Elizabeth Lawley captured David Weinberger’s opening remarks at the Corante Symposium on Social Architecture the other day. The part that really caught my eye was a recounting of the social aspect of these do-it-yourself media tools:
Tosses out a list of tools (wikis, weblogs, email, IM, etc), then asks what these things have in common?
- they connect people to people
- they tend to be relatively low-tech, small, bottom-up, inexpensive
- very human, suffused with human voice
Key points: using these simple, inexpensive tools, you can make real connections with the right people for your business. It’s not without some risk, and there’s a learning curve involved, naturally. But the rewards are great. Yes, there is hype, but there are also really valuable connections to make.
When he was starting Groove Networks, Ray Ozzie kept one of the top exec blogs. A natural for a leader in collaborative software, right? I’m pleased to say that Ray is following up on his mondo Web 2.0 memo from a few weeks ago by restarting his blog, this time as the CTO for Microsoft. Why does someone such a huge task devote time to blogging? Ray says:
As in the past, it’s not my intent to be pitching our products here. We’ve got plenty of mechanisms – old school and new – that work well for that sort of thing. But to the extent that I’m excited about something, or I think there might be a different angle that you might be interested in, I’ll chime in.
Mostly, though, it’s my intent to use this as a channel through which to reply and converse with you in a manner that scales.
Nice: blogging lets you have a conversation that provides both intimacy & scale.
Tech journalist Dana Blankenhorn shares some of his likes & dislikes after touring a sample of corporate blogs. For Dana, the best blogging emphasizes the day-to-day unpredictability involved in creative problem solving. He likes it when bloggers let their hair down, when the writing feels human, real, revealing. So do we. So do our readers. We know, because they, in turn, share of themselves in comments, emails, other blog posts. Real communication catalyzes real connections. Here are some of Dana’s other points:
Let’s start with what I like to see:
- Good thoughtful writing.
- Unpredictability.
- The feeling that there’s a person there.
- Availability of comments.
- An RSS feed that at least tells me what I need to know about an item before it’s truncated because they’re looking for ad revenue.
- Some reporting that involves more than a hotlink would be nice.
The WSJ released their list of must read blogs today. We mashed them up in a single feed found here (just paste it in your news reader).
WSJ In-Crowd Feed
The feed mashup was created using FrankenFeed (in alpha) – soon to be re-released as part of the Big in Japan: Web 2.0 Toolbox.
Our most ‘snarky’ client, D Magazine, just reported in their blog that Lisa Loeb is on the hunt for a mate. For those of you not in the ‘know’, Lise is from Dallas and attended Hockaday. So in keeping with the times she has her own reality show titled #1 Single to document her search. WTG FB for breaking this news!
Last year advertisers were scared to advertise on blogs according to BL Ochman because, "Fear, ignorance and the knowledge that a lot of pioneers got shot." Well that is all over.
Scores of advertisers like Audi and Budget Car Rental are using blog advertising with great success. Read BL’s post here.
Folks like BL Ochman and Hugh Macleod bet their careers on blogging. BL and Hugh used to chat on the phone and ask one another,
"Should we get jobs? Are we nuts? Will anyone ever hire us as bloggers?"
Today it is lucrative and all-consuming for more and more marketing folks. Hugh’s so busy he doesn’t have time to answer his own email anymore…
I ran across an old report from Forrester that I thought was interesting to read in hindsight: "Blogging: Bubble Or Big Deal? When and How Businesses Should Use Blogs." There is an updated powerpoint you can download for free (after registration) here. Here is the summary:
Although Weblogs (blogs) are currently used by only a small number of online consumers, they’ve garnered a great deal of corporate attention because their readers and writers are highly influential. Forrester believes that blogging will grow in importance, and at a minimum, companies should monitor blogs to learn what is being said about their products and services. Companies that plan to create their own public blogs should already feel comfortable having a close, two-way relationship with users. In this document we recommend best practices, including a blogging code of ethics, and metrics that will show the impact of blogs on business goals.
Related reports include:
Alex asked me to reblog his post on PodServer here. So here goes:
This afternoon we had a Big in Japan meeting and the guys presented several new features, a couple of which were interesting enough to share. So I have explained PodServer here. So if you need to catch up do so. For the rest of you, here goes:
Feature One: PodServer makes it easy to create, store and share your podcast by simply uploading an mp3. Each time you create a new ‘show’ you upload it to your podcast and it becomes available to anyone subscribed to your feed. The relationship is simple – 1 person per podcast. What if the relationship model could be broken wide open? That is exactly what the Big in Japan guys have done.
Imagine that you are a member of the Book of the Month Club. Now you and the rest of the club can get together once a month to review your thoughts of the book, but what if you could time-shift the meeting? Each of you could record your thoughts in an mp3 and upload it to the Book of the Month Club Podcast (i.e. anyone in the club could upload their mp3) and the podcast would be a combination of all of your thoughts. This could work for public debate on topics (maybe not as well), but for limited groups it might be interesting. Thoughts?
Feature Two: FrankenFeed for podcasts. Imagine that you are a fan of three different VC podcasts and you want to share them with your friends. You could send all three RSS feeds (in their long URL glory) to your friends or you could use FrankenFeed to combine them into a single VC Podcast Feed. As you found new VC podcasts you want your friends to listen to you could simply add them to the original VC Podcast Feed without bothering your friends – they would just get the new content in the original feed. Neat, huh?
PodServer is written with Ruby on Rails and features touches of Ajax. Today it is deliverying ‘alpha’ podcasts and should be launched (in beta) as part of the Big in Japan toolbox next month.
Today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram features Weblogs Work in an article on "Internet, 2.0." They really key in on the story of Alex creating elfURL while sitting in a session at the SuperNova conference earlier this summer. Aman did a nice job of synthesizing all the excitement going on right now.
