Category: Tech

Self Checks on the Blogosphere Court

Back in the day, I played a lot of basketball.  In fact I remember this one reverse move I put on my lifelong buddy Tommy (who, unlike me, played basketball in college) at some court in Ocean Drive circa 1980.  He called it a “made miss,” but it was sweet. If I had a video of that shot, I’d move back to SC just to taunt him with it.  The fact that he owned me on the court for the rest of my life would conveniently be omitted.

There is a hoops phrase called a self-check.  It means that a player is so bad that you don’t need to guard him.  He keeps himself in check by dribbling the ball off his knees or throwing up bricks against the bottom of the rim. 

There are a lot of self-checks running around the blogosphere too.  Unlike in basketball, however, there is no rim to block their pitiful attempt at a layup, and there is no referee to call traveling as they stumble into a face plant.  It’s up to the collective refereeism of the blogosphere to call a foul.

One textbook example of a self-check in the blogosphere is Andrew Keen.  Here’s a guy whose tired act is telling his readers until he is blue in the blood that they need journalistic lamas to help them understand the world around them.  It’s not that blogs are different than traditional media.  It’s not even that blogs are not as reliable as traditional media.  It’s that our entire culture is about to be swept away by the horrifying egalitarianism represented by such evil forces as blogs, wikis, social networks and digital media.

The horror.

What makes Andrew an obvious self-check is not merely the fact that he is one of the people who, under his world view, should play the lama part.  After all, he’s written a book– on paper.  And he’s really smart- just read anything he’s written and he’ll tell you.  The rest of us, well let’s just say that we are silly little dunces doing our little equality dance while the world crumbles before our folly.

It’s not merely the blatancy of his position talking and the sweet irony that is his blog that get lost in the flood of big words, dire proclamations and extreme statements.

It’s mainly the fact that he actually makes some good points along the way- points that are completely lost on his audience thanks to unbridled arrogance and condescension.  Part of being smart is knowing how to communicate your message to people who don’t agree with you.  To persuade, you must first connect.

Andrew makes no effort to connect.  Which tells me that he is writing for himself and, perhaps, a few self-important eggheads who already share his views on how stupid everyone else is.  When someone is talking solely for themselves or their devotees, there is neither the intent nor the desire to enlighten or persuade.  There is only the desire to be heard.

That is a textbook definition of a self-check on any court in which communication is the goal.

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Morning Reading: 10/15/06

Tony Hung on another Walmart, Edelman, sponsored blogging mashup.  Here’s his follow-up.  I don’t know what if anything Steve knew about all of this, but I can tell you from experience in working at a large organization that (a) he may have known nothing about it, (b) he likely had zero ability to control what senior management at his company did or didn’t do, and (c) no one should try to make him accountable just because he works there, because unless it was his idea, he is not.

Matt Craven on growing a blog.  He’s spot on when he says the key is to write a lot.  Some other bloggers will reciprocate when you link to them, other won’t.  My advice: stop trying to embrace the ones who don’t and pay more attention to the ones that do.  Bonus link: Google Blogoscoped on good blog writing style.

Hugh has captured the essence of blogging when you aren’t trying to make a living off of it.  Blogging is so much more fun when you aren’t sitting around hoping for a link from Scoble or Doc or Hugh or Kent.

I don’t like Google Reader either.  And I find the sharing feature (discussed here by Richard Querin) to be too dilutive of the blog and feed reading experience for me.  If you see a link you like, just link to it.  The 30 seconds it takes to link to it in a real post serves as a de facto filter to make sure people are sharing interesting content.

Charles Cooper on why he still loves Star Trek.  Me too.

Here’s how to carve an amazing jack-o-lantern.

Rick Mahn on the move to online applications and the home network.

Dwight Silverman on the Sony Reader.  This is the first post I have ever read that makes me the least bit interested in an e-book reader.  The company that puts one in a book-looking form will be the one that gets my money.  I read the DiVinci Code on a Tablet PC and it was OK, but I haven’t read a book that way since.

Extreme positions are scary to me, because there is no willingness to see the other side of the argument.  I am big on animal rights, but PETA is making all animal rights people look like idiots.  I’m going to go find a cockroach…and eat it.

I meant to write an entire post agreeing with Seth Godin’s excellent take on museums and marketing, but I never got around to it.  Museums are losing the mindshare of our kids because they feel too much like school and not enough like fun.  I say amen to this:

I can’t remember the last time a museum visit made my cry, made me sad or made me angry (except at the fact that they don’t try hard enough).

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Blogs, Papers and Irony

Nick Carr and Dave Winer are arguing about something having to do with bloggers, Iraq and murdered journalists.

I think blogs are important ways to distribute certain kinds of information, but they are not even close to being a substitute for traditional media for certain news topics.  People have a distrust of old, established media when it comes to political topics- do you really think people are going to embrace a bunch of online diaries by people they don’t know as a reliable substitute for the Washington Post and CNN?  Of course not.  It’s farcical to suggest they will.

I think the idea that blogs, as important to a few of us as they are, will replace traditional journalism is straight out of Monty Python.

“Go away or I shall blog about you a second time.”

I also think it’s ironic that Dave is taking the role as the champion of citizen media.  One of the oft-cited benefits of citizen media is the interactive nature of blogging.  Dave rarely engages people outside of his inner circle, which makes him more like the old media he is trying to replace than the new media he claims to embrace.

The other fact that seems to be overlooked here is that people who risk their lives going to Iraq to write news are generally getting paid for it.  There is an assumption by some of the blogging evangelists that making a living is less important that spouting off about the latest Google acquisition.  It is a whole lot harder to make a living blogging that some people want to admit.

Which means that most of us who blog don’t do it as a living.  As Nick points out, it’s one thing to toss up a post or two about Iraq from the comfort of our living rooms, but it’s another ball of wax to risk your life in the name of a blog post.  I wish more people read my blog too, but I’m not quite ready to risk my life to make it happen.

Blogging as a content management platform may, in fact, be the future of news distribution, but it won’t be guys like Dave, or Nick, or me writing the content.  It will be the same journalists who get paid for doing it now- they’ll simply be doing it in a different, more immediate way.

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Morning Reading: 10/14/06

Ben Metcalfe has a thorough analysis of Deutch-gate.  I have no personal knowledge about this situation and have never read Barry’s blog, but it seems to me this is just another case of using value generated by customers to make a buck in true Web 2.0 fashion.  Do all the Google hating YouTube users have similar grounds to complain?

David Krug has a series on the disappearance of David Krug.  If this is true, this is an amazing and frightening story.

Wolfgang’s Vault has acquired Tower Records’ Tower.Com domain.  If you like classic rock, you simply have to listen to Vault Radio.

Mashable on the distribution of spyware via social networks.  This is another reason why I do not like these social network sites.  The main reason, of course, is that but for the desire of developers to centralize our content so they can make money off of it, the blogosphere would be the only social network needed.

Robert Gale links to video clips of the best of Homer Simpson.  Funny stuff.

Wally Bangs found a very cool album shootout on YouTube.

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Lawsuit a Shot Across the Bow of Bloggers?

In a lawsuit that should be required reading for bloggers, a Florida jury has awarded $11.3M in damages to a woman who says she was defamed on an internet message board.

Legal scholars say this verdict could have an impact on bloggers.  From the Washington Times article linked above:

“This case sends a signal that if you were going to write blog entries, that you need to, like any other journalist, be aware of what you write,” said Michael J. Songer, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a partner at D.C. law firm Crowell & Moring LLP. “It could have a chilling effect when people have to sit down and worry about losing their house.”

There is at least some potential good news for bloggers.  According to experts, there is a distinction between content written by a blogger and content posted by readers in comments.

Robert O’Neil, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, said in the article linked above that while newspapers are liable for all published content, bloggers and Web site operators are liable for only their own content and not that of those who post comments.

 There are circumstances that mitigate against the implications of this case for bloggers, such as the fact that the defendant, who had been driven from her home by Hurricane Katrina, didn’t appear in court to defend herself.  Nevertheless, this is a relevant factor to consider as the distinction between bloggers and traditional journalists continues to blur.

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Firefly is a Great Series

fireflytvI just started watching the Firefly season one and only DVDs.  This is a great show- one of many great shows that seem to get cancelled too soon.

It’s odd, since Firefly is a science fiction show, but it reminds me more than a little of Deadwood.  The music is very similar.  The titles are similar, and the cinematography is similar.  There are horses in both opening credits.

David Boyd is the cinematographer for both.

I highly recommend Firefly.  It’s available via Amazon and Netflix.

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Journalistic Standards in the Blogosphere

Nick Carr has a fantastic post today on the tension between bloggers and traditional print media.  He discusses in great detail some of problems and perspectives that make it difficult for bloggers and traditional journalists to appreciate and trust each other.

Read his post, and think about what he is saying.  Regardless of which side of the illusory fence you think you’re on, no one can deny the truth of this:

When it comes to conflicts of interest, or other questions of journalistic ethics, the proper attitude that we bloggers should take toward our counterparts in the traditional press is not arrogance but humility.

To do otherwise is to claim a position of superiority that is ludicrous on its face.  Blogs have many advantages over traditional print media.  Let’s not obfuscate them with illusions of grandeur.

If we, as bloggers, want to be taken seriously, then we have to act seriously.  We cannot ignore the standards that “evolved over the years in order to temper the freedoms that could lead, and sometimes did lead, to the abuse of the public trust” just because we have the freedom to post whatever we want whenever we want.

As the traditional press moves online (I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in years), it will bring those standards along.  At that point, the issue becomes not hard copy verses on-screen, or even now verses tomorrow morning.  It becomes reliable and self-governed verses unreliable and chaotic.

With freedom comes responsibility, and with progress come challenges.

Some way, somehow, bloggers need to develop a code of ethics that legitimizes blogging as a reliable, and conflict free, information medium.

Once that happens, the real-time and distributed nature of blogging will turn what is now perceived by many as a disadvantage into a tremendous advantage.

I hope this happens sooner rather than later.

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Morning Reading: 10/10/06

Christopher Carfi on MySpace Facebook [UPDATE: as Christopher mentions in a Comment, he was talking about Facebook.  I had MySpace on the brain- apologies for the typo] and its suitability, or lack thereof, for business use.  Of course my question is why any real world business would want to launch a MySpace Facebook page as opposed to its own web site.  Not to mention that business pages popping up on social networking pages sounds a lot like spam to me.

Dave Taylor on the statistics of blog comments.

Donna Bogatin asks a good question– one that I have talked about before: “Isn’t it time we started thinking about the long-term consequences to businesses and individuals of a consolidation of every piece of public, private, and personal ‘information’ within one $122 billion (and growing) market cap corporation’s ‘cloud’ and worldwide server farms?”

Here’s a handy chart that tells you how many megapixels you need to print various size prints.  Richard Querin has more good info on print size.

While I am generally apolitical, Ethan Johnson has a good read on the Texas gubernatorial race.

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A Whole Lot of Juice: Google, YouTube and That Revenue Thing Again

I was going to sit out Google/YouTube day in the blogosphere, beyond my cautionary post last night about using Google as a standard for wise spending.

But then I read Ed Burnette’s take over at ZD Net.  Lots of good stuff there, and it got me thinking about where things go from here.

A year and a half ago some guys started a video sharing web site.  One leaves to go back to school.  A year and a half later, Google, nervous about getting left behind in yet another space, ponies up $1.65 billion to buy it.  $1.65 billion in Google stock of course.

Tell me this story wouldn’t have fit right in back beneath Bubble 1.0.

Be that as it may, Google is the king of shared video- at least for the moment.

So what now?

There’s still MySpace lurking out there.  I don’t use MySpace and I think it’s silly for grownups to have MySpace pages.  But I am seemingly in the minority as far as that goes, and MySpace is certainly a player in the video, music and awful looking web pages race.

And there are all those other video sites that will get launched and/or funded based on the ripples of the Google/YouTube deal.  Give away money to one person and before you kow it everyone has their hand out.  Questionable acquisitions create the opportunity for endless questionable acquisitions.  In sum, buying out the competition doesn’t work when there’s a low barrier to entry.  Can anyone say Soapbox?

And, finally, there’s the bullseye that TDavid correctly notes is now on Google’s back.  It’s one thing for some kid to make a music video of his girlfriend dancing around on the beach and toss it up there like love graffiti on a fence.  But $1.65 billion is a lot of money.  And where there’s a lot of money, there will be a lot of people with their hands out demanding their share.  Content providers, lawyers and telecos will line up outside Google’s door.

Waiting, watching, suing, lobbying.

It’s a big, big win for the guys that made YouTube.  I’m sure that none of them can really believe this has happened.  They must feel like Jed Clampett every time they wake up and realize how rich they are.  Or maybe they feel like Marc Andreesen.

We won’t know for a while how good or bad it is for Google.  The content deals they’re making- and announcing the day before the acquisition- help calm some of the trouble that’s brewing over copyright issues.

Copyright lawsuits will come, you can count on that.  Once someone wins, then they’ll come in waves.  Some will be merely distractions, but taken as a whole, they could have a significant effect on YouTube’s business model.  If the ad buyers start getting nervous about placing ads on the back of pirated content, things could get very complicated.

Yes, the content deals reduce the universe of potential plaintiffs.

But deals require that the content provider get some revenue, which means that the almighty ad dollar is being spread even thinner over the Web 2.0 landscape.  At some point the ad flow will slow down, like an empty bottle of ketchup.  Empty.

And red.

What then?

Maybe there’s a secret plan.  Or maybe one will be dreamed up in the meantime. I hope so.  I enjoy YouTube.  I pay zero to use it, and I have never once clicked on an ad.

But it’s fun.  And free.  Web 2.0 users are very used to free.

This Google acquisition still feels backwards to me.  Like trying to give away more and more stuff in the name of more and more traffic.  Traffic that goes straight to the cost side of the ledger.

At some point they have to deal with the revenue side.  Ads all by themselves are a band aid at best and smoke and mirrors at worst.

Whether it’s search engines or videos, the content providers are ultimately going to demand most of the juice.  Apply a cap rate to $1.65 billion and you will quickly see that this deal assumes a whole lot of juice.

A whole lot of juice.

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Morning Reading: 10/9/06

I’m 46 years old today.  That looks old, even as I type it.  My dad died when he was 46.  Thank goodness for my kids, who keep me young- even if Cassidy does think I’m “fifty something.”

Mike Arrington has an interesting tale about his trip to speak at an Online News Association (there are about ten times too many associations, but that’s a topic for another post) conference.  Old media doesn’t trust bloggers because they are afraid of moving cheese, and because bloggers are not viewed as objective and reliable (which is fair criticism in light of all the conflicts, rumors, pay per click issues, etc.).  Bloggers don’t read papers (I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in 8 years) because the news is stale and traditionally non-interactive.  Arrogant old media tries to ignore or co-opt new media, while forward thinking old media, like the Houston Chronicle, embraces it.  Arrogant bloggers do too little thinking and too much spouting off about this and that.  It’s not a good blend if you’re looking for cooperation.  Speaking of the Chronicle, Dwight Silverman has a good take on Mike’s Washington experience.

Steve Rubel on the end of an era.  Like Steve, I used to love browsing the racks at my local record store.  But I stopped doing that once Amazon allowed me to browse from the comfort of my home.  Mike at Techdirt has more.

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