Demos Project : Demos Website

Oh so social

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 14:25:54 -0100

Since we launched our website almost a year ago, attention paid to social networking and social software has increased dramatically. That means Demos employees, too, are increasingly using a number of existing tools out there for fun and work.
Check out our MySpace profile, our Flickr photos (also seen on most project pages) our del.icio.us tags, our very own wiki (including the 'hive' of former interns) and with a bit of searching around your favourite social networking sites, you never know where else we might be....

Suggestions for other ways you'd like to connect are welcome...

Technorati Profile

Show and Tell Web 2.0

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:29:40 -0100

A cultural anthropologist from Kansas on Web 2.0 and how the machine is us/ing us. It's excellent Friday morning inspiration!

Get Flocked!

charlie.tims@demos.co.uk ( Charlie Tims ) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:41:28 -0100

Just a quick heads-up for the mighty flock . Billed as the "social web browser", it has all the regular firefox features plus
- the ability to stream photos from your friend's flickr pages, directly through the top of the page
- a photo and blog uploader that enables you to upload photos and entries directly from your browser
- a cut and paste bar at the bottom of the page for interesting tit bits you might find
- there's also a very handy rss feed thing, which I haven't quite got the lick of yet, but rss heads assure me is the cats pyjamas

the It's free to download and if you like it you can make a donation.

Best think tank website? I just want to thank my mum...

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:15:20 -0100

It's not everyday geeks (I speak for myself) and wonks take over The Savile Club in Mayfair. But last night, champagne was flowing for the annual Prospect Magazine think tank of the year awards.

To use a word from my home country, I was very 'psyched' to take home the best think tank website award for Demos. Our friends at social software consultancy Headshift have worked with us to build a site that puts participation, transparency and engagement theories into practice. We just launched in June, so I'm looking forward to a lot more exciting and challenging work. It's only the beginning...

Having missed out on the whole sport-related trophy thing in school (geek), I was thrilled last night to hold an award that appears to be the head of Socrates and have the chance to publicly thank my supportive and creative colleagues.

And yes, I did thank my mum, who actually was in the audience...

The artist formerly known as our audience

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 17:30:57 -0100

We've launched a new website! We've worked with Headshift over the last year to develop a number of ways to let our 'audience' participate in our work. I liked to call this involving the 'artist formerly known as our audience' -- and today I noted (a little belatedly) that Jay Rosen has referred to 'people formerly known as the audience' in his recent post on PressThink.

You could call it 'co-production' of knowledge, but really we just thought our project research would be better and more interesting if we started integrating the feedback you give us on the blog, and allowed you to comment on publications and generally get more involved. (See more about the new website features.)

Let us know what you think.

Web 2.0 and democracy

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:23:36 -0100

'Web 2.0' isn't just about citizen media. Is it a new way for companies to sell to consumers? An opportunity for consumers to take control of the corporate communications channel? A metaphor for a new kind of democratic social interaction? A tool that allows well-networked elites to increase their networking capabilities? All of the above?

We're hosting an event with a visiting US social software consultant Elizabeth Albrycht, Livio Hughes from Headshift and Tom Steinberg from mySociety.

New linkages or same old networking (but faster)?

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:33:55 -0100

It is estimated that over 90% of Koreans in their 20s have a 'minihompy' -- a mini homepage where you create your online self. As with MySpace or Friendster, you have different tiers of friends and you can link up to others with your interests.

But it is much more like an online avatar than a myspace profile. According to people I spoke with while in Korea, they must have a minihompy if they want to participate in the kinds of university social relationships they traditionally only engaged in offline. But you don't necessarily meet new people who you wouldn't meet in those offline 'clubs'. It gets addictive because you can see who's come to your site, create gift boxes and wish boxes so that friends can surprise you - or you can treat your friends. And according to some, there is some pressure to answer immediately, good for hits but stressful (also check out this wired article).

Decorating your space becomes very important. Photos, music, wallpaper, animated characters - you get the idea. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend who wants to show you off to his friends, be sure your minihompy is well kitted out! (see an interesting discussion on what I'd call 'Cyworld: revolution or trivial' on Bernard Moon's blog).

To decorate, you use dotori - literal translation is 'acorn' - an incremental point paying system to get music, wallpaper, etc for your page. (You don't have to have technical ability to do this, which means lots of people can get involved.) SK invented the system and also allows mobile access, which had 1 million subscribers as of August, 2005 a statistic echoed by one of my interviewees in February. But you can even get cash back points when you buy other things (like petrol) at SK-owned stores. I heard but need to confirm that in one day, US $150,000 is spent on decorating minihompys.

Is networking dividing us as much as it unites us? The entire online social networking in Korea is happening in Korean and on different software products to ours. For example, google search has almost no market share - the major search service is NHN's Naver, which has a service called 'Knowledge-In'. It relies on people writing in questions and answers - and readers rating those (more on this here). So if you search for something, the logic behind the results is more curated than google. Also, the emphasis we place on RSS and wikis didn't make much sense to the people I spoke with. In fact, they were worried about that level of openness and blurring the ownership of 'knowledge'.

Actual patterns of usage, though, seem to contradict the hesitation of my interviewees. Koreans are certainly not worried about spending money online, and new micropayment models are clearly coming out of Asia first.

Anyone's avatar itching to get out? You might have to learn Korean, Chinese, or Japanese because this English version seems to be very very beta.

Demos website: not just a facelift

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 18:53:37 -0100

What do you get when you combine everyday democracy and web-based technology? Blogs? Wikipedia? Del.icio.us? Well, yes, but you also get Demos + Headshift.

We're putting our money where our mouth is ' and our theory where our website is ' and re-building the Demos site to fit our democratic values. Don't ask me what it will look like yet, but we're kicking off the process by working with Headshift, an internet development company that feels as passionately as we do about giving people the space (and the tools) to communicate and share ideas. Keywords: social software and open web services. (Check out the comments here about Headshift's newly launched 'Patient Opinion' project.)

Don't worry, we're going to keep giving away free pamphlets! But we're also hoping that some creative use of technology will bring to the forefront the relationships at the heart of our work. We want to allow not just Demos authors, but all the voices who participate in the conversations that shape our conclusions, to be heard. In other words: yours.

Any thoughts? Email me.