Friday, November 18, 2005
Conversations lead to community...
"Capitalizing on the Net" by Quan-Haase & Wellman (Ch. 10) describes the impact of the internet on three types of social capital: 1) network, 2) civic engagement, and 3) sense of community. Their research focused on the National Geographic website users and whether they felt a sense of community in their everyday offline life, as well.
This study found that people using the internet reach out to more people via email and the internet, drawing on weak ties (Granovetter, 1973). Granovetter explains that while we traditionally think of strong ties like family as being important, we cannot dismiss the importance of acquaintance or weak ties, as they can be important bridges to jobs, news, information, ideas, etc.
We would expect that the Sun bloggers would have strong ties to each other and weak ties to people outside of Sun. In examining Dave's blog, he has an interesting blogroll. There are some names I notice from Sun, like Tim Bray, who is Director of Web Technologies for Sun. It is interesting that Tim does not have a blogroll of his own, however. Then, I remembered that Dave had blogged about his Roller team earlier in the year about how he started at Sun alone developing Roller, so I was happy for him when I read he was up to a team of seven (!) working on Roller. I know these guys have to be on his blogroll: Matt, Lance, Anil, Henri, Allen, and Elias. Other Sun employees he links to: Claire, Jim, Linda (and she lists him), and Will (who also lists Dave in his blogroll).
The concept of weak ties is very similar to word-of-mouth. We rely on weak ties for a movie review or for a product endorsement all the time. How can business participate in conversations leading to weak ties, ultimately resulting in community? Dave is a great example of someone who is using his weak ties to create community through his blogroll list. I've noted that he is better than most people at actually posting a blogroll--some people don't even do this (guilty as charged). This is a similar concept to Malcolm Gladwell's point in his book The Tipping Point, when he talks about Connectors, or people who are good at making connections with other people. When you read Dave's blog, you know he is a Maven (another Gladwell term), someone who enjoys sharing information, and then when you see his blogroll, you see that he is also very good at connecting people to each other. His non-Sun blogroll includes two people we have talked about in our class: Joi Ito and Chapel Hill's own Ruby Sinreich. In my interview with Dave last spring, he talked about the larger Java community, and his desire to see that expand and improve. He enjoys seeing his software be a catalyst for creating community.
One other way to create conversations is through comments on blogposts. In my interview with Dave last spring, he mentioned that he is blogging about Roller so that users can know what is going on, but does not expect too many comments. I went through his most recent posts and noticed that, indeed, he does not have comments on every post. The comments are an interesting variety from colleagues to his mom congratulating him on completing a recent 10k run. I'm very impressed that his mom reads his blog--my mom recently said she googled me and found the word blog associated with my name, but has absolutely no idea what a blog is!
This study found that people using the internet reach out to more people via email and the internet, drawing on weak ties (Granovetter, 1973). Granovetter explains that while we traditionally think of strong ties like family as being important, we cannot dismiss the importance of acquaintance or weak ties, as they can be important bridges to jobs, news, information, ideas, etc.
We would expect that the Sun bloggers would have strong ties to each other and weak ties to people outside of Sun. In examining Dave's blog, he has an interesting blogroll. There are some names I notice from Sun, like Tim Bray, who is Director of Web Technologies for Sun. It is interesting that Tim does not have a blogroll of his own, however. Then, I remembered that Dave had blogged about his Roller team earlier in the year about how he started at Sun alone developing Roller, so I was happy for him when I read he was up to a team of seven (!) working on Roller. I know these guys have to be on his blogroll: Matt, Lance, Anil, Henri, Allen, and Elias. Other Sun employees he links to: Claire, Jim, Linda (and she lists him), and Will (who also lists Dave in his blogroll).
The concept of weak ties is very similar to word-of-mouth. We rely on weak ties for a movie review or for a product endorsement all the time. How can business participate in conversations leading to weak ties, ultimately resulting in community? Dave is a great example of someone who is using his weak ties to create community through his blogroll list. I've noted that he is better than most people at actually posting a blogroll--some people don't even do this (guilty as charged). This is a similar concept to Malcolm Gladwell's point in his book The Tipping Point, when he talks about Connectors, or people who are good at making connections with other people. When you read Dave's blog, you know he is a Maven (another Gladwell term), someone who enjoys sharing information, and then when you see his blogroll, you see that he is also very good at connecting people to each other. His non-Sun blogroll includes two people we have talked about in our class: Joi Ito and Chapel Hill's own Ruby Sinreich. In my interview with Dave last spring, he talked about the larger Java community, and his desire to see that expand and improve. He enjoys seeing his software be a catalyst for creating community.
One other way to create conversations is through comments on blogposts. In my interview with Dave last spring, he mentioned that he is blogging about Roller so that users can know what is going on, but does not expect too many comments. I went through his most recent posts and noticed that, indeed, he does not have comments on every post. The comments are an interesting variety from colleagues to his mom congratulating him on completing a recent 10k run. I'm very impressed that his mom reads his blog--my mom recently said she googled me and found the word blog associated with my name, but has absolutely no idea what a blog is!
# posted by Karen Mishra @ 4:05 PM 
