I spent Saturday at the Grassroots Technology Conference put on by the Organizers’ Collaborative. It was great fun, with an inspiring opening keynote by activist Nick Jehlen, useful workshops and a lunchtime talk by Professor Paul Niwa about his project charting connections in Chinatown, called BostonChinatown.org.
OK, I’ll admit it. The great weather has an impact on my productivity. I’ve been doing things, just not things I can contort into social media relevance. So forgive me as I indulge in a little personal photo-blogging:
This seal at the New England Aquarium knows just how I feel on those hot days…
I’ve been reading Daily Kos for years, and though I rarely comment or post anything of my own, the site is a favorite of mine because of the quantity – and often quality – of content relevant to me both about politics and about the world. There have been some excellent user-created diaries about the floods in
But any site with Daily Kos’ size and with the ability for anyone to post comes the occasional excuse for those tasteless or cruel to show themselves. The death of Meet the Press host Tim Russert on Friday became one of those occasions. I avoided, and am not going to rehash, the offenses of some and the responses of those who took offense. But it did make me think about community.
There’s the common perception that people will say things via cover of internet anonymity that they’d never say in person, and I’m sure that’s true, but it’s an overstated excuse. When any community reaches a certain size, there are going to be people who stir up trouble or say things they shouldn’t.
I’m going out of town for a few days, but I’ll throw out links to a couple of interesting articles I’ve read to keep you busy while I’m away.
First, a student’s Facebook group to track progress on a civil unions bill in Illinois has become an effective tool for activism. The group now has 9,000 members. Like many of these online activism efforts, it wasn’t started by anyone formally affiliated with any organization. Which makes these efforts both more amazing and, possibly, more ephemeral. Without the collected wisdom of an organization behind it, will these spontaneous efforts eventually reach a limit to their effectiveness? We’ve barely begun to harness the power of the web for activism, but many people much smarter than I, like Clay Shirky, have begun exploring this question already.
Second, via Slog, comes an item about a new web 2.0 initiative for writers. Authonomy (now in private beta), run by Harper Collins, allows aspiring authors to post excerpts of their work for voting and commenting by the community. I may have to give this site a try. They can’t be more critical than some members of writing groups I’ve been in (yes, it was constructive criticism). You can read more at the Authonomy blog.
This morning I grabbed the laptop and walked a few minutes to a local café. One strawberry smoothie and a free wi-fi connection later, I was working. I’d already planned to write about the Economist’s recent special report on “the new nomadism,” but it’s even more appropriate after spending the morning living it. (OK, I’m actually writing this blog post from home, but I’m still on wireless on a laptop. 
The general premise of the Economist articles wasn’t new to me (or to anyone who’s read Smart Mobs or is generally familiar with internet culture). Nevertheless, it was a fascinating speculation on how this new way of working — and living – will impact many aspects of society. The fact that office space may move away from the “cubicle farm” into a more fluid setup with shifting walls and multi-use spaces was fascinating.
“Hulu-baloo” has been used already many times, even though the site has been officially live and open to the net-surfing public for just over a month.
I’ve been watching BattleStar Galactica (and other things) on Hulu, the new NBC and News Corp online video site, and enjoying it, even with the ads. I ditched my cable a long time ago, and get my TV from the net and DVDs. But when you want to really engage with a show and the fan community, you need to watch it as close to the time of original airing as possible. BSG comes out on Hulu a day or so after it aired on the Sci Fi channel, which is the way it should be.
Or maybe it needs to be sooner, as this Wall Street Journal blog post suggests. In my opinion, the goal is to make the online content not just available, but convenient. Streaming is faster than downloading and more convenient (provided your computer is set up correctly), so get them hooked on your online site and hopefully they won’t go seeking out the torrent anytime soon.
Things change very quickly, and who knows where online TV will be by the time Hulu celebrates its first birthday. But finding the right mix of easily accessible content, carefully targeted ads, and possibly special perks for members should make it possible for networks to keep a decent share of the online TV viewer. Make it easy, and they will come.
… and she is 8 years old.
We were visiting friends Sunday, and their daughter – along with most of her classmates – has discovered Webkinz, the pet-based virtual world created by toy company Ganz. Buying a Webkinz toy provides you with a code to enter this virtual world, where you must keep your pet healthy and entertained. There are things to buy, games to play, and limited chat and social networking features to allow interactions without creating privacy concerns.
Of course kids (who have access to them) are using computers younger and younger, and they’ll grow up not only familiar with technology but expecting certain things from it. While virtual worlds exist for adults today – ranging from Second Life to game-based worlds like World of Warcraft – I think we’ll see a fundamental shift in the way these worlds are used as the Webkinz generation grows up.
Many of these kids will do the majority of their online social networking in these worlds, graduating from Webkinz to tween- and then teen- oriented sites, and eventually go looking for the “grown up” version. Facebook will seem dull to them, and my suspicion is even MySpace will look too, well, “flat.” Of course they will play games, but they won’t be looking for a MMORPG: they’ll be looking for a world where they can continue the relationships they’ve had with their (usually real-world) friends in other virtual worlds.
I don’t know what that world will be yet. Will Second Life overcome some of its difficulties
and become the virtual destination of these youngsters in 6-10 years? (Second Life already has a teen version.) Will one of the current kid or tween sites branch off a version for older users? Or will it be someone completely off the radar right now?
I do think we’ll see more – and more popular – virtual worlds. But when – and who – I don’t have an answer for.
Lisa Stone, co-founder and CEO of BlogHer spoke last night as part of the Berkman Center’s Berkman@10 event series.
BlogHer has grown from a 2005 grassroots conference with 300 attendees to an online network of women bloggers that gets 8 million unique visitors a month. They have 22 full-time employees, plan 8 conferences this year and run an ad network that shares revenue with participating members. Their growth has been facilitated by venture capital from Venrock.
Stone began her talk by emphasizing the power of women as consumers (they control the overwhelming majority of the household budget) and as users of social media, including social networks and text messages. Women use blogging not just to express themselves, but also to take action, responding to a wide spectrum of issues. Stone was especially excited to see so many bloggers who don’t normally write about political issues becoming engaged and excited by the current election season.
After surveying BlogHer members on how the Presidential candidates’ campaigns had (or had not) reached out to women, she provided four conclusions that are equally valuable for advertisers:
Stone spoke about their advertising program, noting that about 40% of advertisers want to develop a customized program (like giving away free samples). The companies approaching BlogHer are much more savvy about online marketing than they were in the past and want to engage in an authentic interaction with the BlogHer members.
One of the 2008 BlogHer conferences will be in Boston in October, and I’m looking forward to it even more after this introduction to the BlogHer network. Will I see you there? (And yes, men are welcome!)
The blog’s been wallowing, lonely and unloved – and un-updated. Sadly, procrastination has a ripple effect, and the delay in rewriting my résumé spilled over to other projects. But now the résumé is done.
Within the same week that the New Rules of Marketing and PR was recommended to me, I discovered that the author, David Meerman Scott, is on Twitter and I’ve been following him there, and taking a look at his excellent blog.
David has some free e-books on his site, and in another push toward convergence some career-related events have put me in a position to need some info on PR and new media.
The e-books are a great primer, since I don’t have time right this second to read his print book. The New Rules of Viral Marketing e-book is especially helpful. The analogy to a venture capitalist’s investment strategy when preparing viral marketing campaigns made the most sense of anything I’ve read about viral marketing. Since success is not guaranteed, launch several:
Many will be duds that won’t spark any interest; a few will generate some notice and basically pay back your investment of the time required to create them; and a handful will go viral and make the entire program of ten or twenty viral marketing campaigns worthwhile. (pg 19)
The old saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” applies equally well to virtual baskets, it turns out.
I went to hear Clay Shirky speak about his new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. Shirky explores the “ridiculously easy group forming” inherent in the internet, and how this has the potential to radically change society. Now that many groups can assume that all their members are online, these groups can use the internet to assist in more complicated activities.
Shirky sets up a hierarchy of online group function, with increasing levels of coordination required. The first is simple sharing, then conversation, then collaboration, with collective action the final rung on the ladder. In his talk, Shirky gave fascinating examples of online collective action, from a movement to create an airline passengers’ bill of rights to the use of flash mobs for political protest in Belarus.
This stage is in its infancy, however, and there is still no formula for successful online-based collective action. (In fact, as the subtitle of Shirky’s book suggests, successful online collective actions right now are not spearheaded by traditional organizations which might have the ability to formalize the process.)
The potential for new ways of initiating successful collective action was one of the dreams that got me interested in the internet and social media to begin with, and its exciting to think that the journey is just beginning.
Another beginning that I’m keeping an eye on is Totspot, a new social publishing site for babies and parents that just announced its private beta. I met some of the Totspot team through the local Web Innovators group, and its exciting to see their launch, complete with a write up yesterday in Techcrunch. Good luck, Totspot.
Reading the comments on the Techcrunch article, including parents who buy domain names for their babies and start blogs there (hoping the kids will take them over someday), really drives home the changes that are occurring. We already have a millennial generation with different norms around privacy, technology, and work. Once we have a generation in which online group forming and participation has literally been part of their lives from birth, will we see an even more radical shift toward constant networking, openness and immediate content gratification? What will the discussion of internet-based collective action look like in 2026, when the first Totspot kids are 18?
(Will they laugh at today’s fledgling efforts? Or celebrate today’s pioneers? I can’t wait to find out.)