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Jon Husband
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2 years ago
in Understanding Neighbors and Places on outside.in Blog
Will you have any sort of API that will let this service interact with blog editing tools .. say, such that it is pinged by a blog post about a business or a service or an event in a given neighbourhood composed in an external blog editiing tool ... or maybe posting an external hreview-microformat (standardized format) Review post about a restaurant or a gas station or whatever ?
2 years ago
in Is there an echo in here? on Mathew's comments
This is a new set of conditions for human beings, and yet it involves our oldest tools .. symbols for making meaning used to grope and struggle together towards shared meaning and understanding. I've always believed that blogging (or expressing oneself on the web through personal publishing, or whatever) will follow a similar .. and sometimes different .. process as acquiring language, or learning another language. In other words, people will start doing it, emulate others, give each other advice and correct each other .. hit a plateau, rest for a while (if any of you have ever worked hard at acquiring another language you'll know it can get physically taxing after a long day of using the neurons differently), and then start again ... and then all of a sudden you'll notice greater fluency and range.
I suspect that the coming 3 to 5 years will see more (quantitatively) and greater variety of what so far I call blog-like derivatives, and the blending of blogging with wiki-ing (hmm, I guess that's WetPaint ?) and other application that support the dynamics of personal publishing, hyperlinking, pointing to others, social bookmarking, tagging, etc. to a wider range of purposes in a wider range of human and organizational activities.
It is for sure that keeping to your beaten track will narrow your world more and more, and that is a recipe for us replicating, by and large, what we already do in real life at work and with friends. One of the great promises of this marriage of technology and sociology is the expansiveness and learning that is possible if we choose to work consciously at breaking patterns and developing new habits.
I suspect that the coming 3 to 5 years will see more (quantitatively) and greater variety of what so far I call blog-like derivatives, and the blending of blogging with wiki-ing (hmm, I guess that's WetPaint ?) and other application that support the dynamics of personal publishing, hyperlinking, pointing to others, social bookmarking, tagging, etc. to a wider range of purposes in a wider range of human and organizational activities.
It is for sure that keeping to your beaten track will narrow your world more and more, and that is a recipe for us replicating, by and large, what we already do in real life at work and with friends. One of the great promises of this marriage of technology and sociology is the expansiveness and learning that is possible if we choose to work consciously at breaking patterns and developing new habits.
2 years ago
in The elephant in the kitchen on Scobleizer
There are already many different types of personall or subject-related logs on the Web now .. hundreds of thousands at least that are active, if not several millions .. that are updated somewhat regularly, that contain links, and / or photos or video clips or podcasts or mp3's. Sifry parses and analyzes that kind of stuff, no ? 9as do many others). And as you point out there are many many logs that are empty of one form of symbol or another, but still may be communicating something to someone(s).
And different people use them (logs) for different purposes .. to teach, to learn, to amuse, to avoid other things, to yell, to pontificate, to practice activism or advocacy, to connect, to have an aklternate social life .. and so on. It's like Dave Weinberger has often said .. the Web gives new meaning to the question "what is a dociument ?" So too with logs on the Web.
And yes, there is a large segment that is emerging where service providers are trying to find ways to make money. Since it is the content (ideas, concepts, info, links, images) that attracts many (but not all) readers, an important element of this new environment is the drive towards monetizing content through forms of online advertising (which are also morphing as advertisers learn more about the dynamics of online sociology and psychology)
I also believe that what we call "blogs' today will morph into various forms .. what I like to call blog-like derivatives .. where the derivation comes from purpose, usability, added-value functionality, etc. Different platforms and services will increasingly seek ways to offer services to important and / or lucrative niches .. but in a future of increasing (and dynamic) niches ... what those niches are, how they behave and what they want is very very likely to keep on changing. And imo blogging and other personal publishing platforms will have to keep adapting in responsive ways.
So, the definition(s) of what a blog is today may become different, or mutiple, a year from now, or 3 years down the road .. whatever .. and whenever.
To pretend that YOU know all about what blogging is somewhat arrogant, I think. Even though you may read 1,000 or more blogs via your RSS aggregator (something you used to proclaim proudly about). That only leaves hundreds of thousands or several millions that you haven't looked at, haven't read and never will .. in all sorts of areas, addressing all sorts of topics and issues. There are by now many many people who have been blogging regularly for as long as you have .. they may not be blogging about the kinds of issues you have been, or for the purposes you address, but I consider those I know who have been at it for quite a while and who have grown or refined their blogging, just as "expert' as you.
And as communities (whether of 5 regular readers or 20,000 regular readers) form and de-form they will define (sometimes or often dynamically) their purpose, their context and how they relate to the logs on the Web that for whatever reason they enjoy. I have seen blogs that had thousands of regular readers die quick deaths when the changes the author made were not well thought through or were condescending to important parts of the audience / community.
I also think there may very well come to be ways to monetize, although not in large amounts, many different forms of "blogging" even if they are not pulling enough regular eyeballs to attract high-paying CPM's or utilize the highest paying keywords for PPC.
It's a vast area, and people are an intrinsic (or the fundamental) part of it .. to define it narrowly and introduce some relatively arbitrary standards based on a few high-profile peoples' opinions about how things should be is narrow-minded and short-sighted. There's so much more that can, and should, and will be done by the vast diversity of people who decide that they will work at sharing something .. even if it is stupid fart jokes or obscure extinct-plant-based vegetarian recipes .. with people who may just be interested by that tiny stupid topic.
I honestly thought you would know better than to proclaim yourself one of "the" authorities, when so much has been written about the turbulence and changeability of network dynamics (ssshhh, even in your book).
And different people use them (logs) for different purposes .. to teach, to learn, to amuse, to avoid other things, to yell, to pontificate, to practice activism or advocacy, to connect, to have an aklternate social life .. and so on. It's like Dave Weinberger has often said .. the Web gives new meaning to the question "what is a dociument ?" So too with logs on the Web.
And yes, there is a large segment that is emerging where service providers are trying to find ways to make money. Since it is the content (ideas, concepts, info, links, images) that attracts many (but not all) readers, an important element of this new environment is the drive towards monetizing content through forms of online advertising (which are also morphing as advertisers learn more about the dynamics of online sociology and psychology)
I also believe that what we call "blogs' today will morph into various forms .. what I like to call blog-like derivatives .. where the derivation comes from purpose, usability, added-value functionality, etc. Different platforms and services will increasingly seek ways to offer services to important and / or lucrative niches .. but in a future of increasing (and dynamic) niches ... what those niches are, how they behave and what they want is very very likely to keep on changing. And imo blogging and other personal publishing platforms will have to keep adapting in responsive ways.
So, the definition(s) of what a blog is today may become different, or mutiple, a year from now, or 3 years down the road .. whatever .. and whenever.
To pretend that YOU know all about what blogging is somewhat arrogant, I think. Even though you may read 1,000 or more blogs via your RSS aggregator (something you used to proclaim proudly about). That only leaves hundreds of thousands or several millions that you haven't looked at, haven't read and never will .. in all sorts of areas, addressing all sorts of topics and issues. There are by now many many people who have been blogging regularly for as long as you have .. they may not be blogging about the kinds of issues you have been, or for the purposes you address, but I consider those I know who have been at it for quite a while and who have grown or refined their blogging, just as "expert' as you.
And as communities (whether of 5 regular readers or 20,000 regular readers) form and de-form they will define (sometimes or often dynamically) their purpose, their context and how they relate to the logs on the Web that for whatever reason they enjoy. I have seen blogs that had thousands of regular readers die quick deaths when the changes the author made were not well thought through or were condescending to important parts of the audience / community.
I also think there may very well come to be ways to monetize, although not in large amounts, many different forms of "blogging" even if they are not pulling enough regular eyeballs to attract high-paying CPM's or utilize the highest paying keywords for PPC.
It's a vast area, and people are an intrinsic (or the fundamental) part of it .. to define it narrowly and introduce some relatively arbitrary standards based on a few high-profile peoples' opinions about how things should be is narrow-minded and short-sighted. There's so much more that can, and should, and will be done by the vast diversity of people who decide that they will work at sharing something .. even if it is stupid fart jokes or obscure extinct-plant-based vegetarian recipes .. with people who may just be interested by that tiny stupid topic.
I honestly thought you would know better than to proclaim yourself one of "the" authorities, when so much has been written about the turbulence and changeability of network dynamics (ssshhh, even in your book).
