Friday, July 23, 2004

So shall software

Ross Mayfield: Discussing Social Media. A deep, thoughtful, and even prophetic review of social software from a guy who's been living and working with the subject for a long time. Among other things, it quotes a few words from an email exchange we had while Ross was writing this, in preparation for BlogOn, which I'm (very regretably) missing today.

Are you starting something or ending something?

That's one big question behind my latest SuitWatch for Linux Journal, The Buck Starts Here.

Think about what we mean when we say "end user." An end user is a being that can only live at the terminus of a shipping system for shit that runs from a few producers to a zillion "consumers."

So how about start user?

People blogging politics, for example, are starting something, not ending anything.