Brij’s One More Idea

So I get this question from my friend: 'Brij, what's up with blogging slogging?'

This friend got hit by news will find you trap and found this I-quit-blogging announcement by Jason Calacanis unnerving.

There have been rumblings of sorts on where this whole blogging slogging is going. Today also on Techmeme I saw two posts analyzing this same topic from two different, and apparently honest, angles.  David Risley rightly thinks we are in a change phase and little bit of 'community humility' will go a long way in bringing back the fun:

Yes, it is changing. A super saturated niche like tech blogging is evolving into a conversation that takes place as much on social media like FriendFeed and Twitter as it does on the blog. Not all blogging niches are like that, but tech is particularly saturated as a niche. The guys who end up being leaders in today’s tech blogging are the people who offer real value on all of their communication lines (blog + social media outlets) and who are personable and actively interact with others. Any tech blogger who is looking at it as a competition or who worry incessantly about the so-called "a-list" is just not going to do really well.

If you can’t change with the community, then I guess it might be easier to bow out and start blogging about something else.

 Loren Feldman has a very revealing take on overall  technology world. Emperor has no clothes but he is more right than lot of people out there.

Now my answer to my friend was rather boring. I told him blogging phenomena is evolutionary, some A-listers now need to work on their family, some are just burned out, adsense economy is a welfare economy and you can't pay your bill with it etc etc.

Short answer was that people will continue to need car (blog), they may or may not like going for Hummer or Porsche (star blogs).

Though I wasn't very pleased with my answer, felt I should have been deep and used some difficult to understand words! Later on I managed to dig up this conversation between Bart Simpson and his high-IQ sister Lisa. I think this conversation captures the dilemma faced by these rebellious blogger Barts.

I have taken liberty with emphasis and link. Enjoy -

BART: Lis, everyone in town is acting like me. So why does it suck?

LISA: It's simple, Bart: you've been defined yourself as a rebel, and in the absence of a repressive milieu your societal nature's been co-opted.

BART: I see.

LISA: Ever since that self-help guy came to town, you've lost your identity. You've fallen through the cracks of our quick-fix, one-hour photo, instant oatmeal society.

BART: What's the answer?

LISA: Well, this is your chance to develop a new and better identity. May I suggest .. good natured doormat?'

BART: Sounds good, sis. Just tell me what to do.

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Apnews.com can change citizen journalism as we know it. I am sharing this news article from iPhone using apnews.com.

Update: added pictures using browser client.

User interface optimized for publishing and sharing news stories will win.

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It's always refreshing to see  good discussion on the big picture. Fred Wilson started this thread sharing his social media vision.

This vision is brilliant in it's simplicity but it's a big shift in the grand scheme of human expression. I am sure there will be enough theories on how far reaching change this simple transformation will bring. We are in first inning here. We have seen the impact of social media on main stream media, we are yet to see that play out on other sectors such education, business (B2B or Enterprise 2.0?) and health.

Blogging 1.0 is almost complete and we are going through the birthing process of micro-blogging. Between these two spectrum, there are many forms and shapes of expression tools.

This vision is a long march but there are some interesting opportunities in near future. If you belong to entrepreneurial camp, then there are interesting problems to work on. Let me explain that by expanding on this social media pyramid shared by Don Dodge:

We keep hearing about this 1-10-100 ratio. This supply chain of content gets into action when that lone creator starts the thread. Since this ratio doesn't really translate into any actionable imagery I started calling this submit-to-scroll ratio. Submit-to-scroll ratio is really a contributer-to-lurker ratio. Reason I prefer this terminology as this helps in thinking more about Submit contexts. Slapping Submit sticker in every possible interface we can significantly increase number of creators.

By doing that we can expand Don's pyramid chart to this possibility:

By just focusing on creating more contexts for new users to hit submit button, we can expedite our march towards a fully participatory media.

Social media tools are still lacking when it comes to inviting new social media users. I don't have handy numbers but my guess is that lot of people who moved from Twitter were already familiar with blogging. Big opportunity lies in letting new users join social media way of expressing. When we started MessageDance, our vision was to focus on users who are very comfortable with email as an authoring tool. Extending email content into social networks, blogs and twitter is what we ended up doing. It feels good when users praise our effort for letting them use most well known Submit button!

If you want to add to social media revolution, think about contexts where we can invite new creators. New interfaces for allowing them to hit Submit button. It still amazes me to see many talented people not blogging due to all sorts of silly reasons. Behavior change will happen with the help of new interfaces.

This vision of social media where every online user is creating something is a major shift. We are lucky to be participating in this migration.

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First of all it’s open source and that will help create necessary motivation to add innovation around this API.

TechCrunch has good things to say about this plugin.
Download TypePad AntiSpam plugin from here.

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Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center,  shared key findings from his  organization’s annual study of online terror and hate. 

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Charlie Cheever from Facebook has hurled first real bomb in closely observed attempts by  social networking platforms to "open up".  Data portability promise got first reality check of ToS violation.

Facebook spent couple of days brainstorming on Google's "grand design" and came to conclusion that it's better to block them right away. So no Google FriendConnect for Facebook developers. 

In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.

This is NOT  a good news for Facebook developers as well as for other vendors who have interest in cross network applications. 

I have been following recent announcements in this context. Very soon all these major platforms need to stop and think about how Twitter platform has emerged right under their nose and enabling next generation applications (For example - TwisterNow, Summize, and MessageDance) . It's time for these platform vendors to read Twitter tea leaves (or tweets! ). That's where we are going to see truly open platform in action. 

After Myspace Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google Announces FriendConnect.

Facebook Connect: Data portability done right

Myspace’s Data Availability - The walls are coming down

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Finally Comcast bought Plaxo. We have been hearing rumors of this event for some time now.

It's equally fun to watch how Arrington is matching CNet on every news story out there. He managed to get most important bit of information. Price tag:

Over at CNet, Sam Schwartz, exec VP of Comcast has this to say:

"The address book and Pulse combined will change the way people navigate through thousands of choices of content. You could know what shows your friends are watching, what they are downloading or what they are recording on DVR. Plaxo can help us build that vision. It's less about the Comcast.net portal and more about bringing the social aspects to all media consumption."

Amen to "bringing the social aspects to all media consumption". Plaxo wil join Comcast Interactive group.

Congratulations John. Pulse finds a new home.

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Twitter only allows 140 characters.

Average Google Adsense takes 100 characters.

To me they are yin and yang in the battle to capture user’s intention. Don’t rush into asking where is the revenue model. By the time revenue model becomes clear to everybody, Twitter will be another blockbuster story. It will be too late by that time.

Technorati

Update: I like the way Tom Simonite at NewScientist describes Twitter: column-inch grabbing microblog platform

Update: Looks like today is going to be the day of education for me. Rajesh sent link for twittervision.com.

I see seeds of post-Google world in fast evolving twitter ecosystem.