This essay is some immediate thinking about Google+ that I’ve been throwing around for the past couple weeks. Context: I joined G+ in the first wave of invites, so I’ve been watching the service for what amounts to “a while.” Most of my observations below come from 1) my experience working with danah boyd on her research projects at Microsoft Research New England over the past year, and 2) my personal experience as a Facebook early adopter (ie., only college students) in 2005.

Introduction

I’ve read dozens of articles over the past few weeks about how Google Plus (hereafter Google+) presents a challenge to Facebook (and Twitter), but I’m here to say that Facebook will maintain its dominance over Google’s social competitor because of one reason: Facebook’s social value.

What do I mean by social value, especially now that social, social network, social graph, and other uses of the buzzword have infiltrated and inundated the tech industry and start-up sector? Instead of defining social value directly, let me position it up against another term: informational value. If we think of a communication technology having social value, the technology allows us to inform and be informed about matters relating to our identities and our relationships. Communication technologies also have informational values: that is, supplying relevant data, stories, and news that don’t necessarily reflect our interpersonal connections. A simple distinction between these two values might be illustrated like this:

Status update reflecting social value: “I ate a hamburger today at lunch with Mary.”
Status update reflecting informational value: “I ate lunch today at Five Guys, and it was really good! [link to website]“

So, let me propose this observation: In its current structure, Google+ has no social value. It appears to have a great potential for informational value. Yet because Facebook’s structure allows its users to derive a high social value from the platform. Facebook will continue to maintain a large user population that uses Facebook specifically for its social value.

This is not to say that Facebook has no informational value. Actually, over the years, it’s quite obvious that Facebook has moved its strategy from emphasizing social value to informational value. For instance, the dominance of the News Feed as a major hub for interaction and the eventually-prominent practice of sharing and gathering news and links means that more and more users have found Facebook to be a great platform for producing and gathering news and advice.

However, Facebook’s history tells us a lot about its social value, and an important demographic of Facebook users — namely American teenagers — illustrates why Google+ might not be adopted for the reasons most tech-savvy adults want.

Facebook & Social Value in Collegiate Life

Although a lot of people criticized The Social Network for warping the truth behind Facebook’s history, there are actually some really interesting points that are emphasized throughout the film that not many critics picked up on. One of the most important, I believe, is the importance of college networks to Facebook’s success. This scene in particular stood out to me, where Mark and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Erica talk in Grendel’s Den (a local bar in Harvard Square):

Erica Albright: I have to go study.

Mark Zuckerberg: You don't have to study.

Erica Albright: [Exasperated and angry] Why do you keep saying I don't have to study?

Mark Zuckerberg: Because you go to BU!

Erica Albright: [Erica stares at him, furious]

I thought this joke was quite funny (disclaimer: I went to Boston University), but it also picks up on an important bit of Boston college culture that people who haven’t lived in the city don’t understand: networks between colleges are very important to student socialization. Each school is connected to each other through students’ IRL social networks.

The initial success of Facebook was built upon these collegiate connections. It’s readily apparent in The Social Network, when Mark explains the rollout strategy to Sean Parker at dinner: target universities developing their own Facebook-like online social networks by connecting all the colleges around them with Facebook. Of course, the key to student adoption of Facebook was contemporary collegiate youth culture itself: socialization over education, hook-up culture, cultural importance of parties. Another extremely important scene in The Social Network (again overlooked) is when Mark impulsively adds the “Relationship” status to users’ profile pages — important because it eventually played so a large role in college relationships (or time spent figuring out who was in one or who was single).

I bring up youth culture because for its first few years with college students — and eventually with high school students as well — Facebook played a gigantic social role in the lives of teenagers and young adults. Facebook connected youth, and we didn’t share links: we shared ourselves. The summer before I entered college, I spent countless hours looking through the “Boston University” network, searching out potential connections, figuring out who was in my dormitory and classes. Some of my friends even contacted random students and made friendships before school even started. The role of the profile in collegiate culture reigned supreme from around 2004 to 2008.

It’s also important to note that Facebook’s success within youth networks helped it dominate other services. MySpace’s popularity at the time took two paths: 1) those who were on MySpace saw value in Facebook’s clean interface and “safer” way for connecting real-life friendships with online relationships (and vice versa), and 2) those who were not using MySpace (like myself) saw immediate value in Facebook because it was a practical technology to organize the chaos of college life. MySpace’s demise began in 2008; the transition really took a hit as high school students began transitioning to Facebook in late 2006, who also saw it as a “less sketchy” online hangout spot (and the death knell truly rang in 2007 when the site opened up to anyone over age 13).

Today, a high majority of college and high school students maintain Facebook profiles. Students continue to structure their interpersonal relationships through Facebook: managing interesting, chatting with close friends, discovering gossip, bullying: all of which melds real-life with online life. This is especially pertinent for kids who don’t have as much mobility in their daily lives (eg., it’s difficult to hang out with friends after school), so many teens hit Facebook as a suitable replacement for the mall, park, library, etc.

Facebook Tensions: Adults & Differing Social Values

I’ve always had an issue with adults who say “I’m quitting Facebook; I don’t have a use for it.” (Sometimes this sentiment comes out as “I don’t like Facebook’s privacy issues. But it’s not like I had a use for it anyway.”) It especially irks me when these same adults chastise the younger generation for spending so much time on social network sites: what could kids possibly be doing on them? The answer is frequently “not much.” Teens are bored; Facebook provides them an outlet. But I realize that many adults see teens’ online social practices as similar to their own, which they are not. While it’s true that both kids and adults are constantly negotiating relationships with other people, students have infrastructure for those negotiations: schools. Schools continue to be the primary structure for many kids’ lives, and dynamics within schools heavily impact kids’ socialization. Adults may have something similar (like the workplace or an interest group), but youth interact with one another in school settings on a hyperdeterministic social level comparatively.

Even so, a lot of adults have managed to find similar social value in Facebook’s platform, primarily structured by interactions around the profile page: meeting old friends, keeping up to date about family, the social minutiae that make up everyday social life. But the tech-savvy adults who don’t find this value — the “I’m quitting Facebook”-ers — don’t because they have already established and maintained their personal networks in other spaces, usually email. It’s the same adults that were surprised about kids frequently using IM in the early 2000s — we teens hadn’t established networks yet, and IM was easier to keep on top of our friends… especially because AIM profiles in 2001 played the same role as Facebook profiles do now!

The ultimate issue with Facebook’s social value is its long-term sustainability. As we move through the rapidly-fluctuating phases of early life — from high school to college to young adulthood to 30+ — our social networks change with us. At the onset of Facebook, the social norm was to accept (almost) everybody you met in real life (in class, at a party, friends-of-friends) on Facebook. Why? It’s a difficult question, variable across different types of people. Personally, I’d wager it was half-cataloguing (contact info, keep track of people at college) and half-trend-setting (everyone Friends each other, so it’s easy to say “We’ll friend each other” after you meet someone). But over time, these saturated networks gave rise to issues, such as context collapse (of which Alice Marwick and danah have written extensively). In 2011, teens transitioning to college (the focus of Fred Stutzman’s work) must navigate a revised set of social norms for friending acquaintances; those exiting college face an entirely different set of norms. Teens may transition to email to maintain their connections in the work and professional environment; if not, we’ll probably see a mish-mash of various technologies struggling to maintain coherency.

Informational Value: Twitter as “Social Network”

I’ve talked a lot about social value, but let me tackle the concept of informational value before discussing Google+. The occasional comparison to Twitter is something I also want to address in this essay.

If we consider Facebook to be the purveyor of social value, Twitter embodies informational value. Twitter does away with the profile structure (maintaining only minimal details) in favor of sharing information: it curates an environment that is more news and links than personal, quotidian updates. Twitter also creates a physical structure of equality: every user’s tweet takes up at most around 250 pixels of space in the timeline. The maximum of 140 characters per message enforces brevity but also form: you get headlines rather than details, allowing the user to follow up on anything interesting after the initial glance by clicking a link (if provided). Facebook embodies similar design principles: matching profiles, similar updates (with separate Note pages for longer mental expulsions), equivalent photo albums. And as I stated before, over time, Facebook has attempted to force the emergence of more informational value by de-emphasizing the profile in favor of the Newsfeed.

Twitter, though, provides limited social value. The platform does not do a good job at helping users to manage interpersonal relationships or personal information (about yourself or others). While at their simplest, both Twitter and Facebook let a user manage “status updates,” but Twitter’s role equates more to blogging as Facebook feels more similar to instant messaging. Twitter, therefore, acts as a social network for managing users-as-information-carriers.

Google Plus: Poor Social Value, Lacking Informational Value

So let’s finally talk a bit about Google+. My argument is two-fold: Google+ has poor social value yet also lacks enough informational value. Google+ will probably not overtake Facebook as a platform for interpersonal socialization (for those that prefer that use of a social network), nor will it replace Twitter, because its design is not as streamlined and optimized for fast information filtering and curation.

It’s clear that Google+ was constructed for two reasons: 1) to maintain Google’s social graph as a valuable asset that could unite the company’s products, and 2) to create an appealing alternative to Facebook that approaches issues and ideologies of privacy in a more practical way. Millions of users have Gmail accounts and curate contact lists on Android phones; additionally, millions of other users (I can’t estimate the overlap) are concerned about Facebook’s past privacy debacles and the company’s general ideology to maintain a “public” culture.

But as much as the publicity/privacy issue is a major player in the push for popularity of this new platform, I don’t think that’s what’s ultimately at stake — especially if Google wants to reach the same level of use that Facebook currently boasts. The primary issue that Google+ should be concerned about is the balance between social value and information value.

Google+ currently features a profile system, but the profile is de-emphasized in favor of the Stream (informational > social). Also, there’s an issue with discovering streams: namely, you need to know the person (ie., have their email address) in order for them to appear as a potential contact (at least initially: eventually you can find other people through friends’ profiles or as content is shared by your friends). The conflict therefore is that the social network is built on existing relationships and hinders discovering new people: in either informational or social circumstances.

It goes without saying that one of the most important features to Facebook’s success was the Wall on each profile. Without a (public or private*) one-to-one communication affordance, every piece of information dispersed through Google+ is broadcast to the masses. The issue with broadcast, though, is that even with a system build around privacy (Circles), various users can follow other users, so one user can have thousands of followers (à la Twitter) but no understanding of who is actually following them or why. It’s a complicated mish-mash of Facebook and Twitter, but I don’t necessarily understand the full purpose of the combinations.

Overall, the people-you-already-know limitation, I think, is the largest barrier to participation on Google+. It also doesn’t help that the varying size of posts makes gleaning information from the Stream very difficult; in other words, Google+ does Twitter worse than Twitter.

*Apparently a private messaging system will be rolling out soon.

Conclusion: Google Plus & the Cultural Issue of Early Adopters

It’s clear that Google+ is still in beta: one quote of current user demographics set them at 88% male. It’s also clear that the invitation push went out through Google employees to their friends in a wave disseminating from the Silicon Valley tech industry. Are there issue with this? Most definitely. I think it’s actually worse than a Quora situation, which is a hangout for tech geeks to get their celebrity on (namely hope that tech industry elites answer their questions). The early adopters will shape the focus of Google+. And the fact that Facebook had one of the most unique early adopter communities (all college students) meant that it evolved in very particular and peculiar ways.

As I mentioned in the previous section, I don’t understand the intentions of the combination of Facebook’s and Twitter’s features. If we were to look back at social network site history, all the way to Friendster, we can see similar patterns in the initial structure: making connections with people you know already. But the platform allowed the discovery and interaction of unknown users, such that practices of flirtation and dating emerged within a very local context (namely, San Francisco; at least initially).

By designing for strict privacy, Google+ inhibits social value to emerge from the platform, unlike with Facebook, where the initial publicity within a structured social context (colleges) allowed for social norms to develop. Probably the looming issue is the consolidation of such social contexts outside of privileged and structured spaces.

Do they upload it?

Are you one of those fuckwads who has a fucking problem with my gay son getting married?

FCKH8.com is a new initiative by non-profit media campaigner Luke Montgomery in support of LGBT issues. The website gives a big, ol’ Fuck You to the haters of gay marriage and the proponents of denying gay couples benefits like health insurance.

I came across FCKH8 because a gay friend from high school had posted the video to his Facebook wall, and it had turned up in my newsfeed. The bright pink background caught my eye, and the “You will be offended.” tagline inspired the final clickthrough.

Although the embed contains enough expletives to ward off some viewers, especially if they’re viewing in their workplace, it’s a professionally produced video: great aesthetic quality, good caliber of sound, and an energetic cast that gets the point of “screwing hate” across strongly and proudly.

And the marketing has done pretty well so far. Spanning across all of the major sharing sites — Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon — the pink FCKH8 message has already as of yesterday raised close to $30,000 selling T-shirts and other schwag.

But the most interesting part of the FCKH8 campaign is the video strategy. And this strategy is bringing a whole new perspective to how we think about virality, spreadability, whatever you want to call it.

The FCKH8 channel hosts two official videos on their YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1amIrR-VMAI (“NSFW”) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwLaOtOlQ8 (censored).

However, yesterday, the FCKH8 Twitter account announced that the video had been flagged for removal: “YOUTUBE CENSORS: H8ers campaigned to flag R main video. Uploaded again! Share the FCK out of it!,” seemingly by anti-GLBT protestors.

The interesting note to be made about this message, though, is that “Share the FCK out of it” meant more than just “Share the video, embed it, send the link to your friends, etc.” Instead, dozens of users were inspired and allowed to reupload the original FCKH8 video on their own YouTube channels. Searching “FCKH8″ on YouTube yields “96″ videos, most of which are the original with its iconic hot pink background, with a sprinkling of other response and support vids.

To which I have to say… Fuck. Yes.

When we think about online video strategy by brands, entertainment companies, and producers, we tend to focus on two elements:

1. A piece of media uploaded in lieu of the copyright holders is considered by them, and then — given a positive reception of the illegal uploading — allowed to remain online, an existence from which the copyright holders can reap additional monetary benefits (usually in the form of ads).

2. A piece of media is intended to be spread by users, moving from the “influentials” to their followers and hopefully spreading amongst diverse communities. But this usually includes spreading one piece of media through multiple groups. If there are multiple pieces of media to be spread, companies tend to follow some sort of “transmedia” initiative, where the brand or media is adapted — or sometimes just copied without any change — to other media forms (such as from TV to film to webisode, etc.).

But with this FCKH8 case study, I believe it’s one of the first times when an initiative to spread has allowed users to copy the original media and subsequently spread it, be in via the same or entirely new communities and networks. If we think in terms of the current discourse on piracy, this is astounding.

What makes this case study doubly interesting is that we’re talking about collaborative disruption. Although this initiative is small (less than 100 videos), they are in practice bombing YouTube with repetitive information. Yes, it’s in the face of censorship — although it appears that YouTube has collaborated with the videomakers to reupload the original video after it was flagged for removal. And we can’t necessarily call it “bombing,” because all of the videos either have the same title or append a [MIRROR] tag to the video. In other words, it wouldn’t be difficult for YouTube to suppress the collective action.

But we can compare this to the DDoSing recently by 4chan against the MPAA and other anti-piracy websites or even Justin Bieber fans taking over Twitter’s trending topics (and Bieber’s subsequent complaint about the removal of his fans’ signs of devotion).

Of course, the benefit of FCKH8′s grassroots mass uploading is the eventual spread of a meaningful human rights campaign. Go check out the video, and share it with your friends!

The problem:

Anime con schedules guests, panels, events. Anime con prints schedule one month to two weeks before con. Two weeks before con, schedule changes drastically: panels are added or dropped, events are moved, guests are canceled.

The solution:

Google Docs.

Anime fandom at conventions has changed drastically in the past three years with the mass adoption of mobile technologies (ie., smart phones). Numerous conventions have utilized Twitter for updates and made multiple changes to the designs and interfaces of their websites to push the constant activity of fans on Web-enabled phones into a better comprehension of how the convention works (eg., maps, food, hotels, and particularly schedules). However the latter of this list still proves difficult.

Last year, Otakon experimented with an online personal schedule system, so that each con-goer could manipulate the schedule with highlights of his or her favorite events. Ultimately, it was a good idea with poor execution. Near the main entrance, staffers placed two wide-screen television sets projecting the schedule, which ended up being too big to see the three days in their entirety. Also, with the lack of Internet* in the Baltimore Convention Center, along with not-so-great cell phone reception inside the building, the online schedule was pretty inaccessible.

* This seriously needs to be changed. Too many anime fans rely on the Internet for communication. Anime Boston, at least, has stepped up in the past few years by providing free wireless.

Let me reiterate: We can solve the con schedule problem with Google Docs.

1) Con staffer creates master schedule in Google Spreadsheet. Staffer publishes document as public webpage.

2) Con attendee can download document via phone (after installing appropriate and frequently free app). Attendee can manipulate document via Save As.

3) When necessary, con staffer can update Speadsheet with necessary changes and highlight in yellow. Update then tweeted to convention public.

4) Con attendee can notes changes via Twitter message and download new version of document.

It’s easy. It’s free. It’s scalable (zoom in and out). The staffer can even include a second page on the Spreadsheet with the panel descriptions.

So why aren’t we seeing more convention innovations like this?

- Finally started at the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (Comparative Media Studies). Been organizing research projects for the next year, and I’ve already applied anime as a case study for analysis of modes of media consumption by certain audiences.

- Been hard at work with the Web Ecology Project. Last week, I spent the greater part of five days finishing up our most-recent major publication, “The Influentials: New Approaches for Analyzing Influence on Twitter.” I would say it’s our first academically-toned report, and we have a sick data visualization, so check out the website.

- Looks like I’ll be attending and speaking at the Schoolgirls & Mobilesuits at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minneapolis, MN, from Friday 25 September to Sunday 27 September 2009. I’ll most likely be presenting on the death of narrative structure in anime and money-dependent entertainment, exemplified by Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Finally, look out for a couple articles (finally) coming out next week. Plans for saving the future of the anime fandom and many thoughts on Ghibli flicks to come!

But then off again to Anime Expo!

Sorry for the aberrant hiatus, everyone. Been really busy in the past few weeks with:

- Open Video Conference, where I spoke about the anime fandom’s balancing act of video culture and copyright law
- Web Ecology Project: We released a white paper full of quantitative analysis about how ideas move in the discourse regarding the Iranian Election on Twitter
- Hanging out in NYC with the crew from my Kyoto study abroad group (KCJS)

I really want/need to write articles this week, so I’ll try to get a lot of content up soon. But I have a lot on my plate right now, specifically fandom research in California and drawing up grant proposals for fandom research in Boston and Tokyo.

Good news is that come Thursday I’ll be in Los Angeles, speaking at Anime Expo. I have four panels lined up, which are:

Anime and Manga in Academia
Saturday, July 04, 2009 6:00pm to 6:50pm – LP 2
Whether you have just begun studying anime and manga seriously or are already well into your studies, this panel will guide you on the path from fan to established Japanese popular culture scholar.

Introduction to Anime/Manga Studies
Friday, July 03, 2009 10:30am to 11:20am – LP 3
Ever wanted to write a school paper on religion in Naruto? Read a book on Neon Genesis Evangelion? Or even get a college degree in otaku studies? Come meet the members of the Anime/Manga Research Circle!

The Problem with Otaku
Sunday, July 05, 2009 12:00pm to 12:50pm LP 2
From 1980s science fiction geeks, the concept of otaku has wholly transformed in Japan and America. We’ll examine the history and controversies of the most crucial part of the anime fandom: the fans.

Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes
Friday, July 03, 2009 6:00pm to 6:50pm LP 3
When we watch anime, we tend to ignore what begins and ends series. But these small clips matter too! We’ll discuss history and music, and show some of the most influential OPs & EDs out there.

The rest of my potential schedule looks like this:

Thursday
- Digital Manga Publishing Industry Panel & eManga Demonstration (will miss due to plane arrival)
- Kouga Guest Panel (may miss due to plane arrival)
- Morikawa Guest Panel (may miss due to plane arrival)
- Morning Musume Guest Panel
- Imaishi & Nishigori Guest Panel
- Right Stuf & Nozomi Entertainment Industry Panel
- eigoMANGA Industry Panel
- Japan’s Hottest Doujin Videogames
- Gainax Focus Panel
- The Making of Gurren Lagann Documentary

Friday
- Introduction to Anime/Manga Studies
- Mizushima & Kuroda Guest Panel
- Gundam: The 30 Year Anniversary
- Manga as High Art
- VIZ Media Anime & Manga Panel
- Evangelion 1.0.1 Panel (won’t have time to see the movie due to…)
- Without Watching the Anime: OPs & EDs

Saturday
- The Indecent Otaku Comedy Hour
- Nightow & Nishimura Guest Panel
- Digital Distribution of Anime & Manga
- FUNimation Industry Panel
- Anime & Manga in Academia

Sunday
- Directors Panel [or] Breaking Into Anime Journalism [or] Convention Feedback Session
- Crunchyroll Panel [or] SPJA Board of Directors Panel
- The Problem with Otaku
- Production I.G.
- Closing Ceremonies

Also, I’m still scheduled to speak on a number of panels at Otakon, so if you’re not available to fly out to California this week, I’ll see you in Baltimore!

TED.com officially announced today a project that will crowdsource translations of every TED video in more than forty of the world’s most-vocalized languages. The splash page is viewable here.

The video above is a Japanese translation of Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ demo of Photosynth, one of the more interesting yet much shorter videos available at the TED website. As you can see, the subtitles work pretty well and the timing is for the most part up to par. The only petulant remarks I can make about meticulous details would be: 1) there’s no furigana… but that only applies to Japanese anyway, and 2) the subtitles cover up the images when the projector is shown… but that’s unavoidable, and it’s not that important a matter.

The important issue to take away from TED’s audacious project is something that Ethan Zuckerman summed up quite nicely on Twitter: “TED’s approach to translating video is a first step towards translating the web.” He links to an article of his own that gives a brief background to TED’s translation project. Of course, my stance on the issue of social translation is that fansubs in the anime community have been doing it for years, so it’s not necessarily something “new.” At the same time, however, the social element has never really been an active component of fansubbing. But there was an attempt, one that might have had huge repercussions for the anime industry.

When I attended Otakon in the summer of 2008, I decided off the cuff to drop in on Crunchyroll‘s industry panel, held on Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm in Workshop 1. There’s a lot of information that was passed around at Otakon 2008 in regards to fansubbing and translation — the Fansubs and Industry panel probably the most discussed (note: you can watch the panel via that link to Anime News Network) — but Vu Nguyen announced that Crunchyroll had plans to release tools for the creation of community-driven subtitles.

Keep in mind, the announcement took place before Crunchyroll went “legal.” At the time, the website still hosted anime and Asian dramas that may or may not have been licensed. Putting that aside, though, Crunchyroll provided fans a platform on which to watch subtitled anime and a community through which dialogue could take place about that anime.

However, those subtitles were usually in English. In fact, most subtitles of anime roaming the Net are translated in English, though a good number have been written in other languages, such as French and Spanish (I’m not quite sure the balance of statistics between languages or how many languages are frequently used as goals for translation). Clearly language is a barrier to the wide dissemination of anime to potential fans around the world. Another limitation to translation is the structure of the fansub community. Basically, it takes the form of a team of translators and producers, working together toward a final result, coordinated by a central figurehead.

Social translation solves these two impediments on some level. First, there’s a better chance that more languages will be translated. A problem, of course, is that the translator needs to be bilingual (Japanese and X for anime, or English and Y for the TED talks). Second, tools are provided to take down the infrastructure of translation teams, instead putting the power into the hands of an individual.

I spoke with Vu after the Crunchyroll panel to go over a few details of the project. He first explained that the tools were easy to use. A user relied on the time codes of the English fansub to translate from Japanese to his (probably native) language. One issue that arises here is that the translator could be using the English fansubs to translate, instead of the original Japanese voice overs, but ultimately this is probably unavoidable. Still, it provides a somewhat accurate translation in a language that would otherwise probably not ever be translated. Vu also noted that the translations would be checked by some staff (he didn’t have many details, as the project was still in development) to ensure a certain level of accuracy (mainly to avoid the Nico Nico Douga effect of random text in place of actual subtitles).

I had meant to follow up with Vu in an interview for Youtomb, but then I shipped off to Japan last fall. I sent him an email to inquire further about the project, about which I could find no information this spring. He replied back in April:

As for the community subtitling project, we did launch it at some point for user uploaded content. I agree that it is one of the more ambitious projects. But Crunchyroll made a transition to fully licensed, so all of the content online has a licensing agreement in place and our challenge has been in getting the content holders to agree to allow fans to contribute subtitles. There’s IP issues (to which I think we have a good solution), quality issues (which I think content holders need to overcome), and security concerns (for new, yet to be aired content, there’s almost no way we can provide fans any work to translate prior to the air date, so we can’t use fans for simulcasts). We’re still chipping away at this, but I’m not sure how close we are to accomplishing it, and I’m hesitant to discuss too many details… until we make more progression on our side.

So, it seems that Crunchyroll is still in the process of creating some sort of social translation community around their already thriving membership. I wonder if TED’s project will further propel the CR ambitions further.

And I really hope it develops into something similar. If you didn’t read through the TED blog’s announcement, it details that each video translation will have an accompanying text transcript, in which a viewer can click on a sentence and immediately be brought to that spot in the video. If the fansub community or a CR social translation project were to pursue a similar initiative, this would have epic benefits for the anime research community. The availability of transcripts would be akin to throwing it back old school to the early days of American anime clubs, where a member would stand up at the front of the room and read a translation of the script as the Japanese-language animation played in the background. However, such a project takes that extinct practice and revamps it, providing researchers not only with a transcript but also the accompanying video, with which they can easily do a text search on the page and be transported to X point in the video clip, to examine the art relative to the speech. Of course, such a project begs all sorts of questions, particularly video hosting: is it possible to keep a database of videos that could be accessed while bypassing numerous legal and financial barriers?

The question, though, is certainly not one of fansubbing as a practice. At the recent Media in Transition conference at MIT, a Thursday night panel was hosted by the Comparative Media Studies program’s colloquium series called Global Media (the podcast can be listened to here). Most of the panelists agreed that, all over the world, fansubbing is thriving in genres from Bollywood to American bootlegs to tella novellas (to such an extent that it probably can’t be stopped). It seemed that the panelists were more concerned protecting local works and saw more benefits in the circulation of their works than in the loss of monetary content. For Japanese animation, this might mean that Japan should be focusing on their home turf. But we can’t ignore that companies in the US have been set up to distribute anime, which is the main factor that complicates the Japanese market and its profits.

Ultimately, there are only benefits for TED, who own their own videos because it is their personal content. They do not have to deal with complications with copyright or monetization. As far as the anime industry, it’s a completely different set of matters. As Vu stated, simulcasts are out of the question for fan-curated translations, and getting around questions of intellectual property is going to require some deep thought.

We’ll have to wait and see where this ends up. But if you’re interested in continuing the conversation, I’ll be at the Open Video Conference in New York on June 19 and 20 to give a talk about the the history and culture of Japanese animation in the US and its past/future implications. Come check it out, especially for the other talks (which are obviously going to be way more interesting than mine).

Ever since I got involved with ROFLcon (I attended the very first one and have been working with the team on hosting the smaller ROFLthing events since), I have had Internet culture research on my mind. Tim Hwang and I have talked over potentially writing co-writing a book on Internet memes, but recently the project has sunk below our interest in meme research, specifically that of engineering. But ever since “meme” because the Internet buzzword of our generation, I’ve constantly been at odds with the odd term. What exactly is a meme? Why are we using that specific word? And what do we learn about the Internet by studying memes, or vice versa?

If you haven’t decided to discover the term’s etymology, I’ll try to provide a basic explanation. Trying to explain the meaning of meme by looking at Wikipedia illustrates the issue of defining the word: throwing “meme” into Google provides you with both two articles on Wikipedia, the first entitled Meme and the second, Internet Meme. The discussion of meme here draws from the article Internet Meme; however, we cannot ignore the history behind the former article, especially since work around Internet memes borrows heavily from studies of memetics.

The etymology of the word meme is derived from the biological term gene. Merriam-Webster defines gene as “a specific sequence of nucleotides in DNA or RNA that is located usually on a chromosome and that is the functional unit of inheritance controlling the transmission and expression of one or more traits by specifying the structure of a particular polypeptide and especially a protein or controlling the function of other genetic material,” but I prefer Wikipedia’s simplistic explanation better: “Genes hold… information to build and maintain… cells and pass genetic traits to offspring.” Examining Wikipedia’s explanation, we can understand a gene in two ways: 1) it contains information, and 2) it transfers that information.

The term meme was coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Selfish Gene,” (1976) to explain the movement of ideas and the formation of culture through the metaphor of biological processes.

To elucidate the construction of the metaphor, Susan Blackmore, in her paper Evolution and Memes: The human brain as a selective imitation device, writes, “As Darwin (1859) first pointed out, if you have creatures that vary, and if there is selection so that only some of those creatures survive, and if the survivors pass on to their offspring whatever it was that helped them survive, then those offspring must, on average, be better adapted to the environment in which that selection took place than their parents were… If you have the three requisites – variation, selection and heredity, then you must get evolution… This [evolutionary] algorithm depends on something being copied, and Dawkins calls this the replicator. A replicator can therefore be defined as any unit of information which is copied with variations or errors, and whose nature influences its own probability of replication (Dawkins 1976).” Quoting Dawkins, Blackmore names the element of transmission shared by genes and memes: they both replicate with variations. Replication with variation is then how Dawkins explains his concept of the evolution of culture, how ideas move, the meme: “The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”

To explain the actions of a meme, Dawkins illustrates them once again with the biological analogy: “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” However, Blackmore points out the difficulty of Dawkins’ explanation, writing, “The problem is this. If memes worked like genes then we should expect to find close analogies between the two evolutionary systems. But, although both are replicators, they work quite differently and for this reason we should be very cautious of meme-gene analogies. I suggest there is no clean equivalent of the genotype/phenotype distinction in memetics because memes are a relatively new replicator and have not yet created for themselves this highly efficient kind of system. Instead there is a messy system in which information is copied all over the place by many different means. I previously gave the example of someone inventing a new recipe for pumpkin soup and passing it on to various relatives and friends (Blackmore 1999). The recipe can be passed on by demonstration, by writing the recipe on a piece of paper, by explaining over the phone, by sending a fax or e-mail, or (with difficulty) by tasting the soup and working out how it might have been cooked.” She counters, “The whole point of memes is to see them as information being copied in an evolutionary process (i.e. with variation and selection). Given the complexities of human life, information can be copied in myriad ways. We do a disservice to the basic concept of the meme if we try to restrict it to information residing only inside people’s heads.” However, I believe that Blackmore’s statement, at least in an age where the Internet is general, accessible, and popular, is fairly known and thence a bit redundant given common sense. The one element that can be gleaned by her comment, though, is that while the transfer of ideas undergoes change (“variation”), it also undergoes “selection,” meaning that people eventually weed out ideas from the initial batch. This counteracts the stereotypical marketer’s view of the meme as “viral” because of the possibility for an idea to be discarded, rather than passed on to other people.

In relation to Dawkins’ explanation, the problem for me is not that he explains the concept of the meme in terms of a biological metaphor, but that people examining memes today have latched onto the concept of biology not as a means of elucidating memes but of approaching and investigating them. Case in point would be Mike Godwin’s WIRED article about memes, in which he writes, “A “meme,” of course, is an idea that functions in a mind the same way a gene or virus functions in the body. And an infectious idea (call it a “viral meme”) may leap from mind to mind, much as viruses leap from body to body.” In terms of the definition, Dawkins’ use of “brain” immediately calls researchers of memes to focus on the way the mind works and how ideas transfer between brains. However, I think that a fundamental change must be made here, and that is to examine memes as transferred between not physical brains but nebulous minds. By this I mean not that the physical nature of the persons involved in the transmission of ideas should be emphasized but instead we should focus on the (sociological?) relations between people to understand culture.

Second, Dawkins explains the meme concept by suggesting that memes might take on an entity of their own, in that “memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain.” Unlike some members of the Free Culture movement, I do not believe that information wants to be “free.” In fact, I believe that information does not move at all, at least by its own volition. Instead, people move information. People want information to be free, so people move ideas to match a system that lets them be free. Therefore, my thesis might be stated as people move information, and out of that statement I want to understand memes as people pushing ideas to other people — not a very “biological” concept in the least.

The interesting thing about the Internet is that it is full of people. However, only in the last few years have people been recognized as a presence, though of course one still minor to the extent of information on the Web. Still, they’ve finally be noticed, particularly since the spread of the popular buzzword, Web 2.0. However, the basic theories around the movement of information through the Internet does not seem to entirely account for the presence of people. Recent publications have begun to approach it, like Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, but I feel that the text as well as projects like the Berkman Center’s Internet and Democracy project (to use as an example, not to call it out in a negative light) only approach the human element of the Internet as an affect of the Internet rather than a fundamental part or function of it.

Tim has talked many times about Yochai Benkler‘s Layers of Communication, which illustrates the structure of the Internet and how information moves across it. However, recently at SXSW Tim presented a panel on the future of the memescape, and he had to somehow account for the emergence of memes in real life. How else to do so but apply a human layer at some point to Benkler’s equation. Of course, the human element applies all over the above graphic: people create and set up the physical layer; people code the websites and applications; people upload and submit the information. We could think of each color tab with a tiny orange piece attached that would be the “human knob.”

But I think we need to think of a human layer as integral to the structure of the Internet, specifically a human layer separate from the other three tiers. The graph would then look like this:

Thinking about the structure of the Internet this way makes sense. The physical layer provides the module on which the Internet runs and users interact (eg., through fingers on a keyboard and looking at a screen, which then travels over a wire to other fingers and eyes), the code forms what we recognize at the Internet’s visual structure (as well as the inner workings of the Web via applications), the content is the information that we want/need to see, and the human layer moves all of that information through that code over the physical elements. to other humans.

Internet futurists have already attempted to tear apart the structure that I am proposing here. I present as evidence the semantic web. Basically the semantic web is an attempt to create an Internet in which the human layer no longer needs to exist. To explain that statement further, essentially computers cannot read all of the information on the Web, because it was built by people for people. For example, proof might be Google search: although it helps us find a lot of wonderful things, it is not necessarily the best method for finding everything that we need. To combat that imperfection, the semantic web was created to provide information in a format that machines could easily read, thus helping humans find information faster. We can think of the semantic web as hacking the human layer of the web by rerouting that layer through the code layer.

However, I don’t believe it to be that simple a solution. My assumption is that to find information, we need to find people. I can immediately dismiss my previous statement by saying that the Internet already allows that to be possible. Simply reading this article means that you have found information without having had to find me to provide you with that information. However, I will rephrase my statement to make more sense: To find the information we want, we need to find people.

It is here that my research with the anime fandom in America first coincides with my research on Internet culture. They link in two ways (the second of which I will examine later). First, in trying to find information for my research, I have had to contact multiple people, because it is essentially not on the Web. Currently, we rely on information that already exists when we search for it online. The semantic web, too, relies on the fact that the information its code provides to users of the semantic web already exists. If it does not, the code (basically, XML) must be applied to the information as it is uploaded to the Internet. One of Tim’s most recent questions has been about the potential for an Internet EPA. Basically, such an organization (?) would commit to providing relevant information of quality for users of the Web. However, to find information that does not exist on the Web yet, we need to go to people that have or will provide that information. A basic issue right now with finding relevant information of quality is that if you stumble upon a blog that you feel provides you with that information, will the author(s) of that blog continue to provide you with the same quality or relevance of information. This might be a common issue with communication in general, but especially so on the Internet because direct contact is usually not available for both communicative ends (whether or not the author is anonymous). Also, if you wanted to find a certain piece of information and it did not exist, how do you go about finding the person(s) that would provide it to you?

The aspect of connecting not with information but people is where the human layer of the Internet especially comes into play, and where I believe research on Internet memes needs to focus.

First, though, I must reexamine the concept of the meme to apply it to the Internet. As I stated before, Wikipedia draws on two concepts of meme: Meme and Internet Meme. The Wikipedia entry for Internet Meme makes a bold statement: “The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although this concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.” The author here suggests that Internet memes do not encapsulate the entirety of cultural information that exists outside of the Internet. And, actually, I agree. To clarify my agreement, I would simply state that Internet memes deal with popular culture.

My statement requires two explications. First, to distinguish between memes and Internet memes, I suggest that we can look at the concept of the “meme” as a movement, while “Internet meme” is a manifestation of that movement. When we say meme, we mean an idea, a cultural product, but also that it moves in a certain way. When we say Internet meme, the nominative “Internet” does not denote that the movement of the meme relies on some new Internet-based form of movement; rather, the Internet relies on popular culture, and hence an Internet meme is a meme of popular culture. Second, to explain the phrase “meme of popular culture,” I must define popular culture. However, I will not define it as much as name criteria for the term’s application. Popular culture depends on access and audience. More specifically, the culture of popular culture is that which is accessible by the general populace (in that they can interact with it), and it is culture to which the audience relates. Of course, not all popular culture might be considered “popular” culture given certain contexts: for example, a movie that can be seen in a theater in the city might not be available in the countryside, but it is generally accessible nonetheless.

Now, by “meme of popular culture,” I mean that an Internet meme is a piece of popular culture that moves like a meme, in that its audience replicates it and is selective of it. Taking the Internet meme as a popular culture meme, though, helps us understand the human layer and thence the movement of communication and information online, because when we observe the production of memes, they usually derive from popular (widespread) media or popular (favored) ideas. The importance of popular culture to meme studies is that it brings attention to the audience, or basically the people moving around these bits of culture.

It is particularly important to look at the concept of audience when examining memes because the Internet warps the real-life model, in that it can easily be analyzed. Online, with the potential for anonymity, finding reliable suppliers of information proves difficult. However, when we examine sites of cultural production online, specifically for memes, one of the origins of course is the bulletin board system known as 4chan.

Before tackling the structure of 4chan, I’ll mention that here we now approach the second relation to my research on the anime fandom: the ability to compare systems. When I study anime in the United States, I must also take into account its origins in Japan, which boasts its own fan culture, which even today influences the American fan base. A similar thing happens with 4chan, whose origins were in the Japanese board system, 2channel. Over at Metagold: A Research Blog About Nico Nico Douga (the Japanese video service similar to YouTube), the author writes, “X gives me first a basic introduction into the workings of the legendary BBS (Bulletin board system) 2channel, the direct predecessor of Nico Nico Douga. 2channel is important for Nico Nico Douga in many ways. Most importantly, it has made the culture of anonymous posting popular – it might indeed be a Western misconception to see Nico Nico Douga as a form of Youtube plus BBS. More precisely, it is a BBS plus video. The BBS culture was there first, and it remains the central driving force of Nico Nico Douga… Posts on 2channel normally only appear under the IP address –. Entries are therefore not only anonymous in the sense that they are hidden under a pseudonym. Normally it is impossible to connect the many entries that one user has made. Theoretically, people can also create an identity, but this is tricky, and hardly ever done. 2channel is all about radical anonymity, and this was its great revolution.” In relation to 4chan, then, the anonymity of the users defines the structure. Essentially, a user who posts information on the anonymous board need not worry about the implications of those reading his posts. Therefore, 4chan and 2channel act as a sort of semi-human-layered system, where the system connects the users to those who want to find relevant information in real time, but without consequences to the identity of the user.

The reverse of a anonymous system like 2channel or 4chan would provide the information seeker with more information about the information provider, and thus give the information seeker more clues in determining whether the information provider is worth tracking. A system that resembles this model would be Twitter, where a user is not obligated to follow any other user unless he wants to read updates. Therefore, a user on Twitter chooses the information he wants to follow, with the ability to stop following a user as soon as that user’s ability to provide relevant information lessens. Another interesting aspect of Twitter in relation to relevant information is the limitation of characters, which usually forces users to abbreviate any URLs they post. Because of that abbreviation, users may end up clicking on links to unknown destinations, relying on trust in the user who originally posted the link. I have found myself clicking on a message with just a TinyURL link with no indication where it goes, because I believe the user to be providing me with material relevant to my interests or needs.

The interesting thing about Twitter is that it is fundamentally hackable. Two simple experiments come to mind: 1) The creation of a fake person that provides users with relevant information, and 2) The existence of a real person that bombards users with utterly irrelevant information (by means, for example, of constant @replies, which are now always picked up by the @yourname aggregator). Both of these experiments play with the idea that information is moved around by people.

However, Twitter does not necessarily deal with memetic movement, particularly with regard to Internet memes. The problem, though, is that the definition of meme is slowly changing in the popular lexicon of the Internet. danah boyd recently posted a link on Twitter, commenting, “unbelievable must-view video: http://bit.ly/TnRKo (@ethanz notes that this is the kind of video meme that makes one proud of the interwebz)”. The link’s destination, a video on YouTube, does not seem to fit the concept of the Internet meme as a piece of popular culture that has been replicated and selected. However, it certainly has been repeatedly selected as an item of interest and the link to the video has been replicated across the Internet as people share it amongst friends (or strangers).

The video on YouTube, of Susan Boyle, a recent contestant on Britain’s Got Talent, recently swept the Web and has garnered almost ten million page views as of this writing. In less than thirty minutes this afternoon, I saw it jump over one million page views. The interesting thing about the video, though, is that it mirrors another video phenomenon that hit YouTube back in 2007, where Paul Potts sang an outstanding opera audition on the same show, in a similar lifestyle situation (he was a cell phone salesman; Susan is unemployed; both singers ended up outright shocking the audience). For meme researchers, the link between these videos is key, because it’s very difficult to match similar situations of instantaneous popularity online. Just as Paul Potts had taken the Internet by storm two years ago, so have Susan Boyle’s fans set up multiple fansites for her to spread her name around, widening her viewing audience. If it’s possible to track the people who move around this information on the Web, it would be a celebration for Internet researchers. Meme researchers: pay attention here!

The basic theory of this article states that a new layer of the Internet structure must be analyzed: the human element of the Web that moves information around. I believe that studies like meme research will become a new aspect of fan studies research, and I hope to begin research into that area as I continue my research into the American anime fandom this summer.

The Internet accelerates serendipity. So says my good friend and colleague Diana Kimball. The more I write and think about the Internet, the more I believe her idea to be true.

Twitter has exploded in the past year, and come along way since its introduction in 2006, its incipient user base of post-2007 SXSW, and its world-wide popularity come late 2008 (after Twitter was picked up by the mainstream media). But allthough Wikipedia pegs Twitter as “a social networking and micro-blogging service,” in reality it’s a mode and new form of communication.

Twitter basically allows a user to post a message in 140 characters or less (to accommodate for the length of modern SMS text messaging formats, which limits a one-page message to 160 characters). When a message is tweeted, it appears next to the user’s Twitter handle.

If the TEDtalk video embedded above, one of the founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, says that he and his team expected out of Twitter only as much as has been explained. However, because of the people using the service, and hence the human need for communication in general, Twitter evolved much more. Eventually, the @ sign became a standard element to Twitter, allowing users to direct messages at certain people and for those messages to appear on the intended user’s Twitter stream. The @username trend eventually became integrated into Twitter as a hyperlink system, allowing random users to click on the @username to discover a new persona altogether. In addition to the @username linked in the message, underneath the tweet appears a message that says “in reply to (username),” which links to a separate page containing the replied-to message. Eventually, too, users introduced the #hashtag trend to Twitter, contextualizing messages that included the short (or sometimes long) tag in a foreign conversation that could only be understood with a #hashtag aggreator. Williams seems to remark that conversations beyond dialogues between two people were not inherent to the nature of Twitter, even though in time they appeared.

Before continuing, I will explain what I mean by “narrative of rhetoric.” In conversation we use rhetoric, to persuade or impress the addressee. The nature of conversations, or arguments, debates, etc. flows in a temporal fashion, with sentences building on previous statements to reach a conclusion. Point 1 moves to Point Two which results in Point 3. An ordinary narrative of rhetoric, then, is forward. A five-paragraph essay, for example, begins with an introduction, makes three points to illustrate the introduction’s thesis, and then ends with a conclusion that wraps up the points and reiterates the thesis. The narrative moves forward, like a bedtime story for children.

With Twitter, the narrative of rhetoric is not forward; instead, it is backward. Because of the nature of the Internet — in that we view media online after it has been produced, unlike a conversation, when the media is produced in real time — the narrative flows (and must flow) in reverse.

This is how it works:
1) User views a comment on Twitter that is “in reply to (username).”
2) Clicking on “in reply to,” Twitter brings the user to the previous message, which also contains a “in reply to (username)” tag.
3) The user clicks on “in reply to,” to be brought to another page with the message in sequence before the previous one.
4) And on, and on, and on…

Basically, on Twitter, argument and conversation flows backwards. It’s as if we were to read an essay backwards, which doesn’t make sense, but brings an entirely new and unperceived perspective to the table. We read the last statement instead of the first, and we gain the opportunity to see not where an idea or daydream or poem is going but from whence it came. We are able to ask, “Why would somebody say that?,” and yet instead of fabricating an answer to this musing we are provided the context of the comment. Welcome to history, in reverse.

A similar motion of rhetoric exists, but while the first movement relies on the @user tag, the second relies on the #hashtag. In the imaginary space creating through aggregation services like Twitter Search that compile all the messages relating to one #hashtag, a conversation is let to exist. However, if you are a friend of someone using a #hashtag, the message seems random and arbitrary and without context. As with the @username tag, the #hashtag provides the discovery of a conversation in media res. A user’s Twitter stream could become full of a stream of contextless messages, all having been intended for (imaginary space) conversations.

The difference between the #hashtag narrative of rhetoric and the @username narrative is that the story continues to be told. With the @username tag, if the conversation between two users is continued, the onlooker cannot continue viewing it, unless he finds a future message in the chain and traces its context back to the original conversation. However, with the #hashtag, context is continually accessible, with a mere refresh of the #hashtag aggregation page.

The implications of the reverse or in media res forms of rhetorical narrative on Twitter are interesting to observe. For example, the intended use of the RT tag (or “retweet” tag, which is utilized when a user wants to repeat or reiterate a comment made by another individual) can be hacked. The RT tag does not supply context for a comment, but does draw attention to a message. Adding RT to another user’s tweet means that somebody found that message worthy of recognition. RT symbolizes value. However, we can imagine a scenario when a user fabricates the comment of an individual and then retweets it. Because the RT tag is contextless, the user quoted does not need to have submitted the comment. For instance, I could retweet a fake comment made by my friend that says he hates chocolate ice cream, after having just consumed some at a local shop and texted his opinion to Twitter. The users following my account but not my friends see no context for the fake comment, only assuming that my friend did indeed send the message (because his tweets don’t show up in their Twitter stream). Perhaps fellow chocolate-ice-cream lovers would look down upon my friend after seeing my fake retweet — a negative implication. The hacking of RT can benefit a situation as well, such as retweeting a shout-out about a great blog post that my friend just published. Although viewers would be confused upon not finding the post, their visits would increase traffic on his website.

This look at hackability of comments has already been tackled by the American law system, through libel and slander. But when it is positive, it can have profound effects. A recent case in point was an observation at a hack-a-thon I participated in about a month ago at Harvard. In twenty-four hours, a group of my friends created a service called YawnLog, where users can track their sleep debt (or surplus). Jason Scott, a good friends of many of the YawnLog team, tweeted via @Sockington about our service, and our user base jumped a couple hundred in the span of about an hour.

This situation provides a novel attitude toward the concept of Internet celebrity. The hackability of rhetorical narrative on Twitter provides opportunity both for Internet fame and fame for others through the Internet famous. All of this relies, of course, on serendipity. Serendipity means the occurrence of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. Even before the introduction of the Google search bar to web browsers, the Internet has been about serendipity, about finding new and interesting things online. The novelty of the Internet has awoken a new culture, which has pervaded computer screens, handhelds, and even streets of the real world. And serendipity appears to have propelled ordinary people into stardom online, pushing identities into the realm of the Internet celebrity. Twitter, of course, is one more service, based in everyday communication, that accelerates the chance that we’ll come across something intriguing on the Web. The random potential of the Twitter stream pours a lot of useless information into our laptops and cell phones and web browsers, but it is amazing still how every once in a while a few words will inspire us to click on a link or follow an individual without expectations.

Last week, I Greyhounded myself down to American University in Washington DC to attend Beyond Broadcast 2008. The amiable conference organizers offered me a scholarship in exchange for a little guide to Twitter, because evidently those guys and gals over in broadcast media don’t understand simple methods of sociability online. Either way, to save $50, I had to force myself to like Twitter. But I do like Twitter, don’t I? I mean, I’m not a Twitter obsessor; I follow less than twenty users. What’s so appealing about Twitter?

First off, kudos to the design team. You’ll pulled off a Threadless/Victorian mashup that I truly find appealing.

But really, the element that makes Twitter what it is: simplicity. One hundred forty characters may not be a lot, but such a limit persuades the composer to ruminate on the few phrases he can put together to create a coherent thought.

Then there’s the element that makes Twitter useful: the fact that it produces coherent thoughts. Keep in mind I did not write relevant or sensible. I agree that some messages are completely inane. But good things come out of Twitter. I’d say that the most useful, albeit less frequently utilized, potential of Twitter is to become an idea aggregate, for people to compose quickly-scribbled, Post-It note sized messages that would be more utilitarian published for the world to see than ported around inside someone’s head. Unfortunately, it seems that other Twitter inhabitants would rather employ the service as a replacement for a Facebook status feed, just to keep on top of what everyone’s doing. Of course, there’s also the in-the-moment practicality of Twitter, especially if you have it hooked up to your mobile phone, in situations such as reporting breaking news (eg. the earthquakes in China or if you get thrown in the slammer).

A positive: the Twitter community, I’ve noticed, is fairly peaceful. Well, disregard when Twitter goes down for lengthy eras of time. But in terms of argument or plain old insipid flame wars, I haven’t seen or read about it. There’s no competition on Twitter. And that’s good. (Unlike

OK, so Twitter’s not bad. But, honestly, Twitter has a cult following and it’s turned into something akin to a fraternity considering its most loyal users. A few weeks ago, I surmised what might have caused Twitter’s popularity to skyrocket so quickly and not peter out. At first, I simply blamed the adults and called Twitter the solution to the next generation middle-aged crisis. Now, I feel like being a bit nicer. So let’s pull it back to ROFLCon…

At ROFLCon, Friday’s opening keynote, a talk by David Weinberger, and Saturday’s opening keynote, by Alice Marwick, dealt with Internet fame, which I guess became the official theme of ROFLCon 1. Instead of dissecting Internet celebrities online, think about the general concept of fame, popularity, fashion in the online space. Dave spoke about the current evolution from a broadcast system (mediated, where The Man chooses what we watch and eventually what we find popular) to a network system (free-reign, where We link each other to videos and images, and choose what becomes famous). In a broadcast domain, alienation results. Via network, the focus is intimacy. And so Twitter’s success, I believe, is based in the familiar. As I alluded to previously, I find more statements about breakfast and bodily functions than theories and thesis. But modernism is about the quotidian, the familiar, the ordinary: for example, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the in literary terms revolutionary piece of fiction that follows the everyday, unspectacular actions of Clarissa Dalloway as she experiences London in less than twenty four hours. Localization, therefore, is a product of intimacy. Becoming acquainted with one person familiarizes with a community. Although it appears that location does not matter, geography exists and cannot be ignored. And although the Internet and its culture is highly specific, the consequences of connection becomes globalization, yet also localization. Twitter simply links to some acquaintances on a global scale, and others on a local scale.

Can I answer the question, Why is Twitter famous? According to Alice, fame represents value. So what does the populace of the Internet value? Connection. Ease. And I suppose a little bit of humor. I guess Twitter’s popularity is due to people trying to find an easy way to make friends online. It’s not about being famous for fifteen minutes, or being known to one hundred people, or being connected to everyone by n degrees, or garnering a million hits. We want to get to know people, plain and simple.

Want to know me better? Follow me.

[11:12am] t55e: sc1olist: just noticed wiki page for the Digital Natives session
[11:12am] t55e: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/berkmanat10/Digital_Natives
[11:12am] daithi: so, where is everyone for these sessions?
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[11:13am] alexleavitt: Digital Natives win.
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[11:16am] daithi: digital natives is about 75% Macs!
[11:16am] sc1olist: Well, we *are* digital natives…
[11:16am] sc1olist: A discerning population, to be sure.
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[11:16am] sc1olist: Digital connoisseurs, if you will. Ha
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[11:30am] daithi: over in natives, Urs Gasser is explaining the context, through a discussion of layers, but after that all the action will be at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/digitalnativeberkman10
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[11:34am] EricaG: I love the mixed IRC & twitter chat from multiple rooms at once. Makes it almost possible to go to everything :D.
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[11:34am] sc1olist: (digital natives) Welcome to academia, everybody.
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[11:34am] sc1olist: what’s the twitter tag tracker for berkman again?
[11:34am] dwitzel_: using the question tool in the Digital Natives session – http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/digitalnativeberkman10
[11:34am] dwitzel_: #berkman
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[11:35am] EricaG: berkmanat10 is the universal tag for everything but twitter.
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[11:35am] EricaG: twitter tag is #berkman since it’s shorter and enables both twemes and hashtags to track
[11:35am] daithi: i’m trying to get as much down as I can at http://www.lexferenda.com/16052008/native/
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[11:44am] jeckman: somebody in the last breakout called me an adult, by which I think he meant I was old
[11:45am] daithi: are you? Apparently the digital native cut-off point is 1980.
[11:45am] jeckman: because I was Born before the internet. Not a native by a decade, fwiw
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[11:45am] jeckman: though I have been on the net since 1989
[11:46am] dwitzel_: jbeckman, i think you can still get a digital green card
[11:46am] jeckman: <- (digital immigrant)
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[11:46am] dwitzel_: illegal immigrant?
[11:47am] EricaG: I’m in the cusp. Most people won’t claim me in GenX, but I’m a coupe years older than the official “digital native.” [1978]
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[11:51am] fonchik: naturalized digital citizens?
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[11:52am] daithi: John Palfrey wonders whether classrooms should be wired/online during class. What do ye think?
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[11:53am] jeckman: @jessamyn Which means technically I was born before the internet (1970)
[11:54am] jeckman: And yes, classrooms should be wired during class
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[11:54am] sc1olist: (digital natives) So far, no mention of it being useful in class to find context to what’s happening/discussed. Or that people take notes on laptops.
[11:55am] daithi: or IRC it
[11:55am] saraw1: exactly. i don’t know why professors are so threatened by it.
[11:55am] ltsui: connectivity is great for looking up things in wikipedia during class
[11:55am] saraw1: besides, what constitutes participation? Can you participate without talking? I think yes
[11:55am] sc1olist: @ltsui Exactly. ESSENTIAL in history, particularly at the graduate level.
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[11:56am] EricaG: jassamyn, it’s so time for revolt. these aren’t supposed to be lectures.
[11:56am] jessamyn: speaking of IRCing it, does anyone have a link for THIS Scott MCloud (do I have that right?)? I keep finding the cartoonist
[11:56am] dwitzel_: shouldn’t your twitter feed count for “participation”
[11:56am] saraw1: i was in school before we had any computers in the classroom. i knew then how to feign participation/interest
[11:56am] saraw1: dwetzel-I should say so!!!!
[11:57am] jessamyn: I am trapped by my own politeness
[11:57am] fonchik: I came to college with an electric typewriter
[11:57am] saraw1: the computer has nothing to do with whether you are participating or not, nor BTW does speaking in class
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[11:58am] sc1olist: @saraw1: I disagree on the latter, but the former is quite true. In fact, it often helps give people the confidence to talk.
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[11:58am] alexleavitt: I don’t see why IRC shouldn’t be implemented in classroom, or at least seminar, discussion
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[11:59am] saraw1: why does speaking in class count as participation while being silently involved does not? it’s discrimination against introverts
[11:59am] alexleavitt: http://alexleavitt.com/2008/05/16/berkman10-irc-and-the-dialogue-of-education/
[11:59am] saraw1: besides, note that there is such a thing as saying something just to say it. e.g. content-free participation
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[12:00pm] alexleavitt: most of my English teachers have counted class participation simply through attendance; class participation grades just seem to be part of the old system that needs to change
[12:00pm] daithi: @sara: it can raise interesting gender/class/social/ethnic/disability issues too, i.e. multiple options for participation can be an anti-exclusion device
[12:00pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: It’s not that it doesn’t, it’s that it’s an important part of the training that school provides–the confidence to vocalize opinions and defend them. THere’s an argument to be made for it, that’s all. Don’t completely disagree with you.
[12:00pm] saraw1: absolutely.
[12:01pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: BTW, it’s discriminatory to teach math to people who are inherently worse at quantitative methodlogy?
[12:01pm] EricaG: it’s annoying that participation measurement favors people who speak before they think over people who save their thoughts & produce analysis later, or wait to speak til they have something new or useful to say
[12:01pm] jessamyn: I have a general feeling that we measure the wrong things, in libraries this happens, no suprise in education too
[12:01pm] sc1olist: @EricaG: Yes and no. I think we don’t give professors enough credit for suggesting participation is simply quantity.
[12:01pm] saraw1: No, it is that the definition of what constitutes participation is too narrow and variable
[12:01pm] ltsui: ericag: isn’t that why we also have response papers, final papers, exams etc? i can imagine blogging (live or not) also being part of participation.
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[12:02pm] saraw1: it’s not objective—and i don’t know that there is any correlation between someone’s arbitrary definition of participation and learning–which is, after all, the point of education
[12:02pm] EricaG: @sc1olist I remember being in classes where the number of times you spoke up was part of your participation grade, or where you could only actually get a chance to speak if you raised your hand ridiculously early
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[12:02pm] alexleavitt: so, are we going to define participation by who writes in a collaborative Google doc?
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[12:03pm] sc1olist: @EricaG: Yeah, that’s insane. And not productive for learning.
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[12:04pm] saraw1: no, until it can be shown to be objectively assessed in a fair, consistent way—and until it can be shown to have any correlation w/educational outcomes, it is not worth grading
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[12:04pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: And the same goes for paper grading? Becuase that can’t be done in a fully objective way.
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[12:05pm] ltsui: saraw1: i do think learning to speak in public (incl classroom) should be part of an education
[12:05pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: Do you really believe that one’s ability to defend their ideas verbally is not correlated to educational outcome, or, in another word, IS itself an outcome (since it’s so directly useful in life almost regardless of the field?)
[12:06pm] alexleavitt: @Itsui: I entirely disagree. Public speaking should be a requirement in every educational institution.
[12:06pm] sc1olist: @alex: agreed.
[12:06pm] alexleavitt: @myself: don’t add in “not”s to people’s comments
[12:06pm] fonchik: Could someone in the Digital Natives session explain this discussion (someone just tweeted it) “teaching with twitter rocks”
[12:06pm] saraw1: you are reading my objection to participation grades way, way too broadly and btw discrediting the point i am trying to make by way of hyperbole
[12:07pm] ltsui: @alexleavitt: i was saying learning to speak publicly is necessary. i dont think we are disagreeing
[12:07pm] alexleavitt: @fonchik: We’re talking about using laptops in classrooms.
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[12:07pm] EricaG: i agree people need to learn how to defend their ideas and speak confidently and extemporaneously. but that can be done by having people make presnetations and take questions, having debates, etc. rather than trying to pretend you’re measuring it quantitatively
[12:07pm] daithi: Someone said that they were encouraging students to use twitter in class, and JohnPalfrey asked who else did, and there was some murmurs
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[12:07pm] alexleavitt: @Itsui. Re: alexleavitt: @myself
[12:07pm] saraw1: learning to speak in public and learning per se are two different things
[12:07pm] fonchik: @daithi thanks!
[12:08pm] sc1olist: @saraw: basically, the question is if we’re teaching knowledge in some existential sense, which I think is what you’re getting at with “learning” (correct me if I’m wrong) or useful skills that could be tought (learned) in school.
[12:08pm] alexleavitt: The interesting thing about using twitter during some type of lecture is that with the limitation of input, the results usually end up highlighting important, favorite, or interesting quotations (just look at the Berkman twitter feed)
[12:10pm] alexleavitt: BTW, for anyone inside or outside the Digital Natives discussion, this YouTube video is a must watch: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o (A Vision of Students Today, Michael Wesch, Kentucky State University)
[12:10pm] saraw1: i want to go back to daithi’s comments about gender/race/native language/cultural differences re-comfort w/public speaking.
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[12:10pm] daithi: si?
[12:11pm] sc1olist: @digitalnatives talk: How is having one’s head buried in a laptop different from in a notebook? Aren’t the people who have their heads buried in laptops simple the close notetakers of the present? Same typology.
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[12:11pm] fonchik: @ericag is this IRC getting archived somewhere somehow?
[12:11pm] saraw1: with which i completely agree. btw, I have no trouble speaking up when i have something to say.
[12:11pm] EricaG: No
[12:11pm] alexleavitt: This discussion will be copypasta-ed to my blog.
[12:11pm] • MooingLemur can provide a log.
[12:11pm] EricaG: cool
[12:11pm] daithi: i’ll give a bit more context on what i meant, look for example about the debate on dyslexia and separating out core learning outcomes (and tapering assessment to the outcomes)
[12:12pm] daithi: to avoid assessing something that’s not part of the outcomes
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[12:12pm] saraw1: but I do have a child who is brilliant but very shy. she gets 100%’s on most of her exams, knows the material cold, but gets b’s and c’s for not speaking up enough
[12:12pm] daithi: for class participation, the pedagogical question is what are you trying to communicate and measure
[12:12pm] alexleavitt: webuse.org/papers
[12:13pm] saraw1: exactly (daithi)
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[12:14pm] saraw1: but, because she is shy, she gets b’s and c’s for not speaking enough. oh, btw, i would love to see a study measuring how often teachers called on kids with different demographic characteristics
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[12:15pm] dwitzel_: i have save a sizeable chunk of the IRC. can share somewhere
[12:15pm] sc1olist: me2
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[12:18pm] daithi: Palfrey (DigitalNatives) recommends the MacArthur/MIT Press series on digital media and learning
[12:19pm] daithi: the link is http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/browse.asp?btype=6&serid=170, on screen in the classroom
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[12:23pm] dwitzel_: who is talking?
[12:23pm] dwitzel_: what university?
[12:24pm] dwitzel_: thx @alex
[12:24pm] dwitzel_: sorry — who is talking in digital natives breakout
[12:25pm] daithi: http://www.fir.unisg.ch/org/fir/web.nsf/c2d5250e0954edd3c12568e40027f306/fe9db20511dda0edc1256ae1002c64ff!OpenDocument
[12:25pm] daithi: Herbert Burkert (also http://www.herbert-burkert.net)