Sunday, May 3, 2009
Thanks
Twitter Stress???
Does The Way You Twitter Cause You Stress?
How to prevent yourself from becoming scrambled.
Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes on Twitter recognizes that blue bird. And, like any bird, it began life as an egg. Fortunately, one that didn’t crack and end up scrambled!
Just as in life, there are stages of learning & growth on Twitter.
My invitation to Twitter came from that brilliant international branding bird @coffee_offline who said, “Just Do It! You’ll love it!.” (I’ll leave it to you to delve into her background!)
Admittedly, my initial thoughts were, “What am I going to do with this?” Fortunately, I know how to overcome those limiting thoughts. I recognized those triplets named Doubt, Impossibility & Fear, who are cousins to Stress. (Have your invitations to Twitter been ignored? Consider the possibility that the benefits were over-shadowed by one of the aforementioned emotions.)
Here are my observations & suggestions to help you on your way:
The follower affliction
“I have 3 gazillion followers.” “I’ve lost 2 followers!” This constant score-keeping (egg-counting?) may contribute to the one basket effect. The stress basket. Consider these questions: Does your self-esteem rise and fall on the number of followers you have? Do you feel like it’s a competition? Is it quality or quantity? Are you interacting or number-watching?
Become aware of what is going on internally as you watch the numbers. Remember that your body is constantly reacting to your thoughts and emotions. The physical and chemical adjustments that are being made affect your emotional, mental and physical health. If your response to “Oh” is “Oh, that’s interesting!” versus, “Oh Oh!” your perception is likely causing you stress.
Twitter is about caring.
When we’re stressed, we lose the ability to care about not only ourselves but also our neighbours. We were able to witness a phenomenal act of giving when @Armano reached out & asked for help for #Daniela. There are similar stories, no less important, that occur on Twitter on a daily basis.
Many will never know how something they tweeted has provided someone with much-needed encouragement or help. If you’ve been helped by someone, I strongly urge you to let them know. This creates a “reverberational effect.” A very measurable change in heart rhythms occurs when we activate positive emotions. Life gets better, not only for you, but also for those with whom you come into contact.
Twitter is a society
And as in any society, there are responsibilities. Customs, traditions, folkways and mores provide us with guidance & rules. We are free to conduct ourselves as we see fit, however, there can be repercussions to our behaviour. There are those who are pushed out of the nest by the community for abusing this fine flock. As in the avian world, this “shove” can be a necessary part of growth.
In addition to Twitip, & the Twitter community itself, there are plenty of sites and blogs offering advice to ensure that you find your wings and fly.
Twitterunity
The heart of it is the ability to make connections and to communicate. Stress can cause us to be isolated. Twitter is an excellent forum that will allow you to emerge from your shell, find your voice and develop confidence. How wonderful to be able to leave the nest and fly to new heights! Who knows what you’ll see!
We are all in this together
When we appreciate the community that we’re all a part of, we learn. People are opening their hearts on Twitter. This fosters understanding and also acceptance. I see an openness that crosses cultures, political beliefs, religion & more. We don’t all think the same way & that makes for great discussion and sharing and I believe it leads to fewer struggles. A multi-coloured flock is far more interesting, as well!
Balance
Stress transformation is about balance; not only of your nervous system, but also your life. Wouldn’t you agree that Twitter is also about balance?
Here is the formula I use, based on 3 months of tweeting experience:
- Welcome
- Inspire
- Communicate
- Share and gather information
- Humour connects
- Ask questions
- Promote
- Celebrate
- Credit where it’s due: Retweet
- Thank
On that note, my heartfelt thanks to Darren Rowse, Kathrin Hardie and the creative developers of Twitter!
I had it totally backwards...
Ways to Beat Stress through Social Media and Networking
Posted by Vaibhav Kalamdani on January 11, 2009
Today, it is not uncommon to hear from people that they are undergoing stress. Be it the recession, family woes, heart-breaks, overwork or joblessness, stress has taken control over the human mind causing several health disasters, some even leading to death. But if you are one of those who is facing tough times in life or wish not to be affected much in the future, turn to social media and social networking immediately.
Stress management experts often recommend solutions like playing games, listening to music, interacting with friends, etc. to overcome stress. Considering the fact that social networks allow people to connect with friends and express their mood through status updates, there is high possibility that you will share your feelings or condition with selected few whom you trust and reduce the stress level to at least some extent.
Of course this may not be applicable to those who prefer meeting their friends personally. However, there may be instances where the person you wish to meet is far away from you, say in another town or country. At such times, you can express yourself either in few words on Twitter or by updating your mood on Facebook, as most of the social networks today offer privacy settings for you to choose selected people with whom you wish to communicate.
Secondly, some social networks provide users with the chat facility to make communication easier and faster in case two or more friends are online at the same time. Though some of you may not want to express your feelings at all, chatting with friends or family can help in easing you and talk about general topics to divert your mind.
When it comes to playing games, most of the social networks provide several entertaining games that can help you cope up with the stress and relax your mind. What’s more! These games are entertaining, interactive and easy to play, without pressuring your mind.
Social media sites like YouTube, Google Video and host of others can be used to view videos, listen to your favourite soundtracks, etc. to relieve your stress and get engaged in community discussions. It is really amazing that these sites offer almost all genres of music, from which you can select what you are most comfortable with.
Critics might argue that too much of social networking can lead to additional stress, which is quite a valid point. For example, any rude comment or no response can add salt to the wound, making things worse. But this depends a lot on how you behave and conduct yourself when networking online. You need to be patient and calm, and never take out your frustration on others, as it will only harm you in the long run.
Finally, use social media and social networks as a solution and not as an addiction to relieve your stress. Stress is common to almost all, and it only depends on how strongly you combat it without affecting your life much.
Looking for the Perfect Final Posts
SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.
The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated for it.
“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”
“This is not sustainable,” he said.
It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.
The emergence of this class of information worker has paralleled the development of the online economy. Publishing has expanded to the Internet, and advertising has followed.
Even at established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing people to set up virtual offices and work from anywhere at any time. That flexibility has a downside, in that workers are always a click away from the burdens of the office. For obsessive information workers, that can mean never leaving the house.
Blogging has been lucrative for some, but those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post, and in some cases are paid on a sliding bonus scale that rewards success with a demand for even more work.
There are growing legions of online chroniclers, reporting on and reflecting about sports, politics, business, celebrities and every other conceivable niche. Some write for fun, but thousands write for Web publishers — as employees or as contractors — or have started their own online media outlets with profit in mind.
One of the most competitive categories is blogs about technology developments and news. They are in a vicious 24-hour competition to break company news, reveal new products and expose corporate gaffes.
To the victor go the ego points, and, potentially, the advertising. Bloggers for such sites are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.
Some sites, like those owned by Gawker Media, give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks, like if the pages they write are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the goal is raised, like a sales commission: write more, earn more.
Bloggers at some of the bigger sites say most writers earn about $30,000 a year starting out, and some can make as much as $70,000. A tireless few bloggers reach six figures, and some entrepreneurs in the field have built mini-empires on the Web that are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Others who are trying to turn blogging into a career say they can end up with just $1,000 a month.
Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.
“There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break,” he added. “But that’s never going to happen.”
All that competition puts a premium on staying awake. Matt Buchanan, 22, is the right man for the job. He works for clicks for Gizmodo, a popular Gawker Media site that publishes news about gadgets. Mr. Buchanan lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, where his bedroom doubles as his office.
He says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled — by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.
But make no mistake: Mr. Buchanan, a recent graduate of New York University, loves his job. He said he gets paid to write (he will not say how much) while interacting with readers in a global conversation about the latest and greatest products.
“The fact I have a few thousand people a day reading what I write — that’s kind of cool,” he said. And, yes, it is exhausting. Sometimes, he said, “I just want to lie down.”
Sometimes he does rest, inadvertently, falling asleep at the computer.
“If I don’t hear from him, I’ll think: Matt’s passed out again,” said Brian Lam, the editor of Gizmodo. “It’s happened four or five times.”
Mr. Lam, who as a manager has a substantially larger income, works even harder. He is known to pull all-nighters at his own home office in San Francisco — hours spent trying to keep his site organized and competitive. He said he was well equipped for the torture; he used to be a Thai-style boxer.
“I’ve got a background getting punched in the face,” he said. “That’s why I’m good at this job.”
Mr. Lam said he has worried his blogging staff might be burning out, and he urges them to take breaks, even vacations. But he said they face tremendous pressure — external, internal and financial. He said the evolution of the “pay-per-click” economy has put the emphasis on reader traffic and financial return, not journalism.
In the case of Mr. Shaw, it is not clear what role stress played in his death. Ellen Green, who had been dating him for 13 months, said the pressure, though self-imposed, was severe. She said she and Mr. Shaw had been talking a lot about how he could create a healthier lifestyle, particularly after the death of his friend, Mr. Orchant.
“The blogger community is looking at this and saying: ‘Oh no, it happened so fast to two really vital people in the field,’ ” she said. They are wondering, “What does that have to do with me?”
For his part, Mr. Shaw did not die at his desk. He died in a hotel in San Jose, Calif., where he had flown to cover a technology conference. He had written a last e-mail dispatch to his editor at ZDNet: “Have come down with something. Resting now posts to resume later today or tomorrow.”Sunday, April 26, 2009
Why eBay seems to have cracks in its armor....
A Decade Ago...
http://technologizer.com/2009/04/23/whatever-happened-to-the-top-15-properties-of-april-1999/
On-Line Principles....Really?
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12220966
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wordle
http://www.wordle.net/
Monday, April 20, 2009
Protecting the News Business Model
The Associated Press and Intellectual Property Protection
The Associated Press is a not-for-profit news cooperative that spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year gathering and sharing news of public interest from around the world. Licensing of this content by our members is critical to support our news operations. In the new digital content economy, however, a significant amount of AP news and news from AP members is used without permission or fair compensation. This situation has serious consequences: it dilutes the value of news for licensors and advertisers; it fragments and disperses content so widely that consumers end up relying on fragmented coverage to get their news despite the availability of comprehensive and authoritative coverage on a 24-hour basis.
Recently, The Associated Press Board of Directors announced it would undertake an initiative to affirm the value of original news reporting and protect the news industry’s content from being misappropriated online. The initiative would find new ways to enhance consumers’ ability to find authoritative news coverage online. In addition, the AP Board asked AP to examine creation of a rights-based service that would ensure content owners and publishers earn a fair return on their news investments1.Why is this newsworthy?
The action by the AP Board was an important acknowledgment by the news cooperative that it needs to adjust its practices and work together to keep original journalism economically viable by promoting licensed used of original news content and increasing direct consumer engagement with the sources of that news.
2. What do AP and the news industry want to accomplish?
Our mission is two-fold: enable consumers to find news from authoritative and original sources in the most flexible ways and to ensure that those who gather, report and publish the news are properly reimbursed for it.
3. Why is this important?
The organized news media perform a critical function in a free society. The news media protect the public’s right to know by enforcing freedom of information laws, sending reporters into war-torn regions and covering everything from natural disasters, local legislators and more to file unbiased reports. Pressing for government accountability and covering global conflicts have significant costs -- both financial and human. The Associated Press alone spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year in its newsgathering operation, covering everything from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to every statehouse in the United States. AP journalists must be present whenever and wherever news occurs, at great cost to AP, and sometimes at great risk to themselves. The same is true of every news organization. Safeguarding investments to gather and share news is critical to a democratic society.
4. What does the initiative involve?
Our goal is to improve consumers’ ability to find the most authoritative news coverage while also ensuring a fair return to those who invest in the original reporting of news. The initiative will involve a variety of steps, including something we refer to as search pages, or a “news guide” that would help point consumers to sources of original reporting. It also will involve creation of rights-based services to help publishers and those who originate news to facilitate new distribution and revenue models.
5. What is meant by “rights-based services"?
AP already processes text content from more than 1,100 news providers as part of its “Digital Cooperative” program. This effort assigns tags to the content that make it easier to search and sort news stories by category, location and individuals named, among other things. The rights-based service will enable new licensing models for news distribution and consumption. We believe this will encourage greater innovation in how authoritative news is delivered to the public.
6. What do you mean by “search pages”?
When consumers look for news today on search engines, they often get directed in a random fashion to a wide variety of news sources, blogs and other Web pages. Searches on breaking news topics such as floods, earthquakes and shootings don’t dependably produce results from authoritative local news sources, and often not even to those media responsible for producing the news stories. AP will work with its member newspapers, broadcasters and other media to create a set of search-optimized pages that will guide users to the most timely, authoritative coverage related to their searches
7. Is AP going to put up a “toll booth” around its content?
No. The AP initiative is about opening up clear routes to authoritative coverage. Our first priority is to engage the audience with original reporting from trusted sources. We expect online revenue models online to evolve, with some content supported by advertising and premium content priced for subscription or a la carte purchase by users.
8. Why not just harness the so-called “link economy” to attract the audience?
The world has benefited from the link construct of the Web. The AP initiative is not about prohibiting this. Instead, it is about making sure that consumers have access to authoritative news sources and that they can engage with news content in a more robust and timely way at the same time publishers and content owners receive a fair return on their investments in newsgathering and distribution.
9. What does AP mean when it says it will use both legal and legislative approaches to protect its content?
AP and the news industry are eager to work with everyone – including portals and aggregators -- in a constructive way to make sure content owners are fairly compensated for their work. Like any other business, we may need to seek legal and legislative help to safeguard our business interests.
10. Is AP trying to crack down on what many feel is fair use of news snippets?
As a newsgathering organization, AP understands the importance of fair use. Fair use is a complex analysis done on a case-by-case basis. It defies easy generalization. The AP initiative is not about this; it is about making it easier for consumer to access and engage with news content in more robust ways.
11. Is this aimed at Google? At bloggers?
No. It is not aimed at any one company or Web site. We are eager to work with everyone to achieve a fair solution.
Can In-Depth News Survive
Serious, Long-Form Multimedia Journalism that WORKS
Since it’s so rare to find good journalism-related news these days, I thought I would report one of the positive things I learned from the College Media Advisers conference last week in New York City.
One of the keynote addresses at this conference, attended by journalism students and their professors/adivsors, was by Brian Storm of MediaStorm, who was also incidentally the speaker at my recent Mizzou PhD graduation. Storm is a funny, irreverent, and new media savvy guy, and his small multimedia production studio produces freelance work for the likes of The Washington Post and National Geographic.
If you’ve never checked out the MediaStorm Web site, I would strongly urge you to do so. Breathtaking photography and exquisite multimedia storytelling on the extremely important issues, such as the legacy of Rwandan genocide, that mainstream news orgs are increasingly short on budget to produce:
Their storytelling philosophy, Storm said, is to let the subjects speak in their own words. They use on-screen text to connect the dots and drive the narrative, but the audio is in their sources’ own words. They combine stills and video to great effect and always incorporate some kind of surprise for the audience.
Great and all, right? But there’s two exciting take home messages for other news organizations that had me frantically taking notes on my iPhone during the speech.
PEOPLE CARE. THEY WATCH. Get this. I’m not making this up: They have a 65 PERCENT completion rate for one of their 21 minute videos. Meaning that 65 percent of those that start watching stick with it to the end. Unbelievable.
I’m one of several folks who have wondered of late how much proverbial bang for the buck news organizations are getting when they produce beautiful, slick multimedia packages. I love those pieces, in theory, but in reality, I often see them and feel overwhelmed by the time commitment. I confess that I want to be able to skim text, not sit down and actually watch something or play around with various options and links. I feel guilty about this because I deeply appreciate good journalism in all its forms, but it’s true, and I wonder how many others have a similar issue.
Does Storm have an answer for this? How does MediaStorm succeed in getting and keeping those eyeballs?
1. Quality, quality, quality. They are selective about the work they do, and they invest time and money in doing it RIGHT. No denying that’s a part of their success. But it’s not hard to convince journalists of THAT. Most I know are dreaming of being told that is true. Check out number two.
2. AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS. If you plunk a big time-consuming multimedia project on a Web site where people have come to expect relatively short news and feature stories they can skim over fast on their coffee break at work, or where they come to find local breaking news in bite-size chunks, they will feel just as I do - appreciative of your effort but too overwhelmed to take the time to really explore what you have to offer. Instead, think about creating a separate site for your very best work, where you can cultivate a different set of expections.
3. Put your content in front of people in as many ways and on as many platforms as possible. Make it easy for them to share it - via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Get your techie folks to work hard on making sure the user experience is as seamless and non-frustrating as possible. For example, they include the code that allowed me to add that photo you see above in this post to this blog in a matter of seconds: Cut and paste. Once you’ve created that separate home for your high-quality stuff, push it out to the online world in as many ways as possible.
Yes, MediaStorm is a small organization, so I’m not arguing that what works for them would necessarily work to sustain a large newsroom. But the fact that they are doing well financially while doing serious, long form journalism is a reason for hope.
In Storm’s view, if you stick to your values, you’d be surprised by what just might happen. I couldn’t agree more. Embrace the future and all new media forms, but stick to your guns when it comes to the enduring journalism values of accuracy, quality, good reporting, and engaging storytelling — and I predict a positive long-term future.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Update on File Sharing Story
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/5170170/Pirate-Bay-four-jailed-for-breaking-copyright-in-Swedish-file-sharing-trial.html
Monday, April 13, 2009
Bad Acting, Interesting Ideas
Solution to the Dying Newspaper???
If your local newspaper shuts down, what will take the place of its coverage? Perhaps a package of information about your neighborhood, or even your block, assembled by a computer.
A number of Web start-up companies are creating so-called hyperlocal news sites that let people zoom in on what is happening closest to them, often without involving traditional journalists.
The sites, like EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch, collect links to articles and blogs and often supplement them with data from local governments and other sources. They might let a visitor know about an arrest a block away, the sale of a home down the street and reviews of nearby restaurants.
Internet companies have been trying to develop such sites for more than a decade, in part as a way to lure local advertisers to the Web. But the notion of customized news has taken on greater urgency as some newspapers, like The Rocky Mountain News and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have stopped printing.
The news business “is in a difficult time period right now, between what was and what will be,” said Gary Kebbel, the journalism program director for the Knight Foundation, which has backed 35 local Web experiments. “Our democracy is based upon geography, and we believe local information is such a core need for our democracy to survive.”
Of course, like traditional media, the hyperlocal sites have to find a way to bring in sufficient revenue to support their business. And so far, they have had only limited success selling ads. Some have shouldered the cost of fielding a sales force to reach mom-and-pop businesses that may know nothing about online advertising.
One problem is that the number of readers for each neighborhood-focused news page is inherently small. “When you slice further and further down, you get smaller and smaller audiences,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst who has followed the hyperlocal market for a decade. “Advertisers want that kind of targeting, but they also want to reach more people, so there’s a paradox.”
Still, said Peter Krasilovsky, a program director at the Kelsey Group, which studies local media, many small businesses have never advertised outside the local Yellow Pages and are an untapped online ad market whose worth his firm expects to double to $32 billion by 2013.
One of the most ambitious hyperlocal sites is EveryBlock, a six-person start-up in an office building in Chicago overlooking noisy El tracks, which is stitching together this hyperlocal future one city at a time. Backed by a $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation, it has created sites for 11 American cities, including New York, Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco.
It fills those sites with links to news articles and posts from local bloggers, along with data feeds from city governments, with crime reports, restaurant inspections, and notices of road construction and film shoots. (The New York Times has a partnership with EveryBlock to help New York City readers find news about their elected officials.)
One day last week, the EveryBlock page for Adrian Holovaty, the company’s founder, showed that the police had answered a domestic battery call two blocks from his home and that a gourmet sandwich shop four blocks away had failed a city health inspection.
“We have a very liberal definition of what is news. We think it’s something that happens in your neighborhood,” said Mr. Holovaty, 28, who worked at The Washington Post before creating EveryBlock two years ago.
In some ways the environment is right for these start-ups. In the last several years, neighborhood blogs have sprouted across the country, providing the sites with free, ready-made content they can link to. And new tools, like advanced search techniques and cellphones with GPS capability, help the sites figure out which articles to show to which readers in which neighborhoods.
Unlike most hyperlocal start-ups, Patch, based in New York, hires reporters. It was conceived of and bankrolled by Tim Armstrong, the new chief of AOL, after he found a dearth of information online about Riverside, Conn., where he lives. Patch has created sites for three towns in New Jersey and plans to be in dozens by the end of the year.
One journalist in each town travels to school board meetings and coffee shops with a laptop and camera. Patch also solicits content from readers, pulls in articles from other sites and augments it all with event listings, volunteer opportunities, business directories and lists of local information like recycling laws.
“We believe there’s currently a void in the amount, quality and access to information at the community level, a function, unfortunately, of all the major metros suffering and pulling back daily coverage of a lot of communities,” said Jon Brod, co-founder and chief executive of Patch. This month, the home page of The Star-Ledger’s Web site, based in Newark, twice referred to articles first reported by Patch.
Outside.in publishes no original content. The company gathers articles and blog posts and scans them for geographical cues like the name of a restaurant or indicative words like “at” or “near.” An iPhone application lets users read articles about events within a thousand of feet of where they are standing. Outside.in, which is based in Brooklyn, licenses feeds of links to big news sites that want to deepen their local coverage, like that of NBC’s Chicago affiliate.
Venture capital firms have invested $7.5 million in the company, partly on the bet that it can cut deals with newspapers to have their sales forces sell neighborhood-focused ads for print and the Web.
One hurdle is the need for reliable, quality content. The information on many of these sites can still appear woefully incomplete. Crime reports on EveryBlock, for example, are short on details of what happened. Links to professionally written news articles on Outside.in are mixed with trivial and sometimes irrelevant blog posts.
That raises the question of what these hyperlocal sites will do if newspapers, a main source of credible information, go out of business. “They rely on pulling data from other sources, so they really can’t function if news organizations disappear,” said Steve Outing, who writes about online media for Editor & Publisher Online.
But many hyperlocal entrepreneurs say they are counting on a proliferation of blogs and small local journalism start-ups to keep providing content.
“In many cities, the local blog scene is so rich and deep that even if a newspaper goes away, there would be still be plenty of stuff for us to publish,” said Mr. Holovaty of EveryBlock.Flash Mob
Last week in class we talked about the flash mob. Many of you were new to the concept, and I was mentioning that I thought that the flash mob has grown up into something useful with the recent protests in Moldova. Is it possible that all of these new web tools have an infancy in which they are fun and interesting, but lack a larger social context or good. Do you think that other new, fun tools will grow into important pieces of our social fabric? Think of an example from the past where this has happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob
http://www.flashmob.com/
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
One Billion Reasons to Twitter
While rumors of an imminent Google acquisition of Twitter were apparently offbase, it wouldn't be surprising to see the companies strike up a formal collaboration or partnership.
"Twitter is clearly hot. The phenomenon of real time search and the ability to capture this stream of 'tweet' discussions is an important development in social media and search because people are trying to mine data for information that might otherwise be sought in a search engine," said industry analyst Greg Sterling from Sterling Market Intelligence in a phone interview. "This whole phenomenon Twitter represents is here to stay and needs to be addressed by search engines."
However, it's much less clear why Google would want to spend major-acquisition money on Twitter at this time. After all, Twitter doesn't represent anything close to a clear and present danger to Google in the search market. "Twitter exemplifies the category of real-time search, but it's not a Google killer," Sterling said.
In addition, Google, like most companies, is in cost-cutting mode and Twitter, while wildly popular, hasn't figured out a way to generate much revenue yet.
"There's a very interesting parallel between Twitter and YouTube. When Google bought YouTube, they did it because it was extremely popular, got tons of traffic and represented this new trend of video hosting and sharing. Now, Google still hasn't found a way to effectively monetize YouTube in a big way," said Allen Weiner, a Gartner analyst, in a phone interview. "Does Google really want to spend another huge amount of money on another extremely popular service that hasn't figured out a way to make money? I don't see it happening."
Others aren't so sure.
In an e-mail interview with IDG News Service, IDC analyst Karsten Weide said Google would gain "tremendous stickiness and traffic" from Twitter. "Microblogging is becoming an accepted new channel of online communications in addition to email and instant messaging, and it is here to stay," he said.
But he agreed that Google needs to know that it's highly likely Twitter will never make significant amounts of revenue. "That would mean -- just as Web mail -- it would be a loss leader that one cross-finances in order to have the indirect benefits," Weide said.
While Google doesn't need to boost its audience, the acquisition might keep Twitter out of the hands of competitors, namely Yahoo and Microsoft, he said. "I think an acquisition would make sense, and if they can get it for less than $1 billion, the better it is," Weide said.
Others believe Twitter should actively entertain the option of getting acquired by Google and strike while the iron is hot.
"Other tie-ins short of an acquisition could make sense, but would be harder to sustain since Twitter already uses such open interfaces. It will be hard to do something that others can't replicate. Now is the time for Twitter to sell. It is at the top of its hype range now. Monetizing on its own would be a long, hard slog," wrote Gartner research vice president Jeff Mann in a note e-mailed to reporters.
The rumors erupted late Thursday when tech blog TechCrunch reported the companies were engaged in "late stage negotiations" for an acquisition, citing two anonymous sources. TechCrunch later tempered that report, saying a third source characterized the discussions as "early stage" and possibly revolving around a search engine collaboration. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital tech blog, also quoting anonymous sources, said no acquisition discussions were on the table, but rather talks about collaboration on real-time search and better crawling of Twitter's content.
It would be interesting to see what emerges from a collaboration between the companies to fine-tune Twitter's usefulness for search engine users, Sterling said.
"Right now, it's problematic using Twitter as an alternative search engine. There's a lot of noisy results you get on Twitter's search," Sterling said. "If you can remove some of the noise, it could be quite powerful."
For example, Twitter could turn into the next evolution of question-and-answer search engines, especially for users tapping into it from mobile devices, Sterling said. "It becomes a word-of-mouth network that is kind of instantaneous," he said.
That would complement all the different ways in which Twitter is already very useful, like for marketing, Sterling said.
There would be technical challenges in making Twitter into a more useful search engine, and it would involve Google coming up with a way to weigh the reliability and authority of different Twitter users, Weiner said.
While Google declined to comment, Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone posted a note on the company's official blog saying the company's plans are to remain independent.
"It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects," he wrote. "Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we're just getting started."
Stone also encouraged people to apply for jobs at the company, an interesting document to peruse for clues to Twitter's current plans and business and technology strategies.
Interestingly, Stone appeared on Stephen Colbert's "Colbert Nation" on Thursday evening, and during the interview he also said the Twitter's intention is to be a strong and independent company.
"We're recognizing a difference right now between profit and value. Right now, we're building value," Stone told Colbert.
That means extending Twitter globally, tapping not only into Web-based users but also into mobile phone networks, as well as adding features and refining the service, Stone said.
"When we get to a certain point where we feel we've gotten there, we'll begin experimenting with a revenue model. This isn't unlike the way Google approached their revenue model," he said. The revenue-model testing and experimentation will begin this year, but Twitter will take its time getting it right, Stone said.
Stone's comments may signal a potential tension with Twitter's financial backers, who have poured $55 million into the company. "Investors may agitate for an acquisition because the idea of an IPO is unlikely if not impossible," Sterling said.
Another issue that might derail a Google acquisition is that several Twitter staffers, including Stone and co-founder Evan Williams, already went through the experience of working for Google, after Google acquired Pyra Labs and its Blogger blog publishing service in 2003.
At the time, Blogger was the undisputed leader in the blog publishing space, but as part of Google its rate of innovation slowed down and competitors like Wordpress and Six Apart delivered more sophisticated services.
"Blogger was ahead of the curve when Google bought it and then it became the AOL of blogging platforms: an early leader that then lost ground," Sterling said.
If Google bought Twitter, the Twitter service would see some immediate improvements, Sterling said. Twitter posts would be incorporated into Google search results. Twitter's own search would be improved. Google would monetize Twitter with ads. But in the end, it could face Blogger's destiny.
"You might see Twitter maintain its current leader status for a while, but maybe not see if evolve as dynamically as it would under the stewardship of its founders," Sterling said.
It can't be encouraging that Google decided to stop actively developing Jaiku, a Twitter competitor Google acquired in 2007. Instead, Google has decided to port Jaiku to Google App Engine, and later to release the Jaiku engine as an open-source project under the Apache license.
The Jaiku service is maintained by volunteer Google engineers. Google also recently put mobile social-networking service Dodgeball out to pasture.
Other signs that would point against a Twitter acquisition are recent comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who called Twitter "a poor man's e-mail" and wondered whether it will remain a stand-alone service or become an e-mail feature. Schmidt has also said recently he doesn't foresee Google making major acquisitions in the immediate future.
Hype about Skype
Last week, we talked about the launch of the new Skype app for I-Phone. I had a feeling that it would be well received, but a million downloads already is huge. With this huge success story, there is always some push back. In this case, it is from AT&T who views Skype as a competitor, and it is refusing to allow Skype to fly free on its 3G Network. We have certainly entered a time when every application feels a sense of entitlement to work on everyone's platform i.e iTunes in Windows, but I think that I understand AT&T's point. We spent a lot of time building infrastructure to allow for our business model to work, and the nimble, little Skype isn't going to eat us. Does our global value structures of information, innovation, and speed allow for a company like AT&T to draw a line in the sand? Should AT&T play nice with everyone wanting to use their stuff?FCC Asked to Investigate Skype for iPhone Restriction
Dan Moren, Macworld.com
Since its release on Tuesday, Skype for iPhone has been downloaded more than a million times -- that's a rate of six downloads a second, according to the company. All this despite the fact the software only works via the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection, and not AT&T's 3G network.
That restriction has angered some, who have argued that the practice is anticompetitive. Those allegations have been turned up a notch now, as the Wall Street Journal reports that an Internet advocacy group called Free Press has asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether or not the restriction is in violation of federal law.
Free Press bills itself as a nonpartisan organization concerned with media reform. In its open letter to the FCC (PDF link), it asks the government body to confirm that mobile wireless Internet access is subject to the same rules as traditional broadband Internet.
The letter cites the FCC's Internet Policy Statement (PDF link) which states that "consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice" in order to "preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet."
A USA Today article published earlier this week talked with an AT&T executive about the issue:
Jim Cicconi, AT&T's top public policy executive, says AT&T has "every right" not to promote the services of a wireless rival.
"We absolutely expect our vendors"--Apple, in this case--"not to facilitate the services of our competitors," he says.
"Skype is a competitor, just like Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile," he says, adding, Skype "has no obligation to market AT&T services. Why should the reverse be true?"
Meanwhile, Apple has remained mum on the matter, though it's easy to see why the company might not want to get involved. After all, being able to use VoIP over AT&T's 3G network could help Apple sell more iPhones by providing another attractive feature--but, at the same time, Apple doesn't want to risk alienating their business partner.
The U.S. isn't the only place where VoIP restrictions are irking customers. T-Mobile, Apple's wireless partner in Germany, has said that not only will it prohibit use of VoIP applications on their 3G network, it'll also restrict its use on the company's Wi-Fi hot spot network and cancel the contract of any customers who try to work around the restriction.
In response, the Voice on the Net coalition, which includes Skype, as well as Microsoft and Intel, has asked the European Union to step in and enact policy that would protect consumers rights to choose what applications they can use.
How the FCC and EU proceed could have far-reaching implications not just for the future of VoIP, but in terms of what restrictions mobile operators can legitimately put on the use of their networks, which also may have impact on peer-to-peer programs, live video, and other services.
Death by Sexting
This is the sort of stuff that keeps me up at night. I can't believe the ordeal that this principal had to go through. In an era of anything goes on YouTube, it is no surprise that much of the criticisms and concerns about on-line video would reach mobile technology. As more of our information is received via mobile devices, sexting seems like a natural outcropping. Two questions...Should we try to regulate this? How can market pressures impact these types of moral atomic bombs?
Anti-sexting insanity out of control: False charges ruin vice principal
Posted by Richard KomanThe war against sexting has now reached absurd, outrageous, McCarthyite dimensions. I had thought this story about a prosecutor threatening prosecution of three girls for snapping pics of themselves in bras and a towel was bad enough.
But Kim Zetter’s story at Wired about the ordeal of Virginia vice-principal Ting-Yi Oei, who was assigned to check out rumors of rampant sexting at Freedom High School in South Riding.
Ironically, horribly, the assignment led to a Kafkaesque charge that Oei himself was a child pornographer. He spent $150,000 and year of his life clearing his name. Whether he can resurrect his career as an educator is yet to be seen.
“These charges are so toxic and incendiary,” says Diane Curling, a former teacher and Oei’s wife of 35 years. “Children need to be made aware of the dangers of sexting, but to intimidate public education officials and try to make it a felony to even touch something like this is terrifying. . . . If we are not careful, we will find ourselves with a new McCarthy era.”
Oei’s investigation led him to a 16-year-old boy who confessed to having a sext on his phone - a pic of a girl in panties but with her arms crossed across her chest.
Oei says he showed the image to his boss, Principal Christine Forester, who told him to preserve a copy on his office computer for the investigation. A computer neophyte, Oei didn’t know how to transfer the image from the boy’s cell phone, so the teen sent the picture to Oei’s phone, and told him how to forward it to his work e-mail address. When the process was complete, Oei instructed the student to delete the image from his phone.
Since the girl couldn’t be identified and was apparently not a student, Oei thought the matter was over. But when the boy was busted trying to pull a girl’s pants down and was given a 10-day suspension, the shit hit the fan when the boy’s mother learned of the photo incident. Oei refused to lift the suspension and the mom went to the cops.
Sheriff’s investigators came to the school, ostensibly to investigate the sexting issue. They helped the technologically-challenged Oei recover the photo from his cell phone and later determined the girl in the photo was a student at the school.
A month later, the first charges were filed against Oei: failure to report suspicion of child abuse, a misdemeanor. The charge alleged that Oei had a legal duty to report the girl’s photo to her parents, and to state agencies or law enforcement.
Of course, he hadn’t been able to identifiy the girl, so how would he alert her parents?
Loudoun County prosecutor James Plowman didn’t take that excuse and instead threatened Oei with a felony if he didn’t resign.
“We just feel very strongly that this is not someone who should be in the Loudoun County school system,” Plowman’s assistant explained to reporters. Oei refused, and on August 11, a grand jury indicted him for possession of child porn, a crime that carries a possible sentence of five years. The misdemeanor charge was dropped.
There were even more charges piled on. Read Kim’s story for the whole gory matter. But this week a judge put an end to the madness — and for Oei it must have felt like Joe McCarthy finally being silenced.
Last month, Oei’s defense attorney, Steven Stone, filed a motion to dismiss the charges on the grounds that the photo didn’t constitute child pornography. In a ruling on Tuesday, Loudoun Circuit Court Judge Thomas Horne agreed. Citing a long history of state appeals court decisions, Horne noted that nudity alone is not enough to qualify an image as child pornography. The image must be “sexually explicit” and “lewd.”
“As a matter of law, the photograph does not meet the requirements established by our appellate courts and the felony charge will be dismissed,” the judge wrote. “[T]he two misdemeanor counts will be dismissed as well.”
The prosecutor is unrepentant.
“The issue of whether it meets the definition under the statute … goes to whether it is lewd,” he says. “This one I felt was [lewd] because of the focus of the picture, which was the private areas … and the provocative pose she was in. The judge felt it didn’t meet the precedent case law for child pornography, but it was apparently provocative enough of a photograph that he saw fit that it should be sealed.”
Oei should have resigned, Plowman insisted.
“I thought that was a just and appropriate sanction for his behavior,” he says. “But he was unwilling to be responsible for any kind of accountability for what he did.”
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sort of Creepy and Cool
Here’s how it works: When you log into Photo Finder, the app uses its facial recognition technology to search for untagged pictures of you or your friends throughout Facebook by scanning all the public photos in your network. When it finds photos, it suggests tags based strictly on the faces identified. This could lead to less embarrassing pictures floating about without your knowledge. So far, it seems to work pretty well.
Face.com, based in Tel Aviv and New York, apparently built the Facebook app as a technology demonstration. The company is angel funded and currently raising an A round. While it’s still in closed beta, the first 100 Inside Facebook users who click on this link will be able to try the app out.
Social Gaming and Living Social
Can Facebook be Everything for Everybody?
Monday, March 16, 2009
Facebook is Ready to Rule the (Social Network) World
Facebook can't be stopped. Review the article below and discuss the future of Facebook in your eyes. Will this trend fade? Is it just beginning? Discuss your vision for Facebook for the next decade.
JR Raphael, PC World
Mar 16, 2009 4:24 pm
Facebook appears closer than ever to social network domination, if some freshly compiled stats are to be believed. The site has more than doubled its traffic from one year ago, analysis firm Hitwise has found, jumping nearly 150 percent from February of '08 to February 2009.
Astronomical Growth
There's no question Facebook's growth has been astronomical: Since opening its doors to the public back in September of 2006 (the site has been limited only to college students up to that point), Facebook has seen what can only be described as an explosion in use. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said just a few weeks ago that a million new users are signing up every week in the U.S. alone. Worldwide, the number is projected at 5 million newbies every seven days.
Now, though, it's becoming even more apparent how drastic of a change that's bringing to the overall market. In February of 2009, Facebook received 36.03 percent of all U.S. social network traffic -- an increase of 149 percent from its 14.46 percent total one year earlier. Compare that to MySpace, which dropped 28 percent in the same timespan, falling from 72.92 percent in February of '08 to 52.21 percent in 2009.
Sure, MySpace is still in the lead -- but seeing the two rates of change side-by-side can't be comforting for the folks on Tom Anderson's team. It's akin to the situation in the Web browser world, where IE's crown has slowly but steadily been slipping away. Here, though, the shift is even more extreme. Some tech bloggers have already placed their bets on 2010 for a formal change of guards.
Twitter Integration
Add this into the Facebook win column, too: Just today, Twitter desktop utility TweetDeck announced a new beta version of its software that integrates Facebook functionality as well. TweetDeck 0.24.1 lets you send and receive both tweets and Facebook updates all within a single interface. The software gives you the option of adding a separate section to monitor your Facebook stream right next to your Twitter stuff.
What's perhaps most interesting about the update, though, is that it lets you seamlessly cross-post from one service to the other. Say, for example, you want to share a friend's Facebook status on your Twitter stream. Click a button and you can "retweet" it as if it were a Twitter message. With Twitter's own rapidly expanding adoption, this placement will no doubt be a big boon for the big "F" -- and TweetDeck says even more Facebook-Twitter integration is on the way.
Some may be predicting an inevitable social network backlash in the future, but I suspect any potential doomsday is the furthest thing from the minds of Facebook's elite right now. With the company's mobile growth and Web-wide Facebook Connect system also at play -- not to mention the newly debuted redesign and negative-turned-positive privacy debacle last month -- these days, the view from Mark Zuckerberg's chair has gotta be looking pretty sweet.
Roll the Tape- Old School
Open Source is Everywhere
1. OpenGoo is the open source Web office that lets you collaborate with your fellow jobless and organize that people’s revolution we have all been waiting for. Compare it to the student version of Microsoft Office.
2. Scribus is the open source desktop publishing program for Linux that will help you get out those flyers telling other homeless people where the demonstration is. Compare it to Adobe Illustrator.
3. TextPattern is a flexible content management system that also helps you publish standards-compliant Web pages that print nicely. The revolution deserves a good Web site.
4. GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation System, is great for resizing or extracting bits from pictures like the one above. I use it all the time. You can use it to virtually link the President to the workers’ enemy of the moment. Compare it to Adobe Photoshop.
5. Kino is a cool video editor for Linux. You can use it for that revolutionary film you have been planning, “Triumph of the Geeky.” You can compare it to Final Cut Pro.
6. Pidgin is the universal chat client that gets you over all those proprietary walls erected by “the man” so you can communicate between cells. It even supports custom smileys, so if you want to add a Che Guevara beard to yours go right ahead.
7. Mozilla Thunderbird is the e-mail client I use here at ZDNet Open Source. It’s a good replacement for Microsoft Outlook Express, plus you can add-in features like a calendar so you won’t be late for the revolution.
8. KPresenter is the presentation piece of the KOffice suite. This will let you demo your revolution so it won’t be confused with those of splitters like the Judean Peoples’ Front or People’s Front of Judea. That would be very embarrassing.
9. Amarok is an open source music player, an iTunes replacement, which will be one of the 15 projects honored with a booth at CeBIT next month. If you can’t dance to the revolution what is the point?
Sunday, March 8, 2009
More on Twitter
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid988327350/bclid4865158001/bctid14771815001
Busting Our Cocoon
Here are two really good posts that speak to our discussions over the past week. I don't want to get too focused on the decline of traditional media, but there is a sense that this is the piece that could break the camel's back. How do we perform our essential duty as citizens of gathering varied sources of information, analyzing them for the truth, and begin acting in ways that positively impacts our community when media giants are merging, the number of reporters investigating local and international issues are disappearing, and the volume of information available makes the burrowing for gold nuggets of data so hard. Be solution-oriented. What can we do? What could actually work?
http://www.shellypalmermedia.com/2009/03/01/broadcast-news-vs-information-an-unfair-fight/
http://www.shellypalmermedia.com/2009/03/07/old-media-vs-new-media-continued/
Recap From The Bob Rose Visit
I hope you all took a few things away from our visit by Bob Rose. As a means of learning what you took from the evening and providing feedback to Bob, I ask that you ask the following three questions in your reply.
1. What are three things that you learned from the information that Bob Rose presented?
2. What three pieces of advice do you have for folks working with on-line and print newspapers to better cater to your demographic?
3. Generalize the information that you took from the presenter and discuss how it speaks to the big ideas of our class.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Lost Paper
Friday, February 27, 2009
Bacon Anyone???
Saving Trees and Worldwide Access
Newspaper Struggles Continue
Maybe the founder of Netscape had it right....Since we talked at least two more newspapers have called for Chapter 11. What do you see as that future of print journalism?
San Francisco Chronicle joins list of troubled newspapers
The San Francisco Chronicle is one the United States' best known and oldest newspapersThe San Francisco Chronicle joined the lengthening list of imperilled newspapers Tuesday as its owner set out to purge the payroll and slash other expenses in a last-ditch effort to reverse years of heavy losses.
If it can't reduce expenses dramatically within the next few weeks, the Hearst Corp said it will close or sell the Chronicle, northern California's largest newspaper with a paid weekday circulation of 339,430.
Hearst didn't specify a savings target nor a deadline for wringing out the expenses. A Hearst spokesman didn't immediately respond to messages Tuesday.
But management made it clear that the cost-cutting will require a significant number of layoffs.
"Our current situation dictates that we accomplish these cost savings quickly," ChroniclePublisher Frank Vega wrote in a memo to the staff. "Business as usual is no longer an option."
The Chronicle has given Hearst financial headaches since the New York-based company bought the newspaper in a complex deal valued at US$660 million. The late 2000 acquisition proved to be ill-timed. Shortly after Hearst took control, the San Francisco Chronicle was hard hit by a high-tech bust that caused its advertising revenue to shrivel.
Also Tuesday, the chief executive of Philadelphia's largest two daily newspapers pledged Tuesday to roll back a US$232,000 raise while his company tries to reorganise in bankruptcy court.
Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, which publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, two-and-a-half years after a group of local investors bought the company for more than US$500 million.
Chief Executive Brian Tierney and other executives have insisted the company, while strangled by debt payments, remains profitable despite falling circulation and revenues. But some lenders balked at that analysis at Tuesday's initial hearing on the bankruptcy petition and questioned decisions being made by Tierney, a former public relations executive.
Meanwhile in New York, Journal Register, publisher of the New Haven Register and other newspapers, won approval to continue paying basic operating costs, including employee salaries and benefits and newspaper delivery contracts. Lawyers representing lenders made no objections.
The Yardley, Pennsylvania-based company sought bankruptcy protection a day before the Philadelphia newspapers' filing and said then that JP Morgan Chase & Co and 26 of the company's 37 lenders had agreed to a reorganisation plan to cancel its stock and become a closely held company controlled by its lenders.
Lawyers for the lenders said they were unaware of any objections from any debt holders to that plan, although they did not say why the remaining lenders had yet to sign on.
Besides Journal Register and the Philadelphia newspapers, Los Angeles Times publisher Tribune Co and owners of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis have made separate Chapter 11 filings for bankruptcy protection amid steep declines in advertising revenue.
Friday, February 20, 2009
33 Years Later
No Love for Bono and U2
Ok, I have been guilty of downloading some music over the years, and I happen to fall into that demographic of people that had free music before iTunes decided to sell it for $1.99. I do know that paying $16.99 or more for CDs was total extortion, but I sort of feel bad for U2. They haven't released a full set of new music in years, and they can't even control the launch into the market. It gets to the question about whether we are destroying a new generation of quality music because artist can't survive without being a touring or live music production. Is this a good thing? How should the market deal with file sharing? Should this just remain the wild west? Should you have any access to free music?
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5776098.ece
Podcasting Awards
As we begin to venture into our conversations about podcasts, I thought that I would provide you a list of 2008 award winners. I thought that it was an interesting list. Look at the list and see if you can find something of interest. Listen to a new podcast, and then leave your comments in the form of a review of the new podcast below.http://www.podcastawards.com/
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Learning in Long Form
Group Deliberation Breeds Polarization
Lost in Phoenix
