I am fascinated by Reply-All Micro-Groups. These are the temporary social groups that are formed when someone sends out an email message to a small group of addresses that are exposed in the To: or Cc: fields of an email.
Of course, this happens all the time. However, for a true Reply-All Micro-Group to develop, at least one person needs to Reply-All.
Example: Lets say my friends Volker, Ember, and Ojvind do not necessarily have any prior connections amongst them. When I send an email to all three of them, I've formed a Reply-All Micro-Group with membership that consists of the four of us.
Interestingly, socialization often emerges in this seemingly arbitrary micro-group. When Ember opts to "reply-all", she shares her witty idea with the members of the Reply-All Micro-Group. When Volker is looking for people to meet him for dinner at Suppenküche, he might toss out an invite to one of his recent Reply-All Micro-Groups.
Reply-All Micro-Groups have a very limited lifespan. Once the most recent "post" is no longer presenting itself on the first page of anyone's Inbox Address Book, the critical benefit of addressing convenience is lost and the Reply-All Micro-Group ceases to exist.
Yet all forms of Micro-Groups live on in our collective memory like little "creatures" in a cellular automaton. Maybe a few weeks later, inspired by the original Micro-Group, Ember will send a mail to myself and Volker, but forget to include Ojvind because perhaps he wasn't so memorable. Maybe she'll also add Bryan because he's been on her mind lately.
It's fun to think of members getting added and dropped as two possible forms of mutations in the Micro-Group genome. The genetic algorithm continues with each new Micro-Group formed.
Comments (1)
This is reminds me of the 'email group' listings in address books. At first pass, an email group appears to be useful in keeping track of subsets of comrades. It allows you one click contact to the 5 person "early morning coffee" group or the 20 person "late evening drinks" group. However, unless a user constantly updates and maintains the list, it rapidly becomes invalid as social group members migrate. This renders the 'email group' list invalid and unlike the Reply-All Micro-Group, that group maintains presence in the address book.
As far as I can see that serves two functions; the first being to take up space and give the user more information to discount when searching for valid groups and individuals. The second being a snapshot in time- a type of a quick memory jog "remember when we had Thursday beer nights". Or in my case "remember when we had Saturday playgroup".
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November 14, 2006 6:42 AM
Posted on November 14, 2006 06:42