Quote
"I can’t think of anything that demonstrates the sovereign nature of the self better than a blog.” - Doc Searls
About the Author
Stowe Boyd is a well-known media subversive,
and an internationally recognized authority on real-time, collaborative
and social technologies. His new blog is Message.
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Monthly Archives
July 30, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Someone pointed out to me that we had done a bad job of announcing my new role at Corante, in the midst of all the other things we have been involved in recently, like Suw's Strange Attractor and Bob's Total Experience.
Hylton put the bite on me, and asked me to take on an even more challenging operational role, that of President/COO for Corante. I will be continuing on as a head of research, since we hope to have a growing and healthy federation of cooperating but relatively autonomous research services operating under the Corante Research umbrella. More to follow in that department.
But my primary responsibility is to drive the growth of the company, working closely with Hylton on publications, but more on growing research and the other elements of an exploding social media collective.
We are having fun, but its just crazy these days. So much is happening. If I don't respond to your email, IM, or call right away, bear with me.
Thanks to all those who heard about my new gig, and wrote in with their best wishes.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Dudley and Wes at 2Entwine have posted a roadmap for future Gush enhancements. I am salivating.
Gush Blog: Roadmap
Lots of people have been asking what we have slated for the next release, or when will their favorite IM/Newsreader feature will be included. Typically, our answers range from "you mean we need another release?" to "that feature will be included over my dead body."
We've put together a list of things we think are necessary to take Gush to the next level. Our goal is to get 1.2 out in about 6 to 8 weeks.
Here are the "big ticket" items we have planned for 1.2:
[excerpted just the headings]
Quite an agenda. Nested buddy lists is my contribution to the mess, by the way.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Had I only known about SkypeOut (where Skype supports calling out to plain vanilla phones) two weeks ago, I would have saved a bucket of Euros making calls back to the States. Of course, that would have been a savings over the exorbitant hotel phone charges I was looking at. There has been a lot of fuming about SkypeOut rates, and especially the shift since the beta (see Stuart Henshall, for example), but the image of me calling home through my laptop from Starbucks in London is very pleasant. (Of course, I couldn't connect wirelessly at Starbucks, but that was because I was infected by SearchV, but that's a different story.)
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I'm not the only one suggesting that email blows. Mark Hall joins the chorus shouting that "email is a slum" (Doc Searls).
Mark Hall [from The End of E-mail - Computerworld]
So-called realists out there will dismiss these lamentations by saying that despite all of its problems, PC e-mail is too popular to be abandoned. Perhaps. But those old enough to remember Usenet know that even a good, useful communications tool can be abandoned once it becomes overrun by hucksters, pornographers and other pond scum floating around the Internet. Usenet is still out there, but its popularity is near zero.
OK then, the realists will say, what's going to replace e-mail? After all, technology needs to be replaced with another technology. Agreed.
In the case of the Selectric, it took a combination of keyboards, monitors, printers, storage media and, of course, the PC motherboard to supplant those elegant machines. And that's what I predict will happen with PC-based e-mail.
I believe a mix of new tools will emerge around handheld devices like the Palm, the BlackBerry and your smart cell phone. These products are becoming more powerful, making it possible to do more than just send and receive messages. They're adding crisper displays and better input capabilities, whether with bigger onboard keyboards or external ones.
Also, with these devices, there's no underlying monopoly like Windows that sociopathic programmers can write viruses for. Spam isn't a big problem for today's handheld users. And by the time PC e-mail is jettisoned in the next few years, vendor-embraced antispam standards and legal action against spammers will make it a nonissue.
Instant messaging is another technology that could help move PC e-mail into the dustbin of history. It's hard to spoof an IM user because incoming messages by definition come from someone on your whitelist. And tracking and management tools exist to protect your company and employees from intellectual property theft, harassment and dangerous attachments.
Sure, there's no perfect replacement for PC e-mail. But there wasn't one for IBM's Selectric, either. It had the greatest keyboard ever, one the PC industry hasn't come close to replicating in a quarter century. But somehow, we've managed to get by, just as we will when PC e-mail disappears.
Like I asked at the recent Supernova conference, when was the last time you sent a telegram, or used a mud tablet? All sorts of once-dominant communication media have fallen by the wayside, just as soon as something better has come along. I agree with Mark, that it is likely to be something based on instant messaging, where the whitelist is the norm, and presence underlies everything.
Of course, many do not agree.
Matt Blumberg [from OnlyOnce: The Rumors of Email's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated]
The writer talks about how email will die soon because there are too many issues with viruses, spam, IT management costs, and employment practices. The writer says email is close to having a bigger downside than upside, and that email will go the way of the typewriter or the floppy disk drive.
I say that this is a writer who has a bad IT department or a bad email service, a stunning lack of faith in technology's ability to overcome adversity, and perhaps a misunderstanding of basic economic productivity.
Email is alive and well... [and later, he asserts] The email industry will not allow itself go the way of the typewriter (by the way, you will note, there was never really a "typewriter industry" the way that email has turned into its own sector). There are simply too many companies, with too much at stake, with too much capital to invest and too much reward to be gained, to permit obsolesence.
 I left out some of Matt's more compelling arguments -- like email's central role in today's business context, and spam filters are getting better everyday -- but I just had to poke at this one, that the email industry can somehow stop block obsolescence by wishing it so. And yes, there was a "typewriter industry" that was dominated by companies like IBM and Royal, and now most of those companies have gone away or turned their attention to other things.
Remington sold 100,000 typewriters before 1900, at a average price of around $100, which was incredibly expensive. "During the 1920s and 1930s, the big four front strike typewriter companies--Underwood, Royal, Remington and Smith-Corona--accounted for 80% of the dollar value of typewriters sold in the US" (see Early Office Museum) and those companies, along with IBM and others, made the transition to electricity in the 60's, but not the transition to computers. However, most would have thought that typewriters would be with us forever. They were on nearly every secretary's desk in the early '80s, for example.
Most importantly, despite being mission critical, ubiquitous, and familiar to all, they are gone and the companies involved could do nothing to stop the end of their reign. Nothing.
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July 28, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Apropos of my recent aphorism-- "a brand is no longer a promise, it is an invitation" -- I stumbled across a wild piece at GapingVoid.com:
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
The Democratic National Convention is bringing the formerly simmering dichotomy between blogging and journalism to a boil. In my rant yesterday on Strange Attractor, I attacked a vocal critic of Suw Charman's gonzo introduction to the new blog, but granted that he was uncovering something central in the war of words between the two "sides" in this ideological battle: journalism's belief in objectivity and editorial oversight versus blogging's reliance on subjective voice and individual authority.
The flapdoodle that cousin danah has started about bloggers being dissed by the traditional media priesthood is exactly the same issue:
danah boyd [from Demeaning bloggers: the NYTimes is running scared]
As i’ve written before, blogging is rhetorically situated between journalism and diarying. Most often, people label blogging as one or the other in order to degrade it. The NYTimes pulled this act today because they have a professional interest in portraying convention bloggers as “low-brow” and unworthy of reading, while the NYTimes will present the real “high-brow” convention story. By framing bloggers as diarists, the NYTimes is demanding that the reader see blogs as petty, childish and self-absorbed. They further perpetuate this view by pasting a picture of a youth on the front of the article to suggest that bloggers are all inexperienced and naive, further implying that their reports will not have the value of the more “adult” perspective of “real” journalists.
The entire spin of the article focuses on how bloggers are like children in a candy store - naive, inexperienced and overwhelmed by what is now available to them.
This latest skirmish was picked up by many, including over at The Industry Standard, where an optimistic, live-together perspective is being presented:
Esme Vos [from Journalists vs. bloggers: is that really so?]
With the official recognition of bloggers as members of that sacred tribe, the Press, at the Democratic National Convention, a war of words has broken out between the high priests and the newbies. Danah Boyd feels that the New York Times ran a demeaning article about bloggers. Other bloggers have weighed in saying that the mainstream press is afraid of them.
I have a different opinion. Journalists who have written on muncipal wireless broadband tell me that my blog, Muniwireless.com, has helped them research and finish their stories quickly. Blogs that focus on specific issues are now great sources of information for journalists. By visiting one site (example: Corante) they have access to the experts and accurate information much more quickly than in the past.
Through blogs, newspaper and magazines also find freelance writers who can contribute articles on specific subjects. Granted a lot of blogs are just stream-of-consciousness diary entries, there are enough that can add value to a newspaper's content.
But I think nothing brings this controversy into sharper relief than the exchange earlier this week between David Weinberger and David Mears, a veteran journalist now turned "blogger" for AP, at a Media Circle breakfast.
David Weinberger [from The Media Circle]
I asked Mears, "So, who are you supporting for president?" He said that he wouldn't tell us that because "how could you trust what I write?"
"Then how can we trust what you write in your blog?" I asked.
Mears gave an articulate defense of the canon of journalistic professionalism, and of the craft and value of objectivity.
Of course I respect that. How can you not? We need professional journalists. But for most blogs, we want to know what the writer's starting point is. That's not because we're subjective journalists. It's because a blog is a conversation among friends, and when you're arguing politics with your pals, it'd just be weird to refuse to say where you stand.
You're right, blogging's not "subjective journalism," per se. Blogging is gonzo journalism, where who we are, what we are, and what we care about is as much a part of the story as what we are writing about. And, of course, the same is true in so-called objective journalism, except the belief system and perspective that underlies the purported objectivity is implicit, and therefore cannot be addressed directly.
More importantly, the editorial agenda of the traditional media -- what has made modern journalism such a potent force -- is all about deciding what is important and how much of the front page or the news hour to devote to it.
The world of blogging brings these decisions back to the individual, based on the personal balancing of trusted voices. Each of us can decide what issues are most critical, how to apportion our attention to the affairs of the day, and which memes are worthy of follow-up. We are taking the remote control out of the hands of the editors, and they don't like it. It will eat into their advertising, big time. It is no wonder, given what is at stake, that the established priesthood will rail from their pulpits, and make light of what is a truly profound power shift in the making.
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July 27, 2004
Posted by Gregory Narain
Amy Jo Kim mentions a new technology that is designed to ease the "pain" of dealing with those, now tiny, pictures the new breed of camera phones are snapping around the world.
For camera phone owners, one of the greatest hassles of the process is actually getting the picture off of the phone once a picture has been taken. There are a few reasons that moving pictures is important (at least for now):
Contagion - For the most part, people are snapping pictures "in the now" and want to spread that moment to as wide an audience as possible (usually the members of the clan that aren't physically participating). Storage - Currently, the small devices are not equipped with enough memory. This makes it impossible to store a large amount of photos on the device at any one time. Couple this with the photos already attached to contacts in the address book and the available space is even smaller.
To further aggravate matters, there are a couple of strong forces that are working to prevent users from actually getting their photos off:
Interface Design - As with most electronic devices, there are a number of features that are present, but often not used. With camera phones, usually a button is dedicated to the camera. However, there are still issues in terms of how to manipulate that image, how to annotate it, etc. that prevent many users from having the picture the way they want it. Infrastructure Design - Making phone calls is a relatively painless process on your average camera phone. Sending pictures is a different story. In many respects, it requires a bit of knowledge outside of the device to tell how to send a picture (e-mail vs. MMS, for example) . In addition, there's a potential looming question if the image ever made it to its destination.
In Europe, where SMS is far more entrenched, these may be "easier" tasks. We're only barely getting used to it here in the States now.
Enter Cognima. They've developed a new technology that will allow for the automatic publishing of photo content to a central server. The process happens behind the scenes and is, in essence, painless. According to a study they conducted, it works:
Cognima's study showed that normal camera phone users end up not being particularly active MMS users. Only 18% of the regular MMS users they followed kept on taking and sending pictures on a regular basis two weeks after the trial began. However, 70% of customers using Cognima were still happily snapping photos.
Source: TheFeature, "Taking The Upload Out Of The Camera Phone Process"
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I spoke with Joe Hildebrand, Jabber's CTO, about the recent press releases from the company: today's news regarding an integration of Jabber technology with Webex, and last week's announcement around an XMPP/SIMPLE gateway.
The biggest take aways:
- Jabber's integration with Webex technology represents another turn of the wheel on the inevitable integration between traditional text based (and soon video and audio based) IM and full-up web conferencing. There will be no hard distinction in thvery near future between these two modalities.
- Jabber's push into integration with enterprise applications -- like the Foreign Exchange traders example mentioned in the linked case study (see here) -- is an enormously important area of infrastructure, and the Jabber Forms protocol is a big step forward.
- The XMPP/SIMPLE gateway represents the awareness by Jabber that it is a multi-protocol world, and stonewalling by saying that XMPP is "better" doesn't help customers. Instead, simply providing the gateway sidesteps the issue, and lets customers make headway until technical standards converge on something, some time.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Saw that Moto had won an innovation award for a new product, the IMfree wireless device.
[from Motorola product page: IMfree Wireless Instant Messenger]
Free up the family computer without putting a stop to the fun of instant messaging. The portable, convenient IMfree device goes where your kids want to go -- from their bedroom to the backyard -- without wires or additional monthly fees.
Best Innovations 2004 at CESIMfree lets instant messengers roam almost anywhere around the house -- up to 150 feet from an Internet-connected PC and base station -- so your teens can chat with up to six buddies at a time from the comfort of...wherever. Best of all, with the home computer in less demand, other family members can get their work done at the same time.
Although I am the sort of mental case that has PCs for both my kids, I want one of these for the living room... for me.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Suw Charman's entry yesterday led to an interesting interchange with a reader, Anselm, who was advancing an agenda that is larger than Suw's initial blog entry, or even the Strange Attractor blog itself.
[from my comment]
Your deconstruction of Suw's 'Welcome' post seems like a social analysis of an invitation to dinner: "What are the overtones of 'bring your own beer'? Does 'RSVP' mean that they really don't want me to come? Is 'Sincerely' a subtle insult?"
Come on. Get over it.
But on the other hand, there is a real parallel in your critique with events brewing elsewhere in the world of new media. The desire for subjectivity and immediacy rather than objectivity and deliberation -- that you seem to be asking for -- is a centerpoint of the conflict between traditional journalism and social media (blogging).
And yes, we bloggers write from 'the perspective of how the world pivots' around us, and yes, for our own selfish amusement and self-improvement, absolutely regardless of what other people think. Welcome to the twenty-first century. The world does pivot around us, each and every one. There is no objectivity, and waving it around like a sacred relic does not make it so. People should think for themselves, and reject the mind control implied in 'objectivity' where deep-seated social conventions or the decisions of disembodied editorial forces sidetrack dialogue and stifle contention. This also means that we don't wait until we have figured it all out: we write, even when our thinking is not finished yet. We are always beginning, and never finished.
One of the benefits of blogging as a form of communication is a dialogue with a community of interested readers. That dialogue can be messy, can be bristling with unpalatable or contradictory ideas, and may not perfectly fit the presumptions of the casual reader. Occasionally, the dialogue may be a shouting match. And it can include 'little e-hugs' with people encouraging bloggers to press on, despite the trollish voices telling them to stop.
In the long run, however, the value of a blog is measured by its impact over time in the minds of the community members. It can't be judged based on its first posting, or even its first month of postings. Blogs take time, and involvement, and yes, even vocal nay-sayers howling at the moon.
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July 26, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
 But in a good way.
On my recent whirlwind tour of Europe, I got the chance to meet Suw Charman, whose Chocolate and Vodka I had read with great amusement. She was obviously the sort of bright light we hope to attract to Corante, and so I used my mojo to get her to come aboard.
Thus was born Strange Attractor, where Suw will be looking the emerging business of blogging:
Suw Charman [from Welcome to Strange Attractor]
Like instant messaging, blogging is gaining such a strong foothold amongst business users that by the time the management realises they have been infiltrated, they no longer have the power to switch it off. The corporate cat has to sit back and watch as the Trojan Mouse struts its stuff.
The thing about strange attractors is that they bring their own kind of beautiful order to chaos, but it is still chaos. You don't really see the strange attractor, you just see the chaos flowing around it and know where it is.
-- Joi Ito
In this blog, I want to understand the processes and functions that create these strange attractors, these swirly folded patterns. What makes for a successful blog? How do we counter high churn rates and rapid abandonment? And how do we implement blogs in business in a way that engages users and brings most benefits?
Over the coming months, I will be examining these questions as well as looking at some of the side issues, for example, what is the role of storytelling in business blogging? Are the best bloggers also the best storytellers? Or does content trump language?
A very high quality collection of complex questions for us to pursue.
Thanks for joining us, Suw.
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July 24, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
[from Fierce Enterprise]
Firms will ditch email if security doesn't improve
If viruses, spam, and other threats continue to plague email, 6 out of 10 companies say they will give up on the technology. According to a recent survey, only 29 percent of executives are optimistic about the future of email. The UN's International Telecommunication Union also expressed concern over email security. The group last week released a report warning that "millions" of users could abandon email and the Internet due to disgust over malicious messages.
(source: National Security Organization; pointer from Susan Matick (IronPort Systems))
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Duncan Work, an old pal of mine, has started a jeremiad for a set of privacy and security principles for social networking. He poses some interesting questions.
Duncan Work [from PlaNetwork Journal -Call for A Social Networking Bill of Rights
The primary question posed by this paper is: What are those correct designs and policies? Many online systems don't get privacy policies right because of self-interest, or simply because privacy is not a high priority. For online retailers, protecting credit card information quickly became a high priority. But social networking systems are still fairly new, so while earning the trust of their users is being increasingly recognized as important, clear privacy standards are yet to emerge. What basic principles can social networking systems follow to best protect the rights of both users and non-users?
By the way, what exactly are the rights of users? The right to privacy is probably the most basic, but how should that be expressed, and what other related rights are also important?
And what about non-users? Should non-users have rights too? Most online privacy policies seem to speak exclusively about rights of users, without mentioning non-users. But in social networking systems, the rights of non-users can quickly become important, as well.
Duncan's answer is a "Bill of Rights" which is really a code of ethics that he suggests the services should abide by -- and by inference, those that do not should be avoided. Ok as far as that goes, although I am personally less concerned about privacy and security in the systems at the moment, and more focused on functionality and purpose. There needs to be more going on than the limited contact list-oriented networking the services are offering today.
Clay suggests that Duncan's screed is a bit self-serving for the purposes of LinkedIn, where he serves as chief scientist.
And oh, by the way, Duncan - it would be better if LinkedIn launched a blog to have this conversation in, instead of posting a "paper" at PlanetNetwork Journal, where people can't even make comments for crying out loud.
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July 23, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I am attending BlogOn (do I ever do anything beside travel to and fro to conferences, you might ask), and one meme continues to emerge from the blog sludge that is being pushed around: how does blogging shift the meaning, perception, and utility of brand?
I maintain that a metaphorical shift of brand is taking place, analogous with the time shifting that real-time communication has engendered. Being able to touch people in real-time has changed everything in business conversation; similarly, moving the positioning of product or service from broadcast into many:many dialogue will force a reappraisal of brand. It will no longer be a promise, as someone stated yesterday in the BlogOn bootcamp, it will be an invitation.
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July 21, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Greg Narain and I attended the iDate conference in Nice last week, as part of our Horde of Vandals tour of Europe. [Greg, are we going to make us t-shirts for the crew?]
The conference was only around 60-70 folks, but either because of that, or because of the particular mix of people, it was a great mixing bowl of networking. Old Friends (like Judith Meskill of the Social Software Blog, and Michael Jones of Userplane), and many new (like Sandra Williamson and Jim Houran of True, and Patrick Marshall of Thomas Services).
 The real benefit of a conference in Nice is (as you can see) the food.
(photo courtesy of Yasu Nagaoka; more are found at iDate photos).
I gave a talk, entitled "Social Tools and The Third Space," which I enjoyed researching, and which I will be turning into a written piece in the next week. Uploading the powerpoint won't help much because a/ it was mostly pictures and me handwaving, and b/ the pictures are so dense that the powerpoint overwhelms our Moveable Type limits for upload. Stay tuned. Here's the abstract:
Web context is increasingly assuming the role of the 'third place' -- after work and home, as defined by Ray Oldenburg -- where the sense of community is created. As third place moves online and becomes third space, how will the technologies that we use to communicate shift to support a broader range of social interactions? What about the enhanced third place that new cell phone services are creating in Europe? What can we learn from online work communities and today's online affiliatory communities (like online dating) to intuit the third space of the near future, both internationally and in Europe? What other business models appear in the third space, aside from those we have already seen in social networking today?
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I have heard from several recently separated employees of Ikimbo, that the instant messaging application pioneer has recently decided to close down. CEO Glen Hellman has been unavailable for comment.
The company's Agenda product won the coveted Gold Lotus Advisor Editors' Choice Award in February of 2003.
AGENDA is tightly integrated with Lotus Sametime, which handles the real-time notification and coordination of a response to a critical situation. Organizations can define an "agenda" to follow when a crisis occurs, and AGENDA monitors systems, such as ERP systems, for conditions that warrant a crisis. If a crisis condition exists, the "agenda" for that crisis is followed and the person(s) responsible are notified via Sametime of the situation. More importantly, AGENDA allows people to reach out to underlying systems once a decision has been made and tell the system(s) what action to take. This key step is called "closing the loop" on critical events.
The demise of the company is an emotional blow for me, since I served most recently as EVP there, leaving just after the receipt of the Lotus Advisor award, although I continued on as an occasionaly advisor.
Ikimbo is a company that was simply too early for the market. A product like Agenda would make sense once some form of interoperability is available to the enterprise customers that it targetted. [Note: I will be interviewing various folks at Microsoft in the next few days about their recent announcement about interoperability with AIM and Yahoo networks. Such a platform will lead to the re-emergence of the ideas that motivated Ikimbo and Agenda.]
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July 20, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I read Clay's recent piece on Social Link Management at Many2Many, and in particular wanted to amplify his comments on Amplify:
Clay Shirky [from Many-to-Many: Social link management]
And my anti-recomendation is Amplify. Using it, I had a horrible flashback to the bad old days of Backflip, where the idea was the the user would store their links on Backflip, who would then make it almost impossible for the user to get at those links in aggregate, to store a copy locally, or to get to their links should Backflip be down.
Amplify is that same terrible idea — your links are stored as “Amps,” and everything you click is an uninformative Amp redirect, so even if you get to a page with a link on it, you can’t copy the URL without also visiting the link, and then, when you do visit an “Amp” (always mistrust people who try to re-brand key parts of the Web) it’s in a frame, so that you can’t easily share it without also sending the recipient through Amplify.
And, as the glistening maraschino cherry on the towering sundae of badness, the categories are pre-fab rather than user created, and there are even 14 of them, the Yahoo-official number of top level categories.
I suppose the flipside of the “everything old is new again” pattern is that the old bad ideas get a re-play as well as the old but good ones. I can’t imagine why anyone would hand their links over to Amplify — the info-to-eye-candy ratio on the pages is at PowerPoint levels, and the “we’ll capture the users eyeballs and hold them hostage” link model, already broken in the mid-90s, has now been superseded by things like del.icio.us and Bookmarkmanager. Grrrr.
On top of the inverted model of "sharing" links in Amplify (which is really more like stealing your links), I had a mass of problems in fooling with the tool. Because of my recent trip to Europe I had put off going back to it, but Clay's right. I'd rather investigate sharing that is sharing, and put Amplify to one side.
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July 19, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I have hardly gotten back from the Europe trip (about which I plan to catch up tomorrow, including the lack'o'internet disease I suffered there), when I already had to scramble to make arrangement for BlogOn. We are happy to sponsor this event, where several Corante heads (like Ross Mayfield, danah boyd, and I) are speaking.
[via email]
Register today and Save $100 on BlogOn 2004
Dear Get Real reader,
There's still time to fill the few empty seats available for BlogOn 2004: the Business of Social Media (www.blogonevent.com) this Thursday and Friday at UC Berkeley. If you ask me, you'll be missing a big chance to catch a fast-forming, vital wave of new opportunity. Our two-day, content-packed conference on the business of social media. The more I communicate with the more than 50 panelists and presenters, the more juiced I get about the conference. I'd like to thank you again for deciding to be part of this watershed event and I want to offer advice for everyonecome early and stay late. BlogOn will begin and end on strong notes, and as I peruse the agenda, what's in-between is potent as well.
If you act now we'll even knock $100 off the full price -- but act now. This special offer is only good for the next 36 hours.
Here's what you'll see:
Our executive boot camp (http://tinyurl.com/6hdtv) will demystify the tools of blogging and their incredible power as well as explain its sometimes daunting language. Notable members of this blossoming technology's growing pioneer brigadeSusan Mernit, partner at 5ive; Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext; JD Lasica, journalist, uber blogger and imminent author; Halley Suitt, senior editor of Worthwhile Magazine; Steve Rubel, vice president, client services of CooperKatz & Company and Mary Hodder, web products manager at Technorati will provide close personal attention to participants.
At 6 p.m. Thursday, our cocktail reception will set the tone for general session attendees, executive boot camp participants, panelists, presenters in the ambience of UC Berkeley's Faculty Club. Then, our kick-off panel featuring AlwaysOn's Tony Perkins, AOL's Bill Schreiner, CNET's John Roberts and Yahoo's Scott Gatz will paint The Big Picture in bold brushstrokes.
Friday is content-packed. We'll be presenting a series of interactive panels, company presentations and audience-interactive sessions. If Thursday's panel paints the Big Picture, Friday's informative and insightful panelists will etch in the details.
Our closing panel will follow the thinking of the private investment community. Sequoia Capital's Mark Kvamme; Martin Tobias of Ignition Partners and Anna Zornosa of Knight Ridder Digital will give clarity to which business models make senseor don'tfrom the private placement perspective.
Finally, on Friday night, there will also be an informal blogger dinner, at Pyramid Brewing Company in Berkeley, where you can socialize with folks after the conference. If you are interested in attending the dinner, you can register in the BlogOn Wiki, here: http://www.socialtext.net/blogon/index.cgi?blogon_dinner
When you leave BlogOn 2004 we expect you will have a comprehensive understanding of the threshold the technology industry is now passing through as we move toward the Era of Social Media. We all know what doors have closed behind us in the tech sector. It is now time to understand the full promise we are now heading toward with increasing momentum.
To save $100, register at http://tinyurl.com/63w2l using the Promotional Code ‘social'. And if you can't make it in person, you can sign up for the webcast at: http://microurl.com/26552155
Sincerely,
Chris Shipley
Executive Producer - BlogOn 2004
Co-Founder and Editorial Director, Guidewire Group, LLC
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July 09, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
People want more messages on their cellphones, and will gladly opt in to receive marketing messages -- even if thay have to pay for the privilege:
BusinessWeek [from A Marketer's Dream: Your Cell Phone]
According to a survey by Enpocket, a London-based mobile-marketing company, customers aged 16 to 25 actually want their phone to beep with a message an average of 6 to 10 times a day. "Our biggest complaint from teens is that they don't get enough messages," says Jonathan Linner, CEO of Enpocket. "Every time your phone beeps, it shows you're popular."
It's not just kids who want more missives on their phones. Consider one Enpocket campaign for a beauty-care company in Britain that Enpocket declined to name. The company sent to an undisclosed number of women a message promising to give them customized hair-care advice if they responded to 10 text messages over the following 10 days.
Each day, a message would arrive with a question. Is your hair dry? Is it fine? Is it thin or full? Fully 90% of the women responded to all 10 questions. In return, they got shampoo advice. And the beauty-care company had valuable data to build personalized profiles for further campaigns.
The US use of texting is dwarfed by the Europe market ($1B versus $16B), but teens are pushing at it.
This is another huge generational market, and so the push will come at that level -- with promotions linked to teen's interests: music, games, entertainment, and so on. But don't be fooled. This is not tinker toys.
[pointer from Britton Manasco Customer Intelligence: Membership has its Privileges]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Ernest Miller continues his indefagitable invective around the fools (in this case, The Motley Fools) who really don't get why the INDUCE ACT is dangerous. The flapdoodle about the iPod being at risk is really not the point:
Ernest Miller [from Are the Opponents of the INDUCE Act (IICA) Claiming that the Sky is Falling?]
It isn't the iPod that is at risk, it is the small company's non-DRM'd wireless iPod clone that is at risk. The biggest threat is to the innovative next-generation iPod from some company that no one has heard of yet that the RIAA will quash long before it can sell millions of units and make us all wonder how we survived without one.
Not to mention the fledgling P2P social networking app (like Wiredreach, to name only one) that could be driven out of business in a moment. Or even Groove Networks, which doesn't have the deep pockets of an Apple.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
George Michael, the erstwhile pop star, has closed the doors on a chat room set up at his website, since this "fans" were saying less than fantastic things about him: [from Fans were too chatty for singer]
British pop singer George Michael might have expected some praise from adoring fans when he set up a chat room on his Web site. Instead, contributors complained that the 41-year-old looked old and overweight and criticized his recent music, prompting him to announce Thursday that he is shutting down the forum.
In a message posted on his site, Michael said the negativity was bad for him, his fans and his music. "Those of you that want to carry on the media's work will have to do it somewhere else I suppose," he wrote. "Sorry guys, but that's the way it goes . . . . Peace and Love . . . or nothing at all."
Sounds like Michael has gone corporate, and doesn't want to listen to the market.
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July 08, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I had the chance (at long last) to interview Michael Osterman, of Osterman Research, on the recent market moves by consumer IM giants Yahoo and AOL.
I was happily surprised to hear Mike thought that convergence in the consumer and enterprise spaces is likely within 2-3 years.
It's astonishing to me that the Federal government can continue to allow the Internet giants to *not* support any notion of interoperability. But I guess we shouldn't worry. It's only a few more years before something happens. Sigh.
But Mike's insights on the naturalness of Yahoo and AOL moves *away* from the enterprise market are very interesting, indeed.
[By the way, this is the second of my "IM Interviews" using the Flash SWF technology developed by the guys at 2entwine for the Gush IM solution]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Various participants of STES are blogging on their repsective topics: STES blog.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
In preparation for my trip to Europe (including London), I stumbled onto this Wired story about "toothing" (which also introduced me to the British craze of "dogging": "an underground swinging scene where couples and sometimes third or fourth parties engage in public sex for an exhibitionist thrill.")
Daniel Terdiman [from Wired News: Brits Going at It Tooth and Nail]
And now comes "toothing," where strangers on trains and buses and at bars and concerts hook up for clandestine sex by text messaging each other with their Bluetooth-enabled cell phones or PDAs.
"I've always loved the idea of random sexual encounters, but have never felt brave enough to go to (sex) parties," says Steve, a toother from Hitchin, England. "The beauty of toothing is that there's no pressure. I was reluctant to send messages at first, but the standard greeting, which I found out from (an online toothing forum) is so innocuous there is no chance of offending anyone by sending a random message."
According to the Beginner's Guide to Toothing, the online FAQ written by a man who calls himself Toothy Toothing, toothing is "a form of anonymous sex with strangers -- usually on some form of transport or enclosed area such as a conference or training seminar.... Users 'discover' other computers or phones in the vicinity and then send a speculative message. The usual greeting is: 'Toothing?'"
Maybe I'll rent a bluetooth phone while I'm there...
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
 How I missed this gimmick, I don't know. Last month, to highlight the issues of personal privacy and the juxtapositioning of micromarketing and intrusiveness, Reason magazine mailed out every copy of the June issue with a photo of the recipient's house circled on the cover. For 40,000 readers.
David Carr [from Putting 40,000 Readers, One By One, On The Cover]
In some respects, Reason's cover stunt is less Big Brother than one more demonstration that micromarketing is here to stay. "My son gets sports catalogs where his name is imprinted on the jerseys that are on the cover," Mr. Rotenberg said. "He thinks that's very cool."
In his editor's note describing the magazine's database package, Mr. Gillispie left open three spots - commuting time, educational attainment and percentage of children living with grandparents - so he could adapt his message to individual readers. Mr. Gillespie said that the parlor trick could have profound implications as database and printing capabilities grow.
"What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?" he asked. "That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read."
This is likely to creep people out, rather than getting all excited about how neat the technology is, just like the response when you show someone their house mapped at Google just from their phone number (see When You Put Things Together, They Are Changed).
[pointer from Keith Hampton]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
More support for the theory that being virtually connected leads to being really connected. Keith Hampton, assistant professor of technology, urban and community sociology at MIT, is interviewed on his reasearch regarding wired middle class communities:
Laurie Smith-Frailey [from Being Wired Encourages Human Contact ]
Seven years ago, Hampton set out to discover how online communication vehicles like e-mail are likely to impact our social contacts with family, close friends, and casual acquaintances. Are we going to meet less frequently in person? Are we going to become cut off from our communities? He also wanted to learn the extent to which global communication technologies can affect us at the local level — particularly within our own neighborhoods.
The big findings, he says, are that contact leads to contact. "If we have contact online, we'll have more contact offline, and the opposite tends to be true as well," Hampton says. "People generally don't use just one medium or the other, and e-mail certainly doesn't lead to a decrease in the size of our social circles. In fact, communicating on the Internet can increase our interactions by affording new types of relationships, for example, by helping us get to know our neighbors when we otherwise might never have."
At first neightbors in the studies (Boston and Toronto) emailed for recommendations ("anyone know a good plumber") and then got into talking politics. Turns out talking about politics *is* politics, so that led to political action.
Some of the quantitative information will directly inform my presentation next week on The Third Space. Oldenburg's notion of the third place is the great little place around the corner you go to, to have a coffee or a beer with the rgulars, and shoot the shit. Its not work, and it's not home: it's a third place. Third places are on the decline, as people watch more and more TV. However, there is hope: the Web creates a Third Space, where people can meet, and create those weak ties that make life a richer and more diverse place, where we can let off steam, argue about the local politics or sports, and make sense of the world.
In a twist, it also turns out that more in-person and telephone contact is taking place in neighborhoods than before the project began (and more than in a control neighborhood). The difference has been e-mail.
"We're finding some interesting things," he says. "For example, 39 percent of participants in the suburban field site reported sending a personal e-mail to a neighbor they didn't know before, simply as a result of having the e-mail address available to them; 41 percent met someone in person whom they did not know before e-mailing them; and 20 percent said they talked on the telephone with a neighbor they'd not spoken with before.
"Internet use glocalized social relationships," he continues. "That is, it affords local activities using a global communication technology. Email is just an everyday part of everyday life. In our experimental settings, it is an opportunity for social interaction where none existed before."
So the social tool allows us to socialize at a low cost, with low social friction. This leads to increased use of more personal and intrusive media -- phone and face-to-face, and ultimately, a richer local social experience.
[pointer from Marc Eisenstadt]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
The event planned for next Wednesday in Amsterdam is going to be really fun. I will be elaborating on the theme of emergent knowledge in social systems ("swarm intelligence"), and how various social tools do/do not help.
Very cool design for the poster advertising the event (click to see full size image).
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Despite all the headshaking by the cognoscenti at the recent Supernova about my "Just Say 'No' To Email" stance (see earlier piece), today's USA Today has a story about the extreme lengths that businesses are considering as a result of spam. And a lot of businesses are willing to consider giving up email altogether, according to a Symantec survey conducted last December:
[from Symantec Survey Finds Small Businesses Fed Up with Spam, Willing to Take Action]
The survey found that small businesses are seeing a noticeable increase in spam in their inboxes. More than half (64 percent) of respondents reported an increase in spam over the past six months, with 33 percent noting dramatic increases. Nearly 40 percent of respondents said that spam made up more than half of the email coming into their businesses.
Small businesses are also willing to take steps to reduce their exposure to spam should the problem continue, according to the survey. For example, 42 percent of small businesses said they would consider abandoning email for business correspondence if the spam situation worsened. [Emphasis mine] Fifty-five percent reportedly would consider changing their company email addresses to stop spam. Moreover, 56 percent would consider locking down their email server to allow only approved messages, which would also force all users who wanted to correspond with the company via email to go through an approval process first. Thirty-two percent of respondents already invest the time and resources to help curb spam by submitting spam email addresses to blacklist companies.
If we lock down the openness of email -- which is one of its purported benefits -- and switch over to a registration model, we are in essence creating a gated community model -- which is what IM already offers.
I say that we should just be like the teenagers, and switch to IM.
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July 07, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
Recent piece about the supposed resurgence of interent in surface mail -- 'old-fashioned' letter writing -- in the "upper echelons" of corporate America. I think that any apparent swing in this direction is temporary, and generational. As Doc Searles recently said, "Email is a slum," and who wants to put critical business communications through the cloaca of the American enterprise?
But the author opines that IM is not the answer -- for the wrong reasons:
Michael Kanellos [from Dear Sir: The letter is back]
Most important, the cultural conventions of electronic communication have yet to be established. Security leaks and embarrasing disclosures have become far more common with the growth of e-mail.
Instant messaging is even more primitive. Most users tend to think of it as "instant response," where a reply should come fast, or else.
But the evidence from actual research on the power users of IM are exactly the opposite: its good for all sorts of talktalk, not just bursty, quick response.
But don't expect those "upper echelons" to go along with that. As Ray Lane recently said to me, "sometimes you have to wait for a generation to die off before real change can happen in the enterprise."
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Posted by Gregory Narain
Since the beginning of this blog, I've often tackled the issue of Digital Identity. In short, I've most often griped about the methods in which various systems and services have not only requested it, but also what they ask for.
In the past, I've tried to apply some of my experience developing databases to provide insight into why these services are almost forced to marginilize our identity, not to mention our humanity, to accomplish their goals. Without boiling us down to empircal data that can ne normalized, categorized, and indexed, searching and archiving are daunting tasks, to say the least.
Yesterday, two interesting nuggets appeared to me that got me thinking about something that I overlooked. First there was an article, then there was an e-mail from David Teten of Online Business Networks with a simple question: "Why don't you have an About Me page? What prompted that decision?"
There's a short answer to that question, which I'll send along to David shortly, however that's not the answer I am giving here. Instead, I was prompted to consider the changes in our behavior that occur as a result of having these new digital identies. Specifically, I realized that I could see many different identies in action already (Public, Protected, Projected, Disposable, and Residual).
...continue reading.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Peter Caputa [Peter lashes out at the recent Friendster email campaign to get folks friendstering again: First Rule of Sales...]
Don't call-on/bother someone, unless you have something to tell them. And don't try to be cute. Unless you're 13 and she is into cute guys. Of which, I don't fit.
And listen to the COO. They are the chief operating officer for a reason.
[... the email ...]
Hotmail correctly assumed this was junk mail.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I love this social networking concept. Too bad it's just a parody. Who Banged Who?
About WhoBangedWho.com!
What better subject for a Social networking site than sex and sexual past? This site is a parody, meant to entertain with a silly idea, and we hope it has served exactly that purpose. As of right now, we have no real inention to develop this site and build a functioning network. If you would like to develop something under this domain, feel free to contact us with a proposal. And don't worry if you filled out the signup form....it doesn't submit anywhere. Thanks for coming, and be sure and tell all of your friends...and past partners about WhoBangedWho.com.
-The WhoBangedWho Team
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
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July 06, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
There seems to be a growing wave of interest (at last) in the social networking comunity to use IM as well as email as a means of communication between individuals. Here's something that came today (by email!): [by email!]
We added some new features to SocialTree last month to keep everyone a little more connected with one another. Some of the new features are listed below with descriptions and how to use them.
[...]
IM Names now in member profiles?:
We've decided to allow members to add their IM names from various instant messaging services such as: (AOL, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo) to their member profile pages...
Go to your profile today and update your profile with your IM names to begin meeting new people even when you're not actually on SocialTree!
To edit your profile, visit: http://www.socialtree.com/member_edit_profile.php
So I went to Jay's profile to IM him: no IM handles!
Oh well, its still a good idea.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I love this graphical representation of what's hot in the news: newsmap.
[from newsmap description]
Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.
I have it as an active window on my desktop. Great way to gestalt the news.
[pointer from Mike Davidson: Newsmap as a Model for Smart Aggregation]
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July 04, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I came across this piece, which includes some amazing stats about the level of Intenret dating in Europe -- good grist for the mill, since I will be opining about that topic at iDate (Nice on 15 July). In particular, the projections about future single status for the enderly are compelling:
Ruth Hill
[from The Observer -- Their eyes met across a crowded room full of speed-daters...]
Now, one in five single adults in Britain happily admits to using some sort of dating service, enabling agencies to boast of memberships larger than the population of some small countries: DatingDirect.com, for example, has a membership of more than 1.5 million.
[...]
There are currently 11 million single adults in Britain, a number that is predicted to increase to 16 million by 2010, and fairly evenly split between genders.
According to a Demos report last week, the number of socially isolated elderly people will rise by a third to 2.2 million by 2021, thanks to the failure of younger people today to find a partner.
[...]
The rise in the popularity of the web-based dating industry in the past year alone is astonishing: there are 44 million links to dating agencies on the web today, compared to 13.1 million in March 2003; 3.95 million personal advertisements, compared to less than one million in 2003; and almost 7.5 million dating services, compared to 2.8 million a year ago.
The piece also digs in on "serial daters" -- people who never really settle into relationships, but just keep on with the services and various activities (like naked speed dating).
[pointer from Judith]
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July 02, 2004
Posted by Stowe Boyd
I am making a swing through Europe the week of 10-18 July, which should be real fun (at least for me, if not for Europeans).
In Amsterdam, I am presenting 9pm-10:30pm 9am-11am on 14 July. Please contact George Witteveen for location information and registration.
"Social Tools: Your Network is Smarter Than You"
In 1999, I introduced the term "social tools" to represent a new sort of software, one that would change the way businesses and individuals work and play. But this change would not come as the byproduct of its operation.
"No, this generation of software is intentional, designed from the start to guide human behavior into new paths and patterns, to counter prevailing ways of interaction. I call these social tools: software intended to shape culture." (Message, August 1999)
Many sorts of software are social (or are becoming socialized), and these have many characteristics in common -- they are focused on social networks, they help us communicate, collaborate, and coordinate better -- but most importantly, they are based on community. And in communities we see the best examples of swarm intelligence, where decisions, inspiration, and knowledge can emerge from the interactions of individuals in ways that prove the axiom: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
How does swarm intelligence work? How can this be practically applied in today's distributed, virtual teams? What relevance does this have to you, and your company's next marketing program, product development cycle, or website design? Learn how to use today's social tools to tap the latent intelligence of your networks of friends, colleagues, and partners.
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July 01, 2004
Posted by Gregory Narain
When Pocketster, formerly Pocket Rendezvous, was announced, there was a great deal of buzz (which I aided in creating) about the potential for such applications in the real world and its potential to create new forms of networks. Things certainly looked promising.
Today, the prospect of these ad-hoc networks seems even more viable, but I'm not sure everyone will be happy about it. Apple has now updated their Rendezvous codebase to provide the functionality on both the Windows and Linux platforms.
[from News.com]
Apple Computer has published updated source code to its Rendezvous network-configuration technology for use in Windows, Linux, Unix and Java applications.
The move is designed to entice developers to use the code to incorporate the "zero configuration" technology into their own applications. The software allows network devices to automatically connect to other components of a network and to communicate what features they have to offer. The technology competes with the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology that Microsoft has developed.
This new release addresses one of my major complaints about Rendezvous, its availability on Macs only was very limiting. Now that the PC world can participate, there's a huge new virtual marketplace that can tap into this resource. One question to consider is exactly what type of network will form from desktop-based networks? Will neighborhoods start to literally become "Network Neighborhoods"?.
Personally, the untethered networks are the most interesting. These can be anything from laptop users at Starucks or in the back channel at a conference to the PDA-toting crowd wandering the streets and airports. In this regard, Simedia has a nice advantage, though it could be short-lived. Since Simedia is the one of the few, if not the only, PocketPC-specific incarnations, it creates many unique possibilities.
Unfortunately for Simedia, the availability of this code could lead to some competition. I wouldn't expect to see Apple come out with a PocketPC version of the code, but stranger things have happened. For now, I think Simedia is on the high ground, but the water's rising.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
I came across a thoughtful and well-reasoned argument about email spam, and our inability to counter it with legal and technical responses. But, in the final analysis, it was like reading about the workings of a disease organism that we haven't got a cure for. The only solution? Don't catch the disease in the first place.
Paul Jamieson [from Legal Affairs - $t0pp^ng $p@m!!]
Legitimate businesses that use e-mail as a marketing tool support spam reform because their communications are often lost in the avalanche. Consumers and businesses that rely on e-mail for transactions and communication overwhelmingly dislike spam for the same reason and make their displeasure known to elected officials. Internet service providers, or ISPs, such as Yahoo and Earthlink, oppose it because junk e-mail taxes their networks.
Nevertheless, five months after the effective date of a sweeping federal law imposing stiff civil and criminal penalties on spammers, well over half of all e-mail is still spam. There is just as much if not more spam now than there was before the legal barriers were erected. What gives?
The short answer is that legal measures may be largely powerless to affect the spam problem because the architecture of e-mail is resistant to traditional methods of government regulation.
...continue reading.
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
Hiawatha Bray is being really dumb, again (he's well known for that).
Hiawatha Bray [from For geeks, it's a big misunderstanding]
Outlawing plainly criminal activity seems a worthy use of a senator's time. But this bill, in the view of Hatch's critics, would pretty much end technological innovation in America. Indeed, they predict that Hatch's bill would ban digital music players, outlaw home videotaping, and force cats and dogs to sleep together. Well, never mind that last bit. But you get the idea. This bill is bad -- really bad. Or so its opponents say.
Except that it isn't illegal: that's why Hatch is trying to pass a new bill. If it were already illegal, them we could simply enforce the law. This confusion is the whole point of the Hatch PR effort. And it is seems to have lulled the gullible Bray to sleep.
He goes on to at least admit that Hatch et al are unscrupulously using children as a foil for their real agenda, which is music and movie company profits:
There's some cause for all of the hostility.
Hatch and a bipartisan band of cosponsors have touted the legislation with a greasy, disingenuous claim that it's about protecting America's children, and not the record industry's profits.
But then Bray goes off the tracks again, arguing that the geeks that are screaming that the INDUCE act will limit innnovation are wacky. He waves his hand at the iPod example: iPods could be deemed illegal under INDUCE since they lead us to illegally copy music. The average person cannot acquire 10,000 songs legally, after all. And his assertion that the Business Software Alliance supports INDUCE, and therefore the high tech and innovation crowd shoudl too -- Not!
While he says nothing specifically about the potential of the Act to end peer-to-peer instant messaging or related benign purposes, he does close with this:
But what are the substantial legitimate uses for Grokster or Morpheus or Kazaa? Virtually none. The file-swapping programs are used almost exclusively by thieves, who rob recording artists of billions every year. Shed no tears for them. Weep instead for poor Orrin -- not a bad fellow, but misunderstood.
But of course, the fact that the Act is seeking to make an entire class of technology illegal in order to quash illegal file sharing is not explicitly acknowledged.
This guy is nuts, and with a pulpit like the Boston Globe to shout out from, way too many people are going to hear this muddied and reactionary drivel.
Hatch's PR blitz has gaffed a whale, here.
[Pointer from Copyfight]
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Posted by Stowe Boyd
As I hope you have noticed, Corante has unveiled a new topmost look for Corante.com. As you can see, this is a more journalistic presentation of what's going on in the many Corante blogs (click to see full size image). As time passes, expect to see more innovation here, as we work to determine the best way to provide insight to our readers.
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