LIFT07: Stowe Boyd says that "social = me first"

Running notes from the LIFT07 conference in Geneva.

"Social = me first", says Stowe Boyd. In 1999 Stowe wrote an article pointing to an emerging category of software, and describing them with a concept that lasted: social tools. The old way of thinking about helping people collaborate with software was really about an organizational group mindset: people are part of groups, subgroups, and info-sharing happens there. This is very limiting. There is a fundamental shift from being a member of a group towards the idea that an individual is the center of his/her own world. The individual is the new group. The most successful social applications today are those that allow individuals to pursue what they're interested in, and then deal with affiliation and participating in markets. What happens is that the edge dissolves the center. If you allow people to put their interests first, you put power in their hands. People create groupings and affiliate with others based on those interests, and it's really them at the center of this network of people that matters.

The primary driver ("primary abiding motivator", he says) of people on the web is discovery: of things (music etc), but that's a side-effect, it's the functional domain. What people are really looking for is places where they can learn about things (like music), and they choose places and return to places because of the people that are there. The hidden reality is: people are looking for themselves, trying to define themselves, discover who they are through these layers of affiliation. The buddylist is the center of the universe.

Comments

[ddcc]

sometimes through that alchemy ofwow goldworld of warcraft goldDost thou not think her beautiful? And see with what natural buy wow goldcheap wow goldwow power levelingthey could not have become her better. She is a splendid child! But I know whose brow she haswow powerleveling2moons dil2moons goldanswered the mother, with a tender smile. "A little longer and thou needest not be afraid to trace whose child she isflyff penyabuy flyff goldflyff moneyGaia Online GoldIt was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl's slow advancegaia goldHero online goldpotbs doubloonas I already told thee, children are not readily won to be familiar with mepirates of the burning sea goldPotbs goldBy this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on the farther sideCity of Heroes influencecoh influenceThere was both truth and error in the impression; the child and mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not Pearl'sCity of Villains infamy voyage century gold Pearl still pointed with her forefinger; and a frown gathered on her brow; the more impressive from the childish