Walled Conversationspaces

posted 10:18AM Jul 21, 2006 with tags collaboration communication conversation email jabber myspace by Lars Trieloff

Some day ago I read an interestsing blog post by Joshua Porter how Social Networks are Killing Email. In this entry he describes how closed messaging systems in social web applications like MySpace or OpenBC are killing email:
I recently talked with a father of a MySpace user who said that he tried to email his daughter using regular email and she never responded. He asked her why and she said, “I use MySpace for email. Send me mail there”. So he created an account and now he messages her there. Wow.
Indeed, wow. Daughter and father are voluntarily leaving their communication to a closed system that will not let outsiders take part in the communication nor that allows the participants to take the conversation log with them when leaving the system.

In a linked study from the comments the changing communication patters from three generations Net, Nexus and Boomer are described. The Net generation (youngest) uses instant messaging and SMS most often, while it is seldomly understood by the Boomer generation. Again we see that different generations are locked in their conversationspaces because they are unable to cross the border from email to instant messaging or SMS or proprietary social network messaging.

A system that enables collaborative conversationspaces must work hard to break down the walls of existing communication media. A conversation is a conversation and should be accessible by all participants, irrelevant wether their preferred mode of communication is email, NNTP, online forums, MSN, Jabber, AIM or some other instant messaging protocol.

Peopleaggregator: Myspace for Geeks

posted 11:11AM Jun 27, 2006 with tags foaf myspace peopleaggregator web20 by Lars Trieloff

I've got an invite to peopleaggregator.net. Raju Bitter has already told me about it and recently blogged about the opening of the peopleaggregator beta. From what I've head and read, it should be the best thing since sliced bread, so I immedeately registered after I've got my invitatation mail.

But I was, to put it mildly, surprised about what I could find inside: It is a combination of Myspace-like profile pages, friends network, personal blog, bookmarks and some other services, glued together by microformats and structured blogging. I do not really see the point of this application. Nearly all users already have a weblog, so this weblog feature is not neccessary, the bookmarks feature is duplicated by del.icio.us and so on.

What I would expect from a people aggregator is an aggregation of existing sources of information (blogs, bookmarks, photos, mailing lists) and a connection with friends that works across social networks, e.g. by importing my last.fm, openbc.com and linkedin.com contacts. What is the benefit of another Myspace clone with geek-only-features like microformats and structured blogging?

Buy the way - the peopleaggregator designers seem to have taken the article The MySpace problem to heart.

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