The Social Capital blog points to Paul Resnick’s interesting analysis of a paper titled “When is Reputation is Bad?“. Paul summarizes some of the key points as follows, referencing his example of a car mechanic:

1. Information about a player is revealed only when other players are willing to engage with that player, so that getting a sufficiently bad reputation is a black hole that you can’t escape from.
2. There are “friendly” actions; a high probability of friendly actions is what causes partners to we willing to play. (In the mechanics example, honesty is the friendly action.)
3. There are bad “signals” or outcomes that occur more frequently with unfriendly actions but occur sometimes even with friendly actions. It is these signals/outcomes that will be made publicly visible in a reputation system. (In the mechanics example, the bad outcome is recommending an engine replacement.)
4. There are “temptations”, unfriendly actions that reduce the probability of bad “signals” and increase the probability of all the good signals. (In the mechanics example, the temptation is reporting the signal “tuneup” even when the car needs an engine replacement.)
5. The proportion of player types who are committed to the friendly action regardless of its consequences is not too large. (These would be mechanics who would never say “tuneup” when you needed an “engine”, even if it meant closing their business tomorrow.

presnick: When Reputation Systems Are Worse Than Useless

This analysis seems incredibly appropriate in light of the discussion we’re seeing swirl around not only PayPerPost (1,2,3) but also the related sorties surrounding “blogging vs journalism” and “Edelman vs blogging“.

So let’s relate Paul’s points to our universe:

1. We’ve seen the problem with bad reputations becoming as persistent as toilet paper on your shoe in the blogosphere. Specifically, we know that it is extremely difficult (read near impossible) to recover once you have lost your trust
2. Friendly actions in the post-media universe often hangs under the banner of disclosure (you know, the italicized text usually surrounded by parenthesis)
3. Bad signals are quite easy to spot in the blogosphere, and online in general. PayPerPost provides us two cues: first the text provided by the advertiser is a natural cue and second, the quite manual beacon that call’s home (note: it would take about 10 minutes to whip up a greasemonkey script to highlight the “bullshit” if you were so inclined). However, we should not overlook the best tool of all - blogger’s own innate desire to call bullshit on just about anything.
4. Tempations come in the form of link love, technorati rank, and x-list status. Ultimately, we’re more than likely too obsessed already with our standing in the universal scoreboard that we feel less and less incentivized to put the game in play. We don’t want to run the risk of getting caught with our hand in the cookie jar, right?
5. The proportionality of good vs. evil is what has the big minds in the space all worried. Today, the proportion of good players outnumbers bad players (haha, that’s probably not even true relatively speaking).

Which leaves us, yet again, in the same position I’ve been considering. The equation seems as if it will balance itself over time. The notion of balance still seems overrated, if not far-fetched. Perhaps the real worry is that we’re already past the point of equilibrium.

technorati tags:blogging, payperpost, reputation, monetization

Last week, I chimed in on the PayPerPost controversy, sitting squarely in the middle since I believe that natural selection will prune the bad seeds from the tree. Jeff Jarvis has a quite nice description of this process in a recent post:

Is there danger in this? Of course. One can be corrupted by the siren call of popularity and, worse, money. But if one corrupts one’s product and credibility along the way, then you can bet that the audience will see through the manipulation, become disenchanted, and leave. That is true of newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and blogs. And in the case of the Business 2.0 bloggers, they can also lose their jobs.

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Paid popularity

Many still contest that any form of paid writing in the blogosphere is simply wrong. I can’t really support that particular point of view, if only because it is somewhat alarmist. Certainly, the more useful course of action for all concerned parties is to openly engage in dialogue about how to better demark these areas and how to prevent any harm that might come to the credibility of the blogosphere (an already turbulent topic).

technorati tags:payperpost, media, monetization, blogging, blogs

in‧flu‧ence  /ˈɪnfluəns/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[in-floo-uhns] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -enced, -enc‧ing.

–noun

1.	the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others: He used family influence to get the contract.

Last night, I was chatting with an IBM developer that didn’t deal directly with the social media bubble we roll in.  He asked me a very honest question: “What is social media all about?”.  I gave the usual rattle about publishing, individuality and voice.  The follow-up question asked more to the role of influence in social media.

To some, influence is a numerical measure, more science than art.  Consider Steve Rubel’s post today:

For each top 100 list of local influencers we looked at: who are they, what they cover, how often they talk about multinationals/local companies. In addition, we zeroed in on the top 10 in each region to find out how often they link to each other, regional media and four key US media (CNN, NY Times, CNET, USA Today.) Here’s a snapshot of what we learned and a look at the lists (Excel file) - as of this week. The full results will be published later this year.

Indeed, influence is something that can be measured, maintained, and, perhaps, even bottled into new and interesting things.  Are we upon a new period of time where we can look at influence in a means other than by pure might (financial, political, social)?

With the right level of granularity, all forces are evident.  Just ask Van der Wall.

There was a lot of discussion yesterday about PayPerPost’s recent announcement that they had raised 3M. I think it’s been interesting that the tone of most of these messages, while still negative for the most part, are not as vehement in their opposition.

The one comment which I was most surprised to hear was from Dave Winer. He makes a very interesting and valid point:

When I was a contributing editor at Wired, I went to parties where advertisers and writers mingled. The advertisers would tell us how cool their products were. Could you go to the parties if you weren’t an advertiser? I forgot to ask.

In other words, this is hardly a new practice, but at least now it’s out in the open. Readers know to ask the bloggers if they are members of PayPerPost. They also might be aware that there are less visible ways of buying influence.

Scripting News: 10/2/2006

I’ve always been of the mind that people ultimately have to pay their bills at the end of the month. Most people would be lucky enough to earn their living doing the thing they love the most - it’s just so rare in our lives.

Most of the objections seem to circulate around ethics. I think there’s a built in control system that prevents this from getting out of hand - common sense. If I spend time building an readership and a connection with an audience, I am disincentivied to do anything that will fundamentally piss them off. If I decide that PayPerPost is a viable method for me to make money, then I’ll choose the opportunities that I think would benefit my readers. It’s hard to conceive that I am willing to shill all that much for $5.

The argument that Google will eventually remove the benefit of this model - that I full agree with. On the one hand, the advertisers won’t see the same traction in the organic search side (negated potentially by the fact that there’s live, captive audience members already there). On the other hand, I’m more concerned what it does for the individual blogger (getting reduced pagerank, for example) and for bloggers in general (getting domains blacklisted and margined downwards).

Ultimately, these last factors are the real items worth discussing when it comes down to populating your posts with links to interested parties - isn’t it?

technorati tags:socialroots, payperpost, blogging, monetization, dave+winer

I was pleasantly surprised by a comment last week pointing to a FastCompany article that mentioned SocialRoots - many thanks to Nickster.

That being said, I also have to thank Kevin Smokler for remembering just what it is SocialRoots is supposed to do and for distilling it down so nicely:

Part talent agency, part syndication service, all marketplace — it could give people a way to make money off of citizen media the way eBay turned your attic into an ATM.

If you’ve got the October 06 issue, it’s in a diagram on Page 30.

Now, we just have to launch it so everyone can see :)

I’m here at JFK waiting for the 7:55AM flight to Boston. Why, you might ask? Apparently, my flight left at 6:30 not 6:45 as I entered into my cell phone. I haven’t slept since 10AM (yesterday). I’m tired as all hell, but that’s not really on the agenda for today.

As soon as I get off the plane, I have to find my way over to Podcamp for the next two days. Here’s how that day is going to look: staffing the SocialRoots “boothlet” for the entire day (more on that in the next post) then drinking and mingling with the locals from 5PM onwards. At some point during the day I have to find a hotel and make my way there so I can collapse.

I should be trying to take a nap, but I’m pre-occupied with the new design and beta sign-up screen I just put up on the site. I truly hate these screens, but we’re behind schedule with development and didn’t want to rush things so we’re doing the oh-so-annoying e-mail collection thing for the next week or so until we start adding folks into the mix. I’ll be showing people what’s in store, to a limited extent, throughout the next couple of days. Looking forward to getting more feedback.
Did I mention I still have to find a hotel? Oh yeah, maybe.

If you’re interested in learning more - well, that’s coming in a few days once we add some more content pages to the site.

It’s nice when you can hear someout out in the trenches confirm the ideas bouncing around in your head like a ball-bearing tickling the sides of spraypaint can.  I just had one of those experiences reading Steve Rubel’s post, “Three Ways to Ride the Long Tail”.  The crux of Steve’s points relates to the power of niches:

Reach metrics are the currency of the advertising community. We’re obsessed with eyeballs, gross ratings points and page views. But in a Long Tail world, reach has entirely new meaning. Many niche sites, for example, can’t hold a candle to the traffic at the head of the media curve. However, what they do have going for them is credibility.

Micro Persuasion: Three Ways to Ride the Long Tail

I could show you slides from my pitch to correlate, but that would just bore you ;)  Steve makes three good points:

• Rethink Reach
• Fund Niches
• Demand More From Media

I definitely recommend it - especially if you’re curious about just what SocialRoots does.

File this under the “hey-didn’t-I-just-talk-about-that” category. A few days ago I posted about BizDev 2.0 - The Wet Edge. In it, one of the assetions was that not only was business development enabled by APIs but so was R&D.

Salesforce.com yesterday provided some semblance of proof for this thinking. Their AppExchange, an API-driven marketplace that enables applications to be plugged into Salesforce.com’s applications, purchased on of the hosted applications. Woodrow (who I’ve only first discovered today) has more:

At the time, I wondered whether AppExchange was as much a chance for salesforce.com to outsource R&D and cherry pick tuck-in technologies (and people) as it was about driving near-term revenues and creating a platform.

I then asked if SfDC was using AE as a way to outsource R&D efforts; and whether they would use their considerable currency (i.e., their stock) to make acquisitions of the “best and brightest” developers and products on AE.

• Ismael wholeheartedly agreed and iterated that SfDC should be doing this; it’s good business and a great way to build up an ecosystem in a cost-effective manner
• Charlie suggested that SfDC is doing a “fantastic” job of cultivating even the smallest ISVs
• Dennis noted that SfDC has already bought two ISV partners, and agreed its likely a continuing strategy

The Ponderings of Woodrow: Salesforce.com leverages AppExchange as outsourced R&D…acquires Kieden

technorati tags:bizdev2.0, r&d, salesforce.com

CNN Money, by way of Business 2.0, has a lengthy look at the “Blogging for Dollars” movement. While the piece does quite a bit of research, it won’t be of much help to those of us not at the top of the blogging game - not that it’s not worth a read.The one thing that seems most salient, regardless of the size of your readership, is the nature of the relationship you have with them as compared to the traditional media outlets. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s meaningless - you’ve got something many, many large corporations with all sorts of money can’t muster all that easily on their own.

At the same time, advertisers–shunning old-line media in favor of the Web–are discovering the unique power of blogs. Blogs offer a personal touch in the mediascape; small sites have become our guides to a content-saturated world. As such, their recommendations are highly valued by readers–which naturally has made advertisers take notice. In recent months, big-name companies like Banana Republic and Coca-Cola (Charts) have for the first time run campaigns on blogs, in the belief that blog communities often consist of concentrated numbers of the passionate and influential people all marketers want to reach. Intel bought its first blog ad in March; now all its ads run on blogs as well as traditional outlets. Says Thom Campbell, head of media strategy for Intel (Charts), “The audience on blogs is the cream of the crop.”

Business 2.0: Blogging for Dollars - September 1, 2006

technorati tags:blogging, monetization

I’ve got to say that I am increasingly worried (see Make of Your Blog As You Will) about the attitude many are taking with regards to “blogging”. I put it in quotes because, quite frankly, it’s just as much art as it is science, er, technology.

Robert Scoble has been involved in some sort of revolving door
argument with Dare Obsanjo of Microsoft. The dispute centers around the
claim that MSN Spaces is the #1 blogging platform based on the fact
that it has 72 million blogs. OK. Let them say whatever they want, it
has nothing to do with me and I’m not sure what it has to do with
Robert either, actually.

What does, however, have something to do with me is Robert’s attempt to debunk
this claim by going through the most recently updated “blogs”.
Something made me cringe when he notes “FIRST TWO POST BLOG! But one is
about how much the poster loves her cats.” Then later, in the comments, he makes another “clarification”.

I defined a blogger as someone who posts at least twice a month with at least 500 words a month

Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger » “Where’s the blog?” in Windows Live Spaces?

Anyone heard of photo bloggers, video bloggers, or podcasters (audio bloggers)? Most of these “posts” don’t have any words - it’s not the media they choose to create with. By Robert’s defintion, cornershots.com isn’t a blog either.

When did Scoble become the authoritative source on what blogging is and isn’t? Oh I remember, it was when he wrote his book. Speaking of Naked Conversations, there’s this gem from Shel Israel:

The other thought is that maybe you should reflect on just quitting your blog. You don’t like the blogosphere. You certainly don’t seem to like those of us who are dedicating lives and energy to its promotion, and–don’t be offended by this Nick–we really won’t miss you a whole lot if you just sit down and shut up.

Naked Conversations: An Open Letter to Nick Carr

Excuse me? Is someone telling someone else to quit blogging because they don’t like what they are saying? Get over it. Blogging is not your darling, it’s ours.

Stowe sums it up well: “So, my take is we are back to counting dark blogs and the variousflavors of sinner blogs that don’t follow Scoble’s Five Commandments.Yes, leave out the real mechanical splogs, but everything else counts.”

technorati tags:blogging, robert+scoble, shel+israel, msn+spaces