Facebook and the Institutional Web. Posted by Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) on 15 June 2007 One of the advantages that use of a social networking environment such as Facebook can provide is the ability to see the Facebook applications that one’s peers are deploying.
This was how I spotted that John Kirriemuir had added the UIUC Library Search application to his Facebook account. “What does this do?” I wondered, before deciding that it was worth investing about a minute of my time to find out. So I installed the application and voila: Ambient Intimacy. I find myself talking about quite a lot.
I’m not the only one. The behaviours that Twitter has made more visible are tremendously interesting. I’ve been using a term to describe my experience of Twitter (and also and reading blog posts and ). I call it Ambient Intimacy. 9.0 - Ambient Intimacy. 'Ambient Intimacy' is a term I coined recently to describe an ancient effect which has come to the fore with the use of technologies such as Flickr and Twitter.
Evan Williams of Obvious (creators of Twitter) recently used this term at the International Conference of Weblogs & Social Media to explain the value that Twitter offers it's users. My current definition: "Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. " YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Shadows - Tag, comment, and rate your favorite web pages. Learning Reflections.