Yeah, class. Joi is a guy, and it's pronounced Joey (which I didn't learn till I finally met him in person and heard people saying his name out loud - this interweb can be a context-impoverished zone).

What about visible links to your feeds?

I found this one by guessing,
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/cta1/index.xml

The source had tags for others as well, but my IE 6.0 doesn't seem to care about them.

Very interesting.

People that do not know you obviously view the blog/Joi in a completely different light (other than the fact that they think you are a women).

I thought that if the readers would have taken the time to thoughtfully read and think about Joi's blog - they would undertand much more about Joi.

Maybe the students in the course are slackers :-)

/me wonders if the RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 links in the top right corner of the page are not sufficiently obvious...

:)

D'oh. He was talking about the class site. Never mind.

"4- Ito’s blog is hard to follow. She goes from entries that are given context, such as the entry on San Francisco gay marriages, straight to an entry that says "Six Apart makes Fast Company 50. Yay and congrats! My company Neoteny is an investor in Six Apart". Maybe it is just my lack of computer knowledge again, but what in the hell does that mean? I’ve never heard of "Six Apart," "Fast Company 50," or "Neoteny." Additionally her posting doesn’t make me interested enough to follow any of her links to find out what these things are. It seems way too self-indulgent, as if she is congratulating herself on making such a wise choice. I guess I dislike things that make me feel like I’m out of the loop…an outsider. Ito seems to do this often."

"2. Joi Ito disappointed me sometimes, especially when she posed the question of what the difference was between a diary, a journal, and a blog was. It was such an interesting question, but then she copped out on the answer by just giving us links to her brand new diary that had one entry and her live journal. I would have liked to see some answer from her and not just answers from her readers."

I just got home from That NYU Digital Journalism class & as a student who is uncomfortable by our class being branded “slackers” by one of your readers, I’m eager to respond and perhaps offer some thoughts that will hopefully serve to complicate this opinion. I will begin by saying that I am largely in discord with the comments made by many of my classmates in regards to your site, but still find it all but useful in our academic context to dismiss these comments as ones supplied by un-thoughtful readers. You scarcely do this in your response to us, and you can trust that your comments were all taken constructively in tonight’s class in terms of a deeper understanding of the function and form of your site and other blogs. But in order for you/your readers/fellow bloggers to understand where questions like “Why are you blogging about blogging (ostensibly, about blogging…)?” come from in the context of our classroom, I think it is important to recognize that the majority of us are perusing blogs in this capacity for the very first time. Whether this is a flaw of our media training up until this point is a separate point to be argued, but for now our intents are to seek to learn the nature of the medium, and how it figures into and fares in the spectrum of the traditional journalism world with which we are more familiar. As someone who is focused on the purpose and potential of the blogging community, I think it is fair to share with you that, in some respects, this first week trying to engage with these blogs has been like trying to make friends during the first week at a new school. Chris had clued us in to the ‘cool kids’ dynamic that exists to an extent in the blogging community, but I hope you can recognize that this set-up, although in ways inherent and operative to the medium, is rather troubling and excluding for those who are trying to first enter into understanding the conversations at work among the blogging crowd. By this I mean that many blogs and posts speak to those with pre-existing knowledge of the burgeoning topics and bloggers which we are yet to be on top of. As budding bloggers and journalists, you can trust that we will come closer to connecting with these people and issues, but for now I ask you not to excuse, but acknowledge the place from which some of these seemingly cursory or confused readings of blogs came. That said, I would encourage and appreciate the continuation of this conversation among you and my classmates and hope that we can perhaps even sit at the same lunch table soon-

First off, sorry for the assumption as to your sex. My mother always told me "don't assume or you make an ass of u and me"...I just never thought it would be so public ;)

Second, how would you refer to yourself in relationship to your online musings? Chris Albritton informed us that you are a businessman in Japan, but are you also perhaps a journalist? You make it clear that we're viewing your blog "with your journalism glasses on," but people outside of our class come to you for a different spin on information. What responsibilities does that entail if any?

I understand the cocktail party analogy that people are essentially coming in mid-conversation, but you are publishing. Your conversation is being recorded. Oral and written word, regardless of how we feel about the valuation of one as opposed to the other, are given different weights. A written contract is more binding than an oral agreement. Should this fact change a blogger's approach? Even if it shouldn't doesn't a conversationalist, as well as an author, have some obligation to engage readers? I realize that part of the concept of the blog is that the readers act to engage as well, but does that mean the author can be "self-indulgent?"

I'm really trying to explore this "blogosphere" and come up with my own personal philosophy about it. As Gayathri points out, very few of us knew what a blog was when we signed up for the class. My feelings about blogging are evolving constantly, and I'm actually finding it quite exciting to have conversations arise from postings we made. To be able to talk through our questions, ideas and concerns over blogging with people already immersed in it is probably the most interesting educational experience I've had at NYU.

Great discussion thus far. Regarding "I think it is fair to share with you that, in some respects, this first week trying to engage with these blogs has been like trying to make friends during the first week at a new school," this is an excellent point. It's easy to forget how counterintuitive the blog format can be on first impression (it's backwards! you're stepping into the middle of an ongoing present "now" etc.).

It's also a good reminder to blog writers that their blog should have some kinds of signposts or explanatory to help get people up to speed, perhaps similar to the way TV shows nowadays often start with a montage of clips from earlier store in the relevant story arcs introduced by an announcer saying, "Previously on Buffy..." or "Previously on Alias...."

or "When we last left our hero, he was feeling good about an investment he and his partners made in the company that makes Movable Type, the software that drives the blog for the Digital Journalism class at NYU...."

Also, no one should be criticized for voicing their first impressions, especially when doing was an assigned homework task!

As I mentioned on your class blog, I hope I didn't come across as too negative. It was just really fun jumping into your conversation since it was such a good example of how blogs worked and wanted you to get a "taste of it".

I guess another metaphor that might make sense is an autobiography. I feel like I'm writing a real-time autobiography. It's like opening up an autobiography in the middle and trying to figure out what's going on. There are multiple story threads and a bunch of characters that you don't know. It becomes more and more interesting as you get to know the characters and the story starts to make sense. Each post is just a twist in the plot.

There are really so many types of blogs and styles. The question of "who is my audience" is something we ask ourselves all the time. The interesting thing about blogs is that as your interests and the interests of others change, so do your readers. Some bloggers are very aware of their audience and write to attract a particular type of audience. Sometimes this audience is the general public. Sometimes it is a particular segment of the public. Some bloggers are influenced by the community and participate in conversations that occur across the blogs and are focused on bloggers as their audience. Others are focused on their small group of peers. As Mena (CEO of Six Apart) often says, this is probably the largest segment of bloggers. These are people who care what you had for lunch. Other people write to themselves.

I use my blog primarily as a way of sharing information with people who will contribute to the conversation and help me increase my understanding of what I thinking. My audience is a participatory one. It is the nature of "microcontent" that it is difficult to provide full context in a single post and most of the people who contribute successfully are either regular readers or people who know something about the topic I've posted about. My blog is not mass media and I do not feel a strong obligation to go out of my way to make it easy to understand for people who are not interested in participating or contributing to the conversation. On the other hand, I want to interact with as many thoughtful people as possible. It really is sort of like preparing an invitation for a cocktail party. I want a variety of interesting people to come, but I want to be somewhat selective. I also want diversity. The result is what you see here. Having said that, your feedback is very interesting and as xian points out, maybe I should make it easier for newcomers to figure out what's going on.

I guess it probably DOES feel like the first day at school. I hope it was interesting at least. Anyway, I won't post every single thing in my head right now, but I hope we can continue this dialog. Welcome to blogging and I hope that you all become bloggers and continue to participate after the class is over.

or "When we last left our hero, he was feeling good about an investment he and his partners made in the company that makes Movable Type, the software that drives the blog for the Digital Journalism class at NYU...."

This seems to imply that if Joi hadn't invested in Six Apart, then the class wouldn't be able to use MT, which is stretching the truth, methinks.

pish, posh. no causation implied at all. just trying to put "Neoteny" and "Six Apart" into a context relevant to the class...

It's an encouraging sign to see journalism students engaging with bloggers. Their perceptions are predictable, given their lack of prior experience in the blogworld, but they also exhibit fresh ideas. When it dawns on them what they can do with weblogs, they will probably take this activity in new directions.

The most powerful aspect of this "new media" is that a talented newcomer can rise to prominence on the basis of talent, not on their connections with a university or a publisher.

It will be interesting to see the effect of this experiment downstream.

A tip for people who are puzzled by unfamiliar terms -- Google (or the search engine of your choice) is your friend! I'm amazed daily at how helpful a quick search can be when I'm puzzled by something I read online.

In case you didn't realize it, the previous comment about Baby Car Seats is an example of blog comment spam.

Howard: I deleted the spam you refered to. :)

I wanted to be a journalist once, still do. I really like how people interact on this site.

Howard-I love Google too!

where do you get time to manage all these blogs? :)