Social software and online media
Analysis of social software, blogging, microblogging, and online media. Related subjects include:
Ike Pigott on the future of reporting
Ike Pigott argues that, as the number of conventional journalists plummets, corporations will have to hire their own “embedded” journalists to fill the void. Read more
| Categories: Blogosphere, Mark Logic, Online media, Social software and online media | 5 Comments |
April Fool’s Day highlights
It’s April 1, and hence time for jests, online or otherwise. Highlights this year include:
- In a charming blog post, Google annoucned the new Android Translate For Animals feature.
- Reddit has apparently made every user an administrator, throwing the whole site –or at least the Reddit hot stories list — into chaos.
- A video depicts icons falling off of an iPhone onto a table.
- Firetoys, Ltd., whoever they are, are promoting a Back To The Future style hoverboard. I want one!
Edit: And more being added as I find them:
Related links
- My recent roundup of past years’ April Fool’s highlights
- A companion roundup of other, even funnier pranks
- My alternative to pranks: April No-Fooling Day
| Categories: Fun stuff, Google, Humor, Social software and online media | 2 Comments |
A new attitude toward online reputation?
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch stirred the post today with a post titled Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions. The premise is:
- Embarrassing stuff about anybody can be found.
- Deal with it.
- If there’s embarrassing stuff about EVERYBODY out there, maybe our societal norms will loosen up and get more tolerant.
If anything, Arrington understated the case, by focusing on two kinds of disclosure:
- Specific pieces of information such as photographs, which were originally gathered in a well-intentioned way.
- Anonymous “reviews” — e.g., like those on Yelp, but soon about specific people as well.
That overlooks two other threats:
- Data aggregration or other technologically-advanced snooping used against one.
- Amateur, private-eye-like stakeouts, as cameras and other surveillance equipment get cheaper, and online publication becomes bone-simple.
I.e., Arrington was even more correct than he seemed to realize.
Fred Wilson responded by suggesting that the key issue is making sure that enough good things are said about you to more than compensate for the bad ones. I emphatically agree with that too, as per my 2008 online reputation dictum:
The internet WILL tell stories about you, true or otherwise. Make sure your own version is out there too.
Where Wilson fell down a bit is in suggesting that you should get so many good things said about you they should completely crowd the bad ones off the top page of search engine results. First, this is difficult. Second and more important, if somebody is checking you out for a job or whatever, there’s a good chance they’ll click through to the second page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). But otherwise his thoughts are spot-on.
To paraphrase Andy Warhol, everybody is a celebrity for 15 minutes, or to an audience of 15 other people. And for many of us, you can tack a few 0s onto those figures. So there’s no reason to expect any more privacy than celebrities have — but there’s also no reason to expect any less tolerance for our failings than is shown to them.
Related links
Google Wave — finally a Microsoft killer?
Google held a superbly-received preview of a new technology called Google Wave, which promises to “reinvent communication.” In simplest terms, Google Wave is a software platform that:
- Offers the possibility to improve upon a broad range of communication, collaboration, and/or text-based product categories, such as:
- Search
- Word processing
- Instant messaging
- Microblogging
- Blogging
- Mini-portals (Facebook-style)
- Mini-portals (Sharepoint-style)
- In particular, allows these applications to be both much more integrated and interactive than they now are.
- Will have open developer APIs.
- WIll be open-sourced.
If this all works out, Google Wave could play merry hell with Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, and more.
I suspect it will.
And by the way, there’s a cool “natural language” angle as well. Read more
| Categories: Google, Language recognition, Microblogging, Microsoft, Natural language processing (NLP), Search engines, Social software and online media, Software as a Service (SaaS) | 3 Comments |
TechCrunch offers to pay a source’s legal expenses
A recent TechCrunch post recapitulates its dispute with CBS and Last.fm, reiterates its confidence in its accusations, and closes with
And to the CBS employee who was fired and threatened based on this story – we believe certain U.S. Whistle Blower laws may protect you from retaliation from CBS in this matter. We’d like to provide you with legal counsel at our cost.
That’s a remarkable offer to make, one that is very rare for traditional media to match. As such, it’s a strong (albeit very partial) answer to the ongoing handwringing about the future of investigative journalism. Read more
| Categories: Blogosphere, Online media, Social software and online media | 4 Comments |
Monetization strategies for the New York Times
In his remarks about my recent post that he aptly characterizes as “A Consumer-Centric View of Business Models for Publishing,” Daniel Tunkelang notes that I didn’t directly address the premium/freemium strategy he favors for the New York Times, namely monetizing community. As Daniel puts it,
But community can’t be copied. Even if you mirrored all of this blog’s content and put someone else’s name on it, the comment threads would still live here. You could copy those too, but only the readers who came here could participate in the conversation, and I believe that would still draw most of you.
Frankly, I don’t think that would work. Good blog commenters are precious, generously donating their own time and thought to build up your content. Could one charge people to read that? Maybe. But charging people to write great content for you seems like one barrier too many, and I’m not sure how to charge them to read without also charging them to write. That said, various forums (i.e., message boards) offer premium forums, so at least for some lifestyle business owners the approach seems to be worth pursuing.
Other strategies to consider include: Read more
| Categories: Online media, Social software and online media | 7 Comments |
The 4 reasons anybody ever consumes information (or opinion), and what that tells us about business models
The online world is abuzz with discussion about the future economic models of the publishing industry. It might help in evaluating various proposals to consider why anybody might possibly want to pay money or attention for information or opinion, whether delivered in published or personal-communication form. Since this is a very long post, I’ll put a few of the conclusions here up top, namely:
- “Freemium” models, in which one gives away some good information but charges for the best stuff, can succeed. I do that, in a way. So does ESPN.com. Rupert Murdoch, so far as I can tell, proposes to make WSJ.com more like ESPN.
- Charging by some kind of usage metric doesn’t make sense. This seems to be what the New York Times is thinking about. It may also be what Murdoch is suggesting for some of his other properties.
- Grand cosmic all-you-can-consume-of-all-but-the-most-highly-valuable-information subscriptions — e.g., an “ASCAP for news” — could be marketable. And I don’t even think they’d require the antitrust exemptions the newspaper industry is whining for.
Those conclusions, in turn, are based on the theory that the the best selling proposition for decision-supporting information and information technologies is:
Keeps you fully and conveniently informed about subject area X, where X is important to you. Read more
| Categories: Online media, Social software and online media | 2 Comments |
Consumer Reports + National Enquirer + ? = the future of free societies
Another week, another round of debate about the future of journalism. As usual, I’m too overwhelmed with my own duties of news reporting, commentary, consulting, and small business administrivia — not to mention basketball-watching and kitchen repair — to chime in at the length I’d like. But even given those limitations, I’d like to reiterate something I said in a prior post about the evolving information ecosystem:
a significant fraction of news is something large organizations have a vested interest in releasing
In my opinion, that’s a crucial point. On subjects where primary sources want information to get out, traditional journalists are not needed to relay news. Comment (especially sceptically)? Sure. Filter? Maybe. Story-tell? Yes, but only if news-as-entertainment is your idea of fun.
Basically, the “death of media” concerns should for the most part be restricted to the future of investigative features. When one thinks of major investigative reporting that society would have been poorer without, it’s usually either a feature story or a series of articles that might as well have been a feature. The reason those are threatened is that their huge value to society is not always paired with a huge “fun”/”interest” factor in consuming the stories, and hence traditional attention-based economic models may not work for them. Read more
| Categories: Social software and online media | 3 Comments |
There’s a virus on Twitter: StalkDaily
Twitter got a virus today. I’m updating what I know technically in my Network World post on the subject. The gist apparently is that somebody found a way to hack Twitter pages by hacking the URLs in one’s Twitter settings,and created the hacked @GadgetBoyHah profile. Then he got lots of clicks on it via the usual tactic of following lots of people who, upon notification, checked him out. I was infected too.
The implications for Twitter’s security are not good. The best way to disable or remove this malware is, as I write this, not yet clear, but I hope to get clarity and update the post linked above accordingly.
| Categories: Microblogging, Twitter | Leave a Comment |
(Humor) You don’t exist if you’re not on Twitter!
I’d like to recommend two Twitter-related comedy videos:
- Twouble with Twitters is a hugely popular, slickly executed cartoon video.
- The Twitter Song is a funny song that happens to be better musically than most satirical songs.
But I’m still waiting for a Twitter-related takeoff on “The Trouble With Tribbles” …
| Categories: Fun stuff, Humor, Microblogging, Social software and online media, Twitter | Leave a Comment |
