Daniel Bachhuber - Likes

Augmented Reality at the Lego Store http://uxhero.com/user-ex... (via http://www.lazyfeed.com/)

December 16 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber and Ethan Gahng liked this

There will be a live, in-person, face-to-face (audience participation included) Rebooting the News with Jay Rosen, Saturday Oct. 3 at the Hilton San Francisco 4:00 pm, in the Union Square 15 & 16 room and YOU're invited. The room holds about 40. Dave Winer's dad died last night so he won't be there. I will be and others rebooting the news will be.

September 30 - Comment - Like - Share

Ryan Sholin, Mason Lee, Andres Cavelier and 4 other people liked this

The we are in is called Union Square 15 & 16. It's on the 4th floor of Tower Three at the Hilton. If you're a journalist, or a start-up, or just someone with new media dreams, you are welcome. You don't have to be a member of Online News Association or an official participant in the conference, just come. - Jay Rosen

2 more comments

Dave and I paid for the room ourselves, so that's why we can say that without fear of contradiction. Address: 333 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, California, United States 94102 Tel: 1-415-771-1400 http://www1.hilton.com/en_US... - Jay Rosen

I'll bet that's the Hilton on O'Farrell. Wish I could get down there (3 hours away). Your timing makes it tempting. - USelaine

Thank you Jay, I'm planning on attending. - Peter Mullen

CodyBrown

I've said this before but going to j-school now is like going to law school in the middle of a revolutionary war

August 27 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Abraham Hyatt

Either @streamy is slammed from the @rww mention or it's fail. Hey guys, blog about what's going on. Your "everything's ok" tweet is wrong

August 11 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Apparently it was the traffic spike the post caused. - Steven Walling

I think it's a prob on my end, too. Things seem to have gone back to normal for everyone else. I'll wait until tomorrow to play with it. It looks very interesting. - Abraham Hyatt

Rebooting The News: Jay Rosen

Maybe for next week http://twitter.com/jayrose... "Yes, @eyeseast. Vital part of any rebooted system: http://twitter.com/eyeseas... Conserve the back narrative, serve with each update, revise as you go."

July 28 - Comment - Like - Share

Bora Zivkovic and Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Basically, I'd like to build ways to organize data so we don't have to start over on every story, and make it easier to do long coverage --Chris Amico, @eyeseast - Jay Rosen

Absolutely. If we move "beyond the article" and create a living, breathing document, we need to see past versions of the narrative. Why isn't there a slider at the top of every narrative allowing readers to quickly see past versions of a story? Or for the iCrowd, maybe some coverflowesque eye candy. - Kevin Sablan

Time Machine for a news story: see how the story came together over time through a visualization. It's be a bit like tracking revision history in a wiki. I certainly dig that idea. Who is going to build it? - Daniel Bachhuber

Rebooting The News: Joey Baker

I'd love to get thoughts on what I see as two conflicting ideas: the first comes was mentioned by Prof. Rosen on Rebooting the News "It’s the principles not the practices of journalism that we want to save." (Apologies, I forget the attribution) The second: “Transparency is the new objectivity.” —@dweinberger.

July 12 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel B. Honigman and Daniel Bachhuber liked this

If the second quote is true, it seems to me that we're actually trying to replace the principles of journalism. - Joey Baker

How about, "It's the principles, not the institutions of journalism we want to save"? - Daniel B. Honigman

Rebooting The News: Dave Winer

What, if anything, did Microsoft announce? (Scripting News) - http://www.scripting.com/stories...

July 13 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Kris and Daniel Bachhuber liked this

"In the podcast we talked about a river of realtime news. The analogy fits these pseudo-events in the following way. Sometime in the past weeks Microsoft held a private event, trying to build a dam on the river, hoping to blow the dam at a predetermined time earlier today, thereby creating a rush of news that would impress everyone. It didn't work because apparently the dam developed a leak in the middle of the night and the water rushed down the river of news while everyone was sleeping. No one was impressed. Sad Microsoft" - Dave Winer from Bookmarklet

According to the people I talked to over the weekend, there should've been more than what was announced. - Daniel Bachhuber

Patrick Thornton

Every site with comments needs a like button. Slashdots rating system is the best. I don't want to see comments that the community says suck.

July 13 from Facebook - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Rebooting The News: Jay Rosen

This is something I want to talk about on the next Rebooting the News: http://www.danielbachhuber.com/2009... It's a good direction. The post is by a listener to the podcast, by the way. I think newsroom-as-cafe and the cafe-based news organization have possibilities....

June 12 - Comment - Like - Share

keith feighery, metalerik, Josette Torres and 2 other people liked this

There's your inberkeley.com, @davewiner Not another newsblog but a cafe. A cafe-based news organization http://twitter.com/jayrose... - Jay Rosen

12 more comments

Media companies should open coffee shops http://wemediaguru.com/2008... and New York Times, A Latte With Journalism on the Side http://www.nytimes.com/2009... - Jay Rosen

David Cohn: Journalism Business Idea - the Newsroom Cafe http://www.digidave.org/2009... - Jay Rosen

what I would do if I bought a newspaper (2005) http://blackrimglasses.com/archive... - Jay Rosen

When I read the piece I thought what a great idea. And too bad the Knight award apps are already in, cause that would be exactly the kind of project they should fund as a pilot. Could easily turn into a national chain. I have a feeling this kind of thing was important in the bootstrapping of newspapers orginally?? - Dave Winer

yeah, major arrows back to the origins of modern news and even "public opinion" in the coffee houses of the eighteeenth century. - Jay Rosen

I think it would be fun and interesting just to imagine inberkeley.com--or any local news site-- as a cafe. Let's give her a going over on Rebooting the News! - Jay Rosen

Looking forward to the perspective from the wise gurus of journalism and technology :) - Daniel Bachhuber

Another interesting thing about the old London coffee houses was that commerce was mixed in with the news. Merchants had permanent booths in some of the houses. - Amyloo

A similar theme runs through Steven Johnson's newest book, The Invention of Air: http://www.amazon.com/Inventi... - Jeff Beckham

I see a connection between the fishing village metaphor, the coffee shop in that fishing village, and the analog bloggers: http://www.neatorama.com/2009... - Bora Zivkovic

Techies plan California-style java jolt "Why isn’t there a relaxed place here where people can hang out, plug in and talk tech?..." http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston... - Jay Rosen

Here's the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages... As Dave says, it could be a chain. Specifically (says me, a former franchise consultant) as a franchise -- centrally controlled for consistency and buying power, but locally owned. Hook the locations together so it's a conferencing network, too. - Amyloo

Thanks, amy! Interesting. Also interesting to me: when I discussed this a bit on Twitter, old school journalists just immediately assumed I meant taking the kind of newsroom that they know and turning that into a cafe. - Jay Rosen

Dave Winer

@Ev and @Biz say they'll be running Twitter in 5 years. But how many twitters will there be? http://d7.allthingsd.com/2009052...

May 27 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Erhan Erdoğan, Mike Elliott and 11 other people liked this

Likely not many if they don't get some people in there who know what they're doing. Twitter needs serious Managment and MarCom/PR help fast - guruvan (Rob Nelson) from PeopleBrowsr

24 more comments

Dave, if anything ever happened to you this place would be a worse-off place. Love reading your stuff on FF. - David Lloyd

I think lots of twitters but only because it will become a 'feed' protocol that you use to update other places. See Friendfeed - Andy Bold

@Andy Bold : I agree. Twitter is, if not the protocol, at least, the first layer of the "net-lifestream update" protocol. - Zackatoustra

While you guys are quite correct, there are a host of other services that implement a nearly identical API. If Twitter doesn't really get its business/marketing/PR/monetization act together (i.e. bring on some serious management talent) there won't likely be many people who really want to use it if they can get the same elsewhere. But, the 140char micro-updates are in fact the first... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson) from PeopleBrowsr

I think something else will come along, the next HOT thing, but until then I'll be using it too :) - Owen Greaves

I think @ev and @biz are very shortsighted if they believe Twitter will be around in 5 years, let alone that they'll be running it. They will either have to hand off management to others who more aggressively breathe life into it or watch it slip away before then. They suffer from the I'ts my baby and I own it" mindset that has killed thousands of startups. There are too many other services and other ways to accomplish the same thing for Twitter to last five more years without redical intervention. - Ken Camp

Ken: You're exactly right here. It's a shame that they don't realize that gowing a company to a size and point that you, th founder, are no longer qualified to run the company is one of the supreme marks of success. If you can grow the company to that size, and then hand it off, and be able to learn from your more experienced colleagues that you hire to run it, you'll soon be qualified... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson) from PeopleBrowsr

What else would @ev and @biz say other than "Of course we'll be running things!!"? That actually *is* good business sense, regardless of whether they understand the day-to-day operations of a mega-corp. To say otherwise would start a firestorm internally and a tabloid-frenzy externally. I don't take anything away from such a throw-away statement... - Noah Gray

Noah -- agree totally - Dave Winer

Rob: I'm with Ken on this one. But the other issue at hand is how rapidly technology changes and how readily we all are to jump to the next hot thing. Loyalty is at it's lowest these days unless the benefit far out weighs the next trend. - Owen Greaves

Loyalty in the Internet market is one click away. Our continuous partial attention is an indicator of our ephemeral attention. Without a cohesive and believable story, substantiated by sustainable improvement, loyalty is just a word. - Ken Camp

Ok, you just gave me a headache with that comment :) - Owen Greaves

Owen: Sorry. Didn't mean to create a headache. That was my knee-jerk response to agree with your "loyalty is at its lowest..." Even when it's high, in the Internet world loyalty is fragile and ephemeral. I used to use the example that a web developer only had 800X600 pixels of real estate. It's the same cause and effect. Leaving a web site or service is easy. All it takes is one click. And we users are a fickle bunch. - Ken Camp

Owen: And now that you made me re-read what I said, I gave myself a headache with that obscure verbosity. - Ken Camp

See my response here: via http://ff.im/3jEK7 - Sheryl

Owen: I don't think Ken and I disagreed at all. I specifical said I think he's exactly correct, and elaborated on why. And Noah: Plenty of companies can explain what I did to their employees and not have any attrition of loss of morale from it. I know that Twitter could do that too. But with its history of poor communication, I'm sure you're right that they would let it develop in to a regular twitstorm. - guruvan (Rob Nelson) from PeopleBrowsr

A twitstorm or a blog post series beginning with "what I meant to say was..." ;-) - Ken Camp

Haha! I bet these guys could run for office, now that you mentioned that Ken. "Oh, when we said that we didn't really mean it that way." oy. - guruvan (Rob Nelson) from PeopleBrowsr

And now all I can think of is "if elected I will not serve" but if funded, well that's a different story. Of course I'll take the money. - Ken Camp

Free money is like Free Food: Never turn down free food! - guruvan (Rob Nelson) from PeopleBrowsr

My grandfather trained racehorse. One of his favorite sayings was "If the horse is dead on the track but you don't get off it... technically you are still riding it" - Johnny Worthington

Fabulous point Johnny. I hope you don't mind that I tweeted that line with attribution to you. Thanks for a perfect summary line. - Ken Camp

Rob, Ken: This thread is giving me cramps :) Take the money and run and if the horse is dead for goodness sake dismount! - Owen Greaves

Great line Johnny! And Owen, if the horse died on the track, there's probably no money in it. Unless you bet on the other horse. :-) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

The difference between a fox and a pig is...3 or 4 beers :) - Owen Greaves

Rebooting The News: Jay Rosen

Okay, here's Re-booting the News #10 http://www.scripting.com/stories... Topics include: bug catching as an ethic the news producers would do well to adopt, Maureen Dowd, ease-of-use in tech and journalism, Jay's one year on Twitter, Savviness, Elvis Costello's Whats So Funny' Bout Peace Love and Understanding

May 24 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber, tim windsor, Dave Winer and 2 other people liked this

As usual, I heard only the first part on the way to work, but the mention of EC intrigues... I love the notion of corrections as bug reports. When I launched story-specific feedback at The Sun years ago, the original version was supposed to say: "Did we get it right?" That got boiled down to something less threatening, but even that brought in a lot of valuable critiques from readers. As Dan Gilmor says, your readers know more than you do. Not surprisingly, they're happy to share that knowledge. - tim windsor

Zee.

To give everyone an update on the awful hacking of my email, paypal, registrar and other accounts...I have managed to regain control of most. I'm still unsure as to how they managed to break into my main email account in the 1st place but I do know how they managed to get access to the rest. I'll be putting all the details in a post tomorrow

May 12 - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes, Jamie Vidamour, G. Sigh and 44 other people liked this

thank you so much for all the support and suggestions guys. It has been well and truly appreciated. It was bloody great having access to my Friendfeed account. - Zee.

27 more comments

I'm very interested to hear the details. - Alex Scoble

Super nasty stuff this. Good you have your accounts back. - Ruud van Wijngaarden

glad that u took control of most - Thomas Chai

I'm still not convinced this is the real Zee. ;) - Cristo

What an ordeal! Please give some hints how to protect against this if you can! - John Graham

Thanks for sharing, Zee. The criminals and crackers continue to get better at what they do. You'll help others with this information. - Eric @ CSTechcast.com

Are your passwords the same across sites? Maybe your computer has a backdoor app running on it. I dunno if Macs have such things, but hey, yeah - sorry to read all these notes :( - Tamar Weinberg

It really is truly scary stuff! Taught me a lesson about my passwords really. Hope it all gets back in your control Zee - Charlotte M

Good to know Zee :D Waiting for the details. - Praveen Vasudev

@Tamar @Charley my passwords have been more secure than ever to be honest. I have four different sets of passwords and each set had it's own unique password for each site. Where i was stupid is that I made it very easy for a hacker to reset the passwords for other email accounts. Also, of course when you have access to the main email account - most sites simply forward a reset password... more... - Zee.

So scary -- glad yer getting it under control! - Dave Winer

i'm so sorry all of that happened to you, zee. you've certainly done a great job of containing it! - edythe

Sorry to hear about all this aggro Zee. Hope you get it all sorted out very soon, and I'm also interested to hear exactly what your experience was. - Patrick Jordan

I feel with you and send you calmness, luck and good vibes for the rest-run, had to do this half a year ago. - Julia Pichler

So glad its all coming together for you Zee, what a horrible experience. I look forward to lessons learned from your writeup. After your initial post on the subject yesterday I purchased RoboForm and will most definitely be taking my own security more seriously than I have in the past. Good luck in the uphill climb to stabilizing your situation. - jcunwired

Glad to hear you're getting it under your control again. - Anne Bouey

hmm, do you think there's still a backdoor app running on your computer? Might want to reformat to be safe. - Tamar Weinberg

Where's the details? - Alex Scoble

Someone else on FF was hacked into in recent months - who was that? Anyway, glad you're getting back in control of things again, Zee. - WorldofHiglet

@Alex...sadly, i was hacked again. I'm not sure whether its a good idea for me to share all the details publicly yet. I'll definitely figure out a way to in the near future - Zee.

Feel free to DM me or IM me or email me with the details if you like...I'm very interested to know what happened. - Alex Scoble

bloggingitguy at teh gmail. - Alex Scoble

I was wondering about the development on this. Thanks for the update, and I'm glad things are better. - Alejandro

Zee, make sure your computer is NOT being accessed by the outside world :( - Tamar Weinberg

I've had troubles too, change your password often - Sheri Fresonke Harper

Sorry to hear. That really sucks. Please post details to help others when you get some time. - Mark Krynsky

Oh man that is bad - BEX

I read where you got hacked, But I din't think it was that kind of hacked . Total Bummer - Brent - Loving Life

Meryn Stol

The main problem of "FriendFeed as a twitter client" is that Twitter users look so incredibly *stupid* on FriendFeed. Just like they're dwarfs with only dwarf-sized thoughts. On FriendFeed, you tend to forget that they have to crouch all day long because the god-damn ceiling is so low.

April 28 - Comment - Like - Share

Andrew Perry, Philip Lei, Kevin Pruett and 29 other people liked this

Just to be clear: I KNOW the people on Twitter are not stupid. Most of the smartest people I know are there, not here. They just look stupid on FriendFeed. - Meryn Stol

32 more comments

Just as well, I feel stupid, and feel I look stupid when I have to type a 140 char reply within a FriendFeed comment box so it can be fed back to Twitter. - Meryn Stol

On Twitter on the other hand, that same comment I wrote might look incredibly insightful. - Meryn Stol

I think I'm gonna refer to Twitter as "Tiny-people Land" from now on. ;) - Meryn Stol

I'm just annoyed Lindsey... This a little of me trying to be authentic. The problem I'm pointing out is real. My presentation style used here is not really effective for persuasion of course. - Meryn Stol

FF users can also look... awkward on Twitter. I cite the recent exmaples of <User> Liked: "Stephen Hawking ill - rushed to hospital", and so forth. - Victor Kamutzki

Victor, yes, agree. I do not like this part of FF->Twitter integration. I think it looks "spammy". It's constantly promoting your activity on FF... I feel the same for almost every other type of auto-generated tweets. I try my best to be a good citizen on Twitter, just spewing out stuff from different services doesn't fit that I think. - Meryn Stol

As much as I, too, dislike the aesthetics of it all, I will continue to use both both services; "Liking" something on FF is a good way to share with Twitter followers, and retweeting allows one to inject information into FF as a basis for better group discussion. I will do both sparingly. - Victor Kamutzki

I actually find it pretty interesting that because some people have the "Like" button bound to automatic tweets, they're using it sparingly. Instead, I use Like truly lavishly. I'm more inclined to "Like" something than to comment on something. For people with Likes bound to tweets, it might be the other way round. - Meryn Stol

Meryn, until there's a better (nicer looking) way of doing this, I want to avoid looking spammy on Twitter and stupid on FriendFeed. ;-) - Victor Kamutzki

With over 99K likes, people should be glad I don't inject those into Twitter. - Morton Fox

I find I do that now with my delicious bookmarks. I make most of them private now to avoid spamming my FriendFeed. How have you-all changed the way you use other services because of FriendFeed? - Ken Morley

It's interesting that you're more inclined to "like" than actually comment, and yet making Twitter more conversational is something you find attractive - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

Why can't we all just peacefully co-exist? - Mona Nomura

Uhm Chris, you have to put that into perspective. Look at how many comments I make throughout a day. I just click "like" MORE often. Also, when I post one comment, I often post several, so in total my comments are probably larger than my likes. (and this explanation probably wouldn't have fit in 140 chars) - Meryn Stol

Mona, I wasn't suggesting a war here or anything, I was just venting my frustration. Actually, having given this some thought the past day, I think that a good solution would be to give some more visual indication that a post came from Twitter, so someone reading the post can consider the posters 140 char "handicap". - Meryn Stol

And in general, I'm quite impressed what kind of stuff people manage to put inside 140 chars. It's just that it looks very weird - to the point of stupid - when you're used to people making proper sentences and not leaving the reader guessing. Reading tweets is often quite a guess-game. - Meryn Stol

Meryn, I'm sorry it seems to come out so, um, assholishly when I ask these questions. I'm still grappling with my own vocabulary for expressing what's in my head. You had mentioned earlier in this thread that you tend to like more than comment on FF. You have also mentioned that you would like to see Twitter have a more obvious conversational mode to make engagement through that service easier. Perhaps I've totally missed both points. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

Well if Twitter could both FF-style commenting (without a 140 char limit preferably) AND likes, it would be even better. But by then, Twitter could better be called FriendFeed I guess. ;) Having the choice, I'd rather see the char limit lifted. Though I'm also a big fan of likes. :) - Meryn Stol

Also, Chris, we're perfectly fine. If you want to prevent looking assholish with a comment, I think a good trick is to explicitly ask for something like "Could you explain?" and/or start with "Maybe I'm wrong, but" (etc etc)... All in an attempt not to seem like you think you're all-knowing, and actually care for the other's opinion. But this is just advice in general! - Meryn Stol

I'm just very fascinated by the sparks of conversation here on FF for more similarity between services, when what it really sounds like is simply more better homogenization. It seems like a better idea to let the 'Big 3' put their focus on improving what they already do, and how it relates to the users' needs (and vice versa) rather than diluting their present strengths. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

Haha. I have a habit of doing what drives me crazy in others: starting off in the middle of a conversation that only I have had up to the point my mouth (fingers) start moving. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

Chris, lately, I've became an advocate for "convergence" between the big three services. Although I never really announced that I think. Right now, this can't really happen if only because people's use of FB is so much different then their "public" Twitter and FF networks. What I do know for sure is that many Twitter users will experience the "joy" of FriendFeed way too late because they don't want to leave their Twitter-network behind. The Twitter network is very "sticky". - Meryn Stol

Actually, I phrased that wrong. It's not really about "leaving your Twitter network behind". It's more about *not* finding a proper network (with people sharing the same interests) here on FF. FF is too much for early adopters still. I never find ANY non-profit talk here on FF for example, while this holds my greatest interest (aside from technology and social media). - Meryn Stol

LOL to be honest, for me, Twitter is still much an amusing novelty (as far as my own use). FB is predominately (like 99%) people I actually know IRL, but most of them from my distant past, and nearly all of them just now getting familiar with SocMed (likely it started to monitor their kids' activity), so my FB friends think I'm a rocket scientist when my FF stuff flows in. Here on FF, tho, there's an opportunity to engage with people who actually know more about what I'm talking about than I do! :-) - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

Yup, and that opportunity would be there on Twitter too, if it was not next-to impossible to start a true conversation with someone there. And let's face it, you're not going to ask for some stranger's IM after exchanging two tweets. Besides, switching services makes the conversation very unnatural. It becomes almost like a "date", or something "formal". Here on FF, the conversation can emerge naturally. And both parties can "walk away" at any time. No risk, no commitment. - Meryn Stol

Twitter is like an index card on the laundry room bulletin board alerting me to something that I might want to check out further, and a way to get at that 'something'. If that something is a painting at a museum, then I wouldn't necessarily expect to engage with anyone that wasn't there looking at the painting with me. But if that something was a discussion panel about the painting, my expectation for engagement would more easily be realized - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

Chris, for you it might be that, but some people are actually trying to put out thoughts on it... And seeing that kinda hurts me sometimes. - Meryn Stol

Ah! Yes, I can see how trying to carry on a conversation on the laundry room index card would be very disappointing -- possible, yes, but barely engaging! Wait, was it my view of Twitter that is hurtful? or seeing people trying to create a fluent, contiguous flow of ideas with it? (I swear I'm not trying to be a jerk) - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

No, your comments are not hurtful. What's hurtful to me is the fact that indeed some people are trying to use Twitter for that which is not good at, while sometimes even claiming that it is. That conversations in 140 chars are better than - well - with more chars. I myself feel a personal stake in having good conversations happen on the web. It can aid mutual understanding, creativity,... more... - Meryn Stol

Thank you, Meryn, for being patient with me! It has payed off! I had suspected we were talking about the same thing, just from different perspectives -- many roads lead to Rome, as they say. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

You're welcome, Chris. And please, don't worry too much. :) - Meryn Stol

"still aid mutual understanding, creativity, trust and problem-solving. Better online conversations will help the world" is what I connected with, and is also my vision of what they now call 'social media' can offer, if used properly. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

Perhaps better than the index card example: Twitter for conversations is sort of like HTML in e-mail -- not always pretty, not always completely parsed, but, hey, it does (mostly) work, once they hammered e-mail clients into dealing with it. I'm still not convinced that HTML e-mail is best practice, either, considering the myriad of problems it can create. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

CoPress

This Week in CoPress: The Mustang Daily’s Switch to WordPress - http://www.copress.org/2009...

April 29 from CoPress - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Rebooting The News: Ryan Sholin

The key lesson I learned building PolitiFact: Demos, not memos - mattwaite.com - http://www.mattwaite.com/posts...

April 27 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber, Bora Zivkovic and Jeff Beckham liked this

HIGHLY recommended read for anyone even thinking about building innovative news tools, from Matt Waite, creator of the Pulitzer-winning (!) Politifact: "My favorite game right now? I sit in meetings, guessing what everyone around the table makes, and then I figure out how much this meeting is costing. Then I figure out how many page views at so much CPM its going to take to break even on just that meeting." - Ryan Sholin

Rebooting The News: Dave Winer

Here's the podcast. - http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot0...

April 19 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber, Daniel Langendorf, americanm and 3 other people liked this

Topics...Winer's visit to the Nieman Lab folks; whether we should have sympathy for journalists; the 10 or 11 tech re-boots Dave had had to go through (vs 1.5 for journalists); the radically unequal experience Oprah and her viewers will have on Twitte; Jay's "forced migration for the press tribe" image; how to jump into the new news system without being weighed down by "how is the... more... - Jay Rosen

10 more comments

Best line, in my view, is Dave's, "Journalism's responsibility is to keep its own downfall in perspective." - Jay Rosen

I'm kinda partial to "he had a huge audience, so they really couldn't f#@# with him." ;) But seriously, this has been a big question in the back of my mind - what happens to journalism without the institutional muscle of big media. But then I remind myself that big media gets slapped around all the time (NYT punting on wiretap story for a year, f.e.), and perhaps a decentralized - but networked - system of smaller players would be harder to intimidate. - gnarlytrombone

Thanks for giving a detailed description of Max Headroom as I have never seen it before. Seems normal today, but must have been revolutionary vision at the time. - Bora Zivkovic

Reactions! Blog posts! Like this: http://blog.davidmuir.name/... and Scoble http://tr.im/jeaj and Tim Windsor at Nieman Lab http://www.niemanlab.org/2009... - Jay Rosen

Dave and Jay: Nice job this week. I just finished listening to the latest. Jay, can you expand a bit on the theme of jumping into the new system of news without being weighed down by "how is Paper X going to make the transition"? I find myself applying the ideas discussed on the podcast to my local paper, but maybe I'm jumping the gun. - Jeff Beckham

Good work this week. Jay, I'd be interested in hearing a lot more about your assignment database idea. Make that completely transparent and allow community to add ideas to it and take ideas out, and I think you're on to something. More here: http://bit.ly/u9K36 - Daniel Bachhuber

Jeff: What I meant: is a pretty simple point. If we want to start bringing to life a "new system of news," as I called it in the 'cast, one of the first things we should try to do is imagine it working. But we are hampered in that if we keep starting with how to keep the Cleveland Plain Dealer "working" in the unbundled and digital age. In fact saving big metro newspapers is its own problem, which may not even be solvable. We can't allow that to be the only issue or a default starting point. - Jay Rosen

So I simply recommended other starting points. Max Headroom as prophecy for networked journalism. My description of different pipes, arranged in a different communication pattern, with a different balance of power, different entry points, different mix of participants. Some things different, some things the same: same country, First Amendment, same Cleveland, same problems. If we start with alternative "sources of inspiration," as I called them, then we can look anew at the problems of the Plain Dealer. - Jay Rosen

Daniel: Thanks for your post. The key to the assignment desk is to start with the ideal, an impossible standard to meet off the bat. "Everything that needs to be covered" if we're going to cover high school football, the mayor's race, development in Mecklenberg Country, really really well. Every "event," every interview. You try to describe that as best you can. Convert that "map" into an assignment desk. Then bring people to the desk to select the assignments they can do. - Jay Rosen

Daniel and Jeff: That's what I mean by "jumping into" the new system for news. Don't start with replacing a system that was inadequate to begin with. Start with what we would have if we were...uh, perfectly self-informing! That gets you out of Preserving the Plain Car Dealer. Perfect example: can we get ALL the Tuesday night school board meetings? You telling me we can't video them all, and get all of those tapes watched and reported out? Start with the perfect, and back into the pretty good. - Jay Rosen

Now I see. Thanks, Jay! Can't wait until next week! - Jeff Beckham

Steve Rubel

Twitter Is Peaking; Get Ready to Follow The Geeks Onward - http://adage.com/article...

April 12 from Advertising Age - Steve Rubel - Comment - Like - Share

Peter Efland, Mike Elliott, David Henderson and 76 other people liked this

well put, I've had similar thoughts as it continues going more mainstream, but where are the geeks going or going to go? FF? - Ryan W

44 more comments

It's obvious that Laporte can not monetize Twitter and his edge... - Eric Anderson

Perhaps everyone will go for self-hosted "open microblogging"? - coldbrew

When I launched www.namechk.com on April 1, I exclusively used Twitter to get the news out. CNET picked it up, Lifehacker, Mashable and many many other blog/news sites. Site traffic has compounded daily and RT's on Twitter were through the roof. In 12 days we had over 2000 bookmarks on delicious and almost a hundred thousand unique visitors from StumbleUpon alone. I don't think Twitter is peaking, I think the crowd is learning how to leverage Twitter properly - its use is maturing, not peaking. - David Gosse

We're already here. Found it was a good place to chat and find new content. - Richard A.

David: If twitter continues to fail to address their hiring, scalability, user-notification, and reliability issues, they are peaking. The follower numbers game is killing them. Further, if they don't start having someone AT twitter start to USE twitter, they're going to lose because their competitors are all over it. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Hey Rob! Thanks for the feedback (and your support of namechk). I agree with your analysis about Twitter's scalability issues and that could in fact kill them as you say. But that aside, I think critical user-mass has been achieved and those users are just now figuring out how to leverage Twitter. - David Gosse

My question would be, what is the next thing and is it already out there? - Adam Martin

David: Yes you're correct that people are figuring out how to leverage it. But as with anything cool online(or IRL) as soon as the masses figure out its cool, they come in and use up all the cool In just the last couple months I've watched twitter surge in number hungry spammers. hard to cut through all the noise there. But it's doable. :) (and you're welcome!) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I don't think the management at Twitter really cares. They are going to cash out shortly for a billion or more and they just want to keep feeding the celebrity hype machine until that happens and keep from stumbling bad enough that everyone stops hyping. - Robert Scoble

precisely. - sloomb

I think Scobez hit the nail on the head there. - Tad

Sell twitter for a billion? Then that would mean facebook is worth twenty eight trillion dollars. - Richard A.

What company is going to pay $1B for Twitter. That is an absurd idea, and it will never happen in 2009. - coldbrew

Ugh A billion $$ for a hosed up system that's really just a name and a hype machine. Hope it's worth it ;) But You're absolutely correct on that one Robert. They would be fools to hang onto it. I don't think that Twitter has the (human) resources to pull it together long enough to hold out for an IPO. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

coldbrew: you have no idea how much hype Twitter is getting. That translates into BIG dollars. I hear it everytime I turn on the TV and radio. - Robert Scoble

I can think of a lot of media organizations that would love to get their hands on Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Twitter is only valuable as long as it's stand alone, and as long as the community is involved. Buying that community for a billion would be a waste of money. Buying FB for that would be a smart investment. - Richard A.

I have no idea? Ok, you are right. Good supporting argument... - coldbrew

@scobleizer Very true. In fact, associates of mine who DO NOT EVEN OWN A COMPUTER talk/ask me about it. "So, do you Twitter?" - Aaron Kurtz

coldbrew: just watch and see. Twitter is going to sell for many hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly more than a billion. Even in this economic climate. - Robert Scoble

Hey Scoble, how long have you been saying that? - Joel Bennett

Joel: a while. Twitter already turned down somewhere around a quarter billion of Facebook stock. - Robert Scoble

I also feel that the push marketing (spam) on twitter needs to be addressed. I receive a lot of follow notifications from people who are just looking for a "follow-back", so they can tweet large amounts of URL spam at me. Combine this URL shortening services, that masks the true destination of the link, make this a really unpleasant experience. I am now a lot more careful about who I follow. Twitter feels like it's quickly sliding the direction of MySpace, in terms of signal to noise ratio. - Michael Roberts

$1B != Hundreds of millions. Your usage of hyperbole is astounding, even for a blogger. I will bet you Twitter will not sell for over $500M in 2009 (if ever). - coldbrew

Maybe Twitter doesn't want to sell. Maybe they want to compete... - Joel Bennett

coldbrew: when I say "many hundreds of millions" I'm thinking above 500 million. Wanna bet? Might be fun way to give some money to charity. - Robert Scoble

Just b/c Twitter turned down an amount does not mean they are worth more. It may have been a stupid decision, though it was at FB's $15B valuation, so getting paid fluff doesn't sound like a good exit either. - coldbrew

I'd be interested in viewing a charity bet off... - Patrick Boegel

catrett: I assume he is referring to the likes of the NYT or News Corp. - coldbrew

I think both Steve and Robert have the situation spot on. Twitter, like Facebook, is now for the masses, not the geeks or influencers, and someone (like NewsCorp did with MySpace) will buy it at the height of its popularity and watch it drop to a lower place in both users and buaa. But the big question to me is still unanswered. Where do the geeks go whten Lady GaGa and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese take over the noise on Twitter? - Mark Edwards

Mark: we both know the answer to that. You're a geek, right? It's here, Reddit, StackOverflow, and hopefully Building43 in the future. Of course if I have my way Building43 will be built using friendfeed so... - Robert Scoble

Scoble: At least nobody will ever accuse you of being a pessimist. - coldbrew

So to what charity and at what amount will all these people agreeing with Scoble (and including Scoble) donate? What is the date by which this must occur. Put your money where you mouth is. - coldbrew

btw, I don't agree with Steve's point that superficiality rules based in part due to anonymity, any "corporation" or brand being very successful right now has identifiable individuals at the helm, not just an autobot - Patrick Boegel

everyone ends up on Friendfeed - Twitter on steroids - Thomas Power

How about if I win you donate $100 to Red Cross? If you win I donate $100 to a charity of your choosing (not your own pocket!). Let's say "Twitter sells by end of the year for more than $500 million (I win). If they don't sell or they sell for less you win. - Robert Scoble

I'm game for that, but I need a bit more time to select the charity. You must also write a blog post at some point afterward detailing why you are donating to w/e the charity is (my 'handle' should not be included). Deal? - coldbrew

Sure! - Robert Scoble

To FriendFeed (crossing fingers) - Hamilton Wallace

If FF is used correctly, Twitter just becomes a mere piece of the puzzle, rather than the entire puzzle. - Fleagle

An interesting article on where Twitter is going (or not going) - rob

Fleagle: Exactly how I see it. I expect that we'll start to see more and more services like Friendfeed as well. The whole internet has always been built like this. Layer upon layer - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Twitter.com is peaking. The use of "twitter" type service has just gotten started. - Jeremy Felt

kill the monoculture - Noah David Simon

It will be the same aol failure. Stopped using ICQ when it was bought by AOL, Geocities died when it was bought by yahoo. - Richard A.

Robert Scoble

One out of 39 people follows me on friendfeed. I discuss why that has deep implications for news brands here:

January 25, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Michael Lynton, MiaD, Jordi Soler and 49 other people liked this

I'm followed by more people than anyone else here, according to http://www.ffholic.com/ but yet only one out of j39 people here are following me (26,009 follow me, TechCrunch reports that there's a million unique members on friendfeed). News organizations should understand these changes because they used to have great centralized distribution. Those days are now over. More to come shortly. - Robert Scoble

42 more comments

I read your friend feed daily Robert to pick up on new information, see what you have to say about what's new in the world of technology and anything else that sparks my interest. - Steve Eisenberg

Is it because the Kindle 2.0's coming out soon..;o) - sofarsoShawn

It used to be that we watched three TV stations and read one or two newspapers. Those days are over. Now we follow our friends and get our news through http://search.twitter.com and Facebook. That has huge implications for news brands who no longer will be the place that we go to get news. - Robert Scoble

Friendfeed is giving us a new kind of news distribution system. Thanks to "likes" we can tell our friends about things that are important. The news brands are NOT in charge of that distribution method and it drives them nuts and they don't understand it at all yet. - Robert Scoble

The beauty of this is that it's interactive, and on friendfeed people actually want the discussion. There's something for everyone. More importantly though the network effect is still in play here. - Richard A.

It was eather you or Ivan d'Troll - paul mooney

I talked with execs from LeFigaro, France's #1 newspaper on Thursday. They were interested, but from the look in their eyes I could tell they really don't understand how Facebook and friendfeed work to distribute news, not to mention http://search.twitter.com which was important during the aftermath of the plane crash. - Robert Scoble

Richard: EXACTLY. This is two-way and news brands can't control it. They don't like this kind of news. They like the old way where they reported and you watched or read. - Robert Scoble

One implication I see is that the traditional method for a news organization to build a brand are no longer relevant. What suggestions do you have for a news organization that does want to build a brand? - Daniel Bachhuber

Over the last year or so I've found out about more breaking news from twitter/Friendfeed than from CNN etc. All the news sources don't cater to individuals while things like here are personalized. - BCK

this is adding proof to Rubel's piece about friendfeed as the new blogging platform http://friendfeed.com/e... - sofarsoShawn

Daniel: make lots of friends on Facebook and friendfeed and Twitter. Understand how news gets spread and found and produced on these networks. Get EVERYONE that works for you a Kodak Zi6 camcorder or FlipCam and make them post videos. Get on Seesmic and Twhirl and TweetDeck. Understand why entrepreneurs around the world now have a TweetDeck screen on their desks. - Robert Scoble

Daniel: I now have a real-time-web desk in my home with four computers so I can track what is going on in real time from around the world. Every news organziation should do this. Also, I now am following 7,000 here, 21,000 on Twitter, 5,000 on Facebook, 900 on Google Reader. That inbound lets me see what the world's conversation is and lets me see news before most people do. If I were an assigning editor at a newspaper, this is what I'd be doing. Then I'd be sending reporters out to get the real story. - Robert Scoble

FriendFeed is a data flow that anyone can manipulate to get the right information for them. It's 1-to-1 news. It is annotated and made more valuable via comments, providing a real-time interaction with your own personal news. [edit] Welcome to the world Gibson imagined. - AJ Kohn

Robert, even though brands can't control it, whats great is the Freindfeed encourages them to converse. By allowing to cross post a FF comment on Disqus for instance, brands and their customers can engage in the discussion both here and on their properties. - Sameer

Sameer: been using diqus and I like how easy it makes commenting on all blogs that use it, and how simple keeping track of those comments is. - Richard A.

I think it means 97.4% of people on FriendFeed do NOT use FF to keep up with the latest social media or web tech news. I'd say most people don't use FF as a source for news at all, but rather, to keep up what their friends are doing across the internets. - Daniel Sims

Daniel: I would also open up hundreds of rooms here on friendfeed where they can track news stories and companies and people who are interesting to them and shove in all sorts of RSS feeds. Like what I'm doing with my Davos room. http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Robert Scoble

Robert: I don't disagree with you, but I think that it begs a larger discussion about the role of a *large* news brand. The news industry, imho, should focus on empowering communities to report their news, because the day and age of reporters as information *collectors* is gone. - Daniel Bachhuber

Daniel: that is true, but that is also news and news spreads through these networks very quickly because we trust our friends and family to tell us when important stuff is happening in the world. - Robert Scoble

Sameer said what I'd say. Now if I could just nudge a few of mine to converse here. The flow is great on friendfeed + the ease of seeing what people say on their other services they've linked here. - mrsha

But the problem is that the technorati sometimes forgets about regular people and get so busy with recycling the same info and blowing flowers up each others backsides that you don't get any traction unless your content is tech related. How would a brand of soap, a car maker, or a blog about b grade movies use this kind of network? - MarkCarras

Yeah, but you're probably a friend-of-a-friend to all of'em. - Glen, Bespectacled Elder

Being able to discuss news, is where the power of FF lies in comparison to 'old-style' news. It's also a main differentiator of FF over Twitter. FF let's you get into discussions and get to know people. Twitter is 'just' the start/intro of that conversation. Each having their own merits. - Ronald

Ronald, you also don't wait for a moderator to say they like the comment. As soon as it's said you get feedback. - Richard A.

Robert, just because there are lots of people here doesn't make this a particularly interesting place for brands. Most of the stuff happening here is volatile. Btw I noticed that I'm nr 556 on that list. Pretty high imo since I tend to not be so serious about FF ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

FF, twitter, FB, etc all provide word of mouth recommendations, which most of us trust much more than something being "sold" to us - Ryan

Alexander: newsbrands will LOVE friendfeed rooms. Just wait and see. - Robert Scoble

I hope to bring FriendFeed to my friends and Norwegian people. I'm trying as good as I can to talk positive about both FriendFeed and Twitter, but Norwegians are not that easy to convince... I see the potential. - Qbat

Alexander: Brands don't have a choice really. If critical discussions start happening on this platform and the Goog starts indexing it, it better become "particularly interesting" over night. Volatile or dormant becomes less of an issue. - Sameer

"from the look in their eyes I could tell they really don't understand" Likely those execs were born too soon to get it. Eventually they will retire and they will be replaced with those that understand. Not sure how long that will take. - Phil Margolies

to me this means that the quantity and quality of a network becomes ever so important. who are the connectors, who are the amplifiers, who are the ones who stop information, the negative connectors or de-amplifiers, how many amplifiers are needed depending on the vertical or the brand or the product or the strategy and goals. and how do these amplifiers will use their new powers within a given network? fascinating. - Pascal Bouvier

Yes, this means that the decentralized networks are important; but I'd guess that at least 1 in 3 FF users gets their news from mainstream news sites like CNN.com, Bloomberg.com, cnbc, etc; many FF and Twitter users use microblogging platforms to get less formal news - the info not available through the traditional platforms. - Barry Graubart

Maybe a future video-blog post: I think it would be neat to see your real-time-web-desk with four computers. - Bill Romanos

@robert scoble if you film that do it in the highest res possible :-) - Richard A.

if one out of every 39 on here follows you, and everyone on twitter is worth $42, how much does that make us worth on here? hmm? - rob friedman

does the fact that Twitter doesn't allow its tweets to be indexed by search engines (a good move IMHO...can you imagine the clutter otherwise?) decay the total value of the service? - Jason Salas from IM

Jason, what do you mean? If you think tweets aren't indexed, try a Google search for "wajiii plightbo". - Bill Jackson from twhirl

Robert - At present, agreed that your comments could in fact make a difference ... maybe even be a responsibility. On the other hand, that 'power' could quickly be diluted by someone (or numerous people) working hard to generate a similar following on Friendfeed. In the meantime. Use it wisely and YOU can make a difference. Everyone else needs to realize that the landscape has changed .... and they can too...in many ways - Charlie Anzman

Robert - I do not think any larger news brand that is currently out there could implement the type of news aggregation and reporter assignment system that you spoke about to the other Daniele earlier. I think that any incredibly innovative idea like that has to come from a new, fresh organization. Journalism of the future will soon be coming. But not from a CNN, MSNBC, FOX, or other. - Daniel Zarick

p.s. I have seen a picture of your real-time desk, but I would like to see a video of it all in action too. - Daniel Zarick

@daniel believe me you don't wanna see it. You must be a currency broker to get used to the speed of his real-time feed. I've seen it on CES and it was just crazy. Btw. as someone who just explored twitter and friendfeed and all this stuff, a couple of weeks ago, my personal conclusion is: Hell, i missed something out. - Sascha Pallenberg

@Robert Scoble: FFholic (aka FriendFeedHolic) tracks 185207 public and 23445 private users on FriendFeed, now. And surely, this is nearly the total number of users on FriendFeed. - Arda Kutsal

Davos -- World Economic Forum: michael silverton

I'd like to suggest someone with more social capital than I, please decree some kind of authoritative twitter hashtag in advance; scattering between #wef #wef09 #davos #davos09 #allthoserichfeckerz almost defeats #thepurpose don't you think? Or hashtags obsolete as we can just search any keyword?

January 25, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Jean-Charles VERDIE, Daniel Bachhuber, William Mougayar and Richard A. liked this

I like #wef09 - Richard A.

2 more comments

The solution is to check in one place that aggregates all of the above, plus ohter news too: http://beta.eqentia.com/wef. Otherwise, as far as I know #davos and #davos09 are supposed to be the preferred ones. - William Mougayar

I'll soon have a WEF09 version of my own ongoing experiment with sites like http://tr.im/cmbe but clearly the experiment is increasingly proving its point over time: we need platforms that bring this all together. PeopleBrowsr step in right direction, but solves a different problem from realtime augmented social cognition. - michael silverton

hashtags, generally speaking, is a mess to find, unless I missed some important pointer - Jean-Charles VERDIE from twhirl

Marshall Kirkpatrick

video tour of me pulling my hair out with new Google Task Manager http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive... also hating Jing right now, what's up with that embed?

December 8, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Susan Beebe and Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Pretty cool addition, but it's too little too late. RTM's sidebar is MUCH better in my opinion, and it can be synced with Outlook/Windows Mobile devices. - xxdesmus from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Why won't Google just buy RTM already? Just think if you had RTM across Google Apps for Your Domain, with just a little better team task management approach... - Daniel Bachhuber

I am already starting to use this, and will definitely use it all the time if the folks at Appigo integrate this into their Todo app. I am paying for rememberthemilk right now (only because the iPhone app can't be used without paying). Having my tasks right there with my email would be huge. - Clay Newton from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Jay Rosen

Weeks ago, I told you to watch http://change.gov if you want to know what's different. Now comes http://www.louisgray.com/live... and http://change.gov/open_go...

December 6, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber and Bora Zivkovic liked this

Jay Rosen

I'm glad Dave Winer got to hear the Berkeley J-School crowd explain to him that listening too well to the users is unethical.

November 27, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Gib, JMaultasch, ana and 29 other people liked this

Crowdsourcing does not always provide the answers that you expect. I wonder what would be on the front page of the NY Times if popularity was the determining factor for what stories got published. Celebrity gossip? If so, would they be obliged to hire Perez Hilton as their managing editor? People also tend to not like depressing news like people dying in wars, world hunger, pollution,... more... - scott anderson

38 more comments

Crowdsourcing? Who said anything about crowdsourcing? Who said newspapers should start editing the front page based on popularity? Where did the phrase "cater to the masses" come from? Where are you getting these things from? "If you want to keep their interest, you need to be interested in them." That was his main point. Does that say "edit the front page by market survey?" Jeez-a-roni. - Jay Rosen

Slippery slope. How do you get there from here? Quoting from Dave ... "it was largely considered unethical for a reporter or editor to know which sections of the paper were most read by users of the paper. If the reporter knew, the story goes, he or she might be influenced by peoples' interests in deciding what to write about." Dave indicated that this type of thinking was a bug. I disagree. - scott anderson

It's often commonly known information that some parts of the magazines are more often read than others (while that information is based on the small sample of tests). Anyways, in most newspapers most commonly read page is comics. ;) - Daniel Schildt

Where's the switch? The switch that causes people to hear Dave Winer saying, "listen to users" and yet what the brain receives is "abandon all judgment, all intelligence to whatever people tend to consume." Where is that switch? - Jay Rosen

BTW, here's the piece people are responding to. http://www.scripting.com/stories... - Dave Winer

Jay, it's the same switch that flipped when people told us at Salon a decade ago that we should never look at our traffic reports because it would corrupt our judgment as journalists and turn us into bottomfeeding scum. - Scott Rosenberg

Yes, the same switch; and I recall that battle pretty well. By the way, is "slippery slope" considered a thought? I mean do people still think of that as an argument: "once you start down, the only option is complete loss of balance until you hit the bottom?" To me that seems more like an escape from the necessity of having to think about something, but maybe shouting "slippery slope" at a problem still sounds like a thought to some folks. If so, it's kind of sad, no? - Jay Rosen

My most popular blog post is a throw-away picture of Bruce Lee beating up Chuck Norris. Knowing my stats, do I keep posting Lee/Norris stuff? No. But the next ten most-pop posts are about science, and I notice what style and format appeals to ppl, and I may slightly modify my writing style of posts about science - making them better because of this information. - Bora Zivkovic

I can process the readers' info and not go down the slippery slope. I am still in charge, but feedback - direct through comments and indirect from traffic stats - improves my writing. Newspapers can do the same. - Bora Zivkovic

Right. "Slippery slope" can mean "pack appropriate footwear, move with caution" but too often people use it to mean "that's scary, let's just sit tight." And there *are* sometimes piles of dazed bruised people at the bottom of the hill. - Scott Rosenberg

Maybe this is what it is. When people make that equation, "to listen is to cave," they are not making an observation about listening at all. They are making an observation about other people, what scott anderson called "the masses." The masses lack discipline, the masses want entertainment, the masses want Britney Spears-- not news. Most important: the masses are not me, the observer of other people and their decadent habits. And so to challenge the equation, listening=caving, is to take "the masses" away. - Jay Rosen

But "masses" are interested in stuff other than Britney Spears. Sometimes they don't know it because all the media serves them is Britney Spears: http://scienceblogs.com/clock... - Bora Zivkovic

You never know what you'll learn if you listen, that's what's really stupid about arguing about whether you should listen or not. Maybe the people who want to say something to you might just make the difference between driving off the cliff and finding a new future. Maybe it's keeping *you* from having the great idea that cracks the nut. - Dave Winer

BTW, when did listening become "listening in the aggregate." If you know anything about me, you know that I don't think of users as couch potatoes, passive participants. In the 80s when I ran a software company, we used to design regcards so as to solicit original thoughts, not just box-clicking. When a new batch of regcards came in I grabbed them and studied them for interesting comments. When I had a question, I called them and asked. It's also good for business if people get that you care what they think - Dave Winer

BTW, you might have to listen to 100 users to get 1 good idea. In 1986, I had a meeting with Guy Kawasaki when he worked at Apple. I showed him an early version of one of our products, we had thrown the kitchen sink into it, every half-baked R&D idea, cause our company was failing and this was our last chance. One idea intrigued him. He said everyone at Apple was hand-designing foils to print on Laserwriters (they were new then). He took a piece of paper and drew a box around one of our pages, and... - Dave Winer

asked if we could do that. Of course we could, and we did, and we immediately sold 1K copies of the product for Apple people, but more importantly, they were so excited by it, they in turn sold many more thousands to their customers, and our company went from being in the brink of shutting down to gushing cash. All because (drum roll) we listened to a user. Ask Guy if you don't believe me, he's on Twitter. - Dave Winer

Once again, this leaves me wondering how journalism manages to be arrogant without being awesome. (The profession, not so much the people that practice it -- one suspects they've elevated a rough draft of their core values to a religion, and now can't escape from it.) - j1m

The thinking behind the slippery slope comment was that newspapers are a business that exist to make a profit. The last season of "The Wire" provides a good example of what I was referring to. Once you start down that road, these temporary bailouts become more seductive. - scott anderson

Also, I never indicated that users should not be listened to. I was referring to the actual quote related to ethics from Dave's article that you obfuscated in your twitter post. - scott anderson

Lastly, for the record I am not a journalist. I don't even claim to be a good writer. I am a user of the news attempting to communicate my concerns related to this topic to those that in my opinion appear to have a self serving agenda. - scott anderson

Who is it that you're saying has a self-serving agenda? I like the "in my opinion" part. In my opinion your mother wears army boots! Heh. - Dave Winer

@Dave: You and Jay. I believe that blogging in all its forms has a valuable role to play in our society. However, I also believe that MSM publications that maintain strict journalistic ethics, including accountability, also provide great value and that the two should not be mixed or try to emulate each other. - scott anderson

Well there you have it. You should make such accusations carefully and with evidence and back it up. What exactly is my supposed undisclosed (and unknown to me, btw) conflict of interest? (Can't wait to hear this.) - Dave Winer

@scott "The last season of "The Wire" provides a good example" of a talented auteur unfortunately working out old grievances in public, spinning an entirely unbelievable tale of willful ignorance of total disregard for the truth. Simon also managed to transplant a 1995 newspaper into the current day, an organization that apparently has never heard of the internet, either for reporting the news or checking it out before starting up the presses. - tim windsor

And I'm with Scott Rosenberg. Slippery slopes call for greater caution, but not total avoidance. - tim windsor

I've seen this careful to not listen approach in interviews, too. It seems like a lot of journalists only ask questions they already know the answer to. Of course, they want the expert being interviewed to give the answer, but they might as well be putting words in his/her mouth. - Gordon Vaughan

The line between listening and trusting your own judgment and expertise is a challenging one, no matter how you cut it. But I agree that the "slippery slope" argument is nonsense. If a journalist lacks the judgment to avoid the slide, h probably doesn't deserve the title. - Pete Forsyth

Also, @davewiner -- I've been trying to participate in this discussion on your blog, but my comments have not been making it past moderation. Can you take a look? - Pete Forsyth

It's unfortunate that the intent of my original question has gotten lost in this discussion. I blame myself for being too flippant and not tying the point I was attempting to make more directly to the exact issue I had a problem with. I'll try to rephrase the question again in a more precise manner. Dave was informed by the Berkeley J-School crowd that they believed it was unethical to use the data about which sections of a newspaper are most popular in decisions papers make about where to invest resources. - scott anderson

I responded to Jay's post because he had generalized and distorted the opinion of the "J-School crowd". In hindsight I should have called him out on this and left it at that. All of my comments have been directed to how this specific type of data is collected and used and this issue alone. In regards to the more general question of whether newspapers are listening to their users or not,... more... - scott anderson

That said, for those that believe it is beneficial to use the data about which sections of newspapers are more popular than the others, how should this data be compiled and applied in an ethical manner? Do you survey all the potential users of a paper like the NY Times (aka the masses, the aggregate, etc.) or do you isolate a sample group based on some criteria? What is that criteria?... more... - scott anderson

The problem with the letters to the editor is that they are designed to protect the existing power relations. See this dust-up about the inappropriateness of letters to the editor in science publications: http://scienceblogs.com/clock... - Bora Zivkovic

There are much better ways to listen to the readership than letters to the editor. News outlets have many opportunities -- some more legitimate than others -- to shape the public discourse and influence public opinion. In reporting, in the structuring of the medium, in the archiving of information. Proactively seeking out feedback is important -- and is commonplace in other industries. Some approaches clearly have ethical implications, while others don't. - Pete Forsyth

@davewiner If your claim is simply "news outlets should listen to their users," it seems there isn't much for anyone to argue with. I think that's pretty uncontroversially true. However, it's seemed at several points that you are taking a stronger position than that. - Pete Forsyth

I don't equate listening to caving or that listening will result in bottom feeders but I do not discount the effects that come from the pressures related to being a profitable business, especially in tough economic times. A blog or a niche publication is a much different animal than a news corporation. Are there specific processes or firewalls that exist in the news industry that... more... - scott anderson

I think knee-jerk or reactive answers come out of a specific context, and to suggest that news organizations are dumb or naive misses a more nuanced point. The kind of influence that advertising directors etc. sometimes try to exert over editors can be extreme, and so editors' developing a tin ear to that sort of thing can, in many cases, be a very good thing. It's important hear feedback, but it's also important to not waste one's time hearing repetitive feedback that you can't ethically act upon. - Pete Forsyth

When Obama said he was not against all wars, just "dumb wars" people seemed able to handle it. Their heads did not explode from having to make a distinction. So...There's smart listening and dumb listening. I think everyone can handle that too-- including everyone looking in on this thread. - Jay Rosen

Jay, I think we all agree that the distinction is important. The point I'm trying to make is that resistance to input is not always, or necessarily, a bad thing. That is a starting point for finding a solution though, not an end-point. Trusting journalists to have good judgment implies respecting their right to say "in my judgment, this particular feedback is garbage." - Pete Forsyth

As an aside, I have been blocked from commenting on Dave Winer's blog, for reasons that aren't clear to me. That's why I haven't been involved in the discussion over there -- not a lack of interest. - Pete Forsyth

David Cohn

Canada: A digital ghetto, especially compared the US - http://www.cbc.ca/searche...

November 29, 2008 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber and Antonella liked this

Do they have the internet in Canada? - Daniel Bachhuber

CoPress

EtherPad - Realtime Collaborative Text Editing - http://etherpad.com/

November 21, 2008 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Google Docs-esque tool for collaborative document creation that promises even more realtime functionality. - Daniel Bachhuber

Greg Linch

@kev097 @anthonyjpesce Tech is a somewhat sour subject for some papers.

October 30, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Bachhuber liked this

Environment: Jason

BBC NEWS | In Pictures | Day in pictures - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2...

August 22, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

imabonehead, Daniel Bachhuber, Kopol and Mahdi Ebrahimi liked this

nptech: TJ Sondermann

Wild Apricot Blog : How to Set Up a Non-Profit Facebook Page - http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs...

June 16, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Laura Whitehead, Barbara K. Baker, Cathryn Hrudicka and 5 other people liked this

It's worth your time to do this, esp. if you can promote your Fan page and attract a following. Fan pages can offer a much richer experience than Causes that go well beyond fundraising. - Jonathon D. Colman

2 more comments

...and I forgot to mention that Fan pages offer usage analytics! :) - Jonathon D. Colman

recommend Jesse Stay's book - I'm on facebook now what - Beth Kanter

There's also an e-book on using Facebook in ministry (http://is.gd/JdR) that might be helpful. - Larry Huffman