I've recently launched both Attention Conservation and Reputation Economics over on BlogSpot. These two phrases, both pulled from Bruce Sterling's work in the Viridian Design Movement have been the basis for my work since I set aside renewable ammonia in the spring of 2009.
The social media space is rapidly expanding and I expect more attention rather than less as the economy gets worse. Humans discarded by the corporatocracy are going to do their own thing, and this space is the new frontier.
Inclusive effort in an expanding space is by definition hopeless. I've got a presence on six major networks that I believe provide the full range of features one could expect from networks with reputation economics.
This is the beginning of putting my thoughts in order on these matters ...
I've been using the phrase Reputation Economics for a while now, so much so that the first two Google results are my work, trumping the originator, Bruce Sterling. I took interest in the concept after reading his 1998 post collapse political thriller, Distraction.
This blog, along with its sibling Attention Conservation, are the place where I post solicitations for input, field notes, and conclusions about this brave new world, where reputation matters more than one's credit score.
Attention Conservation. You can't look at everything, not by yourself, and not even with a crew of really sharp like minded associates. The internet can be viewed in a variety of ways - the routing and switching adept sees both The Fallacy Of Cyberspace and the shape of human endeavors there. These, too, are my work; too much time on my hands is my only excuse.
The internet has no physical boundary and a very low barrier of entry, which is about to be further fueled by hordes of discarded white collar workers. Call them Post Consumer Waste. Used to managing projects, desperate for income, and hoping against reality to get 'back' to some consumer Neverland, they're going to come to this non-existent space and build, such as one can.
So, some bounds on inspection are required.
I came up as a writer as Stranded Wind on DailyKos. 250,000 registered members, about 1% of whom are very active on the site, and perhaps a tenth of those are regular diarists. It's an intense environment and it grew to the size it is by having some means to tamp down disturbances. They're about to flip from DK3 to DK4 and I'm told it's dramatically different. I'll explore those changes here once I have access to the new system.
Facebook. I'm busy there, too, again as Stranded Wind, despite the fact that I've pretty much given up the idea that our government is going to display the wisdom required to develop the stranded wind resources of the upper plains in a sensible fashion. I also don't find Facebook very sensible - it's a marketer's tool with just enough content to draw the users back, but it's like a pair of shoes a size too small for someone like me.
I truly love Wiser Earth. Humans, organizations, and even ideas have a reputation there. I appear again as Stranded Wind, and in 2011 I'm going to again pick up organizing in that space, having set it aside for the sake of the 2010 midterm elections.
I have a sprawling Twitter presence. I've recently swapped friend/follower bases between @StrandedWind and @NealRauhauser. I'm responsible for the underpinnings of Progressive Congress News and the dozen accounts associated with it. Only 2,200 followers, you say? I relentlessly eject sales bots, dead end accounts, and I have no use for right wing extremists. I think my ban list is over the 6,000 mark now. Had I left this uncurated I'd have in excess of 10,000 followers thanks to bot breeding.
The last few weeks I've been herding friends and the Progressive Congress News accounts into Empire Avenue. Again I am both Stranded Wind and Neal Rauhauser. The Twitter name swap makes it a bit confusing - symbol SWIND is now bound to @NealRauhauser while the completely empty @StrandedWind is tied to symbol NEALR.
There is, of course, a method to that madness. One is an actual social presence, the other is just an Empire Avenue investment vehicle. I'll use NEALR purely as a EA presence and we'll see how it does against a busy net personality.
Last but not least, I keep a professional profile as Neal Rauhauser on LinkedIn. This system is definitely biased to the professional, so it's more about who you've worked with or interacted with for business, and what they have to say about you in the way of written recommendations. Like every other system that started as a closed environment they scrambled to integrate social media and now offer the Twitter streams of your contacts there.
I think Empire Avenue is the last one I need to inspect. The mock market there seeks to integrate all social media and put valuation on one's presence. It rolls up Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, my blog footprint, and it provides game play to encourage people to start actually using it. This site is more than a game - it's already delivered up one new editor for Progressive Congress News and I've barely scratched the surface.
Am I missing anything? I'm not going to delve into every social network with reputation economics functions, I'm just looking for a representative body of sites. The six here spam the full range of what can be done and I aggressively use each of them for information gathering and dissemination, for organizing, for business development, and for socializing.