Category Archives: Doc Searls

Would we still call it journalism?

Posted on by

Tweet (by me): [Reading:] The End Of Hand Crafted Content http://ping.fm/kzv9s

Tweet (by Katri Lietsala): @josschuurmans What did you think about Arrington's article? In my opinion, he is so right: excellent journalists can have their own brand.

We're talking about Michael Arrington's article on TechCrunch, 'The End Of Hand Crafted Content', which by now has received 350 comments and, according to Topsy.com, was retweeted 1246 times.

Tweet: @katrilietsala http://ping.fm/lxNzC I agree that excellent journalists can have their own brand. There are several push factors at play.

For one, "disintermediation" and "sources going direct" imply that one
no longer needs to be part of a news organization – the news industry -
to conduct and share acts of journalism. We really are witnessing a
revolution, with the means of production changing hands.

For another, the social web, particularly the blogosphere and the
real-time web, appear to appreciate personal perspectives just as much
as "objective reporting". This seems like an opportunity for
individuals, including the "excellent journalists" that you mention, to
build their personal brands.

Furthermore, I expect that journalists will be increasingly compelled
to go solo if their news organizations keep hanging on to their model
of "lecturing" rather than facilitating conversation.

Some freelancers have always been successful at franchising their personal brand across various channels and publications.

The Demonic Verses

Having said all that, the other interesting point that Mike Arrington made has to do with the advent of highly automated,
"fast food" content production.

The illustrating example here is Demand Media, a company whose way of producing “content” was characterized by Jay Rosen as "demonic".

Demand Media immediately brought to my mind the animated video "EPIC 2015" (the Evolving Personal Information Construct), in which GoogleZon operates in a rather similar fashion and the New York Times finally goes off-line to continue as an elite newspaper for the rich and the elderly.

Yet, personally, I am not so afraid of this type of spam. As Doc Searls wrote:

"(…) Just as an aside, I’ve been hand-crafting (actually just typing) my “content”
for about twenty years now, and I haven’t been destroyed by a damn
thing. I kinda don’t think FFC is going to shut down serious writers
(no matter where and how they write) any more than McDonald’s killed
the market for serious chefs. (…)"

The web has always challenged us to distill signal from noise. The vast
majority of content on Twitter, for example, is of no consequence to
most of us.

If anything, should spammy businesses like Demand Media succeed in
gaming the major search engines (which I doubt), it would only boost
our reliance on social filters: if I know you and you have read
something that you'd like to share (and possibly discuss) with me, I'd
probably be interested and trust that it's not spam. We are already
relying more and more on human filters this way.

The business model is still up in the air

The big question remains, how is "excellent journalism" going to be
paid for in the future? Jeff Jarvis is exploring possible answers within the 'New Business Models for News' program at the City University of New York's CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Nikki Usher contends that the business model for news has always been broken – which, in my view, seems to imply that news provision may have to be subsidized. Looking at it
that way, Arrington may be right in suggesting that for some, the only
way to keep publishing may be pro bono.

Perhaps if we made a distinction between b2b and b2c journalism?

The revenue model for b2c journalism relies on sales and advertising.
Selling journalistic content to consumers seems an increasingly
difficult proposition. And on the flip side, Dave Winer sheds some doubt on the future of advertising as well, in Rebooting the News #35:

"(…) advertising itself may go away. “In a way an ad is a query… They try to
guess as to what I’m interested in. And the better they guess, the more
it becomes information." (…)"

The revenue model for b2b journalism is a content model. Businesses
will always be willing to pay for timely and/or exclusive information
as long as it's an essential part of their supply chain. The potential customer segment here is not limited to the media.

But what then, if the customer is not a media organisation? Let's say it's a mobile phone producer, or an insurance company instead. If journalists were to supply them with information which has been researched and packaged exactly as if it were supplied to the media, would we still call it journalism?

The art of selling, part 2/2

Posted on by

Did you read the first part? Okay then, now I'll tell you what happened to me yesterday.

(In the spirit of the Live Web, I'm publishing this while I write. Please check back for a more complete take of this post in a while – I'll be having a little tea break next)

I've had a Nokia N97 for a bit over two weeks now. When I started using it throughout the day, I was somewhat disappointed to notice that on some days, the battery only lasts for about 16 or 15 hours.

Yesterday, I had a bluetooth connection to my headset, and a "3.5G" connection to the Internet, while scanning for WLAN access. Made me wonder if that multitude of connections was the reason why the battery, for the first time, turned rather warm, or if something was wrong with the battery itself – a concern fuelled by the disappointing battery power.

Hence this micro-blog post:

@Nokia, @Saunalahti: Right now, the battery of my new Nokia N97 is getting really warm. Should I be worried?

After I sent that message from my ASUS Eee PC netbook, I wanted to access my Facebook account with my N97, curious to see how fast Facebook would update my status and what it would look like.

Now, it is not a priority to me to access Facebook from the front screen, which is why I had removed the Facebook app from the display when I customized the N97. After all, the Facebook application is still available under the applicatons menu, right? So it's only three clicks away. (apps menu button -> applications icon -> Facebook app). Right?

Well, in theory, yes. When I tried to fire up Facebook that way, the app kept booting forever until I gave up and decided to quit the app. But there's no Esc key, not Crtl-Alt-Del, or any other way I know of to stop the app. Hence my next micro-post:

@Nokia, @Facebook: I just rebooted my Nokia N97 using the on/off
button, because the FB app took forever to start. Is there a better way?

Someone replied to me:

use the browser. The client doesn't work properly, yet.

I realize there is a good chance that some people at Nokia are not going to be pleased with this story. I worked with the company for six years, was proud to be a Nokian and actually caring about its business. I am also a strong subscriber to the Cluetrain Manifesto – which explains the first part of the name of my present company.

What I fear is that even some of the colleagues at Nokia who have read the Cluetrain will not appreciate that with feedback like this, bloggers and customers such as myself are actually doing the company a favor.

Of course it's easier to frame this as a "cheap shot" since Nokia happens to be down in the polls. Some marketing communciations folk tend to take the "wounded game" perspective rather seriously, thinking that the journos and the bloggers are smelling blood and are looking for the first opportunity to take the company down. Well, if that makes it easier for people to sleep at night, they hardly deserve the favor. It's really how you choose to look at this stuff.

Umh… did I get a little defensive there for a moment? :-)

With some 250 million users, Facebook is about the largest social networking service out there. The company is proud to say in a YouTube video that Robert Scoble has called the N97 the ultimate Facebook device.

Then how can you ship this product that costs 650 euros unsubsidized, with a Facebook app which is not ready?

I am still a Nokia believer, because I feel that mobile participation requires not only a QWERTY keyboard, but also real buttons with tactile feedback.

But Robert is right about there just not being the same buzz around Nokia's N97 now as there was around the N95. He even goes as far as to say that 'Europe no longer matters to lead position in mobile':

"(…) in the back of my head I remember how cocky the same entrepreneurs used
to be when showing me their cell phones and noting how far ahead of the
world they were. That cockiness is done and that has deep implications
for entrepreneurs across Europe. They must now visit Cupertino and
Mountain View to get access to customer bases. (…)"

It scares me.

Anyways. Since the Facebook app didn't work, I went to look for an S60 social networking client. Found an interview with my friendly ex-colleague Mark Squires, titled: 'Nokia and Social Media: We Learn It All'. Mark tells us that his favorite new Web 2.0 app is "No question, Gravity (…)".

Now, note that this is an interview article on a Nokia-sponsored site, the Traveling Geeks – an initiative in which, incidentially, Scoble has also participated.

No link to Gravity, so I Google " Gravity S60". The first source I dare consider is half-way down the first results page. It points to the S60 Blog, which I happen to know is also Nokia-sponsored and I consider fairly authoritative on S60 matters. It sports a link which says:

"Download Gravity here".

So I click through and get to 'MOSH by Nokia', which says:

"MOSH by Nokia is no longer available – You are being redirected to Ovi Store, the global market place for
mobile apps, games, videos, ringtones, widgets and more. If you are not
automatically redirected, please click here http://store.ovi.mobi/."

It redirects to a page that says: "

"We're sorry.

Your device is not compatible with the Ovi Store.

Please check back as new Nokia devices are being added frequently.
You can also visit http://store.ovi.com on your PC for help and information about compatible devices."

I can see that my device is not compatible because I am browsing on a netbook. But couldn't your system recognize that and at least give me some information about your wonderful mobile app? Perhaps redirect me? :-)

I still went back to the review of Gravity on the S60 Blog and noticed that it mentions a "free 10-day trial". Right! So they're even asking money for it. Then I noticed the first comment on the page, by John Mark:

"i prefer snaptu which is free and has many other applications on it like facebook and sports
you can download it from http://www.snaptu.com they also have a help forum at http://forum.snaptu.com"

Downloading Snaptu was, well, a snap :-)   Thanks, John!

Notice the contrast? Well, ya'll draw your own conclusions. I'll stop right here, before this gets out of hand :-)

(PS.: I tend to post my micro-blog posts and status updates via Ping.fm onto a number of social media / social networks, including Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook. As I'm trying to link to some of those posts here, it brings home Doc Searls' urging for searchable micro-blog archives; e.g. for Twitter.

First of all, there is no single reference to the "origin" of these posts. My "recent posts" on Ping.fm are not public and they are in fact published onto various services in parallel, all of which are silos in this sense.

Secondly, there is no way of knowing if and when the URLs to the various instances of these post will expire. So what am I supposed to link to? Perhaps I should start using Bit.ly?)

Capturables from Bad Hair Day #4

Posted on by

http://badhair.us/2009/07/16/00021.html

Dave Winer and Marshall Kirkpatrick have two guests this time: Chris Saad and Doc Searls. As I mentioned in my notes from the 3rd episode, something in the dynamic of the conversation changed when the show's format changed from having just Dave and Marshall (as in the first two episodes) to having guests as well. But never mind; perhaps the positive tension between the two wouldn't have lasted over a longer series of shows anyway.

Two things I'd care to capture. First, it was funny that everyone but Dave mentioned using the Greasemonkey script for presenting Twitter search results on top of a Google search results page, which Marshall had just explained in the previous show. I'm figuring out how to start using it myself.

Secondly, it's always nice to read, listen to or look at Doc Searls. A show with Doc cannot fail, because he'll always spill a little gem of wisdom (or two, or a big one). This time what caught my ear was his reference to the ethical side of Twitter not being searchably archived.

I agree with the implication that there is a moral duty – I don't know on whose behalf, possibly Twitter, possibly the government – to enable the public to browse and search for what was published on Twitter at any time in the past.

Twitter is becoming a medium in its own right, a public news system. One could even see it as a utility (like the Internet itself). It's becoming so important that it will need to open up, be archived and searchable, and managed in a more transparent way, with more public involvement.

For now, Twitter is a silo, a walled garden, just like all the other social media and social networking services. The live web will be federated, one way or another. It's something Dave Winer has been campaigning for for a while. Unfortunately it doesn't really seem to be happening yet.

Okay, some people will object to my using the term walled garden, because all these systems do allow linking to and importing content from external sources. But that's not the point. The point is that as a user, I need to subscribe to all these services separately, and conversations are generally confined within those systems and according to the terms of service from the companies that run them.

Disqus, in my view, is an interesting example of a service which federates a specific type of communication (namely comments), across platforms and services. Still, even discuss is not an open standard. Email is perhaps a better example: it's ubiquitous and there is no lock-in of any kind, because it runs on technical conventions (standard and protocols) which are supported by numerous providers.

Final thought: I happen to have close links to some ambitious digital archiving initiatives in Finland. So I wonder what it would take, technically and in terms of resources, to build a searchable Twitter archive. And I wonder if there's a business model in there that would be worth exploring.

See also the FriendFeed group at http://friendfeed.com/badhair.

What makes being a “digital native” truly different?

Posted on by

The other day I left a comment on Jess's blog, musing that there must be a qualitative difference between having know life before the World Wide Web, and being a so-called ”digital native”.

Jess asked me to elaborate. Problem is, we ”immigrants” really don't know how life is different for kids who grew up with the Net. I can only offer a few observations to suggest that life must be different. If you have thought of other evidence – or counter-evidence -, please share. I'd like to understand this better.

By the way, I really think that the metaphor of ”digital immigrants” and ”digital natives” is flawed. If we have to converse in territorial terms, perhaps ”digital colonists” would be more apt? :-)

Anyhow, here's my two cents:

  • When I was a teenager, information generally was physically distributed. If you had a burning question which the people in your immediate presence couldn't answer, you would need to locate a physical source to find an answer. You would go to a library or contact some expert organization. With 24/7 Internet access, an answer from Google, the Wikipedia and your expert social network is only a few keystrokes away. So, my guess is that teenagers must have a different sense of ”where” information resides.
  • Reminds me of what Doc Searls calls the ”giant zero”, or how David Weinberger describes the Net in his book 'Small Pieces Loosely Joined – a unified theory of the web' as a ”spaceless place”, p. 40 etc. And that goes not only or information, but also for entities, i.e. people, groups and organizations. I would expect that members of the N-generation have a more natural sense for things not having a physical location. For people my age (41) this is probably more difficult to imagine.
  • Being always connected means living in two different worlds, a physical one and a virtual one, simultaneously. It will be fascinating to see if, how and to what extent these worlds merge in the perception of the N-generation. Already it seems that kids don't make the same distinction between being ”on line” and ”off line” as we do.
  • According to Gartner, 2009 will be the year when the first wave of ”digital natives” comes to the labor market, armed with social software tools, and the determination to do online whatever they please, even if that means bypassing the IT department.
  • David Weinberger mentioned in a video interview (approx. between 06:00 and 12:45 minutes) that youngsters have a different sense of privacy. For example, it is considered bad form for a hiring manager to check out a job applicant's Facebook info, much the same way that it is inappropriate to acknowledge the argument a couple are having on the street.
  • Part of the impact on education, for example, is that there is less and less sense in examining pupils' capacity to absorb information and reproduce facts from memory. Instead, the emphasis will need to shift towards teaching young people how to conduct research, how to filter, select, evaluate, assess, judge all those sources of information at their disposal. That's what a fair part of Dan Gillmor's essay on the 'Principles of a New Media Literacy' was about.

Yes, these are only sketchy bits. Please share your thoughts on what makes being a "digital native" truly different.

The Live Web Will Be Federated

Posted on by
Reply

Under the headline 'Blogging 2.0: Moving Toward Conversational "Flows"', Bill French wrote a piece on MyST Blogsite, in which he observes that conversations on the Internet are increasingly moving away from being contained within blogs, towards being distributed among lifestreaming or micro-blogging services (Bill calls them "flow applications") such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

He quotes me by saying:

"(…) Ironically, in this comment, Jos Schuurmans equate sthe emergence of social networks with the end of “channels”. (…)"

I subscribe to the view that online conversations will be less and less contained within channels, while more and more federated among and across different platforms and services. To the extent that channels can be seen as walled gardens, the emergence of the blogosphere itself was the disruption that started taking down those walls.

The point I was trying to make earlier, under 'The End of Channels?' and ''Channels' does not sufficiently describe the dynamics of distributed online conversations', is that conversations take place across and between channels, not just within, and that it is therefore less useful to think of the Web in terms of channels. As David Weinberger and Doc Searls have pointed out: the Internet is a place, not a medium.

Indeed, enablers like Jaiku, Twitter, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Ping.fm, and Facebook are speeding up the trend of conversations being more distributed. But what these services represent most of all is the shift from a more static Web to the "live Web".

Another application worth mentioning in this context is Disqus, an enabler of blog comments federation. If Dave Winer will have his way, something similar is going to happen to micro-blogging as well… And why wouldn't he?

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Dugg: The Giant Zero, Part 0.x – SuitWatch | Doc Searls / Linux Journal

Posted on by
Reply

On October 12, 2006, Doc Searls wrote in Linux Journal how “(…) it helps to think of the Net as a “giant zero” (…)”

http://blip.tv/play/AYTwYfgK

(The above video features Doc speaking about the Giant Zero at a Berkman Luncheon Series event on September 19, 2006.)

(Further, here is a podcast on IT Conversations from March 6, 2007, in which Doc talks about the Giant Zero with Phil Windley.)

I was just reading chapter 2 of David Weinberger‘s ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined – a unified theory of the web‘, called ‘Space’, when Doc Searls came out of hospital and the first thing he “cached up” was a link to when he first explained his idea of the Giant Zero in Linux Journal. I thought, if this was the first thing he thought about when climbing back on the saddle, it must be highly relevant.

Together, Doc’s notion of a giant vacuum and David’s notion of the Web being “place-ial” but not spacial, make a lot of sense. David writes:

p.40 : “(…) We could think of the Web as a giant photocopier that delivers copies of sites. We could think of it as a medium through which we see sites. We could think of it as a library from which we request copies. But we don’t. We experience the Web as a web: a set of nodes that are linked one to another, creating a space through which we travel. (…)”

p.45: “(…) While big companies have an advantage when it comes to location because their fatter wallets can buy better positioning, big sites don’t have a leg up on being interesting. In fact, often it’s quite the contrary. (…)”

p. 50: “(…) in this city, nearness loses its symmetry: my Broadway show room may be near (linked to) your Gershwin room, but your Gershwin room need not be near my room. You may not even know that I’ve brought my room near to yours by linking to it (…)”

In Linux Journal on October 12, 2006, Doc characterized his Giant Zero in twelve steps:

  1. The Net isn’t a medium.  It’s a place.
  2. Distance is the main issue.  Not bandwidth.
  3. The vacuum in the middle of the Giant Zero is sustained by light.
  4. The Net is pure infrastructure.
  5. The Giant Zero is built to support an infinitude of business.
  6. The Net is a public utility, like electricity, gas, water, waste treatment and roads.
  7. We need to understand The Because Effect, and how it explains the real value of pure infrastructure.
  8. The Live Web is branching off the Static Web.
  9. On the Live Web, immediacy matters more than mediation.
  10. Works of art, good or bad, are not commodities.  Nobody writes (or draws, or shoots, or sculpts) cargo.
  11. There’s a new economy coming together around The Live Web.
  12. In the Live Web economy, the value chain is replaced by the value constellation.  There are only stars here.

Ping this! | read more | digg story

Dugg: Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams | YouTube

Posted on by
Reply

“(…) Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from
pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18,
2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really
Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons
learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career
and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture. (…)”

http://www.youtube.com/v/ji5_MqicxSo&hl=en&fs=1

(Via Doc Searls)

read more | digg story

Mobile Internet sucks (= conclusion of 3 wks without ADSL)

Posted on by
2

I’ve been without broadband Internet at home for about three weeks – I was “between providers”, so to speak.

Must say that, while I was still able to consume some of my daily Internet fix – browsing RSS feeds on my mobile phone -, it was at the same time a sobering experience of how embarrassingly ill adapted the applications on my Nokia N95 are to mobile Web 2.0 participation.

I’ll probably remember this period best as the time when Doc Searls went in and out of hospital and blogged  it all. Good health and happiness to you, Doc!

Data speed is not the bottle neck. It’s the lack of mobile client-side participatory software.

With my Nseries device and 3G coverage I could browse and email, but that was about it. No tagging, no digging, no blogging with any level of convenience.

So what I ended up doing was to bookmark the URLs I would have liked to tag, digg or blog and thus collect them in my mobile phone’s browser for future reference.

I hope to catch up blogging some of those bookmarks over the coming days.

Dugg: Lessons of Silence | Strategy+Business / Bruno Kahne

Posted on by
Reply

Bruno Kahne: "(…) As I immersed myself in their visual, intensely expressive language, I realized that through their deaf people had developed certain communication skills more thoroughly than most hearing people, which made them uncommonly effective at getting their point across. (…)"

(Via Doc Searls, who summarized:

  1. Look people in the eye.
  2. Don’t interrupt.
  3. Say what you mean, as simply as possible.
  4. When you don’t understand something, ask.
  5. Stay focused.)

read more | digg story

Dugg: Blogging as a Form of Journalism | J.D. Lasica / OJR

Posted on by
Reply

"(…) Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices (…)"

When cleaning up my paper (sic!) archive the other day, I came across a printed article in two parts, by J.D. Lasica for the Online Journalism Review (OJR), published on May 24 and 31, 2001. Just before I’m throwing this away for the benefit of the paperless office, I’ll quote what I highlighted back then:

From: ‘Blogging as a Form of Journalism‘, May 24, 2001:

Continue reading →