1. Disqus Ranks: Disqus has been testing ‘Disqus Ranks’ on AVC and Gotham Gal blogs. Essentially, it tags each commenter based on their activity in the community. Fred has gone for a ‘bar’ theme with him being the bartender and the rest being ‘instigators’, ‘regulars’, ‘familiar faces’ etc while Joanne has gone for a party theme.
I’ve personally found this feature fun and meaningful. It acknowledges your involvement in the community, encourages you to get more active and perhaps most importantly, it adds a feeling of ‘one-ness’ to the whole conversations.
This is a feature I am VERY excited about. And I can’t wait for Disqus to roll it out so we can have it here. I’m already thinking of a theme and am leaning towards a ‘flight’ theme with a steward (yours truly) and frequent flyers (i.e. you). Suggestions are welcome of course! :)
2. Pseudonymity: Mark Suster wrote a great post yesterday on the importance of Pseudonymity i.e the importance of encouraging anonymity and pseudonymity in communities. This was as a follow up to a short post by Fred on ‘Real Names’
I found this very relevant because I never understood the concept till a few months ago. I somehow associated anonymity with critics who didn’t want to say their real name. But, over the past few months, I’ve seen Anonymity/Pseudonymity on display (again at avc where we have a standard bunch of regulars – one great example is the Fake Grimlock) and I fully appreciate the positive effect a bunch of fun avatars can have on a community. And it’s been a nice learning to see how Fred welcomes it as well.
As I’ve said a few times, I visualize/hope we’ll have a learning community going here and I think the place to start would be to lighten the mood a bit. I’ve already requested a talented friend for a goofy avatar and I’m looking forward to that!
3. ALearningaDay.me: I finally have my ‘short form’ blog up as a result of my commitment to execute on the Fred Wilson School of Blogging and this completes the transformation.
And while it is obvious from the number of times his name shows up on this post, a big thanks to Fred Wilson for all the learnings I’ve had from watching him operate as a blogger over the past few months. Thanks Fred – I know you probably won’t be reading this but you’ve made a huge difference!
And here’s hoping these little changes will be the start of something very special..
A Learning a Day 