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I love to think about the end user or reader; where would bloggers be without them, right?
On the other hand, its all well and good to think about services and some vague wish that someone would just create a plugin to magically solve the problem of missing conversations, but if as you put "The winners won’t be those that control the most data — the winners will be those that channel the most data — and those that create the most value on top of the data flow."
... then by default, if bloggers are those that are "creating" content, and services are the ones adding it, then bloggers will *never* be the ones creating the most value, unless they will, by necessity, have to evolve beyond mere blogging to creating services as you suggest, to complement their blogging.
publish2 dot com :)
No, seriously, the post is very services-centric, but I'd love to hear any suggestions about how bloggers should tackle it (I mean besides linking out to generously to every post that is relevant or interesting, which is what most bloggers ought to be doing anyway).
Because I'll be honest, Scott. I am not developing a service and have no plans to do so -- and I *know* you're not necessarily suggesting that bloggers start doing that.
... or are you? :)
Cheers
tony.
I already stated my perspective as a blogger:
"If Shyftr or FriendFeed or anyone else wants to enable their users to comment on my blog posts, I say fine — so long as I can easily display any comment created on their services over HERE. Heck, I’d even give them a feed of the comments created here to display over THERE."
"How about a WordPress plugin that gathers all the comments about my blog posts on FriendFeed, Shyftr, etc. and displays them right here?"
Bloggers should be able to aggregate on their blogs all of the comments on services. And they should make all of their comments available for posting to those services. You should be able to comment on a blog post anywhere and see all of the comments anywhere.
It's called a Pingback -- and many of the Bloggerati have abandoned them as useless because they are a spam target. Yet all you have to do is embed a microformat within that will chronologically tag it to a post, or even thread it within other external comments from the same source.
Develop a microformat for the enclosure, and some Wordpress genius will have a plugin to auto-insert them into the comment stream by Wednesday.
Great post...I agree with you point about open data exchange being the key...Indeed our Service (SezWho) is focussed on building an open data exchange framework. Take a look and let me know what you think.
-Jitendra
To filter signal from noise, and to make the vast quantities of information manageable to the user, there has to be intelligent, old-fashioned editing.
Crowd-based voting is one method of selecting what to read - but it's only one method, and like all methods it has biases built in.
My crystal ball shows an increased role for selective information channels, and for people / machines / combinations who can select things that others will appreciate spending their precious time looking at.
I'm not saying it will be exactly the way editors on print publications have always worked, just that the day of the smart filter is yet to come. A degree of reintermediation, if you will.
Very interesting blog you have here.
"The winners won’t be those that control the most data — the winners will be those that channel the most data — and those that create the most value on top of the data flow."
Publishers and content aggregators are slowly coming around to the fact that just pushig out the content is not enough; users are bringing ther own tools, albeit a fractious toolset, to carve it up content, mold it, discuss it, share it and publish something all their own to their own community. I agree with you; the winners will be the companies that have the vision to not only supply content, but also give their customers a platform to engage with the content as well as a means to self - publish back into the company's domain.
Second, I don't know why this site is getting so much attention. It's unattractive, it has yet another stupid "we dropped the vowel" Web two-point-OH name and, did I mention it's ugly? With the exception of TechCrunch, most of the blogs they're syndicating are much prettier. Really, it looks like yet another content site and you're all giving them free publicity. I don't understand, why not give some other ugly site like Today.com the same attention?
Part of me is really beginning to think there's a conspiracy behind every Bitchmeme.
"If Shyftr or FriendFeed or anyone else wants to enable their users to comment on my blog posts, I say fine — so long as I can easily display any comment created on their services over HERE".
Quite. Where are *their* RSS feeds..?
"Look!... out there... don't you see it? It's... beautiful! ...Let's prepare!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disintermediation
"In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: 'cutting out the middleman'."
Similar to the 90's when every software company was afraid to develop something because once it showed promised Microsoft would develop a competitor and squash them, how do you envision people monetizing open data exchange where they 1.) create a competitive advantage for themselves, and 2.) don't just show Google the way to exclusively make even more?
And before I go, let me reiterate that the world you describe is the one I want to see I just don't yet know how an entity besides Google can effectively monetize it on any reasonable scale.
(BTW, I'm using IE7 and your comment preview button is not working.)
Yes, agreed, the "take out" aspect of RSS feeds and the convenience of moving the conversation for a quick take-up is hmmm, convenient. And for techie/developers "oh just give me a simple command line interface" and "one basic tool for reading the whole internet in one sitting" I see the attraction.
But if you talk to real people - not your developer friends - you'll see that they like "dine in" networks. A "Facebook" break, catching up with "MySpace" friends. Time set aside for specific tasks.
Twitter is different, agreed, but that's because of the synchronous communication aspect. And that's a lot of the attraction - realtime updates for time critical instant communication vs time-out, focussed breaks for non-time critical discussions.
Add to that the move by ordinary people to lock down their own data - the social spammers are about to move in en masse - aggregation is gonna get a whole lot harder to sell unless you can a)absolutely guarantee that UGC will appear only on those networks the creator wants (including those posts on the private herpes forum you made :P) and b)provide a look and feel that offers the social texture layering that normal users expect. Not devs with a toilet roll of "same look, same feel" readers but a rich Purpose, Places and Profiles led experience.
There is not ONE web, there are as many webs as there are people on it. And we enjoy and consume our media differently. I accept you like the "take out" option, but me? I'm a fine dining "dine in" kinda gal. :)
My two cents worth and now I've spent it :(
NOTE: Preview is not working for me either - Flock here.
By the way, the above note goes directly to Mike Schinkel's comment - how do you monetise someone elses (UGC) content? We give away everything for free - including troubleshooting support on your wordpress preview button - how do you monetise that? Welcome to the new social network digital economy. :)
To take it to another level, or maybe from another angle, I'd love a way to aggregate all of my comments on other sites (just like this one) to my own personal site to see what topics I'm currently discussing (and encourage others to continue the discussion on those sites). I've considered a identity portal linking all of my online identities through the Google Social Graph API, and I think this aggregation would be a perfect way to improve that concept if it could be done in an automated fashion. Sort of like a reverse trackback ping if you will.
Google’s business model isn’t about controlling data or people — it’s about CHANNELING data and people. The more people and data that pass THROUGH Google, the more money Google makes. That’s why they offer a free blogging service and want to offer free internet service. That’s why they are evangelizing OpenSocial."
Well, yeah, but their market dominance as an intermediary now means that they DO. That's what the SEO industry is all about.
BUT...this past weekend I just wrote a blog post here about how Google's business model with Gmail is to do just the opposite -- hoard the data and don't let anyone out. So within any company, you can have multiple models -- some enabling the free flow of data, others locking it down.
I totally respect your position, but the solution I propose doesn't strip you away from your user experience. It does give me the option, if I so choose, to aggregate my various conversations where I can see them all at once.
And who knows -- maybe one of my regular site visitors will end up interacting with and meeting new people from my Twitter experience.