Tag Archives: web

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?

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.”

Emptied Bloglines account

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On Friday, in a moment of either clarity…or something else… I removed all of my subscriptions from Bloglines. I had grown frustrated with my habit of checking a few times an hour for updates. I’ve mentioned before that Memeorandum is like crack. Well Bloglines is like cigarettes.

One thing I immediately miss is keeping up with my friends across the web. I feel partially disconnected. But at the same time, I’ve found myself more focused.

This isn’t an anti-RSS screed. I’m thinking there is something about Bloglines that, for me, makes it too easy to distract myself from what’s important.

So, what comes next…. hmmmmm….

“Power Law of Participation”

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Ross Mayfield’s Weblog: Power Law of Participation:

Most of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail examples have focused on models of consumption, not production, where intelligence is largely artificial. Amazonian algorythms guide users down the long tail from Britney Spears to Nobodys, made available without the constraints of shelf space. But the interesting question is will the tail wag? Can users discover their own power together to either discover something great, or even create it?

As we engage with the web, we leave behind breadcrumbs of attention. Even when we Read, our patterns are picked up in referral logs (especially with expressly designed tools, like Measure Map), creating a feedback loop. But reading alone isn’t enough to fulfill our innate desire to remix our media, consumption is active for consumers turned users.

Full feeds versus partial feeds

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Lots of folks out there take a hard line when it comes to publishing either full feeds (the entire contents of each post being published in RSS/Atom) or partial feeds.

Scoble, for example, is famous for declaring he won’t subscribe to anyone’s partial feed.

Shelley and Rafe have posted thoughtful takes on this, from either side of the fence.

My take? Well I publish a full feed. But for the longest time I didn’t. It hasn’t made a difference as far as my readership is concerned one way, or another, because this is such a personal space for me.

‘There is more than one way to do it’ should not only be the motto of Perl, but the motto of the web. There is room for both approaches – and many more. We’ve mostly gotten each other speaking the same language (hey I know that’s arguable), but to argue that there is only ‘one true way’ to publish the sentences misses the beauty of the web.

Congratulations to Dan Gillmor

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I want to offer my heartfelt congratulations to Dan Gillmor, who has announced his upcoming launch of the Center for Citizen Media, a nonprofit whose goals are to “study, encourage and help enable the emergent grassroots media sphere, with a major focus on citizen journalism.”

My fellow co-workers will attest that I am an honest critic to a fault. So when I say that among those I have had the pleasure of working with over the years, few have impressed upon me such a degree of integrity, honesty, and vision – well it means something.

Follow the link for details.

Motherhood and Apple Pie

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lesscode.org: Motherhood and Apple Pie [@lesscode.org]:

The internet is not an accident. The internet was not bound to happen. There was no guarantee that the internet would reach its current state as a side effect of emerging digital processing and communications capabilities. We did not recover complex alien technology.

The internet, that place where all eventual business will be transacted, all content and media will be distributed, all correspondence will be exchanged, all history will be recorded, and all pornography will be is being admired, has a design – and its meant for exactly these purposes.

Many of the principles that led to this design are still with us today, although I would challenge you to ascertain them by observing the mainstream technologies being peddled by leading vendors, publications, and analyst firms. Those who rose to power in a much different environment, where the short-term profits of disconnected, dead-end business software was deemed more important than laying a fertile ground where millions of new ideas (and hence new profits) could bloom.

But the dead-end has long been reached and so these industry leaders have turned their attention to this new place, built on principles and values very different from their own, and have somehow reached the conclusion that this thriving ecosystem must be re-arranged such that they have somewhere to place their baggage. Instead of embracing the people, principals, and technologies that gave rise to this phenomenon they have chosen to subvert its history and to implant the ridiculous notion that it is â€Ŕincapable of meeting the stringent demands of the business community.â€?

Not only have these business radicals claimed the internet as their own but they have also somehow gained the confidence of all the worlds industry in their ability to deliver a new and sparkling internet, one no doubt capable of reproducing the complexities and flaws that plague existing mediums so as to make it feel more like home. They’ve brought their own principles and agendas, asserting them as obvious and correct while ignoring the wisdom we’ve gained and shared and gained and shared over years of collaborative practice and observation of working systems at this scale.

A great essay. I don’t agree with some of his conclusions, but it and especially its source material are must reads.

“filters, aggregators and producers”

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The Long Tail: Brands: response:

…my point about brands becoming people rather than products or companies is specific to long tail markets. In short tail markets, such as traditional retail, I imagine that the usual brands will continue to dominate for a good long time.

Second, here’s a little more detail on the role of people as “branded filters” in the long tail: There are, as it happens, three main long tail businesses: filters, aggregators and producers. Each of those will have its own sort of brands, but those brands are all related in that they’re increasingly about real people, rather than abstract advertising messages, invented characters or slogans.

“Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality – no one in America is”

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So says Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald investigating the Valerie Plame identity leak affair.

For my friends who have no idea what this is about. A quick review.

1. Joseph C.Wilson was a U.S. ambassador assigned to investigate Iraq-Niger WMD production claims. He reported he found none. When President Bush, later in his State of the Union address claimed there were, Wilson went public.

2. Shortly after, his wife Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, had her identity leaked to CNN personality Robert Novak – who revealed it in a newspaper column. It is believed that the revealing of her identity was in retaliation for his going public.

3. Revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative is illegal. An investigation has begun into who leaked her identity to Novak and to other journalists across the country, notably Judy Miller at the New York Times and Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper.

4. Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper has helped reveal his source as George Bush’s primary politcal advisor Karl Rove. Judy Miller, refusing to reveal her source, and has since been sent to jail. Article at the Guardian.

Jay Rosen thinks it’s Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill

I, for one, have had it with Robert Novak. And if all the journalists who are talking today about “chilling effects” and individual conscience mean what they say, they will, as a matter of conscience and pride, start giving Novak himself the big chill.

That means if you’re a Washington columnist maybe you don’t go on CNN with him– until he explains. If you’re a newspaper editor you consider suspending his column until he explains. If you’re Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, you take him off the air until he decides to go on the air and explain. If you’re John Barron, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, you suspend your columnist (with pay, I should think); and if Barron won’t do it then publisher John Cruickshank should.

If Novak says he can’t talk until the case is over, then he shouldn’t be allowed to publish or opine on the air until the case is over. He should know the rage some of his colleagues feel. Claiming to be “baffled” by Novak’s behavior may have been plausible for a while. With reporter Judith Miller now sitting in jail, and possibly facing criminal charges later, “baffled” is sounding lame.

After the decision yesterday someone asked Bill Keller, top editor of the New York Times, if this was really a whistle-blowing case. Keller answered: “you go to court with the case you’ve got.” I understood what he meant, but that answer was incomplete.

For in certain ways the case that sent Judy Miller to jail is about a classic whistler blower: diplomat Joseph C. Wilson. Those “two senior administration officials” in Novak’s column had a message for him: stick your neck out and we’ll stick it to your wife. (They did: her career as an operative is over.) Might that have some chilling effect?

For more on the consequences of Mathew Cooper revealing his sources read this commentary. via dangerousmeta.