In response to Mary Hodder's concern about "rankism"... I wonder whether rank is the wrong presentation, and clouds are right.
A cloud presentation would primarily show the communities that a blogger is in. It may show secondarily the influence strength within that community, but that should be secondary in the presentation.
A cloud presentation might enable navigation along topic axis. For my blog, you'd be able to traverse to social software and austin clouds.
Influence would be calculated within the cloud. So, Jon Lebkowsky would have separately-calculated influence level within Austin and environmental blog communities.
Perhaps the presentation would allow the browser to traverse communities. One could find "blogher", and traverse to the "sepia mutiny" south asia community.
Time would be an interesting factor. Perhaps one could view the cloud by week, month, or year. See how participation ebbs and flows over time. A longer time frame would be interesting -- I wonder whether other bloggers are "bursty" in their topics of interest. A long time frame would catch people who come and go.
In sum, a cloud presentation would avoid the worst of rankism, because it would focus on the community more than the individual, and allow a browser to traverse communities.
Posted by alevin at August 7, 2005 12:59 PM | TrackBack