Sunday, January 27, 2008

Degrees of participation


Let there be light
Going through my allconsuming archive made me realize something I’ve known for a while but not payed sufficient attention to. Engagement in a social networking site is a variable thing: you can be quite peripheral or right there in the thick of things…. or, of course, you can be at any point along the way. I’m right on the edge with allconsuming – you can see my profile and what I’ve been up to, but there are no comments and I’ve never done any tagging there, let alone any kind of interaction. Flickr’s different. I have a small and changing social network there - I describe, comment, tag, interact, meet new people etc etc. You make your own choices and it’s about degrees of participation, and reasons for participation … I suppose choosing your favourite social networking site is similar to deciding where you like to hang out in meatspace.