Apr 27th, 2008 | Media 2.0, Social Media | 2 Comments
Clay Shirky, who teaches and speaks about “new media,” has posted the transcript of a speech he gave at the recent Web 2.0 conference, in which he talks about how TV as a whole is effectively a societal response to a surplus of leisure time — and how much better it would be if those excess brain cycles were used for something valuable, such as contributing to Wikipedia or other forms of “social media.” I really wish that Clay hadn’t written this particular speech. Why? Mostly because then there would still have been time for *me* to write it.
I must admit, the part about the gin never really occurred to me (go ahead and read the speech — I’ll wait). But the rest of it is right on track. Particularly the part where he describes the four-year-old looking behind the TV for the mouse. I’ve spoken to a number of groups about social media, and I always use my three daughters as examples: the oldest uses Facebook more than she watches TV, the middle one loves interactive fiction-writing sites like Gaia Online, and with the youngest it’s Club Penguin and Webkinz. To them, the most interesting kinds of media are interactive media.
Not surprisingly, more than one commenter among the dozens who have responded on BoingBoing’s post about Shirky (since his blog doesn’t have comments) argues that the author is guilty of social-media triumphalism, and that he is merely stating a preference for time-wasting with Wikipedia or Lolcatz as opposed to TV. One commenter says that his speech is like saying “now that we have Oranges no sane person is going to eat Apples, and anyone who grows Apples doesn’t understand how f’n juicy and delicious Oranges are… what a bunch of twits! amiright?”
This point has some truth to it. For every person who thinks that World of Warcraft builds leadership skills and watching TV is one step above drooling and whittling, there is another who thinks that CSI is gripping drama, and anyone on WoW is a brain-damaged geek living in his mom’s basement. There are plenty of ways for human beings to zone out and get very little accomplished — just look at golf, for example (or poker). But Shirky’s point is still a good one, I think: namely, that social or interactive media, however lame or goofy, has an added quality that sitting in front of a box does not. I’ll go along with that.
Jan 3rd, 2007 | Social Media | No Comments
Before too much time goes by, I wanted to take note of something that Muhammad Saleem wrote over on his blog The Mu Life about 7 ways to improve Digg. Muhammad, who is not only a top digger but also a top Netscape submitter and anchor, has clearly thought a lot about some of the flaws with the Digg model — including things such as the “Bury Brigade” and the problems with comments — and I think some of his suggestions make a lot of sense.
One of the most important recommendations, I think, is the first: Listen to the community. And I would add to that: “respond to the community.” If there’s one thing that Digg has not been terribly good at — during all the criticism about the changes to its algorithm to stop the “gaming” of the site, and the various other problems it has experienced — it’s responding to and interacting with the community.
At times, it seems like Kevin Rose and the gang want to have a community-run news site, but without having to actually deal with the community, or like they think that if they tinker with enough things behind the scenes it will become a smooth-running machine and no input from them will be required. I would argue they are wrong on both counts. A community isn’t a machine but a garden, and it takes work to cultivate and keep the weeds from taking over.
Muhammad has a bunch of other good suggestions, including retiring the Bury Brigade — which Steve O’Hear of ZDNet has been on the receiving end of — and being more explicit about the moderating and filtering of content that occurs behind the scenes at Digg. I encourage you to go and read the rest.
Dec 18th, 2006 | Social Media | 1 Comment
Over at Mark Potts’ site Recovering Journalist, he’s got a post with some advice for newspapers that want to allow comments on their news stories (as the Globe and Mail does) — and good advice it is too. Mark came up with the post after the Arizona Daily Star said it is reconsidering its decision to allow comments on its news site. The Star’s “reader advocate” says:
We hoped for tough but respectful debate. We posted guidelines prohibiting certain kinds of comments, but for the most part, we stayed out of the way and let readers speak. In the past month, though, more and more comments are violating our standards. Instead of offering constructive criticism, too many posts are just plain coarse.
To which Mark Potts responds with a list of things newspaper sites can do to prevent that sort of thing, including:
- Require registration and reader log-in… if you ask for registration and a valid e-mail address, it a) frustrates the drive-by crazies… and b) provides the newspaper with a way to identify participants so that, if need be, they can be admonished or banned from the site.
- Put a profanity filter into place… an upfront profanity filter forces people to calm down a bit and be more articulate
- Add “report abusive comment” links to every comment… this lets the audience pitch in to help moderate what goes on in the comments.
- Somebody should be monitoring the comments. Not editing them, not moderating them; just keeping an eye on what’s going on and acting immediately to zap anything that’s untoward and to notify members who get out of line.
As Mark says at the end, “Setting the proper tone for behavior in a comments area goes a long way toward enforcing that behavior: If participants see that the conversation is intelligent, they’ll tend to keep it that way. If it gets coarse and full of trolls, they’ll behave accordingly. Think of a comments area as being like a local bar: If it’s well-lighted and classy, it will attract a better crowd than the dark, nasty biker bar down the street.” Good advice.
Dec 18th, 2006 | Social Media | No Comments
If you like things like podcasts, video and a widescreen look to a website, then Digg has just launched a site redesign that will be a nice ChristmaHanuKwanakah present for you, as described by both Om Malik (at NewTeeVee) and Mike Arrington at TechCrunch. But will all of these new additions help to broaden Digg’s appeal, or will they just further dilute that appeal?
If you’ve been following the blogosphere, there has been a fair bit of controversy about Digg — not about it broadening its reach into general news and other areas (in fact, there’s been surprisingly little comment about that) but about it being rigged, about submitters taking money under the table (which I wrote about here), and so on. Jason Clarke has argued that Digg is useless.
It’s obvious that some of this is getting to other people too. Over at TechCrunch, one person says they hardly go to Digg any more because the comments are cluttered with morons, and that “As Digg gains more and more momentum to be mainstream we will see that it no longer becomes a barometer of cool but just another established website beaten by fragmented niche sites.”
There are definitely both risks and rewards to the way Digg is going. On the one hand, video is becoming more popular — and Digg’s crowd-voting system can no doubt bring its value (positive and negative) to that as well. But at the same time, adding podcasts and video streams and other features takes away from the streamlined focus on Web links that made Digg so popular (StumbleUpon, which got its start in Calgary, has also launched a video service).
As Digg-style voting tools get worked into other sites, it’s also possible that people might desert Digg for other, more focused sites in particular areas (the way Digg used to be for technology). Meanwhile, Peter Cashmore over at Mashable calls the changes “ridiculously overhyped as usual.” And Neil Patel at Search Engine Land notes that Digg has also made some changes that will affect submitters in subtle ways.
Dec 15th, 2006 | Media 2.0, Social Media | 2 Comments
The Fresno Bee, a newspaper owned by McClatchy — which also owns the Sacramento Bee and the Modesto Bee — has just acquired two community-media sites, FresnoFamous.com and ModestoFamous.com, for an undisclosed sum (hat tip to J.D. Lasica). The sites were founded by Jarah Euston, a former bond analyst who writes about the acquistion here. She and a small team built the websites up over the past two years to have 2,000 members and about 150,000 page views a month. The newspaper writes about the purchase here.
