electronic museum

Entries categorized as ‘social networks’

King Knol

December 18, 2007 · 5 Comments

(^ That title was vaguely supposed to be a play on “King Knut” but it didn’t really work out…)

Seb has posted about an article on OpenCulture where the author compares Google’s Knol project to Wikipedia. OpenCulture ultimately comes down hard on Google, reckoning that the Wikipedia “editing by masses” model is a better one.

A dog in a bowl. Irrelevant, but I liked it.
I’m veering around on this one. On the one hand, the Wikipedia model is clearly very powerful. If it wasn’t, then Wikipedia wouldn’t be the phenomena that it is. On the other, Google have at their disposal an extraordinary arsenal of content (most of the web) and users (most of the web-surfing population). These shouldn’t be underestimated.

Google have shown time and time again that they are willing to disrupt “traditional” models of content delivery. Stuff like “suggest a better translation” on Google Translate or using their massive user base to tag images in real time show that although Google aren’t “content” people, they actually understand the power of crowd sourcing around content as well as anyone else. Better than anyone else, in fact, because: 1. They’ve got the biggest user base (bar none) to test against and use to hone the model and 2. They’ve got the brightest people (bar none) working for them…

The criticism seems to be that Google might not use crowd volume in the Knol model and instead we’ll end up with a bunch of articles written by demi-experts which will remain unmoderated and of dubious authority. I can’t ever see this being the case, even if that is what’s hinted at in the original Google blog post. Google do crowds in a big way – be in no doubt that they have a very, very good understanding of who the “authorities” are around subjects as well as having at their disposal a reasonable-sized catalogue of content…Google will find a way of promoting “good” content and demoting “bad”.

Back to Wikipedia for a moment, which gets a load of bad press about non-authority content – a comment on the OpenCulture post echoes the apparent concerns of many:

“…the reality of Wikipedia, where articles created by knowledgeable authors are more likely to be degraded over time by hordes of inept users…“

I’ve never been sure that this is actually the case. Yes, if you’re an academic or museum curator then you’d probably spot errors in some of the detail, but let’s not forget who the normal user is here – if you want to know general stuff, Wikipedia is an outstanding source of information. If you want academically-inclined, peer-reviewed, 100% “accurate” information (whatever that might be), then hey, go look in a journal.

This is scratching at the surface of something a bit deeper which is about how important rigorously researched information really is to our audiences, but that’s another post altogether…

* thanks to Waldo Jaquith for the picture. Irrelevant, but I liked it :-)

Categories: community · content · folksonomy · innovation · museum · social networks
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Tribebook?

December 2, 2007 · Leave a Comment

canoeThere’s a lovely article over on the New York Times about the parallels between Facebook and tribal culture, examining what makes Facebook so intriguing (read, “sticky”) to its users.

The main point made is that our friend-making in the “real” world is based around “orality” and not writing: furthermore, we examine ourselves through a lens defined by the people we know; in the same way we examine others based on the people that they know, and so on.

Apparently an early study in 1982 by someone called Reverend Ong examined the notion of what he coined “secondary orality” and looked at the connections between electronic forms of communication and “..the cadences of earlier oral cultures”: fundamentally the fact that many of the communications we now have via the web (and, thinking about it, IM, SMS and so on) are very much more oral in their nature, and moving away from “formal reading and writing”. The things which really resonate with us as humans are the comments on blogs, the quickfire status updates of Facebook or Twitter or a rapid succession of emails or IM between friends.

Of course the comparisons only go so far between tribalness and Facebookness – as the article says:

“There is presumably no tribal antecedent for popular Facebook rituals like “poking,” virtual sheep-tossing or drunk-dialing your friends.” 

…although maybe a new SuperWall action”chop a canoe for your friends” could go down well…?

Categories: museum · social networks · ugc · web2.0

Social graph, attention data, openid and stuff like that

November 8, 2007 · Leave a Comment

OpenID talkI’m at a one-day conference on OpenID and education, organised by Eduserv. I’m live blogging over on our new Eduserv PSG blog, and that’s hard enough to do in one place, let alone two so I have no intention of doing the same here :-)

Just a quickie: during coffee break I had an interesting chat with Paul Walk who is a big advocate of OpenID – and has been using it for some time. We started a conversation about the notions of identity, attention data, the social graph, single sign-on, etc. It strikes me that the community is fairly bad at defining how these differ and where they cross-over.

I’m a bit of a novice when it comes to OpenID, but in some ways (he blags) that puts me in a good position: I’m a naive consumer of the service rather than a geeked out pro.

As I had understood it, OpenID seemed to be to be always sold as a single sign-on technology, much like Microsoft Passport (sorry, Microsoft “Live ID”..). The question I have is how far it goes beyond “just a sign-in” technology and moves into being an identity holder. Paul tells me that is exactly what it is, and that’s a relief – not least of all because identity is much more interesting than sign-on.

The second question I have is about where the line is drawn around identity. Is the fact that I’m married, for instance (a relationship on my “Social Graph”) a question of identity? Would this information be stored in my Identity profile? Would the name (or name of “node”) of my wife? Looking at it from one angle, I could argue that yes – this is very obviously identity information. From another, it isn’t..

Thirdly, where does attention data sit in this scenario? Over on AttentionTrust, they have a diagram which says “how we browse, what we say, what we read = me” which very much implies that Attention Data = identity. Paul (and others I got talking to) seemed to think otherwise. I’m not entirely sure why, but hopefully we can get some more talking in later on.

I’ve always had a soft spot for approaches such as FOAF, and that’s the final question: how do you map these relationships, and where do they “live” in the OpenID world? Where does OpenSocial sit?

Help.

Categories: conference · innovation · museum · social networks · web2.0
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Everyware

October 18, 2007 · 5 Comments

I got a notice in my inbox today that Chumby Industries are finally (after what seems a loooong time) beginning to ship the first Chumbies to early adopters. I tried very hard last year with a series of increasingly sycophantic emails to Chumby to secure myself an beta model, and failed dismally, but at least I seem to be on the mailing list for the first people allowed to buy one…

chumbyThe Chumby, for those who haven’t come across it before, is a small Linux-based wifi device with screen – er, ok – it’s a computer – which sits on your wireless network. The content it displays is entirely hackable – you can point it at any number of Chumby widgets which sit within the Chumby network. These range from simple clocks to news to just plain weird stuff. The basic idea is that the plain ole’ desktop or web widget is now beginning to show itself in the real world.

I think this is exciting for two main reasons: 1. I reckon that widgets (in general, but right now, web and desktop based ones) are the biggest thing happening to content consumers right now, and 2. Ubiquitous computing / internet of things / the spime – the whole pervasive “internet in real world” thing is going to change the way we use web resources in a big way.

So what else is there? Well, mobiles, obviously – generic computing devices which we all carry with us, everywhere. Offshoots from here include SMS, MMS, QR tagging and mobile web browsing. When commentators like Tom Standage start saying things like

“…mobile phones are the most numerous digital devices on the planet, and truly deserve to be called “personal computers…”,

and major telcos start concentrating on the mobile web (T-Mobile’s “Web n Walk” and Vodafone “The internet is now mobile”), you know that these kind of approaches are leaving the steep bit of the hype curve and entering the mainstream.

MarcelAnother device in the Chumby space is the Nabaztag. Those lovely types at the Science Museum got me one of these as my leaving present and I’ve been hacking it every since. Marcel (picture on left, looking only mildly like a drug dealer..) connects to the web through my wifi network much like the Chumby and receives emails, weather reports, podcasts. Most usefully, I’ve also discovered that he has much more authority for telling my 3 year old to go to bed than me… ;-)

Meanwhile in the museum space, Ross Parry and associates recently presented on the concept of the Live!Label – small screen-based labels for exhibits which can be updated anytime via a wifi network.

The general premise of all of these devices is the same: the real world is where we live and move but the internet can start to be layered on top of that world, Matrix style, rather than separated from it. As wire-free (wifi, 3G, GPRS, EDGE..whatever!) access gets faster and more ubiquitous, this layered internet will begin more and more to play a part in our real, not just virtual, lives.

Categories: everware · experimental · museum · objects · social networks · technology · ubiquitous · virtual world · web2.0

Multiverse…Ning for 3d worlds

August 5, 2007 · 1 Comment

Last week Kurt Stuchell did a potentially interesting thing by setting up a Ning site for Museums. He called it the Museum and Educational Social Network (MESN) and so far it seems to be gathering some traction as a place to interact about all things Museumy. With Facebook on everybody’s lips and screens at the moment, the Social Networking Site has never seen so much action, and it’ll be interesting to see how/if MESN develops.

The nice thing here is that the investment – at least financial investment – is zero. Ning lets you create social networks for free, so you can sling something out there and see what interest it gets without any developer or design activity.

MultiverseTo date this has been a really big stumbling block for 3D worlds. Yes, you can create objects in Second Life for example, but you can’t create an entire environment which is yours and yours alone without having some really serious 6-zero figure in mind before you even start.

Multiverse is attempting to change that. On 2nd August, they announced the opening of their Virtual World Development Platform;

“…a comprehensive software solution that gives development teams the technology, tools and assets to create virtual worlds for almost any purpose, including games and business tools…“

Their business model is very Ning-like: they provide this platform for building 3D environments for free – the way they make money is by charging 10% of the end-user gross revenue. If there is any…

This is another fascinating slant on User Generated Content – as a business model, they will be relying almost entirely on end-users to cover their (presumably huge) original capital investment. As a self proclaimed Second Life cynic, (but addict of competing 3D social environment, There), it’ll be really interesting to see where this goes and how easy it *really* is to start building these kind of environments. I’ll play and let you know…

Categories: community · efsym2007 · museum · second life · social networks · ugc

Thought clarification: JUST DO IT but FOR A REASON

July 2, 2007 · 9 Comments

A long and interesting thread broke out on the Museums Computer Group mailing list today about how museums could use Facebook to their best advantage. As I said on the thread – although the question about how Facebook deals with organisations vs individuals is interesting, the key question to me is what we’re trying to get out of having a presence on social networking sites.

Although I spend a lot of time going on about how we should “just do it” (good tagline, that. Shame it’s been claimed by a global corporation of dubious ethics..), I’m also well aware that museums aren’t immune from the hype curve either. The suggestion we should “do something with Facebook” throughout the thread is terribly reminiscent of many requests I’ve had to “do web 2.0″. The conversation usually goes like this:

——————

Web team office, early morning. Somewhere a phone rings.

Web Team: “good morning, this is your friendly web team. how can I help?”

Important Person, usually somewhere high up in the organisation: “we need a blog/discussion board/wiki/podcast/facebook account/mobile website/[insert other new tech thingy here]“

WT: “why?”

IP: “because I read an article in the Guardian on Saturday and it’ll improve our productivity/sales/grooviness. Besides, it’s free”

WT: “what do you want to say on your blog/discussion board/wiki/[...you get the picture...] ?”

IP: “why does that matter?”

WT: “who is your audience?”

IP: “the kids, of course. da street. da yoof. innit?”

WT: …

IP: “right, I’ll hope to see some serious re-alignment of our visitor figures by, say, a week Wednesday. I is expectin’ big fings in da hood. Bitchin’. “

——————-

There’s a fine line of course between what I push for – technology growth, user understanding, fast to market, flexible applications – and the Important Person’s vision. This is a subtle game, and one which often causes concerns.

I see it like this:

> the mashup environment is about playing with technology – it is therefore partially technology driven (a bad thing) but also understands and build on content and data from disparate sources in the hope that the thing which pops out at the end is useful (a good thing). It relies on a Darwinian process to determine what works and what doesn’t: if your users like it, they’ll take to it and it’ll succeed.

> the drive to make things happen – the push which I believe museums should be making to be more leading than lagging – should always come out of user centred design. Websites should come from a user need. Ultimately, they should fill a hole in people’s lives. The bitter pill to swallow is that the needs of the institution aren’t always the needs of the user, and that’s where conversations like the one above start to cause pain.

Sometimes the needs of the institution do match (or can be bent so they match) the needs of the end user – this is when the best things happen. Take for example the fabulous English Cut blog – a fascinating look into the otherwise closed world of the Savile Row tailor. Hugh Mcleod helped put this together and he writes wonderfully about the value of the “micro smarter conversation” vs the value of the “macro brand metaphor”.

This is where web teams need to be incredibly savvy about what is out there and how to make this stuff happen. Actually, the conversation above should have a moment where Web Team gets in quickly with “Good plan, Mrs Important Person. How about a personal blog written by X about the way in which we Y”, thereby cutting off any possibility that you’ll “just do it” in the wrong direction with some god-awful corporate nonsense.

So….should museums be on Facebook? Yes, probably, if that presence does something interesting and motivating for users. Should museums be on Facebook just because it’s there? Obviously not.

Categories: design · experimental · innovation · mashup · museum · social networks · technology · ugc · usability · web2.0

More social

June 25, 2007 · 2 Comments

Readwriteweb has just started a new series called “All you need to know about…” and first up is e-learning 2.0. There are some great applications here – some of them are very familiar to me but others are new. Check out Nuvvo for example – “an easy way to build online courses and deliver them around the globe”.

The thread that runs through all of these applications is social networking, but usually with a defined edge to it – obviously there are trust issues here which a completely open platform like MySpace wouldn’t be able to support. In many ways, it seems completely obvious that as learning is a social skill, then so e-learning would be an obvious contender for social networking.

I’d imagine there are still huge issues with this kind of approach though. Lots of the courses on Nuvvo are pretty crap once you get under the hood, for example, and maintaining quality doesn’t come without a considerable amount of effort. Opening learning up may be a good thing from a social aspect but it doesn’t ensure the people doing the teaching actually have any kind of qualification. This seems to be one area where openness and authority still have some battling to do. The concept of being able to track courses, students, course materials in some kind of structured framework is nonetheless pretty compelling. I can see why lecturers, students and other learners are flocking in this direction.

Meanwhile – while I’m on the social network thing – LinkedIn just made an announcement about opening up their technology to developers. This is big news and weighs in on my Clash of the Networks post on the side of the Facebook approach and opposite MySpace. It’ll be very interesting to see where this particular thread goes – for starters the connection between LinkedIn and Facebook could get very interesting once data can be shared between the two…
I  love LinkedIn. Although it’s very different to Facebook, I can’t help but compare them, and get the feeling time and again that although Facebook is compelling, LinkedIn actually does something useful, rather than something purely entertaining and voyeuristic. I suspect that Facebook is the album you pick up and love for a month before realising it’s pretty shallow wheras LinkedIn is still going to be an old favourite for years to come.

Now that I’m leaving the museum for (as yet unknown) pastures new, I may be finding out pretty soon how good LinkedIn is for job networking…I’ll be sure to let you know…

Categories: community · social networks · ugc

Clash of the networks

May 28, 2007 · 11 Comments

With the opening of the Facebook Platform a war has broken out, with the two sides aligned with similar views to the ones we talked about at Museums and the Web.

On the one hand is MySpace, the rambling, ugly behemoth with over 100 million accounts, a closed database of users and no API. On the other – now – is Facebook: a mere 20 million users and as of just recently, an API and developer network.

The MySpace approach is closed – almost fascistic, in fact – the experience is entirely to be had within the bounds of the MySpace website. No Flash can be embedded. No widgets which haven’t been authored by MySpace themselves. No data can travel in, out or around the application.

This is (museum) website 1.0. The user experience is there, on the site, with known edges, known paths. It is comfortable, comforting, understood – and ultimately flawed. The Facebook way is markedly different. Obviously it’s primarily a social network, and many hundreds of thousands of users will remain there and move around the site within this framework, never knowing what else is behind the scenes. But now, it’s also going to mutate into many other things – unknown, weird, wonderful, creative things. With a strong API, the data is set free. Yes, it’s true, the API only allows development of applications within the Facebook walls, but it’s a huge head-start.

The reason I believe this works is because this is how people use the web. We pillage images, sounds, text. We remix, mash, rehash, copy, paste. Who here hasn’t sourced stuff from the web and re-used it for a presentation, a talk, a blog post? More to the point, who hasn’t seen the power of this way of working: blog comments, flickr images, google docs…?

MySpace has always been an anomaly to me. I posted about it on the old Electronic Museum website when I questioned that this horrendous beast – ugly, inaccessible, hard to use, terrible to navigate – should be so damn popular. The answer of course is that MySpace could probably be anything at all, but has a critical mass which ensures its continuing success. Most users don’t give a crap about an API, so why should MySpace care?

Well, according to TechCrunch the questions aren’t just about some academic “in an ideal world, data should be free” position. One application launched just a few days ago using the Facebook API now has nearly 400,000 users.

It’ll be very, very interesting to see what happens next. As Josh Kopelman says in his blog:

“Facebook has recognized (and embraced) something that Myspace has not – that there is more value in owning a web platform then a web property.”

When are museums truly going to start recognising that we should start building platforms rather than properties?

Categories: community · museum · mw2007 · social networks · ugc · web2.0