Richard has a terrific list of Web 2.0 lists. Some of the lists he covers:
A new report from Forrester suggests marketers are not rushing to blogs and the like, preferring to stick with more traditional forms of interactive:
Mobile, RSS and advergaming may get lots of media attention, but many marketers are looking the other way. A new Forrester Research report shows that a wide spectrum of interactive marketers is continuing to bank on proven methods such as e-mail and search, and experiment with rich media and new forms of targeting. Yet most are hesitant to try RSS, blogs, social networking, mobile and in-game ads. - ClickZ News
I'm driving more into blogs, wikis, and search than I ever expected. Executing comes with a mountain of challenges - the greatest of which is getting broad organizational engagement in participatory mediums. Thanks to Steve for the pointer...
Ross has a fascinating post on Participation Power Laws - along with an interesting diagram. What Ross is getting at is what so many companies miss in creating blogs. It isn't about the posts and publishing as much as it is about engagement with the community.
When users participate in high enagement activities, connecting with one another, a different kind of value is being created. But my core point isn't just the difference between these forms of group intelligence -- but actually how the co-exist in the best communities.
MarketingProfs has launched a blog - Daily Fix. Lead story falls into the current story trend of "why not to blog". In this case, some of the reasons not to blog are the very reasons to blog:
10. You can't control every message on a blog. (But message control has always been an illusion.) Right. So might as well blog. At least the loose creative act will result in more authentic messages with real-time feedback.
9. You'll have to decide when to respond and when to ignore comments. Isn't that the whole point? Don't do it if you don't want dialogue. And plenty of blogs simply turn-off comments all together, or, only turn them on for topics that they want feedback on.
8. It's hard to build an audience. It takes time, effort, and skillful promotion to build an audience for a blog. So get started now. Immediately. It's just as hard using any other medium. If the point here is that it isn't as simple as it might seem, I agree. But just because it is hard, doesn't mean you shouldn't take a swing at it.
And... 3. Blogging is addictive. You might not be able to stop. It's also lots of fun. I agree!
In the upcoming war for Soccer mindshare, Nike isn't countering Adidas with conventional marketing. Adidas is set to spend upwards of $200m on ads - some of which sound very creative. Rather than match them dollar-for-dollar, Nike has launched a MySpace style network for Soccer nuts:
The site, which launched on Mar. 15, will roll out to 140 countries in 14 languages. Hoping to make Adidas wonder why it spent all that money on mere ads, Nike is making the site a replica of top social network site MySpace.com (NWS ) for soccer-mad fans to commune with each other over their favorite players and teams, download videos, create discussion groups, and the like. - BusinessWeek
Nice move. Both strategies are probably right. Where one zigs, the other zags.
That's the question psed by the Gaurdianas it looks at Edelman (registration required, but worth it). Again, I think Richard's comments are being quite agressively misconstrued:
According to Edelman, we - the PR fraternity - don't have to worry about journos picking apart our press releases and checking our facts any more. We can counteract negative stories in the press simply by posting the real story on a blog.
What I think Richard meant - or at least what I heard - was that transparency is now available to us in real-time (rather than requiring mediators) - and that we can correct what the media chooses not to check, or correct. This is a pretty cynical piece - pretty much reflecting the tone between PR and Media: "No one has a monopoly on truth and nor should they. As we all know, the truth is relative - even in PR. And the truth is that PRs, just like the journalists who sit on the other side of that information superhighway, are obsessed not so much with The Truth as The Power." I suspect this is the case more for Media than PR - especially those on the Agency side.
Holmes has a good analysis of the piece:
But more to the point, Borkowski seems to completely misunderstand the blogosphere, which actually does the fact checking job the mainstream media has abandoned. It's far more difficult to get spin or deception into the blogosphere than it is to get it into the mainstream media. That's the attraction for someone like Edelman: a medium where everyone gets to ask his or her own questions and make up his or her own mind, rather than being fed a story that a journalist has decided is the absolute truth.
I grew up with the notion of the fouth estate firmly embeded in my mind. 20 years in PR has pretty much eroded any view of the media as 100% independent, 100% professional - think unwavering committment to truth. There are some exceptions - people you've got to respect. I've equally seen some horrors in th PR side.
What the "fifth estate" - the blogosphere - brings to the table is a balancing of these two competing forces by enabling immediate dialog and distribution of the stuff that matters. It shift power back in favor of the people that care to be informed.
Down at SXSW they are chatting about (MP3) the Wisdom of Crowds - a book I really enjoyed. There is a key point in the book that gets drawn out over at Bokardo - it's as much about those who draw out the wisdom of the crowd as it is about the crowds wisdom. Take Google and their Pagerank algorithm as an example.
This notion has special significance for communicators. In a Web 2.0 world you should be monitoring and measuring those that are drawing out the dialogue as much as you and the media. For instance, what appears on Google News or Digg.
Next generation communications measurement systems will give you insight into - and weight accordingly - the "aggregators" of content. They will also start to give consideration to the conversations taking place on those sites. Take Digg as an example. Here it isn't just about aggregation, it is about the communities assigned weighting of that content and the associated commentary.
The new dimension in communications measurement will be relevance. Not as measured by abstract algorithms or as determined by communicators. But as measured by the wisdom of the crowd.
Trevor Cook has some good comments from an Aussie lawyer at Baker & MacKenzie on developing a blog policy. He also points to a piece in one of the big rags in Australia. Thanks Trevor!
The Economist (subscription required) speaks to the fact that while bloggers can be vicious, but they can also help companies avert disaster. What is interesting is the number of measurement companies they point to - Biz360 also offers good services in this area.
The spread of “social media” across the internet—such as online discussion groups, e-mailing lists and blogs—has brought forth a new breed of brand assassin, who can materialise from nowhere and savage a firm's reputation. Often the assault is warranted; sometimes it is not. But accuracy is not necessarily the issue. One of the main reasons that executives find bloggers so very challenging is because, unlike other “stakeholders”, they rarely belong to well-organised groups. That makes them harder to identify, appease and control.
Steve is quoted. There is alot of focus right now on issues tracking as it relates to blogs. This is a critical activity for any communications team and will drive all kinds of new revenue streams for the measurement companies. What is equally important is the need for a focus on measurement of the effectiveness and reach of social networking/media/communications - whether it is happening to you, or you are driving it in the market.
... or are you a HEDI? Entertaining read...
GENERATION C
Aka Masters of the Youniverse. The C stands for content, but it may as well stand for control freak. Rarely satisfied with their lot, this tribe (mostly male, mostly 25-40) "create their own content". It's also C for conceited, as they all think they're hot enough to write a novel, make an iMovie, be a garage-band star, become a citizen journalist (blogger). In fact, they're the personification of gravanity (graffiti meets vanity) - the arrogant desire to make your mark in the public domain. Some fancy themselves as minipreneurs and indulge in eBay trading. Others settle for insperience - bringing luxury experiences into their homes via cineplexes, boom-boom rooms and spa-ties.
With the Olympics a day or so away, take a look at these two blogs. Both are excellent implementations from different directions.
The first, Visa's Journey to Torino blog engages Visa Olympians in the run-up. Rather than purely a branding event, Visa is showing the depth of its work and relationship with the athletes.The other, Coke's, is from the perspective of people attending the games. It's great to see blogs being used by such large marketers as an integral part of their communications efforts.
Southwest also made it's first forray into the blogosphere today - their "Adopt A Pilot" blog supports a great community effort they have underway in which pilots engage actively with students in classrooms. It shows lots of promise.
disclosure: The Lark Group provided counsel to Southwest on this blog at its early stages and we work closely with RD2 - a terrific brand and design agency based in Dallas. And, per my previous posts, The Lark Group worked closely with Visa and their agency, Fleishman-Hillard on The Journey blog.
David gives a great update on the momentum in the Blogsphere... This says it all:
We track over 75,000 new weblogs created every day, which means that on average, a new weblog is created every second of every day - and 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created. In other words, even though there's a reasonable amount of tire-kicking going on, blogging is growing as a habitual activity.
In October of 2005, when Technorati was only tracking 19 million blogs, about 10.4 million bloggers were still posting 3 months after the creation of their blogs.
How to handle all those feeds? Rubel suggests deleting them all when it becomes too much and starting again. Even Scoble's. What you miss most is what you'll hunt out and reload.
While this is an interesting idea (and mirrors some of the new thinking in time management - don't archive, just delete what you don't need), I actually value my feeds more than that. All of them. Some were hard to find. Some I share by exchanging files with freinds and colleagues. Others I just enjoy. My approach is to keep them filed. I have a must read folder and then the rest are categorized by my bizzare collection of interests. I only open the folders and look at the feeds when I have time or my interest is sparked. I'm also a fan of Dave Winer's River of News philosophy.
To do this I'm using NetNewsWire on my Mac and NewzCrawler on my PC. I also use FireFox (who BTW released a really anoying upgrade then other day - it wipes your themes and other extensions) - there I have a folder nestled in my toolbar with 20 of the feeds I follow most. I can then do a quick scan without opening any windows. I've yet to sort out the mobile thing - my damn Balckberry is already intrusive enough.
So, all of this enables me to avoid the extreme measure of deleting them at the point of maximum frustration. It's interesting that I have more tools for reading feeds than I do for reading email. It would be easier if Exchange/Outlook emails were just feeds.
Picked this one up via Veer. Gool idea from Britain's Channel 4 - FourDocs, "the place to upload, watch and learn about documentary. Anyone can upload a FourDoc, it just has to be fact-based and 4 minutes long."
Here's one about a French toy store, and anothere one on abseiling (rappelling).
Very participatory.
Om makes a really interesting point: My.Yahoo.Com is no longer a portal page, but instead an "attention page" which can be and should be leveraged to become the aggregator site for complicated digital life.
I doing so he says in a much shorter form what I was trying to get at yesterday on why Yahoo is heading in the right direction. Google doesn't hold my attention. Yahoo does.
I Hope Jeremy has big bandwidth and a big server because his account of the Alaska incident is scarry - and it's going to attract zillions of eyeballs. Via Jeff Jarvis. Compare his account with news reports- some of which are featuring Jeff's photos.
"Citizen Journalism" in action. Jeremy P makes a really interesting point that one lesson for any PR practioner facing a crisis is that you are going to need to manage transparency. It seems that Alaska employees are going nasty-comment-happy on Jeremy's (the Jeremy on the plane) blog. Assuming he would never know I guess, they commented away. Jeremy simply looked at the originating IP addresses, which were from Alaska. And he was gracious enough to suggest that they might have been hackers using Alaska's IP addresses. Not likely mate!
So, if your communications policy doesn't cover commenting on blogs as an employee - then you might want to make sure it does.. and then make sure employees know it. And, if your crisis communications plan doesn't feature monitoring of and communications with the blogosphere - better get on that as well.
Blog content theft was always going to be a big issue. The utility of deploying search advertising only amplifies the problem by enabling plagerists and thieves to remarket content within their own commercial framework. I'm not talking about inserting the odd paragraph or extrapolating content in a different context - I'm talking about making off with a bloggers content in its entirety. So what to do?
I'm not sure but here are some thoughts that need qualifying and more discussion:
Interesting conversation on what happens when you cross a blog and a wiki. You get a bliki. Martin has an interesting definition of what a bliki is.
Technorati has updated their ping site so it will give you a little more info on your blog. Stowe has a pretty picture.
The new Skype beta is here and worth a look. Skypejournal has more. Apparently the merger with eBay isn't going so well - bet you don't get to read this in Fortune anytime soon...
Steve Rubel has nice things to say about The Journey To Torino blog (disclosure: I worked on this project with the crew at Visa and Fleishman). To answer his question, the outstanding design was done by Razorfish. Saying that, this was a really collaborative effort spanning the teams at Visa, Fleishman-Hillard, Razorfish and Six Apart. And, v/casting will be coming soon...
So far, companies have invested 95% of their spending in business processes, according to Social Life of Information author and former Xerox Corp. (XRX ) Palo Alto Research Center director John Seely Brown. A scant 5% has gone toward supporting ways to mine a corporation's human capital. That's why fans say the beyond-e-mail workplace will become a key competitive advantage. In the global race for innovation, it's not as much about leveraging what's inside your factories' machines as what's in your employees' heads.
It's worth a read.
I have a ridiculous number of channels available to me on DirectTV. And I pay a pretty price for them. Most I could care less about. The only thing I care about is rugby - which, to get, I need to subscribe to every petty, worthless piece of crap TV programming created in the last decade.
This weekend there is a really big game - the New Zealand All Blacks, the #1 ranked team in the world take on Ireland - who have never beaten them. There are normally two options for viewing. First, Pay Per View. Having paid a just ludicrous amount for the privilege of all that programming, I need to pay even more to watch the game under this scenario. The other option is Setanta Sports - an Irish sports channel way down the line-up at 617. Being an Irish-based channel you would think they'd cover the game. But no, instead we are going to get France vs. Canada - what is likely to be a boring and sad whitewash. What were they thinking?
Broadcasters don't get the long tail. Moreover, they don't get what customers want. They play to the masses, not to the long tail. But they have the bandwidth and technology to do it. What they are doing is driving people - like me - to companies that get the long tail. Companies like NetFlix and MediaZone.
So, instead of paying for DirectTV and Setanta Sports I'm going to subscribe to MediaZone and get the games in all their 60's Godzilla movie style. It'll suck. I'll listen to the games live on the radio at the same time to account for the buffering issues and shakes and jitters. But what I won't do is pay for lousy programming decisions and a complete lack of understanding of what the consumer wants. I don't want to pay for an entire season of sports but only get a fraction of the games being played. I want to get the season and the games.
This is the power afforded to me by the Web. Those that get the Long Tail will survive. Those that don't will die - slowly for sure, but eventually technology and smart marketers will catch them.
Interesting seeing how different corporates are entering into the Blogosphere. BusinessPundit has an interesting post on how AMEX paid them to blog on a speech by Richard Branson and continue the conversation in the Blogosphere. I like the idea which falls into a category of blogging which I see as sponsored citizen journalism.
Visa is about to launch a really smart initiative also (disclosure: I've been involved in counseling them on it). Thier approach is different and is something I put in the category of sponsored community activation. They will host, sponsor and manage a blog on which Olympic athletes can journal their journey to the Winter Games in Torino. It's a really cool idea from my POV. First, for those of us keen on following the athletes we get to hear from them unfiltered and directly as they head towards their respective tournaments. Second, it will be rich content: words, photos, podcasts, v/casts. Third, it will add a whole new dimension to the way we look at athletes (I think). It's the stuff we might read about well after the games in, say, Outside Magazine.
Both add to the richness of the blogosphere. Watch for more on Visa's initiative in the coming week.
Dan points to the new Tech section over at Memeorandum - worth RSSing. Richard has a good review:
I've been one of the beta testers of a brilliant new blog news service over the past 2-3 months - and today it's gone live. tech.memeorandum is the brainchild of Gabe Rivera. It basically aggregates all the latest news from blogs on one page - but it's more than that. It's an automated, constantly-updated, finger on the pulse of the tech blogosphere.
How it works: the more people that link to a blog post, the bigger the headline. The biggest and most recent headlines are at the top of the page, but move down as newer popular stories emerge to take their place. Below the original source of each story are links to other bloggers who have linked to it. But the beauty of it is, only posts with a decent amount of writing in them make the memeorandum page. A simple link and a sentence won't do.
All in all, it's like a hybrid of populicio.us and the New York Times!
This is a great example of the Web 2.0 that communicators are going to have to deal with going forward. Gabe has a terrific explanation of this:
What are my goals for this site? I want it to address some unfulfilled needs in online news. They are:
- Recognize the web as editor: There's this notion that blogs collectively function as news editor. No, not every last blog on Earth. Tapping the thoughts of all of humanity uniformly would predictably lead to trivial, even spammy "news". But today there are rather large communities of knowledgeable, sophisticated commentators, (and yes) even reporters writing on the web, signaling in real time what's worthy of wider discussion. I want memeorandum to tap this signal.
- Rapidly uncover new sources: Sometimes breaking news is posted to a blog created just to relate that news. Sometimes the author of the most insightful analysis piece at 2PM was a relative unknown at 1PM. It happens. I want memeorandum to highlight such work, without delay.
- Relate the conversation: Communication on the web naturally tends toward conversation. It follows from human nature plus the Internet's immediacy. Blog posts react to news articles, essays reference editorials. And links abound. Yet most news sites do very little to relate the form of conversations unfolding in real time. Some seem to deny that a conversation is even occurring. I want memeorandum to be a clear exception.
InformationWeek reports that traditional publishers are hurting in the face of the ascension of content from blogs and other sources.
While the segment should continue to expand, Outsell's Market View report finds that individual user spending on B-to-B content between 2001 and 2005 fell 15%. "Users are finding alternatives to paid N&T [news and trade] sources: mostly ad-supported content and user-created content from blogs."
The Alternate Content Movement is on us... I don't like the characterization that blog content is popular just cause it is free. InfoWeek, eWeek, C/Net, Computerworld... they are all free to me as well. This is about something very different.
The Alternate Content Movement has very different characteristics - implied (but not necessarily real) transparency, authenticity, brevity, timeliness... plus much more...
So, traditional publishers get caught in a pincer as their high cost models come under pressure from the declining an highly competitive world of online advertising. The winners look like C/Net and The Register - organizations that can blend e-economics, quality reporting, and Participatory Communications...
Ross has a scathing post on Microsoft. Having competed against them for many years this is an all too familiar scene.
...now, with MSN Filter, the convicted monopolist, is creating their own nanopublishing venture -- competing against it's customers. That's OK in monopoly land. Where profit is a function of property, and eminent domain falsely considered a right.
He goes on to flag a defining issue - that is - who owns your post when contributing to MSN Filter. In this case it is Microsoft. To any blogger this should represent an almightly stop sign. Microsoft, in the process of corrupting definitions of Wikis and the like is insulting our intelligence. Saddly this babble looks to be coming from a PR person.
comScore has just released a new market research report (co-sponsored by SixApart and Gawker) on Blogging Behavior. Lots of great great stats and validation of blogging industry. Some of the highlights include:
If I'd really thought about it, you'd be linking to www.andylark.com/blogs. I would have thought carefully about my URL. But hey, I was all swept-up in the rush and excitement of blogging. Now I'm kind of stuck with it. Unless I can get everyone to update their links and do all that other necessary stuff.
Harry Joiner just made the big URL switch so I'll be watching to see how he does. You can now find him over at Marketing Headhunter - which says lots to those that don't know Harry about what he does.
And bonus... straight from Harry's site, a link to Larry's site with some interesting marketing trends.
... this whole blog thing according to a BW usability study:
Download the study if you'd like more. Their conclusion is:
broad comprehension is fairly far away – and better design and terminology are essential. All those tested were optimistic about blogs following the test, with many expressing interest or enthusiasm for what had been a new experience. However, few felt that the presentation of functionality and navigation was intuitive, and many wondered why more effort had not been put into education.
Oh what to do...
Good intro here... "Social network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, animals, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities. The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes."
CIO Magazine extends this notion into the realm of knowledge management. Thanks to Corante for the pointer... and other reco for HR professionals.
Good on Jeremy. Frankly, Technorati is a joke in terms of indexing speed and accuracy. I can tag posts and not see them, well, ever. The fact you get listed at all is a miracle. He is right. As a user, they have let the blogosphere down. Doc Searls has a longer post on this. Doc, it's great you are all chums but for us mere minions it just ain't working and what doesn't work, doesn't get used. Simple as that.
Steve at BusinessWeek points to why Technorati is so slow... He's right, "This spells opportunities for others, from Google to PubSub, if they muster the machinery and algorithms to master the blogosphere." Frankly, the sooner that Google does what Technorati does the happier I'll be.
What's also interesting is Steve's transparency... he posted his reporters notes. This is brilliant and deserves applause.
Interesting site. I've long thought that the workplace needs a complete rethink. I picked this link up through a great email from (forgive their name) Next Generation Consulting. The long and the short of it is a study that looked at Law firms and their success at overworking employees:
Her task force points a finger directly at the profession’s emphasis on ‘total commitment’ as a basis to enter the partner ranks as the key debilitating factor affecting the work environment, attraction and retention of talent and work-family balance within the industry. It found that the profession’s concept of total commitment translates to pushing all non-work obligations aside on a regular basis as a symbol of one’s commitment. The task force concluded that this predominant ethos triggers a series of ‘vicious circles’ in the industry - where solving one difficulty leads to another problem which in turn creates new difficulties.
Sounds so, well, Silicon Valley doesn't it... (also sounds like most consulting firms...)... Anyway, given we've got all this magnificent technology at our disposal I'm convinced employers of choice in the future won't be those with the best food or offices - but those that free employees to work wherever and however they will be most productive. And those that free employees from the tyranny of nonsensical performance reviews that force-fit performance and focus on vertical career advancement.
Via John Battelle, Seth's thoughts...
Our actions, expressed as Attention, establish networks that connect us, our family, our friends, our colleagues and our affinities.
The net currently has a schizophrenic but unique way of remembering bits and pieces of these attention streams: Not all data is captured; the consumer has no central attention management tool; and most companies don’t want you moving your history between their networks anyway.
Despite these points of friction, more and more applications are being built upon our attention streams.
Innovations in internet media are like handfuls of white flour dropped over the invisible outlines of consumer intention. At times, user behavior drives media construction directly, but at other times the original user behavior evolves beyond the ability of the media to engage it. These hollow shells of former behavior are being swept up constantly by domain, banner, click-thru and lead brokers who recycle the detritus into more usable (aka monetizable) impressions.
Here you go. Me, I really like NetNewsWire...
I'm loving being able to collect all my podcasts via iTunes. But there are a few issues you should be aware of.
For the podcaster: DailySonic suggests that iTunes may be caching MP3 files, bad, bad, bad - if it is happening. What this means is that rather than the feed coming off your server, they store to cache a copy (on the off chance your server is down) on their server. While this all sounds really handy it completely screws with your distribution and tracking - not to mention the revenue model of many podcasts.
For the listener: If you want to collect more than one Podcast - and I couldn't imagine you wouldn't - then you will beed to get into preferences and change your settings. The the default scan in iTunes is once a day and only retrieves the single
most-recent program.
According to ClickZ... "more than half of journalists use blogs in the course of their work".
The Euro RSCG/Columbia study shows that more than 51 percent of journalists use blogs regularly, and 28 percent rely on them to help in their day-to-day reporting duties. By contrast, a recent Pew Internet and American Life Project survey showed that just 11 percent of the U.S. population as a whole reads blogs...
Journalists mostly used blogs for finding story ideas (53 percent), researching and referencing facts (43 percent) and finding sources (36 percent). And 33 percent said they used blogs to uncover breaking news or scandals. Still, despite their reliance on blogs for reporting, only 1 percent of journalists found blogs credible, the study found.
Skype is a brilliant example of the power of nurturing communities with a high-quality product, continued innovation and ease of connection. While recognizing that in this instance it's also the essence of the product, that's a sub-text.
Compare Skype to Vonage for a second and you will see what I mean. I "joined" Vonage about four months ago. They treat me just like SBC or Verizon. Every add-on costs more. I get a bill and little else other than the product. The quality is pretty suspect. And while cheaper than Verizon, it ain't cheaper than Skype.
Then there is my Skype account. I get more and more value from neat add-ons developed by Skype and its community. The price and quality are much better than anything Vonage offers. And the community just gets better as a result of this innovation. Then vSkype comes along and adds to my Skype experience with video calling. Bam! The community activates and becomes more valuable - to Skype and to each other. vSkype's CEO says in an email that in the first 36 hours they had 50,000 downloads while some 8 hours later they zipped past 100,000. That's momentum.
Skype Journal has a terrific interview with Stuart Jacobson. In the Participatory Era Skype is establishing an incredible lead over Vonage - in participatory terms,
Add video to Skype... way cool... not for the Mac though...
And, Nev reports that IBM has 3600+ blogs... Wow!
Really? IMHO, this notion is flawed in absolute terms - the best blogs aren't purely pointers or linkers. And, great blogs are rich with opinion.
"Best" is in the eyes of the reader. For instance, I tend to migrate towards bloggers crafting opinions and views that I might not get somewhere else. Adam says it well:
The A-listers are viewed by many as pundits or pontificators – but from my perspective these guys are not actually putting forth a whole lot in the way of declarative statements or analysis (at least not through their blogs). In fact I’d say they’re acting more like radio DJ’s (playing attractive mixes of someone else’s original content), rather than artists.
I get most of my news from, well, news sources - and blogs are a key part of that picture. I call them the "pointers" - and I have a folder in my RSS reader named as such that I turn to each morning for news. The kinds of places I go include Steve on the blogosphere, BBC news, O'Reilly - for tech stuff, Engadget (so I'm a geek) - and, many, many more...
But the blogs I enjoy most (yours also Steve) go deep on issues or have a neat creative bent. Bloghers are doing some cool stuff in the latter of these two areas.
There is a rough parallel in the media universe - USA Today might have
a higher circ than say The New Yorker (making it statistically better)
but that doesn't make it higher quality or "better" in real terms.
Connections, like circ, aren't enough to qualify "betterness". The very function of USA Today drives traffic.
What brings me back to blogs day after day is the writing and views of the writer (which is why USA Today is still at the bottom of my drive while I have scanned The New Yorker). I look for a little enlightenment, humor and smarts - coupled with great content. And of course, links. These factors draw me back to blogs like Ross Mayfield on social networking technologies; Dan, of course; 43 Folders on getting effective; Lessig - it's interesting; Om Malik on broadband; Yager on things Mac; James on things tech; Stowe - cause he is brainy; if:book - I just like it; Pause - Jory is a terrific writer ... and the other thousand-plus feeds I have in NetNewswire... It isn't the links that make them successful - although I do enjoy the utility - it is the thinking. Connecting is a feature, not a differentiator.
Until we start to understand the blogosphere more deeply in terms of the intent and function of different blogs we're not going to be able to define best (and we might not want to anyway). Stack rankings based on traffic and links don't get at the richness of the blogosphere and the different functions blogs serve.
In fact, many of the A list corporate blogs break all the rules. Schwartz - no trackbacks. Edelman - no links. Fastlane - hardly call it a linkfest with four posts containing a grand total of two links on the site right now.
But I will concede this, there are some great bloggers who are incredible connectors.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger has a basic definition of open source (thanks to Ross for the link):
Now, when you collaborate with your colleagues, they have to be able to read and understand what you say, whether you use a natural language like English, or mathematical notation, or tables of numbers. Likewise, if the collaboration involves software, then you would expect to be able to read, modify and generally share the source code of the software on which you are jointly working. Thus, in my opinion, open source software is just a by-product of, or rather a necessary precondition for, collaborative innovation involving software. Nothing more, nothing less.
It's much the same in Participatory Communications where software is replaced by language. As Ross points out, language lowers the barrier to participation. To which I would add technology as an enabler and precondition.
Replacement Obsessiveness Disorder (ROD) struck again today. There seems to be a continuing base need for blogs to replace something - and for us to be subjected to news based on replacement theories. And so we have today the stunning news that... are you ready for it... Blogs haven't displaced media. What, they needed a study to figure that out?
Then we have: "The study dispels the notion that blogs are replacing traditional media
as the public's primary source of information, said Michael Cornfield,
a senior research consultant at Pew." So, let me get this straight - you form a ludicrous notion, prove it with some "interesting" research and bingo, you've got news that warrants reporting. Spare me.
And this. "Bloggers follow buzz as much as they make it," said Cornfield. "Our research uncovered a complicated dynamic in which a hot topic of conversation could originate with the blogs or it could originate with the media or it could originate with the campaigns." Ok - so anything could originate anywhere. That is complicated? (And why couldn't the use of "blogs" in either of these remarks be replaced by "media".)
Did this study actually reveal anything that merits reporting or is it simply fuel for a defensive and skeptical media machine on what must have been a slow news day?
Oh, then we have: The study also found bloggers act as guides for the mainstream media to the rest of the Internet ... Echoing that finding, a University of Connecticut poll released on Monday showed eight in 10 journalists read blogs.
So blogs aren't influential then - or only in influencing he influencers? This would seem to counter the prior comments in the report.
Blogs are part of a new Cascade of Influence - they influence dialog and set the agenda. And the sphere of influence is just getting started. "The Report" would appear to give no credence to the power of the Blogosphere as an echo chamber of sorts in which media comment is amplified and dissected - and the power of that dialog to influence communities of interest. Or, as said well at Pennie Wallie...
The blogs are clearly a product of “emergent behavior”. When a non-trivial number of people start posting and cross posting stories on the Internet, the phenomena that arises is infinitely more than the sum of the individual components. As the number of participants in the blogs increases, the resulting phenomena assumes properties that were not forseen. The blogs are a self-correcting, multi-tasking, multi-threaded, massively multi-participant, online, real-time application...
What really gets me though is the notion that one form of media must die for another to rise - it is flawed and tiresome. First, it assumes that's what we want and that's why blogs are important. Wrong on both counts. Second, it assumes that's what happens. It doesn't. TV didn't kill Radio. Radio didn't kill newspapers. Each technology inflection point drove a new form of communication. We're simply at that point. Can't we revel in the richness of this rather that engaging in another day of ROD?
Dan has an interesting perspective on this.
Stephens got an interesting view on this one. We do disagree (I think they do matter) - as he suggests we might - but not by that much. I view the press release as a technical device for notifying media of news from publicly traded companies. That's about it.
They are of less and less value (think steeply declining curve) as communications tools due to the ubiquity of email, Internet, wire services, blogs, RSS... And, the era of authenticity we've entered into questions their tone - and resulting credibility. But the era of transparency we're in also demands their utility. In my posts below on the Web vs. the Blogosphere you can pretty much replace the Web column with Press Releases.
What Stephen points to though is the need for all communicators to listen to their constituents. How many communicators take the time to ask those constituents how they want to receive news? One of the challenges for any communicator is reaching the full spectrum of buyers, influencers and messengers that make up an audience set. Stephen is a sophisticated influencer and messenger in the upper quadrant of connectivity and engagement. Others will be at in the lower left quadrant - not connected big-time and engaged on an adhoc basis. Technical requirements aside, blogs and press releases represent optimal solutions for different constituent profiles.
Participatory Communications is about just that, participation. I suspect Southwest Airlines effort to raise the visibility of its issues with regard to the Wright Amendment will be much better served by the Internet than by any press release. I love the fact they are inviting their community to engage in their efforts - especially given we have as much of a vested interest in them succeeding as they do. (What a great URL as well!)
Where I also agree with Stephen is that most press releases are crap. Yes, crap. But lets not burn the release just because they aren't being executed well. Bad writing. Terrible legal intervention. Risk and conflict averse communicators. And no news angle/hook are doing as much to destroy the value of news releases as anything.
And here is where Stephen and I violently agree - language and framing matters - until communicators upgrade their efforts in this area then the relevance of the press release is the least of their worries. The real issue is their own relevance. Their relevance to their constituents. And their relevance to the business.
Some great additions to my little list from Pegasus News...
Web = Organized Blogosphere = Chaotic
Web = Predictable Blogosphere = Unpredictable
Web = Find Blogosphere = Browse
Web = Comprehensively shallow Blogosphere = Incompletely deep
Web = Broad Blogosphere = Niche
Web = Slow/Web-time Blogosphere = Instant/Blog-time**
See comments... as soon as the P/news site tracked me back, I updated my blog. Instant publishing. Mike's point is a good one. Blogs are the real, real-time web.
A month ago I spoke at Educause - I was impressed and delighted at how forward thinking the education profession was with regards to blogs, wikis and the like. I sat and listened to keynote after keynote of educators doing remarkable things with technology - many of them recognizing the dramatic shift participatory communications is going to bring to education.
Reinforcing the rule that for every revolutionary there is a reactionary, along comes Blaise:
"One wonders for whom these hapless souls blog. Why do they choose to expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers? What prompts this particular kind of digital exhibitionism? The present generation of bloggers seems to imagine that such crassly egotistical behavior is socially acceptable and that time-honored editorial and filtering functions have no place in cyberspace. Undoubtedly, these are the same individuals who believe that the free-for-all, communitarian approach of Wikipedia is the way forward. Librarians, of course, know better. - Indiana University Dean and Rudy Professor of Information Science Blaise Cronin
I've been thinking about how we can determine how much of the blogosphere is simply pointing vs. creating content. This is the difference between journaling and scrapbooking. And both happen on the same blog frequently - especially this one. And sometimes in the same post - where the scrapbooking is complimented with heavy editorial.
Seems Blogpulse has now identified 10 million blogs, ranking Yahoo as the most cited news source. Those are interesting words. News source. That's all the are - like Google. They merely package - using people. Google uses machines. I wonder how much of this is a result of utility vs. popularity - Yahoo's persistent archives mean articles are around for a long time... But as this piece points out, that can't be all it is as the dreaded NY Times came in second.
What this would suggest is that the originators are as important as the pointers.
The complete top-ten list:
• Yahoo! News (40,145 citations)
• New York Times (37,825 citations)
• CNN (27,099 citations)
• Washington Post (22,729 citations)
• MSNBC (20,116 citations)
• BBC (10,993 citations)
• The Guardian (UK) (9,788 citations)
• San Francisco Chronicle (9,706 citations)
• News.com (9,129 citations)
• Los Angeles Times (8,579 citations)
So where is Google News!
You can also read the most popular articles.
Most of us have answers to this question down pat... What is hard is getting at the depth, richness and warmth of the blogosphere. Now I'm not getting all soft here but two things got me thinking about this.
First, I posted on the arrival last week of Sophia, our gorgeous little daughter. To date we've had a couple of hundred emails from folks including friends and family... through people we've worked with... to long-lost acquaintances.. through to folks I've never met in person but regularly exchange news and views with... through to folks I've never met but read my blog and are kind enough to post comments. In fact, the warm messages reaching us through the blogosphere and email are far exceeding traditional cards arriving in the mail.
Reflecting on this it really throws light on the blogosphere being a place for community and conversation. And that this is a pretty warm place (too often I've associated it with debate and expressions of point of view) - a place where people are genuinely interested in others and express that. Maybe it attracts that kind of person - not everyone is up for such open expression in public forums.
And this is what makes the blogosphere very different. Steve Rubel and I have never met in person but we exchange views via our blogs and trackbacks. The utility of the technology enables him to post a comment and for hundreds of others to send an email saying congrats - and for others to click and email (not everyone is into the comments thing).
It's as if though the blog becomes the center point of your own little opt-in community. You get to fuel it with dialog and if folks like it, they come back and not only share in your views but participate in your little walk through life. And maybe this is what will separate the corporate blog from the rich professional and personal blogs? I'm not interested in being exclusive in what gets to be a blog and what doesn't. But different blog types are here and definitions are useful.
So, in a much broader context, maybe we end-up with definitions that look something like this:
Web = Cold Blogosphere = Warmth
Web = Transmission Blogosphere = Conversation
Web = Place Blogosphere = Community
Web = Anonymous Blogosphere = Personal
Web = Company Blogosphere = People
Web = Content Blogosphere = Expression
Web = Cookie Cutter Blogosphere = Individual
Web = Closed Blogosphere = Participatory
Web = Unresponsive Blogosphere = Gives thanks....
More than anything, this is the notion of conversation that was bought so vividly to life by David Weinberger and others in The ClueTrain Manifesto. While the writing was electric I couldn't help feel that it all was a little academic - a place in the future. My experience over the past few days is quite the opposite. This is very warm and personal. It's something very different. And it's here. Thank you!
Frankly this piece is so much better than BusinessWeek's somewhat pathetic reporting on the Blogosphere. It gets at why Participatory Communications is turning the way businesses communicate on its head. It gets at how blogging builds dialog with and within communities.
Sun was fast to embrace blogging... Shel covers the blogosphere with comments from Noel 'The Terrier' Hartzel and Schwartz.
Noel's quote gets at the new era of Participatory Communications which is upon us:
Sun's blogging explosion was embraced without ambivalence by the corporate communications people. "Most PR teams would cringe, but ours didn't. We have a transparent culture and competitors like HP do not. Our PR team is thinking about how to use technology and culture as a corporate weapon and blogging does both. Hartzell added, "Sun is a company whose success is based on building communities. So a key function of the communications team is to be an information gatherer, analyzer and counselor on participating in these communities. - Noel
“It’s kerosene on the fire. The Participation Age has been on the Net since email. Moving from there to blogging is like moving from carrier pigeon to phone. The emergence of blogs means we have passed beyond early crude tools and it results in fundamental changes on how everything relates. While a journalist is writing about my blog, I’m blogging about his journalism. This is change.” - Schwartz.
From Schwartz’ perspective, blogging is not an appendage to Sun’s marketing communications strategy, it is central to it. He believes that the 1000 Sun bloggers contribution hasn’t just moved the needle for the company, “they’ve moved the whole damned compass. The perception of Sun as a faithful and authentic tech company is now very strong. What blogs have done has authenticated the Sun brand more than a billion dollar ad campaign could have done. I care more about the ink you get from developer community than any other coverage. Sun has experienced a sea change in their perception of us and that has come from blogs. Everyone blogging at Sun is verifying that we possess a culture of tenacity and authenticity. “ - The Red Couch
Don't have time to craft a look at this one but here you go...
Blogs Will Change Your Business
Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later
Get it... and if you don't know what it is, here is the VOIP Wiki...
Take a look at Rojo. This reader essentially bring aggregation to blog aggregation... And here's a terrific review of the product. Still not enough to get me off NetNewswire but you might like it...
Thanks to Tom for the pointer...
NYTimes.com's RSS feeds generated 5.9 million pageviews on the site in March, which represents a 342% increase year over year and a 39% increase from February's 4.3 million pageviews. The sections that were most popular among RSS feeds included: Washington and Business. The feeds have been available since February 2002 (www.nytimes.com/rss).
A post worth reading... of course blogs won't replace news releases. Much like blogs won't replace magazines. I've written about this so many times that I won't rant on again about it here. Other than to say...
The press release performs a key technical communications function. It's the official, final, absolute communication from a company. And that moves markets and influences decisions like no other. It'll be here for a long time. Ok, it's getting commoditized like everything else - prices are coming down, richness and distribution are going up, folks are getting much more targetted... but they are here to stay... I promise.
Too often people think of this little paper mechanisim when thinking of a release. For the most part they are digital and have as much utility as a blog. Many are RSS enabled - just like a blog. (I get all my Sun releases via RSS). And as Shel rightly points out, they're written for the press. At least some of them are.
And as Shel says:
None of which suggests that company executives shouldn’t blog. Opening a channel of communcation between an organization’s leadership and key external audiences is one of the best business uses of blogs. But it doesn’t eliminate the need for press releases any more than the introduction of e-mail eliminated the need for telephones and faxes.
Can an employer intervene? From the NY Times this morning::
As the practice of blogging has spread, employees like Mr. Kennedy are coming to the realization that corporations, which spend millions of dollars protecting their brands, are under no particular obligation to tolerate threats, real or perceived, from the activities of people who become identified with those brands, even if it is on their personal Web sites.
They are also learning that the law offers no special protections for blogging - certainly no more than for any other off-duty activity.
The notion that you should blog anonymously to avoid getting fired though - as suggested by the Electronic Frontier Foundation - is, well, ludicrous. First, anonymity is pretty much impossible on the web. If what you are going to blog is that bad it's likely all you would be doing is staying the inevitable. Blogging on your work or employer in a public forum needs to be done in the context of their policies, practices and culture. A better rule might have been, use your head - and where you're not confident of that, blog on something other than you boss. You have no protection either way. Get over it.
Blogging on matters of work, while still working where you work, will always be a bit of a grey area. No policy will fix that without killing the spirit in which blogging is undertaken. Nial's story is a positive one. One based on open dialog. The employer acted responsibly. The employee acted responsibly - and with sensitivity. Where there is no dialog folks get fired and employers good names get tarnished.
One of my keynote attendees suggested that once a week I do a blink on a social networking technology. I'm not sure how long I will keep this up but in the spirit of giving anything a try... take a look at ZoomInfo. A pretty quick way to search on people. It's kind of accurate and very interesting.
:: ZoomInfo is a unique summarization search engine that finds, understands and extracts the latest online information about people and companies and instantly delivers it to you in concise and useful summaries.
And then there is BlogBridge... I'm testing this RSS reader. Not sure if I see enough to abandon my investment in NetNewswire. It's nice to have an alternative on the Mac though. And, it includes a server-based service (free!) that enables you to synchronize your subscriptions between different computers.
Looks like Spin Bunny is no more. I'm not sure but this could be the first Blog casualty of a legal attack? While the content was very UK centric it was always an entertaining read. I hope we know who did this to them and soon. Send the names over Bunny - we'll get them!
Like they really need the money... but I guess there is nothing like a little commercial validation.
"As the Web becomes more personal, what is the right way for the advertiser to integrate itself into an increasingly personal experience?" asked Gayle Troberman, MSN's director of branded entertainment and experiences team. "Once a user chooses to go to a branded experience -- the advertiser is not just creating an impression, they are creating an advocate."
I'm not sure I get that we are choosing a "branded experience"... and that by advertising on our blog we become advocates. We do by default, but not by intent. Maybe that's a reason not to use MSN Spaces - the fact you don't get to choose who is advertising in your personal space.
According to AdAge:
Pushed live as a Beta test in December, the MSN Spaces concept, which provides anyone with an easy way to start a personal Web log, has proven wildly popular. MSN said 4.5 million people -- or more than a million a month since testing began -- signed up to use the free feature.
Steve Gillmor makes a really interesting point:
This is the subscription economy we’re talking about. Not the Blogosphere so much as the Syndisphere. In this ecosystem the contract is based on continued attention, not captured attention. It leverages a form of broadcast couch potato dynamics, where inertia keeps you tuned from ER to Leno to Today. When CSI broke that cycle, it was a big deal. In the Syndisphere once you’ve signed on, it takes more effort than it’s worth to sign off. Unsubscribing requires real motivation.
I've recently found myself unsubscribing from Blogs that don't add a whole lot of value to my reading. It's a personal thing. But isn't it nice to be able to build your own news flow? As we've all been saying - the user is in control. But what this points to is how little control I have - I get to turn the on and off switch, but the rest is way out of my reach.
Thanks to Dan for the pointer. Good study and well worth the read:-
There's a dramatic revolution taking place in the news business today and it isn't about TV anchor changes, scandals at storied newspapers or embedded reporters. The future course of the news, including the basic assumptions about how we consume news and information and make decisions in a democratic society are being altered by technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.
I wonder how much time PR people - agency and client side - spend discussing media strategy and trends. We tend to make assumptions about what people are reading and when. In the (near) future, media planning and strategy will become as an important function to PR as it is to advertising today.
The dramatic shift in how young people access the news raises a question about how democracy and the flow of information will interact in the years ahead. Not only is a large segment of the population moving away from traditional news institutions, but there has also been an explosion of alternative news sources. Some have been assembled by traditional news organizations delivering information in print, on television and on the radio as well as via the Internet and mobile devices. Others include the thousands of blogs created by journalists, activists and citizens at large.
While the outright collapse of large news organizations is hardly imminent, as the new century progresses, it's hard to escape the fact that their franchises have eroded and their futures are far from certain. A turnaround is certainly possible, but only for those news organizations willing to invest time, thought and resources into engaging their audiences, especially younger consumers. The trend lines are clear. So is the importance of a dynamic news business to our civic life, to our educational future, and to our democracy.
Washington Post reports on the rise of the CEO blogger with this observation:
Since blogs became the next big thing, an increasing number of companies have come to see them as the next great public relations vehicle -- a way for executives to demonstrate their casual, interactive side.
But, of course, the executives do nothing of the sort. Their attempts at hip, guerrilla-style blogging are often pained -- and painful. By Amy Joyce, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, March 19, 2005; Page A01.
While it's a subject for a much longer post, I've long held the view that Execs can benefit from thinking of themselves as brands, and managing themselves as such. That doesn't mean they are brands - although some argue that a person is as much a brand as a product, especially one so much in the public eye as a Steve Jobs. There's no question in my mind that blogs (depending on execution) can either enhance or detract from the Executive's brand. She gives a couple of good examples of how in one instance the communications appears painful, and in another, hip, cool and wired.
Plenty of quotes from Jonathan Schwartz, COO, Sun Microsystems. He gets at the core issue of communicating via blogs - and in fact, of building any brand - authenticity. "Authenticity is fundamental," he said in an interview. "Blogs get pretty dull if you just blog your products. There has to be something personal."
Tip for communicators:- when assisting Execs with their entry into the blogosphere, focus on authenticity. While they are communicating on behalf of the company, it's them doing the communicating. Their blog can't be a marketing vehicle or alternate news distribution mechanism to PR Newswire. It's a place for them to engage in conversations with the market, and for us all to get a better feel for who they are and what they care about.
[update: Some great comments by Elisa over at the Worker Bees Blog. I agree with her that some of the criticism leveled by BW is a little unfair. I really like Lutz' blog - the fact he welcomes comments (something most "corporate" blogs don't do) earns him big brownie points.
Washington Post reports that the issue of transparency and news dissemination is getting a little murky in DC:
The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them.
That message, in memos sent Friday to federal agency heads and general counsels, contradicts a Feb. 17 memo from Comptroller General David M. Walker. Walker wrote that such stories -- designed to resemble independently reported broadcast news stories so that TV stations can run them without editing -- violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.
We appear to have a right to do propaganda, but what about covert propaganda?
The legal counsel's office "does not agree with GAO that the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an agency's role in producing and disseminating information is undisclosed or 'covert,' regardless of whether the content of the message is 'propaganda,' " Bradbury wrote. "Our view is that the prohibition does not apply where there is no advocacy of a particular viewpoint, and therefore it does not apply to the legitimate provision of information concerning the programs administered by an agency."
GIVE ME A BREAK! They really believe these VNRs - with PR people pretending to work as baggage screeners - and packed full of propaganda - represent pure reporting - by that I mean, the don't advocate a particular viewpoint. Well, in that case, lets get rid of the media all together.
I need to go cool-down somewhere... the parting quote from the story says it all...
"Whether in the form of a payment to an actual journalist, or through the creation of a fake one, it is wrong to deceive the public with the creation of phony news stories," the lawmakers wrote
Take a look at the new Java.com from Sun. Great looking site and one of my fave places for free software. Wish the Apple zone was clearer... Here's my new fave time killer...
Just posted this to Brandshift.
Apple Ruling Has Implications for Brand Communicatiors
Friday's ruling in favor of Apple has deep implications for brand communicators. Now I'm no lawyer and experience tells me that different corporate legal counsel will come at this one from different directions. So, take this as you will.
AP: Judge: Apple can press Bloggers on sources. A California judge on Friday ruled that three independent online reporters may have to divulge confidential sources in a lawsuit brought by Apple Computer Inc., ruling that there are no legal protections for those who publish a company's trade secrets.
The Judge seems to have not bought into Apple's argument that Bloggers are not Journalists, preferring to sidestep the issue all together. As I've stated on my blog, I don't believe bloggers are journalists unless they are blogging to what they regard to be a media blog. But that doesn't mean we're not entitled to report and to all the protections of the Fifth Amendment. And, the blogosphere shouldn't be confined by traditional notions of publishing. Suddenly, anyone who has information in the public interest must check with a company to see if it is a trade secret? To which the response is naturally, yes.
There are so many worrying things about this ruling. The least of which is a Judge ruling on the nature of content. "Even if the movants are journalists, this is not the equivalent of a free pass." Kleinberg firmly defined the trade secret information as stolen property. Assuming that all information belongs to someone else, where does this one stop?
Anyway, enough of the rights rant. So what are the implications for brand communicators?
These are just five of the implications of this absurd but critical case for brand communicators. I'd love to build a list of other implications and then publish them as a whole. Drop your thoughts into the comments section... I'll leave you with Charles Cooper's comments from his C/Net column:
The real subtext is this: Apple is directed by a collection of control freaks who would have found themselves quite at home in the Nixon White House. The big difference being that reporters had the constitutional freedom to report on the Nixon White House.
Apple has been an infuriating company for me to cover over the last two decades or so. I adore its technology but can't stomach its overreaching sense of entitlement. Other tech companies deal with leaks all the time. Nobody's happy when their discussions wind up as fodder for the rumor mill. But that's part of the give-and-take that's defined the technology business for decades.
One of the things I've always liked about blogging is that the blog also functions as my virtual scapbook and archive. Benjamin flagged an interesting project to capture the collective memory of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates project in Central Park.
Using Flickr's unique photo sharing platform, the Institute for the Future of the Book will gather pictures of the Gates from anyone and everyone who wants to contribute. The aim is to harness the creativity and insight of thousands to build a kind of collective memory machine - one that is designed not just for the moment, but as a lasting and definitive document of the Gates and our experience of them.
Tim Bray on why Blogging is good for your career. Here are a couple of the reasons he cites (there are five more on his site).
To which I would add...
Nice overview from Businessweek.
Great link off Micropersuasion to this handy guide on how to get the most out of del.cio.us. This is a great example of revolutionary social networking technologies. I've been using Blink for years - but this is free...
Our rights are under attack. We all seem so preoccupied with figuring out how to enjoy, play in, and monetize the blogosphere that the issue of free speech isn't getting the play it deserves. Gillmor says it all:
Apple Computer's disgusting attack on three online journalism sites, in a witch hunt to find out who (if anyone) inside the company leaked information about allegedly upcoming products, has taken a nasty turn. Too bad it's not surprising -- and journalists of all kinds should be paying attention.
A judge in California has decided that the sites don't qualify as "journalism" (AP) under state law and/or the First Amendment. By his bizarre and dangerous standard, I apparently stopped being a journalist the day I left my newspaper job after a quarter-century of writing for newspapers. (Note: At the request of lawyers for the sites, I've filed declarations -- here (104k PDF) and here (1MB PDF) -- saying that in my opinion these sites are performing a journalistic function. I haven't been paid to do so.)
Not just journalists but PR people and citizens. The notion that we should not undertake activities such as reporting or analysis on the basis that only professionals can do that is ludicrous. Suddenly we are faced with a very ominous situation in which the Government, companies and big media don't just get to control what we see and say - but also who gets to say it and when.
BusinessWeek also chimes in saying:
If the ruling holds, it will set a precedent certain to reverberate through the blogosphere because this means under the law bloggers aren't considered journalists.
Problem is, we don't want to be considered journalists - at least not me - all we want is the same right to responsible free speech (we still get sued for libel and fired for stupidity, just like everyone else). But for those sites publishing, or functioning, as media outlets - why shouldn't they be subject to the same laws - or afforded the same rights - as Big Media?
Kevin Bankston of the EFF says:
"They're people who gather news, and they do so with the intent to disseminate that news to the public. The only distinction to be made between these people and professional journalists at The New York Times is that they're online only."
I'm not sure this works in terms of the entire blogosphere - and in all fairness he is speaking to the specific issue of blog media sites. We don't fact-check like they do. We're far more imperfect. We're into the conversation less than the transmission. While Kevin's argument is a good one I come at it from a slightly different direction.
And that is, implicit in the right to free speech is the right to report and when governments and corporations start medling in that, we all need to be very, very worried. Secondarily, they should also stay away from medling in what defines media and what doesn't. It's the fact that we're not reporters or big media outlets, or, in print - that makes this such a revoultionary medium.
"[The] Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief ... Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.'"
-- American Library Association president Michael Gorman's bid to become the blogging community's next whipping boy. Care of Good Morning Silicon Valley, Friday Feb 25, 2005.
He goes on to say... "A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People."
As they say in NZ... "yeah, right mate..."