A couple of observations as the thousand flowers of online networks continue to bloom.

If there’s any doubt about the scope of the garden visit the “Cornell Info 204 - Networks” blog where Cornell Information Science students are sharing emerging ideas and research about how the social, technological, and natural worlds are connected, and how the study of networks sheds light on these connections. Fast-paced posts and comments about far-reaching issues such as the spread of SARS, intelligence-gathering, online social behavior metrics and morality in game theory are all part of this fascinating conversation.

Here’s another flower. The latest offering from the reknowned Nature Publishing Group is the “Nature Network” where scientists worldwide are being encouraged to take advantage of a free online networking website. This Web 2.0 toolkit promises to help scientists meet like-minded researchers, hold online discussions, showcase their work via personal homepages, share information with groups and tag content. This new destination on the networked content creation road map is governed by a typical publisher intellectual property rights agreement that grants the Nature Publishing Group “An indefinite, royalty free, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to include and host that material on the website . . .” Adding content for private use is free. Using that content for something else is not necessarily free.

Nature’s new eScience-focused network is an endeavor with NPG’s scientific collaboration and discovery mission at its core. Commercialized social networks are not always deployed, adopted or managed with such lofty goals.

Second Life, for example, is a cyber world that acts like a computer game complete with a proxy for cash called “Linden dollars,” real estate, violence, commerce, high fashion and pornography. Second Life has been discussed by many as being the latest cyber frontier currently undergoing colonization. An analysis of what’s really going on in Second Life may parallell overall Web activity which got an early boost when pornographers realized its potential for distributing unsolicited information.

Darren Barefoot suggests that humans might want to stick to the basics: “Work; Reproduce; Perish” in his parody of the Second Life website entitled “Get a First Life.” In a spirit of letting those thousand flowers continue to bloom Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, sent him a “Permit-and-Proceed” letter. I personally am following Barefoot’s instructions and heading to my closet to get my First Life costume every morning.

Social networks and the opportunities they present for both scholarship and community are just beginning to take shape in NSDL’s Expert Voices and beyond. As is true with many types of wildflowers, one person’s weed is another person’s favorite bloom.