Some weeks ago I asked Do MySpace Users Have Bad Taste? There’s an increasing tension between visual design and web site success, and that’s what I’m trying to figure out. There are so many sites that have become successful with mediocre (or just plain bad) visual design that somethings gotta give. How does MySpace succeed […]

Continue Reading: Visual and Social Design

Dunbar’s Number, proposed by British Anthropologist Robin Dunbar, measures the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships”. The number, which approximates to 150, would seem to have important implications for social design. It suggests that there is an upper-limit to the number of meaningful relationships we […]

Continue Reading: What is Dunbar’s Number?

I wonder if Cory Doctorow believes in marriage. Or, if like his latest Boing Boing piece: iPhone – the roach motel business model, he disagrees with it on the basis that it is the ultimate “lock-in”. I ask in all sincerity because “lock-in” isn’t so bad if you like what you have. If, for example, […]

Continue Reading: The iPhone or Marriage: which is the ultimate lock-in?

If you haven’t seen this yet, check it out. It’s a Pew Study on the time teens spend on social networking sites. Pew Internet: Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview Here’s the big story: most teens use the “networking” sites to hang out with the friends they already have. It’s networking in the sense […]

Continue Reading: Pew Study on Social Networking and Kids

I’m really enjoying the discussion about the lack of buttons on the new iPhone.

Continue Reading: The iPhone has no Buttons!

Like everyone else, I hung on every word that Steve Jobs said during his keynote yesterday. He said a lot of important things, some of which will affect the way software is made and used in the future. And, being that he’s talking about reinventing the mobile phone, our social lives in and around mobile […]

Continue Reading: Killer Mobile App? Making Phone Calls

From Brands for the Chattering Masses (NYT – link works right now but may go behind pay wall at any moment) “FOR many, many decades, successful branding — one of the corporate world’s holy grails — involved a clear set of rules. Produce quality goods at the right price. Frame the value in memorable messages […]

Continue Reading: Blogs enable more than they begin

The upcoming Macworld starts Monday. Here are some thoughts about where Apple might go with social software and hardware. First off, Apple is making a huge social software push. This is indicated not only in the up and coming MacWorld rumors, but in their already-released details of the next release of OS X: Leopard. If […]

Continue Reading: 3 Predictions about Apple’s Social Software Future

John Brockman, who publishes the well-known Edge newsletter, has an interesting prediction for social software as it goes mobile. “WE WILL SEE migration of social applications as user-generated content moves to the WiFi environment. YouTube, MySpace and multi-user games will be available on hand-held devices, wherever you go. People will carry their digital assets much […]

Continue Reading: Continuous Computing: all social, all the time

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Danah Boyd’s site about social network fatigue, or why people switch messaging technologies (in particular social networks) over time. One view is that SPAM eventually overrides every technology, forcing people to move to something else. A commenter, JD, suggested that SPAM killed Usenet, Email, and IM, and […]

Continue Reading: Does SPAM force us to switch messaging technologies?