www.conversate.org

Conversate is a new web service provided by the delightful folks at Participatory Politics. They are making some very cool stuff and I need to write an entire article about their work, but I haven't yet.

To me, Conversate seems like a distributed blog that is topic-based, not person-based. You make a list of friends and you find something to talk about. Any old thing will do. You then create the conversate (it's easy) and it invites them. Anyone can control how they receive updates, whether it's email or rss (and in the future other methods such as aim/jabber).

What's so big about that? Why post about it on a political blog?

This sort of thing is the kind of out-of the box, bottom-up sort of infrastructure that NEEDS to be built before a successful, anarchistic/panarchistic society can function well. It is a SIMPLE way for information to flow. It allows us to tell people about something and they can immediately be brought up to speed. Whereas the blogsphere has a bunch of different blogs blogging about the same subject, that means you have to click all over the place to read them all. Talkback/pingback make that easier, but it is still not terribly convenient. Conversate is TOPIC based, and that's crucial. It is free association. It is people-power. It is affinity groups. It is uncontrollable from above. However, unlike lots of other mass-things like blogs, these aren't centralized around a person. They're fluid, and could easily spread as fast as people can say "Check this out". PLUS, if they're based on invites, there's LESS risk of obnoxious trolls and such. (Certainly they could show up, but the chances are slimmer.) It may not seem like a big thing, but it destoys many barriers to efficient communication, and builds walls in more logical places.

I foresee this becoming VERY successfull, and potentially very powerful.

Political/activist uses aside, this could be a great way to spontaneously organize things from birthday parties to going out in the evening to discussing the problem with the newest Star Wars movie.