Conversations

Over the past few weeks, I have been swept into an open-ended discussion about conversation in the blogosphere. The Conversational Index, CoComments, and the recent glimpse at 3bubbles are all part of that chitchat.

There are a lot of voices to be collected — which I don’t have time for this morning, since I am in a Toronto restaurant, waiting for a meeting to kick off — and I plan to try an exhaustive review of the notions percolating in this talk soup. A few observations:

• The trend toward more conversation — as a means to collaborate, set context, or argue — is increasing.
• Feedback mechanisms that channel groups of people discussing the same or similar threads (a la memeorandum) will continue to explode, and will amplify the power of the more powerful voices.
• People are eager to adopt tools that move us toward “using the web as it was meant to be” [Paul Graham], which means a more socialized experience. (Less time in RSS readers, too, by the way!)
• The web is a way for us to connect, and collectively make sense of the world, not principally a way to gather information, or find the cheapest deal, or be more efficient.

Tools and techniques that trend in that direction will be picked up, and the best of them will gain broad acceptance. People are moving in that direction, even if they can clearly articulate what is going on.