Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Dark Sucker

There are certain cases when people are wrong. Allow me to let them illustrate:

What Mike is trying to say here: Using a few important thermodynamic principles, air conditioners are machines that move heat from one area to another. Typically, they move the heat from inside to outside.

This is ludicrous. He goes on to argue that we shouldn't set our thermometers. I mean, come on, doesn't the word set mean anything in our turbulet world? Yet, sadly, this is a consistent pattern. A phenomenon, if you will. We assume the world is 80% outside and we should simply give up. But have you ever heard the expression, something something the cold wind blows? Then you know what I'm talking about.

Thomas Munchine, before links were invented, proved definitively that lightbulbs do not emit light. They suck dark.

Corporate Blogging and the Boss

Scott Rosenberg thinks corporate blogging will be inhibited by control issues. Namely, people are afraid of pissing off their boss.

...But for large numbers of workers in America, particularly those at big companies, the dominant fact of life remains don't piss off your boss...The blogs you're going to see from within most traditional companies will be either uninformative snoozes or desperate attempts at butt-covering and -kissing. Not because people don't have great stories to tell -- but because telling the truth has too high a cost...

This follows comments on the same panel at Supernova by Tim Bray: Any corporation that doesn't do this in the future is going to be playing catch-up.

David Weinberger replies:

I do agree that it'll take a long time for corporate public blogging to spread beyond easy industries, such as high tech. But, I think it'll happen faster than Scott does. First, internal blogging will happen relatively quickly because it's a great way for employees to build their reputations, a motive as powerful as the urge not to piss off your boss. Those internal blogs will go onto the extranet and eventually some will make it onto the Internet...

The prospect of being fired up (a cheesy cheerleader way of saying promoted) is as much a motivator as being fired. Whether large scale adoption of corporate blogging will occur outside tech because of control has less to do with characteristics of industries than leadership. It happens first in information intensive industries, but can happen anywhere a manager wants to gain competitive advantage and is willing not just to give up some control, but recongize its already lost. The same dynamic already happens with email as publishing, with less transparency.

David points out a natural cycle from internal to external blogging that we have seen in recent cases. Internally, blogging can also begin in less disruptive activities, like projects or lines of research.

Blogging Supernova

Supernova has been a blast so far. Was taking dilligent notes until I realized that the zen master was here. Here is Heath's transcript of my panel.

So I'm playing in the Eventspace and IRC...see you there.

Next Best Thing to Being There

Next Best Thing to Being There: A New Breed of Software Can Help Far-flung Employees Work Together in Inc. Magazine, profiles Socialtext, Sharepoint and Groove. Until its published on the Web, the article is available courtesy of Groove Networks (.pdf). It will be great to be there with Ray Ozzie at Supernova.

Oh, and if you can't be at Supernova, you can listen into the audiocast and participate virtually.

Newsgator Raises Series A

Newsgator, Greg Reinacker's primarily Outlook-based RSS/Atom Aggregtor, raised a Series A from Mobius.

There is a great deal of investment activity going on around the fringes of RSS. Expect more announcements within the next month. What you are beginning to see is the impact of companies founded on spec early in the market's development that leverage the open source paradigm shift where the network is the market. If you think this space is interesting now, just wait for the impact of form following funding.

Congrats Greg!

Rate-limiting Moonshine

Larry Seltzer posts an opinion that rate-limiting, or capping the number of emails a consumer account can send, should be used in the war on spam. Its appealing because cutting it off at the source would in theory effect only 1% of users and it does raise costs for Senders.

I think the time has come to be more specific. Set a rate limit for outbound mail for consumer accounts. There are systems available to enforce it. And it would be yet another sign to users whose computers have been taken over that they need to clean them out.

Like any solution to spam there are tradeoffs. But this prohibition could have the effect of handing a drunk a shotgun with instructions to plug a hole in a leaking dyke with it. There is a better mixed metaphor, but you'll get my point.

Senders will arbitrage by setting up more accounts to acheive current volumes. This will increase marginal costs for senders, but the marginal cost for managing whole new accounts would be greater. Also, this new form of email jail would be arbitraged by service providers as the disaffected 1% would be seeking alternatives, when say, their bulk mailing for the yearly event they produce is capped. Add to this a new cost for rating and how it goes against stupid network principles.

Spam is an economic problem, we don't have models that account for all incentives and this is just the opinion of one Spamonomist. In general, this is a form of price-fixing that may have negative externalities.

Site-Flavored Yummy

Fresh from the labs, Site-Flavored Search. From their Kaltix acquisition.

Just working on my Google PC. This isn't that big a deal, restricts queries to categories, but you can get your own.

Open Texts in Wiki

The Mercury News stumbles upon as an example of how the Internet is not shit. It's JD Lasica's opening of his book Darknet for editing in a Socialtext wiki:

One of the more interesting trends to emerge lately is the practice of book authors inviting strangers to collectively edit their manuscripts online before they are published...

``I realized the underlying theme of what I'm writing about is that we're entering an era where creative people are sort of losing control of their work, and it's not all bad,'' Lasica said. ``I wanted to experience that. I didn't want that experience of a big media conglomerate where you say `Take it or leave it.' ''...

Lasica said his Wiki experience has been a mixed bag. Readers have enhanced his writings by pointing out facts he missed or fixing grammatical errors.

On the other hand, some readers took it upon themselves to insert Web links to important Web sites throughout his manuscript -- links that will not work in the printed edition of the book.

Nonetheless, Lasica said he would probably use a Wiki again if he writes another book. His editor originally questioned the idea of ``publishing'' his book on the Web before it is printed. But Lasica said he supports the Wiki experiment. In fact, his editor is now exploring whether to set up a Wiki where authors can help edit each other's work.

Lasica said the only major change he would make next time is to put his writings online earlier in the process.

``I just think this is where our culture is headed,'' Lasica said, ``where things are more collaborative.''...

The article also mentions Christian Crumlush's use of a wiki for his book The Power of Many. Christian put it up after we paneled together at a publishing conference to create a collaborative glossary.

For more on wikified books, see (and edit) this page.

While writing this post my daughter stopped me to tell her a story about her dream last night. Of course, the length and detail was less recall and more improvisation at the moment. I told her she should write these stories down and I would type them and by the end of the summer we would have a book to put on the web. She said, "you mean put it on the Web for people who don't have anything to do? ...Maybe if I publish that book I will get a Caldecot medal."

Cold IM

This is insane, but perhaps a sign of things to come. I got my first cold call via IM today. They got my handle off of a mailing list archive. Now I get a lot of cold calls. That's what I get as a CEO trying to answer his own phone. There is no do-not-call for B2B. Most times you try to be nice and hear them out.

What's worse, they pretended to be someone else initially, someone I might sell to. Later in the conversation they admitted they were someone selling KM trade show nonsense. That's where the conversation ended. Block User. But no satisfacion of slamming handsets.

Identity and Email

...There are a number of ways to look at relationships. One is ties in a social network. If you plotted a graph of directional ties using email and and one using RSS they would be different, perhaps even the opposite. Email ties would point from Sender (A) to Receiver (B), a Push Model. RSS ties would point from B to A, a Pull Model. If enough positive message flow exists between A and B you can imply a confirmed tie with either Email or RSS which is an indicator of a relationship...

From a rather long piece I posted on Many-to-Many...

La Opinion Y El ‘Spam Ocupacional’

From the largest Spanish daily in the US...

“El correo electrónico fue diseñado para la comunicación directa entre dos personas y no entre grandes colectivos”, dice Mayfield, quien estima que si un grupo de 50 personas dentro de la compañía recibe diariamente cien de estos mensajes, el costo para la empresa puede ser de entre uno y dos millones de dólares anuales en tiempo perdido gestionando los mensajes que, según el experto, requieren un mínimo de uno o dos minutos para leer y borrar o archivar.

This does translate.

Visualizing Socialtext

Just posted a follow-up to the Ziff Davis Case Study with some social network visualization.

Talking Too Much

I'm joining into an RSS Weekly virtual discussion that starts in a couple of minutes.

Later tonight I hope to see you at the Churchill Club event on Blogging and Social Networking.

Tribecaster

I'm playing with Tribecaster, a new Tribe.net feature that lets you display your so-called-friends easily within a sidebar on your blog. Each picture and name links back to their profile. Guess this is social media. It smacks of Canter.

Just look for the on your Tribe homepage.

For Goodness Sake

Last night I attended a Sake tasting event at a private home. Most of my prior experience has been at sushi bars like Myake's where make you stand on your chair and say something that sounds like "itchy knees, scratchy balls" while pounding warm tasteless stuff. We tasted six kinds of Sake and discovered its complexity, guided by the founder of True Sake, America's first Sake store. He is a self-described dot-bom refugee who followed his passion, learn as much as he can and take his own risk. Before his own book comes out, he highly recommends Sake Pure + Simple.

Supernova Three

Really looking forward to Supernova 2004 on June 24-25 in Santa Clara. The first Supernova was where we decided to found Socialtext, so its always dear to my heart. The last one introduced me to one of my F500 customers and helped cement our angel round. This time the keynote is Thomas Malone, whose book The Future of Work is the first to introduce wikis as an element of decentralization and business strategy.

The blog and the Supernova Eventspace is already up. And Joi's party looks like a blast.

The State of Email

I'm not one to give an address on the state of email (leave that to Eric Hahn), but I can address how the state of email is changing after participating in the INBOX Event last week.

A rather long post continues on Many-to-Many...

More Mountain Lion Madness

In the on-going saga of Palo Alto Mountain Lions, there was a new sighting in San Fransquito creek last week, the border between Palo Alto and Menlo Park. This weekend there was a sighting in Bol Park, my parent's neighborhood in South Palo Alto.

The city government has instituted a mass education campaign to help us tell the difference between Bobcats and Cougars. Rick suggested to me that should simplify it to fear anything that is neither dog nor cat. I'm thinking it time to take advantage of this trend and lay some bait. Apparently they have a taste for venison.

Viva La Revolution

There is a revolution going on in Brazil.

"Opting for free software doesn't just take into account costs. It's about knowledge development," said Sergio Amadeu, the president of the government's Information Technology Institute (ITI), who is in charge of replacing proprietary software like now in federal computers with open codes like Linux.

The government is saving $2,500 for every 10 computers it switches from Microsoft: "...For the first time, we are breaking their dominance in the technology sector." Microsoft directly criticizes their President:

"I don't know if this is the best way to attract investment into the country. I know this is not the best way to create a base of development from which to export because there's no revenue from something free," said Microsoft's representative Emilio Umeoka.

And Simon Phipps puts it best:

They understand the real issue - it's about sovereignty. They no longer want to funnel Brazil's wealth abroad when they have a growing and excellent software community of their own. They want local people to provide service and write software for the government and industry. They want local skills to enrich the F/OSS world and build exportable skills. They have a vision for how to both enrich the culture and skills of their country while creating a power-house for the export of services in the future. They get it. Emilio Umeoka doesn't.

The third world will drive the adoption of open source and companies that don't support this trend will limit their market, monopoly or not.

John Doerr called the boom and bust the greatest legal creation of wealth in history. Some called this spin on was a massive destablization. Offshoring and open source combined, if you factor in the intangibles, may soon eclipse it. If you don't account for intangibles, you must at least credit the transfer of skills and technology. Since value afforded abroad can take the form of low-cost production of software components as well as low cost (or free) distribution of them, they will enable further growth in existing markets. This revolution is different, in the short term it looks like wealth transfer, but in the longer term its the greatest wealth creation in history -- with a stablizing impact.

Bulls in Email's China Shop

Steve Gillmor, myself and a few others got to wander around the INBOX email event like Pamplona Bulls in a china shop. Talking about how the death of email, workspace alternatives and calling into question ways of reforming the modality.

While INBOX wrestles with the intractable problems of blurred international boundaries, too-complex authentication solutions and too-expensive computational and payment schemes, more and more of us are routing around e-mail for all but the most basic services.

He penned this post in reaction to a presentation by the CEO of ePeople, which we practically hijacked into a conversation on control. The sound logic is that most enterprise knowledge exists in email, but enterprises benefit little from it. But their solution is to impose structure -- creating DRM for email.

A sender can determine who can read and what forward rights exist, for example. Now, this is a good solution for specific cases such as Clinical Trials and other heavily regulated contexts where control is paramount. I am sure they are selling well and wish them the best, but the danger is once the platform is deployed, control-oriented managers may seek to use this instrument more broadly.

Because email is breaking due to spam, viruses, monoculture and occupational spam -- people are searching for alternatives. This isn't to say that email won't live on, just it won't be the email we know and love. Email's problems stem from its openness, but the solution has to be more of a golden mean than an extreme.

I argued that DRM destroys value, the role of knowledge sharing is innovation and restricting sharing could have a greater downstream effect on enterprise value than the benefits of short term rules a sender generates. What's worse is an email user can always copy and paste to arbitrage the restrictions a system imposes. And as Steve points out, when IT doesn't fulfill or restricts needs, people self-provision and route around. This isn't just a case of people breaking rules, its unpragmatic policy.

While 90% of email is monitored and it is a corporate asset, without benevolence that encourages contribution to the asset, people generate their own until its time to leave and take it with them. Part of the social dynamics that lead teams to innovate for benefit of their organization is how the organization fosters sharing -- both with employees and the institution. Organizations can benefit from commons-based peer production if they are willing to give up some centralized control.

Socialtext in Forbes

Forbes covers Socialtext from the perspective of an investor in an article by Erika Brown. There are a couple of little errors in the piece, like saying we don't charge for software. It highlights venture interest if they could just get past all that free software and if it had features we have.

Other interesting news today...the case study we released.

In the Box

I'm blogging in the Eventspace at the INBOX Event this week. Here's the INBOX blog to follow and its RSS feed.

Already much talk of RSS, Blogs and Wikis. For example, Lotus using RSS to populate calendars. I'm plucking comments I pick up about RSS.

Here's some shared notes from the "Email is Dead, Discuss" panel.