So by most accounts this is the guy you love to hate. Because he has done it all, one would think that he is a fairly confident character, however, when you read his article “Digital Moaism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”  he comes across as horribly insecure about his future as an expert. Jaron believes that when you let everyone into the sandbox (crowd source, open source, flat organizational structure, etc.), the chances of creating something of value declines because those who actually know what they’re doing will have their voices drowned out, which, in turn, dooms us to a future of crap decision making.

Additionally, Jaron believes that products which emerge from the sandbox are for the most part produced by anonymous contributors. For Jaron, the anonymity is a major loss since knowing the creator of a product is an important dimension/context towards understanding the work. If you like, it seems that Jaron is evoking the Benjaminian lamentation of content having lost its aura.

So does he have a point? Does someone as brilliant as Jaron run the risk of being drowned out by a production model that crowd-sources a bunch of sub 140 IQ dummies? Is it really necessary for him to carry the torch on behalf of those people who shape technology and society?

To answer this question, lets break down what Jaron had to say in his interview with andrew keen and his article, “Digital Moaism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”
——————————————————
The Interview with Andrew Keen:
-Bothered by peoples perception of the net as an entity, an oracle of sorts. Brings up his fear of individual contributions being anonymized, mashed up into being perceived as a whole rather than consumers seeing the parts that make it up.

-Has a respect for the internet’s capacity to provide a space for people to make cool content. Recognizes the potential for good to occur but is very weary of the bad. The bad being the possibility of people congregating to conduct historically detrimental activities (cites fascism, cultism, and communism as examples of negative group action).

-In line with the examples of negative group activities, the core aspect in them is the capacity for the individual voice to be stripped. This is something that he sees happening already on the internet where content creators go uncited. He finds this to be a problem as knowing the author is a critical component towards establishing some context for the content.

-He likes myspace because at least there people celebrate their individual identity

There are thee motivations that brought him to writing digital maoism.

1) Has a problem with anonymous mobism. Believes that when people are given the option, they will opt to hide in a group and take no responsibility for their actions because they are less vulnerable than if they stood out on their own.

2) Has a problem with the business models that are emerging from the internet. Biggest gripe is with how content space providers are making money off advertising linked to the content that users create for free. Essentially big companies are making money off the little guy.

3) Making a stronger case for his gripe with the anonymity of content and how people seem to regard the internet as becoming its own entity with its own intelligence (as you will see over and over, jaron is not a huge fan of AI), he talks about the turing test, designed to see if an individual can tell the difference between answers given by a computer and a human. Lanier says that humans have a desire for AI because it represents a new mode of psychological denial (religion) that displays a pristine existence. Lanier sees how people view the internet as a space for AI to emerge and that humans contributing their thoughts in an anonymous undifferentiated hive like manner displays this belief that humanity is a stepping stone towards AI, a supreme existence/intelligence. Lanier wants to make sure that the spotlight stays tight and narrow on the individual.

-The ability to achieve a collective existence is much easier with the internet as the internet is able to accomplish implementation based rhetoric. By this he means to contrast the internet with the past collectivist scenarios where hegemony was achieved through books and magazines while now it is achieved through simply implementing the infrastructure within which people communicate.

-Sticking with the theme of anonymized existence, Lanier brings up the issue of how the AI that develops within the internet is a result of algorithms that aggregate human activity and essentially turn human behavior into a meta existence. Because of this he is worried that people who start off seeing the world through aggregated content sites will be more susceptible to mob mentality later on in life.

-Jaron believes in the power of the internet for good, he just sees some issues with it that need to be brought up before they become too big of an issue.

———————————————————-

Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

I omitted points already mentioned in the interview.

- starts off by talking about how his wikipedia entry pins him as a film maker when in truth he only made one film that did not do so well. something that he would like to erase from his past. yet whenever he edits his own entry he finds that someone always goes back and reverts the edit.

-compares reading WP to reading the bible in that you have faint voices of anonymous contributors

-sees the structure of WP as the problem. That there is a platform that allows for a collective knowledge to emerge is upsetting to him. especially with influence residing at the bottleneck.

-sees online collectivism as different from meritocracy or democracy

-talks about the Nature article that compares britannica to WP and says that the only reason that WP came out ahead is because one, the chosen topics are constantly evolving thus WP is better suited to be most up to date, and two, there are just a bunch of rosy cheeked go getting grad students who want to show off their knowledge. However, if the comparison was based on a controversial article where fact does not fit into the picture, he says that WP would lose out because the nature of fast updating would result in a mess of updates with no coherence whereas the slow and seemingly more deliberate model of britannica would at least provide a more well thought out presentation before needing to be revised.

-points out that the “all things worked out in time” model of wikipedia is reflective of right wing libertarianism or left wing consensus making

-bothered by the fact that many wikipedia articles just rip text from other sites which in turn creates a distance between the content and the original author

-says that all information can be found through google anyways. to have everything aggregated loses the flavor of casual use that people get through searching the internet.

-longs for the voice o the author that is lost through aggregation. Claims that even Britannica even has a voice

-says that Myspace will tell you more about a TV show than wikipedia

-claims that the goal of the internet is to eliminate the scent of the human and make all content seem as if it emerged on its own.

-claims that aggregator sites are not hive like when contributors are given identities

-has issues with aggregator sites like Digg and Reddit because they seem to place importance on issues of little or no social value

-Thinks the hive mind is boring

- He is carrying the torch for individual human intelligence

-”The beauty of the internet is that it connects people. The value is the other people. If we start to believe the internet itself is an entity that has something to say, were devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.”

-bothered by the fact that the aggregator companies make more money than the content creators

-not a fan of the reactive writing styles of the internet. likes the slower more deliberative style of writing that has a longer shelf life.

-claims that its hard for pop stars to emerge in the collectivist environment. the only way is for people to emerge through american idol…

-Claims the collectivist obsession has even hit the nytimes since they are seemingly pandering to a wider audience than before.

-makes a case for the collectives ability to be smart by citing the jelly beans in a jar example, whereby a group of people estimate how many jellybeans there are in a jar and more often than not, the average of their estimates is very close to the actual number.

-cites the stock market crash of 2000 as collective stupidity

-Markets work through a dialogue between expert individuals and groups. The role of the expert individual is to provide direction for the collective.

-makes the claim that open source programming works well for back end programming but not for interface design

-collective is good at solving uncontroversial matters. when it comes to taste and judgement, they are a disaster. They can deal in numbers, but not moral values.

-individuals achieve optimal stupidity when they are shielded from taking responsibility for their actions.

-The collective needs heros to lead it. cites woodward and berstein and the uncovering of the watergate scandal.

-The role of the feds (experts) and the market collectives. Feds set the interest rates and the market responds by determining whether the latest decision is optimal for preventing inflation.

-We need the institutions/experts to set the bar, take the lead. The role of the collective is to keep tabs on the decisions of the institution and keep them in check.

-the need to modulate the time domain of collective activity. sometimes a controversial wikipedia article will experience edit wars and the content will experience constant turmoil. What is needed is low pass filtering. This slows down the decision making process so that people don’t jump to conclusions. Says that this is how representative democracy works. Asks us to imagine what society would be like if all laws were written in the way that wikipedia articles are written

- says that structures and constraints speed up the evolution of tech

-does not like the idea that people want education to take place through wiki platforms. fears that it will facilitate the nasty outbursts of hive mind mentality. Sees maoism, fascism, and religious uprisings as examples of these nasty outbursts.

-wants a better feedback loop between the collective and the individual

-wants to make sure that as we move into this realm of collective activity that we always remember to cherish the individual first!
——————————————————————————

Responses to Jaron Lanier: The majority of these responses speak from the corner of being fed up with power being abused by the few. All of them are brilliant in their own right and have had success within established institutions, however they realize that the institutional filter of intelligence is no longer the key determiner of who should play in the sandbox.

Douglas Rushkoff: He flips Jaron’s argument on its back by pointing out how the collective can act as the low pass filtering for the experts. Additionally, he cuts to the heart of Jaron’s insecurity by stating that those who fear the meta are those who stand to lose the most in a world were credit is not as important as it used to be. “Most of us who work in or around science and technology understand that our greatest achievements are not personal accomplishments but lucky articulations of collective realizations.”

Quinten Hardy:  Points out that while aggregators may miss certain information of importance, the mass media is no better at this. Also, along the lines of Laniers point of getting to know the flavor of the content by knowing who the author is, Hardy points out that Lanier is a consultant to major tech firms that would like nothing more than to co-opt the trend towards collective production.

Benkler: We know that he has a slew of examples to throw at Lanier. The best one he uses is how the collective mobilized to expose the Diebold scheme in a way that traditional mass media experts would not have been able to.

Shirky: He works to dispel the common myth that plagues wikipedia; the idea that because anyone can edit, wikipedia must resemble a free for all. Instead Shirky points out the myriad regulations that support the efficiency of its production. He also points out that Wikipedia includes similar structures of production to that of linux communities, therefor Lanier should not contrast the two communities.

Doctrow:  He replies to Lanier’s claim that open source production cannot lay claim to successful UI. Doctrow points out that he rather likes firefox and Ubuntu’s interface. He also takes on Lanier’s fear of the individual flavor being loss by pointing out that to really read a wikipedia article means to look at the discussion page, something that Lanier NEVER refers to in his article.

Kelly: Points out that the constituency of wikipedia is far from hive like. he points out that the WP community is run for the most part by an elite group of administrators and contributors.

Esther Dyson: The benefit of the hive for the masses is that they have the opportunity to sharpen and refine their ideas in collaborative spaces.

Sanger: Brings up the appeal of slashdot as something where people don’t care about it being right, they just care that its equal opportunity. Sanger however sides with Lanier regarding the importance of experts, but says that something like wikipedia should be celebrated in its ability to harness labor on such a large scale. In the style of Benkler, Sanger says that we are experiencing an industrial revolution where it is not the technology that is organized, but mental effort.

Viega: Lanier’s point of wikipedia stripping the style of the individual author is refuted when Viega makes the very simple observation that wikipedia entries are very rich if one is to read the talk pages. “The talk page is where the writers for an article hash out their differences, plan future edits, and come to agreement about tricky rhetorical points. This kind of debate doubtless happens in the New York Times and Britannica as well, but behind the scenes. Wikipedia readers can see it all, and understand how choices were made.”

Wales: Provides a short answer stating that all contributions on wikipedia are a result of individuals exercising their own ideas and judgement.

George Dyson: Parallels the way the brain creates memory/knowledge to the style in which wikipedia entries are created. Says that wikipedia is far more natural than britannica.

Gillmore: Points out that this debate about the hive mind is a stark reminder that people need to update their media literacy skills. Either people believe or disbelieve everything they read. People need to get better at applying a healthy does of skepticism in line with fact checking. Says that sites like wikipedia are not collectives or hives, rather they are communities of production. They are not the problem, the consumers of content are!

Rheingold: Refutes Lanier on the grounds of semantics. “Collective action involves freely chosen self-election (which is almost always coincident with self-interest) and distributed coordination; collectivism involves coercion and centralized control.”

——————————————————-

The 10 Theses are another rant about the issues with the web 2.0 culture. This time we hear about how the supposed decentralization and opportunities for organizing are falling prey to the corporations that have successfully co-opted the technology for their benefit. Additionally, web 2.0 culture has failed to mobilize in ways hoped by most as it has found its way into becoming integrated in peoples lives as a passive activity like television.

From Theses 4 – “Better social networks are organized networks involving better individuals – it’s your responsibility, it’s your time. What is needed is an invention of social network software where everybody is a concept designer. Let’s kill the click and unleash a thousand million tiny tinkerers!”

Theses 5 takes a swipe at Wikipedia’s policy of neutral point of view by saying that in promoting this policy they are supporting a one belief system rather than embracing the multiplicity, something that web 2.0 is supposed to do. [what do they mean by style? do they mean opinion? the concept of NPOV in wikipedia entries is to accommodate the plurality by making sure that all sides are mentioned in an article…this is something distinctly web 2.0]

Theses 7 makes a strong case for ensuring that organizing on the web maintains a strong link to the ground. organizing that stays on the web will falter and the organizational structures that emerge must be based on a web+place hybrid.

Theses 9 points out that the web 2.0 model is not bringing about a revolution in economic models, rather it simply promotes the mindless obsession with growth exhibited by capitalism.

Theses 10 brings up issues with privacy, centralization of ones identity, and freedom. Recognizing that our identities are being harvested on a daily basis, Ippolita,Lovink & Rossiter promote the idea of creating complex user ID’s that are designed to confuse the system that harvests user data. From remixing identities to faking them, the concept is to fight the trend of corporations making money off of what you do for free…that being living your life.Similar Posts:

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kaChing was started in 2008 by Dan Caroll and is financially backed by angel money from various Sillicon Valley hard-hitters, including the co-founder of Netscape. What’s so interesting about kaChing is its approach to the roll of the masses in investing: it hinges on the idea that the “wisdom of crowds,” coupled with the direction of “genius” investors, can lead us to better predict how the markets will behave. Also, kaChing exemplifies open-source computing in its technological make-up: in addition to the crowdsourcing of investment research, kaChing has partnered up with Xignite (a cloud-service startup that serves on-demand market and financial data), and has released an API to allow any interested party to mash-up data from other sources. (I am totally an interested party, you guys…)

In this travelogue, I will attempt to 1) understand how kaChing’s open-source structure crafts the user’s experience and makes the service better as a whole, 2) discover how we as users are not only reacting to the market, but shaping it or influencing it, 3) explore kaChing’s API and how its data can be used in congress with other websites concerned with “trafficking in the zeitgeist,” and 4) become a frickin’ virtual millionaire! Too bad the cash is not really real

Let me know what you think!
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Across the network, the key area needed for improvement is that of user participation. While NfN’s JP network does boast a user base of over 1500 and does feature constant blog and forum posts, the aspect of blog and forum responses is fairly low. Also, with the addition of sites for the other towns in Boston, NfN has an imperative to increase participation and boost membership for the new sites.

In my previous post I presented accounts and ideas around increasing participation in networks. One of the more theoretical ideas that was considered was that of social objects, where a social network is defined by an “object” of common interest. While I proposed that NfN’s social object was community organizing for Boston’s neighborhoods, Mushon prompted me to reify this further as he, and rightfully so, felt that community organizing was too abstract and would most likely not boost NfN’s gravitational pull.

Looking further into the idea of defining the social object for NfN, I explored Etienne Wegners concept of communities of practice. Wegner defines a community of practice as :

” groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”

he expands on this further by saying

“In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice.”

As I mentioned in my last post, it would seem that the social object for NfN is community organizing for the city of Boston. However, judging from the level of interaction presently taking place on the site, it is not quite at the level that I think Wegner would want when determining what qualifies as a Community of Practice. More importantly, the element of specificity that we see in a CP is also lacking. Again, Mushon’s point about community organizing being too abstract as a point for convergence rings true. What then is NfN’s focus? Since I feel as if I could run around in circles answering this question, I will instead propose a social object.

Returning to Pinkett’s dissertation, the one idea that stood out most as being the best candidate for NfN’s social object is that of Asset based community development (ABCD). Asset based community development is founded on the idea that all community development initiatives focus on the present assets of the community as principle resources for development. This is accomplished by engaging in asset mapping, where those involved in ABCD plot out all the resources that a community has and begin making strategic links between them. This activity of asset mapping could be one of the primary social object for NfN. I say primary because I believe that upon engaging in asset mapping, the natural steps that follow are that of community organizing.

However, I can already anticipate Mushon’s reaction here, even the social object of asset mapping is too abstract. Shouldn’t the mapping be in relation to a particular cause? This is where the argument shifts from the social to the technical. As I mentioned in my previous post, I felt that there was an issue with the organization of the site in that people were, for example, posting items to blogs that should be in forums. Here I believe we can find the crux of the issue on specifying NfN’s focus resting on the matter of design. If NfN were to reorganize its site so that it placed groups as the entry point, perhaps the asset based mapping and community organizing aspects would have a tighter focus. For example, if we look at change.org, a website focused on generating action around social justice issues, the entry points on the front page are organized by topics of interest. This helps change.org span a wide range of issues but provide a funneling of focus whereby the user enters by finding a topic of interest and then navigates their way to a specific action plan via forums and blogs. If NfN were to follow this design lead, I believe that the social object of community organizing would be strengthened by gaining relevancy through directed attention to important community issues.

Coming back to the social realm and the discussion of increasing participation, the aspect of incentivizing participation seems to be a major component for improving NfN’s participatory culture. If we take Yelp as an example, we see that users who are active participants are rewarded through the attainment of status that validate their contributions and, as I mentioned in my previous post, active contributors are rewarded through social events that celebrate their contributions. While I did not find any specific research on the psychology behind this, there are many examples of how meritocratic ranking systems in online communities act as ample incentive for contribution. In a New York Times article on why yelp works, the author points out that in the beginning, Yelp paid contributors to get the ball rolling. While I imagine that NfN does not presently have the capacity to do this (and it is certainly not a sustainable strategy), entertaining the possibility of taking on paid contributors in the future who would act as community bloggers and resource mappers on particular issues could help get the ball rolling.

As I reflect on my travels through the NfN network, the biggest issue that stood out was that of refining NfN’s focus. It is clear what the founder would like to accomplish, and there are examples of his goals manifesting. However, if NfN wishes to become the convener for the civic minded constituents of Boston, it must revisit both its social and technical design strategies.Similar Posts:

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1.    Members that engage face-to-face are your most dedicated customers
2.    Your most dedicated customers are most engaged
3.    Your most engaged members contribute content (this is, by far, a minority, of your users)

“Converting the weak ties of users that know each other only as avatars and nicknames to     strong ties (friendships) means your highly-engaged users return to your site to be with their friends, and these friendships make more effective/ relevant the other engagement mechanisms in place (point systems, for example).”

This information was backed up by my findings in Randal Pinkett’s dissertation on the Camfield Estates network where his team drove participation to the network by offering classes on how to use the network.

“One of the early challenges was the “chicken-and-egg” phenomenon of building an online community: community members won’t join if there isn’t a critical mass online, and there won’t be a critical mass online until community members join. To overcome this hurdle, at least initially, we had residents register for the site as part of the introductory course. This ensured that once they received their computers and Internet connections that there would be other community members and classmates who were already on the site. In doing so, we hoped to create an immediate audience by registering as many people as possible in a relatively short period of time, as opposed to creating an audience gradually as a result of intermittent or sporadic registrations over a long period of time.” p.167-168

The third and final finding was on the idea of social objects. The idea of social objects in the world of social networking has to do with establishing a common point of interest within the community, a point of convergence that, going along with the party starter theme, gets everyone onto the dance floor.

“The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They’re not; social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object. That’s why many sociologists, especially activity theorists, actor-network theorists and post-ANT people prefer to talk about ’socio-material networks’, or just ‘activities’ or ‘practices’ (as I do) instead of social networks…Flickr, for example, has turned photos into objects of sociality. On del.icio.us the objects are the URLs.” -http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2005/04/why_some_social.html

So what can we take from this when thinking about ways to encourage participation on the NfN network? I think that NfN should incorporate all three components.

1) While I think they have done this in the past, they need to hold regular meetup events in each neighborhood to encourage the creation of a community both online and offline.
2) Offer classes. Already they have discussions around ways in which to organize for action. I think that they should have classes on this in each neighborhood that focus on the general concept and show up to use NfN as a tool
3) And I think this is the most important point, generate focus on the site by generating topics in the forums and blogs so as to promote a point of convergence to promote activity. While I am aware that this runs more or less counter to Pinkett’s point in my last post regarding social constructionism where he advocates for letting the users set the tone, I do think that we are confronted with the chicken and the egg issue with regards to user activity here. So to deal with that I think it best for NfN to take survey of issues facing the community and, in so many words, get the party started by generating the conversation.Similar Posts:

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MIT Media Lab student Randal Pinkett used this quote in his dissertation on a community network site he built in Boston for the Camfield Estates, a public housing community in Boston. This quote is central to emphasizing the importance of what role community network sites can play in helping its members turn to each other in times of need rather than appealing to service institutions. In a time when many are struggling to make ends meet, the need for establishing micro bartering economies has become more pressing, and the ability for a social networking site to make community resource more visible is an important step in this direction.

In this travelogue I began by both reading Pinkett’s dissertation while exploring the social networking site neighbors for neighbors. NfN started two years ago serving primarily the town of Jamaica Plain in the City of Boston. Since then it has expanded to include sections for all the other towns in Boston. I decided to begin my investigation by looking at the sites mission statement. This gave me an idea of how to determine how well the site was meeting its goals.
(see below image for the site goals)

Joseph Porcelli, the networks founder and lead editor posted a statement that seems to capture the mission of the site.

In this post he emphasizes the power of the community to cast their gaze around them rather than above when in search of support. The idea behind such a statement is to set a tone for the culture he is trying to create for this network. His goal is to connect those who have something to offer with those who have a particular need. By doing this, the network NfN is promoting a self sufficient community.

All of this sounds fantastic, but what are the realities of NfN? How well does it meet its mission? With both the networks mission statement and the post by the founder in mind, I set out by exploring two communities that I was most familiar with, the towns of Roxbury and Dorchester. Each towns page has the following categories: Invite, My Page, Members, Photos, Videos, Forum, Events, Groups, and Blogs. Below the categories one finds a “start here” section that provides some context to the categories. This is helpful if someone is new to the site and unsure as to what the function of a section might be.

In order to get an idea of the activity within these networks, I decided to focus on the following sections: Forums, Groups, and Blogs. When I began my search however, I found that the two towns that I picked were relatively new to the network and thus had a low number of members. Roxbury had 17 while Dorchester had 98. I explored my designated sections in the respective networks but saw minimal participation. Given that NfN had only recently launched these sites, I decided to move my focus onto Jamaica Plain, the town that was the original network for NfN and boasts close to 1500 members. Despite the need to shift focus, I did not ignore the fact that my original target sites had a low number of members. While I do not have extensive research and data to answer the question of why this was the case, I was able to obtain some demographic data on NfN users in JP, Boston census information,  as well as cull some information out of Pinkett’s dissertation that I think may lead to some answers that fall in line with the digital divide argument.

In his dissertation, Pinkett cites data on the technology consumption habits between caucasian’s and minorities.

“Whites outspend minorities in the product categories of personal computers, laptop computers, Internet access, cable modems, and ISDN telephone lines (Strategy Research Corporation, 2001).”

Combine this point with the 2000 census data from the City of Boston website that shows Roxbury as having  5% Non-Hispanic White and 63% Black or African-American while Jamaica Plain is 50% Non-Hispanic White, 17% Black or African-American, and it seems like we might have our answer, especially when user data from the Jamaica Plain network shows that over 90% of its users are listed as caucasian.
To this point of consumption habits, Pinkett says,

“when searching for effective strategies to foster engagement with information and communications technology, it is incumbent upon designers and planners to ensure that the infrastructure is well suited to the interests of end-users.” p.60

Pinkett not only encourages designers to be aware of this fact, he also says that users should be involved with the design process itself. While this is a worthwhile area to explore, I will hold off on this for now and stick to my focus on examining the current use of NfN. What I will say is that as a former teacher in the Boston Public Schools, I know that almost all of my students had cell phones and a good number of them had internet access, so perhaps creating the site in such a way where it is easily navigable on a cell phone browser might be a good start.

Coming back to the examination of the network layout, I began by looking at the Groups. With so many members, the JP network was able to create groups that focus on particular neighborhoods. This is especially helpful for organizing around issues that may affect a small area. An example of this hyper-local organizing through the network is seen in the following example:  Since the beginning of the summer, JP has experienced a a rash of burglaries. In response to this, the JP network has become a hub for organizing to contend with this. In the Central Jamaica Plain group, Joseph Porcelli, the sites founder, posts information about a break in and sets up a meeting time for members of the particular neighborhood at 1pm the next day to discuss how to deal with the crimes. In my communication with Joseph, 14 people showed up the next day and the outcome of the meeting produced the following action items.

Here we have what I find to be a solid example of effective organizing between citizens to take community matters into their own hands as opposed to only relying on the police.

The forums feature 6 categories, one of which is classified as community resources and another classified as skill share/tool share. In the skill share/tool-share category I found an example that related to the quote that kicked off the post. Here we have an individual who is looking for help with small jobs around the house. Another example worth noting is when a user posted a request for help with their vegetable garden in exchange for providing the person who helps with some of the vegetables that come out of the garden. In my opinion this is a decent example of supporting a bartering economy that is especially helpful in these challenging economic times.

Finally, looking at Blogs, my attention was caught by one post that included a video that teaches people how to use the new recycling bins provided by the city.

While I found some decent examples of organizing and resource sharing taking place on the network, I did find that many requests for information or blog posts in general had no responses . I asked Joseph Porcelli whether or not he has information about communications generated from these posts taking place off site, as in users emailing each other directly. I am waiting on his reply.

Another point worth noting is that the three sections I focused on, forums, blogs, and groups, all seemed to have content that seemed to be placed in the wrong section (e.g. what should be a blog post found itself in the forums). This can be a problem for both the user who is posting information or looking for information. My feeling is that this is a cultural issue on the network that will be worked out in time as more users take ownership and start to establish stricter guidelines that will help with the networks efficiency of information organization.

In my next post I hope to feature interviews with some of the sites users as well as explore the issue of how to build up site use in forums, blogs, groups and network membership for those towns with a low number of members.

Special Thanks to Joseph Porcelli for taking time to answer my questions!!Similar Posts:

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The social networking site Neighbors for Neighbors provides individual networks for each neighborhood in Boston. The idea is to improve civic engagement in each community as well as increase visibility of social service resources. In my research, I will focus on two of the neighborhoods, look at how the sites are being used, and ask some of the users about their experience on the site. From there I will explore the concept of community based social networking through the lens of community informatics to learn more about the benchmarks for a successful network. I will also use the field of community informatics as a point of departure for learning about other such networks and their successes and challenges.

From this research I hope to get an idea of the what design and implementation methods have led to improved civic engagement and visibility of resources. I would also like to get an idea of how people see these networks as supplementing local government services.Similar Posts:

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            For this particular travelogue I would like to take a look at the social networking site DList.  This particular site is, as stated on their welcome page, “a social network for gay guys and their friends.”  While all essential functions of the website are available to anyone who signs up for free, there are a number of features and restrictions that can only be unlocked through a paid subscription; either $10 a month or $25 every three months.  This site has attracted my attention because of the seemingly large number of users and lack of attention that it has attracted even within the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) mass media.  This kind of site is a perfect example of one form of exclusivity within the LGBT community that I believe to be a part of an inability, at times, within the LGBT community to find a cohesive community within itself or even with the outer heteronormative community.

            The other issue that intrigues me with this site is what kind of image this site gives to the gay male as a stereotype and the gay male as an individual.  Because this site comes off as a mixed form derived from the likes of Myspace and Gay.com (typically seen as a form of dating site), it seemingly takes on a unique new way to engage their audience and allow gay men to interact in a “safe” space.  But does this “safe” space really give people an open forum to be who they really are, or does it perpetuate a certain type of identity that users feel the need to conform to in order to be apart of this community?  What do the advertisements say about the type of identities the website is looking to entice?  Why have a membership fee that obviously perpetuates a sort of class system within this imagined community?

            As a final approach to this, in order to allow myself to “travel” with my research, I would like to see what sort of connections this site makes with others of the same, or similar, type.  Where does this site stand in the social hierarchy of LGBT networking?

Comments, questions you all might have about the topic as well, or any suggestions anyone might have as a way of furthering this search are MORE THAN WELCOME.Similar Posts:

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