Social media
Citizen journalism
Participatory media
DIY content
Micro content
Community publishing
Hyperlocal content
We Media
User-generated news
So many names, with so many overlapping meanings.
Which terms do you favor, and how would you define the ones you use?
Whew.
Just finished the tail end of what turned out to be a couple of months of endless travel--and working.
Some short trips planned, but nothing like the 15,000 plus miles I logged in June.
That means more posts, more thinking--more often.
Can't wait for the jet lag to subside.
PS I pick up my pets this weekend--thanks for taking care of the animals, Spence.
John Markoff's NY Times' story does a good job of explaining the participatory culture of the read/write web.
Quotes and sound bites from many of the usual (emerging tech) suspects highlight ideas many Wrst Coasters are thinking--and living.
Free wireless. A yellow chair. A house.
Who uses it?
interaction designer anab jain documents her wifi universe.
(Via Smart Mobs)
Personal milestone: First relative over age 11 with a blog-- Billy Mernit's Writing the Romantic Comedy (yep, he's an expert.) Congrats, cuz.
Yep, China's a big country. Lotsa people. Lotsa mobile phones.
From Dan Farber, via Emergic, some numbers provided by a China Mobile general manager:
* Mobile phone subscriptions in 2004: 340 million (15 percent growth year over year, 26 percent of the population in China)
* Total number of wired and wireless subscriptions in China: 650 million
* Mobile phone subscriptions by 2007: 500 million, 35 percent of the population
* China Mobile Communications profit: 20 percent on revenue for 2004
* Subscribers who use 300 minutes every month: 200 million (costs about 100 yuan renminbi?$12 US)
* SMS messages sent in 2004: 220 billion
* SMS messages sent during Chinese New Year holiday this year: 11 billion (three times normal usage)
* China telecom industry annual growth rate: 10-percent-per-year for wired, 15-percent-per-year for mobile Google Earth is very impressive. It's a downloadable exe. that offers 3D graphics capabilities for the images...Try it and see.
Vlogging or video blogging-- Mary Hodder writes: "Vlog-posts are little movies, or a post wrapped around a little movie. One cannot link from within a movie, but one can reference, remix, explore...As I discover vloggers, get to know their work, see what they are thinking about as they explore and forge ahead with their vlogging work, I find myself presented with similar sensations of discovery and mystery as I did when I first was discovering blogs."
Pew study: Only 8 percent of the Americans interviewed in a new Pew Research Center for the People and the Press Report say they read news online because it's free--and 73% say reading online news is more convenient.
Of course, the web continues to move from the edge to the center--Key quotes:
" The internet continues to grow as a source of news for Americans. One-in-four (24%) list the internet as a main source of news. Roughly the same number (23%) say they go online for news every day, up from 15% in 2000; the percentage checking the web for news at least once a week has grown from 33% to 44% over the same time period.
While online news consumption is highest among young people (those under age 30), it is not an activity that is limited to the very young. Three-in-ten Americans ages 30-49 cite the internet as a main source of news."
And newspapers? Many of the interviewees said they preferred local cable TV news...They think it's more relevant--and more convenient.
It was today! I am in California, but Blue Jake and others took pix of this wonderful annual event.
Microsoft's got a well-articulated developer's document on RSS, and another on a simple RSS list feature. The spec has some fantastic features articulated, including adding enclosures in a way that, for examples, allows a user to publish a feed of their calendar with an enclosure that allows the calendar app to operate within the feed. Also, there's a simple list spec that sounds very much like a product concept a friend and I wrote last summer--only this is Microsoft and they're building it--Most importantly, the new list spec allows developers to embed additional data into list items (think about product specs, rankings, etc.) and permits multiple views of the same list (because of the new metadata, folks.) Susan sez: Can't wait to see this one play out--the game has just changed, again.
Matt McAlister's post on his tagging and semantic web talk. Very nice. PPT here.
LA Voice: Writers' Guild to go after reality shows-they say staffs are underpaid--and they're not start-ups.
A&E's INKED: New Tattoo art blog linked to A&E show--not the greatest, but evolving--it's brand new.
Bonus: Chef's tattoos
Blogebrity: Jarvis says he likes it, but not cause he's A-list (of course, that's not the reason!). Me, I like the fact it's annoying.
My friend Lisa Petrides knows John Finger, a talented Calfornia watercolorist. I am on his mailing list and every time he sends out a new watercolor, I wish I could buy one.
Here's the latest, a lovely look at California's Mt. Diablo as we head into deep summer.
Not bad, eh?
Kerry, Literal Thoughts: "...do you know what else I have noticed? There are two distinct groups of techies. What I call the old school techies: Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Tim Oren, Esther Dyson, etc, mostly baby boomer generation. And there are your new young techies: think Civicspace, Echo Ditto, etc. There are very few representations of people in their thirties and forties (my generation) in this group."
This amused me, in no small part because she's right.
Halley's hanging with Tony Pierce in Venica, CA...would love to meet up, but I am going to the Fillmore Street Jazz Festival.
What are other people planning for the holiday weekend?
At the Media Center conference, Fran Hauser, the general manager for Time Interactive, gave a talk on magazines, brands and the web focused on deciding when convergence makes sense. I thought her points were worth sharing, both as an insight into how Time Interactive approaches their business and creative, and as a useful reference point for other media publishers.
Fran says that much of her job was to work with the magazine brands and vet or support their ideas. In that vein, she shared the question she asks editors when they have online ideas, or want to use new technology--Is this an appropriate way to extend the brand to a new media platform? At Time Interactive, Fran gets requests to use the following tools:
She says: "A lot of what I do it talk to staff about whether a platform is on brand and whether there is an acceptable return to move a brand to a specific platform."
One example of a project she greenlit was enabling InStyle.com to spend about $75,000 to shoot 30 minutes of fashion video for the fall. The shoot features 80 looks on the theme of what you can wear and what's hot this fall, with merch provided by Macy's, Target and The Gap. The video is being cut up into 80 little clips that will live in a VOD database and be available for members to watch. Of course, all the clothes are available for purchase. Fran says "InStyle is branded runway to reality and this video is exactly that..plus, we found a sponsor for it."
But, as Fran explains, she doesn't greenlight everything. Parenting.com asked if they could do some instructional video; Fran said no way. "Parenting is about useful info to Mom on raising kids, "she explained. "So, what can you do better in video? Nothing--photo galleries and articles do enough." Similarily, Fran told Real Simple no RSS feeds--Although Fortune.com has them, Fran feels that RSS " is a male, tech-savvy thing" so, Real Simple doesn't have them--nor will the other women's brands. (I disagree with that decision.)
The two brands where Fran has supported blogging are EW, because the site is "all about opinion" and All You, the Walmart Magazine that is" informal and accessible."
Final words from Fran were lessons learned:
MIT Bloggers survey: 46 percent of the blogger respondents to a recent survey say they attract 25 or fewer visitors to their blogs on a typical day. 22 percent say they get between 26 and 100 readers on any given day. Less than 1 percent say they have 250 to 1,000 visitors per day. (Via Depraved Librarian)
Dave Pell: What kind of tabloid reader are you? (Compulsive, says Susan.)
Blogger gets photo hosting--cool!
Editors' Weblog: Yahoo! UK editor Simon Hinde says ""Young people are leaving newspapers in droves because print news isn't trustworthy. It's vanity on the part of newspapers to push a particular political view. Facts are distorted to fit a particular view of the world and they don't give a dispassionate view of events. Niche subjects are very well covered online because of semi-professional commentary. There are now mechanisms for blogs to be monetised and that is opening up a whole range of possibilities."
I'm eager to see reaction to this one. Is Hinde too far away to get blasted by the folks who said LATime's wikipedia was a failure--or will the long arm reach out?
The visit to NPR was great. For someone who listens to All Things Considered and Morning edition on a regular basis, getting the tour was a kick (and I LOVE radio stations.)
Even better, there were about 60 NPR folks--from the online group and other parts of the company--come to listen to my talk about digital media and emerging technology tools/companies and share their own ideas.
The group had some good observations and we connected.
Afterwards, I talked with some of the senior staff about ideas they were considering.
I won't spill them here, but will say this group is interested in podcasting, understands tags and tag clouds (at least some do), and is very aware they need to distribute their content beyond the browser (mobile, anyone?)
Went off to the Metro feeling good, especially after the catch-up lunch my old friend and had post talk. B has spent significant time in Asia--Bali, Vietnam, Thailand--it was inspiring to hear his stories and made me want to head East the next time I take time off.
Bonus: If you would like a copy of the powerpoint deck I used in my talk--on Emerging Technology and Digital Media, new technologies and companies to watch, email me at mernit at gmail dot com and I will send you one.
Journalismjobs.com has a post from MSFT recruiting telecommuting bloggers to 'moderate, write and produce blogs in five topic areas: television, music, technology, sports and fashion/food/style." Time estimate is 15 hours a week, and the email goes to filtered@microsoft.com
Susan sez: This is a cheap and clever way for MSFT to fill out their content and build interactive community...Interested to see how it evolves and what placement these blogs get overall.
In DC today, seeing an old friend at NPR and giving a talk.
Taking the Metro in from Arlington, I realize how much confidence I go from my solo trip to Asia.
It was easy to jump on the train and switch twice, not only because I've done it before(and the DC Metro is amazingly well-marked), but because I got around Shanghai by myself.
I can tell that for the next few weeks one of my personal mantras is going to be You can do this, you made it through Asia alone, what's the big deal.
More from the discussion going on with this talk:
Audience member--Please elaborate on what Yahoo going open means:
Craig Forman: This means going from a world of proprietary content that is licensed or bought to providing that plus what we provide from other sources--
We make a light oversight decision as to what feeds are in our RSS aggregators--and we focus on our Yahoo News feeds from that perspective--as opposed to My Yahoo, etc.
Larry: What the Internet does is remove the middleman...it puts a buyer and a seller together in a more efficient way. Yahoo (and other portals) can create communities via being a portal with integrated services. Google tries to separate itself completely from that process and be your pathway to information. We offer a filtered and edited experience.
At the Media Center Cross Platform teams seminar, listening to an on the record discussion by CBS News' Larry Kramer and Yahoo's Craig Forman on the future of news online and working across media platforms. Some points from the talks:
Larry Kramer:
On growing traffic:
Craig Forman Craig says: "I got to Yahoo about 2 years ago ad have looked a news and media from the news, cable, TV production and magazine perspectives--the lesson I have learned is that we are in the middle of still figuring out what they types of engaged media are going to be and what the user benefits are"
We've learned 5 things I want to share:
As we go from 22 to 30 MM users as we have changed the product and user values--we have driven more traffic back to our partners and driven revenues up--We have re-monetized our audience.
The Open Media 100 list is out--and I have an honorable mention, much to my surprise.
(Guess I'm part of the Almost Open Media 150).
More on the list itself later.
E&P: Merrill Brown to direct
Any Gahran starting a site covering the practice of citizen journalism--and a training program as well.
The new AOL startpage is up. Beta link here.
Suw Charman's covered Supernova Day 1 (okay, workshop day)
Andrew Krukoff, one of my favorite NYC blogger types, has launched Blottered, a group-written crime blog.
Tristan Louis has done a wonderful job of crunching numbers to compare how Google, Yahoo and Technorati index the blogosphere and report links back.
This info-rich entry is a super satisfying read.
Some highlights froim his post--
"Yahoo! generally does a better job at indexing the blogosphere than Google does. We know they have been working hard to improve their index and here's proof that they are getting results
Even if Google is the one with the motto about not doing evil, Yahoo! seems to be the one interested in giving equal opportunity to the little guy: smaller blogs seem to have a better chance of being recognized by Yahoo! than they do of being recognized by Google
While the front page of Google advertises they are currently indexing over 8 billion pages, it is very difficult to find ways to support that claim via the link feature they are offering: this can be seen as confirmation that Google does not tell you about all the links it has in its index/"
Tristan also notes "how much larger the number of links found in the Yahoo! index was, compared to the number of links found in either Technorati or Google." He also says that Technorati is getting a better handle on the Asian blogosphere than Yahoo--"a surprising result considering how much time and effort the latter has put into its Asian operations."
Great data, thanks--can't wait to see your stats on MSN.com.
I'll be in Virgina later this week, presenting at Cross Platform Media Teams for The Media Center, and giving a talk at NPR for an old friend.
As I'm getting ready today, I realized that the conference is being held at the Hyatt Reston Regency, the Hyatt at Reston Town Center.
Back in 2001, I spent 10 months literally living at that hotel--I was commuting to Dulles from California, arriving after midnight on Sundays, leaving on Thursday night to go home. My recollection is that I would come into town, work like a maniac for 3-4 days, leave and try to recapture my personal life, which had become very part-time, then get on the plane 36-48 hours after I'd come home to do it all again.
Needless to say, it was not a great time in my life--coming back to stay, 4 years later, will be strange.
Hyatt Reston--Haunt of traveling AOLers on a budget
Went to Berkeley for dinner pre SuperNova and a fireside chat with Dan Gilmor, Becky O'Malley and Peter Merholz. A full houseof folks including Mark Graham, Kevin Werbach, Mary Hodder, Buzz Bruggeman, Sylvia Paul, Jan Hauser, Jeff Ubois, Nina Davis, Kaylia Hamlin, Greg Elin, Suw Charman and a couple dozen others.
Some pix:
Mary Hodder and Suw Charman
Dan Gillmor and Becky O'Malley speaking at Hillside Club
Update: Suw Charman says the discussion seemed to miss the point--I agree--but seeing folks was fun--and meeting Suw was GREAT.
As usual, Halley's spot on:"Just like Happy Divorced Mother's Day, the irony of the day when you have kids and are divorced is that you are essentially the one helping your kid celebrate their other parent -- that person you divorced."
Okay, these crafty baskets from Africa--made by Zulus of telephone wire--speak to me.
(Via PCL Linkdump)
Lovely NY Times op-ed on Friday. S writes of the Star Wars fascination: "Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: "geeking out" and "vegging out." To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means."
He then goes on to compare scientists to the Jedi--we need'em, but they make us uneasy.
Another snippet:
"Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way."
Read the whole thing--well worth it.
Jeneane Sessums writes about her beta trial of Kavena, which the site describes as "the world's first online digital entertainment marketplace enabling customers to watch, play, create, and market films and games." J says: "But you know the net--films and games are a start....video blogging, podcasting, combinations thereof, the sky could really be the limit. Kaneva could easily become a one-stop shop for downloading the newest (think blog-post frequency)amateur and indie entertainment. Because Kaneva also deals in currency, it gives new media creators a place and an audience for distributing and selling their work."
Anyone else noticing how quickly online video distribution is exploding and how many platform and distribution efforts are underway?
Wow, it's an express train.
Rebecca McKinnon tries to set up an MSN spaces Chinese blog using prohibited words like democracy. The response comes back: "You must enter a title for your space. The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title.?
Innovation at Wharton writes about Chinese entrepeneur Jack Ma and Alibaba.com, his China-based e-commerce companybrings buyers and sellers together online.
Dan Washburn: China blogger looking for writers to launch a new local Shanghaist site.
Blog Herald: Gamepolitics calls for XBox purchasers to boycott the new model in protest of China censorship restrictions.
Jupiter exec David Card has some comments on the *new* AOL web-based strategy:
He writes:
"To me, one of the key challenges is getting non-members to use AOL.com as a hub. AOL execs say, yeah, but if you take our existing Web reach, we?re only a few million users under Yahoo, so Job One is to increase page views, and get people to move across the network from within the network, rather than from the home page."
And:
"Shockingly, AOL is positioned to be the leader in RSS among the big portals, search engines, and Internet media companies. Gasp. While frankly, I don?t think RSS is really that important to the masses yet, if AOL does it right, it could teach a lot of mainstream users to use it...Nah, it?ll never happen."
Susan sez: Has AOL explained whether all the ad dollars it is planning to spend are what it takes to launch a new portal destination? Back in the day, it took deep, daily web apps and tools--email, search, personals, etc. to drive daily usage and content got shorter shrift--Will ads for all that AOL free entertainment pay off--or just drive the price of audience acquisition up to dizzying heights?
I share Card's skepticism...AOL is gonna have to pull more than one rabbit out of the hat to make a quick turnaround work.
1. It's not just main stream media and citizen/grassroots journalism--think about do it yourself media--the playlists, event blogs, yahoo groups, shared playlists, photo streams friends, family and unorganized communities create for one another--this is claiming a growing share of Americans' attention--think of it as a throwback to the '30s, when people sat around singing and telling stories for one other--only now we have digital tools to work with.
2. It's about attention, not platform. People don't say Hey, now I want to read a newspaper! Which one is it? --They want news and they go for the most immediate form--0ften web or cable TV. If you are an entertainment information brand, you are competing with brands you may never have considered--but they'll cut into the time your product used to get.
3. Don't overvalue your product online. There's a huge chasm between good and good enough that self-absorbed brands can fall into. If you think making your audience sign up or subscribe as a means to get them to use some cool tool or read some neat content, forget it--they won't--they'll find something good enough somewhere else and leave you behind.
Internet Search engine: A list of alternatives to Google Ad Sense for web sites. (Via Threadwatch and Tim Yang)
bubblegum generation: "The NYT is locking up it's editorial content; the LAT isn't just open-accessing it, it's open-sourcing it (ie, you can remix wikitorials, not just read them)."
American Press Institute new study on women managers in newsrooms:"Only 33 percent of the women anticipated moving up within their organization, while 42 percent of the men were confident of such a move." (Via editors weblog)
little yellow different hits five years of blogging--and still a great read.
Paid Content: More on the new Google Search Subscriptions.
Kristoff writes of the plight of Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani woman gang-raped by order of a village tribunal who brought her attackers to court and used the money she received from their convictions to set up a local school--and who is now being detained by the Pakistani government and is being held without a lawyer.
Jason Chervokas says:"Pakistan's treatment of Bibi and the US government's failure to hold it's ally's feet to the fire on this most basic of human rights issues starkly exposes the bald, two-faced, lie that is the Bush Administration's supposed campaign for democracy in the Arab World."
So far, the US government has been silent on this human rights violation by an ally.
Read Tom Watson on how to speak out. Blogger LazyCat has some added links and resources.
E's going to Paris for the summer to be an RA (resident advisor) in a dorm in an exchange program; this will be her 4th trip to France--not bad for a girl from San Jose, CA now living in New York.
We got together to have dinner in the city (NY); this was our chance to meet up--we hadn't seen one another since March.
Of course, it was fun, it's always fun-- E is one of the great people of the world and the fact she started out as a friend of my son's doesn't mean we don't have a great time together, it just means our friendship has that greatmulti-generational fillip of being honorary members of one another's family.
Have a great trip, my friend--and drink some wine for me.
Can you go home again?
This afternoon, I did.
I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for 15 years, right before I started what's proven to be the most recent nomadic path between two coasts.
Hadn't been back for, oh, 5 years.
Wanted to see if it had changed as much as I have.
Nope. Not really.
The streets were just as green and leafy, the bakeries and coffee shops were unchanged, and the early afternoon strollers seemed just as relaxed and mellow.
And the dogs! Almost as many as in California--Labs, little French bulldogs, and chubby mutts.
On the way back from my friend's house, I stopped in at the copy shop on Flatbush Avenue. Almost 10 years ago, I'd helped Gloria, a local waitress I'd befriended, get a job there--Jay needed someone and Gloria wanted to quit waiting tables.
On impulse, I went in.
Yes, Jay and Gloria were both there, behind the counter.
"Remember me?"
Yes! They did.
We chatted--I told them I lived in California now, they asked about my son, I asked about their families..it felt good.
"I've gotta go," I said, "But I'll stop in again."
And I meant it.
Shanghai Diaries Dan Washburn joins the Gothamist team to start Shanghaist.
English or Chinese?
I hope both.
(Via The Black Journal)