Weblog

May 6, 04:18 am: Things I should be writing about

I’m a list maker and here’s the stuff I’ve told myself I should write up as blog posts:

  • FriendFeed – doesn’t crank my tractor. I mean, I want context not just a stream of info.
  • Attention is the marketplace. And social benefit projects have a secret sauce. Twitter friends think it’s about the story (1, 2, 3, 4). I think it’s about the data. And the juxtaposition of that data. Social benefit organizations collect a lot of stuff — how many people need food, get food, need shelter, are seeking mental health assistance, need a surgery, leave near a polluted water source, don’t have access to water. How do they use this secret sauce to make the change they seek?
  • Does social networking, and the way it helps you reach out to the like minded, just give us more ways to preach to the choir? It’s the think tank, baby.
  • What can Facebook do to be less annoying? Anything? Anyone?
  • It’s a post-fact world. How about a post context world? Blogging lost some context. Twitter loses more. Good? Bad? Does it matter?

Whatcha think? Any of those worth more effort than that?

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Marnie Webb  | 

Comments made

  1. Avi Kaplan

    I’ve been thinking about the question of context a lot lately. I think in some ways it connects to Michelle Martin’s point about homiphily . The loss of context in a lot of contexts, including twitter and blogging which you mentioned already, often mean that we often assume a shared knowledge among those reading what we share. What have people found- does this expectation raise the level of the conversations you engage in or make it harder for more people to contribute?


    May 7, 12:13 am

  2. marnie webb

    @Avi: thanks for adding your thoughts and the pointer.

    The lack of context is particularly disturbing when it is combined with the various social networking features that emphasize finding people liek us. IF we are talking to people lke us, in disjointed fractured ways, in 140 characters what does that do to diversity in conversation.

    It seems that some of these aggregating tools can help to add context and not take them away.
    But maybe we’ve lost the attention span for that….


    May 7, 12:20 am