Jason Menayan

Dyalogues was founded by the two of us, Jason and Kevin. We're a couple of geeky gay guys that have worked in the world of Web 2.0 for a few years. We love two things: people's enthusiastic interaction with new Web technologies, and discussion about all and sundry. Usually over noodles.

Kevin Lee

Yeah, we've had some of our best discussions over a plate of steaming chow mein. I'm beginning to think it's brain food.

Dyalogues was born from a few frustrations we saw in the types of online discussions that have prevailed until now. Blogs are great for giving anyone a platform to share their point of view, and open that to an audience. But blogs are really monologues, or soliloquies, aren't they? Sure, there are blogrolls and trackbacks/pingbacks for bloggers to know that bloggers are paying attention to each other, but they are clumsy and don't afford a whole lot of interaction. And blog comments tend to resemble a speaker fielding questions after a long speech. Lots of bloggers don't respond to comments, or they cherry-pick a few and move on.

Don't get me wrong: blogs are great. But they aren't necessarily the best platform for deep, meaningful exchange.

Jason Menayan

Agreed.

Discussion forums represent the best of what the Internet can offer: conversations among like-minded individuals that breach distance and even time. But cliques and intimidating hierarchies can form, that scare off new members and seriously tilt the balance of the discussion in the favor of the well-established. Unpopular views are piled on by a ferocious mob. Meaningful discussion and reason can yield to egos and power dynamics.

And even when those dynamics don't deter people, it can be hard for two people to respond to each other without getting swept away by the strong current of posts. One person can respond meaningfully to another person's post, and then have to wade through pages of other responses, to find that person's response. It's too easy to lose track and get distracted.

I love discussion forums. But they're not the ideal platform for two people to connect and interact with each other.

Kevin Lee

Exactly. Dyalogues are different cup of tea. Dyalogues are:
  • limited to exactly two people; no fewer, no more
  • a level playing field; neither participant has the "home court advantage"
  • a back-and-forth interchange; no response can be ignored or lost in the shuffle
  • more richly interactive than a blog entry and more substantive than comments
  • a way for bloggers to bridge gaps between themselves through meaningful interaction.

Jason Menayan

I love it when you speak in bullets, Kevin. (ha!) Dyalogues are like a structured email exchange, or a more in-depth version of an IM chat. And they're readable by anyone.

Let me say a little something here about the name; I don't want people to think the Y is a gimmick.

I'll bet most people don't know that dialogue does not incorporate the Greek prefix for "two" (I didn't either, until just a few months ago). Actually, the word comes from the Greek dia-, meaning through, and -logos, meaning word or speech. But think about most of the conversations you have offline. The vast majority of our conversations in life are back-and-forth exchanges between exactly two people. So we wanted to bring the duality, the binary, the twoness (is that a word?) common to most human conversations. Hence the incorporation of dyad, which does derive its dy- from the Greek word for two.

Kevin Lee

Thanks for the etymological explanation, Jason. Noah Webster is smiling at you from above.

Even online, I guess, people are used to interacting with each other one-on-one: I'm thinking of emails and IM here. Allow me to get a little philosophical here: only by really opening ourselves up to intelligent, thoughtful exchange, are we going to understand people who think differently from us, and bridge the barriers that the "culture of personalization" has unfortunately erected between us. We live in a world that is terribly divisive and polarized, and the balkanized media and blogosphere sometimes leads us to living in a sort of ideological cocoon; we're never challenged to think beyond what people exactly like us think, because we're never exposed on a deep level to the train of thought of people who think differently.

Jason Menayan

Well said, and I agree. The "other side" is always captured in "outrageous" soundbites that are designed to fire up our indignation and reinforce our own position. But sheltering yourself from interacting with people different from yourself is really doing yourself a bit of a disservice. You're not required to agree with everyone else, but unless you engage with someone at a deep level, sometimes you live in opposition to the characterization of them, rather than what they really believe and stand for.

At any rate, we all have our own interests. Personally, I love reading people's views on just about everything except sports (I did mention I'm gay, right?), but I have a particular interest in politics, movies, health, science and philosophy. I'd love to do a dual review with horror fans about the latest horror flick (especially since no one I know really likes horror movies). What about you, Kev?

Kevin Lee

I love technology. And fashion. And I watch Project Runway almost religiously. I'd gladly dyalogue with anyone about who'd win in a hypothetical matchup between Jay McCarroll and Christian Siriano...maybe even a romantic one (!)