Tim Berners-Lee's Web Science Initiative is important. Tim's starting academic research to create a scientific discipline that studies human behavior and the systems that support it. Like people talking to each other over the Internet. There are already two academic conferences

Let's start a contract research team. Call me if you're interested. I have a domain and am putting together a discussion forum. We should put together a list of proposals and potential sponsors and see if we can get this off the ground.

Topics that come to mind in the last five minutes:

• How do effective people switch from talk to action?
• What are the cues for mode switching (e.g. switching from IM to voice) or blending within a conversation? Within a relationship? When and how do they work?
• How do people think about the privacy of their calls? How does this vary from culture to culture? What are the effects of those perceptions on choice of communication channels?
• Where are the tipping points for social network migration, where you and your buddies flee one network for another? Are there leading indicators? What strategies might preserve a network's critical mass?
• Can occasional random calls among workplace strangers (in a large organization) improve knowledge work and organizational effectiveness? Might this compensate for not bumping into colleagues at the corridor?
• How does IM change the relationship between supervisors and knowledge workers?
• Which behaviors improve social capital? What metrics and other cues best drive those behaviors?
• How is the psychology of persuasion altered by the social proximity of strangers?
• How long do people talk about different topics? Do those talks have common templates, narrative structures?

If you're a behavioral scientist or market researcher, please ping me. Do you sense the time is right for this area?

p.s. For fun, try this University of South Florida Skype User Satisfaction Survey.