Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Security Closure

Some people have been asking for closure on my posts about books banned on planes. To be clear: The TSA screener was probably mistook books for matchbooks, but is empowered to apply poor judgment, which is the issue.

Flew to Paris with at least 3 books, no problem. However, I flew back with a lighter that I declared to several French screeners. There is no such thing as a closed system and all we have is illusions of a secure homeland.

Technorati Tags: politics, security

Random Rants

The monopoly should be natural: Why can't I print Mac designed business cards through FedEx Kinko's online? If you are going to have a site, seperate this interface this from your transaction backbone to make it a service.

Attractive Design: What is the reason why my 2 year old likes to pluck the keys off my PowerBook whenever he can lay his curious little paws on it?

Atmosphere Kills: When I unpacked my bags from Paris, the stench almost made me agree with Doc's point about great food, bad atmosphere.  The problem is smoking in France is so damn enjoyable.

Furthermore: When I worked for a certain President, he had persuaded the press corps to avoid taking pictures of him while smoking so as to not influence the youth.  Interesting both that this reminds me of Roosevelt and Polio, I don't want to catch Polio, there is a civility of the press that has a role and don't show those Les Blogs pics to kids.

Tiger Leap: Are people standing in lines because it reminds them of the first Star Wars or to Flickr it?

Clue: We are listed as a recent investment on their site.

Scrape ID: My last random rant shamelessly noted how Stowe Boyd was scraped by an otherwise great Topix service.  The SoSo feed is MoMo.  Jeff's scraped identity is his Recent Posts sidebar.  RSS isn't just good spam fodder, it can help valuable services aggregate too.

SPSSAG: Should Probably Say Something About Google.  If I wasn't a blogger I couldn't keep up with all the new Gapps.

Syndicoop: They write headlines and categorize for me, I give them ad revenue, Google news exposure included.

Hack the Earl: If you hack the URL of the greatest free streaming silent movie for boys who like Thomas, you might end up with this @@pple instead.

Paddle: Kayak for Ajaxy travel search, Southwest not included but I would rather go to them better fairs within their Flashy routemap and simple site.

Les Influencers

François Granger, who blogs in both French and English described Les Influencers to me as a blog where publishers can copy and paste ads they choose.  Reporting is transparent and the ads are presented as though they are recommended by influencers.

 

Recommandé par des Influenceurs.

One of the closest implementations of Publisher Driven Advertising (PDA)/Sell-Side Advertising where Sellers Become Seekers to date.  Love ads that need transitive clearing and Cost Per Influence (CPI).  Wonder who influenced these influencers...  But let me leave you with my one criteria for judging an advertising model: does it create incentives for quality creative work?

UPDATE: See comment, François, Jarvis

Les Blogs Presentation

Posted my presentation from Les Blogs on this wiki page, which has grown to a perfect summary of the event with presentations, audio and blog posts.

The French Exception

The vibrant growth of the French blogosphere is something to behold.  French is the second largest language and half of students in France blog.  This is due, in no small part, to Skyradio telling their listeners to Skyblog what they think at most commercial breaks -- a multi-million dollar advertising investment from an MSM to make blogging cool.  Effective, considering they have 1.5 million bloggers according to Pierre Bellanger's presentation.  Wonder what will happen when they begin podcasting.

I really enjoyed the contrast Jochen Wegner provided in his presentation on how Germany needs a second pope.  Basically, nobody blogs in Germany despite their population and broadband penetration.  He implied that there hadn't been an event, or celebrity, or major marketing push to help it along.  Could also be similar to when i asked Orkut why Estonia was the six most populous nationality on Orkut the a population the size of Skybloggers -- he said one of his good friends was Estonian.  Adoption happens from social networks of founders plus mass event exceptions. 

The Germans I spoke to said wikis were far more popular than blogs and the credited Wikipedia (the German version is the second largest), which are both network and mass drivers.

One of the recurring conversations at Les Blogs, beyond metaphysical notions of what is a blog, is why doesn't everybody have a blog? While lots of blog pundits are quick to agree that the real action isn't blogs as publishing (aside: Doc's presentation put the nail in content instead of conversation) -- but chatter with friends that happens to be in the open.  We have explored this as part of the network structure, demographics, interests, everything.  Barak from 6A noted that focus groups show people consistently think of bloggers are people who are self-important and have too much time on their hands.  My wife, who was outed as part of the community this week, and is my favorite focus group, agrees violently.  And nobody gives a damn who has more traffic than who.

However, the reason I cringe when toolmakers says all the action is in the skinny part of the power law (uh, long tail) is that the toolmakers haven't followed through.  Two notable exceptions are LiveJournal and Flickr.  We all know that social networking (especially as a filter) is due to merge with blogging.  However, one consensus from insiders over the past week was that tool innovation significantly lags social practice.  I'd suggest this is the focus of where toolmakers will catch up over the next year or so.

Caterina made some claims that not everyone has something to write, but all can take snapshots.  All true, and the tech makes it dreadfully easy.  Time-spread media like audio and video has a tougher time until editing is emergent.  But people who use computers are generally literate enough to write letter to friends. 

Back to the rest of the world.  Not every country has a salon culture. Some are waiting for inflections of networks and mass. Many are oppressed and don't have events to move their voices like Iran.  Some still look for a third way like what I can't wait to have emerge from countries like Korea.

The story at Les Blogs wasn't some hot heads from the network core coming over to barf up panel sessions that have been heard before.  It was the mix of cultures at a moment in time that expect a day when we all write what we really think through the web.

Socialtext Raises Series B Venture Round

Socialtext raised a Series B round of venture capital.  That's the only clue I'm going to give you, clues are out there. 

Almost announced it at Les Blogs.  It's a really big deal, something we worked hard on for a long time, with some great people and has wonderful implications for enterprise social software. 

That said, I have a list of five key details of the deal (added below), that does not include the valuation.  First person to blog those five details by the end of May wins a Socialtext Starter Package of five Socialtext.net seats for one year. So tell me:

Now go get 'em, you bloggers as journalists.  I'll be watching tag: socialtextb

• Who led the round  
• Total investment
• Participating firms
• A new Board Member
• On what odd day did it close?

Maybe a lawyer would have me include this statement: Employees, participants to the deal and people under a Socialtext NDA (rare) can't win.  Our competitors could win as all that hard work has to pay off sometime and we want everyone to have better tools.

UPDATE:

• Draper Fisher Jurveston is an investor, as blogged by Juri

The Craft of Blogging

I used to believe that brand-centric companies were not adopting public blogging. Corporate brands are paying attention to blogging as they draw greater attention and criticism. They are listening, some are blogging inside while determining their move into the space, and unfortunately view public blogging as a risk instead of an opportunity.

But General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz is changing this view entirely. Perhaps the best corporate blog yet, with a real voice, engaged with other enthusiasts. Bob blogs about the craft of his work.

Think of brands as art. Steve Jobs won't blog unless it is consistent with his masterpiece. It's hard to make a statement in blogs as it is just a written mode of communication. They produce counter-statements -- messages are morphed.

Craft, however, is about the process of innovation and pride in results. Brand-centric companied that take pride in their craft do indeed have more opportunity than risk in corporate blogging.

Rise of the Enterprise Blog

Ed Cone has a great piece in CIO Insight that covers enterprise social software and corporate blogging.

...This is technology that users don't have to wait for. Technorati Inc., a service that tracks weblogs, follows more than eight million personal sites. More than one million wikis have been downloaded from open-source sites, for use in organizing everything from design projects to conferences to lunch meetings. "For the first time since e-mail, users on a very large scale are learning a new writing interface," says Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext Inc., a company that sells wiki and blog-like applications, and boasts 20 members of the Fortune 500 among its customers...

Users appear to be finding new ways to deploy these generic tools. A simple blog that begins as a project-management log for a small group can become a searchable knowledge-management repository when the project is done. Mayfield thinks blogs and wikis could lead to some grand accomplishments that are only beginning to come into focus. The success of Wikipedia, a Web-based encyclopedia created and edited by thousands of volunteers, suggests that companies might also engage in what Mayfield calls "collaboration at a profound scale."

Les Blogs and Social Software

Sitting in the French Senate for Les Blogs.  Given the fact that there are 300 bloggers here, I probably will not do my conference blogging schtick.  The past couple of days have been a wonderful getaway and chance to see friends.  Loic has been a wonderful host.

The Senate representative welcomed us to the first international blog day.  John Chambers spoke here last week, Steve Balmer joins them for breakfast tomorrow.  Blogs are the next revolution.  Half of their schoolchildren blog, French is the second most popular language in the blogopshere, they like to express themselves and debate their views.  20 different countries are represented here, half of attendees from outside the country.  As Peter Parker's uncle said, "a big power implies big responsibilities."  Like Spiderman, we have big responsibilities.

Joi Ito's presentation

  An extension of a series of events.  Internet is the first open bottom up network.  Ethernet connected some computers, TCP/IP connected the network (IFTF rough concensus working code), HTML (had a tagging protocol of SGML but you couldn't view the source, was too complex), with blogs we are connecting people.  Now we are fighting against people that do not want us to share our content and talk freely. 

Richard Florida, The Creative Class: anti-establishment, critical thinkers, autonomous action, self-fulfillment, self-expression, sharing collective action, community, learning and openness to innovation.  These technologies become adopted through word of mouth.  Some cultures adopting faster.  Gap between creative and non-creative class is bigger than between countries.  Shows the superbowl commercial of kids busted for sharing music.  Some people understand this gap and are selling to this creative class.  Watch user behavior and create products for it, don't change behavior.  Traditional media is trying to force people back into the old model.  iPod Shuffle isn't the best specified product, but word of mouth and brand let them make it a success.  Even through they have DRM everywhere and are suing bloggers, we believe they are on our side. 

Long Tail (gulp): Delivery vs. Discovery of content, file sharing(a sophisticated way of playing DJ), recommendation engines/reviews, blogs and word of mouth.  Problem is not how to protect my copyright, it is how to get people to listen to your stuff.  Worse than being copied is not being copied. 

Blogs and marketing: Kryptonite and a Bic Pen lost $10M in 10 days, Rathergate, Fastlane is honest marketing by conversation to develop trust, BBC and Infoworld Technorati sidebars. 

The Sharing Economy: The myth of intellectual property, "creative property" is a new idea, "the commons" is and always has been essential part of creativity, amateur vs. professionals.  This is an amateur revolution.  Professional sex is not always better than amateur sex.  Creative commons has 10M licensed web pages.  Red Blood Cells project where the White Stripes remix is an example of skipping the intermediaries whereas works become automatically copyrighted the moment they are made. (cc)

Remix culture is not just about creative content, it is about free speech.  Read my lips and other remix videos.  NBC is saying you can't use Bush speech because of copyright, lots of things are trying to stifle our ability to share.

Many-to-Many Blogiversary

Amazing.  Today marks the second anniversary of Many-to-Many.

Thanks to Clay, Liz, Seb, David and danah.  Also to Hylton and our great guestbloggers.