Since creating my blog network map over the weekend I've started to explore some of the new blogs that it has revealed. One blog I want to highlight from exploring the network so far is Uncommon Knowledge by Lucas McDonnell. The current post talks about a subject close to my heart, Collection and connection: does this relate to blogs?
"One of the endless information science/knowledge management debates is on the value of connection versus collection. For anyone unfamiliar with this debate, it’s basically this: is collecting information all in one place better than providing connectors among the people who share that information (or knowledge, if you like that word better). Or vice versa?"
Is social network analysis of blogs one way creating relevant and timely "collections" in the social space, rather than the lists that people love to hate? Particularly as this lists get out of date so quickly. Lucas - what do you think?
BTW I also want to say a quick hello to two people who dropped by and commented on my post:
- Tomoaki Sawada who writes the Dog Ear blog; and
- Walter Rafelsberger - who inspired my Technorati-based map - has also gone one better with a new blog network mapping by creating a new map based on a mapping of RSS data from his blogroll.
You raise a very good point, James. While I've often heard that there's all kinds of people that hate lists -- I think there are far more people that like them.
ReplyDeleteI've been putting more thought lately into the automatic aggregation of information into collections. Because I think you're right -- the problem with these collections is that they get out of date so fast.
I think the other aspect to this is that many times, these lists are not only collections -- they are also connection enablers. Sometimes I'll read through all the comments on popular lists just to see who else likes that particular list.
Another social network map of blog activity...
ReplyDeletehttp://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2005/07/social_networks.html
I found this quite informative, its amazing how much information one diggs up when working through a blog network map...
ReplyDelete