If you look at the comments following that FriendFeed post, you’ll note that my friend (and I don’t mean that just because we said so on FaceBook) Dave Winer commented that he, “Totally agree(d) with this.”
Because so many people have learned that it’s important to listen to Dave (even when they disagree with him) his FriendFeed comment about my “tweet” led to a robust disussion that still lingers 17 hours later.
Which leads me to the topic of comments: A small group of the people who read this blog are currently obsessed with trying to understand where “comments” fit into conversational media. Even those of us who think we at least have a grasp of social media — who know its role in de-centralizing “content” — are fascinated (and some, upset) that comments on our blogs are now becoming de-centralized.
It fascinates me that some bloggers, who more often than not, are using their blog to comment on items they read elsewhere, are becoming upset that comments about their posts are taking place elsewhere.
As for me, I love that comments are finally being recognized as the treasure they are.
I don’t care where the conversation takes place. I want to understand it and embrace it.
Why I find all of this fascinating: You know that kid who loves tearing apart physical things to understand how they work. The one who can actually put the stuff he or she tears apart back together again. “She should be an engineer when she grows up,” people will say about that kid.
I wasn’t that kid.
But looking back, I was obsessed with tearing apart virtual things to understand how they work. I was never interested in how my television worked, but I was extremely curious about how programs were written and produced. I was never really that interested in printing presses, but I can’t remember a time I didn’t wonder about how reporters gathered news and editorial decisions were made. I was also fascinated with what today I’d call group dynamics and how teams and clubs and cliques came together and grew or fell apart. I was an organizer of groups and a conversation “moderator” decades before I even realized that groups and conversation need to be organized and moderated. I was fascinated with why fans become fans and what “loyalty” is all about. I was that kid.
For almost 20 years (back to the CompuServe days) the online world has provided me (and many others like me) with an amazing laboratory in which we get to tear apart the flow of information and the creation of conversation and community in an attempt to understand how they work. For some of us, that’s like being a kid in a, well, info-candy shop.
I’ll admit. I’m not merely doing this for fun. I have a business that allows me to apply what I learn in this laboratory to improve our internal conversations and community — and to incorporate what we learn into improving and enhancing the products and services we sell. But, I think it’s also apparent that I still have a child-like curiousity about the ways in which people use technology to share with one-another and to spread information — and create community.
The most important thing I’ve learned is this: It’s not about the technology. I know so many people who are “afraid” of something because they think it’s “technology.” Frankly, technology developers don’t help things by creating products that are driven by features and functions than by ease-of-use. It still amazes me that after 30 years, so many professional marketers don’t understand why Apple has a cult following. “Cool” is what marketers think Apple is all about. “Not corporate” perhaps, you know, that I’m a Mac, I’m a PC thing, perhaps. As a Mac-tard since 1984, I’ll tell you why Apple has a cult following. They make products for people who don’t give a rip about technology. They make products for users. And even though they don’t say it anymore, their products are for the “rest of us” who don’t really care how the technology works, we just want the technology to disappear so we can listen, read, write, create, share, buy, sell, etc.
I’m obsessed with what’s taking place here. But I’m obsessed as a user and “content” creator and “community” builder and participant.
The Important Part: There are those who preach that print is dead. I’m starting to believe it’s reading that’s dead. I am convinced people don’t read past the first sentence of an email, the first paragraph of a blog post, the headline of a news story, the first 30 characters of a tweet on Twitter. I’m thinking of writing a very long book on this topic, but after the first chapter it will only be greeking.
The Funny Part: I think people look at pictures and love charts — even if they don’t understand them. And video, people really love video. But only if they are how-to videos, videos of someone making a fool of themselves — or of someone else. Or if they are funny videos that allow geeks to laugh at themselves, like these:
Over the years, it’s been fascinating to watch the light turn on for certain people regarding what’s taking place in the marketplace of “content” (excuse me, Doc). For example, today, Paul Krugman writes an “a-ha” piece after using an Amazon Kindle for a couple of months.
Quote:
“Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me.
Whenever I read something like that, I have to take a deep breath and admit to myself that not everyone has spent the past 20 years obsessed with this topic. Whenever I read something like that, I wish I had a place to point people to a few seminal writings that have provided similar a-ha-moments to really geeky folks (like me) — but a long time ago.
If you have some more writings that provided an a-ha moment to you, please add them to the comments.
Here are a few of my go-to ones:
1. The Esther Dyson essay, “Intellectual Value,” written in the July, 1995, issue of Wired magazine. (Krugman quotes Dyson in his piece today, but does not link to it.) Go ahead, commit it to memory. It’s like the Gettysburg Address.
3. While not a specific article, I find myself referring often to the concept Paul Saffo coined “macro-myopia.” It relates to forecasting the impact of new technology and means, roughly, “in the short term we overestimate, in the long term we underestimate” the impact of new technology. This is an idea I’ve written about several times over the years (on the Cluetrain listserv in 2000, here in 2002 and in 2004 when Paul explained his role in adding to a concept developed by Roy Amara, Ev Rogers and others. The importance of the concept today is this: When those of us who are obsessed with technology see something that we know is going to change everything, we delude ourselves into thinking the change will be overnight. Technology adoption has a very predictable cycle and even those technologies that look like instant hits are likely catching a wave that was two-decades in the building.
Two bonus long reads for those who find comfort in realizing all these new ideas have been around a long, long time.:
The Important Part: Despite the fact most people have only been using e-mail for the past 15 years, it has become a dominant channel of business communication — and definitely the most mis-used. A couple of interesting thoughts on e-mail have hit my radar in the past 24 hours. First, this check-list from Seth Godin with some practical (and humorous) considerations you should take before hitting that send button. Second, (via a Twitter ‘tweet’ from Steve Rubel) I saw these blog posts by Luis Suarez, a knowledge management expert at IBM, who is 14 weeks into an experiment of giving up business e-mail.
The Take Away: E-mail is not going away anytime soon, but the people who used e-mail before you ever heard of it are moving onto other methods of staying in touch with one-another. Some of this is generational - Facebook and text-messaging trump e-mail for those under 24. Some of this is frustration(al?) - an effort to reduce the noise-level that has resulted from spam and the ease some people have with hitting the send button. Your not going to moving on from e-mail anytime soon, but the next few years will see a significant evolution in how you use and manage e-mail.
Thanks to those who e-mailed me on Sunday to let me know this blog was off line. It happened as one of those unintended glitches that occur when you de-glitch something else. Fortunately, the glitch only affected my blog and some other items sitting on a server that hosts nothing commercial or business-related.
Typically, I would have noticed the site being down, but I was busy all weekend actively enjoying the glorious weather here in Nashville. Checking in with Twitter last night, I discovered there must have been some problems there also this weekend, as some of my friends who are heavy-duty users of the service noticed some (and came up with a fix for) performance issues.
And then, this morning, the voice-over-IP phone system in our office is having some issues (as in, no one can call us, but we can call out).
The parade of glitches reminds me a bit of last week’s episode of Southpark called “Over Logging.” It is a spot-on satirical commentary on the creeping cultural dependence on the Internet that has developed over the past decade. (Warning: There is some very intense — and gross — adult-related content in this episode — as there is in every episode of South Park.) There is much in the show that holds up a mirror to those of us who have forgotten what it was like in the old-days before, say, 1996.
Spoiler alert: The way in which the Internet is fixed is a classic geek-humor moment. And the plea at the end to not “over-log” the Internet is a clever jab at the faddish way in which some people treat “being green.”
It’s Monday. I’m back online. The Internet is working again.
In a really transparent link-baiting, page-view inflating scheme, eweek.com is running a slide-show-ish “editorial” feature titled, “Should Facebook be Banned from Work?” (I hate doing it, but as a service to you, dear reader, here’s the link.)
Obviously, I think it would be ridiculous to ban Facebook from work. I prefer to ban from work employees who aren’t productive and responsible. If employees are productive, they’ll discover how to use anything productive that Facebook enables — and learn how to manage the noise.
What I’d rather see banned from work are editorial features that make the reader click through 12 pages (or more, if you count the ads popping up along the way). The “page-view” metric is the reason publishers do this, but it’s a nightmare user experience and I’m sure any analysis of site traffic would show that people rarely click through more than 2-3 pages. On this one, I didn’t get past the second frame.
Also what I’d like to see banned (and I thought it was) are the types of embedded-in-editorial link-ads that appear on the eWeek website. The type that send Paul Conley over the edge.
For anyone the least bit “web-savvy,” eWeek is a much bigger time waste than Facebook.
I think it’s pretty interesting that Hugh MacLeod’s post about deleting his Twitter account is rapidly working its way up Techmeme.com. If this works the way events like this typically work, in a day or two, Hugh will be the lede in a New York Times article on Twitter burn-out. (Those familiar with the blogosophere can easily connect the dots between his post and the upcoming New York Times article. It will start with lots of blog posts saying, “I hate Twitter, also.”) I wish Hugh had not deleted his account — he could have just stopped posting to it — as the historian in me likes to see things archived, rather than wiped-clean. However, if Hugh was finding Twitter a distraction from finishing his book and his art, and he needed to pull the plug completely, I applaud him for doing so. I like Twitter and have written on this blog about how I believe it can serve many positive purposes. But yes, it can be a time-waste. That’s why I try to keep my Twittering in the background and turned off while working. I’ve found the program Twirhl, a desktop Twitter (and other services) client is helping me filter out lots of Twitter noise and have a better framework and context for the use of Twitter.
So I respect Hugh’s decision. Many media and technology people I know have said to me they “don’t get Twitter.” I understand. I’ve even written here that nobody “gets Twitter.” And that’s one of the things about it that I find so fascinating. It’s also why I’m not deleting my Twitter account.
Later: Surpassing actual news about billion dollar tech giants, Hugh’s Why I canceled my Twitter account post is now atop Techmeme. Go figure.
Seeing the NY Times headline, “Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet,” I figured the story would be related to the hilarious one-man stage performance, British TV show and book from several years ago called, Are you Dave Gorman? In 2000, Gorman travelled the world to meet other Dave Gormans. After his show came out, they even all got together for a big Dave Gorman-palooza (see photo, below). In other words, Dave Gorman is the patron saint of “Googlegängers” everywhere. But, alas, so fleeting is “Internet fame,” the article in the Times doesn’t even mention him. Back when he performed “Are You Dave Gorman?” off-Broadway, he got boffo review from the Times. But now, he’s just another forgotten Internet meme from days gone by who can’t even make it into a trend story about a trend he created. (Flashback: My review of Gorman’s 2004 show, “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure”)
Sidenote: I have never met anyone with my exact name on the Internet. However, by a rather strange coincidence, I discovered that the President of the Lynchburg, Va. Chamber of Commerce has almost the same name as mine (his last name is Hammond, a name I often get called by mistake). Even more strange, however, is that the Vice President, Membership, of that organization has the same name as my wife’s maiden name. Interesting, yes. But not interesting enough to cause me to travel to Lynchburg.
That said, I’ve met several “Rexes” on the blogosphere and via Twitter and must say that our club, while small, is very cool.
Over the years, I’ve heard lots of stories about couples meeting online. And I know that an online industry has grown up around helping people connect with others who are of the same mind — or heart — or both.
Yet when I started blogging, the last thing (but definitely the best thing) I ever expected to post one day was a photo of a happy couple who are getting married this weekend who first met because of this blog. I feel like Michael from The Office when I interject myself into this couple’s “how we met” story, but they’ve told me they first became aware of one-another through comments on this blog and the first time they actually met was at a blogger event I co-hosted with the guy on the left, a Nashville lawyer who was a legendary early “persona” blogger who went my the name Mr. Roboto. Yes, that’s Mr. Roboto.
Anyway, I’ll skip the rest of the story and merely say congratulations and best wishes and I hope the weather is swell in Hawaii where you are arriving and preparing for your wedding — however, I know that first, Mr. Roboto will be watching a little basketball game.
On October 8, 2003 , I first wrote on this blog how strange I thought it was that people actually slept through some of the more bizarre and strange ideas of the late 90s like the CueCat. That was my first-ever post about the re-emergence of Cue-cat-esque ideas that use cell-phone cameras to read bar codes because, and I’m guessing here because I’ve never really understood why, people apparently can’t type in URLs.
On January 31, 2006, I wrote about another CueCatesque cell-phone TV barcode reading solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
Fast-forward to today and, well, every old dumb thing is new dumb thing again. And just because it’s Google this time doesn’t make it not dumb.
That said, I must admit that I found myself in a bookstore recently where I snapped a cover of a book with my iPhone so that I’d remember the name later. It sure would be convenient if I could go ahead and snap that barcode and have Amazon deliver me the book the next morning. (That was a joke, people.)
On the Hammock.com “Custom Media Craft Blog,” I’ve posted an item about the new Library of Congress page on Flickr. According to Librarian/Blogger Matt Raymond, “if all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity.”
This is the type of smart use of new media and collaborative communities that I believe more institutions, companies and associations should be experimenting with. Here’s one little example: Does your church or synagogue have old photos gathering dust somewhere? Post them on a Flickr account and invite your members to help you identify who are on the photos. Just think about all the images in old school yearbook files that could be organized via tagging.
In a smaller way, we all have our little Library of Congress archival photos sitting in files (and shoeboxes) somewhere.
Later: Dave Winer has updated his Flickr-fed, RSS-powered screensaver-caster, FlickrFan (see my earlier post) with a feed option for photos from the LOC Flickr account.
2. By February 28, every event and business-media company in the country will have an “un-conference” division.
3. In June, IDG will announce that the 2009 Macworld Expo is being renamed Macworld UnExpo.
4. In July, Apple’s lawyers will sue several hundred people for using the words pod and camp in the same sentence.
5. In August, there will be a big controversy involving how corporate sponsors have taken over unconferences and how great things were back when unconferences really were unconferences — oh, and another thing, how come there are so few un-white-males attending them?
6. In September, 30,000 trade-show and association executives will attend the First Annual UnConferenceCon and UnTradeshow at Chicago’s McCormick Place.
7. In November, NPR will air a week-long series on the history of Unconferences and leave out Dave Winer because the producer forgets to Google the question, “What is an unconference?”
After adding a del.icio.us link to this discussion on Dave Winer’s weblog regarding Twitter’s business model, I noticed a memorable observation buried in its comment thread. A commenter suggests Twitter may provide a return for its investors, but the commenter thinks it can’t “make money,” as in generate recurring revenue. To this, Dave replies:
“I don’t remember what your definition of “making money” is. To me it means money shows up in my bank account that wasn’t there before.
Frankly, I don’t know why you’d want to spend time reading them, but Techmeme is currently tracking dozens of blog posts that have sprung up today regarding Twitter’s business model.
The most consistent phenomenon I’ve witnessed from observing web-culture for the past 12 years is this: When something new comes along and half the tech/new media geeks I know can’t live without it and the other half detest it — I get ready for a tsunami of “what’s the business model?” pontificating, followed by a ferocious chorus of, “Oh yea?”s.
Dave’s right. Making money is a business model. If creating (or buying) something that you can then sell for more than it took you to create (or buy) it, that’s a business model. The wider the spread between the cost and the sales price, the better the business model.
Bottomline: The folks who created Twitter are in the business of developing web products and, well, selling them. The top guy there created Blogger.com. He sold it to Google. Creating and selling Blogger was a business model — a great one. Does Blogger.com today have a viable business model? (That was a rhetorical question, by the way.)
Oh, yes, something else: The folks who created Twitter have created other things that no one found addictive — or even mildly helpful. Some people call such attempts that don’t work out failures. Smart people like Evan Williams know they are just part of the business model of making money.
I have only an inkling of an idea what the friendly folks at National Instruments sell, but I’m thinking my 17-year-old son may one day want to go work there after viewing this:
From my vantage point as an uninterested (except as a viewer of Lost) observer of the current Writers Guild strike, I’ve wondered if the concept of “union” or “stike” can even hold up in an industry that’s all about independent businesses and self-employed individuals collaborating briefly on a project and then moving on to another project with other independent businesses and other self-employed individuals.
In other words, we’re not talking about a steel mill or auto plant — or even a professional sports league benefitting from government sanctioned monopoly protection. We’re talking about, to a large degree, an industry where even the most steady job with a company, say, staff writer on a network TV show, is guaranteed to end in a few years (but most likely, months) and you’re already working on your next gig.
I understand that, in this context, the use of the word “guild” is more appropriate than “union,” but still, is this a workable model today?
I don’t “follow” the entertainment industry, so I’m sure there are many savvy folks wrtiting about the business aspects of what’s taking place. However, I think an extended strike will be especially interesting to those of us who have always believed “user-generated content” was an incredibly inaccurate term to use when describing what individuals, rather than large corporations, do when they use the web to distribute their creations. In this case, the “users” are far from amateur.
This will be stuff worth watching. And frankly, the longer the strike endures, the more interesting it will be to watch.
On October 8, 2003 , I 
