On this episode of Spark: Online friendship, personal branding, and geoweb privacy. Click below to listen or download the MP3 (runs 54:00).
Play audio:
- Nora explores privacy and the geoweb
- Steven Johnson defines the geoweb (full interview)
- Boy van Amstel promotes location-based privacy awareness through Please Rob Me (full interview)
- Nora mentions Andy Baio’s post about privacy, robbers and answering machines
- Laurent LaSalle extoles the virutes of location-based web services like FourSquare
- Foursquare on foursquare, location, & privacy…
- Anand Giridharadas on the trend of personal branding
- Anand’s NYT column: Branding and the ‘Me’ Economy
- Anand’s Twitter: @anandwrites
- Nora mentions her SparkExchange success story
- Upopolis lets young hospital patients chat with one another
- danah boyd and Bill Deresiewicz examine online social networking and the concept of friendship (full interview)
- Bill is the author of Faux Friendship
- danah is the lead author of the “Friendship” chapter in Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “Song for M” by Timberman
- “Revolve” by hisboyelroy
- Countdown by Corsica_S
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “Dark Hallway (clean)” and “Backed Vibes (clean)” by Kevin MacLeod
- keypad_6.wav by soundplusdesign
- “Morning Dream” by Gurdonark
- “Downtempo Groove” by Neurowaxx
- “Halflight” and “Night Vision” by Chad Crouch
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For more information (and instructions) visit cbc.ca/podcasting
[Original image by josephsardin]
Guardian's latest science podcast discusses a new book called "How many friends does a person need" (with comments about facebook friends too)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/audio/2010…
Nora! Will you be my friend? Zombie.
Personal Branding: I don't want to be a brand. Yes, I like the idea of people thinking of my name when they want to discuss digital copyright and transparent/accountable computing, but I don't want to be limited to that. There are many other aspects of my life I'd like to feel free to share, and never think that it would be damaging to my brand to not be so focused.
Concept of friendship: full interview was amazing. Please don't feel the need to cut short the full interviews. I cringed (twice) hearing you say that you were almost out of time. Having it go for more than a half hour or even more than an hour would have been fine, even if only 10 minutes or so make it to the broadcast. Spark is much bigger than the radio show…
And thanks for another great show!
Thanks for the feedback, Russell. Personally, I love the fact that we can make the longer form interviews available. The one challenge, though, is that when the ratio of raw to edited gets too great, it can be difficult to edit and keep the conversation coherent.
I'm hoping to get back to something we did a little more consistently earlier in the show's life, which was to pick a specific, tight focus for the beginning of the interview, which would then go 'on air' and then broaden the conversation out for the Web. That seemed to work both in terms of giving the Web/podcast audience a fuller experience, and also not ending up with a split or unclear focus on the radio.
About the concept of friendship, I'd agree with Bill's comment that there is a trend that is impoverishing close friendships, and not just due to technology. My personal experience has been so many people out there are stuck in a sort of mode involving shallow interaction with a large number at the cost of fewer but more intimate interaction. One thing I've noticed over time, is that the people I know best are the same sorts of people who have relatively few 'friends' in facebook profiles and such, but that it isn't just a facebook thing. The people I have the best friendships with are the same ones who keep a tighter social circle in face to face interaction as well.
About the specific comment on social media messaging being public by default particularly interesting. Personally I've been quite disturbed by this and almost always carry out conversations in the private modes of interaction. I do this even for conversations which contain nothing particularly private or personal. Despite this, I sometimes worry that I seem odd to other people, due to not going along with the norm of using the public-by-default communication. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.
Nora,
I really appreciate Spark. I picked up on it about 3 months ago and am currently making my way through the archives. Please keep up the good work. I have ideas along the way and will try to be diligent about posting them back, as I realize (and also appreciate) that Spark is a community effort. Thanks again,
drew
Hey Drew, thanks for the kind words. I really value the community aspect of Spark. We're looking for ways to expand what we do as a platform for connecting the community (for instance, with the Spark Exchange initiative: http://spark.stackexchange.com/)
Great to have both danah and Bill on the podcasting talking about online friendship and the impact on offline friendship!
I really enjoyed this podcast. I was thinking that the nature of friendship even online seems to have become much wider and less deep lately. I keep a LiveJournal and have core set of correspondents there, about half of whom I see regularly face-to-face and half who are geographical far flung. The personal nature of many entries and use of the word "friend" rather than follower have always made LJ seem more … (1 of 2)
social networking than traditional blogging. However, the fact that you have longer entries and threaded conversations means that it's also felt in some ways deeper and more intimate than Facebook or Twitter. I really have to think before I'll friend someone on LJ, while I tend to accept friend requests from practically anyone on Facebook, even though my name is there. One of my friends on both sites often says that she uses Facebook as a way to post relatively superficial stuff online that will distract folk away from her LiveJournal, which she doesn't want co-workers and old contacts from high school to know about. LiveJournal seems far less popular than it once was, and I'm noticing the demographic (at least in my use of the site) is trending older than Facebook. If I were using only Facebook, I think I'd definitely feel the same as Bill about online mediation. However, the friendships I have that are both mediated through LiveJournal and maintained through face-to-face contact feel much deeper and more meaningful than ones that are face-to-face only. I think the interface of the online mediation is really important to structuring the breadth and depth of interaction that takes place. (2 of 2)
One of the things I really liked about the conversation was the observation about the impact of specific design decisions. As you say, even something like threaded comments can increase the feeling of deeper communication.
Hi Nora,
Twitter is like having a private news service compiled by friends and people who interest you, whereas with Facebook it feels as though strangers are rifling through your belongings. I know which I prefer.
Incidentally, I'm glad to see that you use Creative Commons music (including Gurdonark) in your show. May I be so bold as to recommend that you take a gander at my Catching The Waves, where you'll find reviews of CC albums that might be suitable for your broadcast? End of plug.
CTW
I'll pass on the info to Dan. He picks the music on Spark. Thanks!
Terrific site, CTW! I'm really digging fLako's stuff. Thanks for the link.
@comelyNora & @couldbeanafroDan,
Thank you for the kind comments about Catching The Waves. I'm delighted that you like fLako's work. Not being the most technically skilled person, I'd never have guessed that starting a blog would have resulted in discovering such things as netlabels, podcasts,Twitter, CC licences, YouTube – it's been very exciting.
I'm equally pleased to have found Spark, and will download and listen to some of your podcasts this weekend. Definitely bookmarked.
Keep up the good work,
CTW
Thanks for the kind words. I find Twitter particularly helpful in this regard. I like the 'lightness' of the medium, the fact that reciprocity isn't required, and the focus on information exchange. It seems to facilitate a level of collegiality.