Some of you might not know, but I have a column at AlwaysOn covering the blogging, social networking, and overall Web 2.0 space. I'm suppose to be a part-time columnist (every 2-3 weeks), but I think I should be called a "one-time columnist" since the last time I wrote a piece was almost 5 months ago.
Yeah, I'm pretty lame. I missed the opportunity to write at least 3 good articles I had brewing in my head but didn't due to my day job. Anyway, I had fun with this piece and my initial rush job was tweaked several times to have more focus since I could have written about several issues I see within the video and entertainment industry. Rich, the managing editor at AlwaysOn, was the primary source of guidance, which I appreciated. He even thought of the title (thanks, rich!). Of course, Jill, my editor, helped in the normal editing process she goes through... once a year :)
Forget the Long Tail!
For video, it will be the big and mid-size players that win in the end.
A little over a year ago, I predicted that the PC would become an entertainment epicenter for U.S. consumers, much as it has in South Korea, where more than 70% of the residents cite the PC (over TV) as their preferred source of entertainment. (See "Where Technology Is Ubiquitous, Opportunity Abounds," January 2005.) Little did I realize how quickly my prediction could become a reality. A year later, my wife and I are watching episodes of "Lost" on my laptop's 15.4-inch screen. And when we're not doing that we're marveling over the perfectly visible beads of sweat on Kobe Bryant's face, thanks to our 50-inch plasma TV and a subscription to Comcast HDTV. Like the rest of America, our viewing habits are changing based on convenience and advancements in picture technology—and the ramifications of this for content producers could be monumental.
With their distribution channels disrupted and user-generated content on the rise, the lords of big media and entertainment are looking over their shoulders. And well they should: Thanks to new players like video-sharing services vSocial and Ourmedia, online editing and publishing service VideoEgg, and distribution platform Brightcove, just about anyone can create, edit, distribute, and even receive widespread recognition for his or her creative work today without the help of a major studio. But this isn't a story of the long tail; the hit makers will get richer. Instead, it's a story of the wide range of new revenue opportunities that are available to established and mid-size players in this evolving media landscape.
High-end picture and sound quality versus convenient access represent overlapping but not competing desires for consumers. As witnessed by the growing popularity of Slingmedia's Slingbox (which lets you access your TV from anywhere through your PC) and iTunes, a large segment of the consumer market has come to value the convenience of PCs. Others love their ESPN and HBO in high definition. In this new digital landscape, it's not simply about content but rather type of content and how it's distributed. And it's the companies that are able to look at content in new ways -- both repurposing existing content and creating new formats to suit the changing mediums -- that will come out the winners.
Over the past year, user-generated content has gotten a lot of buzz, becoming the primary driver in the growth of the blogosphere. With sites like Slashdot.org and Instapundit receiving more traffic than most of the online newspaper dailies, and sites like MySpace creating followings for previously unknown bands and artists, we've seen an explosion of amateur video on the web. The sons of Bob Saget are proliferating, and the web is flooded with home videos that may or may not be America's funniest.
Whether in the service of journalism, entertainment, or art, user-generated content is here to stay -- but don't expect the video space to play out in the same way that written text and photos have. You need more than just good writing skills and precision with a camera to produce good video. And there are only so many stupid human tricks, wild college parties, and horrible accident clips a person can watch. All of which is to say, video sites will rise and fall during this novelty stage of online video development, but the ones that stick around will be those with the best content.
Thus, while this may seem like a story of the long tail, it's not. Instead, it's the story of how online distribution channels will allow big media and entertainment to capture even more revenue -- just as the creation of the video rental market allowed them to do in the 1980s. Think about all of that content residing across the globe in the basements of companies like Time Warner and the BBC -- and then think about all the money that could be made from extending the revenue lifecycles of those content libraries into infinity.
I have thought about this, which is why I was disappointed when Yahoo announced last week that it's moving away from creating original content for the web. I thought Yahoo was moving in the right long-term direction by becoming not only an aggregator of content but also a creator of original programming -- perfectly poised as it is to open up new online distribution channels and increase the public's appetite for quality content. If Yahoo chose to pursue this tack, it could easily become the new studio on the block within the next decade.
Yahoo cousin Google, on the other hand, has applied excellent strategy to its moves in the video space. By signing the NBA, the National Archives, and CBS, the search giant has positioned its service well for the long term. Now, it's just needs to take care of its pricing: $1.99 for TV shows and $3.95 for NBA games are too much. If Google (or its content partners) can get those charges down to $1 or less (and provide round-the-clock access), expect to watch its usage and revenues grow. And although advertising models will no doubt evolve as the online video landscape matures, there's no reason that ad-free and ad-supported content can't co-exist for online video.
Just as the big boys can expect to profit from this changed video landscape, so too can the mid-size production groups that are able to develop content to fill the gap between big Hollywood productions and homemade video. Not all shows need to be multimillion-dollar productions -- especially when they're going to be viewed on cellphones -- but viewers are looking for something more than car crashes and practical jokes. Companies like ManiaTV (which creates broadcast channels for its online TV network) and MobuzzTV (which creates shorter clips geared for mobile devices) can profit from this gulf with productions that cost thousands rather than millions of dollars.
Expect, too, to witness the emergence of more filmmakers in the mode of Robert Rodriguez -- the producer and director of such films as "El Mariachi" and "Spy Kids" -- as the market for low-budget quality content for companies like Google Video and YouTube continues to grow. Again, what I'm talking about is a middle market in the video and movie industry where sustainable companies can and are being created.
So where does it all end? Over the next decade, I expect we'll continue to see the growth and development of these middle-market players, who will command more and more influence in the video and entertainment industries. Sharing in (but not controlling) the wealth will be the big studios, which can expect to see their revenues grow even as their stranglehold on the industry loosens. Most importantly, consumers will have instant access to more quality programming than ever before through a variety of mediums. (Twilight Zone and Star Trek whenever we want? Awesome!) I can't wait for the day when I can watch my favorite NBA games in high definition on my Sony PSP (for 50 cents each).
UPDATE: David Beisel, a VC at Masthead Ventures, has a response to my post, "Go Medium or Go Home?"
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm leaving my copy here.
Showing posts with label alwayson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alwayson. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
2084
I don't believe it's been over two months since I wrote something for AlwaysOn. Work has just occupied my time and mindshare. This week's article has been sitting on my desktop unfinished for at least six weeks. Horrible.
Below is the link to my article and I decided just for fun to post my first draft of the article.
2084
With apologies to Mr. Orwell, the future looks a bit different than that depicted in the pages of his seminal volume.
In the aftermath of the July London bombings, the first photos to come out of that tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary to appear came from blogs. Like many in the blogosphere, I expected this. Then I had an epiphany.
In imagining our society years from now—when technology is ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices have proliferated, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities are commonplace, and information inundation is complete—I realized that George Orwell's vision of 1984 will never truly come to be. Decades from now, even the idea of a totalitarian state will appear utterly ridiculous. Why? Because the innovations and technological advances that will emerge over the next decade will not only improve our quality of life but actually change human behavior and alter the fundamental structures of our societies.
Innovation born a decade past and a decade forward is changing our basic wiring and creating a more transparent world. Now, I'm not saying that technology will cure all of society's ills, but I do believe it will produce tools that can improve communications and living standards across the globe. Today's technological advances are bringing us all closer as physical boundaries are eliminated and people who in other times would never have crossed paths are forging significant bonds.
On a global scale, this technology-spawned collective consciousness will make it impossible for controlling, paranoid governments like the one portrayed in Orwell's "1984" to exist over the long term. Equal access to information and power means that the oppression of the many by the few will no longer be possible. It also means that the general population will likely have a much larger hand in determining the public policy issues that affect us all.
What it doesn't portend is a future like that presented in "Gattaca," a stale advanced civilization dictated by the strict laws and rules of science. On the contrary, as information continues to flood our lives and knowledge builds, we'll create the technology to sort through the chaos, and we'll adapt to a world of terabytes rather than kilobytes.
With respect to George Orwell, here's my Sunday afternoon vision of 2084 ...
Herbert Walker stood in the pouring black rain of Los Angeles tapping his latex shoes while waiting for the AeroBus to arrive. With traffic no longer an issue (since the National Public Air Road Bill was signed into law a decade ago), Herbert didn't mind the rain. The air roads -- designated solely for public transportation vehicles -- have greatly reduced traffic, air pollution, and the number of ground-vehicle users. Jimmy Jun, Herbert's colleague, walks briskly up the AeroBus platform.
"Love this rush-hour 20-minute Irvine-to-Westwood commute. What d'ya say, Jimmy?"
"Love it almost as much as I-pools ..."
I-pools, or "intelligence pools," are vast electronic repositories of shared knowledge that act as a virtual marketplace. Their predecessors were the archaic, Internet-based wiki-pools, which were rendered almost instantly useless (for all but simple information gathering) by the trolls, egomaniacs, and unskilled contributors who quickly ran rampant on them.
Decades later, smartbots were finally developed to comb through these knowledge pools and correct false information, poor structures, and unintelligible contributions. That led to today's I-pools, which inspire almost complete trust in their accuracy and depth. More than repositories of knowledge, I-pools are collaborative marketplaces, where articles are developed, movie scripts are created, and businesses are launched.
"Yeah, remember 20 years ago when we were just starting out? Journalists were almost as underpaid and underappreciated as teachers. Now, the pie is bigger for everyone, and the top talent is finally getting paid well."
"Ha-ha-ha. Are you calling yourself a 'top talent?' "
"Well, six of my articles did get picked by News Corp., Pajamas Media, and the New York Times last month. And one was read by 2 million people in 87 countries."
"OK, OK. There you go again with your numbers. The worst thing about journalism today is that it's so numbers-driven."
"Jealous?"
"Hell, no. I write for my niche of military defense analysts; I have a following. I'd rather be deeply loved by a few than glanced over by many." Jimmy smirked.
"True. [Laughs.] Hey, did you check out Google's new relevancy crosscheck program?"
"Yeah, pretty cool. I actually tested it out last night when I was posting my thoughts up on my cloudpad. After I completed my first few paragraphs, I ran it through 'crosscheck,' and it came up with six articles or references I could use. A couple made great sources to quote, and one was excellent to integrate. What was really coolio was that with a click, I was connected to the author of the piece I wanted to integrate, got his permission, transferred his fee, and it was done."
Herbert and Jimmy step into the AeroBus and settle into its deep seats. Immediately, Herbert inserts a square device into the arm of the bus seat, activating a retinal scan from the seat in front of them.
"Yeah, I forgot to charge my MobileLife last night, so I need a quick boost," Herbert tells Jimmy.
"But you're headed to the office?"
"No. I have a couple interviews on Virtu-Call. One is with some guy in France, and I have to take a picture of him for this article on the outcast lifestyle of people there."
"Really? A Frenchman with Virtu-Call? That's like a Neanderthal with a laser gun."
"Well, he works for a government agency that's trying to develop its manufacturing workforce into information workers."
"Hmmm ... that effort seems about 40 years late. The majority of French workers have become cheap, unskilled labor since that country missed out on the growth years of the Information Age. Only Vivendi is a relevant player in the world economy."
"Yeah, but it's interesting because it's also become a haven for the small segment of Luddites that still exist from the "anti-search movements" of the 2030s."
"Coolio. Just don't send me a copy. I already have 10 books and about 100 articles I want to read this week in my sleep, so I don't need irrelevant junk in my bin."'
"Don't worry, Jimmy, I've known you for more than 40 years?since we met on FaceBook in the second grade. I wasn't going to send it to you."
FIRST DRAFT:
A few months ago, during the time of the London bombings, the first photos to come out that horrible tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary that people read came from blogs, and like many of those in the blogosphere I expected this. Then I had an epiphany. I imagined our society years from now as technology becomes ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices proliferate, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities become commonplace, and people become inundated with more and more information, I realized the world presented in Orwell’s 1984 will never come to be. It won’t even be a remote possibility much less an alternative reality writers can dream up because the idea of a totalitarian state decades from now would become so utterly ridiculous.
The innovation and technological advances over the next decade will not only improve the quality of life for humankind, but change human behavior and the fundamental structures of our societies. Even now, the youth of our society regard email as less useful tool than our generation, make a significant amount of their friends online, and embrace technology instead of fearing it. The weight of innovation that was born a decade past and a decade forward is changing the basic wiring of humans and creating a more transparent world. Of course technology is not a solution or a cure to societal ills and injustices, but a tool that can be applied for the improvement of human communication and living standards across the globe. What is unique about today’s innovations is that they are creating greater connectivity on our earth, crossing numerous borders, and increasing the bonds between people who would have never interacted with each other.
The potential for controlling, paranoid, overbearing governments in “1984” will be crushed by the weight of the collective consciousness that is being formed today. I am not stating that we will become more like-minded in the future, but I do envision issues that are of importance to the general population will be effectively decided or influence by the mediums that are developing today. The oppression by a few to the many will no longer be possible, but will this also mean that the general population will decide upon public policy issues affecting the future well-being of all its citizens? Maybe. This is a scary proposition for some, including myself, but who really knows the mechanisms that will develop in the political arena that complements these techno-societal advancements.
The ostensible information overload that is growing has led people in the past to believe our future will become like the future presented in "Gattaca," a stale advanced civilization dictated by strict laws and rules of science. To a lesser extent, I believe this vision of our future is doom. As information and knowledge continues to flood our lives, we will continue to build the technology that helps us sort through this chaos and our minds will develop to accept a world of terabytes instead of kilobytes. Even children today are beginning to absorb an extraordinary amount of information and multi-task far better than their parents.
I assume when most of you take a pause and contemplate on the significance of the changes occurring around us, we are able to recognize that these are times that people will look back on as ground-breaking, life-changing, or revolutionary.
With respect to George Orwell, the following is my Sunday afternoon attempt to paint a view of 2084…
Herbert Walker stood in the pouring black rain of Los Angeles tapping his latex shoes while waiting for the AeroBus to arrive. No longer a victim of traffic since the National Public Air Road Bill was signed into law a decade ago, the rain was more pleasant for him now. The air roads, which are only designated for public transportation vehicles, have greatly reduced traffic, air pollution, and the number of ground vehicle users. Jimmy Jun, Herbert’s colleague, briskly walks up the AeroBus platform.
"Love this Irvine to Westwood 20 minute commute in the thick of rush hour traffic. What ya say, Jimmy?"
"Herb, I almost love it as much as when the I-pools were created."
I-pools were “Intelligence pools” that were vast electronic repositories of shared information and knowledge that people contributed to while acting as a virtual marketplace. The original predecessor of the I-pools were archaic, Internet-based areas of collaboration called wiki-pools. But these never satisfied the quality standards most people desired since the viruses of inefficiency, such as trolls, ego-maniacs, and unskilled contributors, rendered most of these wiki-pools useless beyond simple information gathering. After decades of mediocrity, they created smartbots that comb through these knowledge-pools and tried to correct false information, poor structures, and unintelligible contributions. Now its progress to its current state as I-pools were there is almost complete trust in their accuracy and depth. Also these I-pools have become more than repositories of knowledge, but marketplaces of collaboration. Articles are developed, movie scripts are made, and businesses launched through these virtual workplaces.
"Yeah, remember twenty years ago when we just started out? Journalists were just as underpaid and unappreciated almost as much as school teachers. The pie is bigger for everyone and the top talent finally gets paid well."
"Hahaha. Are you calling yourself a ‘top talent’?"
"Well, six of my articles did get picked by News Corp, Pajamas Media, and The New York Times last month. One was read by 2 million in 87 countries."
"Ok. Ok. There you go again with your numbers. Probably the worse thing about journalism today is that it’s become so numbers-driven."
"Jealous?"
"Jealous? Hell, no. I write for my niche of military defense analysts, and you know I have a following. I would rather be deeply loved by a few than glanced over by many," Jimmy stated with a smirk.
"True. (Laughs) Hey, did you check out Google’s new relevancy crosscheck program?"
"Yeah, pretty cool. I actually tested it out last night when I was posting my thoughts up on my cloudpad. After I completed my first few paragraphs, I ran it through ‘crosscheck’ and it came up with six articles or references I could use. A couple were great sources to quote and one was excellent to integrate. What was coolio was that with a click I was connected to the author of the piece I wanted to integrate, got his permission, transfer his fee, and it was done."
"Wow. They make really make life easier for us creatives. Hey, the AeroBus is finally here."
Herbert and Jimmy step into the AeroBus and fall into the deep seats of the vehicle. Immediately Herbert inserts a square-shaped device into the arm of the bus seat, which activates a retinal scan from the seat in front of them.
"Yeah, I forgot to charge my MobileLife last night, so I need a quick boost," Herbert tells Jimmy.
"But you’re headed to the office?"
"No. I have a couple interviews on Virtu-Call. One is with some guy in France and I have to take a picture of him for this article on the outcast lifestyle of people there."
"Really? A Frenchman with Virtu-Call? That’s like a Neanderthal with a laser gun."
"Well, he works for a government agency there trying to develop their manufacturing workforce into information workers."
"Hmmm… that effort seems about forty years too late for France. The majority of that country has become cheap, unskilled labor since they missed out on growth years of the information age. Only Vivendi is a relevant player in the world economy."
"Yeah, but it’s interesting because it also has become a haven for the small segment of Luddites that still exist from the 'anti-search movements' of the 2030’s."
"Coolio. Just don’t send me a copy. I already have 10 books and about 100 articles I want to read this week in my sleep, so I don’t need irrelevant junk in my bin."
"Don’t worry, Jimmy, I’ve known you for over forty years now since we first met on FaceBook in second grade, so I wasn’t going to send it to you."
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, just read the copy at OhmyNews here.
[tags: 1984, george orwell, google, facebook, wikis, wikipedia, pajamas media, future, technology]
Below is the link to my article and I decided just for fun to post my first draft of the article.
2084
With apologies to Mr. Orwell, the future looks a bit different than that depicted in the pages of his seminal volume.
In the aftermath of the July London bombings, the first photos to come out of that tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary to appear came from blogs. Like many in the blogosphere, I expected this. Then I had an epiphany.
In imagining our society years from now—when technology is ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices have proliferated, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities are commonplace, and information inundation is complete—I realized that George Orwell's vision of 1984 will never truly come to be. Decades from now, even the idea of a totalitarian state will appear utterly ridiculous. Why? Because the innovations and technological advances that will emerge over the next decade will not only improve our quality of life but actually change human behavior and alter the fundamental structures of our societies.
Innovation born a decade past and a decade forward is changing our basic wiring and creating a more transparent world. Now, I'm not saying that technology will cure all of society's ills, but I do believe it will produce tools that can improve communications and living standards across the globe. Today's technological advances are bringing us all closer as physical boundaries are eliminated and people who in other times would never have crossed paths are forging significant bonds.
On a global scale, this technology-spawned collective consciousness will make it impossible for controlling, paranoid governments like the one portrayed in Orwell's "1984" to exist over the long term. Equal access to information and power means that the oppression of the many by the few will no longer be possible. It also means that the general population will likely have a much larger hand in determining the public policy issues that affect us all.
What it doesn't portend is a future like that presented in "Gattaca," a stale advanced civilization dictated by the strict laws and rules of science. On the contrary, as information continues to flood our lives and knowledge builds, we'll create the technology to sort through the chaos, and we'll adapt to a world of terabytes rather than kilobytes.
With respect to George Orwell, here's my Sunday afternoon vision of 2084 ...
Herbert Walker stood in the pouring black rain of Los Angeles tapping his latex shoes while waiting for the AeroBus to arrive. With traffic no longer an issue (since the National Public Air Road Bill was signed into law a decade ago), Herbert didn't mind the rain. The air roads -- designated solely for public transportation vehicles -- have greatly reduced traffic, air pollution, and the number of ground-vehicle users. Jimmy Jun, Herbert's colleague, walks briskly up the AeroBus platform.
"Love this rush-hour 20-minute Irvine-to-Westwood commute. What d'ya say, Jimmy?"
"Love it almost as much as I-pools ..."
I-pools, or "intelligence pools," are vast electronic repositories of shared knowledge that act as a virtual marketplace. Their predecessors were the archaic, Internet-based wiki-pools, which were rendered almost instantly useless (for all but simple information gathering) by the trolls, egomaniacs, and unskilled contributors who quickly ran rampant on them.
Decades later, smartbots were finally developed to comb through these knowledge pools and correct false information, poor structures, and unintelligible contributions. That led to today's I-pools, which inspire almost complete trust in their accuracy and depth. More than repositories of knowledge, I-pools are collaborative marketplaces, where articles are developed, movie scripts are created, and businesses are launched.
"Yeah, remember 20 years ago when we were just starting out? Journalists were almost as underpaid and underappreciated as teachers. Now, the pie is bigger for everyone, and the top talent is finally getting paid well."
"Ha-ha-ha. Are you calling yourself a 'top talent?' "
"Well, six of my articles did get picked by News Corp., Pajamas Media, and the New York Times last month. And one was read by 2 million people in 87 countries."
"OK, OK. There you go again with your numbers. The worst thing about journalism today is that it's so numbers-driven."
"Jealous?"
"Hell, no. I write for my niche of military defense analysts; I have a following. I'd rather be deeply loved by a few than glanced over by many." Jimmy smirked.
"True. [Laughs.] Hey, did you check out Google's new relevancy crosscheck program?"
"Yeah, pretty cool. I actually tested it out last night when I was posting my thoughts up on my cloudpad. After I completed my first few paragraphs, I ran it through 'crosscheck,' and it came up with six articles or references I could use. A couple made great sources to quote, and one was excellent to integrate. What was really coolio was that with a click, I was connected to the author of the piece I wanted to integrate, got his permission, transferred his fee, and it was done."
Herbert and Jimmy step into the AeroBus and settle into its deep seats. Immediately, Herbert inserts a square device into the arm of the bus seat, activating a retinal scan from the seat in front of them.
"Yeah, I forgot to charge my MobileLife last night, so I need a quick boost," Herbert tells Jimmy.
"But you're headed to the office?"
"No. I have a couple interviews on Virtu-Call. One is with some guy in France, and I have to take a picture of him for this article on the outcast lifestyle of people there."
"Really? A Frenchman with Virtu-Call? That's like a Neanderthal with a laser gun."
"Well, he works for a government agency that's trying to develop its manufacturing workforce into information workers."
"Hmmm ... that effort seems about 40 years late. The majority of French workers have become cheap, unskilled labor since that country missed out on the growth years of the Information Age. Only Vivendi is a relevant player in the world economy."
"Yeah, but it's interesting because it's also become a haven for the small segment of Luddites that still exist from the "anti-search movements" of the 2030s."
"Coolio. Just don't send me a copy. I already have 10 books and about 100 articles I want to read this week in my sleep, so I don't need irrelevant junk in my bin."'
"Don't worry, Jimmy, I've known you for more than 40 years?since we met on FaceBook in the second grade. I wasn't going to send it to you."
FIRST DRAFT:
A few months ago, during the time of the London bombings, the first photos to come out that horrible tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary that people read came from blogs, and like many of those in the blogosphere I expected this. Then I had an epiphany. I imagined our society years from now as technology becomes ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices proliferate, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities become commonplace, and people become inundated with more and more information, I realized the world presented in Orwell’s 1984 will never come to be. It won’t even be a remote possibility much less an alternative reality writers can dream up because the idea of a totalitarian state decades from now would become so utterly ridiculous.
The innovation and technological advances over the next decade will not only improve the quality of life for humankind, but change human behavior and the fundamental structures of our societies. Even now, the youth of our society regard email as less useful tool than our generation, make a significant amount of their friends online, and embrace technology instead of fearing it. The weight of innovation that was born a decade past and a decade forward is changing the basic wiring of humans and creating a more transparent world. Of course technology is not a solution or a cure to societal ills and injustices, but a tool that can be applied for the improvement of human communication and living standards across the globe. What is unique about today’s innovations is that they are creating greater connectivity on our earth, crossing numerous borders, and increasing the bonds between people who would have never interacted with each other.
The potential for controlling, paranoid, overbearing governments in “1984” will be crushed by the weight of the collective consciousness that is being formed today. I am not stating that we will become more like-minded in the future, but I do envision issues that are of importance to the general population will be effectively decided or influence by the mediums that are developing today. The oppression by a few to the many will no longer be possible, but will this also mean that the general population will decide upon public policy issues affecting the future well-being of all its citizens? Maybe. This is a scary proposition for some, including myself, but who really knows the mechanisms that will develop in the political arena that complements these techno-societal advancements.
The ostensible information overload that is growing has led people in the past to believe our future will become like the future presented in "Gattaca," a stale advanced civilization dictated by strict laws and rules of science. To a lesser extent, I believe this vision of our future is doom. As information and knowledge continues to flood our lives, we will continue to build the technology that helps us sort through this chaos and our minds will develop to accept a world of terabytes instead of kilobytes. Even children today are beginning to absorb an extraordinary amount of information and multi-task far better than their parents.
I assume when most of you take a pause and contemplate on the significance of the changes occurring around us, we are able to recognize that these are times that people will look back on as ground-breaking, life-changing, or revolutionary.
With respect to George Orwell, the following is my Sunday afternoon attempt to paint a view of 2084…
Herbert Walker stood in the pouring black rain of Los Angeles tapping his latex shoes while waiting for the AeroBus to arrive. No longer a victim of traffic since the National Public Air Road Bill was signed into law a decade ago, the rain was more pleasant for him now. The air roads, which are only designated for public transportation vehicles, have greatly reduced traffic, air pollution, and the number of ground vehicle users. Jimmy Jun, Herbert’s colleague, briskly walks up the AeroBus platform.
"Love this Irvine to Westwood 20 minute commute in the thick of rush hour traffic. What ya say, Jimmy?"
"Herb, I almost love it as much as when the I-pools were created."
I-pools were “Intelligence pools” that were vast electronic repositories of shared information and knowledge that people contributed to while acting as a virtual marketplace. The original predecessor of the I-pools were archaic, Internet-based areas of collaboration called wiki-pools. But these never satisfied the quality standards most people desired since the viruses of inefficiency, such as trolls, ego-maniacs, and unskilled contributors, rendered most of these wiki-pools useless beyond simple information gathering. After decades of mediocrity, they created smartbots that comb through these knowledge-pools and tried to correct false information, poor structures, and unintelligible contributions. Now its progress to its current state as I-pools were there is almost complete trust in their accuracy and depth. Also these I-pools have become more than repositories of knowledge, but marketplaces of collaboration. Articles are developed, movie scripts are made, and businesses launched through these virtual workplaces.
"Yeah, remember twenty years ago when we just started out? Journalists were just as underpaid and unappreciated almost as much as school teachers. The pie is bigger for everyone and the top talent finally gets paid well."
"Hahaha. Are you calling yourself a ‘top talent’?"
"Well, six of my articles did get picked by News Corp, Pajamas Media, and The New York Times last month. One was read by 2 million in 87 countries."
"Ok. Ok. There you go again with your numbers. Probably the worse thing about journalism today is that it’s become so numbers-driven."
"Jealous?"
"Jealous? Hell, no. I write for my niche of military defense analysts, and you know I have a following. I would rather be deeply loved by a few than glanced over by many," Jimmy stated with a smirk.
"True. (Laughs) Hey, did you check out Google’s new relevancy crosscheck program?"
"Yeah, pretty cool. I actually tested it out last night when I was posting my thoughts up on my cloudpad. After I completed my first few paragraphs, I ran it through ‘crosscheck’ and it came up with six articles or references I could use. A couple were great sources to quote and one was excellent to integrate. What was coolio was that with a click I was connected to the author of the piece I wanted to integrate, got his permission, transfer his fee, and it was done."
"Wow. They make really make life easier for us creatives. Hey, the AeroBus is finally here."
Herbert and Jimmy step into the AeroBus and fall into the deep seats of the vehicle. Immediately Herbert inserts a square-shaped device into the arm of the bus seat, which activates a retinal scan from the seat in front of them.
"Yeah, I forgot to charge my MobileLife last night, so I need a quick boost," Herbert tells Jimmy.
"But you’re headed to the office?"
"No. I have a couple interviews on Virtu-Call. One is with some guy in France and I have to take a picture of him for this article on the outcast lifestyle of people there."
"Really? A Frenchman with Virtu-Call? That’s like a Neanderthal with a laser gun."
"Well, he works for a government agency there trying to develop their manufacturing workforce into information workers."
"Hmmm… that effort seems about forty years too late for France. The majority of that country has become cheap, unskilled labor since they missed out on growth years of the information age. Only Vivendi is a relevant player in the world economy."
"Yeah, but it’s interesting because it also has become a haven for the small segment of Luddites that still exist from the 'anti-search movements' of the 2030’s."
"Coolio. Just don’t send me a copy. I already have 10 books and about 100 articles I want to read this week in my sleep, so I don’t need irrelevant junk in my bin."
"Don’t worry, Jimmy, I’ve known you for over forty years now since we first met on FaceBook in second grade, so I wasn’t going to send it to you."
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, just read the copy at OhmyNews here.
[tags: 1984, george orwell, google, facebook, wikis, wikipedia, pajamas media, future, technology]
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Building the Perfect Team
One entrepreneur's recipe for assembling a startup team that sticks.
For the third time in my career, the excitement of building a company from the ground up is running through my veins. I love everything about this process--from writing the business plan to building the financial model, closing the initial round, developing and launching the product, and recruiting talent. I even enjoy talking about the process and advising other entrepreneurs. In such conversations, however, one topic invariably comes up: team building. As it happens, this topic has been much on my mind of late as I attempt to take my latest venture--the blogging and communications platform GoingOn Networks—to profitability. What better time, then, to present my own boilerplate for successful team building—one gleaned equally from experience and knowledge shared by entrepreneurs and mentors.
While there are countless articles and blog posts that purport to describe what venture capitalists are looking for in startups, none offers the one true formula for success. And as many people are quick to point out, there are plenty of venture capitalists out there who would have slammed the door on Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos if they'd come knocking in their early days.
Not to worry: I'm not writing this to tell you how to position yourself for venture capitalists. For starters, not all startups need or take VC money. (For proof of this, just look at Sam Walton or Mark Cuban. Jason Calacanis has even posted a blog called "Real Entrepreneurs Don't Raise Venture Capital.") The bottom line is that no matter how good your team appears to investors, what really counts is how your team works together in the trenches. Poor team dynamics and failed chemistry can sink even the most promising companies - a fact many founders and investors discover too late.
Without further ado, then, my recipe for building a great team:
Partner with people you trust. My first piece of advice for any budding entrepreneur, and one I always overstate is, "Trust is essential." If you have any doubts about a potential partner, clear the air or steer clear completely. As John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers puts it, "You must ask, 'Are these the people I want to be in trouble with for the next 5, 10, 15 years of my life?' Because as you build a new business, one thing's for sure: You will get into trouble."
Although I believe I'm adept at assessing people, I never go by first impressions anymore. After meeting many polished people with impressive backgrounds, I've learned to reserve judgment until the fourth or fifth meeting. After all, everyone can have good days or bad days, and character flaws often stay hidden until trouble occurs. The solution: Take your time and check team references.
I know of one situation in which close friends who started a company together fell into a bitter dispute. When the disagreement boiled over and my acquaintance left the company, he received no equity because he had let his friend take care of the initial corporate documents -- and his friend had listed himself as the sole owner. The "friend" cashed out at $50 million, and my acquaintance was left in the cold because he failed to cover his butt in the early stages. Don't be like him.
Find out what motivates people. What drives your prospective partners? If the sole factors are money and personal glory, I'd think hard about working with that person. Money can cloud judgment and create conflict: For that reason, money can and should be a primary goal, but it shouldn't be the only goal. Things like changing the world and providing a great product must be equally important.
Check egos at the door. A dynamic leader is great; an egomaniacal one is not. Since your goal is to create an environment in which the best ideas boil to the top, it's important that all members of the founding team have an equal voice. People need to feel that they're contributing to the growth of the company - even as the team builds out. Outside of hard executive decisions, I don't believe founders should pull rank in open discussions.
I know of one situation in which a founder pulled rank over a nonfounding senior executive with regard to a decision to sell out to a large infrastructure company. Without fully listening to the points raised, he rejected the offer. Now, instead of sitting on tens of millions, the founder is operating a company in "exit limbo."
As mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell writes, "A victory dependent on authority is unreal and illusory."
Keep the communications channels open. Don't horde information. In today's fast-paced technology world, it's important that all members of your company have access to the best and latest information. Establish a culture in which there are no information gatekeepers. When one person controls the flow of information, a fiefdom usually emerges in which that individual plays one side against another to increase his or her own perceived value. This creates conflict and inefficiencies - neither of which startups can afford.
Recruit the best talent available. This one's a biggie: Never settle when it comes to personnel. One A-grade hire equals 10 C-grade hires -- a lesson I learned the hard way when hiring a marketing manager for one of my startups. Under pressure to fill an important position, I pulled the trigger on someone whom I had doubts about but looked excellent on paper. By making a rushed decision, I wound up with a nine-month headache -- one that only cleared up when that person finally departed. My former partners still kid me that my once-sterling track record for hiring has been forever tarnished. Needless to say, I won't make that mistake again.
If your network doesn't present a capable candidate whom you know well, take a test-drive, if the situation allows it. For example, with GoingOn Networks, the first couple months was a test-drive between Tony and myself. I knew that if Tony wasn't satisfied with my execution, he'd sever the relationship -- which I've seen him do more than once. He's coldly practical like me, which I like.
Here are some things you should ask yourself about potential hires:
Do they get things done? What is their track record?
Can they deal with risk? What situations of risk have they previously encountered? How much risk are they willing to take?
What is their growth potential? Where do you see them becoming productive contributors? Are they constantly seeking to improve themselves?
Are they team players?
Pedigrees can be good indicators, but they aren't always. Sure, an electrical engineering degree from M.I.T. or the University of Illinois is impressive, as is a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins or Georgia Tech, or an MBA from Stanford or Harvard. Worked at McKinsey, Microsoft, or P&G? Great. None of these gold stars on an individual's resume, however, indicates whether that person can thrive in a chaotic entrepreneurial environment or whether they'll be team players.
At the end of the day it's not about where a person comes from but what they did there. Some people look great on paper but are horrible to work with, while others may have attended no-name colleges but have built great products and demonstrated superior team skills in the intervening years.
Finally, don't pick people because they're your friends; pick them because you know they can execute and contribute. You want people who are not only capable but willing to accept the risks associated with early-stage companies -- people who will look out for the company rather than protect their own backsides.
Keep these points firmly in mind, and you'll be well on your way to establishing a great team. A-quality people may attract other A-quality people, but you need to look beyond professional attributes to a person's character and motivations to truly assess their team potential. If you do so early, you'll save yourself all kinds of headaches down the road. Take it from one who knows!
Originally published at AlwaysOn (old site).
Republished at OhmyNews International.
Brad Feld comments and links to it (old link). Thanks, Brad!
Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change discusses it at "Go for The Moon When Hiring for a Startup".
Torsten Jacobi links and posts about my article here.
[tags: startup, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, business, team, team building, vc, venturecapital ]
For the third time in my career, the excitement of building a company from the ground up is running through my veins. I love everything about this process--from writing the business plan to building the financial model, closing the initial round, developing and launching the product, and recruiting talent. I even enjoy talking about the process and advising other entrepreneurs. In such conversations, however, one topic invariably comes up: team building. As it happens, this topic has been much on my mind of late as I attempt to take my latest venture--the blogging and communications platform GoingOn Networks—to profitability. What better time, then, to present my own boilerplate for successful team building—one gleaned equally from experience and knowledge shared by entrepreneurs and mentors.
While there are countless articles and blog posts that purport to describe what venture capitalists are looking for in startups, none offers the one true formula for success. And as many people are quick to point out, there are plenty of venture capitalists out there who would have slammed the door on Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos if they'd come knocking in their early days.
Not to worry: I'm not writing this to tell you how to position yourself for venture capitalists. For starters, not all startups need or take VC money. (For proof of this, just look at Sam Walton or Mark Cuban. Jason Calacanis has even posted a blog called "Real Entrepreneurs Don't Raise Venture Capital.") The bottom line is that no matter how good your team appears to investors, what really counts is how your team works together in the trenches. Poor team dynamics and failed chemistry can sink even the most promising companies - a fact many founders and investors discover too late.
Without further ado, then, my recipe for building a great team:
Partner with people you trust. My first piece of advice for any budding entrepreneur, and one I always overstate is, "Trust is essential." If you have any doubts about a potential partner, clear the air or steer clear completely. As John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers puts it, "You must ask, 'Are these the people I want to be in trouble with for the next 5, 10, 15 years of my life?' Because as you build a new business, one thing's for sure: You will get into trouble."
Although I believe I'm adept at assessing people, I never go by first impressions anymore. After meeting many polished people with impressive backgrounds, I've learned to reserve judgment until the fourth or fifth meeting. After all, everyone can have good days or bad days, and character flaws often stay hidden until trouble occurs. The solution: Take your time and check team references.
I know of one situation in which close friends who started a company together fell into a bitter dispute. When the disagreement boiled over and my acquaintance left the company, he received no equity because he had let his friend take care of the initial corporate documents -- and his friend had listed himself as the sole owner. The "friend" cashed out at $50 million, and my acquaintance was left in the cold because he failed to cover his butt in the early stages. Don't be like him.
Find out what motivates people. What drives your prospective partners? If the sole factors are money and personal glory, I'd think hard about working with that person. Money can cloud judgment and create conflict: For that reason, money can and should be a primary goal, but it shouldn't be the only goal. Things like changing the world and providing a great product must be equally important.
Check egos at the door. A dynamic leader is great; an egomaniacal one is not. Since your goal is to create an environment in which the best ideas boil to the top, it's important that all members of the founding team have an equal voice. People need to feel that they're contributing to the growth of the company - even as the team builds out. Outside of hard executive decisions, I don't believe founders should pull rank in open discussions.
I know of one situation in which a founder pulled rank over a nonfounding senior executive with regard to a decision to sell out to a large infrastructure company. Without fully listening to the points raised, he rejected the offer. Now, instead of sitting on tens of millions, the founder is operating a company in "exit limbo."
As mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell writes, "A victory dependent on authority is unreal and illusory."
Keep the communications channels open. Don't horde information. In today's fast-paced technology world, it's important that all members of your company have access to the best and latest information. Establish a culture in which there are no information gatekeepers. When one person controls the flow of information, a fiefdom usually emerges in which that individual plays one side against another to increase his or her own perceived value. This creates conflict and inefficiencies - neither of which startups can afford.
Recruit the best talent available. This one's a biggie: Never settle when it comes to personnel. One A-grade hire equals 10 C-grade hires -- a lesson I learned the hard way when hiring a marketing manager for one of my startups. Under pressure to fill an important position, I pulled the trigger on someone whom I had doubts about but looked excellent on paper. By making a rushed decision, I wound up with a nine-month headache -- one that only cleared up when that person finally departed. My former partners still kid me that my once-sterling track record for hiring has been forever tarnished. Needless to say, I won't make that mistake again.
If your network doesn't present a capable candidate whom you know well, take a test-drive, if the situation allows it. For example, with GoingOn Networks, the first couple months was a test-drive between Tony and myself. I knew that if Tony wasn't satisfied with my execution, he'd sever the relationship -- which I've seen him do more than once. He's coldly practical like me, which I like.
Here are some things you should ask yourself about potential hires:
Do they get things done? What is their track record?
Can they deal with risk? What situations of risk have they previously encountered? How much risk are they willing to take?
What is their growth potential? Where do you see them becoming productive contributors? Are they constantly seeking to improve themselves?
Are they team players?
Pedigrees can be good indicators, but they aren't always. Sure, an electrical engineering degree from M.I.T. or the University of Illinois is impressive, as is a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins or Georgia Tech, or an MBA from Stanford or Harvard. Worked at McKinsey, Microsoft, or P&G? Great. None of these gold stars on an individual's resume, however, indicates whether that person can thrive in a chaotic entrepreneurial environment or whether they'll be team players.
At the end of the day it's not about where a person comes from but what they did there. Some people look great on paper but are horrible to work with, while others may have attended no-name colleges but have built great products and demonstrated superior team skills in the intervening years.
Finally, don't pick people because they're your friends; pick them because you know they can execute and contribute. You want people who are not only capable but willing to accept the risks associated with early-stage companies -- people who will look out for the company rather than protect their own backsides.
Keep these points firmly in mind, and you'll be well on your way to establishing a great team. A-quality people may attract other A-quality people, but you need to look beyond professional attributes to a person's character and motivations to truly assess their team potential. If you do so early, you'll save yourself all kinds of headaches down the road. Take it from one who knows!
Originally published at AlwaysOn (old site).
Republished at OhmyNews International.
Brad Feld comments and links to it (old link). Thanks, Brad!
Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change discusses it at "Go for The Moon When Hiring for a Startup".
Torsten Jacobi links and posts about my article here.
[tags: startup, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, business, team, team building, vc, venturecapital ]
Thursday, July 7, 2005
Open It Up, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle!
This week's article for my column was derived from my experience and thoughts while I was in Seoul for the OhMyNews conference a few weeks back. Anyway, check it out:
Open It Up, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle!
Taking a lesson from South Korea's OhMyNews, a horde of bloggers-turned-citizen journalists is about to storm the gates of traditional media.
It had been over a year since I'd left Seoul, South Korea, when I returned a couple of weeks ago to attend OhMyNews' Citizen Reporters' Forum. Upon arriving, I was immediately struck by just how ubiquitous technology is in that country—a fact that had faded from my memory in the interim. Wireless phones are everywhere, and PCs with broadband connections can be found in each mom-and-pop shop. At a conference to discuss, share, and learn about the global progress of online citizen journalism, I was reminded at every turn of the long tentacles of technology.
The most powerful reminder came in the form of OhmyNews itself. OhmyNews was born in the "Land of the Morning Calm," a land that also happens to be the broadband capital of the world. Begun in February 2000, by Yeon Ho Oh, the service -- which grew out of Oh's vision of every citizen as a reporter -- has grown to more than 38,000 citizen reporters, including approximately 600 international reporters and 54 full-time staff reporters. Since its inception, OhmyNews has also inspired countless other citizen journalism projects such as Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere.
The forum gave me an opportunity to reflect on how the internet has influenced the development of a conservative Confucian society and its even more conservative news industry. Bearing little resemblance to the media outlets portrayed on TV shows in this country (think Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant), the news culture in South Korea comes much closer to America's yellow press of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet it was within this cultural atmosphere that citizen journalism was born and that major newspapers began allowing comments on their online sites. How to explain this cultural left turn? Blame it on the broadband boom.
Despite its leadership position in broadband services, however, South Korea has lagged behind the United States in the development of blogging -- which didn't catch on there until 2003 (several years after it had taken off in this country). Even now, the vast majority of South Korean blogs bring to mind the early days of the American sites Xanga and LiveJournal (where people wrote primarily about their daily experiences in diary-like posts), and blogs about business and politics are few and far between. Is this simply a function of a more culturally repressed and conservative society? Or could it have more to do with the symbiotic relationship between blogging and citizen journalism?
As I pondered this, I began to wonder whether the rapid growth of OhMyNews had stunted the development of the blogosphere in Korea. And conversely, whether the booming U.S. blogosphere would stymie the development of online citizen journalism here. Given both options, would I devote my time to creating, promoting, and building traffic to my own blog, or would I become a citizen journalist for a site such as OhmyNews?
On the side of Citizen Journalism, OhmyNews' traffic is hard to ignore: At 750,000 unique visitors a day, the service pulls in more eyeballs than most blogs can even dream of attracting. And it pays: One citizen reporter received a few thousand dollars after a couple days, while a professor/citizen reporter received tips of more than $30,000 during the course of a week (for example, from 60,000 readers paying 50 cents each). Ah, the beauty of micropayments.
Even with BlogAds and Google's AdSense leading the monetary charge in the U.S. blogosphere, OhmyNews' incentive system seems more rewarding. Why go through all the effort of promoting, posting, and linking for a blog when most people get just a few hundred visitors a week (or less) for their efforts and a rejection from Google's AdSense program (which requires minimum traffic numbers)? And even if I were to get enough traffic to join AdSense, I'd still only receive less than $50 a month. I suspect most people would find an established citizen journalism site a more attractive option-more traffic, more money, but probably less personal recognition.
It's only a matter of time before micropayment systems become firmly established in this country, internet penetration reaches the furthest corners of America, and mainstream media finally cracks and opens the floodgates. Wouldn't it be cool, then, if a U.S. media company were to incorporate a citizen journalism system into one of its properties? If, say, 40,000 citizen journalists were to contribute half of the New York Times' online content?
Get ready, because it's about to happen. The internet and technology have spawned a new wave of citizen journalism. Now, the choice is yours: Either ride it in or watch it come crashing onto the shore!
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, just read the copy at OhmyNews here.
[tags: citizenjournalism, journalism, blogging, micropayments]
Open It Up, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle!
Taking a lesson from South Korea's OhMyNews, a horde of bloggers-turned-citizen journalists is about to storm the gates of traditional media.
It had been over a year since I'd left Seoul, South Korea, when I returned a couple of weeks ago to attend OhMyNews' Citizen Reporters' Forum. Upon arriving, I was immediately struck by just how ubiquitous technology is in that country—a fact that had faded from my memory in the interim. Wireless phones are everywhere, and PCs with broadband connections can be found in each mom-and-pop shop. At a conference to discuss, share, and learn about the global progress of online citizen journalism, I was reminded at every turn of the long tentacles of technology.
The most powerful reminder came in the form of OhmyNews itself. OhmyNews was born in the "Land of the Morning Calm," a land that also happens to be the broadband capital of the world. Begun in February 2000, by Yeon Ho Oh, the service -- which grew out of Oh's vision of every citizen as a reporter -- has grown to more than 38,000 citizen reporters, including approximately 600 international reporters and 54 full-time staff reporters. Since its inception, OhmyNews has also inspired countless other citizen journalism projects such as Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere.
The forum gave me an opportunity to reflect on how the internet has influenced the development of a conservative Confucian society and its even more conservative news industry. Bearing little resemblance to the media outlets portrayed on TV shows in this country (think Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant), the news culture in South Korea comes much closer to America's yellow press of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet it was within this cultural atmosphere that citizen journalism was born and that major newspapers began allowing comments on their online sites. How to explain this cultural left turn? Blame it on the broadband boom.
Despite its leadership position in broadband services, however, South Korea has lagged behind the United States in the development of blogging -- which didn't catch on there until 2003 (several years after it had taken off in this country). Even now, the vast majority of South Korean blogs bring to mind the early days of the American sites Xanga and LiveJournal (where people wrote primarily about their daily experiences in diary-like posts), and blogs about business and politics are few and far between. Is this simply a function of a more culturally repressed and conservative society? Or could it have more to do with the symbiotic relationship between blogging and citizen journalism?
As I pondered this, I began to wonder whether the rapid growth of OhMyNews had stunted the development of the blogosphere in Korea. And conversely, whether the booming U.S. blogosphere would stymie the development of online citizen journalism here. Given both options, would I devote my time to creating, promoting, and building traffic to my own blog, or would I become a citizen journalist for a site such as OhmyNews?
On the side of Citizen Journalism, OhmyNews' traffic is hard to ignore: At 750,000 unique visitors a day, the service pulls in more eyeballs than most blogs can even dream of attracting. And it pays: One citizen reporter received a few thousand dollars after a couple days, while a professor/citizen reporter received tips of more than $30,000 during the course of a week (for example, from 60,000 readers paying 50 cents each). Ah, the beauty of micropayments.
Even with BlogAds and Google's AdSense leading the monetary charge in the U.S. blogosphere, OhmyNews' incentive system seems more rewarding. Why go through all the effort of promoting, posting, and linking for a blog when most people get just a few hundred visitors a week (or less) for their efforts and a rejection from Google's AdSense program (which requires minimum traffic numbers)? And even if I were to get enough traffic to join AdSense, I'd still only receive less than $50 a month. I suspect most people would find an established citizen journalism site a more attractive option-more traffic, more money, but probably less personal recognition.
It's only a matter of time before micropayment systems become firmly established in this country, internet penetration reaches the furthest corners of America, and mainstream media finally cracks and opens the floodgates. Wouldn't it be cool, then, if a U.S. media company were to incorporate a citizen journalism system into one of its properties? If, say, 40,000 citizen journalists were to contribute half of the New York Times' online content?
Get ready, because it's about to happen. The internet and technology have spawned a new wave of citizen journalism. Now, the choice is yours: Either ride it in or watch it come crashing onto the shore!
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, just read the copy at OhmyNews here.
[tags: citizenjournalism, journalism, blogging, micropayments]
Thursday, June 23, 2005
No Social Networking Site Is An Island
My column went up yesterday without my knowing. I had a break in the schedule from the OhMyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul since I didn't want to attend a visit of Samsung Electronics. Just got back to the hotel room and catching up on some work and a bit of blogging.
Jill, my editor, came up big with a great header and subheader since I couldn't come up with one in the rush of things before I took off for Seoul. Anyway, check it out!
No Social Networking Site Is an Island
But they can and will become key components of a host of next-generation web offerings in which content is king and the way users interact with it is paramount.
UPDATE: This article was lost during the horrible transition from AlwaysOn's old site to the new site. The AO people didn't back up their files before the transfer. Yeah, pretty dumb.
Jill, my editor, came up big with a great header and subheader since I couldn't come up with one in the rush of things before I took off for Seoul. Anyway, check it out!
No Social Networking Site Is an Island
But they can and will become key components of a host of next-generation web offerings in which content is king and the way users interact with it is paramount.
UPDATE: This article was lost during the horrible transition from AlwaysOn's old site to the new site. The AO people didn't back up their files before the transfer. Yeah, pretty dumb.
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Staring Down the Digital Divide
I didn't realize until I checked now that I haven't had an AO piece up for seven weeks. Wow. I thought I laid off writing for about a month, but I guess my sense of time has been off. Now since the wedding planning and wedding is over I will devote more time to getting more articles out at AlwaysOn. Anyway, check it out:
Staring Down the Digital Divide
Bloggers are the haves in the new new economy, but there are plenty of have-nots as well—and none of us can afford to forget them.
Last week on my honeymoon in Crete, Greece, I found myself detached from civilization. Not so much because of the remote locale, the lack of video-on-demand or cable news in my hotel suite, or even the dearth of America fast-food outlets. The real reason for my detachment was that I didn't have Internet access. That's right: No Internet access for an entire week.
Each day I listened as hotel staff explained to me that their "servers were down" which toward the end of my stay I came to interpret as they were never up. There was no access. Ever. A couple days before we left, I spoke with one of the staff technicians, who fed me the same line but also informed me (when asked) that their connection speed was "56K." 56K? I hadn't heard that number/letter combination in about a decade. If this is the speed the majority of the island is connecting at, a digital divide definitely exists between the people here and the folks back home in Silicon Valley.
That conversation took me back 10 years, to when I was working on a consulting project for the city of St. Louis. The community had just received an Enterprise Community Zone grant (baby brother to President Clinton's Empowerment Zone initiative) to improve the quality of life in designated poverty-stricken areas of the city. A portion of the $200,000 grant was allocated to build a "community information network" where people could access information about services provided by the city and local nonprofit organizations.
This network was core to the grant's vision because many of the residents of the impoverished neighborhoods had no knowledge of the basic services that were available to assist in their well-being and development. It was thought that the Internet could serve as an equalizer, granting the residents access to a world of important information.
Our consulting team was to further define the initial vision, create the framework of information provided, and begin to execute as much of it as possible during our short time with the city of St. Louis. This was my first entry into the intersection of the Internet and public policy as well as the project that led me on my path toward technology entrepreneurship. It was also the first time I'd thought seriously about the digital divide that exists within our nation and the world.
I realized then that the explosion of the Internet was widening the gap between society's haves and have-nots. The rapidly growing sea of information and services coming at us from our computer screens was creating a wealth of opportunities for some. But for others it was only accentuating the lack of the same. Knowledge equals power. Thus, when there's unequal access to it, those that are already underserved, undereducated, and underemployed only fall further behind.
Fast-forward to today, and we're reading blogs, using Linkedin or MySpace for social networking, assigning ourselves avatars, and downloading movies through BitTorrent. Now imagine the digital divide between those of us doing the above and the citizens of Crete. Although AlwaysOn readers and bloggers represent a small group at the cutting edge of Internet usage, I think we all believe that our online behavior will gradually become the norm.
The bottom line is that the development of the Web is a great thing -- but also a point of concern. The divide is growing, so that while the superusers are voicing their concerns about digital identities and most U.S. online citizens are at minimum accessing job information, the 24-year-old man in East St. Louis has no idea the world is passing him by. And he is not alone. A 2004 study by the U.S. Department of Commerce revealed that 38.2 percent of U.S. households don't have computers and 45.4 percent of U.S. households don't have Internet access. The study also found that 41.3 percent of the total U.S. population does not use the Internet from any location.
These are shocking figures for those of us who are connected. What's more, the primary reasons given by "those households that have never connected to the Internet at home" suggest problems of cost/value and availability as well as perception: 41.6 percent of those who had never connected at home cited "don't need/not interested" as the reason; 22.9 percent cited "too expensive" as the reason; and 22.5 percent cited "no or inadequate computer available" as the reason.
Whether you're in this country or another, the problem of the digital divide is more tangible than ever -- and one we cannot and should not ignore. Often, altruistic efforts to level the playing field are quickly forgotten after the initial rallying cry, or they get pushed aside by projects with greater political and economic clout.
In the case of my St. Louis project, there was talk among political leaders at the time of using the "community information network" and grant money as a springboard for all residents of the city, not just those in the designated impoverished areas. I viewed this proposal with disgust -- an unabashed attempt by a couple of city aldermen to seek political glory by reaching a greater base of supporters. To my knowledge, the project remained as originally conceived -- serving those who needed it most -- but if we don't keep people accountable and focused on their commitments, many such projects will never reach fruition.
If you're reading this, you're one of the haves: You have access to a computer; you're connected to the Internet -- in short, you're way ahead of the curve. As such, you cannot forget the have-nots, those on the other side of the digital divide. All of us involved in the tech industry (both as workers and those who reap the benefits of technology) must be aware of this gap and think about how we -- both collectively and as individuals -- can address it. If we don't, we'll all pay in the end.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I just kept the full article here.
Staring Down the Digital Divide
Bloggers are the haves in the new new economy, but there are plenty of have-nots as well—and none of us can afford to forget them.
Last week on my honeymoon in Crete, Greece, I found myself detached from civilization. Not so much because of the remote locale, the lack of video-on-demand or cable news in my hotel suite, or even the dearth of America fast-food outlets. The real reason for my detachment was that I didn't have Internet access. That's right: No Internet access for an entire week.
Each day I listened as hotel staff explained to me that their "servers were down" which toward the end of my stay I came to interpret as they were never up. There was no access. Ever. A couple days before we left, I spoke with one of the staff technicians, who fed me the same line but also informed me (when asked) that their connection speed was "56K." 56K? I hadn't heard that number/letter combination in about a decade. If this is the speed the majority of the island is connecting at, a digital divide definitely exists between the people here and the folks back home in Silicon Valley.
That conversation took me back 10 years, to when I was working on a consulting project for the city of St. Louis. The community had just received an Enterprise Community Zone grant (baby brother to President Clinton's Empowerment Zone initiative) to improve the quality of life in designated poverty-stricken areas of the city. A portion of the $200,000 grant was allocated to build a "community information network" where people could access information about services provided by the city and local nonprofit organizations.
This network was core to the grant's vision because many of the residents of the impoverished neighborhoods had no knowledge of the basic services that were available to assist in their well-being and development. It was thought that the Internet could serve as an equalizer, granting the residents access to a world of important information.
Our consulting team was to further define the initial vision, create the framework of information provided, and begin to execute as much of it as possible during our short time with the city of St. Louis. This was my first entry into the intersection of the Internet and public policy as well as the project that led me on my path toward technology entrepreneurship. It was also the first time I'd thought seriously about the digital divide that exists within our nation and the world.
I realized then that the explosion of the Internet was widening the gap between society's haves and have-nots. The rapidly growing sea of information and services coming at us from our computer screens was creating a wealth of opportunities for some. But for others it was only accentuating the lack of the same. Knowledge equals power. Thus, when there's unequal access to it, those that are already underserved, undereducated, and underemployed only fall further behind.
Fast-forward to today, and we're reading blogs, using Linkedin or MySpace for social networking, assigning ourselves avatars, and downloading movies through BitTorrent. Now imagine the digital divide between those of us doing the above and the citizens of Crete. Although AlwaysOn readers and bloggers represent a small group at the cutting edge of Internet usage, I think we all believe that our online behavior will gradually become the norm.
The bottom line is that the development of the Web is a great thing -- but also a point of concern. The divide is growing, so that while the superusers are voicing their concerns about digital identities and most U.S. online citizens are at minimum accessing job information, the 24-year-old man in East St. Louis has no idea the world is passing him by. And he is not alone. A 2004 study by the U.S. Department of Commerce revealed that 38.2 percent of U.S. households don't have computers and 45.4 percent of U.S. households don't have Internet access. The study also found that 41.3 percent of the total U.S. population does not use the Internet from any location.
These are shocking figures for those of us who are connected. What's more, the primary reasons given by "those households that have never connected to the Internet at home" suggest problems of cost/value and availability as well as perception: 41.6 percent of those who had never connected at home cited "don't need/not interested" as the reason; 22.9 percent cited "too expensive" as the reason; and 22.5 percent cited "no or inadequate computer available" as the reason.
Whether you're in this country or another, the problem of the digital divide is more tangible than ever -- and one we cannot and should not ignore. Often, altruistic efforts to level the playing field are quickly forgotten after the initial rallying cry, or they get pushed aside by projects with greater political and economic clout.
In the case of my St. Louis project, there was talk among political leaders at the time of using the "community information network" and grant money as a springboard for all residents of the city, not just those in the designated impoverished areas. I viewed this proposal with disgust -- an unabashed attempt by a couple of city aldermen to seek political glory by reaching a greater base of supporters. To my knowledge, the project remained as originally conceived -- serving those who needed it most -- but if we don't keep people accountable and focused on their commitments, many such projects will never reach fruition.
If you're reading this, you're one of the haves: You have access to a computer; you're connected to the Internet -- in short, you're way ahead of the curve. As such, you cannot forget the have-nots, those on the other side of the digital divide. All of us involved in the tech industry (both as workers and those who reap the benefits of technology) must be aware of this gap and think about how we -- both collectively and as individuals -- can address it. If we don't, we'll all pay in the end.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I just kept the full article here.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
The 2005 World Series of Poker ... Tech Style
My column went up today, which is a day early. After going back and forth on last minute edits with my editor, Jill, this morning, it got sent to Rich, the chief editor, where he decided to put it up today around 11:00am. I initially thought it was a mistake, but he explained the regular Wednesday columnist passed on this week, so he decided to go with mine today. All good.
Anyway, it's not the best piece of writing, but I just geeked out and had fun writing this comparison of the tech world with the world of poker. Check it out!
The 2005 World Series of Poker ... Tech Style
As Yahoo previews its new blogging service, the rest of the players evaluate their hands and place their bets on what will and won't work in the search/portal space of the future.
Last week, I attended a preview session of Yahoo's new blogging and social networking service, Yahoo 360, in which nine people in the slogging space gathered to provide feedback. The discussion was interesting and insightful—and of course everyone was wondering how Yahoo will integrate Flickr, the photo-sharing service it just acquired, into the offering.
In the end, many of these "influencers" indicated they wouldn't use the service—either because it's too simple or because it's closed (among other reasons). Some said that if their friends were heavily integrated into Yahoo products (for example, Yahoo Messenger or Groups), they would recommend it. Only one person stated she would definitely use it. In one of the few positive comments, AlwaysOn editor-in-chief Tony Perkins voiced his belief that the service would work due to Yahoo's huge installed base and the service's tight integration with other Yahoo products. I happen to agree—with the caveat that two additional factors will drive that success: integration with the company's photo products and well-thought-out privacy controls.
Some features to note in the new service include Latest from My Friends, which provides an overview of your network activity, including the latest posts, pictures, and comments posted by your friends (a feature I first saw on Wallop, the blog research project for the Social Computing Group at Microsoft Research); Blast Message, which allows you to message your entire network; and the service's tight integration with Yahoo Groups, which could become a popular function due to the heavy built-in user activity.
The difficulty Yahoo faces in marketing Yahoo 360 lies in trying to offer something for everybody. While Yahoo is targeting a few primary market segments, it doesn't want to isolate or turn off any of the users in the Yahoo universe. Overall, it appears that the Yahoo 360 team has built a solid product based on careful research about what users want and their feelings about the slogosphere's current offerings (for example, MySpace, Friendster, and Linkedin).
Even before I had the opportunity to preview Yahoo 360, however, I'd concluded that Yahoo was finally catching up to Google in providing products and services for the next-generation web. With its acquisition of Flickr, launch of a competitor to Google's Adsense, and creation of the Yahoo Media Group in Santa Monica, Calif., Yahoo is looking strong for the future.
To me, this whole search/portal space is beginning to look like a game of no-limit Texas Hold 'em, with the major players resembling the world's leading poker players. Google reminds me of Phil Ivey, the young star who burst into the poker world a few years ago with three gold bracelets at the World Series of Poker (and tied with Phil Hellmuth and Ted Forrest for most wins in a single year). Cool, innovative, and fresh: These words describe both Google and Ivey. Yahoo, meanwhile, is the Phil Hellmut of this industry space. Having experienced early stardom as the youngest winner of the World Series of Poker (at age 24), Hellmut is now a brash veteran of the poker world. His ability to read opponents' cards -- whether or not he executes -- is uncanny. Hellmut's recent huge win at the Golden Nugget's National Heads-Up Poker Tournament coincides with Yahoo's big moves this month (acquiring Flickr and launching 360).
Finally, Microsoft is the Doyle Brunson of the tech world. A poker legend, Brunson has nine gold bracelets from the World Series of Poker and wrote the poker bible Super System (Cardoza, 1979), which almost every poker enthusiast has read. Whether or not they admit it, many of today's players have patterned their games after Brunson's -- just as many players in the blogging marketplace have copied Microsoft's methods and research. I've seen this in some of the Wallop functionality that's been incorporated into Yahoo 360. In addition, Microsoft's Smart Tags served as a forerunner to Google's Autolink functionality, which lets users insert Google partner links into web pages.
In the world of search, portals, and the slogosphere, the players have already called all-in -- meaning they've bet all their chips and shown their two face-down cards. Now, let's take a look at how this game is poised to play itself out. Over the past year, the flop (the first three out of five community cards) went down showing an ace of diamonds, jack of hearts, and 10 of hearts. Google acquired Picasa in the photo space, bought Keyhole, made Blogger a significant part of its universe, launched its desktop search beta, and began expanding its international operations. The company's hole cards turned out to be two jacks, meaning the hot, hip company was looking at three of a kind and sitting pretty.
Yahoo was initially quiet with a healthy increase in revenue in 2004 (from $1.6 billion to $3.6 billion) and a net income growth of 252.9 percent, but no major activity to write about here. Sitting on an ace of hearts and a king of hearts and looking at a potential royal flush, Yahoo was an in-betweener -- great potential, but all it had at the flop was a pair of aces. Meanwhile, the Microsoft juggernaut was humming along with the launch of its blogging service (MS Spaces). With its cookie-cutter interface and functions, however, the service didn't generate much fanfare: With a 10 of spades and a two of diamonds and nothing but a pair of 10's to show, the audience was left wondering why the old man went all-in with a 10 and a two.
On the turn, the fourth community card was revealed to be a two of spades -- which means no one can beat Google's three jacks. With the launch of its map service (in my opinion, it's better than Yahoo's), personalized news, and even its messy Autolinks (which had much of the blogosphere crying foul and citing Google for unethical behavior), Google is still the hand to beat. While Yahoo is sitting on a pair of aces, the company's increased activity in the social networking space has led to speculation that it knows something the rest of the players don't. Yahoo was looking past that pair of aces to the possibility of a royal flush on the river (the last community card to be shown). Microsoft, meanwhile, improved its hand slightly with two pairs (10's and twos). The company launched its new search service, but the loudest sound came from Bill Gates's declaration that "today's search is nothing." Is the old man grumbling at the poker table, or is this a serious threat?
Finally, comes the fifth community card (the river card) -- only in this game, it hasn't been revealed. Will it be a two of hearts to give Google a full house (jacks full of deuces) over Microsoft's full house (twos full of 10's)? Will it be a queen of hearts to give Yahoo its royal flush or a 10 of clubs to give Microsoft the sole full house (10's full of deuces)? Or will it be a nothing card, allowing Google to retain its position at the forefront of this emerging market?
The possibilities are many, and trying to pick a winner in this game is as difficult as trying to come up with answers to any of the following: When will Google create a universal login for its services, and what new products is it working on? How will Yahoo integrate Flickr into its platform; how will its "adsense" program compete with Google's; and what new content product will it deliver to its users? When will Microsoft launch its Adsense competitor and announce its efforts in the online photo space, and how will it integrate its social research projects (such as Wallop) into its service offerings? And, finally, will Microsoft's search technology be better than Google's within three years? And what about AOL? Well, ever heard of Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston? He was an old legend long forgotten. And how about IAC? Will that company be like Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, a flash-in-the-pan player who became extinct faster than you can say "ice age." The questions and guessing are endless in this World Series of Poker, tech style.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm leaving a copy here.
Anyway, it's not the best piece of writing, but I just geeked out and had fun writing this comparison of the tech world with the world of poker. Check it out!
The 2005 World Series of Poker ... Tech Style
As Yahoo previews its new blogging service, the rest of the players evaluate their hands and place their bets on what will and won't work in the search/portal space of the future.
Last week, I attended a preview session of Yahoo's new blogging and social networking service, Yahoo 360, in which nine people in the slogging space gathered to provide feedback. The discussion was interesting and insightful—and of course everyone was wondering how Yahoo will integrate Flickr, the photo-sharing service it just acquired, into the offering.
In the end, many of these "influencers" indicated they wouldn't use the service—either because it's too simple or because it's closed (among other reasons). Some said that if their friends were heavily integrated into Yahoo products (for example, Yahoo Messenger or Groups), they would recommend it. Only one person stated she would definitely use it. In one of the few positive comments, AlwaysOn editor-in-chief Tony Perkins voiced his belief that the service would work due to Yahoo's huge installed base and the service's tight integration with other Yahoo products. I happen to agree—with the caveat that two additional factors will drive that success: integration with the company's photo products and well-thought-out privacy controls.
Some features to note in the new service include Latest from My Friends, which provides an overview of your network activity, including the latest posts, pictures, and comments posted by your friends (a feature I first saw on Wallop, the blog research project for the Social Computing Group at Microsoft Research); Blast Message, which allows you to message your entire network; and the service's tight integration with Yahoo Groups, which could become a popular function due to the heavy built-in user activity.
The difficulty Yahoo faces in marketing Yahoo 360 lies in trying to offer something for everybody. While Yahoo is targeting a few primary market segments, it doesn't want to isolate or turn off any of the users in the Yahoo universe. Overall, it appears that the Yahoo 360 team has built a solid product based on careful research about what users want and their feelings about the slogosphere's current offerings (for example, MySpace, Friendster, and Linkedin).
Even before I had the opportunity to preview Yahoo 360, however, I'd concluded that Yahoo was finally catching up to Google in providing products and services for the next-generation web. With its acquisition of Flickr, launch of a competitor to Google's Adsense, and creation of the Yahoo Media Group in Santa Monica, Calif., Yahoo is looking strong for the future.
To me, this whole search/portal space is beginning to look like a game of no-limit Texas Hold 'em, with the major players resembling the world's leading poker players. Google reminds me of Phil Ivey, the young star who burst into the poker world a few years ago with three gold bracelets at the World Series of Poker (and tied with Phil Hellmuth and Ted Forrest for most wins in a single year). Cool, innovative, and fresh: These words describe both Google and Ivey. Yahoo, meanwhile, is the Phil Hellmut of this industry space. Having experienced early stardom as the youngest winner of the World Series of Poker (at age 24), Hellmut is now a brash veteran of the poker world. His ability to read opponents' cards -- whether or not he executes -- is uncanny. Hellmut's recent huge win at the Golden Nugget's National Heads-Up Poker Tournament coincides with Yahoo's big moves this month (acquiring Flickr and launching 360).
Finally, Microsoft is the Doyle Brunson of the tech world. A poker legend, Brunson has nine gold bracelets from the World Series of Poker and wrote the poker bible Super System (Cardoza, 1979), which almost every poker enthusiast has read. Whether or not they admit it, many of today's players have patterned their games after Brunson's -- just as many players in the blogging marketplace have copied Microsoft's methods and research. I've seen this in some of the Wallop functionality that's been incorporated into Yahoo 360. In addition, Microsoft's Smart Tags served as a forerunner to Google's Autolink functionality, which lets users insert Google partner links into web pages.
In the world of search, portals, and the slogosphere, the players have already called all-in -- meaning they've bet all their chips and shown their two face-down cards. Now, let's take a look at how this game is poised to play itself out. Over the past year, the flop (the first three out of five community cards) went down showing an ace of diamonds, jack of hearts, and 10 of hearts. Google acquired Picasa in the photo space, bought Keyhole, made Blogger a significant part of its universe, launched its desktop search beta, and began expanding its international operations. The company's hole cards turned out to be two jacks, meaning the hot, hip company was looking at three of a kind and sitting pretty.
Yahoo was initially quiet with a healthy increase in revenue in 2004 (from $1.6 billion to $3.6 billion) and a net income growth of 252.9 percent, but no major activity to write about here. Sitting on an ace of hearts and a king of hearts and looking at a potential royal flush, Yahoo was an in-betweener -- great potential, but all it had at the flop was a pair of aces. Meanwhile, the Microsoft juggernaut was humming along with the launch of its blogging service (MS Spaces). With its cookie-cutter interface and functions, however, the service didn't generate much fanfare: With a 10 of spades and a two of diamonds and nothing but a pair of 10's to show, the audience was left wondering why the old man went all-in with a 10 and a two.On the turn, the fourth community card was revealed to be a two of spades -- which means no one can beat Google's three jacks. With the launch of its map service (in my opinion, it's better than Yahoo's), personalized news, and even its messy Autolinks (which had much of the blogosphere crying foul and citing Google for unethical behavior), Google is still the hand to beat. While Yahoo is sitting on a pair of aces, the company's increased activity in the social networking space has led to speculation that it knows something the rest of the players don't. Yahoo was looking past that pair of aces to the possibility of a royal flush on the river (the last community card to be shown). Microsoft, meanwhile, improved its hand slightly with two pairs (10's and twos). The company launched its new search service, but the loudest sound came from Bill Gates's declaration that "today's search is nothing." Is the old man grumbling at the poker table, or is this a serious threat?
Finally, comes the fifth community card (the river card) -- only in this game, it hasn't been revealed. Will it be a two of hearts to give Google a full house (jacks full of deuces) over Microsoft's full house (twos full of 10's)? Will it be a queen of hearts to give Yahoo its royal flush or a 10 of clubs to give Microsoft the sole full house (10's full of deuces)? Or will it be a nothing card, allowing Google to retain its position at the forefront of this emerging market?
The possibilities are many, and trying to pick a winner in this game is as difficult as trying to come up with answers to any of the following: When will Google create a universal login for its services, and what new products is it working on? How will Yahoo integrate Flickr into its platform; how will its "adsense" program compete with Google's; and what new content product will it deliver to its users? When will Microsoft launch its Adsense competitor and announce its efforts in the online photo space, and how will it integrate its social research projects (such as Wallop) into its service offerings? And, finally, will Microsoft's search technology be better than Google's within three years? And what about AOL? Well, ever heard of Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston? He was an old legend long forgotten. And how about IAC? Will that company be like Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, a flash-in-the-pan player who became extinct faster than you can say "ice age." The questions and guessing are endless in this World Series of Poker, tech style.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm leaving a copy here.
Thursday, March 3, 2005
RSS: Real Simple Syndication or Really Saturated Space?
As companies awaken to the revenue opportunities of RSS services and technology (think advertising!), players proliferate and the race to differentiate is on.
Lately I’ve been suffering from burnout… RSS (Really Simple Syndication) burnout. I feel like Darryl Dawkins, former NBA player “Chocolate Thunder,” when he was describing how he had nightmares after playing a game against the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “All I saw were skyhooks the whole game and he was making every one of them, so that evening I had nightmares (closing his eyes and shaking)… skyhook, skyhook, skyhook, skyhook…”
RSS, RSS, RSS, NewsGator, FeedDemon, Bloglines, Rojo, Pluck, Onfolio, Feedview, CNet’s Newsburst, MyYahoo!, and hundreds more to come. Some of these are separate applications, some are plugins into your browser, some are web-based, and some provide multiple options. For an information junkie like me, RSS aggregators (or reader) are awesome. They save you time and allow you to efficiently scroll through hundreds of headlines and summaries to find interesting content and fresh ideas.
If you haven’t tried using a RSS aggregator yet, I would suggest Bloglines, NewsGator, or Pluck. Bloglines is my favorite. I like the user interface and intuitive design. NewsGator is good. Pluck has been given some good reviews, but I’m not that fond of the user interface (personal preference). I actually like FeedDemon, but they want to charge me after their trial period is over. Who would pay for something Bloglines, MyYahoo! and others are providing for free? Rojo positions itself as a RSS aggregator and social network, but I really don’t see the social networking factor pulling me towards their service especially since almost everyone else has started to provide some type of feed sharing function already, and their approach has left me in limbo. I can’t access other people’s feed list freely and I have to know them, so I’m forced to invite people to Rojo and wait until they have a list of feeds that I can choose from. It’s limbo because I don’t want to invite people just to look at their list of feeds. A bit tedious process for something I assume they wanted to virally spread. MyYahoo! is supposedly the largest RSS aggregator, but much of these numbers are puffed up since any MyYahoo! user knowingly or unknowingly uses RSS feeds for their regular content updates from Reuters, AP, or whomever. Even personalized MyYahoo! page some more by adding a couple feeds from some of my favorite political blogs, but I never read them. Bloglines is the way to go for me. AskJeeves made a great move to acquire Bloglines, but for me it would be been a better fit for Google. Imagine that blogosphere juggernaut!
From startup to major media companies, RSS is the way to distribute content quickly and efficiently and a new channel for branding or advertising. Nick Denton, founder of Gawker and other blogs, and Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, have integrated advertising into their blogs' RSS feeds. Soon many RSS feeds will have advertising integrated and almost every media company and smalltown newspaper will have RSS feeds for the world to read. It seems RSS might disrupt traditional Internet advertising a bit. Within a few years, RSS advertising could become the focal point of marketing dollars versus banner and text ads. I hope Google is building Adwords and Adsense for RSS.
While the growth of blogging pushed the rapid development of RSS, it is still early for both segments of the online world. Where is this heading? First, I see many of the players from now and over the next few years dying off. A few will be acquired by larger companies… Google? Microsoft? A couple will become stand-alone entities that successfully captured the advertising opportunities in RSS and transitional into enterprise solutions.
Since RSS is just a way to move content across the Internet, we will see an increase in sound and video, which has already begun. One area I see potential is in IPTV (Internet Protocol TV). I’m a believer of cable and video-on-demand (first startup in this space), but the cable industry has just been too slow and deserves a whooping. With Microsoft’s recent deal with SBC, IPTV has gotten a boost. I’ve seen systems back in 1999 that hook up a PC to a set-top box and run content from the PC to the TV. I raised my brow and use to laugh at such systems, but they have been in the market in Japan and Korea over the past few years and cable operators worldwide have not delivered on the promise of interactive TV. I believe RSS should be integrated into such systems where users can request multimedia content into their set-top box with a harddrive, store it, and play whenever they want.
RSS feeds into iPods and MP3 players. Feeds for daily homework from your teacher. Feeds from your corporate team. Feeds your dentist. Feeds from your grocers. Ughhh… I’m getting those RSS nightmares again.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I pasted the original article here.
Lately I’ve been suffering from burnout… RSS (Really Simple Syndication) burnout. I feel like Darryl Dawkins, former NBA player “Chocolate Thunder,” when he was describing how he had nightmares after playing a game against the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “All I saw were skyhooks the whole game and he was making every one of them, so that evening I had nightmares (closing his eyes and shaking)… skyhook, skyhook, skyhook, skyhook…”
RSS, RSS, RSS, NewsGator, FeedDemon, Bloglines, Rojo, Pluck, Onfolio, Feedview, CNet’s Newsburst, MyYahoo!, and hundreds more to come. Some of these are separate applications, some are plugins into your browser, some are web-based, and some provide multiple options. For an information junkie like me, RSS aggregators (or reader) are awesome. They save you time and allow you to efficiently scroll through hundreds of headlines and summaries to find interesting content and fresh ideas.
If you haven’t tried using a RSS aggregator yet, I would suggest Bloglines, NewsGator, or Pluck. Bloglines is my favorite. I like the user interface and intuitive design. NewsGator is good. Pluck has been given some good reviews, but I’m not that fond of the user interface (personal preference). I actually like FeedDemon, but they want to charge me after their trial period is over. Who would pay for something Bloglines, MyYahoo! and others are providing for free? Rojo positions itself as a RSS aggregator and social network, but I really don’t see the social networking factor pulling me towards their service especially since almost everyone else has started to provide some type of feed sharing function already, and their approach has left me in limbo. I can’t access other people’s feed list freely and I have to know them, so I’m forced to invite people to Rojo and wait until they have a list of feeds that I can choose from. It’s limbo because I don’t want to invite people just to look at their list of feeds. A bit tedious process for something I assume they wanted to virally spread. MyYahoo! is supposedly the largest RSS aggregator, but much of these numbers are puffed up since any MyYahoo! user knowingly or unknowingly uses RSS feeds for their regular content updates from Reuters, AP, or whomever. Even personalized MyYahoo! page some more by adding a couple feeds from some of my favorite political blogs, but I never read them. Bloglines is the way to go for me. AskJeeves made a great move to acquire Bloglines, but for me it would be been a better fit for Google. Imagine that blogosphere juggernaut!
From startup to major media companies, RSS is the way to distribute content quickly and efficiently and a new channel for branding or advertising. Nick Denton, founder of Gawker and other blogs, and Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, have integrated advertising into their blogs' RSS feeds. Soon many RSS feeds will have advertising integrated and almost every media company and smalltown newspaper will have RSS feeds for the world to read. It seems RSS might disrupt traditional Internet advertising a bit. Within a few years, RSS advertising could become the focal point of marketing dollars versus banner and text ads. I hope Google is building Adwords and Adsense for RSS.
While the growth of blogging pushed the rapid development of RSS, it is still early for both segments of the online world. Where is this heading? First, I see many of the players from now and over the next few years dying off. A few will be acquired by larger companies… Google? Microsoft? A couple will become stand-alone entities that successfully captured the advertising opportunities in RSS and transitional into enterprise solutions.
Since RSS is just a way to move content across the Internet, we will see an increase in sound and video, which has already begun. One area I see potential is in IPTV (Internet Protocol TV). I’m a believer of cable and video-on-demand (first startup in this space), but the cable industry has just been too slow and deserves a whooping. With Microsoft’s recent deal with SBC, IPTV has gotten a boost. I’ve seen systems back in 1999 that hook up a PC to a set-top box and run content from the PC to the TV. I raised my brow and use to laugh at such systems, but they have been in the market in Japan and Korea over the past few years and cable operators worldwide have not delivered on the promise of interactive TV. I believe RSS should be integrated into such systems where users can request multimedia content into their set-top box with a harddrive, store it, and play whenever they want.
RSS feeds into iPods and MP3 players. Feeds for daily homework from your teacher. Feeds from your corporate team. Feeds your dentist. Feeds from your grocers. Ughhh… I’m getting those RSS nightmares again.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I pasted the original article here.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Lost in Translation
This week's column at AlwaysOn, "Lost in Translation"
I wish I could have talked with some more people in the industry or on the research side of machine translation, but I couldn't get it coordinated with my deadline for the article. Hopefully some knowledgeable readers will add to the content... the beauty of blogs. This is going up tomorrow.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm pasting my article from my original word doc here:
The Blogosphere: Lost in Translation?
It could be if translation technology can't keep pace with the instantaneous, spontaneous nature of communications on blogs and social networks.
Last week I was sitting with Vassil Mladjov (AO streaming guru) at Canvas Café talking about various business ideas and he briefly brought up the subject of online translation software. I asked how the quality of the translation was, and he said at least in Russian to English it’s good enough to get the basic ideas. From my experience, Korean to English was horrible beyond basic translation of words and short phrases. Anyway, I was not strongly interested at the time, so I carried on for a few more sentences and we transitioned into another topic. Last Friday as I did my daily read through of various technology news rags, I came across an article from Reuters, “Google Online Book Plan Sparks French War of Words”, that discussed the “war cry” France’s national library raised on concerns that Google’s efforts to put some of the world's great libraries on the Internet does not lead to a “domination of American ideas” and the English language. Even though I was somewhat amused by the French, began to think about how much of a real concern this was to the rest of the world and wondered if language would become such a barrier to the communication and transfer of ideas in the future. I thought about my mother’s favorite Christian philosopher, Jacque Ellul, since she tried to force his books on me as much as Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” during my high school years. If his books weren’t translated, my mother would never of experience her joys and I would have escaped the torment of her persistence.
Then I thought if Ellul had a blog, how would someone like my mother be able to benefit and be edified from his writing since it would be in French? I began to think about other topics and issues around the globe that people would be interested in reading about from people on ground zero. What would other Iraqis, besides Mohammed and Omar from Iraq The Model blog and who do not have knowledge of English, write about if there was a blog service in their native tongue? Or listening to the voices from Rwanda’s horrible past? Or learning about the latest Japanese gadgets from Japanese bloggers months or years before it they the pages of WIRED Magazine or Engadget?
So it became clear to me that the one of the next next things for the blogosphere is instantaneous translation of languages for blogs. English to Spanish, French to English, Arabic to Japanese, etc. Even though “globalization” is an old, hot buzzword and people consistently talk about a “smaller world,” blogs and social networks are driving it smaller. People talk about dominance of Asians on Friendster, large Brazil contigent on Orkut, or the changing mix on LinkedIn. In the blogosphere, there is a growing world of timely, relevant and important information on all subject matters in many languages. To be limited by language would be an unfortunate bind.
The technology for translating text within documents or the web is called Machine Translation (MT). Some of the leaders are France-based SYSTRAN and Israel-based Babylon. Companies such as Ford, Cisco, and Google use SYSTRAN’s MT technology. Have you ever seen “translate this page” when a foreign language site comes up in Google? SYSTRAN. Have you ever clicked through? If you try Korean for a news article or blog post, the translation results are at best 50% and typically worse. IDC states:
“MT systems work with natural language - a data set that is infinitely varying, ambiguous, and structurally complex. To translate adequately, an MT system must encode knowledge of hundreds of syntactic patterns, variations, and exceptions, as well as relationships among these patterns… A human translator prioritizes and selectively applies linguistic rules based on this knowledge. MT software, unless explicitly coded for each possibility, cannot. Thus, MT will never attain the overall quality of human translation. The primary advantages of MT over human translation are speed, cost, and consistency.”
Since the current technology is far from adequate at best, it seems it might be several years down the road before we can reap the benefits of MT technology capable of translating Japanese blogs on the cool gadgets and the Italian blogs on the latest wines.
I wish I could have talked with some more people in the industry or on the research side of machine translation, but I couldn't get it coordinated with my deadline for the article. Hopefully some knowledgeable readers will add to the content... the beauty of blogs. This is going up tomorrow.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm pasting my article from my original word doc here:
The Blogosphere: Lost in Translation?
It could be if translation technology can't keep pace with the instantaneous, spontaneous nature of communications on blogs and social networks.
Last week I was sitting with Vassil Mladjov (AO streaming guru) at Canvas Café talking about various business ideas and he briefly brought up the subject of online translation software. I asked how the quality of the translation was, and he said at least in Russian to English it’s good enough to get the basic ideas. From my experience, Korean to English was horrible beyond basic translation of words and short phrases. Anyway, I was not strongly interested at the time, so I carried on for a few more sentences and we transitioned into another topic. Last Friday as I did my daily read through of various technology news rags, I came across an article from Reuters, “Google Online Book Plan Sparks French War of Words”, that discussed the “war cry” France’s national library raised on concerns that Google’s efforts to put some of the world's great libraries on the Internet does not lead to a “domination of American ideas” and the English language. Even though I was somewhat amused by the French, began to think about how much of a real concern this was to the rest of the world and wondered if language would become such a barrier to the communication and transfer of ideas in the future. I thought about my mother’s favorite Christian philosopher, Jacque Ellul, since she tried to force his books on me as much as Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” during my high school years. If his books weren’t translated, my mother would never of experience her joys and I would have escaped the torment of her persistence.
Then I thought if Ellul had a blog, how would someone like my mother be able to benefit and be edified from his writing since it would be in French? I began to think about other topics and issues around the globe that people would be interested in reading about from people on ground zero. What would other Iraqis, besides Mohammed and Omar from Iraq The Model blog and who do not have knowledge of English, write about if there was a blog service in their native tongue? Or listening to the voices from Rwanda’s horrible past? Or learning about the latest Japanese gadgets from Japanese bloggers months or years before it they the pages of WIRED Magazine or Engadget?
So it became clear to me that the one of the next next things for the blogosphere is instantaneous translation of languages for blogs. English to Spanish, French to English, Arabic to Japanese, etc. Even though “globalization” is an old, hot buzzword and people consistently talk about a “smaller world,” blogs and social networks are driving it smaller. People talk about dominance of Asians on Friendster, large Brazil contigent on Orkut, or the changing mix on LinkedIn. In the blogosphere, there is a growing world of timely, relevant and important information on all subject matters in many languages. To be limited by language would be an unfortunate bind.
The technology for translating text within documents or the web is called Machine Translation (MT). Some of the leaders are France-based SYSTRAN and Israel-based Babylon. Companies such as Ford, Cisco, and Google use SYSTRAN’s MT technology. Have you ever seen “translate this page” when a foreign language site comes up in Google? SYSTRAN. Have you ever clicked through? If you try Korean for a news article or blog post, the translation results are at best 50% and typically worse. IDC states:
“MT systems work with natural language - a data set that is infinitely varying, ambiguous, and structurally complex. To translate adequately, an MT system must encode knowledge of hundreds of syntactic patterns, variations, and exceptions, as well as relationships among these patterns… A human translator prioritizes and selectively applies linguistic rules based on this knowledge. MT software, unless explicitly coded for each possibility, cannot. Thus, MT will never attain the overall quality of human translation. The primary advantages of MT over human translation are speed, cost, and consistency.”
Since the current technology is far from adequate at best, it seems it might be several years down the road before we can reap the benefits of MT technology capable of translating Japanese blogs on the cool gadgets and the Italian blogs on the latest wines.
Thursday, February 3, 2005
It’s a Wiki Wiki World
My third column is up at AlwaysOn. It's about the world of Wikis with commentary on the recent joust between Ross Mayfield's Socialtext and Joe Kraus's JotSpot and the issues surrounding Wikipedia. Check it out!
It's a Wiki, Wiki World
Skirmishes and issues abound in the Wild West atmosphere of the emerging social software space
The first month of 2005 had both the tech world and the blogosphere buzzing about wikis. For those unfamiliar with the term, a wiki is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows users to not only add content but also edit any existing content -- a definition I pulled from one of the best wikis around: Wikipedia, a free, online collaborative encyclopedia.
It all started a few weeks ago with the (to my mind) overblown "wiki war" that erupted between social software companies Socialtext and JotSpot after the latter lured Disney away from Socialtext to become its first major customer. Founded in 2002 by (now CEO) Ross Mayfield, Socialtext -- which received $500,000 in angel funding from leaders in the social computing space -- provides enterprise social software to more than 50 organizations. JotSpot, in contrast, is the newcomer to the sector: Co-founded by Graham Spencer and Joe Kraus (who also co-founded Excite), the company recently closed a Series A round of $5.2 million from Mayfield Fund and Redpoint Ventures, and is about to come out of its beta launch.
Things can get heated in the blogosphere, and true to form, the primary players weighed in with their own (sometimes cranky) comments about the so-called war. Socialtext's Mayfield wrote the following in his blog:
We're glad to be the market leader that JotSpot feels it needs to goafter ... Zero-sum thinking is lazy and, quite frankly, old school. It cements itself into the business model, product and culture of a company very easily ... Jot may think it has won a skirmish against its leading competitor. But really, it's at the cost of its customer ... The only harm to us is taking my time to write this post."
In response, JotSpot's Spencer posted the following in his own blog:
"One thing in Ross's post merited a comment here: He says that we're 'old school' for thinking that we can convince developers to build on our closed-source platform. I'd like to suggest instead that it's 'old school' to focus exclusively on the openness of the code when the openness of the data is at least as important. Aren't Flickr, Technorati, Google, Amazon, and eBay closed-source platforms, and haven't they spurred some of the most interesting 'innovation at the edge' that we've seen in the past couple of years?"
While the war of words is amusing, it also seems beside the point since the companies don't truly operate in the same market space: Socialtext is leading and creating the enterprise wiki space (which allows for more efficient collaboration and communication among corporate teams), while JotSpot is using a wiki-based program to create simple software applications (many of which seem to be spreadsheets with increased functionality for tracking competition, managing deals, and call-center support).
I sent the JotSpot link to a friend who's an IT consultant at IBM, and he loved it. He was looking for a simple customer relationship management (CRM) program to assist a nonprofit in managing membership and outreach, and JotSpot provided the perfect solution.
All of which reminded me of a meeting with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, in which he talked about the "law of nonconsumption," explaining how MySQL brought databases to people who'd never dreamed of using them. The result: MySQL was downloaded more than 12 million times last year. JotSpot could pull off a similar feat by making CRM programs (as well as other apps whose high costs have traditionally limited them to corporate customers) accessible to the masses. Although some people -- like Om Malik, a senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine -- believe that wikis will never represent more than "micro-niche" products, JotSpot's nonconsumption market may just surprise a lot of people.
Wikipedia: The quest for openness and accuracy. Another debate raging in the mainstream press and blogosphere revolves around the validity and reliability of the very site I mentioned at the beginning of this column -- Wikipedia. Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica, led the charge, stating that Wikipedia's contribution and editing processes are flawed and providing examples of entries that have been edited into mediocrity.
The Wikipedia FAQ states the following:
Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings [sic] by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.
To which McHenry counters, "Does someone actually believe this?
Although I use Wikipedia, I agree -- at least to a degree -- with McHenry's criticism of the site. Online collaborations like Wikipedia need order, structure, and a voice of authority to weed out the junk and trolls, and to increase the overall quality of the information they contain.
According to Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, a core problem with the site is "the dominance of difficult people, trolls, and their enablers." Says Sanger, "I might have continued to participate, were it not for a certain poisonous social or political atmosphere in the project."
What did he expect? Wikipedia is a great, accessible resource that should be considered the first step in serious information gathering or a quick dip in the pool when time is short. When I visited Wikipedia for the first time last year, I found myself laughing at the George W. Bush and Republican Party entries, where you can see the countless back-and-forth edits from both sides of the spectrum.
In response to Sanger, Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, wrote the following on the Many2Many group blog on social networks: "Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don't like the Wikipedia. It works without privilege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate ... [As to] Sanger's final point -- that the Wikipedia is anti-elitist -- yes, it is impossible for experts on a subject to post their views without molestation, but that's how wikis work.
Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. student at University of California, Berkeley, who's researching articulated social networks (and is a co-contributor with Shirky to the Many2Many blog), counters Shirky's comments by stating, "I would argue that many librarians, teachers, and academics fear Wikipedia (not dislike it) because it is not properly understood -- not simply because it challenges their privilege."
Human nature is on display at its best and its worst in forums like those mentioned above. It seems that the smaller the community -- due to interest or barriers placed -- the less trolling and deterioration in the quality of conversation and collaboration occurs. In some of the blogs I visit, however, you can see this deterioration in quality as comment strings lengthen and tempers flare. The result is that often times the best voices turn away because they don't want to deal with the trolls and troublemakers.
In wide-open systems like Wikipedia, there's not much entropy -- but there's not a high level of order either. What does exist is something akin to a Lord of the Flies world order: Battles and skirmishes occur among the children, and the naval rescue squad flies in to save the day. Much of the criticism of Wikipedia has focused on whether the site's Arbitration Committee and processes have, in fact, served as an effective rescue squad.
While the term open source has been used loosely to refer to a number of software development trends, there's a big difference between open-source software development and open-source collaboration. Open-source software has succeeded in part because of its innate order and structure -- rules and standards that developers must adhere to so that their code will be readable by everyone. Wikis, in contrast, are based on words and perspectives, not code, and there are no barriers to entry.
Recently, I compared my experiences living in Korea to those of a friend who's been living in Russia, and found that we'd both drawn similar conclusions -- that people living in environments with few laws and little enforcement tend to act in a more lawless manner. In both societies, the resulting disorder and inefficiency could be seen in everything from basic traffic violations to overtly corrupt business practices.
The lesson? It's a wicked, wicked world out there, and everyone needs rules to live by. Wikipedia is no exception: Marked more by inconsistency than entropy, Wikipedia (like other wikis) needs more rules and enforcement if it's to improve as a source of information.
In the Many2Many blog, Shirky states, "Wikipedia makes no claim to expertise or authority other than use-value. If you want to vote against it, don't use it. Everyone else will make the same choice for themselves, and the aggregate decisions of the population will determine the outcome of the project."
I disagree. In a wide-open world without any review standards, how does anyone identify what's valid and true? You can find a professor within just about any "accredited" university to substantiate almost any view -- no matter how radical, fringe, or unsubstantiated. Which leads to the question, How do you provide checks and balances in the far less structured environment of the web? Some of the responsibility must fall on those that provide the information -- especially if that provider positions itself as an encyclopedia.
My concerns about content validity, however, extend beyond Wikipedia to the problem of accessing information in a world overloaded with data. Greater access necessitates greater discernment. As public repositories of information such as Wikipedia proliferate, the ability to filter that content will become a necessity.
Ideally, this responsibility should fall on individuals; however, not all individuals have the ability to judge whether information is accurate and credible. Nor does everyone have the time to research and validate such sources. As the volume of information builds, wikis will need to develop information verification systems, or "truth seals," to validate their content. Perhaps these could take the form of more robust ranking and monitoring systems. Perhaps you, as readers and users, have some ideas of your own! If so, I'd like to hear them.
In the case of Wikipedia, the bottom line is simple: A stronger monitoring and review process is needed to ensure the quality of its information. If Wikipedia fails to provide it, the market will. And when that alternative emerges, Wikipedia could find itself stranded on an island with no visitors in sight.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm just keeping a copy here.
It's a Wiki, Wiki World
Skirmishes and issues abound in the Wild West atmosphere of the emerging social software space
The first month of 2005 had both the tech world and the blogosphere buzzing about wikis. For those unfamiliar with the term, a wiki is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows users to not only add content but also edit any existing content -- a definition I pulled from one of the best wikis around: Wikipedia, a free, online collaborative encyclopedia.
It all started a few weeks ago with the (to my mind) overblown "wiki war" that erupted between social software companies Socialtext and JotSpot after the latter lured Disney away from Socialtext to become its first major customer. Founded in 2002 by (now CEO) Ross Mayfield, Socialtext -- which received $500,000 in angel funding from leaders in the social computing space -- provides enterprise social software to more than 50 organizations. JotSpot, in contrast, is the newcomer to the sector: Co-founded by Graham Spencer and Joe Kraus (who also co-founded Excite), the company recently closed a Series A round of $5.2 million from Mayfield Fund and Redpoint Ventures, and is about to come out of its beta launch.
Things can get heated in the blogosphere, and true to form, the primary players weighed in with their own (sometimes cranky) comments about the so-called war. Socialtext's Mayfield wrote the following in his blog:
We're glad to be the market leader that JotSpot feels it needs to goafter ... Zero-sum thinking is lazy and, quite frankly, old school. It cements itself into the business model, product and culture of a company very easily ... Jot may think it has won a skirmish against its leading competitor. But really, it's at the cost of its customer ... The only harm to us is taking my time to write this post."
In response, JotSpot's Spencer posted the following in his own blog:
"One thing in Ross's post merited a comment here: He says that we're 'old school' for thinking that we can convince developers to build on our closed-source platform. I'd like to suggest instead that it's 'old school' to focus exclusively on the openness of the code when the openness of the data is at least as important. Aren't Flickr, Technorati, Google, Amazon, and eBay closed-source platforms, and haven't they spurred some of the most interesting 'innovation at the edge' that we've seen in the past couple of years?"
While the war of words is amusing, it also seems beside the point since the companies don't truly operate in the same market space: Socialtext is leading and creating the enterprise wiki space (which allows for more efficient collaboration and communication among corporate teams), while JotSpot is using a wiki-based program to create simple software applications (many of which seem to be spreadsheets with increased functionality for tracking competition, managing deals, and call-center support).
I sent the JotSpot link to a friend who's an IT consultant at IBM, and he loved it. He was looking for a simple customer relationship management (CRM) program to assist a nonprofit in managing membership and outreach, and JotSpot provided the perfect solution.
All of which reminded me of a meeting with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, in which he talked about the "law of nonconsumption," explaining how MySQL brought databases to people who'd never dreamed of using them. The result: MySQL was downloaded more than 12 million times last year. JotSpot could pull off a similar feat by making CRM programs (as well as other apps whose high costs have traditionally limited them to corporate customers) accessible to the masses. Although some people -- like Om Malik, a senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine -- believe that wikis will never represent more than "micro-niche" products, JotSpot's nonconsumption market may just surprise a lot of people.
Wikipedia: The quest for openness and accuracy. Another debate raging in the mainstream press and blogosphere revolves around the validity and reliability of the very site I mentioned at the beginning of this column -- Wikipedia. Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica, led the charge, stating that Wikipedia's contribution and editing processes are flawed and providing examples of entries that have been edited into mediocrity.
The Wikipedia FAQ states the following:
Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings [sic] by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.
To which McHenry counters, "Does someone actually believe this?
Although I use Wikipedia, I agree -- at least to a degree -- with McHenry's criticism of the site. Online collaborations like Wikipedia need order, structure, and a voice of authority to weed out the junk and trolls, and to increase the overall quality of the information they contain.
According to Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, a core problem with the site is "the dominance of difficult people, trolls, and their enablers." Says Sanger, "I might have continued to participate, were it not for a certain poisonous social or political atmosphere in the project."
What did he expect? Wikipedia is a great, accessible resource that should be considered the first step in serious information gathering or a quick dip in the pool when time is short. When I visited Wikipedia for the first time last year, I found myself laughing at the George W. Bush and Republican Party entries, where you can see the countless back-and-forth edits from both sides of the spectrum.
In response to Sanger, Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, wrote the following on the Many2Many group blog on social networks: "Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don't like the Wikipedia. It works without privilege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate ... [As to] Sanger's final point -- that the Wikipedia is anti-elitist -- yes, it is impossible for experts on a subject to post their views without molestation, but that's how wikis work.
Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. student at University of California, Berkeley, who's researching articulated social networks (and is a co-contributor with Shirky to the Many2Many blog), counters Shirky's comments by stating, "I would argue that many librarians, teachers, and academics fear Wikipedia (not dislike it) because it is not properly understood -- not simply because it challenges their privilege."
Human nature is on display at its best and its worst in forums like those mentioned above. It seems that the smaller the community -- due to interest or barriers placed -- the less trolling and deterioration in the quality of conversation and collaboration occurs. In some of the blogs I visit, however, you can see this deterioration in quality as comment strings lengthen and tempers flare. The result is that often times the best voices turn away because they don't want to deal with the trolls and troublemakers.
In wide-open systems like Wikipedia, there's not much entropy -- but there's not a high level of order either. What does exist is something akin to a Lord of the Flies world order: Battles and skirmishes occur among the children, and the naval rescue squad flies in to save the day. Much of the criticism of Wikipedia has focused on whether the site's Arbitration Committee and processes have, in fact, served as an effective rescue squad.
While the term open source has been used loosely to refer to a number of software development trends, there's a big difference between open-source software development and open-source collaboration. Open-source software has succeeded in part because of its innate order and structure -- rules and standards that developers must adhere to so that their code will be readable by everyone. Wikis, in contrast, are based on words and perspectives, not code, and there are no barriers to entry.
Recently, I compared my experiences living in Korea to those of a friend who's been living in Russia, and found that we'd both drawn similar conclusions -- that people living in environments with few laws and little enforcement tend to act in a more lawless manner. In both societies, the resulting disorder and inefficiency could be seen in everything from basic traffic violations to overtly corrupt business practices.
The lesson? It's a wicked, wicked world out there, and everyone needs rules to live by. Wikipedia is no exception: Marked more by inconsistency than entropy, Wikipedia (like other wikis) needs more rules and enforcement if it's to improve as a source of information.
In the Many2Many blog, Shirky states, "Wikipedia makes no claim to expertise or authority other than use-value. If you want to vote against it, don't use it. Everyone else will make the same choice for themselves, and the aggregate decisions of the population will determine the outcome of the project."
I disagree. In a wide-open world without any review standards, how does anyone identify what's valid and true? You can find a professor within just about any "accredited" university to substantiate almost any view -- no matter how radical, fringe, or unsubstantiated. Which leads to the question, How do you provide checks and balances in the far less structured environment of the web? Some of the responsibility must fall on those that provide the information -- especially if that provider positions itself as an encyclopedia.
My concerns about content validity, however, extend beyond Wikipedia to the problem of accessing information in a world overloaded with data. Greater access necessitates greater discernment. As public repositories of information such as Wikipedia proliferate, the ability to filter that content will become a necessity.
Ideally, this responsibility should fall on individuals; however, not all individuals have the ability to judge whether information is accurate and credible. Nor does everyone have the time to research and validate such sources. As the volume of information builds, wikis will need to develop information verification systems, or "truth seals," to validate their content. Perhaps these could take the form of more robust ranking and monitoring systems. Perhaps you, as readers and users, have some ideas of your own! If so, I'd like to hear them.
In the case of Wikipedia, the bottom line is simple: A stronger monitoring and review process is needed to ensure the quality of its information. If Wikipedia fails to provide it, the market will. And when that alternative emerges, Wikipedia could find itself stranded on an island with no visitors in sight.
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I'm just keeping a copy here.
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Watch Out, Traditional Media!
Start of my "Reality Media" column at AlwaysOn.
My bi-weekly column at AlwaysOn got started today. Check it out!
Watch Out, Traditional Media!
The collective intelligence and power of the blogosphere are bringing accountability and competition to broadcast news and journalism.
The tagline for my column reads:
As social networks and blogs become more integrated into our daily digital world, we examine the events, trends and technology across the globe will affect this sector.
This is a good and fun initial foray into journalism. Even though AlwaysOn is a tech blog, the center space of the site is managed by editors similar to a newspaper or magazine. My editor, Jill, was great and I already learned some aspects of writing that I didn't know about from her. It's also interesting to see the editing process. Actually, here is a copy of my initial draft, so check this out and compare with what's up at AlwaysOn:
Shifting From Reality TV To Reality Media
It seems there was a shift in the reading and viewing habits for the world in 2004. Reality television lost its luster and people were getting tire of this genre while eyeballs continued to multiply towards content with substance – from the Internet. With blogs leading the way, old mediums were left scratching their heads like Elmer Fudd looking for Bugs Bunny after being blindsided by the likes of Power Line (Time’s Blog of the Year), Engadget, and others breaking news days before their mainstream media counterparts on everything from false documents used by “60 Minutes” to faulty Kryptonite locks.
John Hinderaker, one of Power Line’s bloggers, stated in an interview for this post:
“Whenever I look at one of those newspaper dispensers, I look at the headlines and I’m always kind of surprised because they seem so out of date. I tell myself, ‘They’re still talking about that?’ There’s always a day or two lag. Blogs, and the Internet in general, have accelerated the pace of the news cycle. In the blogosphere, there are really two or three news cycles within a day. If something is more than six to eight hours old in the blogosphere, it’s really part of a former news cycle. The speed has really changed how people view information.”
In another way, time isn’t a factor in the blogosphere. Posts on blogs are just part of a greater conversation on the Internet. They can be a starting point or just a part of the continuing discussion. As Jeff Jarvis states, “We used to think that the news was finished when we printed it, but that’s when the news now begins.”
In the old days, this piece would probably be too dated to be published, especially if I just focused on a review of activities in 2004, but through the medium of blogs it’s still timely and relevant… well, within certain boundaries.
Probably the most important characteristic of this widespread move towards “reality media” in 2004 has been the power of collective intelligence. We see it here at AlwaysOn almost everyday. No article or post is complete without some commentary, correction, or additional information from a community member. The most significant example of this in 2004 was Power Line’s lead in proving Dan Rather’s use of false documents in a “60 Minutes” story on President Bush’s Texas National Guard service. I asked John Hinderaker about whether the breaking of the “Rathergate” story was the first time he experienced the collective intelligence and power of blogs at work:
“Well, no. For years people have been predicting that the Internet would be a significant political medium, but until this year I didn’t think it happened. This year there were a number of respects in which it was. You start with the Howard Dean campaign and its use of the web for fundraising and organizing. Subsequent to that is the Bush campaign. It’s less well known, but they did a better job in using the Internet to communicate with supporters, raise money, and so forth. The thing that I thought put the whole medium over the top was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story. When they started out they only had $200,000 and only had enough money to buy advertising on three TV stations in Ohio. Kerry’s advisors told him don’t respond and don’t mention it. The media is not going to cover it. They can’t hurt you because they have no money. The group put the ad up on their website and we and many other blogs and websites directed traffic there. Two weeks after that ad came out even though virtually no one had seen it on television. Somebody did a poll that 57% of all respondents knew about the ad and a lot of them had already seen it. What the vets had done was circumventing all the traditional media and use the Internet to get the message out. Of course along with seeing the ads a lot of people made donations. It was the day after the survey came up the Kerry people just freaked because their assumption was that without money the vets couldn’t do any damage, and they were right that the mainstream media would blockade the story and they did. Then you had “Christmas in Cambodia” and so forth and we played a significant role in that along with various other blogs. Even without Rathergate, which I already stated in a lecture I gave in South Dakota, that this is the year that the Internet came into its own as a political medium. Obviously the CBS story was icing on the cake.”
As a reader of Power Line, the amazing aspect of watching “Rathergate” unfold was that it wasn’t just their blog, but several dozen others collaborating with hundreds of their readers who emailed numerous pieces of information that validated the forgery of the documents. The collective intelligence and power of the blogosphere still has doubters.
A few weeks ago I was reading a USA Today article on our own Tony Perkins and came across this statement by Jason Pontin, Editor-in-Chief of MIT’s Technology Review, "The blogosphere doesn't have the capacity to produce analytical, well-researched journalism." I assume this type of thinking is not limited to Jason, but also prevalent among many journalists and mainstream media people who unaware of what the blogosphere really is. I asked Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing for Guardian Newspapers and a blogger (personal blog and “50 quid bloke”), about some reaction to this statement and he said:
“I think the issue is a lot less about the merits or otherwise of bloggers' writing and research, and much more about the impact that bloggers - both as individuals and as a mass are having on the shape and structure of the net.
At one level this is about the impact that individual 'power bloggers' can have on bringing a particular story or issue into the limelight. At another level it’s the bloggers en masse are having – either through aggregation services such as Blogdex and Technorati, or through their impact on Google.
Overall, I think that the combination of blogs, RSS and the ongoing integration of news readers into browsers and e-mail clients is starting to lead to a real change in the way that people will find and consume information. And, no media organisation, traditional or
otherwise, can afford to be ignorant of that change and/or to think that it won't affect them.”
Hinderaker added:
“Well, that’s just silly. Why not? Scott and I have been writing together for newspapers and magazines since 1992. We’ve produced dozens and dozens of newspaper columns, we’ve produced longer research papers, some of which are linked to off our website and some of which have been very influential before the growth of the Internet. Why would people who write blogs be uniquely incapable of either analyzing or researching? That’s just silly…
The blogosphere has made them (mainstream media) pretty nervous. I know many journalists read Power Line. It’s amazing to me how many journalists read our site. I think that the knowledge that there is a whole army of people out there fact checking them has undoubtedly has caused a lot of journalists to be more carefully. I think that’s good.”
Mainstream has taken a bit of a beating this past year in its credibility and viewership. Every mainstream medium has declined in circulation and eyeballs besides the Internet. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press put out a report that reveal how the trust in mainstream media outlets has been declining since 1996. In 1996, approximately 32% of “people who believe ‘all or most’ of what a CBS News says” versus 24% in 2004. NBC and ABC News encountered similar declines and hover around 24%. Wall Street Journal had 36% of “people who believe ‘all or most’ of” what they wrote in 1996, and now only 24% believe in them. Local papers face percentages less than 20%.
The funny aspect of Jason Pontin’s quote is that he contacted Tony and told him how the reporter from USA Today quoted him out of context. If only USA Today was set up as a blog or a blog/social network like AlwaysOn, where that reporter would get an earful from people like Ed, Jeff, or Jason himself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note by columnist:
In this column, I will be covering the intersection of the blogosphere and social networking, which I will refer to as “slogging” (slog v. to social network and blog). I was just tired of writing “blogs and social networks” or “social networking and blogging.”
When I asked our own active community member, Marc Canter, about the events of this past year in the blogosphere and world of social networks he said:
“I lump the two into one. I don’t differentiate social networking and blogging. I consider both in the new era of software which I called Digital Lifestyle Aggregation. Publishing with text is the first step, but we’re always seeing the beginning of audio and video blogging…
All software is about people. It always has been. What we see and know as social networking is simply a recognition of the fact that rather than these big companies trying to lock our names into same membership database and charge us money and treat us like consumers. It’s the other way around now. You start with the viral effect of the communities interacting with each other then from that are a lot of opportunities.”
And lots of content. Looking forward to interacting with the AlwaysOn community on the “slogophere” in 2005. If you have any suggestions for topics, please feel free to email me at bernard.moon@gmail.com or send a message through the AlwaysOn channels. Thanks!
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I will post the original article in the near future.
My bi-weekly column at AlwaysOn got started today. Check it out!
Watch Out, Traditional Media!
The collective intelligence and power of the blogosphere are bringing accountability and competition to broadcast news and journalism.
The tagline for my column reads:
As social networks and blogs become more integrated into our daily digital world, we examine the events, trends and technology across the globe will affect this sector.
This is a good and fun initial foray into journalism. Even though AlwaysOn is a tech blog, the center space of the site is managed by editors similar to a newspaper or magazine. My editor, Jill, was great and I already learned some aspects of writing that I didn't know about from her. It's also interesting to see the editing process. Actually, here is a copy of my initial draft, so check this out and compare with what's up at AlwaysOn:
Shifting From Reality TV To Reality Media
It seems there was a shift in the reading and viewing habits for the world in 2004. Reality television lost its luster and people were getting tire of this genre while eyeballs continued to multiply towards content with substance – from the Internet. With blogs leading the way, old mediums were left scratching their heads like Elmer Fudd looking for Bugs Bunny after being blindsided by the likes of Power Line (Time’s Blog of the Year), Engadget, and others breaking news days before their mainstream media counterparts on everything from false documents used by “60 Minutes” to faulty Kryptonite locks.
John Hinderaker, one of Power Line’s bloggers, stated in an interview for this post:
“Whenever I look at one of those newspaper dispensers, I look at the headlines and I’m always kind of surprised because they seem so out of date. I tell myself, ‘They’re still talking about that?’ There’s always a day or two lag. Blogs, and the Internet in general, have accelerated the pace of the news cycle. In the blogosphere, there are really two or three news cycles within a day. If something is more than six to eight hours old in the blogosphere, it’s really part of a former news cycle. The speed has really changed how people view information.”
In another way, time isn’t a factor in the blogosphere. Posts on blogs are just part of a greater conversation on the Internet. They can be a starting point or just a part of the continuing discussion. As Jeff Jarvis states, “We used to think that the news was finished when we printed it, but that’s when the news now begins.”
In the old days, this piece would probably be too dated to be published, especially if I just focused on a review of activities in 2004, but through the medium of blogs it’s still timely and relevant… well, within certain boundaries.
Probably the most important characteristic of this widespread move towards “reality media” in 2004 has been the power of collective intelligence. We see it here at AlwaysOn almost everyday. No article or post is complete without some commentary, correction, or additional information from a community member. The most significant example of this in 2004 was Power Line’s lead in proving Dan Rather’s use of false documents in a “60 Minutes” story on President Bush’s Texas National Guard service. I asked John Hinderaker about whether the breaking of the “Rathergate” story was the first time he experienced the collective intelligence and power of blogs at work:
“Well, no. For years people have been predicting that the Internet would be a significant political medium, but until this year I didn’t think it happened. This year there were a number of respects in which it was. You start with the Howard Dean campaign and its use of the web for fundraising and organizing. Subsequent to that is the Bush campaign. It’s less well known, but they did a better job in using the Internet to communicate with supporters, raise money, and so forth. The thing that I thought put the whole medium over the top was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story. When they started out they only had $200,000 and only had enough money to buy advertising on three TV stations in Ohio. Kerry’s advisors told him don’t respond and don’t mention it. The media is not going to cover it. They can’t hurt you because they have no money. The group put the ad up on their website and we and many other blogs and websites directed traffic there. Two weeks after that ad came out even though virtually no one had seen it on television. Somebody did a poll that 57% of all respondents knew about the ad and a lot of them had already seen it. What the vets had done was circumventing all the traditional media and use the Internet to get the message out. Of course along with seeing the ads a lot of people made donations. It was the day after the survey came up the Kerry people just freaked because their assumption was that without money the vets couldn’t do any damage, and they were right that the mainstream media would blockade the story and they did. Then you had “Christmas in Cambodia” and so forth and we played a significant role in that along with various other blogs. Even without Rathergate, which I already stated in a lecture I gave in South Dakota, that this is the year that the Internet came into its own as a political medium. Obviously the CBS story was icing on the cake.”
As a reader of Power Line, the amazing aspect of watching “Rathergate” unfold was that it wasn’t just their blog, but several dozen others collaborating with hundreds of their readers who emailed numerous pieces of information that validated the forgery of the documents. The collective intelligence and power of the blogosphere still has doubters.
A few weeks ago I was reading a USA Today article on our own Tony Perkins and came across this statement by Jason Pontin, Editor-in-Chief of MIT’s Technology Review, "The blogosphere doesn't have the capacity to produce analytical, well-researched journalism." I assume this type of thinking is not limited to Jason, but also prevalent among many journalists and mainstream media people who unaware of what the blogosphere really is. I asked Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing for Guardian Newspapers and a blogger (personal blog and “50 quid bloke”), about some reaction to this statement and he said:
“I think the issue is a lot less about the merits or otherwise of bloggers' writing and research, and much more about the impact that bloggers - both as individuals and as a mass are having on the shape and structure of the net.
At one level this is about the impact that individual 'power bloggers' can have on bringing a particular story or issue into the limelight. At another level it’s the bloggers en masse are having – either through aggregation services such as Blogdex and Technorati, or through their impact on Google.
Overall, I think that the combination of blogs, RSS and the ongoing integration of news readers into browsers and e-mail clients is starting to lead to a real change in the way that people will find and consume information. And, no media organisation, traditional or
otherwise, can afford to be ignorant of that change and/or to think that it won't affect them.”
Hinderaker added:
“Well, that’s just silly. Why not? Scott and I have been writing together for newspapers and magazines since 1992. We’ve produced dozens and dozens of newspaper columns, we’ve produced longer research papers, some of which are linked to off our website and some of which have been very influential before the growth of the Internet. Why would people who write blogs be uniquely incapable of either analyzing or researching? That’s just silly…
The blogosphere has made them (mainstream media) pretty nervous. I know many journalists read Power Line. It’s amazing to me how many journalists read our site. I think that the knowledge that there is a whole army of people out there fact checking them has undoubtedly has caused a lot of journalists to be more carefully. I think that’s good.”
Mainstream has taken a bit of a beating this past year in its credibility and viewership. Every mainstream medium has declined in circulation and eyeballs besides the Internet. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press put out a report that reveal how the trust in mainstream media outlets has been declining since 1996. In 1996, approximately 32% of “people who believe ‘all or most’ of what a CBS News says” versus 24% in 2004. NBC and ABC News encountered similar declines and hover around 24%. Wall Street Journal had 36% of “people who believe ‘all or most’ of” what they wrote in 1996, and now only 24% believe in them. Local papers face percentages less than 20%.
The funny aspect of Jason Pontin’s quote is that he contacted Tony and told him how the reporter from USA Today quoted him out of context. If only USA Today was set up as a blog or a blog/social network like AlwaysOn, where that reporter would get an earful from people like Ed, Jeff, or Jason himself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note by columnist:
In this column, I will be covering the intersection of the blogosphere and social networking, which I will refer to as “slogging” (slog v. to social network and blog). I was just tired of writing “blogs and social networks” or “social networking and blogging.”
When I asked our own active community member, Marc Canter, about the events of this past year in the blogosphere and world of social networks he said:
“I lump the two into one. I don’t differentiate social networking and blogging. I consider both in the new era of software which I called Digital Lifestyle Aggregation. Publishing with text is the first step, but we’re always seeing the beginning of audio and video blogging…
All software is about people. It always has been. What we see and know as social networking is simply a recognition of the fact that rather than these big companies trying to lock our names into same membership database and charge us money and treat us like consumers. It’s the other way around now. You start with the viral effect of the communities interacting with each other then from that are a lot of opportunities.”
And lots of content. Looking forward to interacting with the AlwaysOn community on the “slogophere” in 2005. If you have any suggestions for topics, please feel free to email me at bernard.moon@gmail.com or send a message through the AlwaysOn channels. Thanks!
UPDATE: Since the old AlwaysOn site was taken down and posts were not properly transferred, I will post the original article in the near future.
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