Just posted at PressThink is a new essay of mine: The Quest for Innocence and the Loss of Reality in Political Journalism http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone...
I couldn't take it anymore, so... New post: What to reject when you're rejecting the wisdom of crowds http://jayrosen.posterous.com/what-to... Tips for debunkers.
"Here's what the economic historians of the 23rd Century are going to say about the 20th. "They built giant, globe-spanning organizations, that employed tens of thousands of people working around the clock, to produce... sugar water, fast food, disposable razors, and gas guzzlers. Perhaps the defining characteristic of the paradigm of 20th Century capitalism was its astonishing lack of ambition. Rarely in history has such a void, a poverty of imagination been so deeply woven into the fabric of humankind's economic systems.""
- mikepk
from Bookmarklet
The real question for today's builders is: what are you going to do with that raw stuff? Are you going to use it to pump out more sugar water — or are you going to do something radically constructive instead? Are you going to do something merely innovative — or something world-changingly awesome?
- mikepk
Impossible to read from the passing car, but perfect for blogging. Strange there is no contact information in the text, so people seeing it online would know where to find these creative guys. Couldn't imagine it's really a TV Show ad. Looks like an agency showing off. Paul, do you know where the billboard is located?
- earlyadopter
Looks photoshopped to me, i.e. nice idea but not real.
- Miriam
I'm guessing that this was in England, NZ, or Australia.
- Gabe
Mistletoe: I was thinking the same thing. :(
- Gabe
Joe Biden and Michelle Obama in the back set - very funny. Go, go, go, America. :)
- jan geronimo
I don't think Clinton is in the front seat with Obama. More like he's got her tied up in the trunk. But this is cute.
- Dawn
I saw this done with Arsenal players a little over a year ago. Exact same scene, just different heads (Wenger, Fabregas, Adebayor and RvP, IIRC).
- Uche Ogbuji
For businesses who maintain a web presence, the survey's findings highlight the potential consequences of ignoring the mobile web. There are more people surfing mobile sites than ever before - 56.9 million as of July, according to Nielsen. Companies who haven't given consideration to their mobile websites aren't just losing customers for that initial attempted transaction that goes bad - they're possibly losing those customers for good seeing as how many of those frustrated users claim they won't ever return to the site in question.
- Amy Gahran
Too bad it didn't say what phones were used so we'd semi-know what browsers were used and what the experience was. The speed and experience on the iPhone seems pretty good. As far as claiming they'll never return - That's questionable and is only a factor if ones' competitors have a better mobile site for them to go to and that's unlikely. A lot of the answers are unrealistic - like as fast as their desktop - but then the questions might have been slued since the study was done by an optimization company.
- PXLated
another great reason for companies to embrace SM such as twitter or facebook, which have skilled developers optimizing the interface for various platforms
- Mike Chelen
FriendFeed uses RSS as well. It's how I read this article.
- Jesse Stay
twitter is manual while rss is automagic ;)
- Anthony Farrior
I'd say FriendFeed/Twitter has more growth headroom where RSS is somewhat stalled (and currently unfashionable). Polemics are still immature
- oliver marks
same arguments were used against RSS originally.
- Steve Gillmor
Oliver that's ridiculous. As Twitter/FriendFeed grows, so does RSS. RSS is their backbone.
- Jesse Stay
Jason: why is RSS more open than Twitter or FriendFeed?
- Steve Gillmor
Steve, because no one single company controls it
- Jesse Stay
Twitter doesn't control micromessaging
- Steve Gillmor
Steve, if Twitter or FriendFeed dies, RSS lives on. If Dave Winer dies, it lives on.
- Jesse Stay
Sorry Steve, this is just a totally silly debate heh
- Chris Saad
Steve, I didn't say I was bored. I said it was a silly debate, agreeing with Chris.
- Jesse Stay
Steve, so it seems they aren't going to be replacing RSS any time soon if all of this is powered by RSS
- Jesse Stay
I'm bored and I think there is far more important angles and issues on the table that need to discussed and I wish you would add your voice to those instead
- Chris Saad
I've often wondered why people stick around for silly debates.
- Steve Gillmor
@Steve do you mean twitter is the new way to promo content? I would say in that context you have a point
- Anthony Farrior
jesse: all this stuff is powered by all the stuff that came first
- Steve Gillmor
Steve says "Twitter is replacing RSS" All the arguments here are not addressing that issue, they're saying why RSS is better. That's beside the point. Lisp is best programming language in the world, no one uses it.
- Phil Windley
parse my words but please don't replace them and expect me to agree
- Steve Gillmor
So to replace means something has to not exist any more. I'm very confused.
- Jesse Stay
metaphors can be confusing. I feel your pain
- Steve Gillmor
Phil, but everyone still uses RSS. Not the same argument.
- Jesse Stay
twitter recommends content. Are you saying you now prefer what other people give you instead of picking rss feeds to read yourself?
- Anthony Farrior
okay setting up my new blog i ll replace the rss-feed with a follow me on twitter banner and then redirect updates for new posts to my twitter stream'? seriously, wtf ;-)
- michael h
RSS value & use models are well understood: Twitter is still a mystery to most. RSS scale is an issue: becomes a pavlovian recursive exercise where Twitter is more freeform
- oliver marks
ANthony: no, I choose the people who recommend articles and they provide a more efficient way of handling the flow
- Steve Gillmor
@Steve Ahhh I think I understand .... The "human" suggestion factor instead of the cold push factor
- Anthony Farrior
anthony yes, but not instead. the replacement is gradual and never one or the other
- Steve Gillmor
@anthony thats an answer, why not BOTH ;-) ? I don t get the big fuss bout the issue. anyone should choose
- michael h
There's still a place for both factors. RSS fits in quite nicely with the social element.
- Jesse Stay
@Steve the people you choose to recommend you content probably use RSS so you are just moving down one link further
- Anthony Farrior
Anthony, exactly - Social is simply a layer on top of RSS. It will grow with social, but like it is currently, not everyone will use it directly.
- Jesse Stay
I don't think anything has changed in that matter.
- Jesse Stay
Lets see the list of the once that stoped using RSS ...anyone here ?
- Johni Fisher
I cant see no one here that will drop the RSS for Twitter ,when you say replacing it is not the right word in my opinion as we all keep our RSS feeds incoming or outgoing at our blogs etc ... Twitter is an additional stvc but not more than that ,,
- Johni Fisher
understand that johni. don't agree in the larger context of the trend.
- Steve Gillmor
Other important point is the comercial one , I cant see yet the way that we all can benefit from Twitter or a way that Twitter can get an important income from this replacement ,in compare to Google reader or the others ..money move the world if I am not wrong :-))
- Johni Fisher
yes johni, it is harder to see where the money will come, but it will be clearer very soon.
- Steve Gillmor
oh boy I forgot you are now part of the techcrunch gang, you probably know something we don't...Is greader about replace rss feeds for twitter updates? *nervous lol*
- Anthony Farrior
I think that there is no other way for Twitter to make 2010 without Google ,when this will come the change with the integration to Wave will be able to replace the RSS ,in the case that you have this info at your side we can agree
- Johni Fisher
RSS is a way of pushing out content. There is no need to push it out if it is live.
- Garin Kilpatrick
I don't RSS going anywhere. There will always be uses for it. But there are always many different ways of digesting information
- Seth Goldstein
There are some truths in here that go beyond the narrow "social" or "tech" tag. Great read.
- Aron Michalski
So is RSS the http://tinyurl.com/first-m... or candidate for oldest "living" http://www.scotsmagazine.com/ ? I'm hopeful most folks reading and contributing here were party to the orgy of exuberance for Gopher... I mean HTTP. RSS as it exists today will be something that gets leapfrogged as every other moment-in-time solution has so far. Sitting back and clinging to RSS format is just [insert widget] attention span competition. Format wars are mutually assured stagnation. Stagnation is death.
- Jay Cuthrell
So, I was wondering... does RSS afford this kind of debate as part of its structure?
- Cliff Gerrish
Cliff - sure, we just post our comments to each other on the doors of the Schlosskirche via RSS
- Jay Cuthrell
RSS is dying a slow death. So long as content is syndicated RSS will remain alive; right now RSS is alive and well. But the life of online technologies are short, since technologies shift, and once online content distribution shifts fully from syndication to synchronization RSS will be dead. The Real-Time web will have killed it.
- Garin Kilpatrick
Francine just gave me a RSS-FOAF flashback :)
- Jay Cuthrell
Twitter is not real-time for putting through blog links unless someone happens to be on the news site, reads the article, and posts a link to Twitter within minutes (unless the author manually posts the link). Pubsubhubbub will still beat that by minutes or seconds. Many like me feed through to Twitter using Twitterfeed which uses typical RSS technology.
- beersage
Twitter claims to be real-time but it is not there yet. Neither is ff, but they are closer. I am excited to see the mark the Google wave makes on this scene.
- Garin Kilpatrick
Francine, I think Scoble tried to be friends with everybody but it didn't work out.
- Cliff Gerrish
Does this argument matter? Is it more than a way to pass the time?
- Michael Markman
Is there a compelling reason to further evangelize your point? We get it it. Fantastic, for you, it's dead. Makes perfect sense. But at this point you're not just beating a dead horse, you're beating the top soil covering the hole in which you buried the horse. How about we move on to more constructive things.
- Benjamin Taylor
Benjamin: I wrote this in May. Others continue to discuss it. I will respond when my ethics or credibility is attacked. Various folks have asked me to elaborate and I have. If you're tired of it, unfollow me. And expressing what I see as valuable is never unconstructive from my perspective. Leaving insinuation and misinformation unchallenged is unconstructive imo.
- Steve Gillmor