"COMPUTERS AND FUN 2" Monday 20th December 1999 The Huntingdon Room, King's Manor University of York Re:Gossip - A social network of truths and lies. Gossip Workgroup: Ron Wakkary, Technical University of British Columbia, Wakkary@techbc.ca Jussi Holopainen, , Nokia Research Centre, Tampere, Finland, jussi.holopainen@nokia.com Kristina Gregers Andersen, , ID's, London, kristina.andersen@telinco.com Re:Gossip is a project that originated in the Future of Fun II workshop during the Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing conference in Karlsruhe in September 1999. It arose out of our common interest in the connection between the invisible networks of wireless technologies and the invisible social networks that surround us in everyday life. The goal is to make visible the hidden relationships that make up social networks and to transform these networks through wireless, handheld and internet technologies. Re:Gossip is both the real exchange of social data and the fictional game of storytelling. It is seriously fun. We are entangled in a tightly woven social fabric of which many of the intersections and communication processes are hidden. The social structures made visible are those of governments, corporations and institutions. Other social structures that have no representation are trivialized as fiction or on a day-to-day-level, as gossip. Gossip is the most effective and compelling way of weaving the social reality. In Re:Gossip, the internet is both the representation and the communication process for the underlying and ad-hoc social network of gossip and social fiction. Re:Gossip starts with a small group of friends and† associates. They may have only met once and may not "see" each other again. Re:Gossip can be used to stay in touch, to get to know each other better and to further develop their knowledge of each others life as fiction, fact or somewhere in the middle. 'Exaggeration furthers understanding.' When you join Re:Gossip you are given permission to exchange and embellish each other's social data. As community members you are challenged to both expose as "unvarnished truth" the social relations of other members while maintaining the vital bonds of the community. You are as free to tell stories about other Re:Gossip members as they are free to tell stories about you... The heart of the system is the Re:Gossip server and the ubiquitous access to that server. The Re:Gossip system keeps track of all the pieces of gossip going around. Each piece of gossip has a unique identifier and the users should be able to pull out detailed information about the gossip (for example, the gossip body, the trail of the gossip etc.). The important part of spreading the gossip is to register to the database that you have received a certain piece of gossip. The registration can be done automatically (in case of e-mail and SMS) or via the Re:Gossip web site. When spreading the gossip all you have to do is to mention the unique Re:Gossip number and, of course, tell the gossip itself!