Opening the discussion

[Michael Sullivan]

So, some off-list chatting prompted the creation of this group.
I feel that this topic needs its own group without surrounding off-topics in order to carefully disect and focus on the problems and potential solutions.  That is why this group is here. 

I'll go ahead and bring to light a few comments from the most recent threads so we can...well you know... keep track of it all.
These are not 100% chronological since I only have a little time to compile this. And not everything is entirely relevent but this is what was put out as general ideas.  Let's weed it out and pick the most apt ideas and build from there.


From Michael Meiser:

The thing is though that the within the vlogospher, as with the blogosphere we lack systems for creating descrete organic communities and discource.  I call these spaces the "blob-o-sphere". And I think we are ALL trying to find new ways to create more architecture in this space to support things like small communities, conversations, etc, etc. etc.  While tags might have been the first volley at defining this space they are only the tip of the iceberg.  Tag threads on technoratti for example completely fail to have any sort of conversational value.

 

My proposal is to mine the permalink references and recreate the threaded discussions by permalink references... making them browseable, subscribeable and playlistable. We may be able to do this without any new necissary microcontent standards. But it's just and experimental idea and needs rapid cheap protyping.

 

 

I think we're 100% focused on the same goal... tracking threaded discussions, general discussions like around vloggercon and more. If we as an open social network are going to survive the youtube's and the flickr's and the yahoo social networking crap, we need to find ways to compete with things like threaded email discussions and flickr groups.

From Devlon:

My initial idea was to leverage apis (mefeedia, blip, technorati) to
provide sources of information (video, etc.) that a user could browse
through and add to different 'trails' or 'thread's etc.  These
'trails' or lists could be made available via badges so they could be
posted on one's site, or tinyurl-like urls so they could be posted in
comments on blog sites.

The problem as I see it, is that these conversation/topics span
different blog software, sites, etc.  There needs to be some thing to
aggregate (but not) the info in a way that a user could organize,
advertise (for lack of a better term), share thier 'trails' of
'threads' 

 

Playlists are looking to be another possible solution, but here is a
use-case that would need to be addressed:

user 'a' is following a conversation, has several blogs/vlogs in their
playlist.  This works great for them.

user 'b' stumbles on a portion of the conversation and would like to
see the rest of the conversation...the blog/vlog would have to know
about the rest of the conversation so user 'b' could follow the thread
across

What about something along the lines of trackbacks?  The 'playlist'
could 'inform' the vlog/blog software about the playlist via a
conversation-trackback....that way the link for the trackback would
allow other users just joining in to see the full thread. 

-there should be a way to 'mark' a blog/vlog post as part of a
conversation (maybe tags...but who's tags?)
-It would be nice to be able to see a 'map' of the conversation...like
a tree hierarchy...
-anyone stumbling into the conversation by visiting a blog/vlog site
should be able to track their way through the conversation.

From Anne:

i wanted to create a browser for vlogs that would help me move from one vlog to another easily, while maintaining their "vlogginess". i wanted to be able to randomly visit vlogs from a directory, add them to a vlog browser, move around through conversations such as the brouhaha easily.

From Charles Hope:

Welcome!  The air is pregnant with this idea.  It came up several times at Beyond Broadcast.

I thank the people at We Are The Media for keeping that running blog post with the links to all the items in the Brouhaha, but we most certainly need some kind of a playlist system that can be subscribed to, and can accept nonvideo comments.

Tags may be the right way to insert an item into the playlist, rather than requiring a playlist editing person to pull it in actively.  But you're right, tags by themselves are not sufficient.  One needs an aggregator!

From Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen:

I don't know how to solve the problem, but I know one thing: Do not make a
video specific solution. Tracking only video conversations would be
contrary to the idea of the web where I can publish anything I want (and I
personally find it a little bit pretentious in the "video is better than a
photo" kind of way). This is a 'blog' problem, not a 'videoblog' problem.

There are previous attempts at tracking conversations like
track/pingbacks, blog search engines and tagging. It would be productive
to look at those (possibly even speaking with people who have worked with
that kind of stuff for years). See what they have succeeded with, where
they have failed.

From Nathan Freitas:

To really make this work, I think
you'd need the ability for both multiple people to contribute to a
playlist (curators) manually, but also an easy way for people to
contribute their content to a playlist.

From May Hodder:

since tags are really topics..  and clusters are like bottom up faceted
classification.. you can subscribe to these tags and facets to get what
you want here.. in flickr, del.icio.us.. and other places.. or Dabble
for rich media..
tags are topics.. if you filter and cluster them correctly.. and
clusters are facets.. which get you future into large bucket topics..

From Sull:
  

Some Open thoughts/questions/ideas...........

Do you more or less know what topics you want to participate in.... monthly, weekly, daily?
Topics that you care to write or record your own thoughts and transmit them out.
Text, Photo, Audio, Video or all of the above.... doesnt matter what format.  It all "you" trajected out into a conversation on the net.

Are you sick of a topic and want to take a break from it for a while?  Do you miss a topic and want to dive back in with new ideas you have formed?  Have you just discovered something new and want to tap into a flowing river of information? 

How can we do all of this without... seeking, surfing and spending time and effort to discover the discourse that applies to your interests at any given time? 

What if we can subscribe to topics by simply adding them to our central 'home page' on the web.  Whether that be a blog, a myspace profile, or just any custom web page that you create.  If this page was monitored and read by permitted 3rd party services that can bring you the conversations you want to participate in, then maybe results would be interesting at the least and yet potentially efficient.

Passive, Dynamic Topical Subscriptions.  XML output with filters for topic and optional media format etc.  

A tracker could display popular/common topics people are interested in during any date range/time span, letting you opt-in to those conversations easily if you wish to.  Group a topic with others that are similar and logically should be merged.  Read descriptions of topics to make sure they are truly of interest.  Easily view a topics history, detailing where and when and spikes of activity etcetera.

How do you subscribe from your 'page'?  it needs to be easy to add topics, like a textarea field seperated by line. each line holds a topic/description.  but this has to be retained on the page... pref without requiring hardcoding. you unsubscribe by simply removing a line.  How do you pull in topics from trackers?  copy/paste? bookmarklet maybe etc...

If your subscriptions end up as xml, then you can decide where to aggregate the conversations.  use RSS forwarding to EMAIL.  use rss reader.  use rich media aggregators (web or desktop).  It doesnt matter.  use what you want.  Just capture the discussion first.

Like 'What I am listening to now' but 'What I am thinking/discussing now'.

Like I said, this was just a mix of thoughts in my head.  I dont have the time to elgantly write it or include proper technical proposals.

some things i have in mind for keeptrackof.it:

- link to other "monitoring tools"
- use open apis as much as possible
- allow for user customizations
- generate channels
- be a primary and secondar aggregator
- utilize talkdigger.com
- encourage bloggers to add tagified keeptrackof.it urls to blog post templates
      * http://keeptrackof.it/tag/iraq  or  http://keeptrackof.it/user/devlon/tag/iraq (for more personalized tracking).
      * these urls would lead to an associated dynamic aggregator page for that user/tag/topic/conversation on keeptrackof.it but more importantly, a service like talkdigger would find all permalinks that reference these keeptrackof.it urls and provide rss (see http://www.talkdigger.com/rss/).

Feel free to post new threads focusing on any of the areas mentioned above.  No need to reply here.

Sull

[Devlon]

Thanks for putting this all together Sull. It helps to see all these
'nuggets' at once. I"ll post in a bit with some thoughts.

--
~Devlon
http://loadedpun.com | http://mefeedia.com
http://8bitme.blogspot.com | http://devlonduthie.com