Category Archives: Communications, Connection, Internet, Web, Media

Blogging, networked journalism, business models, contrasts

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Craig Newmark: What I’m doing regarding journalism and why:

Democracy requires an active press, asking tough questions, and speaking truth to power. When that fails, we get ineffective government. I figure people of goodwill gotta stand up and support the press.

In my case, I have no background in journalism, so I’m listening hard, and relying on people who really know their stuff, some of whom are taking big risks.

PressThink: Introducing NewAssignment.Net:

In simplest terms, a way to fund high-quality, original reporting, in any medium, through donations to a non-profit called NewAssignment.Net.

The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable. The betting is that (some) people will donate to works they can see are going to be great because the open source methods allow for that glimpse ahead.

In this sense it’s not like donating to your local NPR station, because your local NPR station says, “thank you very much, our professionals will take it from here.” And they do that very well. New Assignment says: here’s the story so far. We’ve collected a lot of good information. Add your knowledge and make it better. Add money and make it happen. Work with us if you know things we don’t.

But I should add: NewAssignment.Net doesn’t exist yet. I’m starting with the idea.

Salon on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk: “I make $1.45 a week and I love it”:

The 21st century twist on the Turk, conceived by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, doesn’t try to hide the people inside the machine. On the contrary, it celebrates the fact that we have become part of the machine. For fees ranging from dollars to single pennies per task, workers, who cheekily call themselves “turkers,” do tasks that may be rote, like matching a color to a photograph, but they can confound a computer. Conceived to help Amazon improve its own sites, Mturk.com is now a marketplace where many companies have solicited workers to do everything from transcribing podcasts for 19 cents a minute to writing blog posts for 50 cents. Amazon takes a cut from every task performed.

Amazon claims its virtual workplace provides “artificial artificial intelligence” — a catchy way of saying human thought. “From a philosophical perspective, it’s really turning the traditional computing paradigm on its head,” says Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services. “Usually people get help from computers to do tasks. In this case, it is computers getting help from people to do tasks.” As Tim O’Reilly, a computer book publisher and tech industry figure, puts it on his blog, old dreams of artificial intelligence are “being replaced by this new model, in which we are creating more intelligent systems by using humans as components of the application.”

So who wants to be the human component of a computer application? A lot of people, it turns out. Since last November, thousands of workers from the U.S. and more than 100 other countries have performed tasks on Mturk.com. The most dedicated turkers have even formed their own online communities, such as Turker Nation.

Calacanis: The first 10 Navigators: We’ve hired three of the top 12 DIGG users, the #1 user from Newsvine, the #1 user from Reddit, and a bunch of Weblogs, Inc. folks.:

It is important to note that this is all an experiment. No one knows for sure if this model of “paying people for work” us gonna work. I mean, it’s crazy to think that people could be paid to do a job and do it with integrity–that’s just crazy talk. 🙂

Seriously, the fact is that the top 10 users on DIGG are responsible for 30% of the front page stories on DIGG. That’s 3% of total front page stories each!!! Think about that for a second… the top 10 users of DIGG do 3% of the work each–that is stunning. They get paid nothing but they are responsible for 3% of the total content on the home page. Wow. Like WOW, WOW, WOW!

BusinessWeek: Digg.com’s Kevin Rose leads a new brat pack of young entrepreneurs :

Those in the know believe that Digg could become a new kind of clearinghouse for news and that its interactive community concept could snowball. That could be a jackpot for Rose, who owns 30% to 40% of the company (he won’t specify) — a massive stake for a founder in a world in which investors routinely demand up to 20% with every outlay. But it’s still only paper wealth, which he and many others have learned can evaporate. “I was here in 2000,” he recalls in an instant message.

A lot of money being made on your participation

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Many “grassroots” participatory media efforts “flip” (are sold) to larger companies, earning their founders millions, while those that helped build these businesses – those who participate in them – get no portion of the ever growing riches.

Kevin Rose of Digg is furious at Jason Calacanis of Netscape to propose a model were top contributors actually get paid for their labors, their passions, their enthusiasm.

Kevin Rose seems to think it’s ridiculous that some people get paid for their efforts: “Ya see users like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Flickr because they are contributing to true, free, democratic social platforms devoid of monetary motivation”.

Really? So you’re giving your excess investment money to charity Kevin? Not taking a salary in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars? You aren’t going to take a few cool million of your own when you flip?

Driving a Hyundai like myself bub?

Didn’t think so.

Here is what Dave Winer has to say:

Digg’s Kevin Rose responds to Jason Calacanis, but doesn’t really respond. Jason raises a good question. No doubt Kevin is going to make something like $20 or $30 million when he sells Digg, which seems a pretty likely outcome. What will the users get? It’s a bit awkward for him to claim they do it for love if he himself doesn’t do it for love. As always Silicon Valley breeds hubris, that’s what Calacanis is taking advantage of, and doing it skillfully and without shame. If a lot of people didn’t agree with him he wouldn’t get away with it (Calacanis, that is).

I’ve mentioned before that I wouldn’t want Philly Future to follow this typical Silicon Valley narrative. It would be nice to be rich, but not on anyone else’s backs. Especially my neighbors. And that is the difference isn’t it?

Philly Future’s community is comprised of neighbors. Not just in the virtual sense, but in the actual physical sense.

Update: Turns out Kevin Rose doesn’t take a salary. That doesn’t change the rest of these questions however.

Crossposted from Philly Future. Comment there.

“This IS the news”

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There is a classic moment in Megadeth’s “Peace Sells” video, where a shirt and tie wearing parent storms into the living room and chastises his son, “What is this garbage you’re watching? I want to watch the news!”, to which the teen replies, “This IS the news”.

The dad these days would be a whole lot hipper looking and would have caught his son blogging to be sure.

Watch it all the way thru and get over your elitist musical sensibilities for once (you know who you are). The imagery, the lyrics, the terror and power could all be ripped from today’s headlines.

This follows earlier music video posts by Duncan and Susie, related to today’s world’s madness.

Hearing “the other side”

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According to to Pew’s latest study, “Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers”, “Bloggers are about as likely as the general internet population to pursue non-partisan news sources. Forty-five percent of bloggers (and 50% of all internet users) say they prefer getting news from sources that do not have a particular political point of view. Twenty-four percent of bloggers (and 18% of all internet users) say they prefer getting news from sources that challenge their political point of view. Eighteen percent of bloggers (and 22% of all internet users) say they prefer getting news from sources that share their political point of view.”.

That’s interesting since linking patterns of fellow bloggers suggest otherwise. But maybe, just maybe, folks are reading what they are not linking to.

One place to get exposed to new and different conversations and discussions is Global Voices Online. It’s a Philly Future style service that “seeks to amplify, curate and aggregate the global conversation online – with a focus on countries and communities outside the U.S. and Western Europe. We are committed to developing tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices everywhere to be heard.”. Sounds a lot like our mission.

It’s a great service, one I wish there were more emulating, but the business model might not be there and that maybe why we see so few try.

Having the possibility to open our minds so simply, by just a few clicks, is a large part of what the web offers that excites me so much. Of course, the web can help us hear other points of view, in the end it may not change how we listen. We still need to click, even if we don’t link. The great thing is that according to Pew, we do. Let’s hope they are right.

How to make money on the web

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According to the New York Times lots of media companies are investing in the web, looking for a business model.

I have a simple question – when folks wonder ‘how do we make money at this?’, why do we instinctively forget the models that have come before that already do?

Amazon.com. Yahoo!, eBay, Craigslist, Google, Salon (I believe in the black).

What is similar about their business models? Do they recognize some essential nature of the web? Any other good examples?

And when we talk about new models for news gathering versus the old, and worry about how in-depth journalism will get financed, is there something related here?

Well, at least I can satisfy my narrow tastes

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The Long Tail suggested that it will be within narrow communities of interest where the future of entertainment lies. Jeff Jarvis has long been a proponent of this point of view. With online music it is probably already so (Washington Post). But would you ever think this applied to Beer?

Check out this quote by Scots whisky manufacturer James Thompson in comments at gapingvoid: “We have decided to create a drinks product that will never be made available to large retailers – ever. We don’t need them and we don’t like them that much.”

Technology shortens distance and time between people and the things they desire. Likewise, it enables companies to market to individuals, or small communities, instead of the masses.

Related thread in Slashdot.

Less friends? You too?

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Coming from the Washington Post is news of a study that reveals people keep far fewer close friends these days.

I’ve seen this at work in my life and I’ve tried to rationalize it. I thought, possibly my work, and our growing family, were pressures here, but when faced honestly, this was gnawing at me for a long while. It sometimes seems the only friends I have are those who I personally reach out to, and I keep a short list I must admit, but now it seems far fewer confide back. A while ago I tried to meditate on what a friend was, thinking my definition was maybe too narrow. But possibly this is just a sign of the times. Of our increasingly busy and less trusting natures. Our electrons may meet in hyperspace for a while, but our hearts miss each other completely.

Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties — once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits — are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

“That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car,” said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. “There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants.”

If close social relationships support people in the same way that beams hold up buildings, more and more Americans appear to be dependent on a single beam.

Compared with 1985, nearly 50 percent more people in 2004 reported that their spouse is the only person they can confide in. But if people face trouble in that relationship, or if a spouse falls sick, that means these people have no one to turn to for help, Smith-Lovin said.

“We know these close ties are what people depend on in bad times,” she said. “We’re not saying people are completely isolated. They may have 600 friends on Facebook.com [a popular networking Web site] and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important.”

10 years of WashingtonPost.com and Slate

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Sometimes the best way to learn of the future is to look at the past. Slate and WashingtonPost.com are now 10 years old. There is much to gleam about where online media is going by looking at where they began, their efforts over the years, and where they are today.

Slate: Michael Kinsley: My History of Slate

WashingtonPost.com: Jay Rosen: Web Users Open the Gates

WashingtonPost.com: Patricia Sullivan: As the Internet Grows Up, the News Industry Is Forever Changed

WashingtonPost.com: Steve Fox: Web Site Starts From a Memo, Gains Millions of Readers