DISQUS

Totally great video Dave! You rawk!

Yeowsers! Sounds naughty! ;)

Great post! But as @mturro points out, Cory Doctorow coined the term Whuffie...I merely repurpose it.

Awwww! Thanks for the awesome review Aldon! Super glad you got it and was able to get through it so fast! You rawk!

Hey Robert!

I've been in Toronto all week, but I'm really excited that you are getting a book. I love this post, too. I'm a big fan of the magical experience. :)

Funny...I break these rules (i.e. take strong positions on controversial topics), yet, I get work, followers, speaking gigs, book deals, etc.. Nobody *really* wants lukewarm. I think companies are changing, too.

Thanks for the pointer to my book.

I don't know if using the terminology is an either/or thing - but my book is coming out with a major publisher in April (Random House) and we have planned a big marketing splash, so it will probably spread around a bit at that point. And really, nobody liked the word blog or the word wiki...how about the word Google? Yikes. Odd. But now used in regular business vernacular. ;)

As well, I interchange social capital and whuffie frequently in the book and have been discussing social capital and online community building since mid-2006. Whuffie was more recent. Neither are my terms (Cory invented Whuffie and Pierre Bourdieu invented Social Capital - Robert Putnum popularized it in the 80's) as Alex points out below.

Really? He can't express himself openly? He can't express his disdain for a city (I've been to Memphis, I understand where he is coming from - although awesome BBQ) without his clients getting their panties in a knot? He didn't even post the city name. To get all riled up and actually write a scathing note like this is petty and ridiculous. The man has a right to his opinion and to express his opinion. Where he would cross the line is to say his client is a pain in the ass or something...but he clearly didn't.

Personally, this is one of those posts where I scratch my head and say, "I would die if I had to live in a world where people were so effing tightass!"

Brilliant as ever, Gary. Being a ZZZ list celebrity, myself, I appreciate the ability to influence while staying grounded enough to be accessible. You keep rockin!

Thanks for posting this, Chris! I'm really excited about what will come of this. Plans? Who knows...that's the beauty of opening things up.

Just so you know, I'm just the community consultant on this. Larry and Todd (who couldn't make it to Gnomedex) have been working long and hard on this. I had dinner with Larry a few weeks ago who showed me what they've done and I got so excited I convinced him to come announce it at Gnomedex. :)

Congrats Alex! I can't wait for the party!

I'd respond to this, but I'm eating with Matthew and drinking loads of beer, so I may turn into a potty mouth myself.

Hmmm...notice how all of your faves were 'Hunt's? I think we are onto a trend here!

Nice seeing you again, Paul. :)

Awesomeness! Thanks for posting these awesome discussion notes Jure! I really appreciate your great questions and feedback in the session, too. :)

Glad I could help, Greg! Keep up the good work!

My migraines were awful, but finally went away. It was hormonal. I stopped taking the full pill and went with a half pill. Stopped them entirely.

Great post, Alex. My sentiments exactly. These SNs are tools, my 'social graph' (that phrase belittles it, I agree) flows between these tools and extends beyond these tools.

Heart is a great way to put it. :)

Thank YOU! That was totally fun! Going to go back to recovering now. :)

I'm just now getting into video and my faves are:

1. Viddler (mentioned multiple times above). Why? Because it has tagging in time (and bookmarking in time) and a nice community.

2. Vimeo. It's totally slick and has a great community. Lots of quality stuff there.

3. Blip.tv. Cause I heart the people behind it and they offer multiple download formats.

4. Google Video. For the layout and findability.

What I would LOVE to see is the ability to upload my video and have it play on all of the services...I'm hoping that's what is being funded. :)

Actually, Jason didn't say that "asking for permission is nice" (that's quite a lofty drop in emphasis), he spent a good deal of his post explaining that it is ethics, not law that should determine the outcome of this case.

Just in case you missed it:

"Copyright law isn't really built for resolving disputes between individuals like Lane and TRS. It's built for resolving expensive and highly profit-driven disputes between large full-scale commercial entities like movie studios, book publishers, software companies, or search engines -- entities with long-standing investments in the copyright system and in-house legal counsel to negotiate issues like licensing.

Ethics, on the other hand, might just be the right hammer for this nail. Ethical behavior is behavior that leads to the "greater good." It goes beyond the mere moral choices of right or wrong and deals with the broader question of the correct choice for society as a whole. If we, as an online society, want people like Lane to succeed in their work, to be successful and profitable photographers, we need to take care to promote them in a way that feels respectful and supportive. We need to make sure they succeed so that they will continue to provide us with amazing photos and make them available online."

and

"...the idea of attribution and promotion have strong appeal. They respect who the artist is and try to help them thrive in their work. I also think ethical online users should consider tithing any financial gain from the use of other people's works back to the original creator -- in essence voluntarily offer to post-date royalties if the project amounts to anything profitable. Such steps would, IMO, go a long way to building a stronger online creative community rather than tearing it down or apart."

So, even though you played it down, I believe Jason was more in the Shelley and Tara camp than anything.

Stop! Stop! We're both right! The DMCA sux, but TRS should have given attribution and not been community leaches. Unfortunately, we currently don't have much in place to promote these ethics. Perhaps we should be talking about this approach instead of splitting hairs. Until then, the only hammer Lane has is the DMCA.

This is an AWESOME idea, Robert! Do you know anyone at HP we can talk to about this?

Thanks for the announcement, Scott! And thanks Laughing Squid for the sponsorship!

I respect where you are coming from, but I will never be able to act from this perspective. I suppose what surprised me the most is that you picked one of the most expensive restaurants I've been to and ordered a whole gamut of appetizers (which weren't cheap).

We live our entire lives to give. We got a bigger place so we could accommodate friends and other nomadic hackers like yourself so you could stay in SF without paying through the nose. We probably pay an additional $500/month so we can offer that. We give our office space to travelers as well as charge a very modest fee for keyholders so that they have affordable space.

And we are not wealthy. We are consultants and this month we haven't been paid by many of our clients so are struggling to make ends meet. But that doesn't change our attitude.

I always assume that if I'm going to a birthday dinner that the collective is paying for the birthday person (even the one time we went to an 8 person meal where two of them were celebrating a birthday, one who we didn't know - and the bill came to $140 each...lol...we thought twice about accepting multi-person birthday dinners after that!).

I don't think it's a European thing. The French have been more than generous each time we've been there. They embarrass us with their generosity. We did notice that in Germany there was the individual bill thing, but they started the meal by saying, "no shared appetizers" when I suggested it. They were clear from the outset that we would get separate meals and bills.

It is an individualist vs. collectivist thing...and I don't think Europe is of one mind on this. I also think that health care and other social programs are usually somewhat telling (San Francisco is actually very different than the US and the city is actually bringing in universal health). I'm a Canadian, so I was raised as a collectivist.

I don't believe it's about the money. It's never about the money. Hell, I guarantee you that last night the difference between what people consumed and spent would have been under $10. It's about fundamental beliefs. The group's imposition versus the individual's will. I'm sorry that you've gotten the short end of the stick in days gone by. That is wrong. You don't have very observant friends.

As for the 'don't dine out' thing, I don't agree with that. However, it is up to someone on a budget to request from friends that you go somewhere reasonable, then to explain at the beginning of the meal (not when the bill comes) where you are coming from. I know that sucks, but good friends are cool with that.

But I think we are probably just going to have to agree to disagree on this point. We just come from two entirely different points of view.

Seriously? This is how you are giving away invites? Are you so desperate for attention that you would beg people to be mean to you? That isn't only sad, it's a cry for help.

(was that pretty good? ;) I hate being mean...)

The problem here is that everyone has different ways of defining their 'friends' online. You have 4,000 'friends' here and want to 'tag' everyone there? That's very different behaviour. Your 6,000 business cards? Those are friends? Man, I have bags full that I finally tossed. Anyone worth following up with, we usually followed up with immediately one way or another. That was probably about 1/10th of the cards. The number of people who shove their card under my nose with no follow up is astounding.

The problem with 'fixing' this issue is that it will 'fix' it for a handful, but break it for others.

I agree that Facebook has no options that ever work for me, so I generally choose the random option and type in a story. I find that useful to a degree (I am now at the point that I forget who is who...beyond about 150, I can't possibly keep track), but, you are right, it doesn't encompass adult relationships.

Have you ever seen the Microformat XFN? http://gmpg.org/xfn/

Wordpress uses this for links - and you can use combinations of types of relationships. For instance, Chris (factoryjoe) is:

friend, met, coworker, co-resident, sweetheart

It doesn't say how I met Chris, but it defines my current relationship with him.

How I met someone is very anecdotal and personal and has endless possibilities...and, you are right, this is where tagging can be very helpful.

So, if I link to Chris, I can say:

"a href="http://www.factoryjoe.com/blog" rel="friend, met, coworker, co-resident, sweetheart" tag="designer, citizenagency, factoryjoe, sanfrancisco, talented, barcamp, coworking, microformats, openid, opensource""

But our actual story is much more complex than that and can never be boiled down to a tag or a drop down. However, for someone I met at a conference, I can tag that person with that conference. If the relationship gets more complex, I may have to remove the conference reference as it becomes meaningless.

Personally, I agree with Jeremy Toeman regarding the misuse of the Nazi term (remember Godwin's Law: http://tinyurl.com/6h49c). Perhaps social networks haven't solved the issue very well. I agree. Personally, I like some of the boundaries these SNs set. I use them for what I use them. LinkedIn does my professional network stuff. Facebook helps me keep in contact with old friends. Twitter is my microblogging tool. I have slightly different networks for all of them and my relationships aren't all transferable.

Okay...so what I've said in a very long-winded comment is that the solution isn't simple. There are both positive and negative results from closed social networks. And there are ways in which people have already been discussing these issues for many years that are out there.