In some ways related to the discussion that Marc Eisenstadt and I have been pursuing the last few weeks about the ways to represent blog-to-blog dialog, I stumbled upon a really interesting thread at Functioning Form: a Tufte-inspired representation of an on-going narrative on a blog that spans many entries.

LukeW

[from Functioning Form - Web-log Continuum Sparklines]

There are a number of ways to organize Web-log posts (entries):

• Date: time, month, day, year
• Popularity: number of comments, links, views
• Category: topic, theme
• Author: who wrote it, who commented on it, who linked to it
• Narrative sequence: evolution of an idea or story

Of these, the last option is probably the least common, yet potentially the most compelling for readers.

To address this, I introduced Web-log continuums last month that added a contextually relevant path for readers interested in how a particular idea has continued to evolve. But these links only tell half the story: they look forward and see if any posts dated after the current post reference it. To get the full story, I have taken a page from Edward Tufte’s sparklines playbook.

Tufte defines sparklines as “intense, design simple, word sized graphics that can gracefully and intensely narrate on-going results in detail.” Though best suited for print (due to their intense resolutions), sparklines can also introduce a lot of contextual (and perhaps even actionable) information to Web blog posts.

There are any number of ways that the display could be intrumented, and LukeW mentions a number of them. The spread between lines could represent the time dimension, weight could represent length of piece, etc.

I think the community dimension is potentially more interesting. How many readers of each entry could make the lines fatter, perhaps; or ratings (either explicit, or implicit: by link count) could be represented by a color dimension.

And finally the real-time presence aspect of the display: how many people are engaged in reading the various entries, right now? I have toyed with various swarming technologies in the past, where the number and even identities of individuals reading a post are displayed at the margin of the blog (a la Eyebees) and you are presented with the opportunity to join others in the swarm, and co-browse to the stories they are reading.

So, what I guess I want is a widget on the bottom of every story that has both flavors of time facets. On one hand, a slow-time chronology element that represents the linkage of the entry to others with various weights, distribution and colors denoting time sequence, popularity, and the like; while on the other hand, a real-time instantaneous representation of swarm involvement in the thread, like who's reading what, who's saying what (yes, of course I want chat integrated!), and how many are where at the present time.