So much link love by all those people who bookmarked my syllabus for The Social Web on Delicious (some one hundred bookmarks), I made it on the Delicious popular list, and it got over a thousand views on slideshare, just two days after I published the syllabus online and four days after I put the introductory lecture on slideshare. The slide cast is at http://tinyurl.com/36zlwu. But there was more than a flattered ego here (I'm sure the title helped); the comments were interesting.

The venerable Michel Bauwens wrote a summary for the p2p foundation, and Samuel Rose added it to SmartMobs. Infocult's Bryan Alexander summed up the argument as focusing  "on economics: ownership of Web 2.0 projects, business models built on unpaid user activity, and the difficulty of linking social activism to social media." Paolo of Gnuband would like to join the course (but is probably in Italy). Paolo, perhaps you'd like to become a networked guest speaker?

Nathan at SwarmMedia compares my Social Web course to Fred Stuztman's current class on social networking. He would have added Deleuze's "Postscript to Societies of Control" to both syllabi. Thanks for the suggestion. Nathan writes:

"One of the most apparent similarities between these two courses is their reliance on texts and writers most known or originating in blogs and blog writing. Fred relies on danah boyd and Clay Shirky, while Trebor looks to Nicholas Carr and Jeff Jarvis. These writers have worked out their thoughts in the very environment that these courses are examining and no doubt have been shaped by this factor. It's not just a curious fact, however, but a recognition that a great deal of contemporary scholarship on social media is happening in and between blogs."

George Siemens wrote (and a permalink to that is apprently not available)

"Trebor Scholz has made his course syllabus availablefor Social Media. The presentation is subtitled "web 2.0, what went wrong". It's tough to get a sense of what the author thinks went wrong from only slides. I don't think anything has gone wrong yet with web 2.0 (except the term...and as I've posted before, its impact on open source use at an educator level). It's still a young movement bridging two parallel trends: social/conceptual innovation (open source, democracy, two-way information flow) and tool-based innovation (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, blah, blah, blah). The reading list for the course is excellent - the most complete compilation of articles I've seen on the social and technological space in which these changes are occurring."

In response- I really work hard to balance the amazing affordances of the Social Web with a critique of Web 2.0 ideoiogy. There is much more ill-concenption than just the name of the "movement." (I don't think it's a movement.) It's a time period in the evolution of computer-mediated networked communication. The scale of participation has grown tremendously but beyond that, it's good old techno-social evolution as we know it.

One commentator from the University of bahia in Brazil said
"Um Blog coletivo sobre Jornalismo, Internet e Novas Tecnologias de Comunicação mantido pelos integrantes do Grupo de Pesquisa em Jornalismo On-line da Faculdade de Comunicação da Universidade Federal da Bahia," which Google Translate anglifies to

"A collective Blog on Journalism, Internet and Novas Technologies of Communication kept for the integrant ones of the Group of Research in On-line Journalism of the College of Communication of the Federal University of the Bahia"

Um, ... I'll check back with Google Translate in a few months to translate another commentator.