January 6, 2008 at 10:07 pm · Filed under communication, community, content, media, politics, social networks, sport
Jeff Jarvis and Dave Winer have put together an interesting collaborative media review tool over the past few days. It’s worth checking out at http://twitcrit.scripting.com/changes.html.
The technology is simple. Get a Twitter account, track down and start following @twitcrit, then message @twitcrit with any media review that takes your fancy. So far so easy if you can script and rummage around an api. But let’s step back from Jarvis’ critique of the latest Democratic prez debate (hey Jeff, why all the hating on you boy Barack?) and look at what this approach does to media interaction.
The wonderful thing about Twitter is that it is a nice simple lightweight medium for one to many broadcasting. Using a browser, a desktop app or a normal SMS from a phone, anyone can send 160 characters of love, hate or debate to those that “follow” their tweets. There’s no walled gardens (Facebook etc.) which means the user can get information in and and out of Twitter with the minimum of fuss.
Up until now Twitter has been great in situations such as conferences, where, for a short period of time only, people need a one-to-many communication structure. It also did a job during recent Californian fires. But all of these uses have been somewhat simplistic. There’s not a lot done with the data on either side of the transport. Message is entered into Twitter, Twitter sends it on it’s merry way, tweet is read at the other end. Bosh!
But how about we start some smart aggregation as Jarvis is suggesting. How about instead of treating each tweet as an isolated many-to-one message, we aggregate it with other likeminded tweets so that we have many many-to-one tweets all sorted and bunched on the receive side. We then start building a picture of what the crowd is thinking on any particular subject, and importantly (as this really comes into its own in live situations) we get a picture of how the crowd’s collective mind is changing as the debate/show/movie/game is progressing.
So how’s this different from those calls to action for standard text messages during X-Factor and the like? Twitter is the difference here. All of this messaging takes place within a defined (but relatively open) infrastructure. We can follow our tweets. We can reply to others and we can interact on a plethora of devices in different ways.
Two applications immediately jump to mind. Elections. Live sport. Howard Dean and the rise of the A-List blogger made blogging the big story of 2004. Can Twitter have an impact this time around?
As for sport, we have a bit longer to think about that, but at the very least a live play-by-play of the Super Bowl, or the multimillion dollar 30 second spots that surround it is a goer in a few weeks.
Now, one final issue. What and how does big media get a piece of this action?
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December 3, 2007 at 4:59 pm · Filed under community, content, magazines, media, politics
Interesting piece from Jon Friedman of MarketWatch on the decline and fall of the magazine. And what the modern American editor is doing about it (not a lot in many cases).
Five easily bloggable points jump out:
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Take a page out of the playbook of what differentiated MSNBC.com from the pack. Have almost as many graphics and design experts as writers on staff.
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Provide a feature that you simply don’t have space for in your newsstand product:
namely, the back story. Readers love to know the Inside Story on a big event. Let your reporters explain HOW they covered big news, and give them an opportunity to tell their stories. Yes, some blogs do this, too, but not often or well enough.
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Make the sites as interactive as possible. Time took a good step in this direction by having its readers pick the questions it asks celebrities in its regular feature.
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Use the Web to explain the news as comprehensively as possible. Don’t simply report the story on the Internet — give such information as a chronology. The Wall Street Journal’s Web site routinely does this, and it pays off.
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Keep the staff nonbelievers as far away from the Web as possible. If editors or reporters are ambivalent about or hostile to the Web (like many have been at Time Inc., and you can’t fire them all), don’t let them corrupt
your site with their lethargy or disapproval. Listen, the Web is the most exciting part of a modern journalism enterprise for ambitious writers and editors. If they haven’t figured it out by now, to hell with them.
The point on graphics design vs extra copy writers I think is massive. It’s all too rare on news websites to see good illustration and it’s something that fits very well into the more protracted deadlines magazines allow.
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December 3, 2007 at 4:00 pm · Filed under community, content, media, politics
Vint Cerf comes over all Bono and guest edits the Guardian Media. Whatever that means. Anyways, the man who came second to Al Gore in inventing the internet gets to lay the smack down on what he feels is the state of the aforementioned internet. And he doesn’t mention his job not doing any evil once.
What Cerf does do though is take a good snapshot of what, after thirty or so years of bottom down development and growth, the internet is allowing us to do.
It takes decades if not generations to fully understand the impact of
such inventions. We are barely two decades into the commercial
availability of the internet, but it has already changed the world. It
has fostered self-expression and freed information from the constraints
of physical location, opening up the world’s information to people
everywhere.
He’s not wrong. But the next point is fascinating, particularly given his employers’ upcoming mobile spectrum bid(s):
And it still has a long way to go. Today, barely one in five people
around the world has access to the internet. Yet around three-quarters
of the world’s population lives within reach of a mobile network. In
the decade ahead, many people, especially in developing countries, will
have their first contact with the internet via a mobile phone.
This is a big point on a number of levels. Google are serious about being a big provider of what is looking like the planet’s primary platform for internet delivery. On top of that layer they are the undisputed heavyweight champ when it comes to organizing the information on that platform.
The second interesting point Cerf seeks to hightlight from what surely could have been a very long list is this:
Unlike previous communications technologies, the internet enables both
one-to-one and one-to-many communications, as well as many-to-many
(such as wikis or Digg). Distinguishing between these forms of
communication isn’t always easy. But the net is still a young medium,
and discerning where personal contact blends into public broadcast will
become easier as time passes.
Taking on Postman’s reading of McLuhan, message, medium and all the rest, this is a huge communications development we’re at the cusp of. How will true many-to-many communications for the masses transform the very nature of how we think and organize ourselves as a society. What sort of impact will this have on democracy as well as popular entertainment?
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