social software seminar

I'm presenting some thoughts on the seminar Interface and interaction: Social software on InterMedia on Thursday. I've had the impression that social software really is just about CMC or mediated social interaction, but according to Clay Shirky "pairwise communications, such as SMS, falls out of the pattern". Doesn't fit my plan for what I'll talk about on Thursday though. I'll have the same focus as I had on the Friday seminar 3. of December: about the social significance of mediated interactions. Which includes any kind of texting, chatting, blog/journal/diary. My informants just say the most wonderful things. For instance:

"I’m a bit worried about meeting people who have read my diary but who doesn’t know me. Like for instance, this summer on several of the festivals: “You’re Linnea, aren’t you?” and “Yes, well, that’s me”. Then I get scared, because I feel that, it is me, but I’m very different, I’m more like, I have a bad sense of humour. And I feel that I talk a lot more rougher than I write. So I worry that they’ll believe I’ll be this tiny, sweet elf-like girl who doesn’t say much but just smiles sweetly. But that isn’t me at all. They are surpried of how loud I am. My way of talking and cursing. But it’s still me. I have a way to write, which is nicer than the way I talk. But I wouldn’t write like I talk, because it wouldn’t be as nice. It wouldn’t be me. Because when I talk I’m not on the same level. I’m not as personal as when I sit down to write a diary.

(…) it’s all me, but it’s small parts of me. Maybe it’s the parts I’m more satisfied with that I write more about" (Linnea, 18 years old).