Brand new project for Aesthetics of Interactive Design. A Database of the Self. I call it Database Me. And I’d love to hear your comments.

Today Conan decided to finally follow someone on Twitter. His choice was random (so he says), but the lucky Sarah Killen has no doubt felt the power of his action. And it’s an interesting case study in the power of celebrity in the new digital participatory culture.

When Conan O’Brien first created a Twitter account we students of social media had a fun new game to play: Guess how many followers Conan will have after each refresh. When I got into the game, he had around 71,500 followers and jumped up to over 72k in less than a minute. And kept climbing. That was eight days ago.

What’s really interesting is Conan’s foreshadowing:

Today, Conan has 535,275 followers as of this writing (and climbing, no doubt). Sarah, the one person he decided to follow, gained over 2000 followers in a matter of minutes. And, as in Conan’s case, that number is still climbing.

Behold the power of celebrity in participatory culture. This makes me wonder if Conan and his crew realize the amount of influence they have on the web. I’m sure they do. Now, Sarah Killen’s life probably isn’t changing all that much. But she has been brought up alongside Conan’s image and, holding onto his coattails, so to speak. Pretty fascinating. I wonder if NBC is noticing this and realizing how incredibly bad their move to get rid of him was…

I’m sure some, if not all, of this has been said before. Social media is so pervasive today that those of us who are serious about it don’t much think about what we’re doing online. And our counterparts get worked up over computers taking the humanity out of relationships.

I beg to differ.

There’s a real-world meme that sporadically spills onto Facebook and other places, where some lonely person gets upset that no one bothers to call them anymore and all they get are wall posts or emails. They get all worked up over the fact that people are taking the time to communicate with them. Or at least try and communicate with them.

But I’ve found that social media connects us better with each other. It connects us with people we may never have had a chance of interacting with in the course of normal society. ¶ Read More…