Tag Archives: Doc Searls

Doc Searls: ‘What Google Does (and needs to keep doing) | Linux Journal’

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Doc Searls, July 28, 2008:

“(…) Google just did something good for me — and for a market that needs help desperately (…)

What Google Did for me was radically improve one of the most annoying experiences in the Webbed world: registering a domain name. (…)”

via What Google Does (and needs to keep doing) | Linux Journal.

(I’m experimenting with the Press This bookmarklet for Firefox, so let’s see if this gets published as intended)

Today I remembered reading a blog post a while back (in 2008 as it turns out), and sharing it on Google Reader in case I might want to switch domain name registrars one day.

At first I didn’t recall who had blogged this, but with a search on my Google Reader account I was able to retrieve it. I recalled that domain registration via Google was supposed to be user-friendly and reasonably priced.

So that “one day” has now come. Back in the days, I registered my domain name “josschuurmans.com” through DomainDirect. Now that I’m planning to map that domain to my WordPress blog instead of my TypePad blog, it’s a good moment to check if there is still validity to Doc’s praise to Google from 2008.

BTW, this is an example of why it makes sense to tag/store/share what you read and make it findable. And yes, it’s an important type of gesture for a personal information recommendation engine.

A hierarchy of gestures for the Holy Grail

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After transcribing the pertinent 9-minute passage from RBTN 82 and offering some conceptual input to the idea of developing a personalized recommendation system for news, I kept thinking about the different kinds of gestures in the mix.

So it might be useful to establish a hierarchy of on-line gestures, which can serve as signals indicating endorsement or recommendation.

1. Subscribe. To a feed, a publication, a newsletter. Or even the repeated act of visiting a service or a web site. That’s a gesture saying: this is potentially interesting to me. Or, in some cases: I know that this is interesting to me.

2. Read. As Doc Searls might say, when I read something, it means that I let it inform me. I let it “author” me. I’m voluntarily exposing myself to its influence. I hope or expect to gain something from acquiring the knowledge or information encapsulated in the article or story.

3. Store (and tag) privately. Make it findable for myself. It builds an archive of things that I’ve read. I find it worth documenting that I read it. And I expect that sometime in the future I might find it worth retrieving it and re-reading it or using it some way or another.

4. Share. For example on Google Reader, as I tend to do with news. In addition to making it findable to me, sharing the feed publicly is also something of an endorsement or recommendation. Or at least, it communicates to anyone interested that I have read this and found it worth putting that fact on the record. Twitter, Facebook, Dig, Reddit, StumbleUpon…

5. Tag publicly. Contribute to the public goods of findability and folksonomy. (Same services as above)

6. Rate. Personally I don’t rate content much. What’s the point? What’s the benchmark? Except Facebook “likes”, which kinda combines rating, tagging and sharing.

7. Copy-share. Arguably it takes a slightly bigger effort to copy content into a draft blog post, although “Press This” makes it almost as easy as any other browser bookmark.

All public gestures of sharing and tagging are instances of amplification. And as we know, amplification is the new circulation. When sharing, two things happen. One: I help this piece of content which I find interesting, to find more readers, to get more exposure. Two: I endorse it, because I kind of associate my name with it when I tweet it or put it on Facebook or on my blog.

But I don’t necessarily interpret it. It can be: this is interesting, an endorsement, a recommendation for reading. Or the purpose may just be to say, I am reading this kind of stuff. My mind is now working with this kind of stuff. So, thinking about the edges of the social networks, if someone else reads the same, finds it interesting, then maybe it’s something worth talking about.

It’s a message from me, indicating that I’m open to conversation about this topic.

8. Send the article (link) to someone I know, for whom I think it may be highly relevant. The threshold for making this gesture is quite high. It’s a strong gesture, and it’s also a very personal gesture, not a public one.

9. Comment on a blog post or news article. Nowadays I don’t often do that, because I think that if it is worth commenting on, it’s worth keeping that comment on my own side, on my own blog, on my own “infrastructure (as I think Dave would agree).

10. Blog about the topic I read, because I have something to add: interpretation, commentary, fact, opinion, context. Or to take it in an entirely new direction. The point here is to create original content. It can be a blog post, a tweet, a status update or what have you. For our purposes, in order for this to be a gesture it’s important to link back to the original article/post/story.

11. Possibly: pipe it through to a (possibly closed) special-interest community, e.g. on a LinkedIn group, a Ning site or some such.

[UPDATE, 2011-02-11, 13:47 : For some reason I had overlooked number 12. And number 13 was inspired by Richard Grusin's comment below:

12. Link inside a (micro)blog post to stuff that's relevant to the topic at hand. In fact, links could well be the most important gestures that we should measure.

13. Approve/reject incoming blog comments or track backs. With this one, the negative signal of rejection might be the more significant one.]

Anything else?

These gestures inform the public or people in my on-line communities and on the Internet in general, as to which content gets through my personal cognitive filters, my interest filters, and therefore get amplified and possibly more widely distributed.

These gestures can be used as input for social recommendations. And that includes news. Why not? Actually, the concept of news is in itself quite fluid. A colleague of mine a couple of years back would define news as “something that is new to someone” – information which is new to someone. Looking at it that way, a lot of information can be news.

Would we still call it journalism?

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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

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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

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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.

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

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"(…) 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:

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