Emerging Technologies

New media killeth a lot

By Brij ⋅ July 15, 2007 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

You read any new media proponent’s blog you will get the impression that “conversation” is the most defining aspect of new media. And rightly so as blog comments and trackbacks allow anybody to voice opinion on the original story. When everybody can be a participant in the dialog then sensationalism becomes a survival tool. Or rather its fast becoming a survival tool.

If conversation is the central piece then civility should be it’s transport. How many times you find yourself sitting with a group of people and shouting “Holy cow X killed Y” in order to get their  attention? Techmeme is lately filled with shouts like these. Check these:

Pownce the twitter killer

Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer

Microsoft releases Joost-killer  ( killer part has been removed i guess)

To me this is a clear way to filter out the author. This shows naive understanding of the business world. Startups get killed more often by their own stupidity than by other startups (or big companies). Yes there are occasional market dynamics which  diminishes economic value of the startup but the word “killed” - that’s strong.

My humble reminder to all is this ( I dont have link handy but Google on Pew and keywords and you can trace the report) -

Average daily time user spends on Internet is increasing
Net number of Internet users are increasing globally

So let’s calm down and enjoy the wonderful win-win platform of Internet. Go slow on killing. Please.

R.I.P. Log (I decided to keep a log of all blog posts showing bias towards headline violence)

Searching for the Google killer