I’ve got three terms with square brackets in them, which I have to get rid of because it’s impossible to say them and they look odd. I used it originally because I figured “personal data” was the same thing as “personal information,” which is why I wanted to distinguish it from “[Personal] data.” That’s still true but I still have to get rid of them.

Those three terms are [Personal] data; [Personal] Cloud-stored data and [Personal] Cloud-based applications. Kinda embarrassing.

Now digital belongings are things I own made of bits. In the world of Cloud-based apps my digital belongings include my tweets and Facebook status updates and avatars and everything else I can create with them. So let’s just sweep all those definitions into the trash and say this:

cldwrld comprises digital countries in-the-making (social networks) with, as its inhabitants, people who use those social networks.

cldwrld is a virtual Real World, made of digital countries and digital-countries-in-the-making and their Digital Inhabitants.

A good example of a digital-country-in-the making is Facebook and see this post which goes way back almost to the beginning of the blog.

Those people are Digital Inhabitants (but Digital Inhabitants is a term that is wider than “only those who use social networks” because it includes people who have a web presence but are not on social networks. It might not be wider for very long if it hasn’t stopped being wider already).

Digital Inhabitants have digital belongings which exist in the Cloud, sometimes exclusively.

If you want to refresh yourself on how I understand the Cloud then please go to the details section.

So that’s that and I’m gonna update the Welcome! and details sections to reflect this new definition. I’ll deal with any conflicts that arise between this new definition and the old as they come up.

updated 02/22/10