Software As She’s Developed

Wolf Logan’s talking about paleosocial patterns (TOOLS Web 2.0 Patterns workshop). Very cool.

Marking – making permanent, public, marks. Dog marking its territory, “I was here” graffiti. e.g. blog comments, forums, guestbooks. Being obnoxious gets the comment noticed more.

Pointing – indicating resources to others, can be with opinions. Reputation will dictate how much people care. e.g. Reviewing/rating sites, Digg.

Competing – comparing self to others, ranking is dynamic Some people approach competition for their own value; others for their social value. Special case of marking – marking yourself – but with an element of objective measurement e.g. online gaming sites, xbox live, popularity contests.

Storytelling – describing sequence of events, often about yourself Different stories for different social groups e.g. blogs, journals, youtube

Grooming – small, ritualised, social interactions – can happen quickly and without much planning, Culturally bounded. Repeated frequently depending on relationshps. “Purring” – e.g. “how are you?” – don’t care, but it’s the purring that happens that makes it a grooming behaviour. The info transfer doesn’t matter, just that the event happened. e.g. friending, twitter, majority of IM content

Hunting – tracking, locating, acquiring resources. Serendipity plays a big part. Successful hunting leads to pointing – tell people what you found. e.g. web search, link following.

Wolf points out hunting and grooming are always the two critical patterns that are noted.