Ross Mayfield: Media

Resistance is Futile

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:52:06 GMT

Liz Lawley made a great post on in-class and in-conference back-channels over at Many-to-Many.

A key takeaway is that the back-channel will always exist. You can resist or incorporate it into your activities to focus the channel.

The Other Buzz

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 22:44:52 GMT

Buzz narrowly escapes his 15 minutes of fame. Today's NY Times story on back channels at conferences has provoked lots of interesting commentary around the web today. One tidbit to pass along. The story includes the archetypal conference blogging story of the impact of Doc Searls and Dan Gillmor sharing a link from Both "forwarded by a reader in Florida." If you want the story behind the story, go check out Buzz Bruggeman's blog buzzmodo. Buzz was that "reader in Florida" and he describes his near 15 minutes of fame. [via McGee's Musings]

Im posting this to help Buzz get a little more fame, as he deserves. The role of a remote participant has grown because of his role.

With all the attention on heckling, good to note remote participation can also be a positive contributor to an event. Arguably in a position to provide greater focus, they can cull revelvant resources and affirm points made by a speaker.

Trade Winds

Tue, 22 Jul 2003 18:51:45 GMT

The community that was fostered at AO2003 is now providing more pensive analysis. This is a great time to reflect on how social software is changing the events business and the "trades" in general.

An excerpt from Conferenza, which provides a tad more traditional paid research coverage of trade shows, contains this golden nugget of controversy:

Still, there were interesting insights, some intended and some not...

· As a demonstration of the power of interconnection, a panel on Web services featuring Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff provoked the most talked-about moment of the conference – at Benioff’s expense. Asserting that the largest e-commerce software supplier is Amazon.com, Benioff pointed toward co-panelists from IBM and Sun Microsystems and said, “None of these companies has any position in [that] market at all. Even Apple’s iTunes music store was built on Amazon,” and asserted that Amazon has 300 people working on its proprietary software.

We thought this was news, until Ross Mayfield, CEO of one of the Web’s leading blogging software providers, Socialtext, led an online chat charge showing that most of this was apparently untrue: Amazon uses standard XML out-of-the-box stuff, and Apple’s iTunes doesn’t use Amazon’s software at all, the chatters charged. As Benioff continued, the audience watched as a group of online contributors disputed fact after fact, input Benioff apparently did not see. “It was sort of like a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit,” said one attendee. “As Mark spoke, we could see his nose growing longer, like Pinocchio.”

How it played out in the Chat (Archive) was Kevin Marks did the fact checking, which was simultaneously projected on to the big screen:

[11:51] KevinMarks: no he didn't
[11:51] adina: bthey /are/ mentioning public web serivces
[11:51] KevinMarks: he licensed the patent
[11:51] KevinMarks: iTunes backend is not Amazon
[11:51] toughcrowd: this panel is showing lots of promise - but I love that cynical suspicion "lovefest"
[11:51] Ross: Amazon's real smart move was an API for developers
[11:52] adina: tross
[11:52] Ross: but they dont get decentralization. witness http://www.allconsuming.com
[11:52] adina: ross again
[11:52] Ross: Kevin, did he say it was?
[11:52] KevinMarks: Apple had ahuge online store already selling Macs
[11:52] KevinMarks: they built on that for iTunes
[11:53] Ross: real-time fact checking Kevin, I love it
[11:54] DariusD: Do you know that the Apple onnline store was not built on Amazon technology?
[11:54] KevinMarks: It is built on Webobjects

Here's Apple's story of how iTunes was built and how they licensed the one-click form from Amazon. Before we get carried away with the event of a fact check, rather than dynamic itself, its important to understand the context. I doubt Marc had negative intent, he had little to gain if so, and he was just plain conversing.

This parallel channel, a second superpower on a finite scale, first emerged at PC Forum 2002 when Dan Gillmor blogged a fact check on Joe Nacchio. Clay fostered the first experiments with social software as an in-room chat tool. Supernova I was the first to formalize a group weblog. PC Forum 2003 was the first to incorporate a conference wiki. The O'Rielly Emerging Technology conference renewed interest in IRC and Hydra in parallel to the wiki. Supernova II was the first to incorporate chat and wiki. AlwaysOn was the first to add video streaming (Archive), creating a richer remote participation experience.

For some, the choice of modes is overwhelming at first, something we are tuning. But Social Software and its practices for events has a reached a level of maturity where it is solving fundamental tensions of event structure.

Take Bob Frankston's experience with remote participation after in-person attendance the first day:

While it's not the same as being their in person, I was surprised how well the combination of the video and Wiki worked. Over my standard home Internet connection I had very good audio and video quality in looking at the panel.

I don't know how to capture the screen picture that included the video so I simply used my digital camera to take a picture. That's Tony Perkins summing up the conference discussion log is in the lower left. There was a lively discussion with people in the room and others outside such as Joi Itcho in Japan and me at home. Joi mentioned that he was attending in his underwear and people wanted to get a video of him. He obliged though only above the waist...

...I judge events by the attendees more than by the panelists and, by that measure, the event has gotten off to a good start. The concept of being always-on or always connected is a good one though, in my opinion, it is important to distinguish between the transport issues that enable connectivity and the question of what one does with connectivity and the implications. This confusion is reflected in some of the panels.

As I write this I'm still attending remotely. I can view the conference over the Internet with very good audio and video quality. Socialtext is provided a live commenting facility using their Wiki software. This is wonderful for those like me who want to jump up and say "that's stupid" or maybe even be positive. There were problems with 802.11 connectivity the first day so I had only a few opportunities for such commentary though I did make good use of it. Today, from home, it appears to be working better and I've been able to add my own comments on the side.

Participating from afar is interesting. The audio/video works very well but I miss the ability to kibitz with others. A side-chat facility would help. Still, this is my first time trying such remote participation. Having been there for the first day I have some sense of the context and it works very well. Of course this is early stage and I can think of a lot of improvements but it is mundanely useful rather than being a novelty.

David Weinberger recently wrote a great piece in Darwin on the Death of Panels:

...Panelists and audiences do not share the same goals. Audiences want to learn and be entertained. Panelists want to impress and sometimes want to sell. Conversations work against the panelists' natural inclination to manage their speech; conversations develop their own gravitational fields that fling panelists together in ways they can't control.

If you're organizing a conference, as an audience member I implore you to cast aside the spurious safety of panels. If you're a moderator, you'll do everyone a favor if you rearrange the chairs, eliminate the opening statements, confiscate the bulb in the projector and get your participants to just talk. Don't "leave time" for audience participation; open it up from the beginning. Hell, screw the bulb back in and project the online chat where the real life of the conference is probably happening anyway...

Mike from Techdirt yearns for conferences with semi-structured small group interaction.

...An ideal conference, then, would be more like a day full of these lunches - that forced people to think in different ways. Thus, I'd love to see a conference where people are either randomly (or carefully planned by the organizers) split into small groups, and given a task or a challenge. Let them do some scenario planning that forces them to think creatively. Get people thinking, get them involved with the ideas, get them interacting with others and force them to think outside of their own viewpoint. Maybe challenge them. Have different groups "competing" in some way to get people to really pay attention, and really try to get their minds around very difficult issues. ..

Trade Winds

Social Software and Social Networking Models provide the greatest threat and opportunity for the trade industry (trade magazines & shows) -- because they change the notion of audience into participants. The rise of weblogs and participatory media allow domain experts to contribute without making contribution their full time job. Networking models allow people to connect regardless of space or time as is the case with LinkedIn, or in space and time with Meetup. Because these tools work so well in virtuality, it is natural for them to be extended to reality (whatever that means).

Trade shows will fundamentally change their structure to become more participatory -- and the result is more connective, constructive and conversational. Remote and in-room participants will moderate panels, there will be greater use of working groups and communities will persist between events. We used to come to trade shows for the people in the place. As Dr. Weinberger says in Small Pieces Loosely Joined, the web is a set of places itself. Now we have places upon places, where the network is the conversation.

This isn't the place for me to talk about commercial value for event organizers, but let me say this. There is no such thing as a closed system. Bloggers are coming to your conference. You can't throw up Walls. The energy can dissipate or enjoin with the event. Do what Tony did and give out blogger passes. Augment experiences. Create a greater and more open context for your event and the wind will blow at your back.

AO Reflections

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 22:45:56 GMT

Settling in after some very intense days at the Always On Innovation Summit. It was a great experience, excellent networking and a different use of Social Software for events. Socialtext provided an integrated video/chat/wiki conference support system.

During the first day, wifi was frustratingly spotty, so the bulk of its use was from remote participants. High quality video streaming allowed people to listen, the BackChat allowed people to interact and the wiki to annotate. Unfortunately the lack of in-room connectivity led to less wiki collaboration and public blog posting right at the time when it usually engenders wider participation.

But the real dynamic took hold on the second day, wifi enabled, where it became part of the program. The Remote Posse and the people Blogging Always On really had an impact. The BackChat was particularly vibrant, with in-room and remote participants (from as far away as Tokyo and the Netherlands) exchanging commentary. A big font version of the chat program was projected on to the big screen, the feedback loop was complete:

BackChat participants kept the discussion relatively high brow. They fact checked, posed questions, had side discussions that were pertainent and in general participate without denegrating into vulgarities or
Moderators fielded questions from the chat, particularly with the open source panel
Panel members interjected requests to respond to things on the chat and in general were kept in check from being to commercial, not revealing bias or ducking questions.
One member of a panel noticed that people were paying more attention to the BackChat screen than the panel itself.

The golden moment was at the end of the show, when I had them project JoiTV. We caught Joi in his underwear and the heckler became the hecklee. Joi waved, we all waved back. Some folks told me that was when something clicked with them about how large the room really was. And many of the remote posse enjoyed a richer participation experience than they have had before.

You have to hand it to Tony for having the vision to run with an untested mix of video with our conference system. You also have to hand it to him for having the grace to extend blogging passes. I hope he has set a precedent for other events.

A bit on some of the folks there. Chris took great photos. Scott posted beyond the limits of connectivity. Jason had his camera phone (took a nice snapshot of me, Pete & Adina). Ev wore a blogger shirt. Dave left shortly to do other things. Adina kept it real. Esther is community. Ramana gets information flow. Richard gets biology. Zack was fully on. Edward is still settling in. Keith is into real-time people. Eric, Larry & Sergey still don't have a blog but that's okay. Dan is our hero.

Chat with Google Founders (photo by Chris Gulker)

And remote posse awards go to Greg, Ed, Kevin & Joi.

About Blogs

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 21:19:56 GMT

About.com empowered their 400 Guides with blogs last week. Blogger and former SVP of Content Howard Sherman makes a case for significance:

It's probably the single largest addition of content to the blogosphere to date.
All of these sites are advertiser supported so it should help give credence to blogs as a viable business model.
The sites are using Moveable Type software which is a vote of confidence in Moveable Type's technology.
Another large media company -- in this case Primedia which owns About.com -- has adopted blogs as a publishing and communications tool.

The quasi-independence of Guides and structure of their site made this move easier than other traditional media outlets could do with editors. You have to hand it to them for doing it right, selecting a best-in-class tool and turning their people loose. How clueful.

The question is if Primedia will learn from this experience as the relevancy of their core business, trade magazines, is under the greatest threat from blogging.

Blog Roll-up

Wed, 25 Jun 2003 23:08:59 GMT

This could be the first roll-up strategy of independent blogs (much like the ISP roll-ups of the days of yore). Differs from the more organic approaches of Nick Denton and Corante or umbrella approach of Always On. Could bode well for the industry. Content rides again.

MarketingFix.com: Andy Bourland Buys MarketingFix, Adventive; Launches Up2Speed. PaidContent: ClickZ Founder Buys Adventive, MarketingFix; Launches Media Company
Bourland.com: Yes, I Have a Comment...Yes, It's True

Andy Bourland, co-founder of ClickZ, who has been taking it easy and figuring out what he wants to do next since selling that industry-leading publication to Internet.com in 2000 for $16 million, is at last getting back into the Internet marketing media game by buying MarketingFix and Adventive.

Hiawatha Bray on Blogs

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 15:13:33 GMT

The Globe on Blogs. The Boston Globe today runs an article by Hiawatha Bray in the Business Section on the Weblogs Business Strategy conference last week:

Consider: Every business needs to know what its employees know. Companies are crammed with experts on various topics whose knowledge goes to waste -- because nobody knows what they know. Now give these workers an internal corporate blog, and encourage them to use it. Let them natter away on every topic that intrigues them. Harvest and index the results. You've mapped your workers' brains. With a few keystrokes, a manager can find out who's been blogging about skiing or bowling or restoring classic cars -- just the thing when you're trying to sell something to an avid collector of '64 Mustangs. The company's hidden experts will cheerfully reveal themselves, and the firm's institutional memory gets an upgrade.

[via Joho the Blog]

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 18:38:01 GMT

Every now and again you get into the good kind of busy. So your blogging drops off. Sorry about that, gradually re-emerging. Have been reading, of course, and here are some gems I would have picked up on:

Virtual economies and how Blogshares Traders are exchanging virtual for real money.

Capitalizing links and the sensitivities of sponsorship

The Always On Debate which greatly concerns me. Our capacity to be open to new particiapants, adaptations of weblogs and business models is a measure of the health of our culture.

Social Web

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 17:14:41 GMT

Business Week has a special report on the Social Web. It rightly identifies the big change -- the web as a social fabric -- but does little aside from stiching together a few threads.

Call it the Social Web. Through the dot-com bubble and bust, one trend has never wavered. Every year, millions more people around the world are using the Internet to interact in more ways than ever before -- to date, find old classmates, check on medical ailments and cures, to read and express alternative views of the news, and even to get live sales help online. It's happening at work as well: Want to check your 401(k), pay stub, or file an expense account? Increasingly, that's all on the Web.

Alex Salkever's piece is on next generation social networking, highlighting Friendster and others:

"The late adopters want solutions. They'are the Consumer Reports people, and they want to read such and such dating site has a 70% success rate before they pay to join," claims Thompson.

"We believe there's a correlation between opportunity and optimism. Never before in the history of dating has it been so easy to get to so many eligible qualified dates and use the technology to help you do this," gushes Trish McDermott, vice-president for romance at Match.com.

In Jane Black's piece, the latest in the blogging as open source media meme, includes Nick Denton's publisher perspective, some great press for Dave Sifry and Clay gushes with this gem of deflation:

"It's a new kind of communication," says Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. To say that blogs will harm traditional media, he adds, "is like saying that instant messenger will kill e-mail."

The Reporter's Notebook

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 20:28:35 GMT

With the NY Times scandal, like Trent Lott, weblogs again sustained a meme to the point where it influenced the media to impact institutional change. This time in the media itself was the institution. A clear example of alternative media providing oversight of traditional media, an increasing role as the industry consolidates.

But the root cause of the scandal could be addressed by social software as well. Jayson Blair took advantage of a culture that allowed contribution without context and a process of filtration that borders on obsolescence.

A copy-editing and fact checking process is typically a top-down defined policy of filtration. Filter processes inevitably result in false positives and false negatives and have a cost of time to press. Accelerating time to press is in the interest of both journalists and publishers. Journalists and copy editors with topical domain expertise and solid journalism ethics are the best accelerator. Culture is the ultimate means of sustaining such quality. However, the external pressures of business ultimately threaten this culture. And topical expertise is expensive and difficult to maintain in an increasingly complex world.

Much of the discussion of journalism and weblogs is centered on the threat participatory journalism holds for traditional media. Either in its power of oversight or as a credible substitute. But countervailing trends are often co-opted by those seeking to retain power and capital. Systems have an amazing power to shape institutional cultures when they involve participants. Before systems arise to this level of impact, individuals experiment with potential component parts outside the institution.

Witness how Dan Gillmor and Jon Udell engage in participatory journalism by posting outside the process. They engage with those with better domain expertise on difficult topics. They harness collective investigation and social filtering. As a result their stories that flow through the traditional process are better informed, facts are checked and if a copy editor needs context they have a wealth linkages to draw from.

At the core of a journalist's practice is her notebook. Stories are built from component parts gained from interviews, research and investigation. A reporter's notebook is traditionally a private resource, and parts of it should be private, but opening components of the notebook could unleash a different kind of source.

If reporters shared their notebooks with their newsroom it would be similar to internal blogging. A resource of journalists and editors alike, it would provide a base of contextual information to draw upon, perhaps increasing quality and speed of publication. A structure to involve specialist freelancers would further diversify expertise in context.

Tools would need to evolve beyond today's personal weblogs -- to facilitate a balance between privacy and sharing, internal and external, speed and quality. And some new forms of collaboration may arise to extend the byline.

Shared notebooks could have brought Blair's poor practice to light or be stemmed from a culture of feedback. The question is if the practice of journalism could accept such transparency and openness within a newsroom. Of course, if it doesn't, the world outside the newsroom will pry open its cold dead fingers.

UPDATE: Gillmor downplay's the role of weblogs in the NY Times scandal.

Reclaiming the Public Domain

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 15:25:52 GMT

Signing the petition is effortless:

reclaiming the public domain. We have launched a petition to build support for the Public Domain Enhancement Act. That act would require American copyright holders to pay $1 fifty years after a work was published. If they pay the $1, the copyright continues. If they don’t, the work passes into the public domain. Historical estimates would suggest 98% of works would pass into the pubilc domain after 50 years. The Act would do a great deal to reclaim a public domain. This proposal has received a great deal of support. It is now facing some important lobbyists’ opposition. We need a public way to begin to demonstrate who the lobbyists don’t speak for. This is the first step. If you are an ally in at least this cause, please sign the petition. Please blog it, please email it, please spam it, please buy billboards about it — please do whatever you can. And most importantly, please help us explain its importance. There is a chance to do something significant here. But it will take a clearer, simpler voice than mine. [Lessig Blog]

The Day the Music Died

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 23:14:40 GMT

The FCC voted to relax media ownership rules today. Dan Gillmor sums it up:

Michael Powell and his damn-the-torpedos colleagues have wounded democracy with their action today...

The fight isn't over -- now we need to bypass the oligarchs -- but diversity in media just got whacked.

And here's how we do it. OhMyNews.com provide a model that defended democracy in Korea. Perhaps its Correspondences.org in US.

Homogenization and Balkanization

Tue, 27 May 2003 15:21:52 GMT

There is a tremendous market failure that is homogenizing public policy while balkanizing civil society.

Stanford Professor Diane Ravitch’s new book The Language Police reveals self-censorship in education. For example, even high-school history and English texts cannot mention: divorce, drugs, homosexuality, or dinosaurs (evolution) on one hand; religion, women as homemakers, slavery, inequality, and so on, on the other. In other words, anything real or interesting or historically accurate. Oligopoly Watch chalks this up to oligopsony (a market controlled by a few buyers), in this case three state textbook evaluation committees. Because there is some measure of accountability and a great deal of lobbying influence, the committees are balancing political correctness from the extreme left-wing and right wing.

Meanwhile, our kids get extreme exposure to these issues through the mass media, itself an oligopoly. When a media oligopoly can diversify its properties through digital cable, the law of the niche drives appeal to extremes. Given the choice, kids will naturally gravitate towards learning about contentious issues in media that is largely absent of context. Further fostering extremism.

Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts ban atheists and gays. With the supreme court granting the right to private civil society organizaitons to be exclusive, extreme interests are balkanizing. Again, this is a market with few sellers.

Parents are left with little choice.

Expat Radio

Mon, 26 May 2003 22:10:06 GMT

Back when I was an expat living in Tallinn, the Internet was my lifeline to home. This weekend we joined some Estonian friends for the usual BBQ of vinegar-based pork shish kabobs, potato salad, rye bread and a little vodka, of course.

What's cool is these cats have wired the inside and outside of their house to have constant streaming of Estonian Radio. Of course they regularly get their news from Estonian portals. But when they look for something, they don't use Estonian search engines anymore, but Google like the rest of us.

Dynamics of a Blogsphere Story

Tue, 20 May 2003 23:03:11 GMT

Very interesting take on the physics of memes in blogspace. Especially the segmentation of types of posts:

Lengthy opinion and molding of a topic around between three to fifteen links with one of those links the instigator of the story;
Vote post where the blogger agrees or disagrees with a post on another site;
Reaction post where a blogger provide her/his personal reaction to a single post on another site;
Summation post where the blogger provide a summary of various blogs and perspectives of where a blog story has got to by now.

Here's some exerpts of the conculsions:

Rarely can an individual blogger get a story going.
The best blog stories are those that are branded with a word or phrase that is highly identifiable with that story.
The stories that get going are not usually subject specific blogs but stories that cut across all interests of the blogging community.
While individuals offer their opinions, it is usual that a blogging story cannot be orchestrated by an individual.
...blogs cannot be read in isolation from each other. Blog stories are understood and appreciated in aggregate and not in isolation. On the other hand, mainstream media stories tend to be read in isolation rather than read and compared.

[Microdoc News offered a Summation --> Doc contributed a Vote --> I posted a Reaction that this is great work]

Wikis in Business

Mon, 19 May 2003 04:56:02 GMT

Socialtext is covered in a great New York Times Article by Amy Cortese on Wikis in Business.

...Software programmers have sought for decades to design products that help people collaborate in the virtual world as easily as they do in the real world. E-mail is by far the most successful result, but it is linear and best suited for back-and-forth communications involving two people or a small group. On the other end of the spectrum, groupware programs like the Lotus Notes software sold by I.B.M. are elaborate attempts to mimic work environments, with multiple levels of authorization, defined work flows and lots of rules — just like a corporation.

The most distinctive characteristic of a wiki is that anyone in the group (or for public wiki sites on the Internet, anyone who visits) can edit, modify or even delete material on the pages. Such a free-form collaborative process can be messy and chaotic, and it requires a commitment to the group that may not sit well with some egos. But over time, wiki advocates say, a group voice or consensus emerges into what some enthusiasts call "emergent intelligence."

The creative anarchy of the wiki is the philosophical inverse of conventional corporate groupware software. Groupware's highly structured rules and processes do not always reflect the way people really work. Employees often ignore costly corporate-sanctioned software and revert to informal social networks — whether simply e-mail or impromptu water-cooler discussions.

Ward Cunningham, who created the first wiki in 1995 and is the author of "The Wiki Way," a manifesto and how-to manual published by Addison-Wesley, says a wiki is a medium for connecting an electronic community and allows "idea keeping." A wiki presents its members with a blank slate, and their entries determine its structure and organization.

As with any community, each wiki develops its own social systems and rules to guide behavior. But there is basic wiki etiquette. For example, wiki-squatting (using a few pages of a wiki for your own personal use) and wiki spam (pushing a product or service on a wiki page) are frowned upon, and offending pages are likely to be deleted by group members. In addition, a good wiki citizen will always give credit and link to material that someone else has already contributed.

Given that wikis are easy to use, inexpensive and can be set up without a company's information technology department, it is no surprise that the software is making its way into business organizations through the back door — much as instant messaging and other stealth innovations have done. While wikis can be helpful for project managers and employees in charge of small teams, corporate managers who favor greater control are more likely to be wary.

That is why various entrepreneurs are beginning to tailor wiki software to corporate use. SocialText, a San Francisco start-up, for example, has wiki software with Web log and chat capabilities. It has also added security features and programmed the whole package to work with standard office and e-mail software.

The SocialText software, which starts at a price of $995 a year for five users, is being used in about 20 companies, typically small businesses or departments within larger ones, according to Ross Mayfield, SocialText's chief executive.

One SocialText customer is Composite Tech, a $10-million-a-year maker of bicycle tires sold under the Zipp brand. Since early April, Composite Tech, based in Indianapolis, has been using the SocialText wiki for a variety of tasks. Employees contribute informal notes on what the competition is doing, for example, while product development engineers keep track of production schedules as well as advances in materials and other innovations that they might use in future models. Notes from meetings are kept in a wiki, and sales and customer service employees can consult the pages to check on production status and plans.

Denham Grey, the production manager at Composite Tech, says the wiki has become a central repository for information that formerly was shared only in an ad hoc way through e-mail or face-to-face encounters. The wiki, he says, is making it possible to build an "informal corporate memory."

Another SocialText user is Global Business Network, a consulting company in Emoryville, Calif., that employs the software to create comprehensive records of client meetings. Chris Coldewey, a consulting associate at Global Business, says he likes the fact that the wiki can be used by anyone. "The bar to participating is very low," he said. "You don't have to have any skills other than typing."...

"You just have to do enough things well enough and cheaply enough," says Clay Shirky, a software guru who is an adjunct professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. "It's the attack-from-below strategy."

Oh My News

Fri, 16 May 2003 00:29:26 GMT

An profound example of informal journalism:

Clive Thompson, in discussing South Korea's OhMyNews.com, the democratization of media and the role of reputation management in P2P journalism: "I love this... this concept -- user-generated news -- is going to increase in size and importance, worldwide." [via Corante: Corante on Blogging]

"Our main concept is every citizen can be a reporter. We put everything out there and people judge the truth for themselves," said its editor and founder, Oh Yeon-ho.

It has a readership of 1.2 million per day, which makes it bigger than virtually every U.S. newspaper, and 26,300 citizens registered as regular reporters. It is now so popular that South Korea's new president Roh Moo-hyun granted his first interview to Ohmynews.com after being inaugerated in February. [via Collision Detection]

The Value of Informality

Thu, 15 May 2003 21:49:13 GMT

If there is one factor that keeps great voices from emerging in blogspace and holds back the development of new journalism, its the blurred distinction between informal and formal speech. And I think there is something we can do about it.

For example, Pierre Omidyar was beginning to emerge as a great voice in our conversations. But then he stopped. It could be that he was too busy. But his last post was on institutional versus personal speech. He explained the difficulty of being to blog informally as a person while being a visible member of an organization. The mainstream media would jump on his words without distinguishing them from something said in a speech or press release. Could spill over into financial or legal repercussions. The Pyra guys have had a sudden transition that almost made them go radio silent. Esther finds it difficult to relate her great experiences. Joi took flack from being an investor and blogger at the same time. With the large companies I have worked with, initially on internal blogging, they raise the prospect of real human executive communication. Only to be hindered by the need for editoral and legal workflow.

The same problem of formality is at the core of the transition to new journalism. The old means of editorial process, meant to distill journalism as fact, poorly serves the ends of analysis. Relegating it to the opinion section whose diversity suffers from bipolar disorder.

By contrast, weblogs offer sheer diverse opinion and analysis. Reader beware, enlightened and participatory. Fact is derived over time through conversations. Blogs don't need to be journalism. What makes this work is informality. The editorial filter is a post-production process. First cuts are made open, raw and exposed. Its faster, social and more honest.

Over the next year or so blogging will experience the quickening associated with large media portals bringing in later adopters. If the boundaries of formality and speech don't take hold, it will be accompanies with horror stories that would hold back the development of the medium. An executive who was slammed for something she said as an individual. More journalists loosing their jobs and further tension between old and new.

The conflict inherent in formal and informal modes of speech or press is a transition of norms. Blogging at first glance is silly, which is what makes it work. We shouldn't strive for better blogging, but strive to let the world know its imperfecture. Hammer this point. Let the world know these words are your own and they are just words. Establish the cultural norm of low expectations and indvidual expression aside from institutional affiliation.

But we live in a real world of jurisdictions and consequences. Recognizing this, what's needed is disclaimers. What I suggest is that there is an opportunity to standardize such a legal agreement. If this doesnt occur, every time an executive or journalist who wants to raise their voice as an individual will result in custom legal work done by internal and external counsel working outside their domain. A standard agreement would accellerate the process of approval for voices to be heared. It wouldn't capture all facets, just the basics, allowing the remaining conversation between individual and institution to be constructive. It would reduce the risks for both the individual and institution. Its core purpose would be would be a legal seperation between individual and institution as an established normative option. One that could be marketed to bring new and free voices into expression.

This may be a job for the EFF, Creative Commons or ACLU. But there are many legal bloggers who could flush out the prospects for such an initiative first. What do you think (if you are free to say it)?

AO Starts to Open

Thu, 15 May 2003 18:37:19 GMT

The Always On Network, much derided by bloggers because it claimed it was a blogging site too early, now allows every day Joes to blog directly in the site. Still a way to go to appeal to blogging purists, but its still in "beta" and the trend is good. A sprinkle of RSS and trackback and they are speaking our language.

I also like how they have opened the Top 100 lists: AO Companies and AO People. You can rate and comment on the existing 100 and contenders. You can also nominate a company, say Socialtext, if you heart desires.

Sizing Micro Markets

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 22:01:44 GMT

Tim Oren is looking for help in sizing the potential of micro-publishing markets:

Now one problem from the point of view of us bloody-minded folks is that while there are studies that definitely show the power law curves' existence, there is precious little data to suggest how much of that curve might be newly monetizable (is that a word?), given the possible existence of things like attention focusing mechanisms or open micropayment systems. Although it feels good intuitively, there's precious little hard evidence that I've seen.
Note there are several reasons why this is a hard problem. Mini & micropublishing are going to be inherently niched. Each niche has its own characteristic power law coefficients. Each niche exists as an epiphenomenon of a community of interest. The standards for reward in each of these communities are going to differ. Ergo, some of the creators might want monetary compensation, but others may be more interested in other outcomes: influence, egoboo, attention. So you can't assume that just because the content source exists at a particular scale that it will be explicitly monetized.
So if you're with me so far, I'd like to issue a challenge: I'm looking for proxy measures for the potential size of mini & micropublishing markets, in any and all niches. I'm interested both in arguments as to why an existing phenomenon might be a good proxy, and in actual data. Just to give some examples: The number of non-label, indy bands that have made CDs might be a good proxy in one domain. Does anyone have that number? How many advanced amateur/semi-pro photographers have tried to sell their images online? Got a number? Got another idea for a currently observable proxy for likely intent to play if such a market existed? How would you measure it? Number of participants, both selling and buying? Total value?

I actually think eBay might be a good proxy (by the way, Tim, you asked for proof that creative networks scale?). A many-to-many structure like blogging that feeds off of Reed's Group Forming Networks Law. All I have been able to find is Emergent Behavior of Bidding, a study that shows how the buy side of the market forms a power-law. I haven't been able to find anything on the graph structure of the sell side of the network, uh, I mean, market. My guess is that the sell side of the market follows the law of the niche when competition is intense and transaction and switching costs are low.

Help Tim out if you can, the results will be valuable to all.

Tipping Point of an Icon

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:36:54 GMT

The fall of an icon says a great deal about the people that brought it down, cultures and context.

My favorite explanation of the differences of the Baltic countries is the story of how Lenin statues fell when their freedom was realized.

In Lithuania, the people gathered en-mass to beat it to a pulp.

In Latvia, a committee was formed and after much deliberation it was carted away.

In Estonia, some called a Finnish crane company via cell phone and it was removed promptly.

In Iraq, it began with a few people climbing up the statue, then a stoning, a rope was tied around its neck but to no avail, the Marines were called in, they put an American flag on its face which was quickly replaced with an Iraqi flag in due response to the crowd, the Armored personnel carrier pulled and pulled until snap -- and the crowd jubilated.

Perhaps the destruction of this icon tells a story of two cultures that have a long way to go together.

Blogs and the Iraq War

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 13:59:08 GMT

David Brake digs through the The Internet & the Iraq War report released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project is releasing today a new report:

Despite the media coverage of weblogs, Pew finds they are barely on the radar of most Americans:

"Some 4% of online Americans report going to blogs for information and opinions. The overall number of blog users is so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful conclusions about who uses blogs. The early data suggest that the most active Internet users, especially those with broadband connections are the most likely to have found blogs they like. "
Pew's research suggests between one and four percent of Americans publish online depending on what you ask - 1% "Create a web log or "blog" that others can read online" while 4% "Create content for the Internet, such as helping build a web site, creating an online diary, or posting your thoughts online". That could even just include posting your thoughts to someone else's messageboard.

To my mind this emphasises the importance of making the weblog and other content publishing tools we have easier and promoting the possibilities they offer over making the tools more sophisticated (though we should be doing both).

Of course making them work multilingually is also going to be key to international adoption, and making them work well offline (so you don't have to compose while connected).

The report also found that "blogs seem to be catching on with younger Internet users – those under age 30 – at a greater pace than with older Internet users."

This latest survey is consistent with my estimates of over 3 million bloggers and adoption in significant growth areas such as youth. What the report doesn't highlight is the influential role weblogs have on the media.

David is right that there is much work to be done with the tools, but we shouldn't discount the relative influence of weblogs in shaping (this war) and sustaining (Trent Lott) memes.

Dan Gillmor on Socialtext

Wed, 26 Mar 2003 18:01:36 GMT

Dan Gillmor on Socialtext in today's print edition of the Mercury News:

Social software: The smaller the group, the more immediate value in the relationship. That's one notion behind an emerging phenomenon called ``social software,'' products that help groups work with each other more effectively.

At the annual PC Forum conference in suburban Phoenix this week, we got a glimpse of what Clay Shirky, an acute observer of the technology scene, called the latest in ``lightweight, bottom-up and Internet-enabled'' tools. I've had an early look at several such products, several of which I'll highlight here. Look for more in my weblog in coming weeks and months.

``Socialtext'' (www.socialtext.com) is all about a Web you can write on as well as read. It expands on technologies that have been around for some time, and lets people work from browsers to collaborate in remarkably efficient ways. The key is simplicity.

Among the base technologies are online chat and something called a Wiki, an extremely lightweight but writeable Web page. Once you're inside the Wiki, you can edit any page yourself, using tools that make it simple to create new links and annotations. It sounds like potential anarchy, and it could turn into a mess without limitations on who can participate in a given group. But I've participated in several of these conversations/collaborations lately, and I can attest to their potential effectiveness.

SocialText isn't the only such idea around, and the tools are still rough-edged. But it illustrates one way toward a goal we all crave -- to share our ideas, organize ourselves and generally make better use of this vastly collaborative new space that combines the real and virtual worlds.

``Meetup'' (www.meetup.com) is a brilliant idea -- using online technology to get people together and coordinate a real-world meeting, not the virtual kind. Yes, in person.

People organize everything online first, including voting on where to meet in some cases. Check out the Web site for the variety of meetings.

Using the Net to be truly social. I love it.

Fotonotes

Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:34:33 GMT

Fotonotes: Every Picture Can Tell a Story. An amazing tool for adding metadata to media in an easy to use way...

Greg Elin has been working for a while on a new kind of photo-related application. At PC Forum he showed me the latest beta, and I'm ready to say that this is one very cool piece of work.

It's called Fotonotes. Basically, it's a tool for annotating JPEG pictures inside the pictures themselves. Here's an example.

I took the above picture at last month's Demo conference. Left to right are Dan Bricklin, Les Vadasz and Mitch Kapor.

Now, here's a view of the picture after editing it in Fotonotes and rolling my mouse pointer over Dan's face:

I created the same "meta-content" with Vadasz and Kapor, and could have annotated other parts of the photo. Although I only put their names in the picture (the text is stored literally as part of the JPEG), I could have written long passages about each of them, information that would pop up.

Now, this doesn't work inside all browsers yet, as it obviously should. Elin says some browsers do support it, and he's working on others.

He adds, in an e-mail, that the screen shots I posted are using "the cross-platform, downloadable Java application. The web-based version allows all browsers to view stories online, but adding of new stories via the browser is not yet supported by all browsers."

This expands possibilities for user-generated Web content. Weblogs have been about text, with pictures added. What if someone posts a picture of this kind, where various parts of the picture can tell a variety of stories? Or what if we can link, transparently, an audio stream? This could get interesting, fast. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Deconstructing Coverage Technologies

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 16:06:40 GMT

This war is different because of the technologies covering it.

The military's open access model for mass media organizations, particularly by embedding journalists within the armed forces has significantly changed TV coverage. There is so much rich media information that wasn't available before that it saturates coverage. The realization of Al Franken's spoof on war journalists with satellite dishes strapped to their head covering the inch-by-inch movements of heavy machinery and the ready access to human interest stories of troops -- keeps the focus abroad. Domestic issues and protests simply are not getting past this filler. Particularly because local news broadcasts are pre-empted.

Weblogs are engaging more people in open analysis and the Internet is providing a mass form of alternative news. Contrast to TV coverage, alternative paths around this filler are allowing protests and domestic issue Daypop to the top of interest. Google News is providing a less biased global view an perhaps the most immeadiate source if something big hits.

TV coverage is still ideal for that big shock and awe moment we are all waiting for. It is also leveraging cutting edge simulation systems from such defense contractors as Evans & Sutherland for the first time to provide views of the terrain with superimposed guesses on troop movements.

It is hard to imagine the average person not being enthralled by TV coverage in the coming days because technology is providing greater access to the battlefield. Of course, that doesn't lead to substantive debate on the issues of war or consideration beyond the awe of military technology.

Related: Scott Rosenberg on CNN and the Denial of Death