This weekend at BloggerCon, there was lots of interesting discussion. I ended the first day Dave Winer asked us what we’re all doing to change the world. When I had my chance at the mic, I noted that I’m very mindful of the leverage that other companies are creating around the things WE create. Doc dug a little deeper on my point which I quickly whipped out the “user-generated content” banner. My thought, as I’ve noted before, is that we are not users, we’re Active Publishers - reacting to an new environment of swift media.

My main point, however, is that when someone asks us to create something for them and doesn’t pay us, or worst, patronizes us with tokens of their sincerity, that we’re being put in the vice grip and leveraged into larger markets and networks that we can’t easily see from our seats in the nosebleed section.

Today, ShopWiki made a very interesting gesture towards our community:

ShopWiki, an incredibly innovative online shopping community, will announce today another step to expand their service’s offerings. The company will pay users $50 per video for the first 500 submitted product review videos selected for inclusion on the site - that’s $25k total. This site is nuts already and paying people to add video reviews is going to take it over the top in terms of usefulness. Or maybe it’s just really cool. I’m not Mr. Online-shopping by a long shot and even I think ShopWiki is loads of fun to use.

TechCrunch

One interesting counter to my argument was offered by Mary Hodder of Dabble towards the end of the day. She seemed to take a position that I made too sweeping a generalization with regards to those using that term. Her point being that she views herself as a User - referencing her prior role in usability. I went to her afterwards to clear the air a bit - and that conversation is important.

First, I noted that I have no problem with any company that recognizes the value in what they’re asking for and creates a pathway for rewarding the participants. There’s not as many as there should be yet, but there’s quite a bit of activity in this arena and more en route. We’ll never have equal footing if we don’t continue to assert our value.

Second, I still reject the term User-Generated except in the context that I am explicitly requested to create it - at which point I am a user of a system designed to collect something from me. On the other hand, while I surely am -using- Wordpress to make this blog, I am certainly not a user of SocialTwister - I am the publisher, editor, and janitor. Mary’s vantage point that, as a usability person, everyone’s a user simply isn’t sufficient for the range of participating and interaction we have in the world today.

Nothing like winding down a whirlwind trip to San Francisco with a blinking exclamation point, huh?

[full disclosure: I am the CEO of a startup dedicated to getting us all paid for our creativity and ability or to go broke trying]

technorati tags:socialroots, bloggerconiv, mary+hodder, napsterization, dabble, monetization, socialmedia, blogging, videoblogging, podcasting, activepublishing, crowdsourcing

I have to admit, I often find myself in marvel of the way that advertising works - especially online advertising. We’ve become so accustomed to where the things are hidden we don’t even see them. I’ve noted this many times as I explained to others how dire I think the situation is for our potential customers. It’s nice to have some research to back it up:

An eye-tracking study conducted by the Nielsen/Norman Group finds Internet users avoid viewing banner ads. Text advertising is read more often than display ads, according to the research.Banner blindness means Internet users focus on the content on a page and ignore the advertisements. This is especially true for bright, flashing ads, and other units that are not relevant to what the user is interested in reading, the researchers found

Research: Internet Users Plagued by ‘Banner Blindness’

technorati tags:bannerads, advertising, research, internet

Dan Farber has run an interesting “State of the”-like post about the new crop of Social Networking applications that are spawning everywhere. He notes that there are many new sites, offering increasingly similar services and features with expanding and contracting audiences.Towards the end, Dan makes an interesting observation:

But something deeper inside the wave is forming beyond social networking infused products multiplying like mice.Some of this gelled for me during a meeting with Fred Krueger and Evan Rifkin of TagWorld. The startup is building a comprehensive communications and media platform, not just a social networking site with profiles, buddy lists and photo sharing. Krueger says his goal is to allow users to easily build complex Web sites with sharing and a social network as the underlying fabric.The so-called architecture of participation is slowly gestating in the bellies of hundreds of startups and established players, and the social Web, made by humans for humans, is taking shape on top of the grid. Sharing and collaboration is not an afterthought bolted onto email or deployed in a separate server for workflow.

» Less than six degrees of social networking and Web 2.0 goodness | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

It brings me back to 2004, when I was addressing some of these same issues with the first crop of Social Networking applications. I’ve previously, in what now seems like a past life, discussed these issues in detail. Here’s a flashback:

One thing remains clear, they all CAN’T survive and consolidation is inevitable. I’m going to skip any attempt to explain the financial motivations for this upcoming aggregation, but I do think that the user perspective is particularly telling. The most influential source of change, and eventually consolidation, will be users’ attitudes towards the various SNS applications. In a widely public race, the SNS with the most USABLE features will come to rule, not necessarily the one with the “best”.

Socialtwister 2.0 » Blog Archive » The SNS Differentiaion Challenge

So I would have to agree. There’s barely the sliver of differentiation these days. What will make the difference?

With choice comes evaluation and comparison. With experience comes knowledge. Both of these forces are working against the current crop of SNS applications. It is, purely from an economic point of view, simpler to build bigger and better when someone has done the research, development, testing, and education. Programmatically, its often easier to write new code while refactoring existing code than to mend an existing infrastructure. With users more informed, their ability to discern the good from the bad grows.

Socialtwister 2.0 » Blog Archive » The SNS Differentiaion Challenge

I’ve argued the ability to switch between social contexts with ease and ultimately usability will be the key differentiators between the survivors and the vanquished. It’s already starting to look that way - but we’ll find out more soon enough.

technorati tags:sns, social+networking, dan+farber

Jeremy Ballenger raises some interesting questions about x:posted, and more precisely, about the methods and tactics that should be used in raising the Intention Economy barn.

…seems a little like consignment sales, sell-side driven to provide a service to buyers. Intention (going by Doc’s idea) is more like buyers yelling ‘I want to buy X‘ and sellers falling over themselves to get to you. X:posted is a central respository or market for sellers - buyers visit and sample the wares. In other words, you still have to go to them. Similar sites are eLance and Guru.I might have misinterpreted Doc’s original idea, but to me something like x:posted or Shel’s approach is close, but not quite there. A functioning intention economy, and for the moment we are restricted to discussing web-enabled commerce, seems to essentially be a search problem. On reflection, my earlier thoughts on this were a little off in describing buyer searches. I think it might actually work the other way, through seller search, buyer filters and maybe even the intelligent use of something like tags.

think mojo

I think he’s right, based on what’s presented in this post. I think we’ve come a long way in terms of the definition of what we’re building and the direction in which we’re moving towards with Social Roots - definitely the thesis is much deeper.

However, Jeremy goes on to add some more fuel to the mixture.

With the increasing use of tags, blog uptake and developments in search technology, this is an example that may have some legs. Ideally, an independent operation would develop the vendor search technology under open source (GNU), alongside parallel development of a plugin for bloggers providing ‘intention tags’. I’ve got nothing against Google (aside from the whole censorship-in-China-thing), but a benefit of the intention economy should be lower transaction costs.

think mojo

The remainder begins an open consideration of providing more and more value to third parties. I think we’ve seen this problem many times over. For example, one point he seems to lay out is that independent parties can come along, spider the web, and essentially sell leads against it. That’s probably great news - for all the usual players. The incentive to search, parse, and store data on resources that makes you know money is considerable and eventually - no one’s indexing people looking for Irish Wool, just home refinance.

As for the disparity in costs for these systems, as noted “The more
cash you have, the better search technology you can afford.” the
reality is that that’s a two-way street. You’ll also need bath tubs
full of cash to index the world to find the valuable intentions.

At the same time, we have another pit to overcome - incentive. This problem correlates nicely to the barriers being faced by the Structured Blogging / Microformats groups. Why exactly do I bother to markup this data? Why do I add work to my workflow? Is there an inventive for me other than being a better citizen? Once that’s proven, there’s more traction in all directions.

We’ve had to spend considerable time as we’ve built Social Roots to understand how to create enough value for the user without having cold, hard cash. It’s very difficult and we don’t know if it will work. Chicken and egg indeed.

I recommed everyone join in on this conversation. There’s quite a lot at stake here.

technorati tags:structured+blogging, microformats, economy, intention+economy, doc+searls, marketplaces, socialroots

Last night, I attended the 1-year anniversary party for microformats. Luckily, I got to catch up with a few people I hadn’t seen in a while, especially Rohit (I love that guy). Anthony rolled down with me and came through in a pinch to lead the music for the first hour and a half - serious thanks to him for setting the tone.

Today - why not yesterday? - Yahoo! has announced that they are now even more broadly supporting microformats throughout the Yahoo! Local site.

Starting today, we’re happy to announce Yahoo! Local fully supports the hCalendar, hCard, and hReview microformats on almost all business listings, search results, events, and reviews. There are a few reasons behind this change, which for now, will be transparent to almost everyone.

Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog » Blog Archive » We Now Support Microformats

Admittedly, microformats are still pretty geeky in nature and we haven’t really seen serious movement in collecting them and leveraging them (for good and evil undoubtedly), but it will happen. SocialRoots will have microformats everywhere we can put them - I can promise that much right now and make good on it in a few days ;)

technorati tags:microformats, yahoo, hCard, hReview, hCal

There’s been considerable chatter regarding this term user-generated content. I hate the term for most of what it’s applied to, though there are some instances when it makes sense.

Jon Udell’s recent rant has gotten me thinking about this more

Everything about this buzzphrase annoys me. First, calling people “users” is pernicious. It distances and dehumanizes, and should be stricken from the IT vocabulary (see Those clueless users) as well as from the publishing vocabulary. IT has customers and clients, not users. IT-oriented publishers have readers, not users.

Second, “content” is a word that reminds me more of sausage than of storytelling (see Sausage, traffic, and clueless users). As writers and editors we don’t “generate” “content,” we tell stories that inform, educate, and entertain — or should.

Jon Udell: User-generated content vs. reader-created context

My active activity online can better be grouped into three categories.

1. Active Publishing - When working like this I am creating original works that I share with the world at large by way of this fascinating new network we have access to. It is my pulpit - free to be shared with anyone that shares my vision - and I apply the care and review protocols that I deem appropriate.
2. Active Reading - When working like this I am an engaged reader that brings my thoughts, energies, and research into a conversation. Stowe is an active proponent of this term.
3. Active Particating - When working in this mode, I am contributing to online resources in a variety of new and interesting ways. For example, I might be filling out a poll on Om’s blog (I love that widget), tinkering with some new widget or application, or rating other resources.This is what I believe the better use of the term “user-generated content” really is. Indeed it is content that the user is creating. It’s a thin line that separates Active Reading and Active Participating and what one individual refers to as AR might just be AP for another.

At SocialRoots, we are building the company around the notion that whenever we’re being Active, we need to be factored into the equation from all angles - readership, audience, influence and revenue.

Scoble nails this:

You see, lots of people out there think that you’re gonna do all the hard work and donate it to companies so they can put advertising next to it. Only you don’t get to keep the money from that advertising, no no no. You don’t understand your place in this world, do you?

No, they are gonna take all your content AND take all the money that the advertising generates.

Even when you build your own thing on your own domain and spend time building your own audience they’ll only give you 20%. Don’t believe me? Come to any bloggercon and compare notes and see just what percentage of the revenues folks are being offered. I’ve done that and it isn’t pretty.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » The screwing of the Long Tail

There is a really interesting piece done today in the Washington Post that talks about the increasing encroachment of the Internet on Mainstream Media (MSM). There are a number of interesting passages that I’ve pulled out as they speak to the trends and the business realities.

There is a love-hate relationship, probably skewing more towards hate, with MSM and the rest of us. There’s countless greanades lobbed over the fences - we complain they’re useless, they complain we’re not journalists and the other raft of issues that continue to force misaligned visions and the subsequent opportunities.

Mainstream news organizations, shaken by the erosion of their viewers, readers and advertisers, and only hesitantly embracing the new media, still have significant strengths in the digital journalism world. Though their economic situation is serious, and perhaps critical, it’s not over yet. What is over is the era of the well-staffed, single-medium newsroom with once-a-day or even once- an-hour deadlines.

First, The Bad News

That’s a hard conclusion for many in the news business to handle. Newspapers, the biggest and oldest segment of the mainstream media, are built on the work of creative, contentious and quick-witted people, but also of curmudgeons who resist change.Newsrooms shrunk by layoffs and battered by bloggers, are seeing their traditional audiences shrink. Daily newspapers lost 1.2 million readers in the six months that ended in March, down to 45.5 million. Online newspaper readership grew to 56 million.

As the Internet Grows Up, the News Industry Is Forever Changed

Interestingly enough, despite the talk of audiences, what they really mean is eyeballs - right? Is anyone really dealing with the relationship that’s held and the realities of maintaining that connection and loyalty over an extended period of time?

The news media’s advantage in advertising is that it’s a mass medium, but online users may gravitate to online-only sites for autos, real estate or jobs. Craigslist, Monster or eBay, among others, offer free listings or make comparison shopping much easier.The competition between old-media and new-media companies for advertising dollars is not a foregone conclusion. Craigslist.com is estimated to have cost the San Francisco Chronicle $50 million in lost classified revenue in 2004. But the biggest information provider in almost every market is the newspaper, and the second biggest is the newspaper’s Web site.Readers clearly are headed online, in some cases replacing both print and television with the Internet as their main source of news.

As the Internet Grows Up, the News Industry Is Forever Changed

We’re hearing the sound of metal crunching as the big machine slows down a halt. If we are intending to compete with MSM, doesn’t some part of how they survived impact our own survival? We want their audiences, their eyeballs but what do we intend to come of that?

Technology has driven behavioral changes, as reporters, producers, photographers and editors learn that interactivity in the form of e-mail, blogs, polls, hyperlinks, Videologs, podcasts and news delivered via cell phones can open their work up to a newer and bigger audience, for better or worse. It’s far easier for a reader to find a reporter now than it was in the past; it’s also easier for a story published overseas or in a local or regional outlet to have a bigger impact. No longer are readers or viewers bound by network broadcast schedules, the delivery of a newspaper or magazine or the top-of-the-hour radio headlines.What worries professional journalists above all else is whether what replaces the newsroom of today will support the journalism of tomorrow.

As the Internet Grows Up, the News Industry Is Forever Changed

A new age of technology - most of it free and widely available. Are we maximizing the benefits of our new, shiny tools or are we still applying the old physics?

My biggest concern with our continuous comparison to MSM is that it keeps us in the secondary position. The more we use the terms and metrics of their industry, the more leverage we ultimately create for them. MSM is filled with many bright, intelligence minds that have quite a bit to lose - never corner a wounded animal they say.

Said differently, are we really painting them into the corner or simply showing them where the corners are? I hope we can apply all our smarts to find the alternative pathways.

technorati tags:socialmedia, media, msm, advertising, readership, audiences

I received a link to this article this morning from a great friend and part-time advisor. It’s an article about how Sony Music has created a new service, called the MusicBox, that is actively encouraging bloggers to use their content as a source of inspiration.

But Sony will also actively encourage fan sites and bloggers–who are mostly used to receiving cease-and-desist letters from studios–to link to the material. Links for adding Musicbox content are displayed on the site. Individuals thus could create sites focused around certain artists by linking to video channels on the Musicbox site dedicated to them, or link to several channels which, in the aggregate, comprise the most mawkish artists (in the view of the blogger) that Sony has to offer.

…

[Jeremy Allaire says] “The media organizations are starting to embrace the idea that their library of assets can be exploited through thousands of touch points,” he said. “It is an opportunity to embrace that urge among consumers to post videos.”

Source: News.com, “Sony Music wants bloggers to promo videos, music“

Can anyone say crowdsourcing?

I can’t say much more about what we’re planning to do with this same industry - opting to build it instead of talk about it, but I’m really pleased to see them making this move at this point in time.

The BloggerCon IV schedule has been announced. There are some interesting topics listed, but one caught my eye: How to Make Money led by John Palfrey. He’s written his introductory post which is worth a read. In it he states:

If you are a blogger, how do you go about making some money from your work? One obvious answer is the classic approach of throwing BlogAds or Google ads or whathaveyou ads on your blog. That works for some people, but it generates more than beer money only for a select few at the left-hand side of that famous power law distribution.

…

I trust that we’ll kick around these ideas, but also get into some new possibilities: shouldn’t really simple syndication allow for some new thinking around getting people to pay for the content you create? And are there ways for bloggers themselves to get on the bandwagon of making some of the money that the venture guys are planning to make? How could that work, exactly? Put another away: lots of people have spent lots of digital ink (sound and images too) on the general problem of “how do you monetize the long tail?”

Source: John Palfrey, “The ‘How to Make Money” Session at Bloggercon”

Naturally, I’m planning to attend this session. If anyone’s tried to figure out how to make money from blogging it’s certainly me - I’m building an entire company that helps bloggers make money.

At the same time, though, I’m somewhat conflicted. I seem to recall some time ago, at a previous BloggerCon, that Dave Winer openly told someone (Chris Nolan I believe), that she didn’t want to make money from her blog, she wanted to make it from the various things that come from having a blog (consulting, gigs, jobs - hey, aren’t those all the same?).  But I could be wrong.

It also strikes me as odd that, considering there are people trying to develop solutions in this arena (many more than just me)  that their knowledge and a dialogue with those audiences might be extremely relevent.  Aren’t the folks that go to BloggerCon largely the people at the top of the game (present company excluded) or otherwise already monetizing in some way?

Just a bit confusing - but I’m glad to see it regardless.

Quick ping to everyone reading for some help with a MT installation.  I need to put together a quick form that will let us utilize the MT API on the server side.  I don’t imagine this to be very difficult if you’ve worked with MT previously.

Add your resume to the comments or send it directly to greg AT socialroots DOT com.  This position needs to be filled immediately.