Archive for the 'Trends' Category

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Why blogs are turning into newspapers and Quora is the future of journalism

Published on December 28, 2010 in Trends, with 0 Comments.

MG Siegler wrote a post following our exchange on Twitter. I called him out because for the second time that day, I had logged into Quora only to see minutes later a TechCrunch post being Tweeted that was rehashing the original Quora discussion. Is this the future of journalism?

Blogging 3.0
Siegler wrote an eloquent post expanding on my original jibe that he was practicing blogging 3.0 (I called it that as over the years Marshall Kirkpatrick would constantly joke Twitter is what paid his rent). Now don't get me wrong: Quora is one of my favourite websites right now, and Siegler (as well as Kirkpatrick) are two of the more talented writers in the blogosphere. But it made me wonder: what's the role of the journalist in the world, and by implication, the news blogger?

For the bloggers out there who receive bonuses by getting headlines on Techmeme -- what's stopping Gabe Rivera (Techmeme's founder) from simply importing the RSS feed of Quora posts and having its human editors headline the best answer? As Siegler points out, he (worryingly) already has. Given Quora responses are like blog posts and get aggregated into a community wiki-like answer summary, I can't see why this won't become a new input source for Techmeme, completely bypassing the traditional blogs.

And while we are on the topic: Julian Assange of Wikileaks argues that they are pioneering a new form of journalism, which he recently argued in an editorial for The Australian, as "Scientific journalism". Scientific because you can read the source of the material in its naked form or accompanying an article that discusses the source.

Source material is democratised
Journalists, it is said, are becoming curators of information. Siegler claims he has retrieved information from an obscure source, amplified it, which in turn will be broadcasted by a bigger publisher like CNN. But if Quora democratices the source gathering -- it's so obscure that everyone in Silicon Valley is on it, include billionaires like Steve Chase who founded AOL and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook -- what's stopping me from "breaking" the apparent news? Or Rivera from doing a direct RSS import of the top answers, direct to his audience of thousands?

If the big blogs are traffic hungry that have them reliant on the aggregators like Techmeme to feed their pageviews....And if this trend to scientific journalism is being promoted, where journalistic bias adds colour to a source only if you want (rather then the bias being the source of your information consumption) -- then one has to ponder. That the evolution of journalism will come not from changes in journalistic style, but by changes in technology -- an evolution where every single one of us can talk openly about the world and in an applied way.

Siegler says this is business as usual for the bloggers, but I think it's business as usual for the disruption technology is generating for the news making business. Disruption that will continue to favour those who tease out the source of news (like Quora, Twitter and Wikileaks has) and those who curate it into an efficient way to consume (like aggregators such as Techmeme, Google News and Digg).

The future of journalism resides with those that create the originating value: traffic or content
Before the Internet, newspapers were the sole source of information and so had an elevated role in society. Now they are being relegated to just one of the many sources of news; once considered a horror if they disappeared, they would not impact the world if they went bankrupt today (as there are plenty of online mastheads to replace their value). As social media technologies continue to be refined -- where the participants curate the source material themselves -- blogs will not disappear like how newspapers won't disappear. But their position in the world is far from guaranteed, as the audience curation is being done better by the aggregators and the source material is now no longer proprietary to a journalist.

The new magazine

Published on December 22, 2010 in social computing and Trends, with 0 Comments.

The Facebook homescreen is a remarkable thing. I just saw a video of a friend throwing food at birds; relatives taking pictures of themselves in a hot tub; a link to a mind-expanding article; and a status message that made me laugh. It made me think: the homescreen is the new magazine.

Sure, we can be simplistic with this and say lots of pictures and content makes thee a magazine. But what strikes me as fascinating is how much personal content is shared. People's thoughts, insight into their lives, and the real-time autobiographical dictation by our "friends". It makes me think of the fascination people have with celebrities, and how gossip magazines are some of the highest grossing of their kind. The same phenomenon is being exploited here -- which is people want to know more about people they know. While with celebrities you could potentially say people do it due to a fixation on celebrity status and looks, I would argue the reason gossip magazines are so popular is due to the curiousity into the lives of people who are familiar. People would be equally fascinated with a magazine about celebrities as a magazine of their neighbours, if it was practical.

It's almost like Facebook's homescreen is the new media version of a publication. But of your friends. And like a glossy magazine. Of original content from otherwise hard-to-obtain situations.

Or more practically speaking, like a gossip magazine of your neighbours.

Unfollow people on Twitter: it’s good for you

Published on March 23, 2010 in Trends, with 0 Comments. Tags: , .

Since my first Tweet in April 2007, I've been using the service in different ways. In that time, my career has changed; the people using it are now beyond the early-adopted tech crowd which dominated when I first started using it; and more significantly, Twitter has added new functionality that has changed the pattern of usage.

In other words, I've changed; the people around me have changed; and the service has changed. So with that in mind, I'm asking myself now how should I use Twitter now? It's become a new communications paradigm, and so our personal evolution in using it is an interesting thing to consider for the future of communications.

What has Twitter become
Put simply, people and companies use it to connect with other people. Not only that, but its become a means to discover information and people. The discussions on it have allowed communities to emerge (and organise), trends to be noticed, and people to be identified. Its created the social melebrity - the term I give to the trend of "micro-celebrities" - and created a new avenue to the consultant (online self-promotion), researcher (uncovering trends and breaking information), and business development manager (discovery of opportunities), among others

What's different about Twitter now
Twitter was implicitly designed to encourage a gaming of human psychology based on the number of followers you had. The more followers, the more perceived status an account had and by extension a person or company. This status created perceived influence and authority - which in some ways was true, but true or not is not the point: it was enough of a motivator to get people thinking constantly "how can I get more followers", a brilliant state of mind from the perspective of a profit-making company benefiting from usage.

Several new features have since emerged, one of which is lists. Lists themselves have become another way Twitter, inc has been able to game its user-base as it implies a sense of status. But from a user point of view, its also become a great new way to track people stream's, which at core is what Twitter is meant to be about.

Foe anyone that follows a lot of people, tracking every Tweet can be impossible. I now hover around the 500 mark of people that I 'follow', but the reality is, I don't actually follow them in the true sense of the world: only in the off-chance I check-into Twitter to see what's happening. 'Following' these days is not a reflection of my engagement with that person, but simply, my interest (once upon a time).

Thinking about value
With all the above in mind, let's now answer the question of who should you follow. Should it be people you're interested in following, like how it's always been no? I say nope to that, and here's why.

I get no benefit following someone who is not following me back, other than the initial notification someone gets that I've followed them (and which I know can be quite successful as a marketing tool). The value we get, is if they follow us back, is the fact we can directly message each other. And this has real value: I know people who are impossible to reach via email, myself included sometimes, because of email overload. But, if someone sends you a direct message via Twitter - it can come to you via email, IM and SMS. And the conciseness of the message makes the communication more direct and pointed (a benefit in itself). It's an efficient way of reaching busy people.

On the other hand, there is a real cost following someone who doesn't follow you back. If you have an account where you follow more people than follow you, you are considered a spam account in the eyes of other users. If you follow more than a certain amount of people - say a few hundred - then you are not considered (rightfully) engaged in that person. And let's not forget the cost to your attention: you get more value out of the Twitter stream when you can consume more of it - meaning, the less accounts you follow, the more engaged you are.

So what's my point? Unfollow people and start using lists. Don't be gamed by the Twitter communications platform, and start thinking about what value it can provide to you in your life.