We talked with Chris Messina about Barcamp, Teh Space and other building blocks for independents. He's an open source rabble rouser that we always learn a lot from & are inspired by.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: barcamp, brian oberkirch, chris+messina, coworking, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
(Photo by Tantek)
A great interview with Chris Messina a bit ago about a lot of things. (Can you just talk with Chris about one thing? We think not.) Here he talks about microformats — a standardized approach to structuring metadata making it easier for everyone to remix & reuse stuff to further the emerging info ecosystem. It's the first in what we hope is a series with lots of folks talking about microformats. Tantek? Kevin? Ryan? We'd also like to interview other developers, designers, business guru types or anyone interested in taking up the cause of microformats.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: brian oberkirch, chris messina, microformats, podcast, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
Rebecca Blood gave a great keynote at the New Communications Forum in Palo Alto in early March. We talked with her later that day about the evolution of blogging and how connection is really the key ingredient to all this.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: brian oberkirch, new+communications+forum, rebecca+blood, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
We talked with Anil Dash to get his POV on the good, bad & ugly of corporate blogging. As usual, he's charming & insightful. Can you tell we're Anil fans? We even have the t shirt.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: anil dash, blog comments, blogs, brian oberkirch, corporate+blogging, movabletype, sixapart, typepad, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
A few of the folks from the Palo Alto PR 2.0 discussion got together for another chat this week. I talked with Mike Manuel, Josh Hallett and David Parmet about a post Mike did a few weeks ago on the social media services gap. We focus on the unique challenges agencies face when working in social media, and what we as workers on the frontlines can do to improve.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: brian oberkirch, david parmet, josh hallett, mike+manuel, podcast, pr2.0, public+relations, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
We chatted with Josh Hallett & Jeremy Harrington about how designing blogs and highly interactive Web applications is a bit different from traditional interactive design challenges. I think we're just beginning to wrap our heads around designing for data (check out Tom Coates as a great guide) so we'll keep these types of podcasts going.
Listen to the podcast:
Technorati Tags: blogs, brian oberkirch, design, hyku, jeremy+harrington, josh hallett, podcast, tom+coates, web 2.0, web+design, web+development, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
We talked with Jim & Charles of Jambo before the last Refresh Dallas meeting. Check out our first vlog (look out, Irina) — at the Weblogs Worknotes page, download the file directly (~19MB .mov) or grab the whole feed.
Technorati Tags: brian oberkirch, charles+ribaudo, jambo, jim+young, refreshdallas, vlog, Weblogs+Work, Weblogs+Worknotes
In the final installment of this morning's Sphereorama, here is a podcast interview with Tony Conrad, CEO of the new blog search service. I talked with Tony a few weeks ago when I was visiting Southpark and getting my Web dev on. We talk, of course, about why they felt compelled to build a new blog search service, the features included in today's release, and the new culture of sharing powering most of the Web ventures we are excited about.
You can check out the full Weblogs Worknotes set of casts, listen to the MP3 (~16 MB) or subscribe to the feed.
Technorati Tags: sphere, tony+conrad, weblogs+work, Weblogs+Worknotes
A few more thoughts on Sphere's launch. I'd like to talk more generally about how we think about social media and how we talk about and build the tools we need. I have a baseball metaphor, which may be appropriate, given that Sphere CEO Tony Conrad is a baseball geek like I am.
I think we are confused when it comes to social media. Even though we talk about micromedia, microbranding, getting small fast, when it comes to success metrics we revert right back to the lingo of Big. How many results returned? How many page views? How many subscribers? Downloads? Links, comments, etc. This is blockbuster thinking smuggled into a microchunked world. Even today's leading blog search service (who has done a *ton* to advance this field & spread microformats, etc.) perpetuates this kind of thinking with their Technorati 100, most favorited, emphasis on the raw numbers of the blogosphere, etc. Dave Sifry's insights about the magic middle are far more powerful than the quarterly stat pr0n around the growth of the blogosphere.
In his review of Sphere today, Steve Rubel runs a test to find the number of results Sphere returns against other engines, as though that is a useful way to figure out which has more value. Gabe Rivera once remarked about the strangeness of that: that you would measure the effectiveness of a filter by looking at what it doesn't filter out.
So, I applaud Sphere in that the focus is put on quality, relevance, connection. (That's the point of this blog, after all.)
Connection is more than a link. Or, rather, links are not the only measure of connection. Sphere starts to offer some tools to grok that dynamic.
So, we can see a bit more clearly what is actually going on. Social media engagement is nuanced, time consuming. Working the edge means doing your homework. You can't merely get a list of the top bloggers and spam them with your press release link. You have to understand the web of connections they exist in: the ecosystem. That's what Sphere starts to give us.
To baseball. To the untrained eye, baseball games are won & lost in 'key at bats.' Does the guy get a hit or not with the tying run on second? While 'true', this sort of analysis leaves out the thousand small interactions that led up to the game situation. Baseball, too, is a collection of small moments loosely joined into a larger outcome. How often did the pitcher go 3 & 1 and have to throw a hittable pitch? Did an outfielder miss a cut-off man and allow an extra base? Did the shortstop bobble a ball that made a sure double play into a fielder's choice and extend the inning? Did a pitcher go 3 & 2 and give the runner on first an extra head start? Did someone fail to bunt or hit behind a runner to move them along? Did the pitcher throw too many pitches and run over his pitch count early, bringing on an early substitution. Did a batter pull a ball away into a ground out instead of hitting it back through the middle or going the other way for a rising line drive?
You get the drift. Anyone can tell you the final score or highlight the 'big' plays. None of which really gets you inside the game, which is a game of small moments. A game of inches, as the old chestnut has it.
Social media are collections of small moments. One reader at a time. One comment at a time. One post a time. It's a microchunked world. Remixed, recombined. We are nowhere near having the analytical or technological tools to fully engage this new ecosystem. But the only way to get there is to recognize the shortcomings. Our reliance on blockbuster metaphors. Mass mediated thinking. I welcome the launch of Sphere, the next Barcamp, Umair's forthcoming book, and all your comments as ways for us to get there.
Technorati Tags: david sifry, gabe rivera, sphere, steve rubel, technorati, toni+schneider, tony+conrad
We've been playing with Sphere for the past week and are able to start sharing it with our clients today. Sphere is a new blog search and discovery tool. (Hey, don't we already have Technorati, IceRocket, Google Blog Search, Feedster, etc.?) Sure, but this issue is far from solved. First, as we monitor for our clients and help them track conversations, it's clear that no one tool is comprehensive enough to rely on. Secondly, we waste a good deal of time on spam blogs & the leading services have yet to really work through that problem.
So, Sphere. Sphere's basic premise is that everyday folks want to get right at the good stuff. They don't need a zillion features that would interest power bloggers — they want to find good posts about topics they care about. In other words, give me fewer results that are more relevant to my search. Give me less to wade through. Filter for me, don't just find. The focus is on simple search & introduction to other blogs and other media discussions related to these search terms.
Sphere builds its index three ways: link structure (which T'rati prioritizes), analysis of meta data and semantic analysis of the post content. Sphere then lets you review its results and use them as a jumping off point in a number of ways. First, you can use its blog search results filtered by relevance (the default) or recency:
You can also use sliders to customize the date range you want to search for something — around a certain event, say.
Once you've identified a relevant link, you can easily find out a bit more about the blog itself by hitting the profile button.
(More is coming on these blog profiles. They'll add descriptor text to this initial bit of information.)
Then you can move off into discovering other relevant blogs for certain search terms by using the Featured Blogs. Sphere CEO Tony Conrad said that Sphere can generate dynamic featured blog lists for about 15,000 terms today.
Here are the featured blogs you get when you search for 'podcasting'. You can also suggest other blogs to include, and I expect the results to improve as time goes on and more users help groom the system.
You can also see how the conversation is being carried out in other media, using Sphere's Related Media link.
Here you can see that a search for 'blogging' gives us Webshot photos using that tag, Yahoo news stories that are related, as well as books and podcast listings.
The cool thing is: Sphere is creating links between relevant content where none previously existed.
The most whiz bang example of this is using the Sphere bookmarklet — Sphere It!. You install the bookmarklet in your browser toolbar, and click it when you want to see what relevant blogs are saying about any Web content that you are reading. Let's say we're reading yesterday's story about Apple's song pricing. Sphere It returns the following results:
Again, Sphere has created these connections through metadata and semantic analysis, so I can follow blog discussion about the topic, even if the blog in question hasn't actually linked to the article I want to use as the basis of my search. Kind of like having a memeorandum engine in your browser, aimed at whatever topic is important to you at the time.
There is a great deal of discussion out there today about Sphere. Check out the tech.memeorandum conversation.
Mike Arrington has a thorough review and a podcast with Tony Conrad & Toni Schneider about the launch.
Om has a rundown the initial investment for Sphere.
Sphere is one of the first companies involved in Adapative Path's New Ventures program, and Ryan Freitas has an extensive essay detailing the design and development process for the service. The whiz kids at Mule Design also lent their handiwork.
Technorati Tags: adaptive+path, mule design, new+ventures, sphere, toni+schneider, tony+conrad
