"Particls is the coolest thing I've seen in
quite a while"
Marshall Kirkpatrick
"I could even see my folks getting excited about
this"
SuperHelix (User)
"Particls has every chance of becoming [a]
standard"
Michael Mahemoff
Software as She's Developed
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Announcing initial participants for the APML Workgroup
An initial set of participants in the APML Workgroup have been announced. APML stands for Attention Profiling Markup Language.
From the website:
APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.
The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests.
It is a fantastic group to start with and we are all very excited to get the ball rolling.
Paul Jones (Senior Architect, Faraday Media/Touchstone)
The APML Workgroup is tasked with converting the current specification into an agreed standard. We invite all the players in or around the "Attention Economy" to join us in realizing APML. To join the Workgroup please contact us with your qualifications.
Members of the general public are invited to join the mailing list (via the APML.org website) forums or blog to provide feedback.
More about APML
In a world where our online footprints (Attention Data) are measured, dissected, analyzed and used to better target us with content and advertising APML represents a way for users to take back control of their own Attention Profile.
In order for the study of 'Attention' to evolve into the Attention Economy we must have a way to export, own, trade and assign value to our own Attention Profiles. APML promises to become an important part of the solution and we believe this announcement is a significant milestone in it's development.
Attention Profiles will become our digital fingerprints and will eventually have implications for all aspects of our lives including Media, Business and Lifestyle.
Individuals can now make a good living as content creators, without ever creating or becoming part of a scale content business. What’s more disruptive, however, is that in the market for original content, the attention economy is draining dollars out of the cash economy. There remains a zero sum game for consumer attention, so for every minute a consumer spends with content created by an entity whose compensation is in form of attention, there’s a minute not being spend on content created by a for-profit entity.
In contrast, the content aggregation and distribution side of the divided media industry has all the advantages of scale, with the technology-enabled platform (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, search) serving as the organizing principle for the new scalable media businesses. Content creation is asymptotically approaching commodity status, while platforms that can effectively aggregate content and allocate scarce consumer attention can unlock immense value in the new media marketplace.
Bingo.
This does not mean, however, that commercial content creators will lose out while Aggregators destroy their businesses. It means that content creators need to understand and respect and value the role of aggregators to help them find an audience. Further, they need to understand how Personalized Aggregation (based on Attention) changes the publisher/audience dynamic.
First, as we all know, there is no more audience, only participants. But more importantly for this discussion - the participants have different expectations. They want highly tailored content experiences that meet their tastes exactly. And they have no shortage of places to find that conent - in fact too many sources. We sometimes call this hyper choice or information overload.
This means that publishers need to:
Start thinking niche.
Start finding ways to cut through the noise to reach niche audiences.
This is where Attention comes in. By measuring one's Attention you can learn what they are interested in. By learning what they are interested in you can learn what content they want to see more of. From there, it's a hop, skip and a jump to connecting content creators with participants.
It also means that Aggregators will have a growing responsibility to content creators. A responsibility to report statistics, create transparency in their platforms and find some way to help the eco-system of Content Creators become successful.
Touchstone in your referrer stats - Audiences of One
People have started to notice Touchstone in their referrer logs. So I thought I would write a little about it.
I don't think anyone will ever see a 'Digg Effect' style mad rush from Touchstone. So we probably wont make headlines that way.
So what does a referrer from Touchstone mean?
I think it means something significant. Maybe even more significant than the Digg effect. It means that your article got through the Touchstone Personal Relevancy filter of our Attention Management Platform and connected with at least one person.
One person might not sound like much, but consider that one person after another might turn into hundreds and thousands. Consider also that each of those people are intimately interested in what they came to see.
Not only that - but the user clicked through (despite seeing your headline and synopsis) from inside the Touchstone UI.
With this in mind, Touchstone traffic could become a great measure of your sites ability to intimately connect with audiences of one - people just like you. People that might want to buy what you are selling.
Here is my Media Consumption Diet (most used at top, least used at bottom).
Web: I get most of my web content via RSS. I read my favorite authors and track my information junkie world via FeedDemon because I am one of those people who has to read every single item.
I also (of course) run Touchstone so that I can get an ongoing view of my news while I work. Touchstone also, by virtue of it's "Automatically Find Information For Me" feature regularly finds information first before any of my trusted authors repeat it in the echo-chamber.
Any other web-browsing happens from recommended links from friends. I occasionally check Techmeme for 'what's popular right now'.
I subscribe to 176 Sources directly + The rest of the entire feed universe via Touchstone.
I also get a lot of mainstream news from Newsmap - I have it as an Active Desktop Component on my second minitor - it is amazing.
TV: I am as big a TV junkie as I am a Web/RSS Junkie. I watch too many shows every week (including Daily Show, Colbert Report, Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, Boston Legal and others). I get most of my shows online. The only TV I watch that comes from my cable or over the air is CNN (for real news and weather!!), Fox News for excitement and propaganda and BBC for a more international perspective. I avoid Australian news because it is rarely interesting or significant.
I watch my downloaded TV via Windows Media Center on a TV.
Movies: I used to watch a lot more movies than I do now. With all my TV consumption I have found that my attention span has been reduced to 41 minutes (the time it takes to watch a typical TV show without the ads). I find it mildy disturbing that I get so restless at the 41 minute mark. I often think to myself "A TV episode would be over by now and probably told a more compelling story".
That being said though, I have a long and growing list of landmark movies in my life that I try to convince everyone I meet to watch. I love movies. I get most of my movies from the theatre - some on DVD to play catchup or for what I call "DVD Movies" - movies not worth the cinema experience.
Update Here: Jeremiah asked me to clarify if my TV/Movies were watched 'On Demand' (or as some might call 'Time Shifted'). The answer is 99% yes. I rarely wait for the networks to tell me what to watch and when. In fact, living in Australia - if I did that, I'd never see anything because they would pick up the show 2 seasons late and cancel it after 5 episodes.
Communication: I access my email from either my PC, Tablet or Laptop. I am addicted to my email. I used to route my Gmail through Outlook, but my Outlook 2007 Beta expired and I have been too lazy to re-install it. The result has been amazing. Gmail + Online Office style apps have kept me going for a month now! When I am out I check my Gmail via my i-Mate JasJam Pda/Phone over Telstra Next-G.
I also sit on Skype and MSN/AIM all day (via Trillian). 99% of my communication is done via Skype chats or calls (even to land-lines from skype in and out).
Twitter is a bit of fun also. I started a MySpace account to see how it worked and now people keep adding me as friends. I don't like using it though (maybe that's understating it a little).
Music: I listen to my MP3s mainly. Sometimes when I remember I go to Last.fm. I love music but lately I have not put much emphasis on it.
Magazines: I used to read Time and a few others. But they are always 2 months behind on news. Like Jeremiah I think it's helpful to know when stuff has hit the mainstream but... latley I don't care.
"this is an invaluable tool that simplifies the process of research for academics and professionals alike. It is not meant to replace the RSS Reader in anyway, but it does improve workflow/ productivity by acting as an intelligent personalized “tipster” right on your desktop and one that gives you up to date persistent information. Being a heavy RSS reader/ user, I found it filtered a good amount of news based on my keywords and preferences. Touchstone is a powerful app that is going to be a permanent addition to my desktop tools and daily research setup."
Last night i hit the jackpot via my personal filtered Touchstone tool that i am using during their BETA period (see below note). In the post titled "Web 2.0 applied in an Enterprise – a huge business opportunity" Peter Reiser lays out beautifully how a company like Sun Microsystems is looking to take advantage of the social dynamics of Web 2.0 and turn it into a business value and business advantage.
[...]
Note: Here is a perfect example of the way a tool like Touchstone has helped me be alerted to something that i might have missed- based on the feeds i have inputted via my OPML file (i have had the complete SUN Blogroll on my GoogleReader for ever but there is just so much on a daily basis i find it very hard to find what is personally important unless i subscribe to Sun individual blogs). With Touchstone and key terms i might be looking for- in this case client names and key words like 'enterprise 2.0' the information was delivered to me via a news ticker of things that are important to me. Without it, i wouldn't know that Peter Reiser was blogging on a subject that is dear to me. Touchstone is in Private Beta- i still have a couple of guest invitation and if you are interested please do drop me a line (danielavbarbosa[at]gmail.com).
Rose confirmed that digg is actively mining users’ attention data in order to implement these changes. He professed ignorance of APML, but “there are a couple of engineers deeply into this stuff” back at digg HQ.
Thanks to everyone who takes the time to blog about Touchstone - you are instrumental in spreading the word about our baby! It is very much appreciated.
Scouta - Word-of-mouth media recommendations Web 2.0 style
Ever wondered what it would be like if you could get Amazon style recommendations about all forms of media across the net (yes even podcasts)?
Richard Giles a fellow Australian Web 2.0 junkie has created just such a thing. It's called Scouta and it just went live today.
From the home page:
There's nothing more powerful than a word-of-mouth recommendation. That's why Scouta uses recommendations from you and like-minded people to help find a needle in a haystack or a video in YouTube.
Granular parts of our established systems are being dislodged from their containers and only reforming via temporary, loosely coupled connections.
Content is being disintegrated from the Page, TV and Radio via RSS and Microformats.
Functionality is being disintegrated from applications (loosely coupled mashups are starting to overshadow complete applications).
People are being disintegrated from families. Divorce is now common place and starting to lose its taboo. As a result families are forming all sorts of strange and lopsided combinations where ex’s and steps come together for special occasions and in support of ‘the children’. At all times, however, the individual seems to be achieving more freedom and importance than the ‘family unit’."
Another way to phrase this perhaps is "Loosely Coupled Relationships" much like RSS and REST are loosely coupled APIs that allow us to mash stuff up.
I have been having more thoughts on this issue recently and just now saw something that promoted me to write about it. I just saw an interview with a group of bloggers and the Nun that looks after the Vatican website (recorded by fellow Media 2.0 Workgroup member Robert Scoble).
In reference to the Internet building new types of communities she related a story of one of the first Skype calls she witnessed. In it, one of her colleagues made a call to someone in china. She went on to say (and I paraphrase).
"That exchange [the call to China with some random person], had a very personal component, an emotional component. It had something that brought out something from within that person - he gave it to that person in China, and then what happened?
We need to distinguish between creating something that builds relationship and something that is just dumping out all kinds of energy that has no place to go... It's energy that we need to integrate into something real."
I have been wondering about this for some time. It seems to me that a growing number of tools are being released that allow us to have surface style, loosley coupled relationships.
The most extreme example of this is Twitter. With Twitter I don't need to actually care enough about someone to ask how their day was. I can just have a passive overview of their activities as they release updates into the ether. If I choose to catch what they are sending I am free - but I am also equally free to ignore it. It is very non-committal.
An earlier technology also provided this level of disconnect. SMS (at least here in Australia) has in many cases started to take the place of phone calls because SMS is less confrontational and committal. You could do other things while having a 'conversation' with someone. Ignoring an incoming SMS is also (usually) perfectly fine - even more so than ignoring an IM message in some cases.
The same is true for MySpace. Look at a myspace comments section and you will see lots of fruitless and surface style interactions that seem to go nowhere.
It seems to me that these sorts of passive or group interaction mechanisms, while creating one type community, may - taken to their logical extreme - negatively affect another much deeper level of connection.
Maybe these loosely coupled relationships were never destined to be any deeper than a twitter message. Or maybe, this type of behaviour will expand to include loved ones and friends who used to require more commitment.
Personally I wonder if there isn't a way to harness this energy and capture it for good. For deeper connections. Or at least to reveal the deeper connections that are already present.
In the rush to create more democratic, social and distributed media, I'd hate to think that our one-to-one relationships will end up as nothing more than temporary mashups - like ships passing in the night.
Twitter me with your thoughts (no just kidding - comments are fine).
Stowe Boyd just pointed me to posts that Emily Chang and He (separately) just posted about Data streams.
From Emily Chang's post.
For now, this activity stream idea is providing the start to a holistic view of my activity across online networks: both my own and the ones I use. In turn, this acts as a conduit for you, the reader. Rather than just a static “recommended links” page or a blogroll, the data stream opens up my activity to you in semi-realtime and at one website.
They are both interesting posts on Personal Aggregation. There is a service called Jaiku which does much of the same thing without the databasing and searching.
I personally don't see the aggregation of multiple feeds as anything too amazing. That's what a feed reader does. The more interesting improvement is the fact that the data is then re-syndicated to a single, aggregated feed. But Touchstone has been doing that for months and months. And any feed splicing service can do it easily. Our feed also includes ranks for how 'Personally Relevant' each of the items were.
The final step that seemed interesting to Emily was databasing the results and searching on them later - that would be an easy output adapter to make.
Stowe has focused on the idea of routing items to other applications so you can take action on your attention stream. This too would be a simple matter of writing an output adapter to trap Microformats etc from Touchstone. In fact it's been on our adapter ideas page for ages. It's been there since before I can remember.
Once we release the updated SDK to developers they should be made in short order.
As a bonus, Touchstone would also alert you to important changes in your stream.
Might have to chat to my mate Stowe about the project he is cooking up - could be room to work together on it!
Overview An evening and a day of community, strategy, and information about the art, technology, and science of relationship blogging for 250 experienced bloggers.
Purpose We will demonstrate to 250 bloggers how to take their existing blogs to the next level through interactive presentations on publishing, design and branding, tools, analytics, social networking, marketing, and coaching, from the perspectives of the blogger and the audience.
Sounds right up Touchstone's ally!
If you are in Chicago and would like to go represent Touchstone please drop me a line at chris@touchstonelive.com.
It's great to see people experimenting with Attention Data. They too, however, are locking you into their service and don't let you export your Attention Profile.
"But I was struck by how widgets, like RSS, are really more of a boon for online publishers than for average folks. Widgets, like RSS, are great for syndicating information, or in the case of widgets, also application functions. But for average users, they are only useful for aggregating on a start page, and really, how often do most people change their start pages?"
Widgets and Gadgets are names used interchangeably for stuff that you can put on your blog/myspace account and stuff you can put on your desktop.
"[To hit the mainstream] RSS has to become brain dead simple to use." - Fred Wilson
Do your parents know how to find and subscribe to RSS feeds? Should they? Do they know how to read HTML? Of course not; they "browse the web". RSS needs to be that simple.
Touchstone makes RSS dead simple by taking the subscribing out of the equation. Get your mum to quickly and easily type in her interests into a little textbox and Touchstone does the rest.
Like Scott goes on to say in his post:
"Now, none of this means that widgets, like RSS, won’t revolutionize the world of web publishing (although I’m skeptical of Tariq Krim prediction that widgets will kill web pages) — it’s just that it will be transparent to the average web user."
He's exactly right.
Widgets, like RSS, are usually technical and always overwhelming in an information consumption sense. They are great for myspace bling, but to actually get productive information you need something far more intelligent.
Sorry this is a little off topic - but what is with CNN International and their Weather coverage?
Every time I turn on CNN I see someone talking about the weather. Switch over to FOX News and they are talking about an exciting (albeit pointless) murder suspect or rape case.
If CNN want to get my Attention and improve their ratings they should probably focus on real news stories rather than cutting to the weather every 5 minutes.
There is a whole channel dedicated to that topic - it's called... the weather channel.
I need to invert my thinking. I should be starting most days with a strong idea in mind of what I want to spent the majority of the day focusing on. If there's time left, I'll tend to the other distractions.
This has implications for both business and media consumption:
Business
Jeremy is correct. We must define our scope of interest first, and then make intelligent decisions about what to pay attention to.
That's what Touchstone does with APML. Your APML file (generated by Touchstone or any other APML compatible service) describes your scope of interest. Toucstone then ranks and filers incoming information for you against that profile.
Jeremy I'd be happy to give you a Beta Invite - drop me a line.
Some might say that this approach limits spontaneity or serendipidy. I'd argue that if you want spontaneity check Tailrank or Techmeme or Digg - they are fantastic Popularity/Meme Engines.
If you want a productive awareness of what you do all day, you need an Attention Management Engine.
Media: Now some might say this sounds all academic and very 'Business Productivity' focused. But the reality is that this applies to media consumption as well. With a growing underbelly of great niche content, it is becoming very difficult for content creators to find an audience and audiences (or should we say participants) are finding it increasingly hard to pick the right entertainment experiences from a huge range of possible choices.
Unfortunately, due to the complexities of the Gmail authentication system, attempting to subscribe to http://gmail.google.com gets you nowhere. All is not lost however! Subscribe to https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom, enter your username and password, and Touchstone will check gmail for you. Nifty.
Hey guys - for those of you checking out the blog via RSS - you might want to click through to www.touchstonelive.com where you might notice a little change. Ok I am understating it - it's a big change.
Send your feedback - you know we love it.
Thanks to everyone who helped refine the design including Julie, Marjolein, Marianne, Marty, Ben, Blaze, Ashley, Steve and Sofia.
Update: Paul also helped, but he mainly just laughed at the bad ones.
When you are intimately involved with developing a piece of software you grow to become unattached to your application configuration. At any given time the next experimental build might blow up and kill your settings or you might have to delete your config files to see what a 'fresh install' might look like for a new user.
Over the last year I have destroyed many an installation of Touchstone - each time thinking nothing of it... Deltree *.* (don't you remember DOS?)
Lately though, I have noticed a change. As the app has switched from a Swiss cheese set of features into a complete product my APML file - the file that contains my Personal Attention Profile - has started to become precious to me.
I can no longer just delete it and start again. It has grown to identify me. It produces content results that I like. I want to protect and nurture it. In fact now I back it up and carefully ensure that I never let it die in the process of trying the next experimental build from the dev team.
My APML file is becoming "the digital representation of my physical self" (Morpheus - Matrix 1).
It is obvious that APML is going to become something quite personal for people, and I would like to publicly recommit ourselves to protecting and nurturing it with all our might.
We are the user's ally in the fight against information overload and the search for great, personally relevant content. And APML is our BFG.
In the latest build of Touchstone we have taken the system resources from up to (on my PC) 80% CPU and about 200-300meg of RAM (in early alpha) to now (in early beta) up to 20% and 100meg of RAM. Typically though it runs at 0% CPU and <100meg of RAM.
In fact, my Touchstone is using less resources than FeedDemon - and everyone knows how much I love FeedDemon!
This is, of course, using the same OPML file + Touchstone is also finding additional information for me based on my Attention Profile beyond my RSS feeds.
Robert Scoble is like Dave Winer - he's feeling overwhelmed. Not him personally, but he is clear that most of us are. He rightly asserts that there are too many ideas and companies now and many of them will not achieve critical mass - not because they're not great, but because there isn't enough attention spectrum left.
I think one way to avoid this overload is to stop aiming products at our own sandbox and start aiming them towards mums and dads, executives, knowledge workers, cafe owners and others who don't care about myspace, or social bookmarking or making youtube videos.
Another way is to just let the information flow over you. Stop trying to hold onto it.
As I have written previously to Dave Winer and about Constant Pile Reduction Mode it's important to remember news was never supposed to be read like email. No one went through their newspaper and marked off each and every article. They browse and they get what they can about their world before going off to live their real lives.
With this in mind, publishers need to start offering tools to their users that are designed with this reality in mind.
I am reminded by a great quote from the movie "American Beauty"
"it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment..."
"Comment is free, but facts are sacred. "Propaganda", so called, by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard. Comment also is justly subject to a self-imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair. This is an ideal. Achievement in such matters is hardly given to man. We can but try, ask pardon for shortcomings, and there leave the matter" - C.P. Scott
"Most sites are based on a voting model. Members look around the Web for interesting items, such as video clips, blog entries or news articles. A member then writes a catchy description and posts it, along with a link to the material, on the site, in hopes that other members find it just as interesting and show their approval with an electronic thumbs-up vote. Items that receive enough votes rise in the rankings and appear on the front page, which can be seen by hundreds of thousands of people. When an item is submitted by a popular or influential member -- one whose postings are closely followed by fellow members -- it can have a much better shot at making the front page."
It's a little scary. They imply that services like Digg, Reddit and Netscape have made influencers out of little-known everyday people. Why is that scary? Because we don't know these people. They have not been vetted by public opinion and to many users they are an opaque part of the process. It's not democracy if there is a small group of people pulling the strings.
No one diggs around digg looking for the 'Top Diggers List' - in fact now they CAN'T dig around Digg for it - because Digg has taken it offline. Check out the article to get a list of the top Digg, Reddit, Netscape and StumbleUpn user they found. It's not a list of people I want deciding my news for me.
So these popularity platforms are giving rise to micro-influencers who are actually having a huge affect on our news and information choices and most of us have very little idea who they are. That doesn't sound very social, transparent or desirable to me.
As I have saidinpreviousposts - while popularity engines are fine for working out "what's cool" the real question should be "what is personally relevant: - finding news that affects my life and aligns with my interests.
Then, the only influencer in my media consumption is me and my Attention Profile.
It seems like Attention Data is becoming more and more pervasive. Now MeeVee is asking users to specify their interests so that it can find videos for you.
"So far, MeeVee has let you create a calendar showing you whenever say, performer Jay-Z appears on a TV show. Today, MeeVee has unveiled a way to track Jay-Z related videos, too. You simply hit the “add interest” button, scroll down to the bottom, and add a keyword “Jay-Z.” MeeVee then surfs the Web and returns the most recent and relevant videos tagged with Jay-Z. You can then click on the videos and watch. See screen shots below for the Jay-Z example. A tab at MeeVee lets you toggle between TV programming and video."
It seems like MeeVee is becoming a great interface to manage and view your Media 2.0 video!
I have posted before musing if Blogging could create world peace. Another weekend rolls around and am prompted to ask a similar question. Can Web 2.0 create world peace?
Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact; this means our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources
We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. Many governments would benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. Wikileaks will facilitate safety in the ethical leaking movement.
Seems like they can't wait for Web 2.0 platforms to create organic and measured transparency in government institutions - they are going to force it by providing an anonymous platform.
We often say that new forms of media lower the barrier to entry for participants to have a voice and therefore strengthens democracy. And it's clear that this latest iteration of our media platforms is the most democratic of all. So does democracy include complete transparency?
This is a philosophical question as much as a logistical one. There have been bookswrittenabout total transparency - and what such a world would look like. Some paint a very rosy picture.
Interesting Concept. I can't decide if it will result in anarchy or the end of corruption (or the beginning of new ways to hide corruption!).
Everyone is talking about the new service from Yahoo - Pipes.
Pipes is cool. It does a lot of stuff. Mainly it lets you take RSS (Ray Ozzie has referred to RSS as the "Unix pipe of the web") and literally pipe it. Through what? A series of services and transformations until it comes out look just like you want it.
Unfortunately though, it's not exactly useful 'out-of-the-box'. But that's ok - because it is more a piece of Internet plumbing than it is a consumer facing service. Which is strange considering it's coming from Yahoo!
My friend Ian Forrester loves pipes. He has been talking about them for a long time. In fact he correctly noted that Touchstone is a sort of pipeline. Data comes in from a set of Input Adapters, is processed by our engine for Personal Relevancy, Cache and Routing, and is then passed on to one or more Output adapters for presentation to the user.
Of course our pipe is not as flexible or configurable, but it is immediately useful for consumers. It's interesting in fact that the first example that Yahoo provides (and O'reilly catches on to) is the idea of using pipes to aggregate and filter news alerts. But filtering is so 5 years ago.
Chris Anderson is happy that his book is now available on BitTorrent. The reason for his happiness makes me happy.
"My publishers want to make money, and I like them so I usually do what it takes to keep them happy, but in truth I just want to be read/listened to by the largest number of people. Leave it to me to figure out how to convert that reputational currency into cash--just get me in front of the biggest audience and I'll do the rest. My agent doesn't want to hear this, but I'd rather take a smaller up-front advance or lower royalties in exchange for more liberty in distributing free versions, because I think I'll actually be better off in the end.
As Tim O'Reilly puts it, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy".
As I always say - people just want to be heard.
I have had a fascination with this idea ever since my first major project - both on real radio and online which boasted huge levels of audience interaction (forums, chat, participant generated content etc) back in 1997. The slogan - "Don't just listen - Be Heard".
Chris won't go hungry because of this little breach in his rights. He will only earn more audience and a louder voice. He will make his money from better jobs, more opportunities and a bigger booking fees.
The reality is though, us other content creators who are far less well known will have to find another way to make money from the long tail.
Stress levels have been pretty high for a few days at Touchstone HQ.We’re at the business end of alpha and experiencing the typical Braxton Hicks that a start-up experiences as they prepare for beta.
It’s been long tiring week and the team are exhausted.But it’s ok – it lets us know we’re still alive.
A (seriously) lucky few have had the opportunity to actually play with the beta version and so far the feedback has been extremely positive (perhaps they will write something pleasant in the comments to this blog post to make us feel special).
The only problem preparing for the long anticipated beta is that, at some point we have to turn off the ideas (something we’re all struggling with).
If you’re a newbie to our humble little blog, please make sure you sign-up (on the side <-- over there) as a matter of urgency.Trust me! It’ll be worth it.
I'd like to give a shout out to a fellow Brisbane developer who just got on the front of Techcrunch today with his parody of all the signing up to services we have had to do lately. He calls it 'useless account' where you can have 'unlimited account editing'. Unlimited! Now that's a good deal...
For those of you who are wondering - Touchstone will not require a signup to use. Just download and run. That's when we are out of private Beta of course. Until then you will need an invite so make sure all your friends are on the mailing list (that one to the left of the blog).
Brad writes a great post on the Union Square Ventures blog asking "What's next?". In it he explains that innovation moves up the stack and that we are now at the 'data' layer.
"In the early days, the central value proposition in the computer business was hardware. Later, it shifted to systems software, then applications software, and then networks. As more software functionality was delivered to a browser over the Internet, the basis of competition shifted from features to service level metrics like reliability, accessibility and security. I believe that today, at least in the area of consumer web services, we have already moved on to a new focus of competitive differentiation based on data."
I am glad VCs are starting to ask these questions. It shows they are thinking beyond 'me too' services.
He goes on to write:
"One way to look at that question is to argue that we have arrived at the end of history. The progression to date has been up the stack in a classic architecture diagram, data is on top of that stack, and nothing sits on top of the data. I disagree."
I disagree too Brad. Here are a few more layers to think about.
Once data is structured and syndicated, the next job is to:
Aggregate - And I don't mean like a feed reader. I mean like Edgeio and Vast
Visualize - Using all sorts of techniques. With Touchstone we are using escalating alerts. The more personally relevant the content (from step 2) the bigger the alert.
My good friend Marjolein is usually one of those people who works in the background. Everyone seems to know her because she is an unsung hero that connects people and ideas to create spontaneous innovation and improvement in our web 2.0 ecosystem. And I love her for it.
This is a poetic and informative piece of video. I encourage you to check it out. One of the most impressive presentations about Web 2.0 and structured data I have ever seen.
Scoble sells out - Accepts invitation by PayPerPost
The issue of content authenticity is very important to us here at Touchstone. When you are delivering news and information to users you want to feel assured that you're giving them authentic voices saying authentic things so it's in our best interest that the blogosphere is a place of trusted content (or at least a place where content trust can be measured).
So when the issue of PayPerPost (getting paid to post stuff about a company) pops up it piques our interest.
Robert is getting a lot of flack today for his announcement that he will be speaking at a PayPerPost event. Even Shel seems to be disavowing his writing partner!
The fact is though I think Robert is once again doing the brave thing. He is the most visible content producer in our little revolution. He is on the bleeding edge when it comes to facing all the real and emerging issues.
Issues that most bloggers don't have to worry about like balancing content creation, revenue and disclosure or reading AND responding to hundreds and hundreds of emails a day in an effort to maintain the social part of his social media. Or issues like remembering his responsibility to link to us z-listers.
The fact is though - Robert has been most transparent about his struggle with these issues. In many ways though, I think it's that transparency that has been attracting so much criticism lately. People expect more from him than Boing Boing! or Engadget exactly because he makes it clear that there is money involved and that money can and does change the game.
So that makes him the perfect person to go into the lions den and find out what these PayPerPost people have to say. To champion full disclosure and face the reality that where there's an audience - there is money. And where there is money there will always be scammers. We need to face this fact.
With great power comes great responsibility. And today, the barrier to gaining power is lower and lower. First we had Spam, then we had SEO tricks and now we have Splogs and paid posts. Someone has to find a way to define and declare our moral standard - and someone (or a group of someones) should document our best practices.
Maybe that's a job for a good wiki and the Media 2.0 Workgroup. But it is definitely a job for the Scoblizer on the front lines - demonstrating how it can be done by doing it. Stumbling, and doing it better.
I just read an interesting blog from Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0, about the recent YouTube polls, partially regarding potential cost to users should YouTube introduce ads at the start of each video.
Needless to say that it doesnt bode well for YouTube if they did this. I too wouldn't be too happy about it and am a self-confessed media junkie. But is this just the cost of doing business? Can we not come up with more creative ways of monetizing video?
What about this; Incremental random ads where volume of advertising is tied to popularity of a piece of content. So, the less popular videos will have no ads and then randomly show ads with increasingly frequency as the views/popularity increases.
This is on the assumption that people might be more inclined to accept ads for the more popular (and thus theoretically more interesting) videos.
Just my thoughts. I wonder if there is any other compromise?
For the life of me I can't work out why Paul, our new (for about 4.5 months ago) uber-programmer, didn't get a proper welcome to the team on this blog. Ash and I have always welcomed new team members etc. I will blame myself entirely.
Paul, over those last 4.5 months, has done an amazing job. You will notice a huge difference in the beta in the areas of performance overall and the ticker usability specifically. You need to email to thank him :)
The reason I am pointing all this out, though, is because Paul has started a series of great posts about how Touchstone works. Or at least how we have solved seemingly simple problems that actually amount to a complex web of systems and subsystems to make an application work 'as you'd expect'.
Well I think we already have a better term - Media 2.0.
Jeremiah says he hates the 2.0 thing. Well I say too bad. It's great! Why is it great? Because the change in media is not just about social. If it's about one thing then it's about Personal.
It just so happens that we are each (personally) social beings and therefore a symptom of more personal media is social features.
But personal manifests itself in other ways including:
More personal choice (more niche content providers including/especially participant created content)
More personalization (in the form of recommendations and attention based filters)
More personal transparent (public is the new private)
More personal presentation (choose your browser, aggregator, device, color)
More personal scheduling (choose the time and date of the content - time-shifted/on-demand content).
More personal connections - SOCIAL
But there are other aspects of the changing media landscape. Convergence, DRM (that's not very social!), Identity etc. So that's why I call it Media 2.0. It's a major new version of a very old idea. Personal human connection.
In the comments of the post he writes:
Chris, I’m not a fan of “2.0″ anything. What’s happening is the natural evolution of the web, it’s nothing really new is it?
This is why I like the term “Social Media”
Important: Social Media is about People.
I responded:
Social is a symptom of Personal - but whatever your definition - to try to foreshadow the destination/goal before we get there only limits the discussion/possibilities.
2.0 gives people freedom to decide what the next generation will look like while still giving them a buzzword to rally around.
The community and the market will decide what the 2.0 means - and I think you will find that ’social’ is only part of that outcome.
Also, while the people listed on the page are great voices to help spotlight the discussion, we will start to find ways to bring everyone into the conversation in more democratic ways... stay tuned.
For now I'll give you a hint and say start tagging your content Media 2.0 ;)
This is a blog
about using Attention Data to help users
filter the noise and experience a
personally relevant
Internet. It is written by the two
founders of Faraday Media - the creators
of
Particls and co-authors of
APML.
Who's Who
Ashley Angell: Co-Founder/CTO: Entrepreneur, Code Guru and TV Addict
Chris Saad:
Co-Founder/CEO: Entrepreneur, Media Junkie and Attention Ninja
