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I'm going to experiment with splicing ads in my RSS feed. I've joined Explore Social Media (a FeedBurner Network).
If any subscribers object to this, please let me know in comments and it will weight heavy in my decision. I'm really just playing here, not trying to make money.
This week I participated in a workshop with the CIA on blogs and wikis. What was fascinating was not just that the participants included Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Jerry Michalski, Eugene Kim, Marcia Conner and Jay Cross. The agency perhaps has the greatest to gain from adopting social software, but also has the greatest hard coded structural barriers (need to know) and a culture that reprimands against participation. Nevertheless, an Intellipedia and blogging at all levels in the organization is burgeoning. There is a shared understanding that these tools, with the right practices and change in culture could transform intelligence from a manufacturing model that delivers reports to a complex adaptive system where intelligence is a conversation with decision makers, an inherently counter spin. To understand the potential, see Calvin Andrus' "The Wiki
and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community." Also see posts by Eugene Kim, David Wienberger, JP and Mark Ohlert and Jay Cross who says: Support the Agency. You don’t have to like the people they report to.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've reached my Gmail storage limit, currently 2768 MB. This is something I didn't think could happen and it is really hampering my productivity. I've been an advocate of Gmail and my blog review is listed in their testimonials, where I said:
While I have offloaded much of the work I used to do in email to wikis and blogs, my public position makes me a target for spam and genuine correspondance with new collaborators.
While there are some good tactics for reducing Gmail volume, the solutions I want are not available to me:
Unfortunately, for now, I'm back to the user experience I've had with webmail. Constantly tending to an inbox at the limit instead of actually getting work done.
Any suggestions?
UPDATE: A Google employee reached out and I can say with confidence that a solution is on the way.
I was too busy to blog this yesterday, but Socialtext became one of the first sponsors of Techmeme's new ad format and it might be helpful to share the rationale. What is appealing about the format itself is the ability to control the content yourself, simply make a new blog post. From an advertiser's perspective, this is pretty revolutionary. Zero-barrier to campaign adaption, in the conversational format we are already communicating in and where campaign is in conversational context.
Now, I'm not really doing this right, and truly adapting the ad to the context of what is being discussed. If there were memes to directly play off of, and quite frankly we weren't so busy incorporating feedback on Socialtext 2.0 and the close of a great quarter, I'd be playing a different game. I had confidence in this ad buy, a rare thing for our company, because of who we were sponsoring and influence.
Gabe is a good guy, and sponsorship is the last remaining ad format yet to be commoditized, largely by Google. Last time I looked, sponsorship was 10% of online ad revenue. You may know my interest in Cost-Per-Influence and Sell-Side Advertising, which I believe is the future of online advertising. The buy started with Gabe reaching out to me, a gesture that meant he sought affiliation with our brand. I gauged the relative influence (not how many impressions, but who was impressed and whether those would impress others) of Techmeme in my decision. If Techmeme writers as readers could cross-post my ad (in a way they did, by blogging about the news of the format, but that isn't supporting a Socialtext meme) -- it would be the same dynamic as sell-side advertising.
It is early in the experience, and there is something to learn here, something else.
Erick Schonfeld pointed out that companies that really blog, like mine, could get on to Techmeme through meme merit. As it should be (btw, any Socialtext employee can post to this blog with only general good sense guidelines, so someone could commandeer the ad, within reason). The editorial and publishing sides of the house should take such sides, even if driven by an algorithm. After all, why else would users be there?
Let's explore that question. With me prodding Gabe like I have before (and without backchanneling).
I'd love to see the Techmeme ad format evolve towards its editorial content. Towards as in format, not as in business rules. Maybe keep the auction for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place -- but show the conversations linking to each ad post.
Scary thought, eh? The question is how that would effect the ad price. Would enabling ads in context of conversations scare off ad buyers? Only those oblivious to how little control they have over the message in the first place. For others, it may be more attractive. If an advertiser had confidence they could snowball positive conversations with their ad, buying an ad could amplify the effect. After all, broadcast casts what you want to be, networks amplify who you are.
Now what if the way advertisers were gaming the system, in a system of highly nested feedback loops, by creating great content as advertising to attract and influence others? Perhaps Gabe would run a whole page driven by advertisers they selected. Perhaps readers would find it as compelling an index as the one driven more by merit. The single criteria for fulfilling Sell Side Advertising is a system that is driven by incentives to create better ad content. And for that, I think we would all be better off.
This morning we announced Socialtext 2.0. Techcrunch has the story.
This screencast gives an overview of the first major enhancement, the UI:
Charlie Wood highlights the second part, Wiki Web Services.
In addition to UI enhancements, SocialText 2.0 adds what the company is calling "Wiki Web Services", which are a full set of both SOAP and REST APIs to enable integration with other applications. I've signed up for the beta program and will be expanding my work with Salesforce.com and Google to include SocialText as well.
Jeff Nolan has moved on from SAP. He has really served as a model to follow for others working in a large company that hope to move it forward. I'm sure he rustled some feathers along the way, but it was Jeff that brough SAP into the blogosophere and woke the giant from within. As a friend and colleague I know he will be great in his new gig.
This morning Socialtext released SocialCalc Beta 1, the Commercial-Open Source version of wikiCalc. Dan Bricklin has made great progress with the wiki-based spreadsheet since we started working together. Download it now on SourceForge and let us know what you think.
I'm guestblogging for Shane Richmond at Telegraph.co.uk. First post: share control to create value.
Most of my posts will probably be relating what's readers of this blog already know. But if I make good fun of British newspapers or come up with something unexpected, I'll cross-post here.
As an aside, it is already interesting to have photos chosen for your blog post and a headline writer to have his way, calling the first post Why it's good to loose control. Perhaps I have.
Another wave of Enterprise 2.0 definition has been kicked off by MR Rangaswami's otherwise good post on the trend. He defines it as enterprise software using the latest in technology, development and delivery methodologies. Andrew McAfee rightly brings it back to the original definition (Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.) and rightly points to the contributions of Ray Lane, Rod Boothby and Dion Hinchcliffe.
The funny thing is we have been through this before.
Through the end of 2002, the big debate was on defining social software. In conversations spinning off of this link (Matt rebuilt his blog so most backlinks have been taken out of the index) a great vetting occured that helped everyone understand what it was, but no single definition reached absolute concensus. Today's Wikipedia definition seems to be off the mark, but Meatball captures the points of view and since then there have been good posts that trace evolution. But I have to bring it back to the definition I contributed at the time we founded Socialtext:
Social Software adapts to its environment,
instead of requiring its environment to adapt to software.
My point back then was adaptation to both people and other systems required a different architecture and openness.
Today, Enterprise 2.0 needs more case studies beyond what Socialtext is achieving to give us more to talk about. The conversation will likely continue, along the way we will gain insight, and absolute concensus on a definition is not the post important thing. Like a standard, truth is in implementation.
I gave up my speaking slot at Office 2.0 to my co-founder and VP of Products, Adina Levin. Hopefully this guesture restores the gender balance and brings harmony to the blogosophere. Or perhaps inspires others to attend this great event. But really, she is just as qualified as I am for the job.
UPDATE: Veni. Vidi. Wiki. The published story, and commentary by Ryan Singel, The Wiki That Edited Me. Charts of editors and saves by Peter T.
I believe the Wired Wiki experiment can be called a success, and yesterday I would have said it was doomed. Just came back from Wiki Wednesday, where Wired reporter Ryan Singel held a conversation about it. How we conducted the experiment, what part of the editorial process it was directed at it and the participation of the community gives us a lot to learn from.
Do recall that the use of wikis in journalism has been significantly tainted by the LA Times Wikitorial debacle. It was a failure in wiki implementation, goal setting, content structure and moderation. While the media has embraced public blogs, they still have a while to go before public wikis are accepted.
When I was an intern I got into an argument with the editor of the Washington Post that ended with him telling me I have a perception problem. Since then I have been trying to prove him wrong, but that's a larger story, right now I might tell him the same thing.
There are different parts of the editorial process where wikis are perfect fits. Public wikis of course run the greatest risks, but I believe these risks can be managed with the right practices. Up front, this experiment was different from Wikitorial:
There was one lesson from the Wikitorial, something I saw coming back then, that we had to employ in the middle of the project. With the Wikitorial, an edit war ensued with differing viewpoints. Jimmy Wales stepped in and forked the page, creating pro and con editorials. With a wiki, there is space for everyone, even when the topic is war. In this, the topic was wikis where lots of people have a stake. Wired endorsed an Enumeration to also be published, for remaindered links and references. This served as a pressure release valve, to let the quality of the main article improve.
We made some mistakes, perhaps on purpose:
The article initially evolved reasonably. A pattern I have seen before, say with sharing Wikified Books, where most of the contributions were lightweight and adding in references and associations that came to the minds of readers. Personally, I stayed out of the initial editing fray (Wired did too, more on that later) to leave room for others. But a wave of edits came in. Angela called it "here's my favorite wiki" links. This did reflect the topic of the article, a domain of vendors, open source and public wiki project managers. Almost every wiki vendor added a link to themselves and editing in their positioning. Part of this is a sad commentary about the space, I can tell you that if this experiment was done 2 years ago, the contributions would be more, uh, wiki-like.
There were some real gems, particularly in the education section. One person took it upon themselves to interview an expert at Harvard after coordinating with Ryan and contributed a quote that persisted. Someone suggested an expert to Ryan on the Comments page, but he didn't have time to interview her. She got word of the experiment and contributed persistent edits herself. There was a minor dispute within the section, and some backchanneling between the parties, but the result stands.
At one point, someone stepped in made the first significant edit. They were kind enough to leave the remainder on what was the beginning of the Enumeration page, with an explanation:
Whereas the Wired Wiki story became too long, and became a soapbox for too many wiki, editors moved some of it to this page.
Hark, and know that you are upon an epic enumeration of wiki. Here, mentions of many wiki sites shall you find, and links shall you encounter.
At first I thought it was crazy, but then saw the wisdom. Unfortunately, this created a vacuum that was quickly filled with the same. Yesterday, with the deadline approaching, I thought the experiment would be a failure.
This morning there was a significant amount of edits, including some multiple detailed edits by one editor. Suddenly, the article was a story again. And the edits persisted.
At present, there is no plans for a community and I wouldn't say that one took root. But some common understanding was reached in a short period of time. I gained greater confirmation about some mediative techniques and moderation practices. There are better parts of the editorial process to apply this too, some proven already, and many happening behind the firewall, but much work to be done.
The result is a good story, dear reader (at the moment), I leave to you to judge.
Tomorrow night's Wiki Wednesday Palo Alto will feature an open conversation with Wired News reporter Ryan Singel about lessons learned from the Wired Wiki experiment. I expect we will cover the broader topic of participatory media.
We'll have a parallel conversation for developers about the REST API and STRUT (a conversion toolbox.
See you Wednesday night, 6-8pm, at Socialtext.
We are getting close to the deadline of the Wired Wiki article tomorrow afternoon. From here, it is editing within the current word count (1,900), but Wired will now also publish an Enumeration page. Basically, a place where people can share their own wiki projects, experience and tools. Some could call it spam, but it is a pressure relief valve that should help the main article become a story.
Aaron Swartz did some initial research comparing Wikipedia contributors by number of edits and characters, arguing that the core community (who make most of the edits) should matter less than peripheral domain experts (who write more). He is running for the Wikimedia Foundation's board as a proverbial outside the beltway candidate with a populist platform. In his previous essay he noted that the core community was more engaged in the details of technocrats than high minded theories of what Wikipedia means for the world.
However, one Wikimania session attended primarily by these technocrats and a couple of board members was on very similar but deeper research. The core community does the heavy lifting to allow a numerous and diverse body of content contributors. I'd suggest at least part of the core community is aware of this. After all, all those edits amount to interaction with content contributors.
I personally believe how Wikipedians relate to casual contributors over time and scale is a core issue. This is an area for further research to inform policy decisions and administrative practices. Perhaps we could help Aaron get some computing cycles or a research partner to take this further.
In other news, the NY Times has an article on consumer advertising supported wikis.
UPDATE: JP says it better than I did now or before, which is increasingly the case.
Every time I see Gabe Rivera of TechMeme, I ask for the same thing -- MeMeme. Give me TechMeme where the core index is based on who I read, about 150 people at any given time, to show me what my friends are interested in. I used to ask this from people who make Newsreaders. Because simply somedays you are too busy to read everything, but you want to make sure you haven't missed something big. That's the real value I derive from TechMeme today. But what I really want find something that is big with my friends, which in the larger blogosphere is actually something small.
Today we have two new and seriously great kinds of attention tools. Newsreaders give us the ability to personally personalize. Combined with persistent query feeds, you can follow the people and things you know you want to read. Similarly, social networking services with a purpose let you aggregate the objects of your friends, be it pictures with Flickr, or posts with Vox. Tagging then lets you pivot for social discovery, but that is digging deeper than you often have time or interest for.
TechMeme and others show us mass popularization. Different communities help things bubble up. In Social Software, you first saw this with Blogdex and DayPop. What in the blogosophere has the most attention within a given time period. Now we have Digg, del.icio.us/popular, Reedit, Netscape, Technorati, YouTube, Dabble, Last.fm, Flickr Interestingness and a gazillion other increasingly rich examples. This is a Wisdom of Crowds we couldn't gain before for discoverable knowledge.
As an aside, I wonder how original Slashdotters feel about Diggers' favor for a popular answer rather than a leading question.
So more concisely, what I hope develops:
* Tools that let me personally personalize should give me just one more degree of interestingness and popularization.
* Tools of mass popularization should give me social popularization
Since Flickr has both kinds of attention tools, let me give specific suggestions for extension. For within My Contacts's Photos, show me the most viewed, favorited and commented by my contacts. Then show me the most viewed, favorited and commented pictures by my contacts in Everyone's Photos.
Now, this is just one user's greedy suggestion, and there serious usability and algorithmic challenges to overcome. But what I'm getting at is part of the future of media.
The other night I watched the evening local news broadcast for the first time in a while. Its funny how local news attempts to localize national news. The idea is that if they show you a Mom in the Bay Area of a Soldier in Iraq, you can relate to that and it brings the story home. But unless the story originates from that Mom or Soldier, it is just an overlay with too much of a contextual shift. Similarly, when an item of local news is made national -- it is too shallow for our local tastes and we are attracted to it simply because or fair city is made popular.
I empathize with the expert editors behind these mass media and their attempts to connect the interesting for me, when me is lost in a demographic. But I've had a taste of going direct. When I carry the burden of discovery, and float around YouTube's popular and related clips, I can compose a broadcast for myself. The outstanding political commentary, funny stuff and best soccer highlights from around the world.
But after a long day of work, I'm tired, and want the network to work for me. Cue up not what is popular, or what the people I subscribed to produced. Cue up what my social network has found interesting. At any given time it may be local, national, international, topical or mundane. Of course, in the process of actively consuming it, I'll leave behind breadcrumbs of attention to make it better for my friends.
UPDATE: I've been ranting about this for years. Sam Ruby hacked together a nifty MeMeme and the result shows a clear and simple foci of attention (a post by Spoksky at last glance), FeedDemon has something in the works and Tailrank has something close.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW.. and run off into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?" I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these 2.0 concepts. But there is one thing I do know - when a man like this chap tries to hold his first conference he deserves some slack, and, if not, he is entitled to no less than two million in compensatory damages, and two million in punitive damages. Thank you.
The result of the deliberation over the Enterprise 2.0 article in Wikipedia was a keep. You can see the archived discussion here. Despite all the fuss, I'm pleased with the process and the outcome.
Also, Optimize Magazine has a new piece on Enterprise 2.0, with the pros and con.
UPDATE: SJ:
As always, it amazes me that so many people -- homemakers, high school students, firemen -- who simply care about the development of a reference work can be as sensitive to nuance and level-headed in academic discussions as academics (who have devoted much of their life to scholarly discourse). It makes me at once proud and disappointed by our civilization; that all manner of subtleties can be picked up without special training; and that much capability is untapped through ignorance or denial of this.
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