DISQUS

Jay Cuthrell · 1 year ago

My status is my Blackberry Messenger client status entry (typically blank), Facebook status, Linkedin status, and sometimes Twitter. But really, short of ping.fm, it is a different set of networks to touch on the web. The truly close business groupings and personal groupings are Blackberry Messenger status. The device is not me of course but is the extension of how to be reached. My desk phone status is to forward to a mobile device. "Find me follow me" is the name for reach oriented telephony service -- and for all the promises, you still have to set it up and maintain the settings for home, work, play, hours, and any out of service time you plan.

Status never caught on with IM -- point of fact -- in my realm of contacts. Mostly, I see iTunes tracks being played as the status but a select few might be "Away" but this is likely an automation by default at a 10-15 interval when the IM client has not been in focus on a desktop.

I am finding that many status services are, as the saying goes, a status symbol.

Taylor Davidson · 1 year ago

It's amazing how disaggregated all of our services are: but perhaps that's what we want, to be able to present and sell ourselves in different ways to different audiences. I'm amazed by all the ways hacking everything together, the beauty of APIs and distributed data.

The majority of status prompts are our status symbols, methods to passively communicate and share information about ourselves and our lives. We've always had this ability to present ourselves offline, and I'm curious what will happen as the online world continues to evolve.

Perhaps there is a business opportunity in helping people show off, in helping them show off how they see themselves. Or is that simply Facebook?

Jay Cuthrell · 1 year ago

HP had the notion of presence and relevance based on a fob you carried around the office using RFID, WiFi and interaction agents on devices (phone, celluar, keyboard/mouse activity) that would give a view not unlike a MMORPG but I don't think a Second Life interface is practical for the real world.... btw... that was in 2002.

So, there -is- a market that doesn't know it exists and there is a business opp for when people demand some method for teaming and presence -- it's just hard to lay out the scenario where everyone needs it. More and more I am seeing Unified Communication being pushed into places it does not and should not fit.

For example, none of this is remotely useful or needed with a workforce that is tethered to a desktop in a call center or highly sedentary environment. Contrast this with distributed sales teams or multi-timezone project teams and you can see it isn't something you can ignore as you break up the proximity of a team but it also isn't a fit for everyone.

Taylor Davidson · 1 year ago

It's a technical solution to a problem people adapt to. Making people change is nearly impossible: helping them make their lives better, helping them be who they want to be: know that's a business.

I see a lot of unified communication applications that simply require too much from the user, too many routing, device, time and caller scenarios requiring too many pre-selected decisions. The potential is in passive information sharing instead of active, interruptive collaboration.

(btw, I wasn't even thinking of unified communications when I wrote this post: we've gone down a "status in the literal sense" train of thought, interesting...)

gregorylent · 8 months ago

i had never thought of online status as hierarchy/signifier, but as state, like the departures board in the airport ...

new cultural norms? perhaps we are relying on our intuition even more than in "real" life .. my sense of taylor davidson is derived from very few signals, yet feels very real ...

you always ask such good questions, and in such a way that my usual instant reply mode just won't work, i need to think out my responses .. and then time goes by ...

ok, enjoy

gregory

Taylor Davidson · 8 months ago

relying on our intuition even more than in our offline lives? what do you mean? that because we have partial information, and information that is biased and often devoid of context, that we instinctively use our own senses to project more meaning?

similar to how I'm always smarter after a couple drinks? :)

Each twitter message is a status update of a sort; once Twitter is "mainstream", or once Facebook opens up the status message, and status is a conversationthen our usage will change. Just watch.

lately I've been thinking I could find an endless ideas for posts just by going back to old posts and answering questions that I've asked...

thankfully you see the "taylor davidson" signals out of all the noise :)

gregorylent · 8 months ago

i used "inttuition" as a way to skate around stating what i really think is happening, and that is that our subtle bodies, which are not limited to space and time, are increasingly doing the interacting that is taking place on chatlines, in cyber love stories, on twitter, and everywhere else ...

we scrape a lot of meaning from just a few words, and an avatar, and it is surprising how accurate much of it is ...

intuition is just the convenient english word to use when referring to the sukshma sharira, the sanskrit word for the subtle body ...

technology is just the out-picturing of what awareness can already do ...

and, as to your blog posts, you could just loop a few, and get completely different comments, your stuff is usually that deep, and brings out different answers at different times ...

enjoy