social networking

eremiah Owyang, whose blog is Web Strategy by Jeremiah, posted these numbers on November 3, his comparative analysis of the social networking of Barack Obama's campaign and John McCain's and their relative followers. Pretty interesting! Here's the link for the blog posting that is filled with comments, more links, and analysis.  Bottom line:  Of course Obama won!

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/11/03/snapshot-of-presidential-c...

Yesterday I wrote a long blog about the importance of prior connections to social networking, participatory learning, and what media visionary Tim O'Reilly calls Web 2.0. Then O'Reilly himself tweeted www.dmlcompetition.net to his twitter network of some 9000+ plus all of us who follow him on Twitter. Amazing reach and influence in 140 characters . .  Here's the O'Reilly tweet that has our hearts a'twitterin:

http://twitter.com/timoreilly 

We are getting out the word about www.dmlcompetition.net and learning the lesson we've all learned before all over again: it's all about the relationships . . .

I am not a "Web 2.0 cynic" (as Prof Ian Bogost describes himself), but even I chafe at the idea of "friends," a term used way too loosely and coercively.   Here are some of my views and then a reblog and a link to Ian's very compelling discussion of the difference between being a "friend" on social networking sites such as "Friendster" or "Facebook" and being (let's face it!) a "LinkedIn" contact.