Blogstuff

Boomtown (and manyothers) having been gorging on the Yahoo sinking ship exodus, including the alleged exit of the Peanut Butter gallery:

Sources say Garlinghouse and the other execs are deeply unhappy about the new reorganization being architected largely by President Sue Decker.

Structured now to over a lot more power to Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider, who runs the Global Partner Solutions division, the changes are being made without a lot of input from execs like Garlinghouse.

Instead, Decker–with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang–is working with a small group of top managers, especially Chief Human Resources Officer David Windley, so a lot of other top managers are largely in the dark about the changes.

And this differs from any other large and serious corporate restructuring how exactly? Company hits a rock, axes are swung, heads roll, new people come in. Its the Circle of Corporate Life, and this one is far from a corpse yet.

It differs because les geeks can now write les blogs, so instead of a few measured lines in the WSJ and FT is is all over Techmeme like a rash. Its interesting how the human interest angle has totally overshadowed the business aspects - one of the things about social media is it is more inclined to report on social aspects.

You can't make it up - from TechCrunch - see here and here for our earlier posts:

But now the A.P. has gone too far. They’ve quoted twenty-two words from one of our posts, in clear violation of their warped interpretation of copyright law.....

.....So I’ve called my lawyers (really) and have asked them to deliver a DMCA takedown demand to the A.P. And I will also be sending them a bill for $12.50 with that letter, which is exactly what the A.P. would have charged me if I published a 22 word quote from one of their articles.

What goes around truly comes around, Part IV is eagerly awaited - we told you to sit back and enjoy the fireworks

There's a meme swirlng around Techmeme.....the blog as we know it is doomed. There are two main inter-related thoughts to this:

Firstly, Steven Hodson's view that a weeding of the blogosphere is a-coming. Lower cost-of-entry tools - mainly social networks - allow people to "microblog" or use their Facebook or MySpace page as a Faux-blog. In essence Steven sees two forces driving the exits:

(i) blogging is moving from a diary keeping / ego flaunting hobby to another form of "pro" activity that is a required form of media. The problem is that there is very little direct cash in it, so to play as the bar rises requires increasing offset funding or time.

(ii) the social media tools have arisen to provide an easier, cheaper - and more interactive - alternative to the legions of amateurs and hobbyists.

In other words, as the going gets tough, the Chatterati get going - to Twitter et al. This leaves the pro and semi pro in an interesting place, as Steven notes:

...among the serious non-professional bloggers this idea of immediacy and easier discovery using things like friends or contacts made using Twitter and other social networks was a strong drawing card. In this group of bloggers I can see future forms of social media much like FriendFeed being added incentive to move away from the blogging format. That doesn’t mean that we won’t always have a hardcore contingent of serious non-professional bloggers I just don’t think that their numbers will be the same and neither will they grow in numbers as they have in the past.

...the career or professional blogger – is much harder to figure out what the road forward is because many times they throw up so many mix messages because I think in some cases they are confused themselves as to where the road is leading. Part of this feeling adrift in a sea of technology is partly the making of the group most commonly referred to as the early adopters. While it was this group for the most part that were to grasp the power that blogs cold hold they are also the one’s that are easily swayed by the next new shiny object syndrome.

Given that the future is less than predictable, I think Steven is correct when he notes that the best option is to keep on keeping on if you want to make this work:

Even with all this seeming confusion over where blogging is going there is still a core of both professional and non-professional bloggers who truly see a long term value for the medium. Whether then end up as some sort of new media conglomerate like TechCrunch, Mashable or ReadWriteWeb or just a bunch of really good independent bloggers the point is things are changing.

The trick for many of us – especially the independent bloggers and smaller networks – is to be willing to take advantage of anyway that comes our way to communicate with our readers. We can’t be afraid of changes as they happen but instead embrace them and use them to our benefit.

The second part to the meme is the role of the comment, and the commentator - and here too there are 2 subthoughts:

(i) Comments are devolving to other organs such as Friendfeed, which aggregate comments into conversations. We've discussed this before (see here)

(ii) Comments are "blog posts" in and of themselves, a thought initially expressed by Fred Wilson.

However, I must incline to Alex van Elsas's view that it is harder to write than comment:

But at the same time I also feel that commenting is easy. Easy, not because the stuff that is written down is obvious in any way. But easy because the original blog writer triggered a commenter to think and react. And that is what Blogging is all about. Some are in it for the money, some are in it for the fun. But a great blog post, no matter what it is about, makes the reader think. And that is what is so hard about blogging. I always try to write posts in such a way that my thoughts trigger other people to think and respond. I don’t have to be right. But I love it if it starts a conversation with people. Because out if this conversation there is always something to learn.

In other words writing is pro-active, commenting is reactive. Higher investment is required to write than comment, on average. (though it is interesting how many commentators on this blog and others are bloggers in their own right)

Two thoughts - I think Steven is probably right, that "microblogging" and Social Net "blogging" (Socblogs?) are sucking away the less committed, and, as Louis Gray notes on Alex's posts - in a comment, natch:

If today’s bloggers find it too challenging, those of us who have the energy and interest to keep going welcome their leaving. Commenting is simple. It can take seconds. Blogging and bringing something useful to the conversation is more difficult. But blogging can truthfully be anything you want it to be. It can be your personal diary. It doesn’t have to be a news site, as many of us have gravitated to.

I.e. its the men on a lifeboat game theory - the more fall off, the better the odds for those remaining. Its interesting having Louis make this comment, as he has been one of the strongest proponents of off-blog comment aggregators. And to him my question is:

(i) If blogging - ie creation - is the hard thing, and commenting is easy, how does taking all the comments and conversation off-blog (especially into new walled gardens) reward the original writer for the creative effort?

(ii) Assuming it does not reward the writer, and drives the creator out, how does off-blog commenting sustain itself?

After all, its not as if you'd be allowed to comment on the mainstream media's Associated Press feeds


(Oh, and by the way, the observant among you will have realised that this is a blog comprised of a load of comments to other people's original posts, but this way I get to make it look hard to do )

....2 people said they nominated us for the Computer Weekly Web 2.0 / Business blog award in May, but its still not logged on the site. If (and only if) you think we are worth it, d'you mind nominating us over here or mailing our url (www.broadstuff.com) to this address

I wouldn't ask ordinarily, but it annoys me when I think things aren't being done quickly / openly etc.

The discussion (sic) about who owns the comments on a blog, off a blog, whether a comment is creative content in its own right or not, who has the right to edit a comment, et etc, that has been rolling around for the last day or so has been truly.....well, its enough to make anyone want to give up blogging and run a mile from fair Geekland.

But its worth recording the story, simply because it is indicative of a mindset one can get into if you take all this stuff too seriously.

At its root is that various aggregation systems are essentially trying to create content (and thus some semblance of flippable value) for themselves by "capturing the conversation" - so instead of commenting on this post on this blog, you comment on it in say Friendfeed or whatever. All very well, but when a blogger cuts his blog's line into Friendfeed, various others who were commenting on that blog post, in Friendfeed, lost their comments.

Well.

This started a whole raft of Blogma discussions - is a comment creative, who owns it, does a blog have a right to delete comments on the blog, who is liable for libellous comments, should the Creative Commons policy be changed - and other angels on pinheads sorts of discussions. I like Steven Hodson's Grumpy Summary

Anyway, turns out that as bloggers we are definitely at fault because it is not clear to you, gentle reader, what the commenting policy is on Broadstuff.

So here it is:

1. You may comment anywhere you darn well like but commenting here strokes the ego far more
2. If you comment on this blog, play nice (please).
3. Thus, if we think the comment is spam or libellous or stupid, or I just think you are an *sshole, I reserve the right to delete the comment on this blog. The decision, however apparently irrational and capricious, is final. Unmarked £50 notes can influence decisions
4. If the comment is made on this blog, I will do my best to respond. This should take the form of rational argument but can equally be gibberish or....irony
5. But, I really cannot be *rsed to go chasing and responding to comments made elsewhere in any way. Life, as they say, is too short.

Seems like a plan.

Oh - and one more thing - we reserve the right to flatter and paste any comment in any blog post......

Update - Disqus, which is essentially a walled garden comments aggregator, has setu up a Commentors bill of rights over here: It Sez:

I’m going to make an initial attempt to materialize what some rights should be.

a) The ability to edit and remove their comments
b) Access to all of their comments, even if it has been deleted on a blog
c) The right to use their own comments as blog posts. After all, a commenter is just a publisher not writing on his own website.
d) A life for the comment beyond a single blog. I want to take my comments with me, even if the blog shuts down.

This may seem threatening to the publisher, but it really isn’t. A commenter should have rights to what they post, but bloggers should still have control over content that appear on their blogs. Bloggers should still control:

a) Whether or not someone is allowed to comment on his blog
b) The deletion of a comment
c) The modification of a comment, as long as the original copy is still accessible and the edit is transparent

My thoughts are, based purely on what Serendipity (our blog software) will do:

1a) No. My blogging software won't let that happen, and we ain't giving commentators full admin rights. Worst case, email us to change it.
1b) No. Ditto blogging software issues. Make your own copy, we're not going to put an admin load on ourselves to manage commentators.
1c) Absolutely
1d) You are welcome to take your comments if Broadstuff shuts down, but I ain't going manually through 2,000 odd comments to return 'em. Make a copy if its valuable to you.

2a) Agreed
2b) Agreed
2c) I'll only mod a comment if the author wants it.

Now, by my answers to 1 above, I have clearly played into the hands of the aggregator agenda, but it would be impossible not to without being economical with the truth, because most blogging software today doesn't do No's 1 a,b and d (hence the aggregator existing), and as this blog is an amateur endeavour I'm not taking on that admin load. As and when Serendipity's hive decides to implement something like this I'll add it, until then its on our roadmap

In fact, this is a "be careful what you wish for" thing, in that by increasing my cost of blogging, I may choose to manage that by (i) exiting the market (or exiting commenting more likely) because I can't afford the load, (ii) limiting commenting to a manageable level in some way or (iii) seeking to extract the extra cost from the commentator in some way

The secondary thought therefore is that those requirements are fine, but that is in our "platinum" Service Level Agreement....it costs £10 a month per commentator, and that will pay for the time to manage that. The "Gold" service is free and is stated as above.

So here's the counter-deal - we want commenting to be as open access as possible (no barriers my end) but the quid pro quo for a free service is we want as light a touch in comment management as possible. As technology comes along to help we'll take it, but the rules are these:

(i) The technology is open to all, no walled gardens
(ii) The technology is open source, no proprietary lock ins, and users can build on it.

Fairy nuff?

Duncan Riley notes some suggestions on link etiquette for blogs:

Primary source:
If the primary source for the post comes from another blog (an exclusive) a link is desirable in the first line. For example: zyz reports [link], or xyz fact according to a report at [link].

The negation to this rule: if you’ve been approached by the source directly (media release, tip, exclusive etc) or if multiple sites are reporting the facts having obtained the data the same way.

Via source:
It’s good form to include a via link in a post if you’ve obtained the story idea via another site or blog. Format: (via: [link]). This is one part of attribution that seems to be dying out. It’s unfortunate, because it was one of the features that helped build the blogosphere.

Quote/ Inline source:
Where the source isn’t primary (they are reporting it second hand, most commonly with MSM), you can quote the external site within the post as an alternative to a via link. This has become more common than a via link, but it’s really only desirable if you can make it work within the context of the post. I’ve always used with direct quoting: Format: [link] says/ reports “xyz.”

Photo credits:
These weren’t really discussed in the old days, but in an age of litigious copyright holders it’s always safer to give a photo credit when using non-default imagery (in particular photos). Format: photocredit: [link]. The other alternative is to use blog safe photos and I tend to use Wikimedia Commons.

The Honesty Catch:
There are times when blogs write about stories where other blogs have recently written about the same thing, without the second site knowing the first site wrote about it. I’ve had this happen a couple of times in the last 12 months, with people demanding attribution when I’ve sourced the idea usually from a direct email from the company/ startup or site. I don’t believe a link is due where the author honestly wasn’t aware of the earlier article, and lets face it, if you really looked hard enough you’d nearly always find something has been written about before.

Its a nicely done code, I think we'll try to follow something like this as a standard in future.

By the way, there have also been times when our stuff has been taken sans attribution, and even packaged as "research" by 3rd parties to sell to their clients. In fact the reason for Duncan's post is that there is a little bit of whinging going on in the Bitch-o-sphere about Ars Technica apparently holding back for 2-3 days before putting a good overview article in and not linking back to the (supposed) originators. Hmmm sez I, on 3 counts:

(i) Actually, I like overview articles written with a sense of perspective - its that editing value add
(ii) Ars Tech are hardly alone here - nearly all the MSM do it, and are often lauded (erm - sucked up to?) by bloggers
(iii) A-listers whinging about others taking their material and not attributing it is a bit rich, more than one "A List" blog has done this sort of thing.

...from our article Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam etc etc yesterday.

For some reason Serendipity (our blogging software) decided to save every update instance as a separate post, so there are now 8 out there. The broadband connection was misbehaving at the time so I suspect this is the cause. I'm leaving them up for now as there are separate comments on different ones and I won't have time to sort it all out before tonight.

Update - The Broadstuff email edition - feel free to sing along

"broadstuff" - 11 new articles

1. Apologies for the Spam....
2. Taking Flack from the Spamalot Caste
3. Servicing Facebook
4. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
5. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
6. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
7. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
8. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
9. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
10. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
11. Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam
12. More Recent Articles
13. Search broadstuff

Two interesting posts in the last day or so popped up in the Broadstuff Reader - Scott Karp arguing that much of the coverage of the Microsoft/Yahoo Hoo-Ha was just the same stuff cut and pasted over multiple blogs, and here a piece of analysis on which blogs make Techmeme showing a roughly 1/3rd each split between Top 10, Next 100, and The Rest of the Long Tail.

FYI the Top 10 are:

1 TechCrunch techcrunch.com
2 CNET News.com news.com
3 New York Times nytimes.com
4 ReadWriteWeb readwriteweb.com
5 Ars Technica arstechnica.com
6 Silicon Alley Insider alleyinsider.com
7 Between the Lines blogs.zdnet.com/BTL
8 VentureBeat venturebeat.com
9 The Register theregister.co.uk
10 GigaOM gigaom.com

Putting these two stories together, you get to the none too surprising hypothesis that most of the major blogs are just repeating the same old stuff, and thus a high degree of redundancy occurs. As Scott notes:

We all know how this happened, of course. All of the print publications, including non-niche pubs like the Washington Post, have to create a version of this story for their print publication, and then dump that story on the web. All of the web-native tech sites, competing tooth and nail for page views, are all obligated to publish at least one if not multiple takes on this story. Then there are all the sites that reproduced the wire version of the story.

If each site were, as in print, an island unto itself, this would make sense — if the news outlet did not cover the story then its readers might not know about it. But seen as a whole on the web, which connects each and every one of these websites, and especially seen through the lens of an aggregator like Google News or Techmeme, this huge mass of content about the same story doesn’t make much economic sense.

Indeed - you get economic nonsense - news redundancy - in fact (and fiction) which will, economically, inevitably lead to real life redundancies. This is a sort of tragedy of the commons - there is only so much attention out there, but the devil will bite the hindquarters of any blog that holds back and doesn't try and grab its share.

Inevitable result will be increasing filtering - if you read one top 10 (or maybe 2, El Reg is required reading in my view ) you pretty much have the main story in spades. The question then is what do blogs 11-100 do to keep up traffic given the main story is a done deal, and people will increasingly filter out repeats (Blogs 101 - 101 million will be picked up pretty much when they have something useful to add - we assume.). Finding 90 different angles on a story is non trivial......

Big picture - there are simply too many "A List" and "B List" blogs competing for attention with the same stuff to be sustainable, there has to be a shakeout. We assume it will be partly economic (how much money are the pro-bloggers actually making, can they do this sustainably?) and partly attention deficit as people filter some out and those wither on the newsvine. To survive, they will have to start differentiating themselves via, for example:

- adding value - eg TechCrunch CrunchBase
- getting there fastest with the mostest
- having unique insight from subject experts, or insiders etc
- having a unique approach that readers cleave to ( El Reg's sharp scepticism for example)
- personality based

One thing the blogs all face is the offset economics of the MSM - if they have to write it for the papers, they may as well pop it up on the blog at minimal on-cost, which coupled with their brands gives them quite an advantage, especially as many of the Big Blogs (in my opinion anyway) are no longer iconoclastic, individualistic views, but, by taking advertising and multiple journalists on board are increasingly looking like the thing they once so despised.

I think George Orwell once wrote a book on this dynamic

This came to me on the train this morning - I was thinking about which tech blogs I like to read, and why, and how you might structure "what sort of blog are they" into a filter system - and then this simple 2x2 came to me:



The 2 axes I thought of are the:

- Tone of blog - is it continually breatlessly awestruck by whatever new new thing is emerging or perpetually cynical?
- Content of blog - is it part of the echo chamber, or is it giving out original thoughts

This led to 4 quadrants - so, and my thoughts on them, starting from the "Sweet Spot 2.0" :

(i) Original thought, but perpetually awestruck. This - in my opinion - is the path to "Gurudom 2.0", you are leading the way in saying what everyone desperately wants to hear. The two problems with it (I find anyway) are:
- I think it is to an extent intellectually dishonest - they must know that this stuff isn't always so shiny shiny - mustn't they?
- it ages fast - the lack of a critical aspect shows the writer to be naive in hindsight, and this is a fast moving industry.

Still, it works - its arguably the best way to clamber up the Blog Influence ladder.

(ii) Echo Chamber, Continually Awestruck - I look at these and think "whats the point" but in reality this is the A list blogger equivalent of a fan base, at worst they are the blog groupies. By and large harmless, but - as we have experienced - if you ever disagree with a Blog Guru or a Current Trend, these are the blogs that will attack you directly. This allows the Gurus to stand above the fray, so they have their uses.

(iii) EchoChamber, Perpetually Negative - Precisely because there is so much hype and snake oil in any bubble that running around with a pin pricking all the bubblemes is an easy gig. Possibly they serve the purpose of the Jester, but because the tone is resolutely cynical but without adding anything new, its sort of like candy - a bit of it is wonderful, but, like Private Eye its best taken in small doses or else its tales of the Valley wind up wagging your blogging dog

(iv) Original Thought, Perpetually Negative - in a way I admire these most - they are getting up there and saying stuff that is unpopular or unpalatable, and backing it up with sound, original argument. Over time though, they risk being ignored by the Faithful (always too negative) and even by the neutral as its the easier gig - the Accuntants play - see the price in everything, but not the value. One person I really do admire here is Nick Carr - perpetually curmudgeonly, but always soundly argued and thought provoking

Over time I find myself inclining to the right in my reading, and whereas once i sought out the bottom corner to run a counterpoint, I am increasingly of the opinion that that is where "realism" lies, as I think Gurudom 2.0 does risk breeding a sort of "Optimism Arms Race" - who can pimp the new new thing better, faster, further?

And what about Broadstuff, I hear you ask?

I think we have over time become more sceptical in the flow, (though it may just be we've stayed the same as optimism inflates?) - the analytical part of me (or the Santayana's Law part that went through Web 1.0 ) just knows that much of the New New stuff is pan-glossing over reality - but I'd like to think we do it with a sense of fun - "wittily sceptical" would be the aim. Whether this is the "correct" tone for a sober, mature New Media consultancy is unclear - but its by far the most fun to write

Also, I know how hard it is to continually provide original thought, and my respect for those of all persuasions who do has increased over the time we've been doing Broadstuff. Our standards have slipped to doing some original thought - one a week if we can - but also commenting on what is going around - the rule we try to follow though is only to comment if we know something about the area from real work we have done.

Oh, and if I could write half as well as the Economist does, I'd die happy

I guess in a way the risk is we sit in the space of the stuff I like to read the most now, so for diversity I now try harder to reach outside it.

Be fascinated to hear others thought (i) on what you think / like, (ii) how you might filter it and (iii) of what you think we could do better / differently.

OK, OK - I'll admit I read this on Techmeme over morning coffee and I know its considered dreadfully bad form to comment on a story once its there, but this is too good to ignore - its the most excellent rant about the silliness of Social Media, A Listers and our bubblecosm in general:

I have no problem if the NYT follows me in an effort to make sure I realize they have a Twitter account. But I'm OFFENDED when a person, a real human being, decides to follow me along with 10,000 other people.

What does this act say to me?

Does the person really want to follow my conversations? Obviously not - they are on a blind follow-fest and I am an appetizer.
This is no different from the heydays of MySpace when some people collected 10K plus friends. Aside from Tila Tequila who now has an absurd and annoying reality show - it's an obnoxious and futile attempt at social media stardom.
I use this as an anecdote. My beef isn't with Twitter, but with the shameless self-promotion that occurs 24/7 on the web, to which Twitter is another tool. Conversation is being comodified - and people think they can become 'experts' in online conversations.

Guess what: "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile."

Shame on you, popping our rosy views like that - there I was thinking that all those A Listers valued me as a unique and special friend

How much of the internet is produced by social media experts re-hashing what others have already said on the web in their own words? Better yet, how much do they charge to teach you how to re-hash those same words?

You mean A Listers copy lesser known people's ideas and publish them sans attribution - well I never !!!

There needs to be space for successful blogs beyond Tech and Politics. I know there are lots of mommy-bloggers and food blogs, etc - but the most successful blogs right now are either tech or politics. Just take a look at the Technorati top 100 and try to disagree with me. Then consider this: Half of those tech-blogs are navel gazing, writing about either
A. Tools that enable + empower new media.
B. Other A-list bloggers.

More fool us for reading them then.......

So how about a Campaign for Real Blogs then, how about turning off all your A Listers for a month, starting May 1st. No Scoble, TechCrunch, Gadgetzines etc for all of May. Eschew Techmeme.

Go on, go on strike - find the other flowers in the fields.