get a feel for type of the person they are and whether that [...] is your type of person. It’s almost like a pre-dating.

Bloggers point that although weblog is a form of publication, it works differently from publishing an article: “if you read somebody’s paper you get to know their ideas, if you read their weblog, you get to know them as a person” (Dave), “when you write a blogpost you are giving yourself out as a person” (Luis).

What exactly helps to get to know a blogger as a person? Several bloggers mention passionate writing and “personal things” that appear on a weblog (for example, when talking about Bill Ives both Luis and Shawn mention his passion for food and restaurant reviews next to his KM writings).

However, it is more than that. Euan suggests that there is also

something about the pacing and the size of the blogging window, two or three paragraph idea that’s weighty enough [...] That’s why I still blog even if I have Twitter: you can put more thoughts into a blogpost. You are expressing something hopefully slightly more profound about yourself and your ideas.

For Nancy blogging helps to get to know others by providing “a window into their life over time”, “exposure of their thinking over time”, however it depends a lot on how well people write, so “you don’t get to know crappy writers via their weblogs”. Martin tells about the type of weblog writing that helps him to get to know others as those that show “willingness to expose what you don’t know [...] willingness to learn… not yet finished thinking” or the opposite, “being brave and bold”, taking a radical position that invites criticism. Shawn says that “photos seem to give your more than just the text”, “you also get a sense of the people in terms of links and depth of their posts”.

Learning about other bloggers comes through an aggregation of various signals:

You can pick up little subliminal or subconscious or peripheral bits and pieces about people through what they write, how they write, how their blog looks, how they react to things.(Euan)

Euan gives an example of observing how bloggers engage in an interaction in weblog comments that gives signals about them similar to observing their behaviour in a face to face conversation.

Since the process of getting to know others “from a distance” involves reading and browsing that does not leave many traces, a blogger does not necessarily knows about it. Monica tells about an invitation to come as a keynote speaker that she though was a joke until she’s got a confirming phone call:

I didn’t know I was followed by them. If [people] leave comments, you have a clue, a footprint. It turns out that the guy who was reading my blog suggested that I would be a good person to talk as a keynote speaker.

Gabriela is aware of people using her weblog to find more about her. She gives an example of a job interview for her current job, where her boss knew a lot of things about her from the weblog. However, she says, “I never had a bad experience with exposing myself through my blog. I didn’t feel threatened.”

Shawn gives an example of meeting readers of his weblog at a conference:

…people come up to you and they know you through your blog, but you have never met them before. It’s a kind of a disarming experience… you feel it’s quite an asymmetrical relationship. They have a really good sense who you are, what you do, what interests you and you don’t even know their name. I think that’s kind of peculiar to people who blog and have some sort of readership…

Luis, who has similar experiences with meeting previously unknown readers of his weblog at events, finds it “fascinating”. He says “that person gets my attention full at that moment” because “they took the effort to read what I write”.

In sum, blogging provides a “living portrait” that not only shows ideas and interests of a blogger, but also helps to get to know her as a person, by observing writing, linking and interaction over time. Such observation is not necessarily reciprocal, so asymmetrical relations are something that bloggers have to deal with. While it may be one-sided, learning about other bloggers from a distance provides an opportunity to make informed choices about possible closer contact with them, knowledge of their interests and personalities, as well as enough starting points for an interaction.

• BlogHer aftermath: more on the speakers list
• Most common words of BlogWalk participants
• Food and bloggers coming Sunday

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

How bloggers find each other? Study participants find new bloggers by attracting them with their own writing, through their network and in places where they meet bloggers they already know.

One way to discover others is writing own weblog, which then serves as “a conversation starter”, “a big neon sign that invites others to come and comment” (Ton). With multiple instruments that weblogs provide it is easy to get notified about comments to one’s weblog or links from other blogs. Bloggers follow trackbacks or subscribe to notification about referrals to their pages (e.g. via Technorati or Google blogsearch). Nancy, who had a web-site people linked to before, credits this attention to incoming links that is part of blogging as the reason for “discovering” people in her network that she was not aware of.

Those who comment on one’s blog writing are not random people. Bloggers appreciate the attention to their own work and the effort taken to comment: “the people who link to you are interesting, because they found your ideas interesting, they comment” (Dave). Monica indicates that commenting on blogs was not the obvious way to grow one’s professional network when she started: “I didn’t realise that linking and giving credits to someone’s work would extend my professional network very quickly”.

Another way to find other bloggers is through following links from people already in one’s own network, who provide filtering and recommendation:

it’s a collective pointing that helps to find stuff, once you have an established group of bloggers you read and trust. And their ability to find a good stuff to point to it increases your signal to noise ratio on the web. [...] Blogs do that better than other tools because of the context – you have to say why that is important, why you are pointing to something. (Euan)

Finally, bloggers find other bloggers in places where they go to interact with those they already know. Although usually these are events that bloggers attend to meet each other in person, they could be online places as well: Ton gives an example of a German blogger whom he first “met” in a comments section of an American weblog.

Given that bloggers indicated that their blogging connections often extremely diverse I ask what exactly contributes to finding others across boundaries. Nancy suggests that it is the public nature of weblogs and their discoverability as a result of cross-linking. She adds that comparing to communities, where there is usually an “agreement what it’s all about even if it’s about nothing”, with a weblog it is more easy “to cross over” between topics both when writing and reading.

This crossing becomes easier as weblogs are person-centred – “a weblog is about me even if you think you write about a topic” (Martin). They also represent different interests of their authors (“most of the times I read them for KM, but find something else”, Gabriela) and readers may value the diversity of topics covered (“good bloggers are eclectics, they do different things, they surprise you [...] that is what keeps you going back”, Dave).

In addition, at first blogging is “connecting through content” (Nancy). When one follows a link to a new weblog, blogger’s words are visible, while the details about the author (such as age, gender, professional affiliations or place in various hierarchies) are not necessarily on the surface or made explicit at all. As a result, with blogging “you can’t live of your reputation, you live of what you say” (Dave).

In the process of discovering interesting others weblogs serve as attractors and filters. From one side presenting oneself to the world through writing a weblog attracts others who resonate with this writing and comment or link back. From other side, weblogs work as filters: links by bloggers one reads provides not only pointing to potentially interesting others, but also personal recommendation. Since weblogs are rather person-centred than strictly focused on a predefined topic, a blogger often writes about a variety of personally relevant issues, exposing readers to potentially new and unexpected topical areas and other bloggers within those.

While finding others may result in a direct interaction (e.g. continuing a conversation in a weblog comments), it is not always so. The following post describes how it is possible to get to know other bloggers from a distance, without any interaction.

• Blogging as boundary practice
• Converted to RSS reading :)
• Something unspeakably alien

This post is part of the series describing the results of the study of blogger networking practices. Please take into account a couple of things:

• This is a draft. Healthy scepticism and comments are very welcome.
• Statements are linked to the names of people who talked about particular issue, those might be true or not true for others.

***

The participants of the study are professionals in knowledge management or related fields, although they do not necessary explicitly associate with KM. They live in Europe, US and Australia, know English enough to write on professional topics in it (although only occasionally for Martin and Monica). They are established bloggers (2-7 years), some of whom tried blogging with a variety of tools and have an experience with multiple types of weblogs (e.g. KM and parenting blogs for Brett, internal and external for Luis, personal blog in Romanian vs. professional ones in English for Gabriela).

Participant’s weblogs have different degrees of connection to their work. Dave, Shawn and Nancy integrate blogging in web-sites of their companies, while Monica has an experience of blogging anonymously to hide the connection to her employer. All bloggers write about work-related topics; however the degree of explicit connections (including linking) to their work is different.

It is important to note that for most of the study participants (except of Brett) visibility as a results of blogging contributes to their work as entrepreneurs, consultants or researchers. Also four out of ten participants have a connection with IBM – as a current or past employer for Luis, Dave and Shawn and as a research site for Gabriela (I didn’t realise it when selecting people to be interviewed).

All participants talk about their professional networks expanding as a result of blogging. The degree of this expansion is different and seems to have a relation to the size of blogger’s network prior to blogging, the interest of developing new relations, as well as motivations for and the style of blogging. Blogging might change one’s awareness of own network, for example, by helping to discover people previously invisible (Nancy) or by expanding network without blogger’s awareness of it (Monica).

Using Martin‘s terms, blogging networks of the participants could be characterised as both “diverse and not diverse“. From one side the connections that bloggers establish tend to cross topical, geographical, organisational and hierarchical boundaries. From another – there seem to be a shared culture of embracing diversity (Martin), contributing without direct expectation of a gain (Dave, Nancy) and shared interests and professionalism (Ton, Luis). Several bloggers (Luis, Gabriela) also talk explicitly about a sense of community that emerges in those networks.

Those networks (and practices associated with them) change over time. For example, more people starting blogging change not only the numbers of potentially available others to connect to, but also the intensity of connections with them and topics that connect bloggers (Euan). New tools that appear change the ways bloggers connect via their weblogs (Gabriela). Growing uses of weblogs in a business context might change the perceptions of a weblog by its readers and change the connections as a result (Martin, Monica). While for many bloggers connecting with others is a side-effect of blogging, as they reflect on their experiences they might become more intentional with using weblogs as part of their networking (Brett, Euan, Luis).

• Something unspeakably alien
• Food and bloggers coming Sunday
• Levels of communication, relation building and weblogs