Tom Peters
From Collectivate Course Wikis
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Please visit my group section:
Socially Networked Video
Project
Research Page
- This page is about Tom Peters' research. For his bio page, see Tom Peters. For his group project, see Socially Networked Video.
My research is about networked entertainment.
Enter links to readings that we individually scheduled for you into each week. In the response section switch between quotes from readings and your personal responses. Argue, don't rant. See guidelines for thesis writing to learn more about writing and writing style. Relate the topics raised in the readings to your work. Describe relevant artworks where possible. Use proper bibliographical referencing systems (decide on one before you start).
Week 4: Collaboration: For the Love Of It
Reading: Collaboration: For the Love Of It by Trebor Scholz & Geert Lovink
The Quote:
"They are hyped to an extent that troubles us. 2004 was declared the year of blogs. The online millions are trying to find out for themselves which they want to ask the web. Is a blog just a world pain teenage diary? Or is it a new public platform for the intellectual that would have Jürgen Habermas and also Alexander Kluge rethink the public sphere? New platforms have different sets of publics watching and contributing. In 2005 collaborative filtering, social bookmarking and the people's taxonomy (folksonomy) came along. But in turn all this socializing software made some people rather autistic. They are just inundated by all that information. All that blogging, reading of RSS feeds and email leaves them no TIME to think (for themselves). We filter and therefore we are!" (Lovink and Scholz).
I was listening to Ron & Fez the other day and a listener called up and began complaining about how conservative our media really has become. Five conservative cooperations run 90% of the news media we read and watch. Ron's response rather suprized me because they are a comedy talk show. He mentioned the boom of the blogs and how many people now are obtaining their news from reading blogs. I'm not buying into it hower. I personally don't see it as a new public sphere. To me, blogs I always felt were exactly like a "teenage diary." I already hate walking the halls at UB and having to hear about the random ramblings of your "self-important" college student. Why would I now want to go online and read these, especially when they are coming from people without any background in the field while they act like they are the authority on the matter?
Another part of this section I agreed with was how this socializing software has created autistic people. Part of the reason I agree with it, is because I'm guilty of it. I'll watch a documentary like "Loose Change" and then try to talk people into believe these facts that I'm spitting out without really any prior knowledge. We as a society forgot how to independently think for ourselves. We hear something and repeat it as fact. The blogs are always guilty of this as well as our news. Instead of researching the truth behind a subject, these news and blog sources just keep refering to each other allowing lies to spread like fire.
Lovink, Geert, and Trebor Scholz. "Collaboration: For the Love Of It." Data, Death, and Desire. 9 Feb. 2006 <http://wiki.critical-netcultures.net/wiki/index.php/Collaboration:_For_the_Love_Of_It>.
Week 5: Tracing the Evolution of Social Software
Reading: Tracing the Evolution of Social Software by Christopher Allen
The quote:
Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz are credited by many as coining the term 'groupware' in 1978, after experiencing EIES for the first time. They defined groupware as:
I have long preferred this definition for two reasons -- first, the word intentional implies conscious design. Second, this definition also contains the important distinction that group processes come before the software. I felt that this definition properly excluded multi-user databases and electronic mail that are not designed specifically to enhance the group process (Allen).
The Lenz's definition for groupware I find is directly connected with the project Socially Networked Video is trying to release. Groupware as this article suggests is basically the predecesor to the term "Social Software" when the businesses watered down the term. The reason I find this quote interesting is how Allen suggests that this definition leaves out tasks which many users can perform synchronously but still not be considered groupware. I think this is also what seperates our work from other popular video websites such as Google Video and VideoBomb. Sure these websites have users that submit videos and in VideoBomb's case, users which also vote on videos, but there is a real lack of social communication and interconnectedness. This is SNV relates to groupware. In our planned vision of the future for SNV we are planning to develop deep networks of users and not just a database of a collection of people who vote and watch movies. Allen also implies that the software should specifically enhance the group process. This is exactly what SNV is planning to do as well. Even with our first version of SNV it was meant to be a group view, and was often most enjoyable when users were voting against each other. With this new version of an actual social network being implement, everything being programmed is designed to enhance this group proccess Allen refers to.
Works Cited
Allen, Christopher. "Tracing the Evolution of Social Software." Life With Alacrity. 13 Oct. 2004. 2 Mar. 2006 <http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html>.
Week 6: Social Networks
Reading: Social Networks by Wikipedia
The quote:
The shape of the social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More "open" networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling social holes) ("Social network").
I'm not sure if I completely agree with this statement. I understand the point he makes about a closely knit group of friends already share the same experiences and knowledge but I'm not sure if I buy into a more loosely connected network being more useful. When I think of the biggest social networks I think of sites such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook each with millions of users. Those users have hundreds to thousands of friends. These sites fill this definition of a loose social network, however I really don't see any real useful ness behind this. To my knowledge, this people just simply add someone as their friend and after that nothing becomes of it. Sure they may post a comment to their webpage but what usefulness do these people actually provide other than the ability to gloat that you have one more "friend." I also can't stop thinking about the Trendspotting with Demetri Martin on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It's a spoof on this notion of an online friend and how people really don't attempt to maintain these connections.
What I'm hoping for SNV, is that we can make loose social connections useful. Currently on sites like MySpace, there is no benefit to having 1 friend or having 9,000. But what we want to implement with Socially Networked Video is a voting system weighted by the amount of friends you have. I'm not deadset on making sure this is implemented, but I think a feature like this could add many useful functions. One being a reason to actually make social networks. Another being a biproduct of this where user's invite their friends to join the site. Also another useful function we want to add to SNV is the ability to invite everyone in your social network who is currently online to participate in a video.
As of right now I don't think Social Networks are truely reaching their full potential. What I'm hoping for is that SNV can help make a step in that direction.
Works Cited
"Social network." Wikipedia. 28 Feb. 2006. 3 Mar. 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network>.
Week 7: The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
Reading: The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes by Christopher Allen
The quote:
This all leads me to hypothesize that the optimal size for active group members for creative and technical groups -- as opposed to exclusively survival-oriented groups, such as villages -- hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50. Anything more than this and the group has to spend too much time "grooming" to keep group cohesion, rather then focusing on why the people want to spend the effort on that group in the first place -- say to deliver a software product, learn a technology, promote a meme, or have fun playing a game.
As a real quick background, Allen has been arguing how the Dunbar number should truely be defined. The Dunbar Number of 150 is the cognitive limit to how many people humans can maintain stable relationships with. Allen argues however, that this number applies only to survival type networks. In non-survival oriented groups, Allen suggests this number hovers around 80. After this number there is too much work involved to create group cohesion.
I've become real interested in the various aspects of Allen's take on the Dunbar Number and how we can implement this into Socially Networked Video. In my last reading response, I was discussing how we can expand our social networks to sizes that online sites such as MySpace (which people have friend totals in the thousands). However, after further thinking about it, I wonder if we should place some kind of social constraint. Or maybe perhaps, allow up to around 50 friends, and then have an unlimited amount of acquaintances. I'd have to further look into the benefits of having someone as a friend and only as an acquiantance but I think it's a possible we should look into.
Allen also talks about the social networks of various online multiplayer games such as Ultima Online. He argues that typically these factions or guilds are best run at active members hovering around 40 people. Some guilds have peaked over 1000 members, but most of them are inactive. When tallying only active members, they typically were 150 or less. I think this is also another concept we should try and include, the difference between active and inactive members. Afterall, if you think of real life connections, it's a lot easier to get a favor from a close friend you've had a long lasting relationship with than someone whom you haven't spoken to in four years.
Works Cited
Allen, Christopher. "The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes." Life With Alacrity. 10 Mar. 2004. 3 Mar. 2006 <http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html>.
Week 8: Dunbar Number & Group Cohesion
Reading: Dunbar Number & Group Cohesion by Christopher Allen
The quote:
When the max subgraph size of a guild is plotted against the guild size, you get some interesting results -- the maximum guild cohesiveness occurs around the guild size of 50. Larger then that, guilds have a much more difficult time remaining cohesive (Allen).
In this article Allen was further covering the use of the Dunbar Number in online social networks. A few people pointed out that early research done on online games neglected the fact that many players have "alts" that exist in the same guild. So here, he compares guilds that are currently online as well as cliques that are hanging out in similar zones.
He makes two interesting notes in this article... that the peak size for an efficient guild is around 50 while once a group grows past 10, it becomes increasing difficult to maintain group cohesion.
I really would like to implement this idea further in our project. I was thinking of the following. Jon and I were talking earlier and we planned on having acquaintances and friends. Acquaintances would hurt your friend score (because you aren't able to maintain steady friendships). But I think we can further expand this.
What we originally wanted was you make a friend (actually you start off as an acquaintance). After 3 online movies together you become friends. Now if you don't interact with your friend every so often (at least like once a month or so) you loose them as a friend, and they fall back to the level of acquaintance (which will negetively effect your score). If you want to become friends again, the minimum views will be lower. There would also be a max cap of friends you could have (probably 50).
Using this research I was thinking of slightly varying this. If you have 10 or less friends, it would be very easy to maintain friends. Maybe after two views you become friends, and you only need 1 view per 3 months to maintain. However as you increase your friends, it will become progressively harder for you to maintain these friendships. Perhaps, if you hit 100, you need to 1 view every couple weeks or so, or you start loosing friends.
The more friends you have, the higher your score. I was also thinking of maybe implementing best friends (for like averaging 2 views/week or something). I'll need to think more on that. But I think this is a good start for now.
Works Cited
Allen, Christopher. "Dunbar Number & Group Cohesion." Life with Alacrity. 28 Oct. 2005. 19 Mar. 2006 <http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/10/dunbar_group_co.html>.
Week 9: Agile Web Development With Rails
Reading: Agile Web Development With Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson
I don't have a quote for this as it's a pretty straight forward book on developing websites using Rails (which I've never touched before). However I do consider this valid research considering over the last few days I've read about 200 pages completely new material to me. So in lieu of critically engaging this, I'll state a few reasons why I've chosen this framework over PHP which I've been using for the last 3 years.
- Rails is an MVC framework (model-view-controller), the code is structured more cleanly. Models are responsible for maintaining the state of the application, views provide the user interface, and controllers communicate between the views and models. Also, I don't have manually query the database, it's automatically handled via models.
- Scalability- one of the thinks SNV will HAVE to do is beable to expand. If we want to compete with sites such as MySpace, and Facebook, we'll have to be able to add features quickly and easily without making sloppy code. Rails allows us the freedom to do this
- Exposure- Rails is still relatively new, it is however a hot buzzword around the web community. These web sites typically show other good sites that feature the Rails framework, we're hoping to make one of these sites.
Works Cited
Thomas, Dave, and Dave H. Hansson. Agile Web Development with Rails. 4th ed. Raleigh: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2005.
Week 10
Review: Facebook
Description:
Facebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at schools.
It was launched to the public on Wednesday, February 4th, 2004.Facebook was a huge inspiration for my end of the project. MySpace and Facebook are the two leading social networking sites. However, the reason I prefer Facebook is because of it's simple clean design. Myspace is very hard to navigate and allows users to add their own styles, fonts and backgrounds. It is quite obvious that most of the users aren't graphic designers because they are plagued with design flaws, and just legibility. Facebook doesn't allow this and it forces users to abide by their format.
What you lose in personality I think is justified by the end result. I don't have any statistics in front of me, but from my own personal conversations, those who've used both have prefered Facebook over MySpace for the reasons I've been discussing.
It's these features with Facebook that I have tried to incorporate into my end of Snivy. We have a simple, clean design. It's easy to navigate. When you're logged in, you are instantly brought to your profile page where you can see pending friend requests as well as comments. From here you can quickly launch the video player. Easy of navigation was always in our mind.
Week 11
Review: Open Source Cinema
Description:
This site has many, MANY flaws. To begin, the about page says "This is the about text." If people want to start using a website, they at least have to know what it's about. Also, I find this site hard to navigate. To even watch one clip it takes 3 to 4 clicks and each click looks like the same page with a little more info.
The clips themselves aren't even labeled user friendly. There is no description, and the titles themselves are like "Bored on your backside," "Don Joyce 27," "Don Joyce 28," etc. The clips aren't anything useful the majority of the public would want to use any ways, they are often just clips of a press conference or an interview.
The idea sounds good, but it may be too much work for user participation. It's like they just opened the doors without really inviting anyone inside.
Our project has to be careful of this as well. As mentioned earlier I tried to design this site as efficiently as possible making navigation seem almost natural. We have descriptions for all our movies, and hopefully have provided enough of a base for users to get started on.
Week 12
Review: Trendspotting with Dimitri Martin - Social Networking
Description:
This video which originally aired on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart actually influenced how we want our final project to turn out.
"Ranger5, he's 23, he likes football, and he hates Steel Magnolias. I feel like I've known him for ever. But this girl, Steel Magnolias, she's 22 and she's hot so it doesn't really matter what the rest of her profile says, she's my friend."
It's this type of interaction on these social networking sites that don't mimic actual social networks, and this is where we wanted to differ.
The professor which is interviewed in the short says that making real friends takes real effort, risk and sacrifice.
This is more of a path we wanted to take. We want to mimic real social networks with the ability to actually have to make friends and maintain them, instead of the current method of adding them as a friend and then they are friends forever.
Week 13
Review: Dodgeball.com
Description:
This site allows friends, friends of friends, and crushes to meet up when they are in the same vicinity of one and other. While this idea may sound good to begin with, it suffers from many flaws.
First of all, it's limited to only 22 cities in the United States, so if you aren't in one of these locations, you're out of luck. Second of all, it requires every user to be registered through the site. This isn't a huge downfall, but it may be a pain trying to convince all your friends to join the site and participate.
Another problem I find is this idea of a crush. You have to list this person as a crush in your online profile and then when your crush is close you'll get a message like "Jimmy Joe has a crush on you, he is at..." I find this very akward and too forward. But that's just me.
The biggest downfall on this site, is this need to check in where you are at. Everytime your location changes, you need to send a text message of your updated location. All your friends must do the same. Now I mentioned earlier it's one thing if you like to do this, but trying to entice all of your friends to do this will be another thing. Also, if you're that close with your friends where you can convince them to use this software, aren't you close enough to simply send them a text, or call them up letting them know where you'll be?
In the end, I think this site is too much work. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. I think sending a text to your friends is a lot more efficient then sending a text to the server and having all of your friends do the same to see if you are close, and if you are, you then can hang out.
Week 14
Review: Friends or Enemies
Description:
I have to be honest, we had the idea to incorporate some kind of an enemy system. It wouldn't be called enemies, but maybe like a feuding system. However, the way we would plan to incorporate it would actually effect various aspects of our site from the video playing experience, to maybe even just web browsing. We haven't nailed anything down yet, but if we do incorporate something, there will be a method behind our madness.
Friends or Enemies is another site where you add a person as a friend or enemy and they are out of your life forever. There is no point to add a friend or an enemy, except to have your list grow. This isn't the only part that irritates me, it's the entire design of the site as well.
The design is very sloppy. Columns do not match up. Margins are different, and sometimes too close to borders. The profile page is hard to browse because it looks as if all the information was thrown there instead of methodically planned and organized. Even the area where it displays four friends and enemeies isn't layed out nice with no seperation between which is which except small text at the top.
It's a sloppily designed site and the features weren't well thought out.
Group Members
External Links
Instructor's recommendations
- Tracing the Evolution of Social Software by Christopher Allen
- Technologies of Cooperation by Howard Rheingold