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05/19/05 Meeting Notes

Attendees:

  • SR: Shimon Rura
  • MW: Mal Watlington
  • DW: David Weinberger
  • JA: Josh Ain
  • R: Rachelle
  • j: j
  • AH: Ann House
  • BS: Brett Stilwell
  • F: Francois
  • PS: Pito Salas
  • LB: Lynne Baehr
  • EG: Erica George
  • JD: Jared Dunn
  • M: Marilyn
  • LW: Lisa Williams
  • Chris Dickson, via IRC
  • Michael Feldman, via IRC
  • Andrew Grumet, via IRC
  • Steve Garfield, via IRC
  • VoA crew: Brecken, and cameraman
  • VOA: Story on blogs from political angle – impact on society – will air in china
  • Story so far has been very postitive of blogs – she wants to hear some critiques too
  • JA: once you publish, you lose control over your info – it’s out there, and it’s out there, you can’t easily erase it.
  • EG: social consequences
  • Brecken: any visions of how blogs might affect the political sphere
  • SR: like any new communication medium people can become too enamored of the medium – just ebcause you have a platform to broadcast on doesn’t mean that everyone wants to read you. But most people blogging aren’t looking for fame – they’re looking for meaningful personal connections. It’s not just people who wish they were newspaper columnists. Most of us are content to be fairly anonymous.
  • LW: Sure, all the poorly adjusted people can find you when you;’re out there and make you miserable, but when you’re not out there, you miss all the great people. Who here has had a truly awful bad experience because of blogging? none. Who’s had a good experience? hands go up.
  • LW: We now have a full schedule for the whole summer! The lineup is great. it’s on the yahoo group site and will be on the berkman blog soon. Still lots of room though for additions.
  • LIVEJOURNAL
  • Josh Ain talks about “LiveJournal: Not Just for Teenage Girls.” He says that it has the reputation/stereotype of being for teenage girls writing about cats. The vast majority are indeed teenage girls. “Are LJ users the AOL users of a new era?”
  • Josh’s PDF slides: http://www.raresense.org/ljPresentation.pdf
  • What could a blogging platform offer you to jmake your life with friends better? Josh argues that that’s what LJ offers. It’s a very successful social network, although it comes at social networking very differently than friendster et al. It’s easy to set up. You can use it as a purely personal journal – he’s heard that a third of LJ journals are purely private – but, like del.icio.us, it has a social dimension. It’s easy to aggregate any other LJ journal user. By clicking on the “Friends” button you see any other LJ user you’ve added to your LJ aggregator…and anyone reading your LJ blog can see your friends. (Bill says it’s LinkedIn except people seem to be deriving value from LJ.) You can read any of their blogs and drill down into their comments. It’s easy to go from being a commenter to creating your own blog.
  • There’s also a reverse aggregator to see who’s aggregating you. When it shows you who is aggregating someone else, it also notes which of those folks are also your friends.
  • You can easily create groups to whom you give permission to read your blog.
  • You can list interests in free text and it will show you others with the same interests. The people who show up in the list of popular interests are the people who registered for LJ first. There are also communities. Erica explains that a community is like a group blog. She points to the Davis Square community as an example.
  • Josh says there’s an open API to allow desktop software to post to it. They make money by selling paid accounts that let people have “demonstrably cooler” LJ’s. LJ was recently sold to Six Apart. 67% of LJ users are female, and the bell curve peaks between 15 and 22 years old. (Lynne says that until 6 Apart bought it, you couldn’t have an account if you were under 13. Now you can, with parental permission.)
    Lynne says that the average LJ’s user’s friends list is about 10-25 people. Pito asks if there are any LJ celebrities. Lynne points to Homeless Girl. Is there a power law distribution there? Shimon thinks not because LJ is designed for people whoi aren’t looking for mass broadcast readerships. Erica emphasizes that LJ isn’t just about people talking about their personal lives; there are important topic-based communities as well. Lisa says that someone had created a feed of her own non-LJ blog; Erica says that feeds are unowned. Your RSS can be commented on without your even knowing it.

  • Erica and Lynne explain the intricacies of asymmetrical friending and locking people out of your account. Erica also points out that spammers can easily be banned from a community.
  • There’s a discussion of the advantages of LJ over match.com. You get a better sense of the person. Marriages have ensued.
  • It’s easy to have multiple accounts and thus multiple identities. People change their usernames a lot.
  • Josh’s pointer to tech info.
  • Lisa says that LJ is thought to be unsophisticated technically but in fact it’s feature-rich. “It’s a great example of what you can do when everyone is on the same server.”
  • Josh says its success has to do with its focus on a particular set of users and its building a social network indirectly by focusing on the “seed content.”
  • Pissed off people can avail themselves of Dead Journal.
  • Question from Bill: Does Technorati index LJ?
  • Shimon says he likes to use his real name on line, but among his LJ friends, almost none use a LJ handle that uses their real name. He wonders if he’s betraying any trust by using his real name. This sparks a discussion of the nature of “friending” and “de-friending” on LJ.
  • Erica thanks David for taking notes during the LJ segment. We’ll be posting the IRC transcript too… now we’re off to dinner @ Cambridge Common.
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