Common Craft Blog
Re-Introduction to Stocks and Flows in Online Communication
By leelefever on March 31, 2005 - 9:26am
Scott Moore reminded me of a series of posts that started one year ago tomorrow right here at Common Craft. These posts, though a bit sprawling, mean more to me and what I do than perhaps any other.
Why? Because it's a framework that can be used to describe social tools. Either they flow (timely and engaging) or they are stock (archived, organized reference). I'm resurrecting them because the framework will be a big part of Social Design for the Web.
This graphic makes the distinction.
- Part 1 of 3:Introduction to Stocks and Flows in Online Communication
- Part 2 of 3: Weblogs, Wikis and RSS (My favorite)
- Part 3 of 3: Back to Basics
Re-Introduction to Stocks and Flows in Online Communication
Lee: I'm reading these for the first time, and I find myself disagreeing with one bit.
There are certainly types of weblogs that are pure flow, but there are many others (personal journals, del.icio.us-style linkblogs, and so on) that are about stock as much as anything. In fact, I'd say that the great thing about a blog is that it flows via the RSS feed and stocks via HTML.
Of course, I may have just misunderstood what you were saying, in which case, forget I said anything. :)
Re-Introduction to Stocks and Flows in Online Communication
You know, I can't disagree too much Roger. There is a fine line and blogs certainly are stocks too. I mean look at my post- I'm referring to stocked posts from a year ago! :)
My position is that the prodominate use and value of weblogs is related to them being "news" sources- and as such, the information in a weblog post is most valuable at the moment it is presented (as it flows). The posts have a shelf-life.
In my mind, weblogs are better at presenting new things (flowing) than they are at archiving and organizing old things (stocking).
It's all a bit confounded by the darned permalink, which makes the stock argument stronger (especially in the context of del.iciou.us and link blogs). You could say that permalinks enable individual weblog posts to be stocked all over the web.
My hope is that the stock and flow framework can give us a new way to talk about this stuff- and I appreciate you making me think Roger.