Well sometimes people leave and sometimes they come on board. That’s the story of the last month at Microsoft Research (MSR) in social computing.

I was pretty excited when Marc Smith came to MSR 10 years ago. He’s a PhD sociologist and has been studying social computing since before it became the big thing that it is today. As someone with an undergraduate degree in sociology (as well as Systems Analysis) I thought is was great that one of “my people” was at MSR studying things that I was very interested in. Well Marc has left. He writes about leaving and some of what he has accomplished here. And to think I just got to meet him this past summer. Hopefully I’ll be able to run into him again in the future though.  I do wish him the best of luck in what ever he tackles next.

That’s the going, the coming is danah boyd. Danah announced that she will be joining Microsoft Research in the new New England Research Center in January.  I was introduced to danah very briefly this past summer as well but I have been reading her blog and other work online for quite sometime. Her joining MSR in New England means that social computing research is being taken seriously and is a great thing for MSR. I look forward to seeing what results  from the unique research center that MSR New England is rapidly becoming.

I think that as a company Microsoft has really accepted social computing as something that fits into the way people work both internally and externally. There are thousands of Microsoft bloggers, the number of Microsoft people on services like Facebook Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and others is growing at a rapid rate.  So to me it makes a lot of sense that MSR would have someone studying the phenomena seriously.

I’m currently following about 165 people on Twitter. At times the stream of messages is pretty overwhelming – much more than I can read. This is something I find frustrating. I guess I am a bit like a little kid who doesn’t want to miss a thing. This morning as I tried to read through the messages that came through overnight I wondered if I was over doing it. Or could I handle more if I changed the way I thought about following people on Twitter.

Some people follow many times more people than I do. Could it be that they view Twitter differently than I do? So I sent out the following as a Twitter this morning.

how many people can one person reasonably follow on Twitter? What defines "reasonably follow?"

mguhlin (Miguel Guhlin) replied with several interesting replies.

Follow? No. Experience? Many. Twitter is an experience you dip into, not a white stag to follow.

Experience is like a river you cool off in, follow is rocks in a bag upon your back until you break.

You let the river carry you where it wills, rather than slavishly follow its course. ;->

Miguel follows over 870 people. He an interesting person and besides being active on Twitter he is a prolific blogger (on education) so it is probably unsurprising that he is followed by almost 1,000 people. And clearly his use of Twitter is different from mine. I’m trying to drink every drop out of a garden hose while he is sampling from a fire hose. And I suspect that from time to time the heavy flow of the fire hose takes Miguel places that he never expected. Which is not a bad thing at all. I probably don’t get as many surprises. And that may not be a completely good thing. Not completely bad but still I could be missing out on a lot.

Speaking of missing out that is one thing that keeps me from signing up to follow more people. What if they Tweet something interesting and I miss it? OK that is not completely logical. By not following them I miss everything they Tweet. So is it better to follow a lot of people and catch what you can and “let the river carry you where it wills?” Or is it better to follow only as many people as you can keep up with everything they say? In all probability there is no right or wrong. Some times different is just different.

Two of the people I follow on twitter are Robert Scoble (follows 21,000 people) and Guy Kawasaki (follows 18,400 people) and I sent them replies when I Twittered my message a second time. Replies tend to attract more attention because they are more direct. Neither of these two gentlemen replied. Not surprising really and I didn’t really expect one – though it would have been great if they had. Did they ignore it? Possibly – it would have had to tickle a particular interest to reply. Or did it just pass by in the flow without them ever seeing it at all? Also quite possible. This was not an important message by any stretch of the imagination.

So what is keeping me from adopting this river of Twitter model? Well some of the people I follow are friends of mine in real life – outside of cyberspace – and I really don’t want to miss their Tweets. I should probably look for a Twitter client that would let me set up groups or channels to organize messages from people I follow. I could perhaps write my own. If I could be sure that the people who are highest priority for me to follow were easy to read I could set up a second channel for everyone else. Maybe I can have it both ways? :-)

So I have been reading a lot of people suggesting or outright saying that Obama has lost the election. Say what? So here now is my analysis of where we are at.

To win a presidential election one has to “run to the middle.” Obama made a huge misstep in my opinion picking Biden as his running mate. Obama is perceived by most as being far left. Everyone sees Biden as far left. So what ever beefing up this selection did with the far left Obama probably already had them so this doesn’t help. Misstep Obama.

McCain is unusual in that the far right sees him as too far to the middle so he needed help with his right wing base. Palin gives him that. On the other hand Palin hurts him with the left and left middle. On the other hand women in the middle like that he picked a woman. The women on the left are upset about who he picked but he was unlikely to win them over any way. Over all no gain. No misstep but no big win either.

McCain is running off a lot of talk that is anything but “straight talk.” It’s ticking people like me off a great deal. He is also upsetting people who dislike mud slinging and attack ads. OK some people are buying what he is saying but will they turn out to vote? Big misstep McCain.

Obama adds are just not generating buzz or discussion. The attack ads are mild which is good but is he really giving us enough of a reason to vote for him and not against Bush, I mean McCain? No help but no big misstep.

People are still really ticked off at Congress. McCain is running against Congress which is strange since he is part of it. But he is seen, somewhat correctly, as being in but not of Congress. Obama has to be working for a big win in Congress this year. Why? Because he is seen as too much a new guy who hasn’t earned his place at the head of the ticket. He needs to be helpful to Democrats who are running to win seats or to retain seats. So running as hard against Congress is not an option for him. Advantage (though small) McCain.

You may or may not have noticed that Obama has dark skin and McCain has light skin. For reasonable people that doesn’t make one bit of difference. Unfortunately being a reasonable person is not required to vote. I hate to admit it but there are still people who will not vote for  an African-American candidate. How many of them are out there? I don’t think anyone knows because most of them are smart enough not to admit it publicly. This is the great unknown in this campaign. Depressing as it is personally to me it would be foolish to discount it as a factor.

I think this election is just too close to call. I do think that McCain more than Obama will determine the outcome. I think he is seriously hurting himself with the half-truths, distortions, and out right incorrect statements he is making. He may yet convince people like me to stay home on election day.

And then there is the Electoral College. Can Obama win enough of the large states with large urban and minority populations to win the election even without a majority of the population voting for him? I think there is a good chance of that. Could McCain win enough of the so-called red states and pick up a couple of states where bigotry crosses party lines? Perhaps.

But we have a month and a half yet and a lot could happen. The Palin decision could look even worse in a couple of weeks. Some blatant racist action could win Obama a lot of sympathy. People could turn away from McCain for not being straight. One candidate of the other could blow a debate. Palin/Biden is going to be awfully important. I can actually see that being a huge factor.

So too early and too close to call. See me in a month. :-)

Well maybe it should be “Twitter and strong opinions” but this post was inspired by watching Twitter during the political conventions. And also by something I Twittered upsetting a friend. It was a strong political opinion I guess you could say. But it all started me thinking.

Many of the people I follow on Twitter are, well, I guess you could say far to my left politically. They loved everything that was said at the Democratic convention and hated pretty much everything that has been said so far during the Republican convention. The feelings were the other way around for the few right wing people I follow. But the tone of the left leaning people really upset me. It seemed so very nasty. I suspect it wasn’t meant that way. Well maybe it was. But the point is I don’t really know. As little context and other clues that we have in email and blog posts there is even less in Twitter. There is that whole 140 character limitation.

Politics, like religion, is of course a particularly emotional and polarizing thing. It can be highly nuanced as well but nuance does not translate well to Twitter. What makes it worse in Twitter is that people easily forget who is reading. Most of the people following me probably don’t know me that well. I definitely don’t know many of the people I am following very well either. Many of them I have never met in person and know strictly from blogs and Twitter. In some cases only Twitter. Do I want to judge these people with only Twitter as a source of information? I think not. I’m pretty sure I don’t want them judging me with only that context either!

I’ve decided to avoid as much as possible making political or religious comments on Twitter in the future. Twitter is no instant messaging to an individual – it is a sort of micro blog. Good (read smart) bloggers are careful about what they blog and how they say things. Even still it is easy to get into trouble. But Twitter is I think more risky if only because you have less time/space to include context and make things clear. With Twitter I think you also have of an opportunity to clarify things, to make things right.

I’m not sure how much people are aware of the risk. Do the people I followed last night know that they presented a very negative image that influenced me against their favored party and candidate? Probably not. I imagine they think they presented “truth” that should be convincing to people who disagree with them. That is the other reason I want to hold back – I see more possibility of turning people away in 140 characters than convincing them of anything.

And somehow I keep thinking of that old proverb “it is better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt.” How soon will it be before someone loses their job over something they say in Twitter?

I’m a Preacher’s Kid. That means different things to different people but for many of us who are actually in the role one of the things it means is that if we do something wrong it is likely that our parents, particularly the preacher in the family, who will pay the most serious price. Yes I know people who have lost their jobs because of things their children did. And still more who found life very difficult for the same reason. To some extent the same is true of people in other public positions. Teachers, political officials being the most common. I would argue that they don’t usually have it as bad as preachers do though.

This week of course a lot of people are out to get Sarah Palin because of actions her daughter has done. The Palin’s 17-year old daughter is pregnant. Gasp horror! Lots of people are suggesting, if not outright saying, that this shows that Palin should not be Vice President. As a PK I’ve heard all this before. And it upsets me quite a bit. The girl is 17. Kids of 17 make mistakes like that all the time. Kids from all walks of life make it. Blaming the mother or some how suggesting that having a daughter who makes a common mistake is somehow not fit for public office is outrageous. It is unreasonable to hold parents personally responsible for their children's mistakes.

Being a parent and being the son of someone whose profession brought extra-ordinary attention to things I did the unfairness of this is blatant to me. It is completely unfair to both mother and daughter. They are both under enough stress as it is. This helps no one. I really feel for the girl by the way. At 17 no one should be under national scrutiny for something like this. Oh but it is because of who her mother is some say. So what? It is still unfair to the girl. This is and should be a private family matter. Her parents are being supportive of her. Good for them. Praise them and hold them as a positive example that should be emulated. She’s keeping the baby, again with support from family, which is yet another positive thing. If you are going to bring it up then the morally right thing to do is to accentuate the positive. Caring family following through on stated pro-life belief by supporting mother and child to be. Isn’t that what we want? As it is the media we are seeing and the critics we are reading seem to be aimed at stigmatizing unwed mothers more than they already are and extending the “shame” and “failure” on to parents. I fail to see the good in that!

There is yet another lever that this all offends me. Most of the people who are bringing this up and pointing fingers and suggesting it reflects poorly on the parents are the same people who think that cheating on one’s wife should not be an issue. They are the ones who say that single parent families should not be thought of as a bad thing but as an  example of female empowerment. They are the same people who will forgive all sorts of failings in their own candidates but nothing at all in the candidates they oppose. I’d be happy to discuss the issues with people who honestly believe that this issue should rule Palin out. All the have to do is first show they are non-partisan in their objections by stating out that there is more than enough similar reasons to rule Hilary Clinton and Bill out for any future high political office. After all using ones position of power to get a young White House intern to have sex is at least as bad as a hormonal teen getting pregnant with someone she plans to marry. And a wife trying to cover it up is at least as bad as a mother being willing to support a pregnant unwed mother.

Oh I’m not one who believes that Bill’s sexual dalliances rule him out for public office. Alec Baldwin (noted left wing extremist) convinced me of that in a letter to the editor years ago. Anything I’d forgive someone I like I should and would be willing to forgive in people I don’t like.