Seth Finkelstein

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  • Seth Finkelstein  "barriers to his bloggers going off and starting their own equivalent networks ..." I think you've been taken in by the mythology here. The cuckoo-clock repeating of "Low barrier to entry! Low barrier to entry!" seems to have as much factual basis behind it as that cuckoo. Because if it were really true, why haven't a bunch of bloggers simply cut out Nick Denton ?
  • • 2 weeks ago
    •   Denton: Evil genius or just plain evil?
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   Daniel Gibbons  I didn't say "low barrier to entry", but "lower barriers to entry", which is much more than just semantics. I was saying "lower" relative to what it would have taken to start a competitor to a major publishing property in the 1980s. It's gone from "virtually impossible unless you're already vastly wealthy" to merely "very difficult"... And as to the reason why a bunch of bloggers haven't cut out Nick Denton, well that will almost certainly happen, as it does in virtually every creative industry. And they'll go on to form their own network, which in turn will be criticized for exploiting the poor old bloggers who work for it rather than own it. Denton has momentum and a critical mass of readers, but these aren't things that are necessarily related to how much capital you have at your disposal.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  People have asked. The Boingers aren't talking. See latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/06/violet-blue-scr.html
  • • 3 weeks ago
    •   Joanne McNeil on Boing Boing's "erasure" of Violet Blue
    •   Technovia
  •   ianbetteridge  Interesting - but, I note, Joanne had posted her post prior to this one. So clearly, while a proper newspaper was willing to make a couple of calls, she wasn't.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Well, regarding research, I was partially relying on your description - "... the brash young millionaire co-founder of Vimeo and CollegeHumour.com, and one-time blogging boyfriend of party girl-blogger Julia Allison ..." :-(.
  • • 3 weeks ago
    •   Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Seth Finkelstein  By the way, the Kathy Sierra incident was far more complex that the way the story is usually told (which tends to omit any hint that the facts were different from the most sensationalist narrative). See my column at: Accusations of sex and violence were bound to grab the headlines
  • • 3 weeks ago
    •   Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up
    •   Mathew's comments
  • • 1 point
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  • Seth Finkelstein  My impression is that he was/is running a video site, not earning money from being a blog/"conversation"/"self-expression" conference-club evangelist. That is, he took the Kool-Aid, the evangelists were happy to "use" him while he said it tasted good, and when he got sugar-shock, then it was: SHUT UP, FOOL! Nobody FORCED you to drink that Kool-Aid. IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!!! The underlying problem is that the blog-world is extremely exploitative and personally destructive, and marketers need to construct excuses that it's a particular person's failing whenever this is demonstrated.
  • • 3 weeks ago
    •   Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  That's not the case at all, Seth. Take a look at Neekolas's comment -- if anything, Jakob was the poster boy for Tumblr-blogging, and was more than happy to confess his innermost thoughts and feelings to the world. And when the attention was positive, he was happy to soak it up. You need to do a bit more research before making pronouncements.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Cue another iteration of the hypester's song :-( Marketer: Look! This is amazing! Fantastic! Revolutionary! World-changing! Never been anything like it before! Chump: I tried it. It didn't work. It's nasty and damaging. Marketer: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT YOU WHINER?!?
  • • 3 weeks ago
    •   Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Seth, I should have known that you would try to force this into that tired mold. No one marketed social media to Jakob Lodwick -- if anything, he's the one who has been marketing it to others, and displaying its alleged benefits in the form of continuous updates about his every mood, though or personal predilection. As I said in my comment to Joe, for him to suddenly complain that some of the attention he's been getting is negative is either the height of hypocrisy or the height of naievete. One is stupid and the other is ridiculous.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  What people don't understand is that sending lawyer letters IS a corporation's idea of how to start a "conversation" :-). [And if you don't believe that, remember, A-list blogger's idea of "conversation" is ranting from on-high to their audience below, and possibly bullying critics - it bears very little resemblance to any sort of reasoned exchange of concepts with equals.]
  • • 1 month ago
    •   Why Saul Hansell is wrong on AP
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Wait -- you mean ranting from on high and bullying critics isn't a conversation? :-)
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Aye Carumba! By "except in a trivial way", I meant you could give it a meaning where it was true, but that meaning would be trivial, depending on what you meant by "plenty of room". There are almost by definition few high attention slots, but it would likely be said to mean something like "lots of chances to win the (attention) lottery" (even though very few people do win), and that's what I'd mean by trivial. The idea of the comparison is how one could construct similar spurious reasoning to "prove" the MSM is open, democratic, anyone can break-in (pointing to the few people who do), etc. Oh, have another link: Shelley Powers: "Guys Don't Link" http://burningbird.net/connecting/guys-dont-link/
  • • 2 months ago
    •   Techmeme and the “A-list” canard
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Don't have a cow, man. I would in fact claim your statement ("content from unknowns") is false, except in a trivial way. That is, blog-evangelists don't say: "With all the newspapers and trade-journals being published, with all the 24/7 news programs, there is still plenty of room for content from unknowns or little-knowns to emerge and be recognized in the mainstream media - and look, x% of people quoted or sound-bited come from The Long Tale!" Have another link: Nick Carr: "The Great Unread" http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/08/the_great_unrea.php
  • • 2 months ago
    •   Techmeme and the “A-list” canard
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  First of all, saying that it's false "except in a trivial way" means that it's true, but you think the parts that are true are trivial. I disagree. And secondly, your comparison to blogs and being quoted in the mainstream media is ridiculous. I reject it on the grounds that it is irrelevant, incorrect and -- most of all -- boring.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  BAH HUMBUG! Let me know how many links I can post without triggering a spam-trap, this utter nonsense is a FAQ by now. Here, have one: Jon Garfunkel: "The New Gatekeepers" http://civilities.net/TheNewGatekeepers
  • • 2 months ago
    •   Techmeme and the “A-list” canard
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Thanks as usual, Seth -- although the "bah, humbug" routine is getting a little old, don't you think? Time for some new material. Obviously, none of this is to say that there aren't "gatekeepers" or whatever terminology you want to use -- I've admitted that countless times in similar posts. My point is that there is still plenty of room for content from unknowns or little-knowns to emerge and be recognized. That's good, isn't it?
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  • Seth Finkelstein  "I had a feeling you would be dropping by, Seth." And, see, it wasn't different this time! :-) Again, you're confusing one component with an overall process. That's a very standard evangelist ploy, Since the laws of mathematics haven't changed, to a good approximation, the net results will never be different. 150 years ago, were their railroads like [BigName]? 100 years ago, was there TV and radio like [BigName]? 50 years ago, was there cheap air travel like [BigName]? All of these created a few new big businesses - and also lots of failed businesses. It's never different, in that there's always people running around saying that this time it's different.
  • • 2 months ago
    •   Web 2.0 in limbo? Let’s get a grip
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Wow -- I'm impressed that you were able to dismiss the past 100 years or so worth of economic progress so quickly. Nice work. "All of these created a few new big businesses -- and also lots of failed businesses." That pretty much describes every technology ever invented since the industrial revolution. Your comment reminds me of Warren Buffett's famous saying about how the airline industry has been a net destroyer of capital since the Wright Brother first flew at Kitty Hawk. The upside? We get to fly places instead of taking boats and cars.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Bah, humbug. This post regurgitates the most dangerous idea: "IT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME" As in: "The bottom line is that the Web makes it so much easier to start and run a business " - it's different! Not like the old bubble! DON'T LEARN THAT LESSON!!! In fact, I'd argue starting and running a real business is pretty much as hard as it's always been. People are confusing a shift in expenses with a revolution in economics.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Web 2.0 in limbo? Let’s get a grip
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  I had a feeling you would be dropping by, Seth. You know the funny thing about saying "It's different this time?" Sometimes it really *is* different -- and refusing to acknowledge that is just as much an example of blinkered, head-in-the-sand behaviour as the opposite. Was there a distributed server cluster like Amazon's S3 back in the first bubble? No. Or if there was, it was orders of magnitude more expensive than what startups can currently afford -- that's a real difference in economics. So is the existence of Google Apps, and of Amazon's EC2 and Simple DB, and even of Basecamp, for that matter. Those things make a difference -- maybe not enough to turn a dumb idea into a smart one, but enough to make it easier to try them both out and figure out which is which. In the last bubble that didn't become obvious until after the IPO.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  And another strawman falls to the that venerable blogger weapon, the Big Sneer ...
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Trolling for links: The top tech bloggers
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Ah, the wonders of the bogosphere, where anyone, I mean the BigHeads, gets heard, and it's so democratic, I mean oligarchical ...
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Trolling for links: The top tech bloggers
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mattcraven  And exactly how, Seth, do you think they got to be big heads? Which reminds me that I really need to finish my post on that very topic. Matt
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Bah, humbug. IF YOU'RE NOT ON THE A-LIST, YOU DON'T GET HEARD! And then you get a bunch of A-listers and A-list-wannabees whiners attacking you. The proof is the simple problem of claiming that worthiness just happens to manifest almost exclusively in well-off white men (aka Where Are The Women)
  • • 3 months ago
    •   The blogosphere as high school, part XVII
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   dave  Hi Seth, are you on Twitter? It's a reshuffling of the deck. Get your ass over there and tell your tale. I really liked your piece about Wikipedia, btw, and sent it around to all the people who follow me on Twitter. Also, it seems like the Guardian is kind of A-listish. Is it not?? Keep on truckin dude!!
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  • Seth Finkelstein  I should make a FAQ. This one is "The MSM shouldn't generalize about blogs"
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Seth Finkelstein  "actual news" means not bloviating, opinionating, punditing, etc. but finding out things that are, well, new. There is extremely little of it, and the web-hype was that all the "citizen-journalists" would be generating a huge amount of such news. Really, one of the most frustrating things I find in these discussions is the necessity of repeating, over and over, the elementary points at issue.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Smith's point is not that MSM is perfect, but that blogs are essentially the echoing part with nothing else. Note: Perhaps the most depressing of them is the fact that despite the massive proliferation of news-headline websites and "citizen" news sites (that is to say, blogs), there is no more actual news being found and reported. In brief: The evidence shows snake-oil (blogs) doesn't help. Blog-evangelists cannot deal with this as a fact. They have to launch into attacks on the writer, distractions, fallacies, etc, because THEY NEED TO GET ATTENTION. And the way to get attention, is by playing to the crowd. Which is sort of Smith's point. [Pre-emptive: "The MSM plays to the crowd too!" . Sometimes. The problem is blogs have much less else.]
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Seth, the biggest problem with Russell's statement is that it just isn't true. "There is no more actual news being found and reported" is just an out-and-out lie -- or at least, not supported by the facts. For one thing, the Pew report focused mainly on cable TV, not online -- and even it noted that there was more coverage, it was just coverage of the same stories (which, as I pointed out, were pretty important). And don't even get me started on what the phrase "actual news" means. On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 7:32 PM, Disqus
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Talk about fallacies!!! You definitely believe in being unfair.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Seth Finkelstein  That turns every refutation of blog-evangelist snake-oil into a media forum, which I think is unreasonable. I do not see the need to follow every short statement which points out that the web hype is unfounded and untrue with wearing a hairshirt. "This snake-oil doesn't work. In fact, it makes you sicker than conventional treatment". "Hey! In fairness you must point out mainstream medicine doesn't always work either. Side-effects were invented by mainstream medicine!"
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  In other words, you don't believe in being fair. Point taken. On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 12:56 PM, Disqus
  •   Tim Burden  In fairness, the proper analogy would be: "You shouldn't use snake-oil because it has side effects." "Hey! That's not a good reason to abstain from snake-oil, because mainstream medicine has side-effects, and nobody thinks that's bad. What's the real argument against snake-oil?" Now to bring it back around: Smith: blogs are bad because it leads to a million sources reporting the same thing. Ingram: Wait, MSMs do that too. that's not a good argument against blogs. See, Seth? Mathew was doing the logical fallacy thing before you got here.
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  • Seth Finkelstein  The fallacy here is formally called "Tu Quoque" ("You Too Fallacy"). Your assertion ("You shouldn't ...") would mean that nobody could ever point out that the hype of the blog evangelists is false (unless they were perfect themselves).
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  That's great, Seth -- I'm quoting (OK paraphrasing) the Bible and you're giving me Rhetoric 101. I know that if we were on the debating club in high school, I would get a negative mark because of my logical fallacy. My response? Whatever. My point is that in terms of balance and fairness, and all that is good and right and true in our society -- perhaps even our universe -- it would have been nice if Russell had admitted that the same failings he is criticizing were invented by mainstream media. That is all. On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 9:21 AM, Disqus
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  • Seth Finkelstein  Bah, humbug - facile, blog-evangelizing argument because, well… it’s easy. You do several rhetorical fallacies, which I see over and over in blog-boosting posts. Claim: Writer points out news coverage is not getting better Fallacy: Say MSM is not great. Of course, the writer didn't say that. The blog-evagenlist just finds it a good strawman to knock down. Then there's the two-step, "blog" means "journalism", except when it doesn't. Oh, why bother, I've been around this too many times :-(
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  It's not a rhetorical fallacy, Seth -- it's a criticism. You shouldn't point out the mote in someone else's eye if there's a 2 by 4 in your own, I think someone said. It's a simple matter of balance. And the word "journalism" is a lot broader than you imply -- oh, why bother, I've been around this too many times :-) On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 12:52 AM, Disqus
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  • Seth Finkelstein  If you want to see what I mean by sycophants, read: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/the_book_of_ess.php Regarding the rest, I'm keeping quiet for the moment.
  • • 6 months ago
    •   Wikia search: Let’s give it a break
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  Keeping quiet, Seth? I'm shocked :-)
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  • Seth Finkelstein  "ants in the desert erecting a giant anthill" - you said it, not me! Little ants on the bottom and a few kings of the (ant)hill :-(
  • • 6 months ago
    •   Video interlude: Techmeme time-lapse
    •   Mathew's comments
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  • Seth Finkelstein  But isn't that (infrastructure over product that proves itself) almost all of "Web 2.0"? And his main source of attention? [Do you see why I tend to just say "Bah , humbug"? :-) ]
  • • 7 months ago
    •   Deadpool claims another victim: Edgeio
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  A fair point :-)
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