DISQUS

Agreed, I think that no social network so far can accurately reflect true friendships. And I think that the fundamental system of "friends" is still very raw. In my opinion, a basic start in the right direction would be groupings, where different groups have different permissions and interaction options.

As for the data, agree that I don't think anybody has it. It's too diverse. For me, personally, my connections are mostly through IM (and now Twitter). A lot less through email and networks. So yeah, that's another factor to throw in. IM.

Love that people are starting to question this more, though, and hopefully we'll see some developments.

I don't really know about the Plaxo issue, but I want to comment about the issue of offline vs online friendships, where you said the lines are blurred.

I completely agree with what you say, but as you said, it's not Scoble's (or anybody's fault). I think we really have to take a second look at the whole 'friend-ing' mechanism of social networks. The Yes-No nature was good as a starting point, but it needs to be developed further. There are too many nuances in real life friendships.

One starting point, I think, would be to have the ability to select what you want specific friends to see. Or maybe even have different 'sub-profiles' for different groups of people (something like how your friends in real life see you differently based on the social circle - colleague vs husband, etc). I don't really have a good answer to this. I asked the question at http://is.gd/ul , and would love to get your thoughts. =).

An idea that I had, which Marina from Sufficient Thrust recommended I post a comment about here.

Personalized start pages like iGoogle and Netflakes are quite static in that they tend to display the same feeds daily. But the real world doesn't work like that. We all have schedules. Some of us don't want to see our work email on weekends, for example. Even newspapers have different editorials/sections on different days. So why can't we have a personal start page that allows us to schedule when the different feeds appear?

You can read more of the idea at http://derrickkwa.blogspot.com/2007/12/schedule..., but yeah, just thought I'd take Marina's suggestion and see what you think.

This is a topic quite related to my blog, so just thought I'd add my thoughts.

I think it's a good point. But I think it's more of thinking about the every day, then bypassing it. To me, it's about thinking about what you're doing, and whether it's mundane. Not just bypassing it. The danger of "bypassing the every day" is you might miss out on the little things that can be important, and just bypassing things and writing it off as mundane without actually thinking about how it fits in your life.

I do think you're making a good point, and it's more a matter of phrasing than anything. Just my thoughts.

Just a thought: does the type of blog play a part in the number of comments, perhaps.

Yours (Chris) is a Social Media blog. So the people who visit tend to be more into social media (I'd assume), and want to be a part of the conversation. In blogs of other fields (personal development, sports, etc), the audience might not be as participative.

What are your thoughts? Or do you think I'm completely off track here?

I'm not a marketing expert by any means, but I'm reverting to Seth Godin on this. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/10...

Yes, there's a difference, but I'm going to have to agree with Seth Godin (and Dr Mani) on this one. The difference in definition, in my opinion, is the extent of it. Viral is more like an extended "word of mouth". And the point is, with the internet, it's a lot easier to do this.

I see where you're coming from, but I don't think the difference is in the definition. Viral marketing CAN happen without your permission, word of mouth can't, but the permission isn't the defining variable in it, in my opinion. Viral can happen with permission as well.

Cool, I think this is awesome.

There are a couple of things I've been thinking about lately, actually, and would love to hear your thoughts.

Firstly is how you go about building conversations and community. I know this is quite a vague topic, but especially after listening to episode 79 of Six Pixels of Separation, it really got me thinking. How do you get comments and build a community around your blog?

Second question is how you balance the personal and 'professional' parts of your life in your online brand. Personally, for my blog, I won't want it to become too much of a personal diary. But at the same time, I want it to be real, and not become too much like a magazine/newspaper column. So how do you balance that?

Hope you get where I'm coming from. =).

Completely agree. Would love to see more focused PodCamps. But before I go into any of your ideas here, my first aim is....a PodCamp Singapore.

I just signed up and explored it.

And actually, the auto-redirect script doesn't work for Blogger blogs. Just wanted to point that out.

Couldn't agree more. I think this is an awesome thing.

And it comes just days after OpenSocial. The potential for combining the two open technologies is amazing.

Completely agree. From what Bre said, it apparently took 2 hours from idea to getting on the front page of Digg? That's truly awesome.

Thanks for sharing this. Truly amazing.

Great idea. I might do this one day. Only a couple of things I have to think about and work out, though. Firstly, I don't exactly have too many readers/followers, but of course, that can always be changed. Secondly, and harder to work around, is the distance and time difference. Being in Singapore, it might be a bit difficult to get people to call me.

Yeah. Can't wait for this! I think it's going to be awesome!

Good points, and I completely agree, especially with the thing about the comments system. The commenting system, and the lack of an email address of those who comment (which is kind of related to subscribing to comments) almost made me switch to wordpress.

Good post, I think the value of confidence is under-rated. At least in Singapore, ego is normally seen as a bad thing. I think because the outward appearance of confidence sometimes can be seen as arrogance, and people (at least here) don't want to come across as arrogant.

I just blogged about this topic a couple of days ago, would love to know what you think. http://derrickkwa.blogspot.com/2007/08/confiden...

Hm. Nice tips. One thing, though I do carry my cellphone 24/7. I agree with your rationale, and I've seen it a lot, but personally, it's just a commitment I try to make to my friends? To be there for them as much as possible. For my close friends of course. Just wanted to share my thoughts, yeah. Maybe an alternative viewpoint.

A bit late, but a good post, Chris. There's great value in doing something different and being a disrupter. I'm trying to do it myself as well.

Thanks for the link. =). Really appreciate it.

I think something it's about being different, unique and remarkable.

Like Seth Godin says, if you're driving and you see a cow along the side of the road, you're unlikely to stop. If you see a purple cow, however, you're probably going to go "wow", and stop and take photos and tell your friends about it. It's remarkable, because it's different and unique.

Same goes for videos. If it's unique, and something that nobody has seen before, it will strike a chord. It will make people think. And to quote Paul Arden (in his book Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite), "The effort of coming to terms with things you do not understand makes them all the more valuable to you when you do grasp them."

It's all about being different, and challenging mindsets.

I like the 100 comments idea.

Also really like the social media idea. I think a lot of ppl don't really do anything proper with their facebook/myspace accounts.

Would love to be involved in the Grasshopper Factory, but might be a bit hard for me to be involved in a conference given that I'm from Singapore and all.

But yeah, I'd be wiling to help on any of those 3 ideas in whatever way I can (I'd be willing to help in any of the ideas, but especially those 3).