Ton is very nicely describing what I conceived as one of the main design better information architecture issues around blogs before tagging, social networking sites etc. showed up (back in 2001). You need to offer lots of different entry points to one and the same content. You need to offer different ways to look, search, and find. Thus already the early weblogs had so called redundant navigations menus; and think of the archive pages instead of being redundant as rich entry points.
But of course Ton adds an enlightening theoretical framework on the grounds of information architecture and netsociology (t d f). He spans the bow from people to objects and descriptors => almost a semiology (t d f) of social software.
Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts: Social Software Works In Triangles: “To me this also means that self-proclaimed social applications that do not offer you the possibility to explore all sides of a triangle, aren’t useful as a social medium. A bookmarking service that does say how many others bookmarked the same thing, but does not let you explore who these people are or lets you see who uses what tags, only the tags used by themselves, doesn’t do much in a social sense. By maintaining the triangle you make sure that individuals keep their face in the masses even when you aggregate info. (You can always drill back to a person and her personal set of in this case bookmarks and tags)”
It feels good to be engaged in topical discourses aside from the organizational frenzy I’m unwillingly involved in. Yesterday I stepped back as CEO of permalink, the firm.
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Tags: Firm, Research, Social Software
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