Atlanta Media Bloggers

A delightful parable by Nick Carr

This whole topic has generated much kerfuffle in the blogosphere, but it's the kind of kerfuffle I like, because it forces introspection, forces one to examine unquestioned assumptions about whether online interfaces are as democratizing as the spin often claims, whether there could be political/social biases embedded in deep structure interfaces.

The folks who have roundly spanked Carr for claiming things that they say the open "Home on the Range" of the Internet makes impossible have a point, but still, Carr's humorous parable rings true more often than not, particularly in the opening bit, and the epilogue.

Link: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The Great Unread.

The Great Unread

Prelude

Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.

Part one:
On the nature of innocent fraud

I've been reading a short book - an essay, really - by John Kenneth Galbraith called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. It's his last work, written while he was in his nineties, not long before he died. In it, he explains how we, as a society, have come to use the term "market economy" in place of the term "capitalism." The new term is a kinder and gentler one, with its implication that economic power lies with consumers rather than with the owners of capital or with the managers who have taken over the work of the owners. It's a fine example, says Galbraith, of innocent fraud.

An innocent fraud is a lie, but it's a lie that's more white than black. It's a lie that makes most everyone happy. It suits the purposes of the powerful because it masks the full extent of their power, and it suits the purposes of the powerless because it masks the full extent of their powerlessness.

What we tell ourselves about the blogosphere - that it's open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.

Part two:
The loneliness of the long-tail blogger

The thing about an innocent fraud, though, is that it's not that hard to see through. Often, in fact, you have to make an effort not to see through it, and at some point, for some people, the effort no longer seems worth it. A few days back, the blogger Kent Newsome asked, "Who are the readers of our blogs?" His answer had a melancholy tone:

The number of bloggers competing for attention makes it seem like the blogosphere is a huge, chaotic place. But it only seems that way because we have all ended up in a small room at the end of the hall. When people refuse to converse with me or go out of their way to link around me, it hurts a little. Until I remember that while they aren't listening to me, no one in the real world is listening to them either ...

[...]

The best way, by far, to get a link from an A List blogger is to provide a link to the A List blogger. As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite. A blog-peasant, one of the Great Unread, comes to the wall of the castle to offer a tribute to a royal, and the royal drops a couple of coins of attention into the peasant's little purse. The peasant is happy, and the royal's hold over his position in the castle is a little bit stronger.

[...]

Epilogue

One day, a blog-peasant boy found buried in the dust beside his shack a sphere of flawless crystal. When he looked into the ball he was astounded see a moving picture. It was an image of a fleet of merchant ships sailing into the harbor of the island of Blogosphere. The ships bore names that had long been hated throughout the island, names like Time-Warner and News Corp and Pearson and New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast and McGraw-Hill. The blog-peasants gathered along the shore, jeering at the ships and telling the invaders that they would soon be vanquished by the brave royals in the great castle. But when the captains of the merchant ships made their way to the gates of the castle, bearing crates of gold, they were not repelled by the royals with cannons but rather welcomed with fanfares. And all through the night the blog-peasants could hear the sounds of a great feast inside the castle walls.

   

Another voice heard from on BlogHer...

From a person I haven't heard from in the blogosphere in a while, Burningbird (Shelley Powers). I've missed her perspective and am happy to have it back.

While it may be controversial, I couldn't resist pulling a few bits out, for discussion or whatever. I wasn't at the conference, so I can't say one way or the other about things that only eyewitnesses know.

This is sort of hard to excerpt, so if you're into this, I really recommend reading the original and popping off to all the different links in it.

Chris

Link: The Bb Gun | Blog Archive | Measuring Success.

Measuring Success

August 1st, 2006

Before I started the new weblog(s), I told a friend that I was going to avoid saying anything even remotely critical about BlogHer. It does no good to do so, I told him.

I’m sure he knew that I could not follow this vow. I don’t know if being critical of Blogher will do any ‘good’ or not. I do know that fighting for women to be heard–inside blogging or not– has been a part of me for too many years to see it co-opted into a new business model; or used as an excuse to disregard women (even the flirty, sexy, beautiful ones) the other 360 ought days when BlogHer is not running.

I wanted to point you to Jeneane and Stowe Boyd’s response to Dave Winer’s Blogher recap. I particularly want to empathize Boyd’s reaction to the conference, which I found honest and direct.  Tara Hunt also came out with a post related to some of the ‘bloghim’ responses. In addition, she provided her reasons why Blogger is not for her–most of which parallel other’s thoughts.

I’d already mentioned my concerns about the marketing aspects of BlogHer. These were, in a way, enforced by Lisa Stone’s only mention of the conference at the BlogHer site. In it she discusses the ’success’ of the women in the keynote panel of the conference; their success, and how, it would seem, the new BlogHer measures such:

If success is the best revenge, revenge must be sweet indeed for this quartet. For today, each of these women todays enjoys kudos from their readers/users (even critics), while at the same time being able to point to cold, hard facts such as Web traffic and revenue that demonstrate their ideas were worth pursuing.

Is that the true mark of a good idea within weblogging? Web traffic and revenue? Not writing or worth of the thought or the person…web traffic and revenue?

Women make up 50% of weblogging. That used to be a rallying cry, demanding that we be heard. Now it’s been reduced to facts and figures to place in front of the likes of Johnson & Johnson, GM, or some condom maker. This is influencing, heavily, the direction BlogHer seems to be taking.

Barbara Ganley wrote on some of this, in reference to the fact that DOPA passed–a law that has dangerous implications to the freedom of the Net in our country. Not a word was mentioned at BlogHer:

[great quotation snipped]

If DOPA did not generate interest, where was the emphasis at BlogHer? From what many of the attendees stated: Mommyblogging.

[...]

If we, women and men both, follow a path where the only measure of success is the number of ads at our site, the links we have, the money we make, then the only power we’re exercising is that of consumer–catered to, perhaps; but essentially meaningless.

Melinda Casino, who is both a contributing editor and was a panel presenter at BlogHer, wrote a long and thoughtful response about her impressions of Blogher tonight. It was titled, appropriately enough, Goodby Grassroots BlogHer. In it she lists out her disappointments of the conference, including the marketing and, ironically, the lack of diversity.

[...]

I read in the liveblogging of the session on sex how the representative of the company that supplied the condoms for the goodie bag participated in the discussion. From this, I gather we can rest assured that the constuction of their condoms is of the highest quality.

I will freely admit that it is Melinda’s post that spurred me to write this one last post on BlogHer. When she mentioned this event, it reminded of all the concerns that have been expressed the last few years about the growing ’selling’ of weblogging–that one day we would be sitting there, in pleasant expectation of a conversation, only to be given a sales pitch. When the lines start blurring, we don’t know what’s real anymore. That will kill this environment faster than any law like DOPA.

[...]

I also wish, and I mean it, much success for the organization. I have no illusions that I will change anyone’s viewpoint with this writing. Perhaps the emphasis on women’s purchasing power can, this time, be used as a weapon for social change. In this, I hope they succeed.

I’m going a different path, though. One that doesn’t measure success based on ads, links, and revenue. And I’m not going to look back.

Lucasfilm "gets" the new media (obviously)

Lucasfilm has been informed that YouTube recently removed from its site several fan-made Star Wars spoofs and parodies. We would like the fan film community to know that this was not done at our request.

Apparently the action was taken by YouTube as a result of a misunderstanding of a request to remove an item containing material taken from starwars.com without our permission. We have asked YouTube to restore any works that they inadvertently removed.

 

SOURCE: YouTube and fan-made Star Wars videos

Special Guest to Lead the Atlanta Media Bloggers in August

Dan Greenfield, Vice President, Corporate Communications for Earthlink will be leading the discussion on August 17th.

Dan recently published an article in iMedia, "Why Earthlink Embraces Social Media."

Customer voices are being heard and companies need to listen and participate in the conversation or find themselves standing on unstable ground.

We have the honor of learning about the challenges and opportunities Earthlink has found by embracing this drastic, disruptive change in business.

Free downloadable e-book on PR and interactive media

I think I originally followed this link to PR Squared from Sherry's site (now I can't find the original link), reading stuff about a social media press release template. Anyway, so I was checking back in to show the template to a friend, and came across this as well, the PR 2.0 Essentials Guide. Downloaded it and have read a bit. Thought it might appeal to some of y'all. What do you think? Did they get it right?

Chris

Link: PR Squared: SHIFT Releases "PR 2.0 Essentials" Guidebook.

Link: Shift Communications | Public Relations Services.

This is from the site:

"PR 2.0 Essentials Guide," which examines a range of social media innovations (such as social bookmarking, RSS, etc.). This is for all in-house and Agency PR Professionals who need to bone up on the latest Social Media tools that are changing how we communicate on behalf of our respective companies and clients.

 

 

The Rule of 1%

After our discussions on user-generated conent, I thought my fellow Atlanta Media Bloggers would find this interesting. (I wonder how many will interact with this post?)

***

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

It's a meme that emerges strongly in statistics from YouTube, which in just 18 months has gone from zero to 60% of all online video viewing.

The numbers are revealing: each day there are 100 million downloads and 65,000 uploads - which as Antony Mayfield (at http://open.typepad.com/open) points out, is 1,538 downloads per upload - and 20m unique users per month.

That puts the "creator to consumer" ratio at just 0.5%, but it's early days yet; not everyone has discovered YouTube (and it does make downloading much easier than uploading, because any web page can host a YouTube link).

Consider, too, some statistics from that other community content generation project, Wikipedia: 50% of all Wikipedia article edits are done by 0.7% of users, and more than 70% of all articles have been written by just 1.8% of all users, according to the Church of the Customer blog (http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/).

Earlier metrics garnered from community sites suggested that about 80% of content was produced by 20% of the users, but the growing number of data points is creating a clearer picture of how Web 2.0 groups need to think. For instance, a site that demands too much interaction and content generation from users will see nine out of 10 people just pass by.

***

READ: What is the 1% rule?

"Make Friends With Your Audience"

Here is a rather revealing MSM interview with Amanda Congdon. From MSNBC: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13832899/

And yet another semi-cluessless piece. This time from The Guardian: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1818617,00.html

As Amanda says, when asked by the "talent" on what exactly is that elusive formula for success MSM could learn from New Media, "Make friends with your audience."