DISQUS

I would also suggest being clear on why you want to communicate with bloggers. Do you want them to provide you with feedback, commentary, or ideas? Are you trying to get them to relay your message to their readers? Or are you trying to learn more about the industry/brand/communities they interact with so you can develop your own relationships down the road?

I would love it if the Google Alerts I receive weren't for data published weeks ago!

"What does it take to create the attentional environment needed for the sustained intellectual work demanded of the reader."

Here's the start of a list:

1. Interest (assuming engagement is voluntary)
2. Community (to reinforce and encourage engagement)
3. Something to read (seems obvious but how this is created may be relevant)
4. Situation (including time and place to read and engage)
5.
6
7.
8.
9.
10.
5.

One challenge to sustain the value of the printed monograph will be the ability to create environments where sustained partial (in)attention is not the norm. Book (your term is monograph) creation and book consumption benefit substantially from sustained attention on the part of author and reader(s). Technology wise I see something like the Kindle fostering that more than general browser based access.

I agree - subsidized media will always exist.

But not everyone will always be satisfied in every situation with what they can get "for free" that is being paid for by someone else.

Some users will be willing to pay for what they value very highly -- high quality performances as opposed to amateur, expert medical opinion instead of non-name first year residents, novels by best selling writers as opposed to fanfiction. Willingness to pay will be dependent on circumstances and need.

Whether you call it monetization, payment, or subsidization, at the end of the day money has to change hands. Content is not created by people who have died of starvation.

Are you arguing for treating information as a type of public property whose creation and distribution should be subsidized (via taxes?) as a public good?

You seem to be saying that "it will be free as long as someone else pays for it." This approach tends to break down, though, when end users are also content creators.

While I basically agree with this, especially when a robot pretends to be a human, I'm not sure where to draw the line between "authentic" and "unauthentic" communications. Using a search engine to search Twitter messages, for example, might be thought of as "unauthentic" by some people who say, "Ha - you're following so many people you need software to keep track of what they're saying!" Using add-on tools to group the people you follow could be viewed as a similar intervention. These things are just tools, and some people use the tools to manage communications with large numbers of people. If I get an obviously automated message, though, I do "unfollow" the source, too.

Arthur Godfrey did it, Willard Scott did it, C. Everett Koop did it, why can't Chris Brogan do it?

People should stop being so sanctimonious about condemning the selling of access to trusted communication channels.

As long as there is disclosure and it is possible to shut off access to advertising channels we no longer trust, it's fine with me.

Dennis McDonald
Alexandria, Virginia
http://www.ddmcd.com

I agree with Dennis that "collaboration" is an important topic -- when did he figure that one out? -- but having witnessed a number of technology adoptions over the years I believe a lot of the "resistance" we see to Web 2.0 stuff has to do with understanding and ease of use, not to actual resistance or logical cost benefit assessments.

He is right to put social media into the overall context of web impacts on daily life and business. And even if the term "social media" makes his skin crawl, one of the main reasons social media are growing in popularity is because -- surprise -- they are social. They enable people to work and communicate in a more social, person to person fashion.

In a society where traditional organizations, processes, and systems are built around depersonalization and repeatability, social enablement of even basic business processes can be a significant step. But it takes time. And this has all been said before.

I agree in principle with much of what you said, with one significant caveat: not everyone agrees with what constitutes "news." Some people need certain types of information immediately and don't care about the "professionalism" source. For them, a Twittered message suffices.

For others, for certain topics they are happy to wait till they receive the morning paper or turn on network TV to get an edited, concise view of some event that occurred yesterday.

We make a major mistake if we think that everyone has the same needs. The essence of capitalism is figuring out how to meet those diverse needs profitably and consistently.

So, for some things -- like being aware of the well-being of my family members who live in Los Angeles -- Twitter has been a great boon for me. But I still periodically check Yahoo News and scan the morning Washington Post.

I had forgotten how good that movie was!

You should listen to the DataPortability.org podcasts, too, for more insight into why it's going to take so long for "social data portability" to happen without a few large vendors weighing in and knocking heads.

My take: unless I can control who can see what, I'm not in favor of "social data portability."

What did you say was the relationship between search volume and voting patterns?

Everything you say is true Chris but trade associations have a distributed governance model that may restrict the success of traditional bottom up or viral approaches. Top level commitment and interest will be a key otherwise individual efforts may wither on the vine.

Dennis McDonald
Alexandria, Virginia
http://www.ddmcd.com

I have another, although radical suggestion: local news media should PAY bloggers, podcasters, and other creators of "user generated content" to republish their content. This will be an indication of the value of the content and will result in more attention being paid to placement, promotion, and ultimately, pricing of advertising by the local outlet.

I've been surprised at how many times I've been approached by sites of various kinds to "republish" my stuff for free, and some of the requesters are reputable properties whose sites are already crawling with ads. Granted, I'm no A-lister, but in our economy cash on the barrelhead still counts for something.

Dennis McDonald
http://www.ddmcd.com

If you were to retrieve my birthday from Facebook you would find I was born somewhere around 1900.

I think this switching function is something people should be able to do easily on their own web pages, rather than have links to other services appear on every social network we belong to.

It was earlier this year that I finally added "corruption" to the list of tags I use on my blog: a bill was introduced to cut off Federal aid to colleges if they didn't police file sharing on their networks. As if there are not more important things for colleges and universities to worry about?!?

My advice to Facebook: fix the problem; tell your customers; tell your partners; don't let the blogosphere bully you.

My use of Twitter has caused me to think much harder about what to put in my blog. But Twitter is not so good a conversational tool, unless you follow all parts of the conversation. (I actually blogged about that issue here: http://www.ddmcd.com/turing.html.)

Why are people always giving the French such a hard time?

Even though Facebook has "momentum," somebody is probably going to figure out how to break the "walled garden" factor to share information. You can already get access to some of your "friends" info via RSS so I figure access to group info and app data cannot be far behind.

Another concern for me has been the closed nature of Facebook. If I create content (text) there it's only accessible to Facebook users. If I create content for my blog, it's available to everyone. Since I rarely use Linkedin for generating content (which is possible with the Answers system) that's usually not an issue.

Scoble is right because he understands the role of influencers and links in generating traffic. Indirect evidence of this in my own case comes from examining the search generated traffic I get versus the link referral traffic. Numerically the search generated traffic is greater but quality wise - quality being defined as "people hitting on posts for the reasons I wrote them" -- I get "better" traffic on my little specialized blog from links and referrals, since so much of my search generated traffic seems to be tangential to my real topics.

For example, I get a ton of hits because my last name is the same as a famous fast food restaurant.

While I don't have advertising, I would still think that advertisers would prefer quality over quantity, given the specialized nature of my site.

ps - say hi to Jeremiah for me next time you see him.