While I may have more to comment on the Friendster blogger and its implications, I didn't want to dilute this message. The sad irony of all of this is of course that Friendster is purportedly an online social networking community. It's an ecosystem of people and the myriad of relationships that coalesce into hopefully something greater than the whole. The only thing that holds relationships and meshes of relationships together is trust, empathy, respect and love not technology. The entire glue that binds Friendster isn't in its architecture or speedy infrastructure. A social networking site's assets and sustainable competitive advantage mostly lies in its critical (and growing) mass of networked users.
As much as I've tried to use these social networking services, I really find only blogging to offer any depth to nurturing and sustaining relationships - something practically unexplainable to a non-blogger as I know I didn't grasp it until I started myself. We become transformed and expanded by the sighs, laughter, brilliance, and synchronicities of others. It's not a media, it's much more than a network.
A medium's job is to deliver a message. It does its job well if that message is delivered intact. But that's not how media actually work because we are not passive containers. Rather, in the process of understanding something, we let it affect us. It shapes us, and we shape it. We absorb it into the context of our lives. - David Weinberger's blog
Yes, and it goes beyond the process of understanding something. But also understanding someone.
Hmmm, not a media, not a network. A platform? In tech speak, if one develops a platform it serves as a foundational piece for an ecosystem of additional third-parties to contribute and add value to the platform in a synergistic fashion. Still for a technological system, the platform itself is typically the hub. But in two-way communication, the hub is an third entity - an in-between place - a marginal zone - that didn't exist prior to the communication. Neither I nor you, but a we place.
One of the so-called offending posts that Joyce wrote about was referenced by Jon Udell, an InfoWorld journalist and a fellow-blogger. Where is the line drawn? Is Jon a journalist, a blogger, a friend - or more than any of these? Did Troutgirl speak to "the" press without formal PR department approval? Did she create her own press, er blog? Either way, Jon reminds us below all that we owe Troutgirl our thanks for contributing to the third place and the ever-ongoing and bidirectionally flowing conversation.
Ecologists know that life is most interesting, and also most dangerous, at habitat boundaries -- where the ocean meets the shore, where the forest meets the meadow. And in the virtual world, where the private meets the public. A healthy ecosystem requires that we colonize that marginal zone. When people get hurt trying to do that -- in the right ways, for the right reasons -- we should offer them not only our condolences, but also our thanks. - Jon Udell
Evelyn, I just came upon your site,and find it hugely helpful to those of us..beleive it or not..are in christian ministry in these amazing times.
Just to say thanks, and note we will be discussing and learning from you
here:
http://3dff.com/php/viewforum.php?f=10
Posted by: fresno dave | Mar 26, 2005 at 02:54 PM
Evelyn, I just came upon your site,and find it hugely helpful to those of us who are in christian ministry in these amazing times.
Just to say thanks, and note we will be discussing and learning from you
here:
http://3dff.com/php/viewforum.php?f=10
Posted by: fresno dave | Mar 26, 2005 at 02:54 PM
Dave, I definitely believe you. I consider Jesus and Buddha my greatest teachers followed closely by everyone that enters my life.
I'm in a ministry of sorts myself -- don't let the business speak fool you ;-)
Posted by: Evelyn Rodriguez | Mar 26, 2005 at 07:51 PM