relationships

Social Media Week in London saw a great set of events, thinking and presentations for all things social media. One of my favourite presentations from the week came from an event I wasn’t able to attend: Steve Bridger’s keynote from the Media140 Third Sector and the Real-time Web event.

A nice reminder from Chris Brogan. I recommend watching the entire talk—it's only 10 minutes. Here's what you need to know: as an observer and active participant of the social web for several years, I've seen the power of serendipity influence how business gets done. Business leads coming in through Twitter because the person inquiring somehow stumbled upon you via the web and after following you for a while, they decided it was time to talk business.

I’ve been continuing to analyze the data I collected about friendships on Last.fm. Last week I presented a paper at Internet Research 10.0 in Milwaukee co-authored with Kiley Larson, Andrew Ledbetter, Michelle McCudden and Ryan Milner in which we combined quantitative analysis of motivations people had for friending with qualitative answers to questions about what they get out of friending.

by: Nancy Baym

by: David Armano

by: danah boyd

Yesterday, I received an email about one person's Facebook usage that I felt the urge to share:

by: Scott Goodson

Someone sent me a direct Tweet today asking "what are the essentials of a lasting client and agency relationship in these new economic times?"

I don't think they've changed much from the advice Mary Wells wrote about in her famous book about account management.

My list includes:

- Honesty. Whatever happens, client and agency, need to tell each other the truth.

- Trust and mutual forgiving of mistakes, which are unavoidable on both sides.

by: Nancy Baym

One of the big questions raised by social networking sites is what the heck those “friendships” really are. In this paper, written with my former Ph.D. student and now Ohio University professor Andrew Ledbetter, we examine this in the case of Last.fm. Based on a large survey of users, we pose the question of what predicts how strong or well developed Last.fm friendships are.

by: danah boyd

In youth culture

When I read the Chicago Tribune's coverage of why teens have eschewed dates for school dances, I wanted to scream. This shift has nothing to do with "the way young people view personal relationships in the age of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter" (and not just because teens don't use Twitter in significant numbers yet).

by: Sigurd Rinde

Hugh's post on social objects the other day resonated with many, and I still remember Jyri bouncing a beach ball around at Reboot a couple of years ago.

Allow me to quote Hugh reporting from a social setting: