Profane Blogging Gets Washington Post Writer Fired
Washington Post journalist Michael Tunison was fired for blogging at Kissing Suzy Kolber, a humorous sports blog. Apparently, the Post was unhappy with the language Tunison used in the blog. Tunison used the pseudonym Christmas Ape while blogging and was fired not too long after revealing his journo job in this post where he says he works for a "dying medium."
Editor & Publisher posted this email from Tunison in a recent article.
"There was no conflict of interest between my writing for Kissing Suzy Kolber and my work for The Washington Post. The blog is not a journalistic endeavor and it is not something I was paid for until I revealed my identity. It is a humor blog about the NFL, whereas my job for the paper was to cover local news in a suburban county outside Washington, D.C. It is beat that has nothing to do with a professional football league.
"I also find it troubling that I was summarily fired for engaging in something that is core to the spirit of The Washington Post: full disclosure. Even if editors had a problem with the language used in the blog, they should have been able to respect that my goal was not to defame The Post, but to be forthcoming with my readers."
It certainly doesn't sound like the blog clashed with his Washington Post writing.
There's an update on the KSK blog called Ape Got Dooced. Dooced referring to when blogger Heather Armstrong was fired from her job in 2002 for writings in her blog Dooce.com.
The Discovery Channel is reporting that a study published in CyberPsychology and Behavior found that there may be some psychological benefits to blogging and/or using online communities like MySpace. The study followed about sixty people who were updating their MySpace blogs regularly. After two months of blogging these people felt more confident and more involved.
Researchers James Baker and Susan Moore have written two papers investigating the psychological benefits of blogging and regularly updating personal Web pages with information that invites others to comment.
The first, published in the latest issue of the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior, compares the mental health of people intending to blog with that of people not planning to blog.
Moore says the researchers messaged 600 MySpace users personally and directed them to an online survey. A total of 134 completed the questionnaire; 84 intended to blog and 50 didn't.
"We found potential bloggers were less satisfied with their friendships and they felt less socially integrated, they didn't feel as much part of a community as the people who weren't interested in blogging ... they were also more likely to use venting or expressing your emotions as a way of coping," Moore said.
"It was as if they were saying 'I'm going to do this blogging and it's going to help me'."
And it seemed to do the trick, as the researchers' second study shows.
This study, which is yet to be published, was conducted two months later. The researchers sent out questionnaires to the same group of MySpace users; this time 59 responded. Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.
The study found that the bloggers (technically MySpace users in this study) reported feeling "less anxious, depressed and stressed" after two months of blogging. To be fair the people going into the two month study were optimistic that blogging would help them in the first place. It is also interesting to know that there is a journal called CyberPsychology and Behavior. You can read more about the bi-monthly peer reviewed journal here.
Will geeks become an endangered species? Investor and prankster Yossi Vardi delivers this lecture on the dangers of blogging. Men especially should not ignore the risks of "local warming." This is the laptop local warming research the video is referring to. You may not want to keep your cellphone in your pocket either. The presentation includes one of Zoli's posts from 2006.
Wired has an article about Screenwriter Diablo Cody who they describe as an "up-and-coming scribe who's making waves in Hollywood." Cody was a stripper in Minneapolis before chronicling the details in her blog and in a book called Candy Girl. She's now a screenwriter involved in several projects. Cody first became noticed because of her blog called The Pussy Surprise so it is no surprise that one of Cody's tips for finding Hollywood success it to start blogging.
Step Two: Start Blogging and Wait to Be Discovered
After college, Cody left her native Chicago for the romantic Twin Cities -- trading Post-it Notes for pasties while exploring the frosty Minneapolis underworld as a stripper. She described the perils of pole-dancing on the popular Pussy Ranch blog.
Because there are only a few blogs online these days (Technorati currently tracks a mere 112 million), it was a safe bet that a successful Los Angeles literary manager (Mason Novick) would find Cody's work and inquire from 3,000 miles away about her literary ambitions.
"Before Mason found me, all I'd written was the blogs for City Pages in Minneapolis," Cody said. "He asked me if I'd thought about writing something else. I started my book after that."
Once you get noticed you then write your memoirs. Afer that you write and sell your first screenplay. It's all pretty simple. Cody tells Wired, "I think there's room for more talented bloggers to break into Hollywood. It seemed like a fluke when I did it, but I won't be the last blogger to have a film produced." Cody's path was unusual but she is correct that she won't be the last blogger to make the jump to Hollywood. The next blogger to sell a screenplay could be you.
Over 400 Bloggers Plan to Blog All Night For Blogathon 2007
This year's Blogathon will be begin on July 28th at 6:00am Pacific Time. Each year a group of bloggers post every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight to raise money for charity. One of the bloggers partipating this year is Raymond Angel who blogs at Amassed Lust and also has a live show on Ustream.tv called Rockstar Live. Raymond blogs that he will also be broadcasting live this year on a webcast called "Blogathon TV."
Blogathon is an annual event in which participants like me will post a new blog entry every thirty minutes for twenty-four hours for charity.
This year I'm also going to be broadcasting LIVE for the entire 24 hours on "Blogathon TV" which will be a webcast in which I take a look at what is happening during the Blogathon.
Raymond Angel is raising money for Doctors without Borders. You can read more about his Blogathon TV idea here.
If you are interested in participating you still have time. The Faq says signups don't close until the day before the event. However, you are running out of time to both signup and get sponsors.
Study Finds Companies Firing Employees for Leaving Blog and Forum Comments
Wired's Threat Level blog cites an interesting study that found that nearly 10% of companies have fired at least one employee for leaving comments on a message board or a blog.
Nearly ten percent of companies have fired an employee for violating corporate blogging or message board policies, and 19 percent have disciplined an employee for the same infractions, according to a new survey from Proofpoint, a messaging security company.
Almost a third of companies "employ staff to read or otherwise analyze outbound email," while more than fifteen percent have hired people whose primary function is to spy on outgoing corporate email. A quarter have fired an employee for violating corporate email policies. Twenty percent of the companies and almost thirty percent of companies with more than 20,000 employees had been ordered by a court or a regulator to turn over employee emails.
Wired's Threat Level also notes that Proofpoint, the company behind the survey, is a "vendor that sells message monitoring equipment." Proofpoint's survey is very timely as one of the big business news stories this week was the trouble Whole Foods CEO John Mackey got in over comments he left on a Yahoo dicussion forum under the name "Rahodeb." Mackey's blog was even put on hold (via Ars Technica).
The fact that message board comments were lumped in with blog comments in this study is a little unfair to the blogosphere but there may not be much that can be done about it. Corporations tend to frown on employees leaving comments anywhere -- whether it is a blog, website, news article or online forum.
Paula Neal Mooney has a big list the includes the earnings of a number of bloggers. You probably saw the USA Todayarticle describing how tech bloggers Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) and Om Malik (GigaOm) have built businesses out of their blogs. If you are curious about what other bloggers make you should check out Paula's list of blogger pay.
The list isn't all-inclusive. For example, you will find Michael Arrington on Paula's list (it says he makes $1.8 million in ad revenue annually) but you won't find the blog-related income for Om Malik or Michelle Malkin. However, the list does provide the earnings for a wide range of bloggers from Mario Lavandeira (PerezHilton.com) who makes $468,000 - $832,000 to Lucia Liljegren (The Knitting Fiend) who makes about $3,000 a year from Google ads. Some of the annual blog earnings for other bloggers on the list include Darren Rowse ($360,000 or more), John Chow ($126,712), Randy Brown Grown Up Geek ($75,492), Thilak Raj Rao: Tech Buzz and Blog Talks ($36,735) and Matt Coddington: Net Business Blog ($12,000). The income is wide ranging but this is a long list of bloggers earning a good income or good supplemental income from their blogging activities.
The AFP reports that words like blog, wiki, blogosphere and folksonomy have topped a recent poll of hated Internet words. Folksonomy was found to the most irritating web word of them all.
"Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki" have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published Thursday.
Topping the list of words most likely to make web users "wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard" was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system.
"Blogosphere", the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; "blog" itself was third; "netiquette", or Internet etiquette, came fourth and "blook", a book based on a blog, was fifth.
"Cookie", a file sent to a user's computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while "wiki", a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth.
Folksonomy is an irritating web word but it is used more often than you might think. Folksonomy has over 11 million results on Google.
Study Finds 39% of Bloggers Admit to Blogging Harmful Comments
The BBC reports that a new study commissioned by Croner, a UK human resources firm, found that 39% out of 2,000 admitted to making "harmful comments" in their blog.
More than a third of UK bloggers risk the sack by posting derogatory or damaging details about their workplace, boss or colleagues, a survey claims.
Human resources company Croner, which commissioned the study, warned that such bloggers could be sacked from their job for gross misconduct.
Croner surveyed 2,000 people who keep a personal internet blog or diary and 39% said that they made harmful comments.
Bloggers should consider the potential impact of all postings, Croner said.
A company named YouGov ran the study for Croner. The article doesn't elaborate on what kind of content qualifies as "harmful comments." Past surveys by Croner have focused on other employee habits that employers might not like such as this survey which discovered that 1 in 3 employee exaggerate an illness to get more time of work.
David Hauslaib's Jossip Initiatives is launching Stereohyped a new blog targeting black readers. Stereohyped offers a dozen posts a day about topics like fashion, beauty, politics, music, film, and books. The website says that, "Once you blog black, you never go back." The announcement was made in a press release.
Helmed by editor Lauren Williams, a Washington, D.C. native who has
been spearheading the blog's creative effort, Stereohyped is published by
Jossip Initiatives, the New York blog brand behind insider media blog
Jossip, award- winning gay lifestyle blog Queerty, and celebrity tabloid
blog MollyGood.
"The black community needs a blog of its own like Stereohyped," says
editor Lauren Williams. "Whether we're dealing with the Don Imus scandal or
potentially welcoming the first black president with Barack Obama, African-
American readers are craving a news and entertainment site that's entirely
dedicated to them. Nowhere else on the web is there something like
Stereohyped."
"Launching a blog for the black community just makes sense," says
Stereohyped's 23-year-old publisher David Hauslaib. "We're heading into
this with creative people holding degrees in African-American Studies, an
appetite for informed analysis, and plenty of experience with gossip," he
says. "We're bringing a great editorial mix to Stereohyped. And in the end,
serving our black readership will matter most."
Jossip Initiatives also publishes Jossip.com, Queerty and MollyGood. According to the press release Jossip Initiatives is claiming a monthly readership of seven million across the network.
The Wall Street Journal has an article about how blogging can land you a job. A couple years ago the WSJ would have been a very unlikely place for such an article but times have changed. The article says corporate recruiters are surfing blogs -- especially in the tech and media industries. A Wal-Mart recruitment manager is one of the recruiters surfing blogs for potential employees.
Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. "Blogs are a tool in the tool kit," he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.
In addition to blogs that focus on their industry or field of interest, recruiters say they check candidates' blogs about noncareer-related topics for evidence of writing skills and clues to how well rounded they are.
Most blog-related recruits are professionals in technology and media because jobs in these fields often require knowledge of the blogosphere, says Kirsten Dixson, a founding partner at Brandego LLC, a career-management firm in Exeter, N.H., that specializes in personal branding.
In June, Brian Balfour's blog, SocialDegree.com, inspired an unsolicited offer for a product-manager job from an executive at Zoom Information Inc. "I was impressed by the points Brian was making and the way he was making them," says Russell Glass, vice president of products and marketing at the Waltham, Mass., technology company. The blog also offered details about Mr. Balfour's work history and education. "It was a no-brainer to give him a call and see if he'd be interested," Mr. Glass says.
Blogs offer recruiters a tool for assessing the skill level of the people writing the blogs. This is something that isn't nearly as easy to do with a resume. Bloggers will want to avoid the obvious things that will turn off recruiters -- foul language, discussing drinking and partying, lewd photographs, etc. If bloggers avoid the negatives and write well enough about the industry they work in or are interested in then it's possible to get a job from blogging -- even the Wall Street Journal says it's true.
The big discussion today in the blogosphere is about a proposed Blogger's Code of Conduct. It is currently the top story on Techmeme. Tim O'Reilly has posted a draft of the Blogger's Code here on his blog and here on Wikia. Tim O'Reilly says the "code" is a draft based closely on the BlogHer Community Guidelines. The code was devised following the recent blogger death threats. There is a sheriff type of badge for blogs that adhere to the code's guidelines. There is also an "anything goes" badge for blogs that will not follow the guidelines. This badge contains a stick of dynamite about to explode. Eventually the Blogger's Code of Conduct and badges bloggers can use will be posted at bloggingcode.org. Here is the first draft of the Code.
We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.
We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we'll delete comments that contain it.
We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
- infringes upon a copyright or trademark
- violates an obligation of confidentiality
- violates the privacy of others
We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
We connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.
When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible--see above) and ask them to publicly make amends. If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.
We do not allow anonymous comments.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
We ignore the trolls.
We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them--"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it." Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.
There has been a backlash against the code by many bloggers and against the idea of badges for blogs. It is most likely that bloggers that choose to ignore the code are not going to post any kind of badge at all or they might alter the badges like Duncan Riley did here on a post at 901am.com.
Some parts of the code like not being libelous, not stalking and not infringing on copyright are things that we all hope reasonable bloggers are going to follow whether or not they have agreed to a code. There are also already laws that make many of these activities illegal. It is the parts of the Blogger's Code of Conduct about anonymous comments and trolls that are the most controversial. A lot of blogs allow the posting of anonymous comments and some bloggers talk to the trolls. Robert Scoble admits to feeding the trolls. Ensuring that commenters are who they say they are is also not an easy thing to do even if you wanted to. Zoli notes that commenters can hide by "just registering with bogus credentials."
The New York Times has an article about the Blogger's Code of Conduct. Jeff Jarvis points out that the code gave the Times an excuse to use "World of Nasty Blogs" in a headline. The article includes a photograph of the founders of BlogHer.org, where a similar code of conduct has been helpful in building that community.
The Guardian has an article that says many people are blogging off and abandoning their blogs or not posting as much as they used to. The article also cites a Gartner study that found 200 million blogs have been abandoned. They list a few examples of bloggers that haven't been posting as much lately.
Sandra Gidley, the Liberal Democrat MP, hasn't posted since January 2006. In one of her last entries, she wrote, "I made a new year's resolution to resume the blog, but to be honest the beginning of the year was depressing" (Gidley was one of those who called for Charles Kennedy to go). Tory MP Theresa May hasn't posted since December, stating the obvious with the comment: "OK, so my previous promise to make my blogs more frequent may have fallen by the wayside."
Sandra Gidley, the Liberal Democrat MP, hasn't posted since January 2006. In one of her last entries, she wrote, "I made a new year's resolution to resume the blog, but to be honest the beginning of the year was depressing" (Gidley was one of those who called for Charles Kennedy to go). Tory MP Theresa May hasn't posted since December, stating the obvious with the comment: "OK, so my previous promise to make my blogs more frequent may have fallen by the wayside."
Celebrity blogs are faring little better. "Oh my goodness, I am so sorry it has taken me so long to write!!" posts the actor Gillian Anderson in one of the last entries on her website in August last year, which shows she can't have been that sorry. Barbra Streisand's sideline in political commentary can't be dependent on keeping up the pressure - her last entry was four months ago. Some blogs, such as Mariah Carey's, in which she famously left rambling, incoherent messages before going into therapy, seem to have disappeared altogether.
"You have to be opinionated and passionate about what you write, or your enthusiasm will wane," says Drew Benvie, social media adviser for Lewis PR and a blogging expert. Benvie thinks now is the time to dig out your old password and get back to blogging. "Companies are starting to see them as a way of promoting their products. Write about films and you might get tickets to screenings; write about gadgets and you might be sent gadgets to test."
There is no question that many bloggers do not keep to a daily or even weekly schedule. Many blogs have probably also been abandoned over the past couple years. However, people still have plenty to say and love talking about themselves so the idea that blogging will go away completely is silly. What will happen is that blogging will peak at some point but there will always be networked communication and publishing tools that resembles blogging. The peak could literally be once every young person has some kind of profile somewhere. This seems like it is almost the case for the 13-21 year-olds. Tools like Flickr and Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace also show that blogging can take a wide variety of forms: blogs, microblogs, photoblogs, social network profiles, etc. These variations on blogging will also make it very difficult to pinpoint exactly when blogging has peaked.
CNET has an article about the start of blogging that includes an interesting timeline on blogging. The article discusses several early bloggers including Justin Hall, Carolyn Burke, Jorn Barger and Dave Winer.
Was the first blogger the irascible Dave Winer? The iconoclastic Jorn Barger? Or was the first blogger really Justin Hall, a Web diarist and online gaming expert whom The New York Times Magazine once called the "founding father of personal blogging"?
Or did all three merely make incremental improvements on earlier proto-blogs? The answer is most likely "yes" to all of the above. In truth, awarding the title "first blogger" is more than a little tricky because the definitions of blog and blogger are slippery. Any definition should probably include posts sorted by date, with the newest posts at the top and the rest archived for future use (criteria that would eliminate the Drudge Report, for instance).
Winer is a pioneer of Web syndication techniques and editor of Scripting News, which launched on April 1, 1997.
He boasts on his site that Scripting News "bootstrapped the blogging revolution" and that it is the "longest currently running Web log on the Internet." A decade ago, however, Winer wasn't actually using the term "Web log," nor does he claim to have invented the term. Winer did not respond to repeated requests for comment from CNET News.com until after this article appeared. He replied in a post claiming "the first blogs were inspired" by Scripting News.
There were also a lot of lesser known people keeping web journals and online diaries back in the mid 90s before anyone called it a blogging. The article also talks about the .plan files that people used to pass around in Unix.
If you want to hear my thoughts going forward I suggest joining my twitter group: http://twitter.com/JasonCalacanis
you'll get like 2-15 alerts on your phone/AIM a day with my links, thoughts, discussions, etc.
I'm thinking of doing a week of Twitter-only blogging.... so, join now!
500 people are already on the group... crazy!
Clearly, Twitter is already reducing blog posts for some users. Some are suggesting that Twitter will become the place for short posts while regular blogs are used for longer posts and analysis. That's the long and short of it for now anyway.
The blogger at the Vancouver Housing Market Blog was blogging regularly until one day readers of the blog loaded up the site's homepage (or their RSS reader) to find this shocking message.
Things have changed on the off-line front. I have to go now. It has been a lot of fun. I might be back sometime in the future, but I need to stop for awhile anyway.
TaTa For Now.
And just as things are looking pretty grim on the housing front especially in the subprime market. The departure of the blogger at the Vancouver Housing Market Blog (VHB) resulted in this article appearing in The Tyee called, "Pop Goes Real Estate Bubble Blogger." The article says some of the blog's daily readers were shocked to read the blogger's goodbye message.
Usually, the VHB provides links, charts, stats and commentary (like about the number of properties on the Vancouver market and their average prices, historical patterns, comparisons between Vancouver and other cities) that have the implicit questions -- is this a bubble and will it crash?
His last post on Friday left no indication that a halt was in the works, so those who visited his blog on Monday morning expressed surprise. "This is very sudden and I am sad to hear that the mysterious VHB will no longer be making the prescient posts I have become used to reading over the past 12+ months," said a commenter named Mohican.
"Please!!! Don't go! She'll come round!! Just involve her more...She can do some graphs and you guys can research, together," said a commenter named Mighty Mouse.
"Well good luck with that. If you can, keep the site alive. It will be interesting to go back and check the comments in the future. We are going to look like either prescient geniuses or ignorant boobs. I don't think there is much in between," said a commenter named Freako.
When a local blogger covering a niche subject like the housing market disappears it can leave quite a hole. All that good fresh coverage and insight just stops coming. Since leaving the VHB blogger has returned to leave this message.
Thanks to all who have posted such nice things over the past few weeks. Life is going very well, thank you. I do miss blogging in a way, but on the whole it is better to get on with the coolness that is life. Enjoy the crash! (Whenever it comes . . .) VHB out.
It look like someone else will have to pick up the slack in local housing market coverage for Vancouver.
Calvin Klein is targeting the young blogging and text messaging crowd with a new fragrance called CK in2u and a new social network called What Are You IN2?. Did they base this campaign on some focus groups and market research that found bloggers buy tons of fragrances? Because it really isn't common knowledge that bloggers buy more of these products than anyone else. Or do they just think their campaign is so good bloggers will just have to buy some? The What Are You IN2 social network will launch on March 28th. The fragrance social network tie-in is a part of a new marketing campaign from Calvin Klein. The New York Timesreports that the marketing materials for this campaign actually include the following text.
"She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It's intense. For right now."
Valleywag has already created an ad based on this titillating marketing text. The fragrance is also being targeted to the "technosexual generation." Those are today's kids that apparently love to hook-up via blogs, IMs and text messages. The Hey Pretty blog explains:
I wasn't sure what the "technosexual generation" is either. Lucky, he goes on to explain. "Technosexuals" is apparently a new marketing buzz word for young people who use text messaging and blogging in order to meet and arrange hookups.
Yeah, yeah, I know. All the cool kids are doing it these days. But ew. Something about that description kind of makes me want to stop blogging forever and communicate with others only through Morse code. I feel, I dunno. Dirty.
Gawker says bloggers don't want to smell of blog and
the One Eleventh Ton Man remembers the smell of grunge. A post from the blogger who claims to have coined the word "technosexual" can be found here. If you want more coverage of the new in2u fragrance try Buzzfeed which has a growing roundup of links.
Future Competition for Human Bloggers: Super Intelligent Robot Bloggers
In the future human bloggers may face a new threat - robots that blog. These robot bloggers may have the advantage of having processors that are faster than our human brains and the ability to interface directly with the Internet. No typing necessary. The BBC is seriously reporting that South Korea is already concerned with ethical issues involving robots. They will be releasing the Robot Ethics Charter at the end of the year. South Korea's government also predicts robot surgeons by 2018.
A recent government report forecast that robots would routinely carry out surgery by 2018.
The Ministry of Information and Communication has also predicted that every South Korean household will have a robot by between 2015 and 2020.
The article also says that a UK study predicts that robots will demand the same rights as human beings before 2060. If the robots are smart enough to demand rights they will have no problem blogging.
Other bodies are also thinking about the robotic future. Last year a UK government study predicted that in the next 50 years robots could demand the same rights as human beings.
The European Robotics Research Network is also drawing up a set of guidelines on the use of robots.
This ethical roadmap has been assembled by researchers who believe that robotics will soon come under the same scrutiny as disciplines such as nuclear physics and Bioengineering.
A draft of the proposals said: "In the 21st Century humanity will coexist with the first alien intelligence we have ever come into contact with - robots.
"It will be an event rich in ethical, social and economic problems."
Even if all these robot predictions come true we humans should have at least another decade or two to blog freely without the threat of robotic competition.
Sahar Sarid at the Conceptualist brings up the possibility of a blogging subscription model emerging in the future. Sarid points out that newspapers, radio, television, etc all have subscrption models. Scott Karp, writing at the Blog Herald, discussed the concept more in this post.
The issue of whether any paid content online is "better than what you can get for free" has been debated since the dawn of the Web. What arguably makes some of the top blogs better than other blogs is that, by dint of their success, they have become scoop magnets, e.g TechCrunch, Engadget. That doesn't necessarily make their reporting or analysis better, but you can always get the information there first. Of course, if they were behind a pay wall, that advantage might disappear.
That's why the Seth Godin consultant model might be more viable. Darren Rowse at Problogger, for example, offers advice to bloggers equivalent to what you might get from a paid consultant.
The argument against a paid content model for blogging begins of course with ideology - there are many blog purest who would refuse to call a paid blog a blog. Blogging, traditionally, has been about openness and inter-connectivity, which a paid subscriber wall certainly does not foster.
In the future there will probably be some blogs run by experts in a particular field that will be able to charge a fee for access to their blog or feed. However, this will most likely be blogs/feeds that have to do with legal, medical and financial subjects that require an extensive knowledge base. There
have always been financial newsletters that people are willing to pay a fairly high fee for and there is no reason why this won't translate into paid blogs. But paying for blogs that simply offer blogging or marketing advice seems highly unlikely because there is so much of this information already readily available. If someone offering blogging or marketing advice tries to move their blog behind a subscription wall people will just go to other blogs offering similar content. There is no shortage of good blogging or marketing advice on the Internet.
The paid blogging model technically already exists as the New York Times has some blogs that are behind the Times Select subscriber wall. The Times has a blog called the Opinionator that can't be read without a subscription. There are several other blogs behind the Time Select wall as well -- see the "select features" section on the right.
The word "beme" was mentioned recently in an ABC News story (see the 4th page). Tom Hayes says he coined the word beme to describe a meme propagated by blogs and bloggers. Now Tom Hayes has a lengthier explanation of beme (via Doc Searls) on his Tom Bomb blog.
A beme is a turbo-charged meme made possible entirely by the existence of the network affect. A beme can be impactful because it is lurid--a photo of a panty-less Britney Spears, or humorous--a whimisical video of the band OKGO on treadmills, or gut-wrenching--the sad tirade by comedian Michael Richards. A beme can cement an idea with the public in a way that cannot be legislated or regulated. No legal effort by Cisco to enforce a trademark, for example, will make the public unlearn that Apple produces the iPhone.
A meme is old media, a beme is new media.
A meme takes off by accident, a beme by design.
A meme can take years to surface, a beme hours.
There are not very many mentions of beme on Technorati but it is a word that could ending up sticking.
A New Scientistarticle looks at new activities and habits of people in the Internet age like egosurfing, Google-stalking and being a Wikipediholic. Photolurking is probably the most disturbing activity discussed in the article.
Photolurkers spent most of their time online flicking through photograph albums posted by strangers
Whose looking at your family Flickr photos? Photolurking definitely has a creepy One Hour Photo feel to it -- as The Guardian suggested. The New Scientist article says two researchers at Lancaster University in the UK discovered photolurking.
Then there are photolog sites like Flickr. While most of us would rather die than be caught surreptitiously browsing through someone else's photos, there need be no such qualms about the private pics people put up on these sites. Haliyana Khalid and Alan Dix at Lancaster University in the UK have studied this new practice of "photolurking". Most people they interviewed who used Flickr and similar sites spent time each day browsing albums owned by people they had never met. They do this for emotional kicks, Khalid and Dix suggest: flicking through someone else's wedding photos, for example, allows people to daydream about their own nuptials.
What most of us find excruciatingly boring others apparently find quite fascinating. BuzzFeed has links to a few more blogs discussing the subject of photolurking.
Bloggers may also want to avoid this one:
Blog streaking: Revealing secrets or personal information online, which for everybody's sake would be best kept private.
Blogging under the influence is probably the best way to get yourself involved in a blog streaking incident.
A t-shirt being sold at CoolestShop.com features Samuel L. Jackson pointing a gun and the words "Say Blogosphere Again." The shirt features dark writing on a brown shirt which makes it a little hard to read. The t-shirt implies that Samuel L. Jackson will shoot you if you dare say the word "blogosphere" again. There are some bloggers who truly dislike the word. Boing Boing says it was fun for a couple months.
If you're tired of hearing the word "blogosphere" (which was kind of fun for a month or two in 2001) then this is the t-shirt for you: Samuel L Jackson in his Pulp Fiction persona, pointing a gun at the world and saying, "Say blogosphere again!"
The t-shirt is currently sold out but coolestshop.com appears to be in the process of getting more of them. We like the shirt but we also still like using word blogosphere now and then. Please don't shoot.
Dave Winer has posted a response to the ongoing blog comments argument. He says that a blog is the "unedited voice of a person" and that comments may actually interefere.
Do comments make it a blog? Do the lack of comments make it not a blog? Well actually, my opinion is different from many, but it still is my opinion that it does not follow that a blog must have comments, in fact, to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog.
We already had mail lists before we had blogs. The whole notion that blogs should evolve to become mail lists seems to waste the blogs. Comments are very much mail-list-like things. A few voices can drown out all others. The cool thing about blogs is that while they may be quiet, and it may be hard to find what you're looking for, at least you can say what you think without being shouted down. This makes it possible for unpopular ideas to be expressed. And if you know history, the most important ideas often are the unpopular ones.
Adding comments does not unblog a blog anymore than not having comments makes a blog not a blog. However, on some popular blogs comments do lead to a community atmosphere that may change the blog over time. Comments can make a blog more like a web forum if there are enough people leaving comments.
Those urging Google's Blog to add comments may be upset when Google finally does add comments and the conversation (and traffic) moves to Google's Blog and away from their own blogs. What if Techmeme added comments? Wouldn't this drain traffic from top comment blogs like TechCrunch?
Will some pro-community bloggers eventually argue that all blogs must have a feature like MyBlogLog in order to be a blog? Will they insist that these blogs allow little faces of other bloggers to appear on their blog? Will they argue that Google and other companies need these features on their corporate blogs in order for them to really be corporate blogs? There are good arguments that adding comments can increase traffic to a blog. There are also strong arguments that comments make a blog more interesting. However, there are not any good arguments that a blog is not a blog because it does or does not have comments.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics has released data about which Wikipedia articles bloggers most referenced from January 1st to December 10th. It isn't quite the entire year but it does give you an idea of what some of the top stories and top subjects of 2006 were.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics also said that Wikipedia outranks mentions of the term "encyclopedia" by a 6-to-1 margin. The BuzzMetrics press release also lists some Wikipedia-happy bloggers that frequently reference Wikipedia. The following blogs linked to Wikipedia 50 or more times since January 1st according to BuzzMetrics:
Boing Boing, Look at This, Micropersuasion, TCAL.net, SmartMobs, Gadling, Joho, Lifehacker, Metafilter, Gothamist, 2Blowhards, Splinters, Chris Abraham, Slashdot and Unmediated. No doubt there are probably many more bloggers that linked to Wikipedia at least 50 times in 2006 since that is only about once a week.
You are Time's new Person of the Year. Time has chosen "You" meaning YouTube users, bloggers, citizen journalists, etc. -- people who use Web 2.0 software and contribute to social media websites.
The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.
And we are so ready for it. We're ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.
And we didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.
While it is nice to see Time magazine acknowledging the power of the Internet, Time's "You" actually leaves a huge number of people out. As high as 99% of all the people are left out if you follow the 1% rule. Many people may read blogs and many people may look at the videos on video sharing websites but the majority do not contribute any content at all.
New Law Turns Bloggers, Web 2.0 Sites Into Obscenity Police Force
CNET reports that a new law drafted by Senator John McCain would require blogs, social networks and websites to monitor posts or profiles for "obscenity" and child pornography. Any blogger found lax in this required monitoring could be fined $300,000.
The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain and obtained by CNET News.com, would also require Web sites that offer user profiles to delete pages posted by sex offenders.
In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, the Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate warned that "technology has contributed to the greater distribution and availability, and, some believe, desire for child pornography." McCain scored 31 of 100 points on a News.com 2006 election guide scoring technology-related votes.
After child pornography or some forms of "obscenity" are found and reported, the Web site must retain any "information relating to the facts or circumstances" of the incident for at least six months. Webmasters would be immune from civil and criminal liability if they followed the specified procedures exactly.
Critics are concerned with the new burden the law would place on blogs, social media and Web 2.0 sites. It would obviously tax photo and video sharing websites. Kevin Bankston, an EFF attorney, told CNET that he is concerned about traveling down a "slippery slope."
Internet service providers already must follow those reporting requirements. But McCain's proposal is liable to be controversial because it levies the same regulatory scheme -- and even stiffer penalties -- on even individual bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites.
"I am concerned that there is a slippery slope here," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "Once you start creating categories of industries that must report suspicious or criminal behavior, when does that stop?"
According to the proposed legislation, these types of individuals or businesses would be required to file reports: any Web site with a message board; any chat room; any social-networking site; any e-mail service; any instant-messaging service; any Internet content hosting service; any domain name registration service; any Internet search service; any electronic communication service; and any image or video-sharing service.
CNET writes that another potential problem with McCain's bill are that the definitions of what constitutes child pornography can be very broad.
The U.S. Justice Department, for instance, indicted an Alabama man named Jeff Pierson last week on child pornography charges because he took modeling photographs of clothed minors with their parents' consent. The images were overly "provocative," a prosecutor claimed.
With the new law bloggers could become online police finding and storing any blog comments they find suspicious -- and being fined $300,000 if they miss anything. The law also requires website owners to remove any webpage that is "associated" with a sex offender.
The other section of McCain's legislation targets convicted sex offenders. It would create a federal registry of "any e-mail address, instant-message address, or other similar Internet identifier" they use, and punish sex offenders with up to 10 years in prison if they don't supply it.
Then, any social-networking site must take "effective measures" to remove any Web page that's "associated" with a sex offender.
CNET explains how "social-networking site" could also mean blog or forum based on the way the vague law is written. For a blogger to try and remove comments from a known sex offender they would have to match every user or commenter's name against an existing database of sex offender names. That is beyond the scope of what individual bloggers and many small companies are capable of.
The title of this post sounds like a strange question to ask but Andy Rutledge has a post about how social media can be boring, mediocre and possibly even civilization ending.
Mediocrity is the only possible result of a wide sampling of opinion or input. The only idea that can survive such a mechanism is one consistent with the lowest common denominator. The mob works to ensure that all other results are weeded out. Now, we might think that it is the highest common denominator that is promoted in this environment, but it's just not so. The "highest" anything is largely held by the masses as being discriminatory and elitist. So only the lowest common denominator wins out. The point is that in this sort of environment excellence does not survive.
Excellence is not the sum of opinions. Excellence is not born of consensus. Excellence is by its very nature something far outside the average. In fact, not even good is found in the average. Average is comfortable. Average requires no great effort. Average requires nothing exceptional. Average anything is..., well, just mediocre.
It is worth discussing how much value there is too social sites that let anyone edit or select content. There is truth in the idea that the content selected by online crowds is not always the best -- often it does seem like the worst content -- or the most sensational content -- rises to the top. Businesspundit agrees that social media can produce mediocrity. Businesspundit says the downside of easy publishing tools is that you have to put up with "a million yahoos."
I'm not anti-amateur, I'm just anti-mediocrity. Yes, low barriers to entry allow us to find the diamonds in the rough - the excellent writers and thinkers who otherwise would not have a publishing platform. Unfortunately, it also means we have to put up with a million yahoos who think they know way more than they do. Years ago I heard a minister say "if anyone tells you they have all the answers, run the other way." That's why I steer clear of Web2.0 pundits.
Not everyone agrees that the most popular videos on YouTube.com or the most popular stories on Digg are the best ones. That's why people turn to different blogs and websites for a different filter or a different perspective. Most bloggers are using social media websites as a tool and not as a way of life. Many bloggers allow comments but they certainly aren't turning their blogs into wide-open wikis that anyone can edit.
There is a problem with the argument that social media is anti-elitist because the people using social media are actually the elite. Remember over 97% of humans are blogless and most people in the world don't even have access to social media. Bloggers also do a good job of pointing out experts and some of the most popular bloggers in a particular niche are often experts in their field.
Andy Rutledge also seems to be linking social media mediocrity with the downfall of civilization.
Mediocrity and decadence: these are now our birthright and we work feverishly to ensure that they're the primary features of our social endeavors. This sort of thing has happened before. History is filled with stories of how societies, great and small, have followed this path. We can read about their beginnings and their inevitable endings, in books - and now in the so–very–accurate and august Wikipedia (monument to the wisdom of crowds - /sarcasm).
The waxing relevant engines of our culture are teaching us to follow a pat, clichéd script that has played out over and over again for millennia. Western culture is on the downhill slope and gathering speed toward the brick wall at the bottom. I’m talking about the hill where, at the bottom, lie the heaps of rubble that history refers to: great cultures all. Welcome to culture 2.0.
So, in a nutshell, Andy believes that crowds are grunting masses of baboons, and that anything that surveys a group of people will inevitably result in mediocrity. The great are pulled down amongst the rabble. Pretty depressing, right? At one point, Andy says that "Western culture is on the downhill slope and gathering speed toward the brick wall at the bottom." It made me want to crawl into bed with a copy of Wuthering Heights and a nice bottle of Dom Perignon and wait for the mob with pitchforks to attack my castle.
There is a lot about social media sites that is not praiseworthy. Many of the top 100 videos on Google Video are not important -- like the Guy pwned by girl! video (currently ranked 5th). Sometimes content selected or highlighted by social media sites as "the best" is often very boring, trivial, pointless, tasteless and/or stupid -- but most people using social media sites are conscious of this "reality tv" aspect of social sites. They also know that most of the people using some of these sites are very young. Social media won't end Western civilization and if Western civilization is nearing its end it isn't because of social media. Global warming, pollution, bird flu, crooked governments, censorship, nuclear war, rogue asteroids, exploding calderas are far biggers concerns and you can find them all discussed in blogs and social media websites.
California Supreme Court Protects Bloggers From Libelous Comments
The International Herald Tribune reports that a decision by the California Supreme Court gives bloggers, forum owners and publishers immunity from libelous comments posted on their websites by others. It is a good decision because bloggers should not be punished for any annoying trolls that stop by and post vicious comments and/or start flame wars.
The court, in a unanimous decision overturning a San Francisco appeals court ruling, said that those claiming defamation could sue only the original source of the disputed comments, not publishers or distributors, even if the distributor was an individual.
Internet users are protected by the same 1996 Communications Decency Act that grants immunity against defamation claims to publishers in most cases, the court said.
MSNBC.com has an article that includes what the California supreme court said.
In today's ruling, the California Supreme court said that granting such broad immunity for posting defamatory statements "has some troubling consequences."
Nevertheless, the court said, "Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area" people who contend they were defamed on the Internet can seek recovery only from the original source of the statement, not from those who re-post it."
Instapundit calls the decision a free speech victory for blogs. Talk Left posted a link to the PDF file containing the text of the decision. Tony Hung at the Blog Herald writes, "And to that I say - let the libelous trolling flame wars begin!"
Paid Content reports that BBC staff are now allowed to pay for content generated by the public but the BBC wants to make it clear that payment should not always be expected.
New guidelines tell BBC staff they can make payments to members of the public who send in footage from mobile phones or cameras, but "audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm," which will definitely put more pressure on the editors in judging whether to pay or not.
The new editorial policy guidelines state: "In return for payment we may negotiate an assignment of copyright or exclusive rights - but bear in mind that material other than photographs may be copied and used by other news organizations under 'fair dealing'."
Vicky Taylor, the BBC's head of interactivity, said that "We do not want to give people the impression that we will pay for hundreds of pieces of user-generated content," said Ms Taylor.
It sounds like if you want the BBC to pay you for a photograph or video you are going to have to have something unique that the BBC doesn't already have and they are probably going to try and buy exclusive rights to the content.
The Houston Chronicle is reporting that at least 30 Texas death row inmates have profiles on MySpace. These profiles aren't written directly by the inmates. Instead they are written by friends or family members on behalf on of the inmates.
They're prison inmates and many, including those on Texas' death row, have moved their cell-based ponderings from isolated anti-death penalty Internet pages to the popular social networking Web site favored by the younger set: MySpace.
At least 30 Texas death row inmates have MySpace pages created for them. On these personal pages they detail their likes and dislikes, just like anyone else.
"I think I'm a pretty funny guy. I have a wacked sense of humor," writes Randy Halprin, who was convicted in the 2000 shooting death of an Irving police officer. "I can be a big kid at heart. I'm a hopeless (and I mean HOPELESS) romatic (sic)."
To be clear, no Texas inmate has Internet access. Instead, inmates send letters, journal entries or blog postings to friends and families who create the pages for them and post their writings for them.
"This is not new," explained Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "The reality is that for many years death row inmates have had family and friends on their case, on the Internet, oftentimes to get pen pals and in some cases raise money for the defense."
A local ABC affiliate has details about one of the MySpace profiles. Another news story says there has been a request from the crime victims office for Houston Mayor Bill White for MySpace to remove the profiles.
Bloggers that blog about finding something very unusual can sometimes receive a big traffic surge. That's what happened to the Bent Corner blog when they posted about finding t-shirts for sale at Wal-Mart that contained the Totenkopf or Death's Head symbol once worn by German Nazi SS members. The shirts also contain the year 1978 on them.
I stopped in at Wal-Mart today after I got off work. I had to pick up a few things. As I was walking past the men's clothing area, something caught my eye. I noticed something weird over at a wall of t-shirts. One of the t-shirts had a design on it that looked remarkably like something related to Nazis. Specifically, the Totenkopf or "Death's Head".
I took a picture of it with my camera phone.
The Death's Head symbol was worn by the members of the German Nazi SS. The Totenkopf on the Wal-Mart t-shirt looks very similar to the divisional insignia of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. As you can see, It's almost an exact copy.
Bent Corner received 55,000 visits in a single day from the Totenkopf post. The blogger at Bent Corner also blogs that he received an email from Edelman, Walmart's PR firm, explaining that the Totenkopf t-shirts were stocked by mistake and that they would be quickly removed from Wal-Mart stores. In this same post, Bent Corner says that Wal-Mart isn't pulling the shirts fast enough and that gleeful teenage Nazi wannabes who saw his post have rushed out to Wal-Mart to buy the t-shirts.
Slight Increase in Youth Vote During 2006 Elections
The German Press Agency reports that there was a slight increase in voting by voters ages 18 to 29 during yesterday's midterm elections. The turnout for this age group was 13%. That seems very small but it is a 2% increase over the 2002 turnout of 11%. This age group favored Democratic candidates by 22% according to the news report.
Washington-Younger voters turned out in higher numbers in Tuesday's US congressional elections, giving a lift to Democratic candidates in a contest that gave the party control of the US House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years. "This is a new generation," Hans Riemer, political director of Rock the Vote, an organization that seeks to mobilize young voters, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "They're more involved, more engaged, and less cynical."
Exit polls showed that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast 13 per cent of all votes, up from 11 per cent in the 2002 elections, the last non-presidential national election. Voter turnout is typically higher in presidential elections.
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