disambiguity

Ambient Intimacy

LastFM IRC

I find myself talking about Twitter quite a lot. I’m not the only one. The behaviours that Twitter has made more visible are tremendously interesting.

I’ve been using a term to describe my experience of Twitter (and also Flickr and reading blog posts and Upcoming). I call it Ambient Intimacy.

Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight.

Who cares? Who wants this level of detail? Isn’t this all just annoying noise? There are certainly many people who think this, but they tend to be not so noisy themselves. It seems to me that there are lots of people for who being social is very much a ‘real life’ activity and technology is about getting stuff done.

There are a lot of us, though, who find great value in this ongoing noise. It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances. It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like.

Knowing these details creates intimacy. (It also saves a lot of time when you finally do get to catchup with these people in real life!) It’s not so much about meaning, it’s just about being in touch.

As Ian Curry at Frog Design writes:

It’s basically blogging reduced to what the Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin called “the phatic function.” Like saying “what’s up?” as you pass someone in the hall when you have no intention of finding out what is actually up, the phatic function is communication simply to indicate that communication can occur. It made me think of the light, low-content text message circles Mizuko Ito described existing among Japanese teens - it’s not so important what gets said as that it’s nice to stay in contact with people. These light exchanges typify the kind of communication that arises among people who are saturated with other forms of communication.

I came across this research when I was doing my Masters a few years back and it’s continued to fascinate me (and yes, I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit whilst considering, and defending, Twitter).

Here’s an observation from some Japanese ethnographic research into the use of camera phones by young people undertaken by Daisuke Okabe (2004):

intimate sharing / presence – sharing intimate photos on the handset when talking face to face with people. Photos that fall into this category would be photos of partners, family, pets, etc. However, this can also be very every day stuff… eg. what I’m having for dinner. It is sharing ongoing mundane visual information with intimates, creating a sense of presence in other peoples lives without needing to talk or be physically present.

I think that the simplicity of Twitter is key to it’s success. The messages must be short and they’re simple text. I’m starting to think that the level of stimulation is key to the success of these ‘osmotic’ communications (as the guys from LastFM referred to the IRC channel they use internally).

We’ve been trialling some options for a similar kind of osmotic backchannel to use at Flow. One of the first things we roadtested was Skype Public Chat. Amongst some other problems (including that there is no Mac version of the current release which supports the Public Chat function), it seemed that the flashing and noises and animated emoticons were too stimulating… the conversation wanted to leap to the front of the screen continually demanded attention.

IRC on the other hand (ah, what a flash back to open up mIRC again after all these years!) reminds me a lot more of Twitter. There’s none of the flashing and animating and carrying on. The humour is in the text (it took about 30 seconds for the first trout related comment to emerge… old habits…). To me, IRC seems to be a much more effective tool for a back channel, for supporting this osmotic communication within a company. (Assuming we can reduce the barrier to ‘log on’… it’s not a friendly experience for not-geeks).

What does seems clear is that, for a lot of people, this ambient intimacy adds value to people’s lives and their relationships with others. I think we can expect to see a lot more of it… but if I was building a tool to support it, I’d be keeping it very simple and unobtrusive. Osmosis is one thing, hyper-stimulation is quite another!

Twitter Me

Image credit: Slide used by LastFM in their presentation at FOWA

Reference: Okabe, Daisuke 2004, Emergent Social Practices, Situations and Relations through everyday camera phone use, presented at Mobile Communication and Social Change, the 2004 International Conference on Mobile Communication in Seoul, Korea, October 18-19 2004

136 Comments

Leith @ Birth of a Startup on March 2nd, 2007

Interesting post. I have lately been trying to recall in great detail what life was like before all this technology, even before mobile phones, and although perhaps I was too young at the time to make a proper analysis here, I do know that my circle of acquaintances was dramatically lower, because there is only so much time in the day for phone calls and letter writing, which is what we used to depend on. So these technologies have certainly broadened my circle of contacts, although it has also increased the burden of responsibility to keep them relatively close to my life. As you say, this can be quite an enjoyable pastime, and its interesting to observe the growth in tools that facilitate this ‘feeding of acquaintances’.

Alex - Microsmeta on March 2nd, 2007

For me, Twitter is excessive. A real Big Brother. I don’t care if a friend is taking a shower or eating sushi. But I care of what he thinks about my interests and I appreciate if he likes what I’m writing on my blog. So, I prefer MyBlogLog. With it, I know when my australian friend comes to read my thoughts on the last movie I have seen, and I’m in touch with all people I like worldwide and all their friends sharing common interests.

James Governor’s Monkchips » A Twitter use case: RSVP (Really Simple Voting Poll) on March 2nd, 2007

[...] But I think the app can have some real utility, above and beyond ambient intimacy. So I am looking for 1000 followers to the RedMonkRSVP twitter id. The idea is that we will be able to run instant polls according to our, and your, research ideas. Sort of a lightweight yougov poll. Twitter was never intended for this but I would like to try it and I need your help. Please get people to sign up and lets start twittering the wisdom of the crowds. I don’t have an infrastructure in place to aggregate and query results, but when did that ever stop anyone from achieving cool things? I am hoping that the folks from Adobe will grab the jump ball and build a Flex app to record results from inbound replies (Ted, Duane?) [...]

anil on March 2nd, 2007

Leisa - nice post. Anil from last.fm here. wrt getting non-technical people using irc - it’s not been a problem for us. We have all our business/labels/design people on the channel too and they can all absorb information from it.

Cote' on March 2nd, 2007

Yuh! Sounds good to me I’m glad more and more people are doing ambient intimacy things, it’s so much fun to consume, publish, and swirl around in.

With respect to IRC, I really wish it was more widely used. Part of the problem is installing a whole new app, but the bigger problem is that many corporate networks block IRC, which totally sucks.

Not to mention that IRC doesn’t work over SMS as Twitter does. I don’t use the txt updates or digests (by sending “get” to Twitter) most of the time, but I love having them when I’m out, about, and bored. A little update to 40404, and I’ve got my fix for producing content!

tech decentral » links for 2007-03-02 on March 3rd, 2007

[...] disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy This is the best post I’ve read yet on Twitter. Leisa: right on. (tags: twitter relationships networking social) [...]

James Governor’s Monkchips » links for 2007-03-02 on March 3rd, 2007

[...] disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy Anne says this is the best post yet on twitter. i still say its telepathy but citing Bakhtin is always a winning strategy. quite the critical theory day with Bakhtin and flaneurs turning up. I think we’ll see more mashups of critical theory and network ar (tags: criticaltheory Twitter telepathy adoption) [...]

People Over Process » Blog Archive » links for 2007-03-03 on March 3rd, 2007

[...] Ambient Intimacy “It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances. It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like.” Yuh! (tags: twitter socialsoftware ambientintimacy people via:JamesGovernor) [...]

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Workstreaming: The New Face Time « on March 3rd, 2007

[...] There are a wide variety of tools that might be used for workstreaming, and which ones suit you and your team depend both on what kind of work you do and what tools your coworkers are using. It’s not effective to use an IRC channel if you’re the only one on the team who knows what IRC stands for, but it can be great for a techie crowd. Twitter creates a virtual shared office space that can reproduce the chatter and intimacy of a physical office while allowing team members to share what they’re working on and what they’ve completed. RSS feeds from blogs, message boards, photo sites, and project management apps could all provide useful workstreams—especially if these are aggregated for a whole team. Source code control systems like Subversion can output RSS feeds too so you can make team members aware of new features and bug fixes as they’re checked in. [...]

Mark Y. on March 3rd, 2007

“Ambient Intimacy” … I expect to see it gain ground as a catch phrase.

(I also gather, by reading, that it’s not the relationship I was seeking at the bar in town during my college years…)

ivanka on March 4th, 2007

I love the Ambient Intimacy (beautifully put) of Twitter (and flickr for that matter). I was quite sure that it would annoy me and just be another web thing that I would sign up for and ignore - but it isn’t. There is something charming about little messages from people you know popping up during the day that you are not compelled to respond to. Like the difference between doing a horrible chore all on your or have someone sit with you while you do it - just knowing they are there somehow makes it better.

Ted Leung on the Air » Blog Archive » Ambient Intimacy - I love it. on March 5th, 2007

[...] Leisa Reichelt has coined the term Ambient Intimacy to describe the value of Twittter. For some reason, this turn of phrase really resonates with me. [So, yet another RedMonk recommended blogger enters the 30 day evaluation folder in NetNewsWire…] [...]

sandoz » Blog Archive » Ambient Intimacy on March 5th, 2007

[...] Leisa has branded this wave of [micro-communication+social openness] as ambient intimacy in this great post. [...]

Petteri Koponen on March 5th, 2007

I really like the term “ambient intimacy” since I believe that in the future people will share more intimate details of their life with smaller closed groups of friends, family members, etc, as opposed to the public nature of current “lifestream sharing” services.

At Jaiku, we are aiming towards this with an approach that is slightly different from and complementary to Twitter (quite a few Twitter users have added their Twitter feeds to Jaiku’s lifestreams). We emphasize the ability to ignore the “ongoing noise”, but every now and then there will be a short discussion around a particular update (such as in Stowe Boyd’s lifestream here).

Liz Henry on March 7th, 2007

Oh, perfect. I’ve been thinking a lot about this too, and I keep writing long posts about how people are treating Twitter and what it exposes, & that strange intimacy. Blogging functions that way, which is why we all have of “blog-friends” who are closer to us in many ways than people we see regularly in daily life. Twitter does that on another scale, very beautifully.

hillary on March 7th, 2007

the peeps over at 30boxes have described their hope for connectedness among “buddies” as “situational awareness”. i like the term…it’s not exactly the same as “ambient intimacy” or how myspace has redefined the word “friend,” but it’s along the same lines.

i’m fully on board with the lifestream concept, and like the ideas you bring up in your post. kudos.

Marc LaFountain on March 8th, 2007

I love it when a blog post captures a concept I had never thought of, yet is all around me. Love the term Ambient Intimacy. I just wonder if as a society we are starting to favor Ambient Intimacy over the deeper, more traditional intimacy that we have had with family and friends. (How old and stodgy do I sound now?)

Marc

innonate » Blog Archive » links for 2007-03-08 on March 8th, 2007

[...] disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lun (tags: twitter social community relationships ambient flickr sociology web2.0) [...]

disambiguity - » If it wasn’t for Twitter I wouldn’t be here… on March 13th, 2007

[...] People ask me what I think of Twitter and whether it’s really important or useful. I’ve already said a bit about it, but here’s a funny story. [...]

Henry Halff on March 14th, 2007

It’s been proposed (sorry that I can’t dig up the reference) that we humans in our earlier days formed bonds amongst ourselves through mutual grooming and that these grooming circles were limited in size to about 50.

It’s also said that, as we evolved, our hands became far too, well, handy, to fritter away in grooming. So, our ancestors came to maintain their social bonds by inventing speech and yammering at each other whilst they were using their hands to make tools, stir pots, change diapers, whatever.

It turns out, in fact, (again, sorry I can’t dig up the reference) that our conversations are still dominated by inconsequential blather, what some might call “noise.” This noise, as you point out, is ideally suited to maintaining social bonds.

What is interesting about all this is that what with all the twitter posts from mobile phones and keyboards is that we apparently have returned to using our hands to maintain social bonds. Perhaps its because we don’t want to waste our voices on such mundanities.

Last, I would like to know about the numbers of friends that active tweeters follow. How many follow more than 50?

Meriblog: Meri Williams’ Weblog » links for 2007-03-14 on March 15th, 2007

[...] disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy “Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.” (tags: twitter adoption behaviour ambientintimacy greatterm conversation community social socialsoftware) [...]

Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) on March 15th, 2007

Twitter, c’est quoi? Explications……

Cet après-midi, je ramasse 20minutes dans le bus, et je vois qu’on y parle de Twitter. Bon sang, il est grand temps que j’écrive le fichu billet en français que je mijote depuis des semaines au sujet de ce service que j’adore (apr….

The primates of Twitter « Factory Joe on March 18th, 2007

[...] The primates of Twitter Henry Halff, Larry’s dad, makes a very interesting comment: It’s been proposed (sorry that I can’t dig up the reference) that we humans in our earlier days formed bonds amongst ourselves through mutual grooming and that these grooming circles were limited in size to about 50. [...]

leisa.reichelt on March 19th, 2007

LOL @ Twitter as mutual grooming… it certainly is a lot like that isn’t it!

I’ve just noticed that I can’t tell how many people I’m actually following on Twitter at the moment. I have 64 friends at the moment, but that includes things like BBC news and Twitter status updates, which uses Twitter in a slightly different way. And I have some ‘friends’ who I don’t follow (meaning I don’t get their messages via IM or SMS, but still follow on web), in my case either because I don’t know them so well or don’t have so much in common with them, so their updates are less interesting to me, or because they Twitter to much and too often and I can’t handle the noise.

I reckon I probably have about 50 people who I do follow at the moment, and I definitely feel as though I’m at a kind of threshold where I couldn’t really handle much more.

So, that’s a survey of one that fits your hypothesis… anyone else want to share some numbers?

Tara Hunt on March 19th, 2007

Leisa,

I heart this post. Thanks for all of your great information on Ambient Intimacy. I always felt that way about Flickr, too. I could glean my friends’ current state of mind and activities by their uploaded photos. I think Twitter lowers the barrier to entry even more!

Henry Halff on March 19th, 2007

Since I asked the question concerning the number followed, I suppose I’d better answer for myself. I beleive that my count is three (3).

Davezilla on March 19th, 2007

That’s such a great phrase, Leisa. I’d been using hive mind, as that is what it felt like to me, however it fails to capture the emotional aspect that ambient intimacy captures. I hope that becomes a permanent term.

Design de Interação » Blog Archive » WWAD? on March 21st, 2007

[...] E não é que, lendo as mensagens sobre o twitter, em uma das listas de discussão que participo, me deparo com um link para um post com um texto sobre o tal Twitter. Depois de ler o post, vou para a página inicial do blog e vejo o que mais parece um presente: um post que nos lembra o que a Apple faz: paper prototyping e user research. [...]

Andrew Duval on March 22nd, 2007

You’ve coined a great phrase, Leisa - best description for Twitter I managed to come up with was “picking lice” - meant in a positive ape-grooming kind of way, just like Henry’s take on it, but it’s not likely to catch on is it? “The latest trend in virtual lice-picking…”

Ted Leung on the Air » Blog Archive » More thoughts on Ambient Intimacy and Twitter on March 24th, 2007

[...] After several months of Twitter usage, Leisa Reichelt’s characterization of Twitter as Ambient Intimacy still resonates with me. I have some more thoughts on ambient intimacy in the context of Twitter, and I’m going to take them in the reverse order of the catchphrase. [...]

Ambient intimacy on March 27th, 2007

[...] Twitter’s Evan Williams is giving and invited talk at ICWSM and just sowed a good quote from Leisa Reichelt. Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

vallery.net » Blog Archive » What is Web 3.0? A review of the ICWSM on March 28th, 2007

[...] Evan also presented a quote from Lisa Reichelt about ambient intimacy that describes Twitter. Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. [...]

links for 2007-03-29 on March 30th, 2007

[...] Ambient Intimacy (tags: twitter social web2.0 psychology relationships) [...]

Ambient Intimacy « Lost In Oregon on April 3rd, 2007

[...] April 3, 2007 at 1:25 pm · Filed under Uncategorized Excellent article about how media and communication sharing services like Flickr, and Twitter are breaking down the barriers of formal communication. Read on to understand and link through to the full article: disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. [...]

Jean-baptiste LABRUNE on April 3rd, 2007

Hi, there is a similar concept in the HCI research field. It is called Intimate Social Networks, many interesting papers have been published on this topic. I participated in a workshop two years ago at CHI about mediated intimacy and ambient awareness systems. The position papers are not available unfortunately but mine is still online http://insitu.lri.fr/~labrune/web.jb/CHI2005_MackayRicheLaBrune.pdf , also about intimate social networks, interesting works done by the interliving project http://interliving.kth.se/

**The definition of intimacy exceeds 140 characters.* » melle.ca** on April 4th, 2007

[...] Then today I happened to read this post: Ambient Intimacy, and I really enjoyed it, it really got my brain juiced up… I disagreed with almost every bit of it. The author is one of the “others” — someone who uses it and values it. [...]

Jane’s » Blog Archive » Copresence cropping up again: Ambient intimacy on April 16th, 2007

[...] Ha, I think I finally found the answer to the question: Why do people like to take pictures of their breakfast and put them online? One Leisa Reichelt talks about what she calls Ambient Intimacy, which can be considered a form of copresence. In a nutshell, ambient intimacy is about sharing mundane, everyday things with people we know, in a casual, unobtrusive way, which can create for the consumer a sense of presence and of “being involved”: Through transmission of information about the producer’s environment (images, sound, textual descriptions), a shared “mental” space is established which both the producer and the consumer can relate to. [...]

Reluctant Blogger » “Ambient intimacy” sounds about right on April 22nd, 2007

[...] From Disambiguity via loose wire. I have a similar post on hallway conversations (not nearly as nicely phrased) that I will port over this week: Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. [...]

James Governor’s Monkchips » If Markets Are Conversations Then Twitter Is Money on May 3rd, 2007

[...] With Twitter I can get up to date with my network in less than half an hour - the beauty of the 140 character limit for messages. One of Kathy’s last posts before some thugs scared her off the blogosphere argued that Twitter was Too Good. I am more aligned with Tara Hunt and Lisa Reichelt (Ambient Intimacy). [...]

Defrag blog » Ambient Intimacy on May 3rd, 2007

[...] Leisa Reichelt has applied an interesting new term to all of the “twitterness” going on in the valley as of late — “ambient intimacy.” Quoting her: [...]

Russell on May 4th, 2007

It isn’t quite ambient, it isn’t utilising an otherwise vacant information stream. It doesn’t quite replicate the bustle and noise of an room where you cue in on conversations that interest you without requiring you to glance at another window or grab a phone. It should stream in without conscious effort. Twitter requires some effort.

Having said that the level of intimacy itself is proportional to the number of updates that your friends make. Situational awareness ( as one poster mentioned ) relies upon regular updates. I do care what friends are up to but it takes context and timeliness for those twitters to be relevant. And often it requires following a stream of thought as well.
osmotic is another good word already used, if we could absorb voice twitters in such a way that we don’t disturb the rest of our environment ( workplace party etc ) then it would truly be ambient.

What it does do is foster the shared cultural awareness and shared experiential memories that bonds friends together.

Yoick: Connect, Interact, Create and Share » Blog Archive » Twitter 2.0: tapping the AttentionStream on May 11th, 2007

[...] Over time we will begin to see these loose wires meld into a seamless AttentionStream. This won’t happen overnight and I expect we will see other ‘wires’ form in the interim. Ruminating on that I extrapolate that we will see Twitter 2.0 some time soon - the question is what will it look like. What other than reducing blogging to the phatic function will resonate and more importantly, will bring us one step closer to a melded AttentionStream. [...]

Pas capté Twitter? at Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) on May 14th, 2007

[...] Un seul exemple parce que j’ai la flemme de chercher plus loin, mais cet argument est régulièrement avancé par ceux qui visiblement n’ont pas pris le temps (vu ce qui précède, je ne vais pas jeter la pierre) de comprendre comment fonctionnent les relations humaines et l’intimité en particulier. Ce sont “les petites choses de la vie” qui font les gens proches. Et l’intimité ambiante qu’apporte Twitter peut aider à garder vivants ou même renforcer les liens distendus par la distance (c’est moche ou poétique, à vous de choisir). Certains l’ont compris: [...]

disambiguity - » Summertime is for speaking on May 15th, 2007

[...] Reboot 9.0 - I’m off to Copenhagen at the end of the month to go to Reboot for the first time. I’ve heard rave reviews of this conference and can’t wait to experience it myself. I’m going to be talking about Ambient Intimacy (in the middle of preparing the presentation right now and *really* enjoying it!) [...]

Converge » Using Twitter on May 17th, 2007

[...] An aside: Leisa Reichelt calls the phenomena Ambient Intimacy - “being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.” [...]

The Exodus from Twitter to Jaiku : UberNoggin: Big Brains - Big Ideas on May 17th, 2007

[...] ** And yet another: Lisa Reichelt’s theory of Ambient Intimacy for Twitter digg_url=’http://ubernoggin.com/?p=13′; digg_skin = ‘button’; digg_bgcolor = ‘#FFFFFF’; digg_title = ‘The Exodus from Twitter to Jaiku’; digg_bodytext = ”; digg_topic = ”; Powered by Gregarious (42) Share This [...]

Clunky Flow » Q: What the hell is the point of Twitter? A: Uh, its like sorta Ambient Intimacy? on May 17th, 2007

[...] Excerpted from a this post by Leisa Reichelt I find myself talking about Twitter quite a lot. I’m not the only one. The behaviours that Twitter has made more visible are tremendously interesting. [...]

Lain Burgos-Lovece on May 17th, 2007

Excellent post, Leisa, one of many…
(Just came here from Stowe Boyd’s feed and I’m impressed)

Can’t resist giving you and Henry the footnote you are looking for, in comments 20 and 24. It’s a fantastic book on the evolutionary origins of language - quite useful for people who value things like storytelling in design, etc. By the way, the ‘number’ is not 50 but around 150.

Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Robin Dunbar. Faber and Faber, 1996. ISBN: 0571173977

For background, see also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/interview/story/0,12982,955709,00.html

Identity crises and the Diaspora of You « Green Tea Ice Cream on May 21st, 2007

[...] Don’t know yet. Once upon a time, remember, this was the norm and now that real villages of one kind or another seem to be forming again - my parenting blog definitely lives in a little village of people I’ve never met but who’s everyday rhythm of life is increasingly familiar to me - being immersed in the flow of other people’s lives (I relate this to the concept of ambient intimacy outlined by Leisa Reichelt) is gradually becoming our default state of existence once again. [...]

About Blogging...and ambient intimacy « Otis Toy Design Department on May 22nd, 2007

[...] Read on. [...]

mikevu.com » Blog Archive » Ambient Intimacy on May 23rd, 2007

[...] I came across this interesting article focusing on what the author calls “ambient intimacy.” Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. [...]

Silent Lucidity » links for 2007-05-28 on May 28th, 2007

[...] Ambient Intimacy Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. (tags: relationships community twitter social-software flickr communication) [...]

roblef dot com » Blog Archive » links for 2007-05-29 on May 29th, 2007

[...] disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy read it. is all I gotta say (tags: intimacy web_2.0 ellis twitter) [...]

Ambient Intimacy « Phone Scoop Blog on May 29th, 2007

[...] This post on ambient intimacy - even though the second half of the post has nothing to do with mobile phones - got me thinking about the way i, and many other mobile rangers, are sharing our lives. We are using dead simple applications to share tiny bits of our lives very often. We are doing this because these sharing services are both dead simple to use and also because they’re multi-modal. I can add a post, or check the posts of people i care about, in a variety of ways - including from any mobile phone. Both these factors don’t just effect what i share, since my posts are limited to 140 characters or a picture or a video, they effect how often i share things - which is quite often. And most my friends on these services do the same. [...]

deb schultz on May 29th, 2007

Leisa - love it. I have thought of htis as continuous partial community - with a nod to Linda Stone. But I really like the ambient intimacy term much better. I have been trying to explain the phenomenon of lightweight connection and the term community is too heavy and has too much baggage.

iStalkr and life aggregation « Green Tea Ice Cream on May 29th, 2007

[...] Anyway, whether you call it ambient intimacy or lifestream or flow (my own catch phrase - we all need a good catch phrase, right? - being the diaspora of you), a number of Web 2.0 start-ups are working to aggregate and mediate the socialisation of this loosely joined stream of personal information. The latest one I’ve stumbled across is iStalkr. I’m not sure about the slightly menacing concept behind the brand but their intent is to provide a visual representation of your lifestream (a little bit like Journal in Outlook, though I’ve admittedly never got the hang of that) through pulling together all your LastFM, twitter, RSS feeds etc into one coherent stream. Here’s mine, which looks a little empty right now. may I should get a life. Tumblr is another, simpler implementation of a similar concept but is less explicitly social. [...]

Ode to a twitter. « Vendorprisey on May 29th, 2007

[...] Via James I found Ted, who links to Leisa Reichelt on Amibent Latency. (two new adds to the feed) Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. [...]

"no sleep til utrecht" « Second Verse on May 31st, 2007

disambiguity - » Reboot 9.0 - Ambient Intimacy on June 4th, 2007

[...] I spent some time last week at the fabulous Reboot conference and was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to share some ideas around concept of Ambient Intimacy, which I continue to find fascinating. It was great to have the opportunity to develop and share my thoughts. [...]

M1K3¥’s Blog » Blog Archive » links for 2007-06-04 on June 5th, 2007

[...] disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy interesting.. (tags: networking presence twitter ambient-intimacy) [...]

Ambient Intimacy « Thoughts on the Ideal on June 5th, 2007

[...] Ambient Intimacy Lisa Reichelt: “Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.” read on! [...]

Red on June 5th, 2007

Just had a bad experience with Ambient Intimacy. I popped in too late on a friend’s life. Found out I missed an event that was life changing for my pal. The key word in the Ambient Intimacy definition is regularity….but suppose we take that to mean whenever it is most convenient to me and not to our people. Too little, too late.

And suddenly everything became clear at Like It Matters on June 6th, 2007

[...] Leisa Reichelt on ambient intimacy. Her presentation from Reboot. [...]

ViNT // Vision - Inspiration - Navigation - Trends » Ambient intimacy on June 6th, 2007

[...] Op het Reboot 9 congres in Denemarken heeft Leisa Rechelt (weblog) eind vorige week een presentatie gegeven over Ambient Intimacy: “It is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.” [...]

James Governor’s Monkchips » ABC, as Easy as 1,2,3: RedMonk Rankings in Analyst Top 50 on June 18th, 2007

[...] Is it surprising that a firm which set out to be the first blogging analyst company should take the top spots in such a poll? Of course not. But it is a nice validation of our strategy -sure it is. We don’t put information behind a firewall, which dramatically improves our ambient findability. We use social software to benefit from ambient intimacy. We want to be easy to deal with. We want to be fun. We want to be smart. We want to learn from a range of communities, not just one narrow constituency. I think the Top 50 award represents all of that. So that’s a good start to the week. [...]

Reboot Part II-- bub.blicio.us on June 25th, 2007

[...] Leisa Reichelt of “ambient intimacy” fame [...]

Balkan Witch » Blog Archive » Twitter as tech support on June 27th, 2007

[...] There are some things about this new world of ambient intimacy that I really enjoy. Especially as in offline land I am quite loud and wonder how often people wish they could switch off their alerts! [...]

No Man’s Blog » Asi joined the group If this group Reaches 150,000 members I will name my son Batman. on June 29th, 2007

[...] Don’t get me wrong, I’m all up for connectivity, ambient intimacy and phatic communications etc. but I honestly believe that until the moment that social networking applications will be of a more meaningful value, we will all be hoping from one internet darling to the other. [...]

No Man’s Blog » so long facebook on July 4th, 2007

[...] interestingly enough the bit i enjoyed most and made me reconsider my opinion was the twitter-like feature where people write what they are doing now. I totally get the appeal in it but i experienced this with very mixed feelings. on the one hand i’m sold to the idea of ambient intimacy - there is indeed something charming in the ways it makes us feel closer to people we somehow care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like. but on the other hand there’s a very very thin line between the charm and wit to the excessive, sticky noise and personally I’m not good with being selective and taking these things in small doses. [...]

CommunityNet Aotearoa RSS Archive » Blog Archive » PANUI Issue #64, July 2007. on July 9th, 2007

[...] “Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.” — Leisa Reichelt (http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy) [...]

Library clips :: Roundup : UrbanSeeder, Wizag auto-tag and discovery, RadarFarms, XFruits RSS to Blog, Zentation :: July :: 2007 on July 10th, 2007

[...] UrbanSeeder - ultimate ambient intimacy, meet someone at a party, sad to see them go, give them your urban seeder so you can continue the conversation online. [via R/WW] [...]

disambiguity - » What’s in it for me? Why people participate in social networking websites on July 11th, 2007

[...] Of course, I’d add into that the Ambient Intimacy effect which I think is more about being connected and less about identification. [...]

The solution to too much information is more information at Like It Matters on July 23rd, 2007

[...] So I think we need more. More granular control. More pivot points for discovery and to flag things we want to watch continually. Simple on/off flow controls. Design that recognizes the ambient nature of these services and doesn’t pretend that we’re going steady. [...]

Ambient Intimacy at pixelblog on July 31st, 2007

[...] I prefer to describe this form of communication as Ambient Intimacy, as coined by Leisa Reichelt on her blog back in March. [...]

Ambient Intimacy « ditigal ramblings on August 15th, 2007

[...] I prefer to describe this form of communication as Ambient Intimacy, as coined by Leisa Reichelt on her blog back in March. [...]

dn on August 20th, 2007

Roman Jacobson, not Mikhail Bakhtin, coined the term “phatic function”, keeping communication channels open.

From documents to community on September 9th, 2007

[...] Ambient Intimacy “Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.” — Leisa Reichelt (www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy) [...]

Emil Sit » Privacy, the Internet, and me on September 11th, 2007

[...] Until then, we experiment with managing our online selves, learning to be careful about what we share and how we share it. We have learned etiquette for using mobile phones and made them the new garden fence. The use of blogs to document and share personal experience and practical knowledge with others is becoming more mainstream. Those on the cutting edge use twitter and campfire to provide ambient intimacy and virtual context. [...]

nofi.org » links for 2007-09-19 on September 19th, 2007

Faris on September 28th, 2007

This is great - I was thinking along very similar lines - although I called it continuous partial presence after Linda Stone’s attention

http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/continuous_part.html

Grant at Cultureby had some good thoughts on this:

http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2007/07/how-social-netw.html

Facebook is a closed platform, and it should stay that way « Curiouser and Curiouser on October 2nd, 2007

[...] To my surprise and delight, I recently came across a discussion of this very same feeling, where the phenomenon was termed “ambient intimacy”. This beautifully descriptive name illustrates “being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible…It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like.” I think that this is the very thing that makes online social networking so addictive for me, as I’m sure it is for many others as well, whose lives have made them too busy, or taken them too far away to be able to keep up with everyone they wish were a daily part of their lives. [...]

Naked Yak » Blog Archive » Open Ideas on October 2nd, 2007

[...] While chatting about online intimacy, and the effect that Leisa Reichelt has termed Ambient Intimacy, we got on to the subject of Open Source. Glenn Jones pointed out that “In the Beginning there was View Source, and lo it was good”. [...]

disambiguity - » Ambient Intimacy at the Future of Web Apps on October 5th, 2007

[...] I was very happy to have the opportunity to hop up and share my thoughts on Ambient Intimacy at the Future of Web Apps conference in London yesterday. The slides are above. [...]

graphpaper.com - Ambient Intimacy, Collective Musing, Intellectual Doodling on October 11th, 2007

[...] Leisa Reichelt coined the term “ambient intimacy” to describe the genre of social computing apps led by Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce. She was interested in the constant sense of closeness users feel with their circle of friends, no matter how far-flung, through technologies that informally reveal us to each other. [...]

Naked Yak » Blog Archive » Open Messaging and Ambient Intimacy on October 14th, 2007

[...] Check the Open Messaging document, updated now with Leisa Reichelt’s concept of Ambient Intimacy, and how Open Messaging would lead to this more human, less invasive, condition of being ‘always on’. [...]

Conversations with Dina » Social Media - listening better on October 16th, 2007

[...] In addition to learning how to tell our story well, I do believe that part of the problem is we are so flooded with so much info today, that we are also having to relearn how to listen - and how we learn. Social technologies that foster microblogging like twitter, bookmarking, aggregating news, and even facebook, help me navigate thru’ this more easily. Much has been written about Continuous Partial Attention (Linda Stone) and Ambient Intimacy (Lisa Reichelt) that apps like Twitter provide - they give us interesting frameworks for examining our own behaviours. [...]

James Governor’s Monkchips » The Analyst Business Should Learn From Disambiguity on October 18th, 2007

[...] With a headline like Why collaborative research analysis rocks out it was no surprise I found Lisa Reichelt’s recent blog made very interesting reading. Leisa, originator of the wonderfully evocative phrase Ambient Intimacy, and all round sticky note queen (3M should sponsor her) argues thusly: These days when I’m doing any kind of user research, rather than going to my secret consultant place and doing that consultant magic that results in a presentation of research findings, I much prefer to get into a big room with clean walls and several hundred sticky notes and my clients/project team, and to work out the research findings collaboratively. [...]

Intimité Ambiante « Titre du blog on October 21st, 2007

[...] So for this first post, I’d like to refer to a very interesting post from Leisa Reichelt’s blog (one of my personal favorite.) She’s exposing the “Ambient Intimacy” notion or how the intimate communication is stimulated through original and modern web tools. I’m myself very intrigued at the web social network phenomenon. [...]

James Governor’s Monkchips » The rise and rise of the social/digital bridgebuilder on October 23rd, 2007

[...] Never mind objects of sociability, I am talking about people of digitally enhanced sociability, people that know how to work ambient intimacy and have enough domain knowledge to really make it count. [...]

Twitter Essence « wonderwebby on October 28th, 2007

[...] The effect has been defined as ambient intimacy, the social sixth sense, amongst others. I’ll take a quick turn at trying to define the essence and why I think it works. [...]

Shattering barriers | acidlabs on October 31st, 2007

[...] We talked kids and spouses, social media, continuous partial attention, ambient intimacy, books and a bunch of other subjects of interest. It was fun, but unlike what usually happens when you meet someone for the first time, the complex and challenging social barrier of introduction was missing - we just didn’t need it as our online connectedness through tools like Facebook and Twitter had already done the hard work for us. [...]

What do I need Twitter for, anyway? « The lost outpost on November 2nd, 2007

[...] I’m not wondering that. Apart from the very excellent sense of Ambient Intimacy (see Stephen Collins for an excellent recent example), I’ve got a few thoughts of my own as to how Twitter is useful. In fact, I commented recently on a post by Jasmin Tragas about this: [...]

NYT and The Global Sympathetic Audience « Luca’s Blog on November 3rd, 2007

[...] Nov 3, 2007 in International, Life I am happy to notice that also the New York Times now talks about Twitter and Tumblr as the “global sympathetic audience“. I completely agree and I wrote about it some weeks ago in my Italian blog. [...]

EDITing in the Dark » Bait and Switch? on November 8th, 2007

[...] It raised some interesting ideas about how Web2.0 - commenting how the “continuous partial attention” or “ambient intimacy” is really changing the way that we have communicated - from the scope of audience to the ephemerality of the message to the latency between sender and receiver - from the basic face to face and print to “print plus (my term)” and “f2f plus” again with technology helping to shape the various elements of how the message exists. [...]

arts & crafts revisited « shot from the hip on November 11th, 2007

[...] the parallel threads that i see linking that age to this one talk about many of the same issues - cultural responses, enabled by new technologies, seek to extend the role of creative individuals and communities beyond the restrictions of previous media generations. the democracy - or meritocracy - of creative practice and dissemination of ideas, practices and values, and it’s potential impact for transforming g/local economies and communities can more accurately embody the principles of each participant. our media, as of late, has enabled a more ‘human’ representation in communicating remotely - social networks encouraging slivering identity, mobile platforms mapping new topographies of social presence and ambient intimacy, media bricolage creating an emergent expression economy. [...]

Where is my continuous partial attention? | acidlabs on November 14th, 2007

[...] Where is my continuous partial attention? If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Those of us involved in social media spend a good deal of our time rabbiting on about continuous partial attention, the ambient intimacy afforded to us and the social capital generated by use of the tools we leverage such as Facebook and Twitter as well as the real, human communities these actually represent. [...]

Ambient Intimacy « Cogitations of a PR Student on November 17th, 2007

[...] Ambient Intimacy This. is. freaking. awesome. No, seriously it is. I think we have our an entire generation that will enter its adulthood on this concept. It is; however, hard for me to be entirely sure since I am a fogey of this generation. Born in at the very, very end of 1979 — I am very close to the generational cusp. I have been finding this to be more and more true as I get older and enter the workplace but I digress. [...]

SMC-DC Recap » The Buzz Bin on November 30th, 2007

[...] The presentation of “best practices” took some different twists and turns due to a very interactive audience (which was great), but the one section that I enjoyed was the idea of Twitter providing “ambient intimacy” between users. As said by Lisa Reichelt: It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like. [...]

theory.isthereason » Online Lecture: Seduction of the Swarm (Join In: Monday 8am EST) on December 3rd, 2007

[...] Entitled “Seduction of the Swarm: Understanding patterns of online participation“, I chose to build on the collective intelligence series I’ve been working on, helping to flesh out productive ideas on participatory culture. Much like a tour of online-centric ideologies, I’ll be making mentions from books like Wikinomics, Wisdom of the Crowds, as well as concepts of the gift economy, bits vs. atoms, Amy Jo Kim’s Five Game Mechanics, Leisa Reichelt’s Ambient Intimacy, as well as my personal stake: The Return of Walled Gardens. [...]

esphères identitaires » Blog Archive » Twitter je ne boirai jamais de ton eau et pourtant… on December 6th, 2007

[...] …et pourtant je m’amusais déjà avec le mood message de skype que je mets à jour tous les jours. Ensuite j’ai continué à m’amuser avec les status update de Facebook. À suivre mes êtres chers ailleurs, à laisser des pistes sur mon quotidien… Mais depuis Facebook Beacon, j’ai de moins en moins envie de laisser ma trace via Facebook: j’ai vérrouillé mes privacy settings à mort, bloqué Beacon, coupé court aux histoires suscitant le voyeurisme des mini-feeds, éliminé un tas d’applications inutiles juste pour le fun et revisité la signification d’amis de sorte que je suis fière de n’avoir que 10 amis! Ensuite je suis tombée sur The RWW Guide to the World’s Most Popular Twitter Clients ainsi que sur d’autres ressources abordant la notion d’ambient intimacy (i.e. Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible, Leisa Reichelt) et aussi Video: Twitter and Ambient Intimacy. [...]

links for 2007-12-10 « David Black on December 10th, 2007

[...] Ambient Intimacy - disambiguity “Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.” [via Strange Attractor] (tags: internet socialmedia socialnetworking blogging twitter psychology community language neologisms) [...]

kyb on December 10th, 2007

It’s not intimacy though. Intimacy can never be broadcast by its nature. Intimacy is about more than the knowing of details. It requires two way, privileged communication.

It may be that things like twitter encourage intimacy because it’s easier to enter into intimate exchanges with those you keep up with, but we shouldn’t mistake the two.

leisa.reichelt on December 10th, 2007

hey kyb,

I can kind of see where you’re coming from here but I see things a little differently. For me, Twitter - for example - is not really ‘broadcast’ - even though my Tweets are public, I don’t think of them as going out to a vast and faceless audience, rather I think of the collection of individuals with whom I regularly share communications using this medium and am communicating to them, usually as a group, occasionally as individuals.

Secondly, I think of ambient intimacy as just one type of intimacy. It’s certainly not a substitute for all the other types of more direct and in-person intimacy (at least, it is not for me and I would hope not for anyone else). I do know that certainly my experience and the experience of many others that I’ve spoken to is that tools like Twitter and Flickr and Facebook and many others *do* create a experience of intimacy where, without these tools, there would almost certainly be none.

It doesn’t seem to be a universal experience, but certainly significant enough to be acknowledged.

kyb on December 10th, 2007

leisa:

Thanks for the reply. As I understand intimacy, it’s very nature requires priviledged communication. If you talk about ‘intimate surroundings’ you’re talking about surroundings that encourage priviledged communication. If you say ‘getting intimate’, you mean that the people you’re talking about are priviledging each other in their communication. An ‘intimate group’ is a small group of people with a special bond. It’s this specialness that is important in the concept of intimacy.

Another important part of intimacy is not just that priviledged information is received, but that the reaction to its reception is part of the experience of intimacy. You can’t have an intimate conversation with someone who is watching the tv at the same time. A single email cannot convey intimacy although an email exchange can. Intimacy is two way, and most naturally (although not exclusively) synchronous.

Any broadcast that can be received by others (no matter who it’s intended audience) is by my definition not intimate. If someone who doesn’t know you at all can take part in the priviledged communication channel, then it’s not priviledged anymore, and therefore the transmission and reception of the information means less. I think that the extent to which it feels intimate is actually an illusion of false intimacy, and in some cases may even be harmful to the relationship.

I don’t want to suggest that there is therefore no value in things like twitter, im and all the other paraphenalia of social networking. It can obviously have enormous benefit, but it is almost direct opposition to the way I understand intimacy.

kybernetikos.com » Blog Archive » Intimacy on December 11th, 2007

[...] I’ve been taking part in discussing ‘ambient intimacy’ over on the disambiguity blog. [...]

Wow Pare! » Blog Archive » How We Are Becoming Intimate Thru Twitter on December 11th, 2007

[...] This is a nice slide show on Ambient Intimacy. Ambient intimacy is … …about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight. [...]

Ambient Intimacy at Binary Bonsai on December 11th, 2007

[...] It’s the phrase I’ve been wanting to spout at all of those internet-lethargic friends I have, but couldn’t conjure up on my own. Ambient Intimacy, (via Jeremy). [...]

Exhaust data « barbd on December 12th, 2007

[...] Exhaust data This is an interesting and thought-provoking piece on the nature of the communication that flows between people using so-called ‘micro-blogging’ tools. Interesting because of the number of times I’ve heard people criticise the kind of “banal, pointless chatter” that goes on through channels like Twitter or Facebook. Am I really interested in the minutiae of my friends and colleagues’ lives? Well, yes. I might not really be that bothered what Mr Snowbadger is having for Sunday lunch, but I do think that Leisa Reichelt’s ‘ambient intimacy‘ post holds water. It’s a kind of connection that’s quite reassuring and human - this kind of throwaway communication acts as a nice counterpart to big, heavy, thought-through content that typifies the kinds of blogs I tend to read ;).I have a lot of friends that live in far away places, and I really do find that I feel much more connected to them and their lives. When I was growing up, my family lived in Singapore whilst I was at school in the UK. I remember clearly the ONE phonecall I could make every 3 months. Muchly disconnected. Things are very different these days… [...]

Anne Truitt Zelenka » Scott Karp: Talking to You People is a Massive Waste of Time on December 12th, 2007

[...] Isn’t that what human interaction is like? Sometimes there’s an urge to say something just for the sake of saying something — just for the sake of interaction or recognition. Sometimes there’s conversation that doesn’t really mean anything; there’s no signal in the noise of ambient intimacy. [...]

Twitter: Waste of time or social tool? - - mathewingram.com/work on December 12th, 2007

[...] I think what Anne’s driving at, though, is that some of this social interaction, some of this “ambient intimacy,” is good for us — even if it does get in the way of our actual work. I would compare it to working at home versus working at my office: at home, I can actually get a lot more accomplished, but I miss the social interaction, the miscellaneous chatting and random conversations with co-workers. Some of it is just socializing, but some of it has value — although it may not be immediately obvious. [...]

A Frog in the Valley » De l’inspiration du moment… on December 14th, 2007

[...] classé dans lang=fr, perso, CES2007. Permalien. Commenter ou faire un rétrolien (trackback): Trackback URL. « Néo Concours2.0 [...]

Ambient Intimacy : Venture Chronicles on January 3rd, 2008

[...] Posted on January 3, 2008Filed Under web 2.0 | Tom alerts me to a really great term to describe why Twitter is so sticky, ambient intimacy. [...]

Twittering about… RSS / Twitter mini mashup-ing @ Nixon McInnes: Social media goodness. Translated. Created. Delivered. on January 8th, 2008

[...] Leisa Reichelt coined the phrase “ambient intimacy” to describe it. Anyway, we’re getting away from my point (and I’m sure someone else will cover that in a post in the future)… which is that, thanks to almost everything having an RSS feed nowadays, you can very easily do a bit of mild mashup-ing and do some very cool stuff really really easily… Like pull your blog into your Twitter. [...]

Ambient Intimacy | Timothy M. Kunau on January 13th, 2008

[...] (See also: disambiguity: ambient intimacy) [...]

17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners on January 16th, 2008

[...] Apart from its use as a info resource and publicity tool, Twitter is also a communication platform for individuals and their personal social networks. Leisa Reichelt calls this form of usage, ambient intimacy: Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. [...]

17 Great Ways You Can Use Twitter » zoulstips.com on January 23rd, 2008

Uses for Twitter « Spaghetti Testing on January 25th, 2008

[...] 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners - The longest list yet! And some original uses listed - as a tool for time management, as a repository for taking notes, and as a to do list. Also good points of the way that Twitter feels when you’re using it… how it creates “ambient intimacy,” how the user experience is fragmented, how it can be a distraction (yup, been there done that). [...]

Out to Pasture » Blog Archive » Links 1-29-08 on January 29th, 2008

[...] Disambiguity “Ambient Intimacy” (which ties into my “The 95%” post on Facebook; another hattip to Marc) (while Armano writes about Ambient Interruption) [...]

seamonkeyrodeo » That “Ambient Intimacy” Thing on February 5th, 2008

[...] While the term “ambient intimacy” still feels a hair creepy to me, I guess I’m starting to see the point. [...]

grinding.be » Blog Archive » on all things Twitter on February 8th, 2008

[...] Firstly, there’s a slew of PC clients you can run: twhirl, twitteriffic, Tweetr, etc. Tweetr was the one I used to use a lot. It’s great because it just pops up a background window of people’s tweet’s as they come in. Which is a sterling example of Ambient Intimacy. Effortlessly you’re kept appraised of what those your following are up to. [...]

I Switched Off Twitter and Doubled My Productivity on February 8th, 2008

[...] But in the last fortnight I’ve switched the mobile phone updates off and managed to cross far more off my to do list than I’d expected. Please don’t label me as one of those people who don’t ‘get’ twitter. I completely understand how great the service is. I love the idea of ambient intimacy and I think use Twitter has really helped build my online reputation. [...]

blog » 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners on February 12th, 2008

Monther of all money blogs » 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners on February 13th, 2008

Naked Yak » Blog Archive » Thy Neighbours on February 25th, 2008

[...] Links about ambient intimacy: http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/ [...]

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