Object-Based vs. Ego Based Social Networks vs. WoW and Second Life

There are so many cool things in Fred Stutzman’s recent post, but this point rang the bell for me just as I was considering the differences between World of Warcraft and Second Life. More on those games in a moment, first let’s get Stutzman’s description of ego vs. object networks:
An ego-centric social network places the [...]

The Sky Is Falling

MySpace, Second Life, and Twitter Are Doomed.
myspace, second life, twitter, social software

Google To Psyc Profile Users!?!

There it is in The Guardian:
Internet giant Google has drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games.
Yep, “do no evil” Google has filed a patent on the process of building psychological profiles of its users for sale to advertisers.
Details such as whether [...]

Second School?

Rebecca Nesson, speaking via Skype and appearing before us as her avatar in Second Life, offered her experiences as a co-instructor of Harvard Law School’s CyberOne, a course being held jointly in a meatspace classroom and in Second Life, and open to students via Harvard Law, the Harvard Extension School, and to the public that [...]

Shifting Borders

My first reaction to the notion of librarians running reading groups in Second Life was a question of whether this was akin to putting a reference desk in a bar.
My second reaction was a question of how our systems will support these extra-library interactions. Can people quickly and easily trade URLs to access the library [...]