So the Edwards campaign, thru Eventful.com, is running Demand and Be Heard a competition where "The US city with the most Demands gets a visit from Edwards."
Naturally, this puts big cities at a population advantage--that is, if they can get people to vote for their city.
Enter scrappy little Columbus, KY--population 229. On the surface, it doesn't stand a chance now, does it? Well....I'm not so sure
An attack ad? of are they just engaging in some savvy, cheeky marketing? (okay, maybe they went overboard about the canned apples and margarine...)
Personally, I wish Columbus, KY great luck here--and apparently, right now, they're not doing too bad, with 1797 votes in their favor (yes, that's more than five times their population. Pretty amazing use of social media, eh??)
--much thanks to Justin Kazmark of the Morris-King Company...
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
mediabistro.com sold for $23 million
Congratulations Laurel Touby! She just sold Mediabistro.com, her online networking site for media professionals & freelancers, to JupiterMedia for $23 million....
Touby launched Mediabistro in 1999, after hosting a number of successful f2f netwoking parties in NYC...
Laurel knows networking for sure! I spoke with her two years ago when I interviewed her for an article on blogging for the Smith Alumni mag. The interview I did didn't make it to the mag (another alum's interview did) but it was great to have had the opportunity to speak with Laurel. A savvy Connector for sure!
Touby launched Mediabistro in 1999, after hosting a number of successful f2f netwoking parties in NYC...
Laurel knows networking for sure! I spoke with her two years ago when I interviewed her for an article on blogging for the Smith Alumni mag. The interview I did didn't make it to the mag (another alum's interview did) but it was great to have had the opportunity to speak with Laurel. A savvy Connector for sure!
Surrender Your Content! Beware of Social Networks Bearing Gifts
Over the past week I received two spam requests for information from two new women's "social networks." (note: I won't link to these--not going to feed them) Now, spamming someone is not cool--but spamming someone to join or give content to a "social network" is even more specious....
One request, from a "mommy" network, simply wanted a link to my blog. The other, which maintains that it is a Hollywood-based women's professional network, asked for me to fill out some questions so that they could post a bio of me on their site....
And why should I do either? In the first case, I'm not a mommy. Still, I went in and checked the "network"--found that it was nothing more than an aggegator of feeds to other blog (that probably didn't know they are being aggregated) and news stories from wire services. So, there was no clear and compelling reason for me to give the link to my blog or to reciprocate. Remember, blogging is a social thing, and there has to be a couple of individuals involved in the pursuit, and some original content, for me to get involved.
The second network--the Hollywood-based network--scared the begebus out me. It was loaded with adware--from in-context ads (those nasty green underlined things) to fraudulent "videos" that lead to product websites. None of the content was original--all was cribbed from other sources without original thought involved. And there was no discernable "about" information on the person or persons who put the "network" together. So, once again, why should I give this "network" any of my information? So that whomever put it together has free content to help her make money? This is totally unethical and not what forming a network is about.
So, where might these folks be getting the ideas to do this? First, it may be coming from solid information on women's online habits (most of it culled from impotant reports from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that's meant to help us understand what we do and why.)The Pew studies show that women enjoy being online and that life online is important to us. Second, the incentive may also come from the "make money from your blog!" rhetoric that's proliferating these days. This way of thinking has turned blogging from something that is social, that might help one's career (if one wants to write), into a mercenary mission to get as many suckers as possible to generate income from aggregated stolen content.
So, if you are spammed by requests to give links or content to any "social network," check the network out. Ask these questions:
Does the network have original content?
How many ads are there? are the ads intrusive and overwhelming?
Is anybody home? Is there a person with a valid email addy running the network?
If nobody's home and all you're seeing is content belonging to someone else, and loads of ads--stay away! This site may be fraudulent and the only motive for this site may be to generate income for the person running it--not for any social purposes at all.
(that many of these networks are preying on women is even more insidious. beware, ladies!)
social networks, web 2.0, media
One request, from a "mommy" network, simply wanted a link to my blog. The other, which maintains that it is a Hollywood-based women's professional network, asked for me to fill out some questions so that they could post a bio of me on their site....
And why should I do either? In the first case, I'm not a mommy. Still, I went in and checked the "network"--found that it was nothing more than an aggegator of feeds to other blog (that probably didn't know they are being aggregated) and news stories from wire services. So, there was no clear and compelling reason for me to give the link to my blog or to reciprocate. Remember, blogging is a social thing, and there has to be a couple of individuals involved in the pursuit, and some original content, for me to get involved.
The second network--the Hollywood-based network--scared the begebus out me. It was loaded with adware--from in-context ads (those nasty green underlined things) to fraudulent "videos" that lead to product websites. None of the content was original--all was cribbed from other sources without original thought involved. And there was no discernable "about" information on the person or persons who put the "network" together. So, once again, why should I give this "network" any of my information? So that whomever put it together has free content to help her make money? This is totally unethical and not what forming a network is about.
So, where might these folks be getting the ideas to do this? First, it may be coming from solid information on women's online habits (most of it culled from impotant reports from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that's meant to help us understand what we do and why.)The Pew studies show that women enjoy being online and that life online is important to us. Second, the incentive may also come from the "make money from your blog!" rhetoric that's proliferating these days. This way of thinking has turned blogging from something that is social, that might help one's career (if one wants to write), into a mercenary mission to get as many suckers as possible to generate income from aggregated stolen content.
So, if you are spammed by requests to give links or content to any "social network," check the network out. Ask these questions:
If nobody's home and all you're seeing is content belonging to someone else, and loads of ads--stay away! This site may be fraudulent and the only motive for this site may be to generate income for the person running it--not for any social purposes at all.
(that many of these networks are preying on women is even more insidious. beware, ladies!)
social networks, web 2.0, media
Monday, July 16, 2007
Assignment Zero Post-Mortem: Participation was Paramount
This morning, as I read --Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back and Lessons Learned--Jeff Howe's Assignment Zero post-mortem--I noted that Jeff mentions the importance of participation, but doesn't mention either myself nor Amanda Michel, and our key roles in keeping people interested and active with Assignment Zero....
As I quickly IM'd Amanda--who's now on Jay's new project Off the Bus with former fellow Deaniac Zack Exley--I could not help feeling somewhat crestfallen by Jeff's omission (although I know Jeff had a tough job encapsulating the AZ experience in 2,000 words.)
I came into the project at a most difficult time--during the 500-volunteer crush that Steve Fox experienced, the insanity of amassing the significant number of volunteer editors that were necessary for the project, and the massive complaints about site usability. One of the first things I noticed--and Amanda had hinted about to me--was the inability of many of the journalists to understand the importance of organizing and staying in constant contact with volunteers. I'd had much experience in online forums, messagboards and blogs (going back to '98) as well as a very successful run as the Volunteer Co-ordinator for the Northampton Independent Film Festival (where I consolidated a haphazard volunteer recruitment policy into a more concentrated, online focused effort.)
Amanda and I spent many days trying to figure out how to get through to the journalists, and decided it was perhaps better to do what we could to bolster the volunteers (some of the journalists got it--because they had done some interaction already--while others just didn't.) One of the first things we did was to start regular newsletter-style email communications with everyone registered to the site. This was something we both knew worked--it gives volunteers the sense that they are needed and important to the project...
And it's true: without volunteers, there would be no project.
At one point, it hit me that there were far too many stories to handle. I'd asked Lauren Sandler how stories were triaged in a newsroom. She explained how stories where no one was showing interest pretty much fell off the vine--and we thought that might happen with AZ. But, that wasn't happening with AZ. We were putting topics out there, and even if one person showed remote interest, we kept them. We hadn't figured out a system for deciding what not to work on. So, we had a potential unlimited number of contributors--thus a potential unlimited number of opinions and story lines for the feature. For our purposes, we needed a different system.
It became imperative to cut things down a bit or risk losing everyone who volunteered...because, at this point, volunteers were asking us for more direction--where they were needed. They were getting tired of us asking them for what aspect of crowdsourcing they were interested in writing about.
So, the first triage was to cap the projects. This was a process--not wholly cut-and-dried. Amanda and I corresponded with Jeff, David, Jay and Lauren. We decided to spin off the Citizendium story to publish early--it had a fantastic, dedicated writer, Mike Ho, and some good reporting from a few other AZ participants.
We also decided to give the blog a group voice rather than a single personality- driven voice. The project, after all, wasn't about one person on the Team, but about all of us on the Team working together.
Then, myself, Amanda, Jeff, David, and Jay concentrated on what stories to keep and what stories to triage. Amanda and I had been looking at stats weekly, and I mentioned to her that it might be a good idea to "unpack" the stats we had so that we could see the focus of our volunteers' attention.
We were running on a tight timetable. There was a limit to what we could accomplish because time, and volunteers had been lost (for a number of reasons.) We couldn't waste the volunteer's time nor their attention.
Amanda drew up a concise report as to where people's interests were directed--lots of numbers broken down incrementally. We then strategized on what kind of reporting a group of folks from a wide variety of backgrounds might be able to accomplish. My experience had been that the Q&A format was the easiest to handle--David agreed this might be easiest for a group with a broad level of journalistic experience. We could see from the reports that there were some topics where a significant amount of work had been done, and others where there remained a good amount of interest. So, the decision was made to allow those topics that were developing to go to full fruition, while others would be truncated to Q&A status.
Even Jeff mentions that many of the Q&As exceeded his expectations. Indeed, excellent work was done by the majority of our participants.
One thing to note here: every day we faced an onslaught of email. We received email to the "assignment zero editors" account, as well as individually. A key skill for dealing with a crushing volume of email is knowing how to filter communications--knowing when to read and when to respond (or not.) With- out this skill, it is easy to feel one is the center of a project's communications universe and never get any work done. David, Amanda and myself became proficient at filtering, about letting some things go, and knowing when to clarify others.
Angela Pacienza, Director of Online News for The Canadian Press came onboard to help us organize the Q&As, and Hillary Rosner (former editor at the Village Voice and contributing editor at New York magazine) took the reins on the features.
All of this, even with the new divisions of responsibility, still required constant communication with the volunteers. Now, though, there were editors that volunteer contributors could go to with questions.
But none of us on the Team were ever working in isolation (none of us were ever not working either.) Deftly communicating via email and IM became of paramount importance--both with volunteers and among ourselves. A curious thing about working virtually: egos must be left at the door. When working virtually, and all over the country, it's easy to evolve into a 24 hour operation....and because there's no social outlet, it can be very easy to take others for granted (or imagine slights.) Upon first reading an email, nothing can be projected into email text. The reader must be dispassionate in order to maintain equilibrium and to respond constructively. If something seems biting--let it go, or ask the person privately. Don't escalate. Yet we did thank one another often, and were much kinder to one another when personal matters kept us from being on-call 24/7. We didn't learn quite as much about each other had we worked in the same office--but we were able to humanize one another and work consistenly and with compassion.
After all, if you think about it, compassion may take time, but it is truly an easy thing to do...
All in all, we did our best with what we had at the particular time in history--and did rather well. We learned that in "crowd" or "open"-source projects, organizing the crowd is vitally important. People want to be a part of new--possibly historic--undertakings, and when they step up, need to be acknowledged. Once acknowledged, they need to know what's going on--even moreso with virtual projects where there's the perception that there's no Central Office. People don't want to just hang out waiting for instruction--in fact, they expect to be given direction right away. This means that the core group--the leadership of the project--has to be unified, have good communication, know the details of the "game plan." If the Team doesn't know the game plan, or if there's a breakdown anywhere in the chain of communication--if anyone's ego or need to horde information gets in the way--then things will go wrong. And with Asssignment Zero, more things went right than they ever went wrong.
Expect the unexpected. Be prepared for any eventuality. Fuck the critics. Communicate Openly. Love your People.
That's what it's really about.
I've also written another piece on participaton in Assignment Zero for the Connected Intelligence Wiki...
Update: Jeff Howe's posted important follow-up to his Wired.com article (which, he informs me, will have an addendum.)Jeff says:
and don't forget to check out David--the hardest working young man in journalism--Cohn's fab perspective on AZ. Suffice to say I'd be super-happy work again with DigiDave. (oh, and David's also started a link post at the NewAssignment.net blog.)
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Open Source Journalism, Wired magazine, Assignment Zero
As I quickly IM'd Amanda--who's now on Jay's new project Off the Bus with former fellow Deaniac Zack Exley--I could not help feeling somewhat crestfallen by Jeff's omission (although I know Jeff had a tough job encapsulating the AZ experience in 2,000 words.)
I came into the project at a most difficult time--during the 500-volunteer crush that Steve Fox experienced, the insanity of amassing the significant number of volunteer editors that were necessary for the project, and the massive complaints about site usability. One of the first things I noticed--and Amanda had hinted about to me--was the inability of many of the journalists to understand the importance of organizing and staying in constant contact with volunteers. I'd had much experience in online forums, messagboards and blogs (going back to '98) as well as a very successful run as the Volunteer Co-ordinator for the Northampton Independent Film Festival (where I consolidated a haphazard volunteer recruitment policy into a more concentrated, online focused effort.)
Amanda and I spent many days trying to figure out how to get through to the journalists, and decided it was perhaps better to do what we could to bolster the volunteers (some of the journalists got it--because they had done some interaction already--while others just didn't.) One of the first things we did was to start regular newsletter-style email communications with everyone registered to the site. This was something we both knew worked--it gives volunteers the sense that they are needed and important to the project...
And it's true: without volunteers, there would be no project.
At one point, it hit me that there were far too many stories to handle. I'd asked Lauren Sandler how stories were triaged in a newsroom. She explained how stories where no one was showing interest pretty much fell off the vine--and we thought that might happen with AZ. But, that wasn't happening with AZ. We were putting topics out there, and even if one person showed remote interest, we kept them. We hadn't figured out a system for deciding what not to work on. So, we had a potential unlimited number of contributors--thus a potential unlimited number of opinions and story lines for the feature. For our purposes, we needed a different system.
It became imperative to cut things down a bit or risk losing everyone who volunteered...because, at this point, volunteers were asking us for more direction--where they were needed. They were getting tired of us asking them for what aspect of crowdsourcing they were interested in writing about.
So, the first triage was to cap the projects. This was a process--not wholly cut-and-dried. Amanda and I corresponded with Jeff, David, Jay and Lauren. We decided to spin off the Citizendium story to publish early--it had a fantastic, dedicated writer, Mike Ho, and some good reporting from a few other AZ participants.
We also decided to give the blog a group voice rather than a single personality- driven voice. The project, after all, wasn't about one person on the Team, but about all of us on the Team working together.
Then, myself, Amanda, Jeff, David, and Jay concentrated on what stories to keep and what stories to triage. Amanda and I had been looking at stats weekly, and I mentioned to her that it might be a good idea to "unpack" the stats we had so that we could see the focus of our volunteers' attention.
We were running on a tight timetable. There was a limit to what we could accomplish because time, and volunteers had been lost (for a number of reasons.) We couldn't waste the volunteer's time nor their attention.
Amanda drew up a concise report as to where people's interests were directed--lots of numbers broken down incrementally. We then strategized on what kind of reporting a group of folks from a wide variety of backgrounds might be able to accomplish. My experience had been that the Q&A format was the easiest to handle--David agreed this might be easiest for a group with a broad level of journalistic experience. We could see from the reports that there were some topics where a significant amount of work had been done, and others where there remained a good amount of interest. So, the decision was made to allow those topics that were developing to go to full fruition, while others would be truncated to Q&A status.
Even Jeff mentions that many of the Q&As exceeded his expectations. Indeed, excellent work was done by the majority of our participants.
One thing to note here: every day we faced an onslaught of email. We received email to the "assignment zero editors" account, as well as individually. A key skill for dealing with a crushing volume of email is knowing how to filter communications--knowing when to read and when to respond (or not.) With- out this skill, it is easy to feel one is the center of a project's communications universe and never get any work done. David, Amanda and myself became proficient at filtering, about letting some things go, and knowing when to clarify others.
Angela Pacienza, Director of Online News for The Canadian Press came onboard to help us organize the Q&As, and Hillary Rosner (former editor at the Village Voice and contributing editor at New York magazine) took the reins on the features.
All of this, even with the new divisions of responsibility, still required constant communication with the volunteers. Now, though, there were editors that volunteer contributors could go to with questions.
But none of us on the Team were ever working in isolation (none of us were ever not working either.) Deftly communicating via email and IM became of paramount importance--both with volunteers and among ourselves. A curious thing about working virtually: egos must be left at the door. When working virtually, and all over the country, it's easy to evolve into a 24 hour operation....and because there's no social outlet, it can be very easy to take others for granted (or imagine slights.) Upon first reading an email, nothing can be projected into email text. The reader must be dispassionate in order to maintain equilibrium and to respond constructively. If something seems biting--let it go, or ask the person privately. Don't escalate. Yet we did thank one another often, and were much kinder to one another when personal matters kept us from being on-call 24/7. We didn't learn quite as much about each other had we worked in the same office--but we were able to humanize one another and work consistenly and with compassion.
After all, if you think about it, compassion may take time, but it is truly an easy thing to do...
All in all, we did our best with what we had at the particular time in history--and did rather well. We learned that in "crowd" or "open"-source projects, organizing the crowd is vitally important. People want to be a part of new--possibly historic--undertakings, and when they step up, need to be acknowledged. Once acknowledged, they need to know what's going on--even moreso with virtual projects where there's the perception that there's no Central Office. People don't want to just hang out waiting for instruction--in fact, they expect to be given direction right away. This means that the core group--the leadership of the project--has to be unified, have good communication, know the details of the "game plan." If the Team doesn't know the game plan, or if there's a breakdown anywhere in the chain of communication--if anyone's ego or need to horde information gets in the way--then things will go wrong. And with Asssignment Zero, more things went right than they ever went wrong.
Expect the unexpected. Be prepared for any eventuality. Fuck the critics. Communicate Openly. Love your People.
That's what it's really about.
I've also written another piece on participaton in Assignment Zero for the Connected Intelligence Wiki...
Update: Jeff Howe's posted important follow-up to his Wired.com article (which, he informs me, will have an addendum.)Jeff says:
The plain fact is that in the future, journalists will have to develop these skills if they want to succeed in a future in which their readers are also their writers. . .The crowd does not contribute in a vacuum. They do so as part of a community of other contributors. I see this again and again in researching my book and, no surprise, it was true with Assignment Zero as well.Yes, Jeff gets it. :-)
and don't forget to check out David--the hardest working young man in journalism--Cohn's fab perspective on AZ. Suffice to say I'd be super-happy work again with DigiDave. (oh, and David's also started a link post at the NewAssignment.net blog.)
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Open Source Journalism, Wired magazine, Assignment Zero
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Much Ado About Stickam....
Shocking news of the day: latest teen craze StickAm is owned by a company that also streams porn! (or so the New York Timesreports today....)
Funny thing about this..on July 3, the local NBC affiliate WWLP-22 ran a story on Stickam quoting one Stickam user as saying "Girls shaking their butts, that is the biggest popular videos on Stickam." (sounds like the user is pretty much a viewer. as we all know by now, it's only 10% of viewers who bother to participate. And this particular Stickam viewer certainly knows what he's looking for on Stickam)
This fits totally into 22's usual "The Internet is EVIL!" stance. Whenever the network has anything to say about the Internet, it usually quotes someone from law enforcement, a teen-ager, or a clueless parent. It never bothers to speak with anyone who is involved in life online. I guess when you're staring down the barrel of massive digitization and may lose significant revenue because of the Internet, then it makes sense to demonize it and keep the populace thinking that online's a very dangerous place...
But I digress....
The NYTimes article goes on to discuss the allegations of Stickam's former VP, Alex Becker (and some documents) that Stickam's parent company Advanced Video Communications, is managed and owned by Wataru Takahashi, a Japanese businessman who's made a killing in online porn.....not to mention that Stickam NYC shares offices with the AVC's porn folks....
Makes me wonder, though, when Rupert Murdoch took MySpace, which was loaded with age-inappropriate content when he bought it, and started marketing it to teens, that no one batted as much as an eyelash about it. (Even though I was freaking out--yes, I had a MySpace profile back before Rupe bought it. I knew full well what was on that site and knew any curious teen would eventually find its unrestricted adult content. Oh, and isn't a soft-core porn starlet that has the most "friends" on MySpace?? guess this is ok for teens....after all, you can make some good money doing porn, or so I'm told...)
Fascinating, though, is the discussion on Techcrunch's Stickam piece. A number of folks think it's no big whoop to have an adult content producer also hosting a teen video social networking site (rather oxymoronic term when you think about it.) If you think about Rupe and MySpace, sure, it's no big whoop. It will also be no big whoop to you if you're a raging capitalist who likes drawing parallels between Stickam's lineage and Kraft Foods having once been owned by tobacco giant Altira (a.k.a. Phillip Morris) (although Kraft and Altira never shared the same offices.)
What most of the Techcrunchies as well as the fearful folks at 22 and most people don't know or remember is how so much social networking--and many "advances" in Internet commerce--were often tested in the world of adult content (I could do the research on this, but someone in the Techcrunch comments also mentions it, so I'm not smoking crack on this one....) What's rather alarming is the short, bleedingly open and obvious hop from adult content to teen content. Up to this point, we really haven't cared all that much about this small factor. We haven't really cared all that much when someone like Christina Aguilera (who I actually like) is featured simultaneously on the cover of Seventeen and the cover of GQ (in a more seductive pose)....
And that all of this is just OK....
Although I hesitate to jump into the camp of Donna Rice and Enough is Enough. IMO, Rice's org, and many others like hers, takes the whole notion of protecting children just a bit too far. Many of these orgs that seem to want to protect children merely want to sanitize the Internet for your protection (yes, like a toilet seat in a hotel.)
Enough is Enough attacks the wrong parties in all this. It's not the entire Internet that needs to be sanitized. The Internet's a big place, and adults should be able to partake of various forms of adult entertainment without having to hand over a credit card or a social security number. Perhaps what's needed is for Rice's org--and other orgs like hers--is to be more like Eda LeShan and, with great reason and forethought, target marketers who are taking products meant for adults and marketing them to teens.
Think about it: what does a teen need with a webcam and the ability to stream live video of him/herself? Is there any clear and compelling reason for this?
Chances are the answer--aside from "my kid needs to be the coolest on the block"--is no. Teens don't need to be streaming video of themselves so that other teens can see them. It's not going to make them more creative, or give them some sort of creative edge with video. That's just really, really good marketing convincing y'all of that notion...
Don't believe the hype....
So, is Stickam, and its association with porn, really an issue? Well, not necessarily an issue inasmuch as it is a good story--and a story that should have been done before in relation to many, many other products and services that make a bit of backdoor dirty money via porn. Stickam's not alone. But Sickam also shouldn't be marketed to teens as the Next Big Thing....
And maybe that's where Sickam really went wrong...
stickam, media, web 2.0, social networking
Funny thing about this..on July 3, the local NBC affiliate WWLP-22 ran a story on Stickam quoting one Stickam user as saying "Girls shaking their butts, that is the biggest popular videos on Stickam." (sounds like the user is pretty much a viewer. as we all know by now, it's only 10% of viewers who bother to participate. And this particular Stickam viewer certainly knows what he's looking for on Stickam)
This fits totally into 22's usual "The Internet is EVIL!" stance. Whenever the network has anything to say about the Internet, it usually quotes someone from law enforcement, a teen-ager, or a clueless parent. It never bothers to speak with anyone who is involved in life online. I guess when you're staring down the barrel of massive digitization and may lose significant revenue because of the Internet, then it makes sense to demonize it and keep the populace thinking that online's a very dangerous place...
But I digress....
The NYTimes article goes on to discuss the allegations of Stickam's former VP, Alex Becker (and some documents) that Stickam's parent company Advanced Video Communications, is managed and owned by Wataru Takahashi, a Japanese businessman who's made a killing in online porn.....not to mention that Stickam NYC shares offices with the AVC's porn folks....
Makes me wonder, though, when Rupert Murdoch took MySpace, which was loaded with age-inappropriate content when he bought it, and started marketing it to teens, that no one batted as much as an eyelash about it. (Even though I was freaking out--yes, I had a MySpace profile back before Rupe bought it. I knew full well what was on that site and knew any curious teen would eventually find its unrestricted adult content. Oh, and isn't a soft-core porn starlet that has the most "friends" on MySpace?? guess this is ok for teens....after all, you can make some good money doing porn, or so I'm told...)
Fascinating, though, is the discussion on Techcrunch's Stickam piece. A number of folks think it's no big whoop to have an adult content producer also hosting a teen video social networking site (rather oxymoronic term when you think about it.) If you think about Rupe and MySpace, sure, it's no big whoop. It will also be no big whoop to you if you're a raging capitalist who likes drawing parallels between Stickam's lineage and Kraft Foods having once been owned by tobacco giant Altira (a.k.a. Phillip Morris) (although Kraft and Altira never shared the same offices.)
What most of the Techcrunchies as well as the fearful folks at 22 and most people don't know or remember is how so much social networking--and many "advances" in Internet commerce--were often tested in the world of adult content (I could do the research on this, but someone in the Techcrunch comments also mentions it, so I'm not smoking crack on this one....) What's rather alarming is the short, bleedingly open and obvious hop from adult content to teen content. Up to this point, we really haven't cared all that much about this small factor. We haven't really cared all that much when someone like Christina Aguilera (who I actually like) is featured simultaneously on the cover of Seventeen and the cover of GQ (in a more seductive pose)....
And that all of this is just OK....
Although I hesitate to jump into the camp of Donna Rice and Enough is Enough. IMO, Rice's org, and many others like hers, takes the whole notion of protecting children just a bit too far. Many of these orgs that seem to want to protect children merely want to sanitize the Internet for your protection (yes, like a toilet seat in a hotel.)
Enough is Enough attacks the wrong parties in all this. It's not the entire Internet that needs to be sanitized. The Internet's a big place, and adults should be able to partake of various forms of adult entertainment without having to hand over a credit card or a social security number. Perhaps what's needed is for Rice's org--and other orgs like hers--is to be more like Eda LeShan and, with great reason and forethought, target marketers who are taking products meant for adults and marketing them to teens.
Think about it: what does a teen need with a webcam and the ability to stream live video of him/herself? Is there any clear and compelling reason for this?
Chances are the answer--aside from "my kid needs to be the coolest on the block"--is no. Teens don't need to be streaming video of themselves so that other teens can see them. It's not going to make them more creative, or give them some sort of creative edge with video. That's just really, really good marketing convincing y'all of that notion...
Don't believe the hype....
So, is Stickam, and its association with porn, really an issue? Well, not necessarily an issue inasmuch as it is a good story--and a story that should have been done before in relation to many, many other products and services that make a bit of backdoor dirty money via porn. Stickam's not alone. But Sickam also shouldn't be marketed to teens as the Next Big Thing....
And maybe that's where Sickam really went wrong...
stickam, media, web 2.0, social networking
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
We Media Miami: Looking back on what we accomplished
Came across the following video on the iFOCOS.org homepage--that nicely encapsulates the experience of We Media Miami....
Online Videos by Veoh.com
What many people do not understand is that if you knock hard enough, and write thoughtfully enough, you *can* get into the doors of think-tanks like iFOCOS. But, you have to prove yourself. You cannot just write a bunch of bile-sotted bilgewater and expect doors to open. Doesn't work that way.
And, yes, iFOCOS is actually doing something to change things. Andrew and Dale worked pretty hard to put together a diverse group of folks at WeMedia Miami, and many viewpoints that might never have been heard were indeed able to speak to those C-level executives (not an easy thing to do--takes lots of confidence and a modicum of chuzpah, to say the least)
I'm looking forward to what's next with these guys...and how much further we can take the dialogue. After all, this is now a two-way medium. The channels need to be kept open.
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, WeMedia Miami, web 2.0,
Online Videos by Veoh.com
What many people do not understand is that if you knock hard enough, and write thoughtfully enough, you *can* get into the doors of think-tanks like iFOCOS. But, you have to prove yourself. You cannot just write a bunch of bile-sotted bilgewater and expect doors to open. Doesn't work that way.
And, yes, iFOCOS is actually doing something to change things. Andrew and Dale worked pretty hard to put together a diverse group of folks at WeMedia Miami, and many viewpoints that might never have been heard were indeed able to speak to those C-level executives (not an easy thing to do--takes lots of confidence and a modicum of chuzpah, to say the least)
I'm looking forward to what's next with these guys...and how much further we can take the dialogue. After all, this is now a two-way medium. The channels need to be kept open.
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, WeMedia Miami, web 2.0,
Monday, July 09, 2007
Assignment Zero gets Wired
Finally!! The first installment of Assignment Zero stories to be published at Wired.com appeared today! They are:
An intro from Jay Rosen with links to all the Q&As that were done....
Open Source Journalism: It's a Lot Tougher Than You Think (believe me, this is an understatement if ever there was one...)
Creative Crowdwriting: The Open Book
Q&A Your Assignment: Art The Andrea Grover interview--a great read!
Stock Waves: Citizen Photo Journalists Are Changing the Rules
Much thanks to everyone who worked so very hard on getting this package together...from all the folks listed in they bylines to David Cohn, Amanda Michel, Angela Pacienza, and Hillary Rosner. We did it!!
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Web 2.0, open source journalism,
An intro from Jay Rosen with links to all the Q&As that were done....
Open Source Journalism: It's a Lot Tougher Than You Think (believe me, this is an understatement if ever there was one...)
Creative Crowdwriting: The Open Book
Q&A Your Assignment: Art The Andrea Grover interview--a great read!
Stock Waves: Citizen Photo Journalists Are Changing the Rules
Much thanks to everyone who worked so very hard on getting this package together...from all the folks listed in they bylines to David Cohn, Amanda Michel, Angela Pacienza, and Hillary Rosner. We did it!!
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Web 2.0, open source journalism,
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
UNLV Study Finds Bloggers Not Misanthropic Opinion Freaks After All
In January, I reported on a survey on blogging and social interaction being conducted by the research team headded by Dr. Reza Torkzadeh and grad students Reza Vaezi and Jerry Chang at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Department of Management Information Systems. Here, from Reza Vaezi--the student who originally contacted me about the survey--are some of the survey results. And they're pretty positive about us:
Weblog users are socially active people. About half the respondents helped to elaborate a special issue or concern in the Blogosphere and 32.8% of them initiated elaboration of a special issue or concern. Also, 39.3% of respondents joined a campaign through Weblogs. The majority of Weblog users said they knew in which Weblog they can find their needed information; suggesting that they are skilled Internet users and very familiar with Blogosphere.
Weblog users and social interaction. About half the respondents stated that they have met other people through Weblog and 12.6% stated that they dated people they met through Weblog; not only they use Weblog to communicate but they also meet each other. Responses to the open ended question, “how many friends you have made through Weblogs”, range from zero to 100.
Weblog influence on the individual. We received many comments about Weblogs. One respondent said, “Blogs have changed the way I work and socialize. I generally find everything, from current events (news) to cooking recipes through blogs or links to websites that were posted on blogs”. Another respondent said, “I have owed many things from writing my personal Weblog. I have become a ‘web developing’ teacher and a journalist by lessons I learned and experiences I got from Blogging. So, I’m a big fan of Weblogs, Blogging and Blogosphere.
Weblog and social issues. We received many comments that reflect how bloggers see the role of Weblog in society. “I believe that Weblogs have changed many things on the internet and in the real world, especially in the world of media”. Another comment reads, “I believe that Weblogs are an essential and valuable part of society. They allow people who would not normally have a voice in American society, in particular, to speak and be heard by others who have the same feelings, opinions, problems, experiences, etc.” Another respondent said: “I think Weblogs are a great way for people around the world to communicate and share information and ideas. One respondent said, “The best thing about Weblogs is bringing people together over a common interest.
Weblog and work. Results suggest that 6.7% of respondents tried to hire someone based on what they read on his/her Weblog. Also, 12.3% of respondents said they received a job offer or were invited to an interview because of their Weblog; an example of Weblogs use in human resource management.
The team also concluded that such positive results demonstrated "a clear need for research to explore and examine impact of this technology on the individual, organization, and society."
Here! Here!
There's now a follow up survey posted here: http://faculty.unlv.edu/rtorkzadeh/survey/
I'll be going in and taking this survey and hope you will too!
web 2.0,media, culture tech Blogs Blogging Bloggers
The team also concluded that such positive results demonstrated "a clear need for research to explore and examine impact of this technology on the individual, organization, and society."
Here! Here!
There's now a follow up survey posted here: http://faculty.unlv.edu/rtorkzadeh/survey/
I'll be going in and taking this survey and hope you will too!
web 2.0,media, culture tech Blogs Blogging Bloggers
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
AOL takes Blog-esque Approach to Relaunched News Site
When I heard that AOL had re-created its AOLNews site to be a bit more "bloggy," I began to be very afraid.
And there was reason to be afraid.
Yes, it's quite blog-like. Very much like a blog that someone just started and is throwing the kitchen-sink into it to see what works. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Throw it all against the wall-polls, comments, pundits, a paltry newsblogroll--and see if any of it sticks...
And, by mid-day, the more serious headline shown in the photo (from Reuters--probably of AOL's "news" page rather than "home" page) was replaced by one of Paris Hilton leaving jail....
Hmmm...not really surprising when we consider that the guy hired to do this re-design, Lewis D'Vorkin, has had super-success with TMZ (which is a joint-venture between AOL and TimeWarner)
If anybody knows how to catch those gossip-mongering eyeballs, it's Lewis!
So, I guess the big brains at AOL believe we all want to see our news presented in gossp-blog format. And we want copious polls and lots and lots of places to leave comments for....
Well, for whom? Mo Rocca? Or Dinesh D'Souza? On D'Souza's post on Paris Hilton (did we need another one???) there are some comments from various people with first names, only one linking back to the old AOLNews main page, which is now screaming about the murder-suicide of wrestler Chris Benoit and family....
Oh, and the comments to D'Souza's story is obviously meant to direct us into a conversation with other community members and not directly with D'Souza.
After all, do these perfect pundits really have the time for the people? I tend to think many are more like LA Time's Joe Stein on the matter of columnist-to-people communication.
All of this uber-bloggyness at AOLNews seems so bloody banal--a stilted attempt to make people feel like they're communicating with other people, when, at the moment, all it feels like is yelling down a well...
Yelling down a well about more bloody-ridiculous-awful celebrity gossip...
The way I always thought the Digg model would lead to a tyrrany of geeks dictating the news, I fear that AOL's new model will lead to a tyrrany of vapid celebrity-chaser wannabees dictating the news.
Or maybe dictating what they think is news. As for the rest of us--well--I guess news is relative.....
Journalism, AOL, media, web 2.0, Blogs
And there was reason to be afraid.
Yes, it's quite blog-like. Very much like a blog that someone just started and is throwing the kitchen-sink into it to see what works. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Throw it all against the wall-polls, comments, pundits, a paltry newsblogroll--and see if any of it sticks...
And, by mid-day, the more serious headline shown in the photo (from Reuters--probably of AOL's "news" page rather than "home" page) was replaced by one of Paris Hilton leaving jail....
Hmmm...not really surprising when we consider that the guy hired to do this re-design, Lewis D'Vorkin, has had super-success with TMZ (which is a joint-venture between AOL and TimeWarner)
If anybody knows how to catch those gossip-mongering eyeballs, it's Lewis!
So, I guess the big brains at AOL believe we all want to see our news presented in gossp-blog format. And we want copious polls and lots and lots of places to leave comments for....
Well, for whom? Mo Rocca? Or Dinesh D'Souza? On D'Souza's post on Paris Hilton (did we need another one???) there are some comments from various people with first names, only one linking back to the old AOLNews main page, which is now screaming about the murder-suicide of wrestler Chris Benoit and family....
Oh, and the comments to D'Souza's story is obviously meant to direct us into a conversation with other community members and not directly with D'Souza.
After all, do these perfect pundits really have the time for the people? I tend to think many are more like LA Time's Joe Stein on the matter of columnist-to-people communication.
All of this uber-bloggyness at AOLNews seems so bloody banal--a stilted attempt to make people feel like they're communicating with other people, when, at the moment, all it feels like is yelling down a well...
Yelling down a well about more bloody-ridiculous-awful celebrity gossip...
The way I always thought the Digg model would lead to a tyrrany of geeks dictating the news, I fear that AOL's new model will lead to a tyrrany of vapid celebrity-chaser wannabees dictating the news.
Or maybe dictating what they think is news. As for the rest of us--well--I guess news is relative.....
Journalism, AOL, media, web 2.0, Blogs
Monday, June 25, 2007
Assignment Zero/Wired.com to publish on 7/11/07
The results of all our hard work at Assignment Zero will start to show up on Wired.com starting on July 11, 2007. From what I understand, the various pieces will be published in three installments (yeah, we super-over-achieved on this one, and weren't allowed to hog a whole isssue....)
Also, Jay Rosen's next project has a website up: check out OfftheBus.Net....
Also, Jay Rosen's next project has a website up: check out OfftheBus.Net....
Did blogging kill the CEO star?? The Street's Brett Arends writes a decent piece on social media, Eric Jackson, and the fall of Terry Semel Brett wonders: hmmm....did social media hav anything to do with it?
All I can say is, "Well, duh!" that's why I started following the story back in January....
(via the I Want Media newsletter...)
All I can say is, "Well, duh!" that's why I started following the story back in January....
(via the I Want Media newsletter...)
Slate V Launches
Launched today: Slate V, the video verison of Slate magazine. The sponsor messages are unobtrusive--but you can't get the embed code for several of the vids (esp. the rather funny "Damned Spot" ones. Here's one on the Gotcha! game on YouTube:
the Gotcha! game was discussed back at the Personal Democracy Forum--and the video version is really only an extension of what's been going on in print for awhile....
From what I understand, they're looking to include user-generated video on Slate V--and to pay for it. Will it be more dog-and-hula-hoop or man getting hit in groin with football stuff?
I don't know...it's kinda interesting....maybe a new way to waste time when I'm sitting around wondering when the next contract's going to fall from the sky...then again, maybe I really *like* watching pirated old Man From Uncle and Paul Revere and the Raiders stuff....
the Gotcha! game was discussed back at the Personal Democracy Forum--and the video version is really only an extension of what's been going on in print for awhile....
From what I understand, they're looking to include user-generated video on Slate V--and to pay for it. Will it be more dog-and-hula-hoop or man getting hit in groin with football stuff?
I don't know...it's kinda interesting....maybe a new way to waste time when I'm sitting around wondering when the next contract's going to fall from the sky...then again, maybe I really *like* watching pirated old Man From Uncle and Paul Revere and the Raiders stuff....
Supernova2007: How did Social Media Get to be Anti-Social?
It's taken me two days to get over the jet lag I encounterd thanks to a red-eye flight after the most excellent Supernova2007 conference ended on friday...yet I keep going over the conversation that occurred among the guys of theSocial Web panel, and find myself a bit troubled by some of their assertions about social media....
If we are to consider the opinions of this panel, they would have us believe that people use social media basically to continue their pre-existing physical world connections in an online environment--and that most of the time, people do not know what they want from social media.
To those of us who use social media on a regular basis, this is insulting nonsense.
Yet I think that when Daivd Liu of AOL (who I have a feeling I've met before) says "Lots of research shows that people don't know what they want," he misunderstood the importance of social media and confused it with what people may or may not want from information-oriented media.
There's much that says that people very in general feel overwhelmed by the plethora of choices for where they might find news and information--they're not sure about websites or blogs mostly, sometimes social news sites like Digg or Reddit if they're into that kind of thing....but this is different from the uses of most social media...
Rather, social networks built on social media, like Facebook and MySpace, which are geared towards young people of a certain age and their particular social needs--keeping in touch friends when they're away from college, finding cool new music, and making sure that mom doesn't find out they're talking to strangers--are leaving certain analyists with the impression that People only want to socialize with others that they already know. And, if they're not getting information from people they already know, that they're totally confused about their information.
I'd venture to say this is a false impression with regard to how many of us have used social media since the early days of LiveJournal and Blogger--which had little to do with finding accurate news reports (we went to newspaper websites for that.) Rather, the reasons people began to use these forms of social media has been to create their own space where people might be able to find them, and to give them an online persona that might aid in finding and sharing information with like-minded others...
In other words: social media helped to create new friends and new relationships....not to just maintain old ones, and thus expose people to new information Think about it: in the beginning, online social networks weren't populated with your friends. Often, unless your friends also had the time and money for internet access, your friends were people you called on the phone (remember that device?) Social networking to maintain pre-existing f2f friendships more than likely began with Friendster, and gained much momentum with MySpace, leading into Facebook (which is something like Friendster...only more walled....)
This panel, however, seemed to be confused about how and why people continue to socialize on the Internet outside the confines of Facebook and MySpace. Martin Varsavsky of Fon made a number of statements about how he uses his social network, created thru social media, to exchange information just among his buddies....who sounded like they were people Martin already knew f2f....
How different this was from when I heard Stowe Boyd at the Corante Symposium on Social Architecture (Nov. 2005) talk about sharing playlists with a teenager on Last.fm. He was discovering new music through sharing with someone who he knew only online--not someone who was a continuation of his f2f social network....
So, is it coming to this: that our social media contacts are only people we know f2f? As I said, this is one thing when it comes to professional networking as in LinkedIn where you have either met the person or worked with the person with whom you are exchanging links. Professional-level online networking, however, is different when one is simply going online to be social. (Note: I have several contacts on LinkedIn that I have never met f2f, but have built strong and important relationships via open online communication.)
Or have we come to a point where we don't do that kind of thing anymore?
We are, perhaps, no longer free to be as social as we'd like to be. Maybe now we must be vetted by Facebook, approved of through MySpace, and stamped with the Twitter seal of approval before we can even begin to communicate with someone we don't know...
If we listen to this panel's assessment of The People, we're nothing more than a group of scared, clannish folk who can't make up our minds about where we get our news, nor with whom we want to make friends.
We can't be trusted to do that on our own. We're just too confused and vulnerable.
Gosh, that's insulting.
Which makes me think that, if we continue to listen to certain pundits about social media, we will find ourselves in very much a position where we are back to a broadcast/gatekeeper model of media within the Internet space.
And, who knows...maybe that's what they want after all....
But is it what We want???
Update: The BBC reports on research about Facebook conducted by danah boyd at UCBerkeley shows that Facebook is predominantly white and upper-crusty (also see danah's post.) It's the social network of the college "in crowd"--well, I stand by my opinion that to use Facebook as a way of vetting who's who and what's what in social media is a very, very bad idea. And we all might think a bit more about what Andrew Keen has to say about the long-term effects of this new brand of digital utopianism that's eminating from the Silly Valley (more on that in another post...)
If we are to consider the opinions of this panel, they would have us believe that people use social media basically to continue their pre-existing physical world connections in an online environment--and that most of the time, people do not know what they want from social media.
To those of us who use social media on a regular basis, this is insulting nonsense.
Yet I think that when Daivd Liu of AOL (who I have a feeling I've met before) says "Lots of research shows that people don't know what they want," he misunderstood the importance of social media and confused it with what people may or may not want from information-oriented media.
There's much that says that people very in general feel overwhelmed by the plethora of choices for where they might find news and information--they're not sure about websites or blogs mostly, sometimes social news sites like Digg or Reddit if they're into that kind of thing....but this is different from the uses of most social media...
Rather, social networks built on social media, like Facebook and MySpace, which are geared towards young people of a certain age and their particular social needs--keeping in touch friends when they're away from college, finding cool new music, and making sure that mom doesn't find out they're talking to strangers--are leaving certain analyists with the impression that People only want to socialize with others that they already know. And, if they're not getting information from people they already know, that they're totally confused about their information.
I'd venture to say this is a false impression with regard to how many of us have used social media since the early days of LiveJournal and Blogger--which had little to do with finding accurate news reports (we went to newspaper websites for that.) Rather, the reasons people began to use these forms of social media has been to create their own space where people might be able to find them, and to give them an online persona that might aid in finding and sharing information with like-minded others...
In other words: social media helped to create new friends and new relationships....not to just maintain old ones, and thus expose people to new information Think about it: in the beginning, online social networks weren't populated with your friends. Often, unless your friends also had the time and money for internet access, your friends were people you called on the phone (remember that device?) Social networking to maintain pre-existing f2f friendships more than likely began with Friendster, and gained much momentum with MySpace, leading into Facebook (which is something like Friendster...only more walled....)
This panel, however, seemed to be confused about how and why people continue to socialize on the Internet outside the confines of Facebook and MySpace. Martin Varsavsky of Fon made a number of statements about how he uses his social network, created thru social media, to exchange information just among his buddies....who sounded like they were people Martin already knew f2f....
How different this was from when I heard Stowe Boyd at the Corante Symposium on Social Architecture (Nov. 2005) talk about sharing playlists with a teenager on Last.fm. He was discovering new music through sharing with someone who he knew only online--not someone who was a continuation of his f2f social network....
So, is it coming to this: that our social media contacts are only people we know f2f? As I said, this is one thing when it comes to professional networking as in LinkedIn where you have either met the person or worked with the person with whom you are exchanging links. Professional-level online networking, however, is different when one is simply going online to be social. (Note: I have several contacts on LinkedIn that I have never met f2f, but have built strong and important relationships via open online communication.)
Or have we come to a point where we don't do that kind of thing anymore?
We are, perhaps, no longer free to be as social as we'd like to be. Maybe now we must be vetted by Facebook, approved of through MySpace, and stamped with the Twitter seal of approval before we can even begin to communicate with someone we don't know...
If we listen to this panel's assessment of The People, we're nothing more than a group of scared, clannish folk who can't make up our minds about where we get our news, nor with whom we want to make friends.
We can't be trusted to do that on our own. We're just too confused and vulnerable.
Gosh, that's insulting.
Which makes me think that, if we continue to listen to certain pundits about social media, we will find ourselves in very much a position where we are back to a broadcast/gatekeeper model of media within the Internet space.
And, who knows...maybe that's what they want after all....
But is it what We want???
Update: The BBC reports on research about Facebook conducted by danah boyd at UCBerkeley shows that Facebook is predominantly white and upper-crusty (also see danah's post.) It's the social network of the college "in crowd"--well, I stand by my opinion that to use Facebook as a way of vetting who's who and what's what in social media is a very, very bad idea. And we all might think a bit more about what Andrew Keen has to say about the long-term effects of this new brand of digital utopianism that's eminating from the Silly Valley (more on that in another post...)
Judge's missing pants not worth $54M
Sometimes common sense does prevail in the courts (which prompts me to write about it): the owner of Washington D.C.-based Custom Clearners will not have to pay $54 million to the crybaby who got his knickers in a bunch when the dry cleaner lost his favorite pair of pants.
Judge Judith Bartoff ruled that Custom Cleaners did not violate its "Satisfaction Guaranteed" policy and wrote: "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands" or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing. . .
We can now say that $54 mil to replace a pair of fancy-pants is indeed most unreasonable. Plaintiff Roy L. Pearson (also a judge) should have taken the $200 offered, got himself some new fancy-pants, and taken them to another place for alterations. Then, he could have simply used the power of word-of-mouth to express his true feelings about Custom.
Rather, he got greedy trying to make a point.
Pearson was ordered to pay Custom's court costs.
Judge Judith Bartoff ruled that Custom Cleaners did not violate its "Satisfaction Guaranteed" policy and wrote: "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands" or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing. . .
We can now say that $54 mil to replace a pair of fancy-pants is indeed most unreasonable. Plaintiff Roy L. Pearson (also a judge) should have taken the $200 offered, got himself some new fancy-pants, and taken them to another place for alterations. Then, he could have simply used the power of word-of-mouth to express his true feelings about Custom.
Rather, he got greedy trying to make a point.
Pearson was ordered to pay Custom's court costs.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
More shake-ups among Yahoo! top brass: according to a breaking report Chief Sales Officer Wenda Harris Millard is leaving as part of an ad sales reorganization... Perhaps the departure of Terry Semel last Tuesday was only the beginning.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Blogging Supernova2007: Can we innovate social structure?
Here at the Westin St Francis Hotel, I am lost in a sea of Illuminati--but I smile a lot. I'm attending Supernova 2007...spoke a bit at the Challenge Roundtable...everybody's on Twitter, using Jaiku....sending messages back and forth, but I look at the feed and wonder why I might want to read the musings of all these people...then again, why might they want to read my musings....series of thoughts expessed (by some) emphatically and declaratively....
At conferences like this--those that are high on techology--I sometimes feel the human element is lost in the massive conversations that take place on the stage. Theoreticals are great--but many of the theoreticals sound like oh so much "Technology, yay!" that I begin to wonder if the people are just a bunch of declaratives pumped out across the most AmazingNewPlatform....
But I got to meet Clay Shirky yesterday, and it was like encountering an old friend--who knows that community isn't just an abstract concept that needs just the right tool.
It's more than that. And we won't see how much more it is until everyone gets over the giddyness of MySpace and The Facebook--when all the dabblers and gawkers are burned away and we're just left with people who strongly believe that This Space is transformative and that there is, within this space, a capacity beyond tools to change human interaction...
So, I was very much looking forward to this morning's session with Clay and Denise Caruso on (I'll put up links to the recorded conversation as soon as it becomes available) Both talk about the human element of the Internet.
Denise raises several excellent points: about collaboration yielding better resuts, and how fears often hold it back. How many of these AmazingNewPlatforms (tools) aren't making us more social, but, rather, promoting something anti-social.
Against social. Siloing us off from one another in our own hermetically sealed thought bubbles....
Caruso raises the issue of how can we automate serendipity--well, we kinda do that now, but we complain when the app that recommends a new band isn't recommending the right kind of new band. We want directed serendipity. A serendipity that conforms to our tastes and likes and doesn't leave us with a nasty taste in our mouth or stale information about a travel destination we've already visited...
So, automating serendipity is, perhaps asking a bit too much. And automating a kind of social network serendipity--well, I'm not sure that would work either. Imagine the parents freaking out when, in the new social network, someone gets recommened to be a friend to their teen-ager, and they don't approve of this person....
Actually, that might be telling parents more about a kid than they'd like to know...shattering the illusions...
Denise leaves with an interesting question: can we build social networks of people who aren't like us??
All depends. I've kind of done it. We have some underlying commonalities, but most of the people I know are much higher up on the economic food chain than I am at the present moment, and sometimes we're not the people who might "friend" one another just on an arbitrary list of literary and musical likes and dislikes.
Shirky talks about a particular Shinto shrine, which is torn down every certain number of years, only to be re-built with wood from the same forest where the first of this particular Shinto shrine was built many, many centuries ago....
He talks about the "love" that flourished (flourishes?) in the perl community--how over ten years ago he could point to this community and get answers there quicker than from a manual...
And he brings up the "echo chamber" concept--and why don't we have a metric to help us understand when exactly the group has become so tight that it devolves into groupthink...
(because, really, sometimes echo chambers are communities of support--even in politics...)
Yet how do we get people to talk across boundaries?
Underneath all of this, we're talking about a fundamental social change in the way we view one another within This Space. Yet we talk about innovation with tools and technologies, as if these things are going to make it easier to be human....
But the thing is, no matter how much we worship at the altar of techology, it's still the face to face human interaction that gets us to stop disliking one another, that helps us to see, hear, touch, smell the humanity of another person, and helps us bring them into our tribe.
Still, I think, how are we going to innovate changes in social structure? It's like Journalists getting mad at the People who leave nasty comments on their sites--when they gave people only a legal Terms of Service and never a social Code of Conduct. As if good conduct will somehow inhibit Free Speech. Isn't that kind of retro-hippie thinking? and it's been a long time since the Summer of Love....
Bottom line, isn't it kind of condescending? Only those on the Inside know how to behave. The rest--the unwashed masses--can never learn.
oh. please.
So, where can we begin to innovate changes in social structure? Where can we begin to encourage people who transgress boundaries, the pionneers who are beginning to bridge the new social classes/tribes that are forming on and around the Internet. Because tribalism happens. We have an "A-list" and "B-list" and The Rabble.Even the Rabble has a Rabble. And, like information, the tribes tend to exist in silos, separate and rarely interacting with other tribes....
Is it about more face to face? or better tools--like live streaming--to help us facilitate face to face?
Or is it just that we need to present examples--people who move in and out of cultures, and classes, ages, and tribes. Peopel who teach and who will become the kinds of people who cause the social structure to change.
Maybe it's just too early for this. Then again, what I see in social networking is, in many ways, an encouraging of young people to hang around with people only like themselves. Will they venture out? Do they feel safe enough?
I don't know.
So, I'm here for another day. In a very expensive hotel room with a super-comfy bed and hamburgers made from Kobe beef. and I think "well, how did I get here?" and maybe it was transgressing a boundary, and making friends, creating connections and understanding that transgressers have to form there own tribe within a tribe....
And maybe this is how we being to change the social structure....
Maybe...
At conferences like this--those that are high on techology--I sometimes feel the human element is lost in the massive conversations that take place on the stage. Theoreticals are great--but many of the theoreticals sound like oh so much "Technology, yay!" that I begin to wonder if the people are just a bunch of declaratives pumped out across the most AmazingNewPlatform....
But I got to meet Clay Shirky yesterday, and it was like encountering an old friend--who knows that community isn't just an abstract concept that needs just the right tool.
It's more than that. And we won't see how much more it is until everyone gets over the giddyness of MySpace and The Facebook--when all the dabblers and gawkers are burned away and we're just left with people who strongly believe that This Space is transformative and that there is, within this space, a capacity beyond tools to change human interaction...
So, I was very much looking forward to this morning's session with Clay and Denise Caruso on (I'll put up links to the recorded conversation as soon as it becomes available) Both talk about the human element of the Internet.
Denise raises several excellent points: about collaboration yielding better resuts, and how fears often hold it back. How many of these AmazingNewPlatforms (tools) aren't making us more social, but, rather, promoting something anti-social.
Against social. Siloing us off from one another in our own hermetically sealed thought bubbles....
Caruso raises the issue of how can we automate serendipity--well, we kinda do that now, but we complain when the app that recommends a new band isn't recommending the right kind of new band. We want directed serendipity. A serendipity that conforms to our tastes and likes and doesn't leave us with a nasty taste in our mouth or stale information about a travel destination we've already visited...
So, automating serendipity is, perhaps asking a bit too much. And automating a kind of social network serendipity--well, I'm not sure that would work either. Imagine the parents freaking out when, in the new social network, someone gets recommened to be a friend to their teen-ager, and they don't approve of this person....
Actually, that might be telling parents more about a kid than they'd like to know...shattering the illusions...
Denise leaves with an interesting question: can we build social networks of people who aren't like us??
All depends. I've kind of done it. We have some underlying commonalities, but most of the people I know are much higher up on the economic food chain than I am at the present moment, and sometimes we're not the people who might "friend" one another just on an arbitrary list of literary and musical likes and dislikes.
Shirky talks about a particular Shinto shrine, which is torn down every certain number of years, only to be re-built with wood from the same forest where the first of this particular Shinto shrine was built many, many centuries ago....
He talks about the "love" that flourished (flourishes?) in the perl community--how over ten years ago he could point to this community and get answers there quicker than from a manual...
And he brings up the "echo chamber" concept--and why don't we have a metric to help us understand when exactly the group has become so tight that it devolves into groupthink...
(because, really, sometimes echo chambers are communities of support--even in politics...)
Yet how do we get people to talk across boundaries?
Underneath all of this, we're talking about a fundamental social change in the way we view one another within This Space. Yet we talk about innovation with tools and technologies, as if these things are going to make it easier to be human....
But the thing is, no matter how much we worship at the altar of techology, it's still the face to face human interaction that gets us to stop disliking one another, that helps us to see, hear, touch, smell the humanity of another person, and helps us bring them into our tribe.
Still, I think, how are we going to innovate changes in social structure? It's like Journalists getting mad at the People who leave nasty comments on their sites--when they gave people only a legal Terms of Service and never a social Code of Conduct. As if good conduct will somehow inhibit Free Speech. Isn't that kind of retro-hippie thinking? and it's been a long time since the Summer of Love....
Bottom line, isn't it kind of condescending? Only those on the Inside know how to behave. The rest--the unwashed masses--can never learn.
oh. please.
So, where can we begin to innovate changes in social structure? Where can we begin to encourage people who transgress boundaries, the pionneers who are beginning to bridge the new social classes/tribes that are forming on and around the Internet. Because tribalism happens. We have an "A-list" and "B-list" and The Rabble.Even the Rabble has a Rabble. And, like information, the tribes tend to exist in silos, separate and rarely interacting with other tribes....
Is it about more face to face? or better tools--like live streaming--to help us facilitate face to face?
Or is it just that we need to present examples--people who move in and out of cultures, and classes, ages, and tribes. Peopel who teach and who will become the kinds of people who cause the social structure to change.
Maybe it's just too early for this. Then again, what I see in social networking is, in many ways, an encouraging of young people to hang around with people only like themselves. Will they venture out? Do they feel safe enough?
I don't know.
So, I'm here for another day. In a very expensive hotel room with a super-comfy bed and hamburgers made from Kobe beef. and I think "well, how did I get here?" and maybe it was transgressing a boundary, and making friends, creating connections and understanding that transgressers have to form there own tribe within a tribe....
And maybe this is how we being to change the social structure....
Maybe...
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sorry for the silence! At Assignment Zero we're still wrangling a bit with Wired, wating to hear about publication--and I'm prepping to speak atSupernova on one of the Challenge Day roundtable discussions. I may do some blogging from Supernova if I'm not too exhausted!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Yahoo Stockholder Meeting: Jackson Confronts Semel
This a.m, while imbibing of my morning coffee, I caught a vid on CBS of Eric Jackson confronting Terry Semel, Yahoo's CEO, about the drop in Yahoo's stock....
Back in January, I posted about Jackson's Yahoo Plan B--a bold attempt to organize stockholders using social media to take action against Semel. He did pretty good with a wiki and several videos Jackson made himself (here's one)
And while things may not have changed at Yahoo, Jackson's getting press in lots of pubs, including Business Week, and the WSJ noted the Board was approved with a low margin...(check out Jackson's Breakout Performance blog to see more reports)
Also check out Kara Swisher's report on the meeting. Kara notes: "Shareholder proposals–centered on performance goals for executives and also on human rights–did not pass, although some got a very high approval vote." So, Jackson wasn't the only shareholder with a proposal (you'll see another in Kara's video below) and it is indeed surprising that the proposals got high approval votes, even if they didn't pass...
It's just fascinating to note the use of social media to make an impact on a corporate board meeting. It may not have changed anything just yet...but there's a generation who's getting very comfortable with these tools....and eventually they'll have their own ideas about CEO salaries and the social consciences of corporations...
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, yahoo social media
Back in January, I posted about Jackson's Yahoo Plan B--a bold attempt to organize stockholders using social media to take action against Semel. He did pretty good with a wiki and several videos Jackson made himself (here's one)
And while things may not have changed at Yahoo, Jackson's getting press in lots of pubs, including Business Week, and the WSJ noted the Board was approved with a low margin...(check out Jackson's Breakout Performance blog to see more reports)
Also check out Kara Swisher's report on the meeting. Kara notes: "Shareholder proposals–centered on performance goals for executives and also on human rights–did not pass, although some got a very high approval vote." So, Jackson wasn't the only shareholder with a proposal (you'll see another in Kara's video below) and it is indeed surprising that the proposals got high approval votes, even if they didn't pass...
It's just fascinating to note the use of social media to make an impact on a corporate board meeting. It may not have changed anything just yet...but there's a generation who's getting very comfortable with these tools....and eventually they'll have their own ideas about CEO salaries and the social consciences of corporations...
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, yahoo social media
Thursday, June 07, 2007
NBC to allow User-Generators to post NBC video on blogs
Oh Joy! NBC has announced
If you think about it, the way NBC has asked for, and retains the rights to, any "user-generated content" The People submit to its site, this little widget could represent some sort of reciprocity with the user-generating community....
but I'm sensing some kind of 3-card monty shell game here...
Knowing there's no such thing as a free (widget-based) lunch, I wonder: what sort of code will be embedded in this widget? What sort of information will it be sending back to Big Media Brother about our "habits?" And will all this info end up coming back to bite us in form of endless adverts? Or something else? And will NBC let the user-generators know if they embed something like spyware in their widgets?
Still, will NBC only offer celebrity-soaked entertainment crud to be widgetized, or will they also let user-generators post snippetts of the presidential debates?
the latter would stimulate conversation about important democracy issues. the former will only perpetuate user-generated numbing-out.
Only time will tell if NBC decides to use its powers for Good--or for just the same old, same old...
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, Blogs
Independent Web site and blog owners can embed software widgets -- small bits of code that function as dynamic applications when installed on a Web page -- linked to text and video clips from its shows.
If you think about it, the way NBC has asked for, and retains the rights to, any "user-generated content" The People submit to its site, this little widget could represent some sort of reciprocity with the user-generating community....
but I'm sensing some kind of 3-card monty shell game here...
Knowing there's no such thing as a free (widget-based) lunch, I wonder: what sort of code will be embedded in this widget? What sort of information will it be sending back to Big Media Brother about our "habits?" And will all this info end up coming back to bite us in form of endless adverts? Or something else? And will NBC let the user-generators know if they embed something like spyware in their widgets?
Still, will NBC only offer celebrity-soaked entertainment crud to be widgetized, or will they also let user-generators post snippetts of the presidential debates?
the latter would stimulate conversation about important democracy issues. the former will only perpetuate user-generated numbing-out.
Only time will tell if NBC decides to use its powers for Good--or for just the same old, same old...
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, Blogs
Monday, June 04, 2007
Assignment Zero: Putting the Baby To Bed
We're in the final push at Assignment Zero, getting ready for publication at Wired.com tomorrow....
I've been a bit tired and ill today from an unknown food allergy--but I've been doing what I can. And I know my feeling are up and down, a bit mixed about being part of something really important, and that important thing ending. At the moment, I'm holding my breath. Tomorrow's the final pub. I'm worried about an emotional drop-off. I'm worried about drifting away. I'm worried about feeling lost.....
Because it's been a lot of work. A lot of different moving parts from the very beginning--putting together a list of projects, to organizing a community, to shaping the project-in-process into something different than what it was originally drafted. There's been a lot of emotion in that. There can be no denying that aspect.
And I'm not that dis-passionate about anything that I do...
The thing is, this has been a trial-and-error process- learning just as much what may be workable in a particular length of time as how to harness the interest of "amateurs" (who turned out to be not as amateur as first thought...more on that in another post)
It's been a lot of thinking about the nature and consequences of what we're doing.... sometimes feeling like Den Mother....Sometimes being a real Brat (or, some might say, Bitch...sometimes hard to tell the difference...)
Getting people involved was perhaps the hardest part. Not necessarily because we didn't offer interesting topics--but mostly because of simple human nature. The Internet is still full of lurkers and people often like to volunteer for for "a good cause" while it's unclear what they can do. That's not a bad thing though. That's just the way we volunteer for stuff--and how we lurk online.
Assignment Zero has, at times, been terribly exhilarating and at other times horribly frustrating. Throw-a-computer-across-the-room frustrating and "wow! that's amazing!" exhilarating....
I think the project definitely shows who might pitch in, and how to construct, an open-source journalism project on a topic of cutting edge high geekery. Because that's pretty much what we did...
Perhaps this is a bit disjointed because I'm a swirl of emotions and thoughts and wondering what's next--for the project as much as for me. What are outsiders going to think of all our hard work? Will it bring any insight on the topic? What was my contribution? Was it appreciated?
Could it have been done without me?
Frankly, I'm pretty darned proud of all the work so many people have put into Assignment Zero. Many people who've put up with the ups and downs while we've figured it out as we went along. Many people who've put in overtime to get it to this stage....
I've always been one of those people who's thought the word would go on quite fine if she wasn't here....
Maybe, this time, it couldn't have.
Tomorrow's another big day....
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, Assignment Zero
I've been a bit tired and ill today from an unknown food allergy--but I've been doing what I can. And I know my feeling are up and down, a bit mixed about being part of something really important, and that important thing ending. At the moment, I'm holding my breath. Tomorrow's the final pub. I'm worried about an emotional drop-off. I'm worried about drifting away. I'm worried about feeling lost.....
Because it's been a lot of work. A lot of different moving parts from the very beginning--putting together a list of projects, to organizing a community, to shaping the project-in-process into something different than what it was originally drafted. There's been a lot of emotion in that. There can be no denying that aspect.
And I'm not that dis-passionate about anything that I do...
The thing is, this has been a trial-and-error process- learning just as much what may be workable in a particular length of time as how to harness the interest of "amateurs" (who turned out to be not as amateur as first thought...more on that in another post)
It's been a lot of thinking about the nature and consequences of what we're doing.... sometimes feeling like Den Mother....Sometimes being a real Brat (or, some might say, Bitch...sometimes hard to tell the difference...)
Getting people involved was perhaps the hardest part. Not necessarily because we didn't offer interesting topics--but mostly because of simple human nature. The Internet is still full of lurkers and people often like to volunteer for for "a good cause" while it's unclear what they can do. That's not a bad thing though. That's just the way we volunteer for stuff--and how we lurk online.
Assignment Zero has, at times, been terribly exhilarating and at other times horribly frustrating. Throw-a-computer-across-the-room frustrating and "wow! that's amazing!" exhilarating....
I think the project definitely shows who might pitch in, and how to construct, an open-source journalism project on a topic of cutting edge high geekery. Because that's pretty much what we did...
Perhaps this is a bit disjointed because I'm a swirl of emotions and thoughts and wondering what's next--for the project as much as for me. What are outsiders going to think of all our hard work? Will it bring any insight on the topic? What was my contribution? Was it appreciated?
Could it have been done without me?
Frankly, I'm pretty darned proud of all the work so many people have put into Assignment Zero. Many people who've put up with the ups and downs while we've figured it out as we went along. Many people who've put in overtime to get it to this stage....
I've always been one of those people who's thought the word would go on quite fine if she wasn't here....
Maybe, this time, it couldn't have.
Tomorrow's another big day....
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, Assignment Zero
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
The Anonymity Issue Revisited (Again)
There was a small group--around 20--for the Springfield, MA installment of the New England News Forum's Civic News Library Listening Series but it was a crowd that was engaged and knowledgable about media--specifically alternatives to media. Folks like Stevie from freepress.org, Sheila McElwaine and Jeremy Cole from the Springfield Cultural Council, Jeff Potter of the Shelburne Falls Independent, writer/journalist Andrew Varnon (who blogged it), and River Brandon (husband of Urban Compass' Heather Brandon) were in the audience. There was also a reporter for the Republican but he didn't intro himself to any of The Rabble--although some may already have known him....his report ended up being a rather bland "say nice things" type of story.
But that doesn't help us have any kind of debate/meaningful conversation about the issues at hand...
As per usual with panels like this, the crowd knew a heck of a lot more about what is going on with the Internet than the panel. Three of the biggest bugaboos about online interaction--"civility," anonymity, and "too much information"--were brought up by the panel in a sort of "What's all this then!" Inspector Harry "Snapper" Organs/Monty Python kind of way...
It was the anonymity issue that kind of "got" me this time. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Madeleine Blaise brought up the specter of anonymity--and that people should not be anonymous when they are blogging....
The thing is, there are very good and important reasons why Americans choose to blog anonymously....and if journalists can't see, or know this about the society in which we live, then something is very, very wrong with our journalists...
I am always taken by a level of hypocracy people will express when it comes to anonymous U.S.-based blogs. If the anonymous work is from a country where political (and usually press) freedom is non-existent, we Americans believe the anonymous blogs. To those People, Anonymous Blogs are a godsend. Anonymous blogs begin to have more importance than the news reports from those regions (which we know are controlled.) Although, that doesn't mean all those anonymous blogs from all those places are any more or less "real" than anonymous blogs in the U.S.
To their credit, groups like Global Voices Online do an excellent job of filtering anonymous foreign blogs by having a staff of amazing editors who know the countries and the cultures enough, as well as know the world online enough, to be able to tell us that the anonymous blogs are indeed from their countries of origin....
It seems to me that it's journalists--not bloggers nor people who read blogs--who are having the trouble determining the authenticity of anonymous American blogs, and are the ones who want us to be totally transparent at all times.
Doesn't that kind of scream a bit about how out of touch some journalists might be with their own culture? Have some journalists reached a point in their careers where they need guides to culture online in order to understand how the People live within this space--and that in order to participate out here, one might need the cloak of anonymity.
For many private citizens, being anonymous online isn't about the press being free (they're fine with that) or about fear of reprisals from the government (some do, but not everyone)--what appears to be the most prevalent reason that gainfully employed adults will have anonymous/pseudonymous online identities is, in part, fear of reprisals from employers.
Yes, in a rampant capitalist society, where employment is "at will" and where your boss can Google you at any moment to find out what you're up to, just the way he/she might make a quickie legal background check, anonymity for many is paramount if they are going to participate in life online.
And it's not that people are hiding deep-dark secrets or mocking their bosses behind their backs. If you know your employer is conservative, you might not want her knowing you've left a diary or two on Daily Kos--and if you're employer's a "progressive," he might think a bit differently about you after reading your blog about the wonders of modified field rifles.
Still, you might not want your employer, or your neighbors for that matter, reading your profile on Match.com or AdultFriendFinder.com. You might not want them knowing it was you who left that snarky comment about "New Age" psychiatry on the F.A.C.T.net message board, or that you've been secretly writing a novel and asking for input from the denizens of AbsoluteWrite.com.
There are any number of reasons why an adult might want to keep mum about his/her personal life. There are more consequences for adults (as danah boyd once pointed out in a post vis a vis kids online)....
Yet just because there are more and serious consequences to what adults say online, it shouldn't mean that adults shouldn't be online. Many adults want to be online--and want to participate in the varied conversations and wonderful things going on out here, without having to worry about the judgements of neighbors and the potential loss of employment for words uttered that are totally unrelated to their employment....
We know one can get fired for talking anonymously online about one's job (Remember Dooce)--and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before what we say online that's unrelated to our jobs will have some serious consequences. If it hasn't happened already...
I know that when I open my mouth on my personal blog--about *anything* personal--that I am making myself potentially unemployable to someone out here in the Pioneer Valley. That's a cold, hard, fact of having a Google-able life.
If journalists in the United States are having trouble dealing with anonymous blogs, then they need guides--maybe some domestic versions of GVO. But they should not make demands on the people. Journalists must step back from the transparency needs of their professions and understand that for most adults, life in the United States is a complex dance-through-the-minefield of politeness and provincial mores, and that personal expression in any venue can have serious consequences to one's livelihood and social standing. Journalists might want to consider that not all bloggers want to be journalists, and that the "anonymous" may not be unknown to everyone--but only to them.
(a quick thanks to Melinda Casino, who, when I first met her, blogged anonymously at Sour Duck....and who taught me the value of anonymous blogging.)
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, Blog, Blogs
But that doesn't help us have any kind of debate/meaningful conversation about the issues at hand...
As per usual with panels like this, the crowd knew a heck of a lot more about what is going on with the Internet than the panel. Three of the biggest bugaboos about online interaction--"civility," anonymity, and "too much information"--were brought up by the panel in a sort of "What's all this then!" Inspector Harry "Snapper" Organs/Monty Python kind of way...
It was the anonymity issue that kind of "got" me this time. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Madeleine Blaise brought up the specter of anonymity--and that people should not be anonymous when they are blogging....
The thing is, there are very good and important reasons why Americans choose to blog anonymously....and if journalists can't see, or know this about the society in which we live, then something is very, very wrong with our journalists...
I am always taken by a level of hypocracy people will express when it comes to anonymous U.S.-based blogs. If the anonymous work is from a country where political (and usually press) freedom is non-existent, we Americans believe the anonymous blogs. To those People, Anonymous Blogs are a godsend. Anonymous blogs begin to have more importance than the news reports from those regions (which we know are controlled.) Although, that doesn't mean all those anonymous blogs from all those places are any more or less "real" than anonymous blogs in the U.S.
To their credit, groups like Global Voices Online do an excellent job of filtering anonymous foreign blogs by having a staff of amazing editors who know the countries and the cultures enough, as well as know the world online enough, to be able to tell us that the anonymous blogs are indeed from their countries of origin....
It seems to me that it's journalists--not bloggers nor people who read blogs--who are having the trouble determining the authenticity of anonymous American blogs, and are the ones who want us to be totally transparent at all times.
Doesn't that kind of scream a bit about how out of touch some journalists might be with their own culture? Have some journalists reached a point in their careers where they need guides to culture online in order to understand how the People live within this space--and that in order to participate out here, one might need the cloak of anonymity.
For many private citizens, being anonymous online isn't about the press being free (they're fine with that) or about fear of reprisals from the government (some do, but not everyone)--what appears to be the most prevalent reason that gainfully employed adults will have anonymous/pseudonymous online identities is, in part, fear of reprisals from employers.
Yes, in a rampant capitalist society, where employment is "at will" and where your boss can Google you at any moment to find out what you're up to, just the way he/she might make a quickie legal background check, anonymity for many is paramount if they are going to participate in life online.
And it's not that people are hiding deep-dark secrets or mocking their bosses behind their backs. If you know your employer is conservative, you might not want her knowing you've left a diary or two on Daily Kos--and if you're employer's a "progressive," he might think a bit differently about you after reading your blog about the wonders of modified field rifles.
Still, you might not want your employer, or your neighbors for that matter, reading your profile on Match.com or AdultFriendFinder.com. You might not want them knowing it was you who left that snarky comment about "New Age" psychiatry on the F.A.C.T.net message board, or that you've been secretly writing a novel and asking for input from the denizens of AbsoluteWrite.com.
There are any number of reasons why an adult might want to keep mum about his/her personal life. There are more consequences for adults (as danah boyd once pointed out in a post vis a vis kids online)....
Yet just because there are more and serious consequences to what adults say online, it shouldn't mean that adults shouldn't be online. Many adults want to be online--and want to participate in the varied conversations and wonderful things going on out here, without having to worry about the judgements of neighbors and the potential loss of employment for words uttered that are totally unrelated to their employment....
We know one can get fired for talking anonymously online about one's job (Remember Dooce)--and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before what we say online that's unrelated to our jobs will have some serious consequences. If it hasn't happened already...
I know that when I open my mouth on my personal blog--about *anything* personal--that I am making myself potentially unemployable to someone out here in the Pioneer Valley. That's a cold, hard, fact of having a Google-able life.
If journalists in the United States are having trouble dealing with anonymous blogs, then they need guides--maybe some domestic versions of GVO. But they should not make demands on the people. Journalists must step back from the transparency needs of their professions and understand that for most adults, life in the United States is a complex dance-through-the-minefield of politeness and provincial mores, and that personal expression in any venue can have serious consequences to one's livelihood and social standing. Journalists might want to consider that not all bloggers want to be journalists, and that the "anonymous" may not be unknown to everyone--but only to them.
(a quick thanks to Melinda Casino, who, when I first met her, blogged anonymously at Sour Duck....and who taught me the value of anonymous blogging.)
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, web 2.0, Blog, Blogs
Monday, May 28, 2007
Hugo Chavez and the Bloodless Murder of Free Speech in Venezuela
Update 5/29/07 BBC News reports that Chaves is moving to shut down another station, Globalvision, for inciting violence against him--and he is also suing CNN for "allegedly linking Mr Chavez to al-Qaeda." Globalvision is probably under attack because it aired footage of protests against the closing of RTC. The protests against Chavez's actions continue.
Coming across the headline Venezuela replaces opposition TV with state network I got very, very worried. And we all should be. Apparently, Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected leader of the people of Venezuela, has shut down Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), the 53-year old network that has been the only voice in opposition to Chavez...
who seems to have forgotten that he got into power from a democratic process and a free press....(or maybe that's exactly what he fears...)
Not everyone thinks Chavez's actions are so grand: 70-80 percent of the people oppose Chavez's unilateral decision to shut down the station.
And I am horrified by the rhetoric coming from the Chavez regime--which cites a lack of "journalistic ethics" as one of the reasons for shutting RCTV down.
Isn't that an easy thing to claim nowadays?
It's not just Chavez's actions, and rhetoric, that horrify me, but also the way our venerable press--the New York Times--has downplayed the incident with the headline Chavez Launches New Venezuelan TV Station
WTF??? Apparently, shutting down the only opposition TV station in Venezuela is nothing more than the launching of a new TV station...makes it sound like Rupert Murdoch just launched an new movie channel or something.
The Times story reads differently (surprise, surprise) and gives very good details regarding what Chavez has done. But the headline minimizes Chavez's decision--and that there has been significant public outcry opposing his decision.
We here in the U.S., and in the blogosphere, should take note of this. We must be ever vigilant to those who want to channel or censor and what we are doing because they are "concerned" about "ethics" out here, and what they view as "echo chambers" out to damage our democracy. Most of the criticism comes from outsiders who know little about how blogging funcitons--the mechanisms of credibility and conversation, which differ from the hidebound "ethical standards" of journalism that may approve of misleading headlines like that in the NYTimes--and cannot host any conversation to discuss or debate how those headlines mislead and minimize a serious consequence to the free speech of a people in a formerly democratic country.
Will some people in Venezuela turn to blogs? Possibly. But there's loads of rhetoric to help Chavez shut down blogs, too. Chavez can simply turn to the rhetoric of American media pundits for justificiation: blogs are "echo chambers" and have no "journalistic ethics." Chavez can also turn to media pundits if he wants to shut down the press in Venezuela--after all, who needs "dead tree media" anymore anyway?? People can simply get the filtered, government approved messages from state run TV or state run online media outlets...which, if Chavez has taken notes on how to manufacture "astroturf" could be easily made to look like the voice of the people...
Oh, Chavez may not have struck at online just yet--but if he's shut down the last oppostion TV station, you can bet that online media (just as much as the printed press) will be the next to go.
And this is how you can make something very, very bad look like it's the best thing in the world to happen to free speech....
RCTV's official reaction to the shutdown:
And this is the demonstration against the shutdown:
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, free speech, Hugo Chavez, RCTV, Web2.0
Coming across the headline Venezuela replaces opposition TV with state network I got very, very worried. And we all should be. Apparently, Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected leader of the people of Venezuela, has shut down Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), the 53-year old network that has been the only voice in opposition to Chavez...
who seems to have forgotten that he got into power from a democratic process and a free press....(or maybe that's exactly what he fears...)
Not everyone thinks Chavez's actions are so grand: 70-80 percent of the people oppose Chavez's unilateral decision to shut down the station.
And I am horrified by the rhetoric coming from the Chavez regime--which cites a lack of "journalistic ethics" as one of the reasons for shutting RCTV down.
Isn't that an easy thing to claim nowadays?
It's not just Chavez's actions, and rhetoric, that horrify me, but also the way our venerable press--the New York Times--has downplayed the incident with the headline Chavez Launches New Venezuelan TV Station
WTF??? Apparently, shutting down the only opposition TV station in Venezuela is nothing more than the launching of a new TV station...makes it sound like Rupert Murdoch just launched an new movie channel or something.
The Times story reads differently (surprise, surprise) and gives very good details regarding what Chavez has done. But the headline minimizes Chavez's decision--and that there has been significant public outcry opposing his decision.
We here in the U.S., and in the blogosphere, should take note of this. We must be ever vigilant to those who want to channel or censor and what we are doing because they are "concerned" about "ethics" out here, and what they view as "echo chambers" out to damage our democracy. Most of the criticism comes from outsiders who know little about how blogging funcitons--the mechanisms of credibility and conversation, which differ from the hidebound "ethical standards" of journalism that may approve of misleading headlines like that in the NYTimes--and cannot host any conversation to discuss or debate how those headlines mislead and minimize a serious consequence to the free speech of a people in a formerly democratic country.
Will some people in Venezuela turn to blogs? Possibly. But there's loads of rhetoric to help Chavez shut down blogs, too. Chavez can simply turn to the rhetoric of American media pundits for justificiation: blogs are "echo chambers" and have no "journalistic ethics." Chavez can also turn to media pundits if he wants to shut down the press in Venezuela--after all, who needs "dead tree media" anymore anyway?? People can simply get the filtered, government approved messages from state run TV or state run online media outlets...which, if Chavez has taken notes on how to manufacture "astroturf" could be easily made to look like the voice of the people...
Oh, Chavez may not have struck at online just yet--but if he's shut down the last oppostion TV station, you can bet that online media (just as much as the printed press) will be the next to go.
And this is how you can make something very, very bad look like it's the best thing in the world to happen to free speech....
RCTV's official reaction to the shutdown:
And this is the demonstration against the shutdown:
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, free speech, Hugo Chavez, RCTV, Web2.0
Friday, May 25, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Knight Foundation Announces Winners of 21st C. News Challenge
Congratulations Lisa Williams! Placeblogger has won one of the Knight 21st Century News Challenge Awards
And here's the list of all this year's winners (which include Amy Gahran, JD Lasica and Jay Rosen)
Congrats everyone!
And here's the list of all this year's winners (which include Amy Gahran, JD Lasica and Jay Rosen)
Congrats everyone!
Friday, May 18, 2007
Notes from the PdF
Friday
It's 4:30 and I've got the usual conference exhaustion....coupled with a slight hang-over I've had all day, and the lack of water (and lack of rest rooms), and you could say I'm feeling a little dehydrated...I've got 15 pages of notes and there's still one more panel to go before the cocktail party...
It's been a full day--with lots of heavy thinking. Hard to do with half a brain...
For the most part, everyone here's had very good things to say. Lawrence Lessig explaining the importance of unmooring videotaped debates from the limitations imposed by networks (yes, debates should be more of a public service vs. a profit-generating show for the networks.) Yet one of the most important things I like about what Lessig is saying is that we should not let Hollywood dictate how democracy should be--and that copyright, something that is important and helpful to hollywood, shouldn't necessarily control how political information gets disseminated (and debates are not just poltical information--but an important part of our political process. Political debates should be free, but Star Wars shouldn't necessarily be free. And, perhaps, there should be some exceptions in the use of video in the case of educational materials....)
Tom Friedman and Eric Schmidt (Google) were next, and it was a bit of a surreal dialogue. Schmidt sounded like he was making google out to be benevolent, but every time I read about them, I'm reading something that isn't all that benevolent. I did, however, and indirectly, learn more about why they purchased YouTube--basically, people respond to video differently than they do to words, or text, on a screen. It seems that by purchasing YouTube, it gives Google a ringside seat for observing the emotional responses of viewers to video...
There was more of a sense that Google is the Big Brother that Orwell *almost* envisioned. Orwell simply forgot about captialism in his worldview...
But back to Tom Friedman--who seems to be embodying the worst traits of the affluent middle aged white male. As he, once again, ad infinitum, told that tired old anecdote about the Paris cab driver wearing the bluetooth headset, and that, disappointedly, he and the cab driver didn't have a conversation on his ride to the hotel, all I could think of was "hmmm...heard this one before..."
That story is nothing more than the parable of a rich man out of touch with people, and making assumptions about the lot of regular people and interaction based on his own limited interaction with one individual in a cab...
I've just heard this one too many times on too many mainstream media programs and can no longer think of it as significant in any way. It's a moment over-exposed..
So then, why is Tom Friedman's one experience such a titual moment and diagnostic of the human condition in the internet? How can he understand anything about the real-life ways in which people are (or aren't) "connected" if there is always this barrier of class and priviledge between himself and the people he encounters? When Tom can speak, as I can, about the experience of a friend or a neighbor has with the internet and technology, I might begin to believe him...
As it is now, Freidman sounds like a man trapped in his profession--separated from people and knowing them only through stats and distant observation.
And if Freidman's point is that we need to learn to filter--and that people's perceptions of the 'net is that what they find on it is more accurate...well, that, too, isn't something I haven't heard before. Those are points of media literacy--something our schools will not teach (no money) and we must learn for ourselves.
In all fairness, Tom does know a great deal about a great deal--but even the most eloquent of speakers, and the most intelligent of individuals, can have blind spots...I believe this is one of Tom's big ole blind spots...
as it is now, I'm more inclined to believe Lee Rainey of the Pew Internet and American Life project, who's conducted some of the best surveys ever on the phenomenon. Lee's a fascinating guy, and the things he unpacks from his bag of tricks never ceases to enlighten even the highest of highbrows....
Note: Combing thru blog reports on PdF, I come across Josh Bernoff at Social Media Today on Friedman: Funny how privacy and reputation are somehow repeated in so many of these presentations. Everyone needs to develop a thick skin and skepticism. The trend of transparency and of online character assassination are two sides of the same coin. Get used to it. While I don't believe Friedman's hypothesis that now "everybody" has a blog(I know quite a few people who don't and never will)and all of us are one step away from being Paris Hilton, Bernoff's right about developing thick skins and skepticism. Otherwise, things may go horribly litigious which will only have a chilling effect.
Sunday: Taking a couple of days off due to catching a small "bug" in NYC, I'm sitting at my desk this dusky cool Sunday evening, going over my notes and reading other blog posts on the PdF. I've hit the page of notes on Yochai Benkler's talk, and remember how Dave Cohn and I kept talking about how are minds were totally blown by Benkler--who was so spot on when he said that "not everyone is a pamphleteer, but we are also not all intellectual lemmings."
Yet every time I listen to danah boyd (more here)I get a little depressed that I was ahead of the curve in social media in one sense, and behind the curve in another. danah mentions in her talk four points of online public spaces-- persistence, serchability (less privacy), replacability, and invisible audiences--I find myself nodding at these as they are things I disccovered from being online for so long (close to 10 years now). And she knows, like so many of us, that public space is disappearing--correction: has been disappearing for many, many years. The internet, for many of us, *is* our public space. True that it is more the experience of teens, but it is for a handful of us adults, too. Getting that thru to political types, as danah knows and has said, is a difficult thing indeed. They just don't seem to be able to *see* the space. If they can't see the space and understand the space, they will never reach young voters. And that's something we can't afford....
The most important thing I got out of the PdF though was that, out of all the conferences I've attended (and if you look at the sidebar, there's a bunch) this was the first group where there was not a whole bunch of demogoguery. Nobody was jumping up and down shouting "Citizen journalists rule!" or promoting any other hyperbolic ingredient in the Web 2.0 user-generated kool-aid. Rather, there was true, reasoned discussion...
Even on the Web 2.0: Cult of the Amateur? A Debate panel with Andrew Keen....
Jeff Jarvis said that he was approached to debate Keen at the PdF, and actually I was glad he didn't take up the offer. Jarvis on that panel might have taken away from a reasoned discussion on the topic--and, given Jeff's penchant for interrupting folks, Keen might not have been able to state why he wrote his particular polemic at this particular time...
But there is more to Keen than even he might have you think...(check this vid)
When Keen mentioned that he had taught Marxism, and that his book was a "subversion of a subversion," I got exactly what he is trying to do with his book. Keen lives in the land of Web 2.0. He's living among the kool-aid sippers, and he's not enjoying the trip. He is, indeed, a contrarian's contrarian--the most curmudgeonly curmudgeon. And my sense, clearly is that he has to be in order to be able to be heard over the happy-happy-joy-joy cacophany of the Silly Valley.
Hell, sombody *has* to do it--and it might as well be one of Their Own--a Berkeley Insider--which is Keen. Would that world listen to anybody else? Probably not.
Clay Shirky, however, provided a fine counterpoint to Keen, pointing out that the negative effects Keen discusses in his book are indeed real. (If we don't want to trust Keen because of his particular level of crankosity, then all we really need to do is read some Shirky--who, on occasion, points out the negatives, too. Albeit perhaps a bit more amusingly...)
Shirky doesn't believe we're looking at the death of our culture (as Keen believes), and that there are positives in this. The negatives, Shirky asserts, will be felt most strongly by those who have benefitted the most from the old system...
Someone, possibly Shirky, mentions Revenue: and massive positive supply-side shock. A
and "talent" online may be limited--but the thing is you don't have to have talent to have a conversation. And lots of blogging is conversation...
Then Craig Newmark--who amusingly pointed out how Keen equated children with livestock (and made everyone just crack up)--reminded all that "The Internet is just beginning. We're evolving the mechanisms." (talked to Craig a tiny bit earlier in the day--hope he's enjoying NYC :-) )
Robert Scoble also brought up how the people act as editors and monitors--and he's very right. Yet I find Scoble's assertion that *anyone* can become bigtime out here just from, say, blogging, isn't telling the entire story. If you really *do* want to do something with your blogging--you've got to find ways to get known (don't I know it...)
Keen finally mentioned how he beleives newspapser should be like utilities--and if they were not accountable to anyone, then they would be very different from the entities they are today (isn't this terribly Marxist of Keen? and isn't this, perhaps, what newspapers should be, rather than profit generating machines?)
Although Keen does sort of shoot himself a bit by claiming "The Internet is a wet dream" to which Rory O'Connor said "what?!?" and (to me) "you better write that one down..." it was an, um, seminal moment? (pardon the pun...)
Other important goings on:
Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry announce Tech President--an important initiative to get technology concerns on the table for the next election. Check the blog out here....
And a number of the folks I know from Boston blogging circles were there, including Steve Garfield making whole bunches of videos...and catches me and Andy Carvin and Kenyatta Cheese trying to snap the ever-moving Jarvis...
Halley Suitt (whose blog is, sadly, now readable by invitation only)
Andy Carvin (who's got a Tech President post with audio) who isn't in Boston any more, but that's how and where I know him...
and Aldon Hynes who's actually Connecticut, and was attending his *fourth* PdF! who introduced me to the very cool Ruby Sinreich whom I hope to get to correspond/talk with again...
Also ran into Mary Hodder who I hadn't seen in an age, and would really love to be able to catch up with....she's writing fantastic stuff these days...
JD Lasica who's always fun to bump into at cons...(and I've been bumping into him since my first con--BlogHer--back in '05)
Liza Sabater who I will one day have more than a five-minute chat with....
as well as Bob Cox who was there taking pics with a new Nokia...looking forward to them on Bob's Bob's Flickr photo album. Bob says "every time I see you, you're talking to somebody! you're like my 5 year old, you never seem to shut up..." yeah, that's true....if it wasn't for the social aspect of conferences, I might not go ;-)
and Jay Rosen, who finally found me when I was talking with Bob in the cortyard, I thought knew I was going to PdF on a press pass, but I guess I forgot to tell him... oops!
and finally Loren Feldman who does the kind of ragey rants I wish I could do...but, sadly, being a woman (and a middle-aged woman at that) I am verboten to perform... glad at least somebody can...and in such mellifluous Brooklyneese....
PDF2007,
citizen journalism,Journalism, media, Web 2.0, Blogs,
It's 4:30 and I've got the usual conference exhaustion....coupled with a slight hang-over I've had all day, and the lack of water (and lack of rest rooms), and you could say I'm feeling a little dehydrated...I've got 15 pages of notes and there's still one more panel to go before the cocktail party...
It's been a full day--with lots of heavy thinking. Hard to do with half a brain...
For the most part, everyone here's had very good things to say. Lawrence Lessig explaining the importance of unmooring videotaped debates from the limitations imposed by networks (yes, debates should be more of a public service vs. a profit-generating show for the networks.) Yet one of the most important things I like about what Lessig is saying is that we should not let Hollywood dictate how democracy should be--and that copyright, something that is important and helpful to hollywood, shouldn't necessarily control how political information gets disseminated (and debates are not just poltical information--but an important part of our political process. Political debates should be free, but Star Wars shouldn't necessarily be free. And, perhaps, there should be some exceptions in the use of video in the case of educational materials....)
Tom Friedman and Eric Schmidt (Google) were next, and it was a bit of a surreal dialogue. Schmidt sounded like he was making google out to be benevolent, but every time I read about them, I'm reading something that isn't all that benevolent. I did, however, and indirectly, learn more about why they purchased YouTube--basically, people respond to video differently than they do to words, or text, on a screen. It seems that by purchasing YouTube, it gives Google a ringside seat for observing the emotional responses of viewers to video...
There was more of a sense that Google is the Big Brother that Orwell *almost* envisioned. Orwell simply forgot about captialism in his worldview...
But back to Tom Friedman--who seems to be embodying the worst traits of the affluent middle aged white male. As he, once again, ad infinitum, told that tired old anecdote about the Paris cab driver wearing the bluetooth headset, and that, disappointedly, he and the cab driver didn't have a conversation on his ride to the hotel, all I could think of was "hmmm...heard this one before..."
That story is nothing more than the parable of a rich man out of touch with people, and making assumptions about the lot of regular people and interaction based on his own limited interaction with one individual in a cab...
I've just heard this one too many times on too many mainstream media programs and can no longer think of it as significant in any way. It's a moment over-exposed..
So then, why is Tom Friedman's one experience such a titual moment and diagnostic of the human condition in the internet? How can he understand anything about the real-life ways in which people are (or aren't) "connected" if there is always this barrier of class and priviledge between himself and the people he encounters? When Tom can speak, as I can, about the experience of a friend or a neighbor has with the internet and technology, I might begin to believe him...
As it is now, Freidman sounds like a man trapped in his profession--separated from people and knowing them only through stats and distant observation.
And if Freidman's point is that we need to learn to filter--and that people's perceptions of the 'net is that what they find on it is more accurate...well, that, too, isn't something I haven't heard before. Those are points of media literacy--something our schools will not teach (no money) and we must learn for ourselves.
In all fairness, Tom does know a great deal about a great deal--but even the most eloquent of speakers, and the most intelligent of individuals, can have blind spots...I believe this is one of Tom's big ole blind spots...
as it is now, I'm more inclined to believe Lee Rainey of the Pew Internet and American Life project, who's conducted some of the best surveys ever on the phenomenon. Lee's a fascinating guy, and the things he unpacks from his bag of tricks never ceases to enlighten even the highest of highbrows....
Note: Combing thru blog reports on PdF, I come across Josh Bernoff at Social Media Today on Friedman: Funny how privacy and reputation are somehow repeated in so many of these presentations. Everyone needs to develop a thick skin and skepticism. The trend of transparency and of online character assassination are two sides of the same coin. Get used to it. While I don't believe Friedman's hypothesis that now "everybody" has a blog(I know quite a few people who don't and never will)and all of us are one step away from being Paris Hilton, Bernoff's right about developing thick skins and skepticism. Otherwise, things may go horribly litigious which will only have a chilling effect.
Sunday: Taking a couple of days off due to catching a small "bug" in NYC, I'm sitting at my desk this dusky cool Sunday evening, going over my notes and reading other blog posts on the PdF. I've hit the page of notes on Yochai Benkler's talk, and remember how Dave Cohn and I kept talking about how are minds were totally blown by Benkler--who was so spot on when he said that "not everyone is a pamphleteer, but we are also not all intellectual lemmings."
Yet every time I listen to danah boyd (more here)I get a little depressed that I was ahead of the curve in social media in one sense, and behind the curve in another. danah mentions in her talk four points of online public spaces-- persistence, serchability (less privacy), replacability, and invisible audiences--I find myself nodding at these as they are things I disccovered from being online for so long (close to 10 years now). And she knows, like so many of us, that public space is disappearing--correction: has been disappearing for many, many years. The internet, for many of us, *is* our public space. True that it is more the experience of teens, but it is for a handful of us adults, too. Getting that thru to political types, as danah knows and has said, is a difficult thing indeed. They just don't seem to be able to *see* the space. If they can't see the space and understand the space, they will never reach young voters. And that's something we can't afford....
The most important thing I got out of the PdF though was that, out of all the conferences I've attended (and if you look at the sidebar, there's a bunch) this was the first group where there was not a whole bunch of demogoguery. Nobody was jumping up and down shouting "Citizen journalists rule!" or promoting any other hyperbolic ingredient in the Web 2.0 user-generated kool-aid. Rather, there was true, reasoned discussion...
Even on the Web 2.0: Cult of the Amateur? A Debate panel with Andrew Keen....
Jeff Jarvis said that he was approached to debate Keen at the PdF, and actually I was glad he didn't take up the offer. Jarvis on that panel might have taken away from a reasoned discussion on the topic--and, given Jeff's penchant for interrupting folks, Keen might not have been able to state why he wrote his particular polemic at this particular time...
But there is more to Keen than even he might have you think...(check this vid)
When Keen mentioned that he had taught Marxism, and that his book was a "subversion of a subversion," I got exactly what he is trying to do with his book. Keen lives in the land of Web 2.0. He's living among the kool-aid sippers, and he's not enjoying the trip. He is, indeed, a contrarian's contrarian--the most curmudgeonly curmudgeon. And my sense, clearly is that he has to be in order to be able to be heard over the happy-happy-joy-joy cacophany of the Silly Valley.
Hell, sombody *has* to do it--and it might as well be one of Their Own--a Berkeley Insider--which is Keen. Would that world listen to anybody else? Probably not.
Clay Shirky, however, provided a fine counterpoint to Keen, pointing out that the negative effects Keen discusses in his book are indeed real. (If we don't want to trust Keen because of his particular level of crankosity, then all we really need to do is read some Shirky--who, on occasion, points out the negatives, too. Albeit perhaps a bit more amusingly...)
Shirky doesn't believe we're looking at the death of our culture (as Keen believes), and that there are positives in this. The negatives, Shirky asserts, will be felt most strongly by those who have benefitted the most from the old system...
Someone, possibly Shirky, mentions Revenue: and massive positive supply-side shock. A
and "talent" online may be limited--but the thing is you don't have to have talent to have a conversation. And lots of blogging is conversation...
Then Craig Newmark--who amusingly pointed out how Keen equated children with livestock (and made everyone just crack up)--reminded all that "The Internet is just beginning. We're evolving the mechanisms." (talked to Craig a tiny bit earlier in the day--hope he's enjoying NYC :-) )
Robert Scoble also brought up how the people act as editors and monitors--and he's very right. Yet I find Scoble's assertion that *anyone* can become bigtime out here just from, say, blogging, isn't telling the entire story. If you really *do* want to do something with your blogging--you've got to find ways to get known (don't I know it...)
Keen finally mentioned how he beleives newspapser should be like utilities--and if they were not accountable to anyone, then they would be very different from the entities they are today (isn't this terribly Marxist of Keen? and isn't this, perhaps, what newspapers should be, rather than profit generating machines?)
Although Keen does sort of shoot himself a bit by claiming "The Internet is a wet dream" to which Rory O'Connor said "what?!?" and (to me) "you better write that one down..." it was an, um, seminal moment? (pardon the pun...)
Other important goings on:
Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry announce Tech President--an important initiative to get technology concerns on the table for the next election. Check the blog out here....
And a number of the folks I know from Boston blogging circles were there, including Steve Garfield making whole bunches of videos...and catches me and Andy Carvin and Kenyatta Cheese trying to snap the ever-moving Jarvis...
Halley Suitt (whose blog is, sadly, now readable by invitation only)
Andy Carvin (who's got a Tech President post with audio) who isn't in Boston any more, but that's how and where I know him...
and Aldon Hynes who's actually Connecticut, and was attending his *fourth* PdF! who introduced me to the very cool Ruby Sinreich whom I hope to get to correspond/talk with again...
Also ran into Mary Hodder who I hadn't seen in an age, and would really love to be able to catch up with....she's writing fantastic stuff these days...
JD Lasica who's always fun to bump into at cons...(and I've been bumping into him since my first con--BlogHer--back in '05)
Liza Sabater who I will one day have more than a five-minute chat with....
as well as Bob Cox who was there taking pics with a new Nokia...looking forward to them on Bob's Bob's Flickr photo album. Bob says "every time I see you, you're talking to somebody! you're like my 5 year old, you never seem to shut up..." yeah, that's true....if it wasn't for the social aspect of conferences, I might not go ;-)
and Jay Rosen, who finally found me when I was talking with Bob in the cortyard, I thought knew I was going to PdF on a press pass, but I guess I forgot to tell him... oops!
and finally Loren Feldman who does the kind of ragey rants I wish I could do...but, sadly, being a woman (and a middle-aged woman at that) I am verboten to perform... glad at least somebody can...and in such mellifluous Brooklyneese....
PDF2007,
citizen journalism,Journalism, media, Web 2.0, Blogs,
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Cool NewMedia Happenings 5/17/07
OhMyNews on Wikimu citizen journalism in Indonesia.......Newsdesk.org's new design and more NYMHM...Ourmedia celebrates two years...NowPublic and YouTube?!?.....A new guy at Associated Content...
OhMyNews profiles Adrianto Gani, the CEO of Wikimu.com and discusses citizen journalism in Indonesia:
I'm fascinated on how various countries deal with "citizen journalism." In countries where the polticial situation is more hot-button than it is here (well, it is here too, but we ignore it), the press has an extremely important role and the cultivation of citizen journalists is important. Over here, we have it way too easy, and our "citizen journalism" is slowly being co-opted by the mainstream. Look at all the networks that want *your* video content--why? as well as many of the major newspapers wanting to "host"--as in direct, co-opt, gatekeep--citizen journalism.
Over here, it's all about Celebrity--if the networks can bestow it on you and how you can keep it. In places like Indonesia, it's about freedom of speech and information.
and speaking of independent, citizen-powered sites in the U.S.:
Newsdesk.org spiffs up their site, as well as their "News You Might Have Missed"--which y'all can also subscribe to. Josh and his team dig up some great stories--definitley stuff that you would certainly have missed otherwise...
Non-profit, non-coroporate citizen media site Ourmedia recently celebrated its two-year anniversary with a new streamlined look. Cool things about Ourmedia: tons of interviews with all sorts of movers and shakers on the inside of the "web 2.0" movement (geeze! I hate that term!) as well as great information resources (how tos on doing it right and not getting screwed by "the law"--hmmm...maybe the YouTube guys need a lesson there ;-) ). (via D.G.'s blog)
but wait! there's more...
NowPublic's new deal with YouTube makes it easier for citizens to get hold of other citizen's (or their own) video and post to stories they do at NowPublic. As Mike sez in an email: "It's crowd-sourcing for all." Exactly!
Associated Content's hired Tim Skillern, former multimedia producer-reporting type guy at RockyMountainNews.com, to be its new News Director. From the AC p/r guys:
Journalism, citizen journalism, media,web 2.0, Blog, Blogs
OhMyNews profiles Adrianto Gani, the CEO of Wikimu.com and discusses citizen journalism in Indonesia:
Q: Being independent and open to any point of view, how would you prevent your site from being used for political or religious campaigns?
A: Editors can always interfere, if needed, to decide if an article needs to be modified or even rejected before being posted in wikimu.
I'm fascinated on how various countries deal with "citizen journalism." In countries where the polticial situation is more hot-button than it is here (well, it is here too, but we ignore it), the press has an extremely important role and the cultivation of citizen journalists is important. Over here, we have it way too easy, and our "citizen journalism" is slowly being co-opted by the mainstream. Look at all the networks that want *your* video content--why? as well as many of the major newspapers wanting to "host"--as in direct, co-opt, gatekeep--citizen journalism.
Over here, it's all about Celebrity--if the networks can bestow it on you and how you can keep it. In places like Indonesia, it's about freedom of speech and information.
and speaking of independent, citizen-powered sites in the U.S.:
Newsdesk.org spiffs up their site, as well as their "News You Might Have Missed"--which y'all can also subscribe to. Josh and his team dig up some great stories--definitley stuff that you would certainly have missed otherwise...
Non-profit, non-coroporate citizen media site Ourmedia recently celebrated its two-year anniversary with a new streamlined look. Cool things about Ourmedia: tons of interviews with all sorts of movers and shakers on the inside of the "web 2.0" movement (geeze! I hate that term!) as well as great information resources (how tos on doing it right and not getting screwed by "the law"--hmmm...maybe the YouTube guys need a lesson there ;-) ). (via D.G.'s blog)
but wait! there's more...
NowPublic's new deal with YouTube makes it easier for citizens to get hold of other citizen's (or their own) video and post to stories they do at NowPublic. As Mike sez in an email: "It's crowd-sourcing for all." Exactly!
Associated Content's hired Tim Skillern, former multimedia producer-reporting type guy at RockyMountainNews.com, to be its new News Director. From the AC p/r guys:
Skillern will be responsible for developing and managing the news library, editing news submissions, supervising support staff and managing the syndication of assets. He will also manage the site’s Content Producers, organizing teams to respond to breaking news stories, as well as reaching out to invite contributions from new users.Pretty much sums it up. Sounds like a fun job--and where can I get one kinda like it??? ;-)
Journalism, citizen journalism, media,web 2.0, Blog, Blogs
Monday, May 07, 2007
Stop! Look! Links! 5/7/07
Save Pandora....Citizen Journalism hype: the view from Australia. . .Ziff-Davis' ethical gaffe...Jack Myers on ethical lapses with the VA Tech story...new independent hyperlocal citizen journalism in Buffalo,NY...Where is social media going?
Sorry I've been remiss with posting here. Lots going on at Assignment Zero and I've barely had a chance to breathe. However, there's been a number of stories y'all should take a look at:
Tim Westergren of Pandora recently sent an email urging action on recent regulations boosting fees for Internet radio. from Tim: Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential. Sign the petition to Save Internet Radio. . .
Check out Buffalo Rising a new hyperlocal site for Buffalo, NY! I love when people go and do things without the permission of the local newspaper magnates! BR's got its own reporting, PLUS it's aggregating local blogs, PLUS an ad from the local minor league team! Best of luck to George Johnson and everybody at BR :-)
(if I had the time and $$ to do it, I'd set up something like this out here in W. Mass...)
DIY journalism is not a real alternative: Christopher Scanlon writes a how the rhetoric around the term "citizen journalism" is being used in Australia: The ease with which a blog or a news site can be set up fuels the myth that citizen journalism is free of constraints. However, the most popular sites aren't owned and controlled by altruistic charities intent on spreading free speech. They're controlled by entities that are driven by profit.... In most cases, and esp. as far as the big media-style blogs are concerned, he's right. The smaller, hyperlocal ones, however, are a different story. I wonder what the hyperlocal scene is in Australia?
Fellow blogger Paul Conley's been following Ziff-Davis' use of IntelliTXT ads in their news copy and ZD journos have informed Paul of ZD's recent malfeasance Paul says: Look. I have nothing against advertising. But this is not a negotiable issue. The ethical standards of our industry are as clear as can be in this area. The editorial department controls editorial. It's that simple. Here, in fact, is what ASBPE says: "Whether for editorial or advertising information, hypertext links should be placed at the discretion and approval of editors. Also, advertising and sponsored links should be clearly distinguishable from editorial, and labeled as such ... Contextual links within editorial content should not be sold, and generally should not link to a vendor’s Web site, unless it is pertinent to the editorial content or helpful to the reader."
There may be a place for ads such as these, but that place cannot be in any publication that claims to adhere to the standards of professional journalism. I so completely agree with Paul...this kind of thing is nonsense. Hyperlinks in text should lead to further information, as in related stories, and not to ads. This really is just bloody awful...
NBC Should Never Have Aired the Virginia Tech Video: Jack Myers’ Think Tank former CBS tv exec Jack Myers writes the best column at MediaPost TVBoard blog--Jack's look at lots of the decisions that networks are making these days and is unflinching in his criticism of the ethical gaffes msm is making these names all in the name of money. from Jack: There are endless arguments about free speech, about how the videos would have found their way into the public eye — and, of course, NBC’s responsibility not only to the audience but to shareholders as well, for whom any ratings opportunity is more important than issues of the public good. Jack's got a good point....and also understands that when these sorts of things show up on YouTube, it's a very different thing than when they show up on something like the NBC Nightly News--partly because of the money involved but also because of the ethical implications. I can't do Jack justice here...go read the whole post...
Vincent Maher's Where is Social Media going? is an unflinching look at the downside of social media: The social media world is highly fragmented, in terms of both content and format, and also tends to be filtered around clusters of special interests or communities. For instance, the collective intelligence that emerges on sites like Digg and Reddit ultimately recreates the considered decisions made by editors but the process is very different and, ultimately, harder to fix.
If an editor begins to display a consistent bias that negatively affects the publication, the editor can be fired and replaced, quickly. On the other hand, the wide-spread ideological bias of the readership of a site like Digg (and perhaps the influence of an elite of power users) is much harder to eradicate. Anybody who thought the Digg riot was a good thing should read Maher. Social media sites are great when the emphasis is on "social"--but when "media" dominates "social" in the word-equation (and in the thinking of those who want to boost their profit margins), we've got problems.
That's the best of the bunch from my Inbox! more later...
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Web2.0
Sorry I've been remiss with posting here. Lots going on at Assignment Zero and I've barely had a chance to breathe. However, there's been a number of stories y'all should take a look at:
Tim Westergren of Pandora recently sent an email urging action on recent regulations boosting fees for Internet radio. from Tim: Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential. Sign the petition to Save Internet Radio. . .
Check out Buffalo Rising a new hyperlocal site for Buffalo, NY! I love when people go and do things without the permission of the local newspaper magnates! BR's got its own reporting, PLUS it's aggregating local blogs, PLUS an ad from the local minor league team! Best of luck to George Johnson and everybody at BR :-)
(if I had the time and $$ to do it, I'd set up something like this out here in W. Mass...)
DIY journalism is not a real alternative: Christopher Scanlon writes a how the rhetoric around the term "citizen journalism" is being used in Australia: The ease with which a blog or a news site can be set up fuels the myth that citizen journalism is free of constraints. However, the most popular sites aren't owned and controlled by altruistic charities intent on spreading free speech. They're controlled by entities that are driven by profit.... In most cases, and esp. as far as the big media-style blogs are concerned, he's right. The smaller, hyperlocal ones, however, are a different story. I wonder what the hyperlocal scene is in Australia?
Fellow blogger Paul Conley's been following Ziff-Davis' use of IntelliTXT ads in their news copy and ZD journos have informed Paul of ZD's recent malfeasance Paul says: Look. I have nothing against advertising. But this is not a negotiable issue. The ethical standards of our industry are as clear as can be in this area. The editorial department controls editorial. It's that simple. Here, in fact, is what ASBPE says: "Whether for editorial or advertising information, hypertext links should be placed at the discretion and approval of editors. Also, advertising and sponsored links should be clearly distinguishable from editorial, and labeled as such ... Contextual links within editorial content should not be sold, and generally should not link to a vendor’s Web site, unless it is pertinent to the editorial content or helpful to the reader."
There may be a place for ads such as these, but that place cannot be in any publication that claims to adhere to the standards of professional journalism. I so completely agree with Paul...this kind of thing is nonsense. Hyperlinks in text should lead to further information, as in related stories, and not to ads. This really is just bloody awful...
NBC Should Never Have Aired the Virginia Tech Video: Jack Myers’ Think Tank former CBS tv exec Jack Myers writes the best column at MediaPost TVBoard blog--Jack's look at lots of the decisions that networks are making these days and is unflinching in his criticism of the ethical gaffes msm is making these names all in the name of money. from Jack: There are endless arguments about free speech, about how the videos would have found their way into the public eye — and, of course, NBC’s responsibility not only to the audience but to shareholders as well, for whom any ratings opportunity is more important than issues of the public good. Jack's got a good point....and also understands that when these sorts of things show up on YouTube, it's a very different thing than when they show up on something like the NBC Nightly News--partly because of the money involved but also because of the ethical implications. I can't do Jack justice here...go read the whole post...
Vincent Maher's Where is Social Media going? is an unflinching look at the downside of social media: The social media world is highly fragmented, in terms of both content and format, and also tends to be filtered around clusters of special interests or communities. For instance, the collective intelligence that emerges on sites like Digg and Reddit ultimately recreates the considered decisions made by editors but the process is very different and, ultimately, harder to fix.
If an editor begins to display a consistent bias that negatively affects the publication, the editor can be fired and replaced, quickly. On the other hand, the wide-spread ideological bias of the readership of a site like Digg (and perhaps the influence of an elite of power users) is much harder to eradicate. Anybody who thought the Digg riot was a good thing should read Maher. Social media sites are great when the emphasis is on "social"--but when "media" dominates "social" in the word-equation (and in the thinking of those who want to boost their profit margins), we've got problems.
That's the best of the bunch from my Inbox! more later...
Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Web2.0
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