Archives for Blogs & Internet
Speaking of personal transparency and salaries, according to the BCC, “There has been outrage in Italy after the outgoing government published every Italian’s declared earnings and tax contributions on the internet.” The website was put up without warning by the outgoing government and has been taken down after complaints. Said the deputy economy minister: “I can’t understand what the problem is. This already exists all around the world, you just have to watch any American soap to see that. We had the system ready by January but we delayed publication to avoid arguments during the election campaign.” (Hat tip Drew.)
Declan McCullagh reports that “FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House of Representatives committee that Internet service providers should be required to keep records of users’ activities for two years.” Not only is this a giant unfunded mandate that deputizes private companies, but it’s incredibly intrusive. How is this different from the Postal Service opening, photocopying, and archiving your mail before delivering it?
Of followers and following
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There seems to be a debate over which is more valuable. Jason Calacanis is giving away a MacBook Air to a follower once he has the most followers on all of Twitter. He often couched this as a competition with Robert Scoble, although Scoble encouraged his followers to follow Calacanis since Scoble argues that the power of Twitter lies in the number of people you follow and not the reverse. To me it’s not an either/or proposition.
The value in having lots of followers is in the crowdsourcing effect. As Calacanis has figured out, you have yourself an instant focus group on which you can bounce ideas. You can also make lazytweet requests or ask for advice. And of course, you can promote your latest content. For these uses to work, you need more than a few followers, so getting a fair share is useful.
On the flip side, the Twitter you see depends completely on who you follow. Lots of folks will sign up for Twitter, follow just the one or two friends who convinced them to join, and give up the pursuit as boring and pointless. To get the most out of Twitter you need to follow a good number of people. You don’t have to know them, you just have to find them interesting. I follow a bunch of journalists, bloggers, authors, technologists, and musicians that I don’t know personally, but their tweets make Twitter useful. Plus when I respond to them, they often write back, which is pretty neat.
Now, I don’t care for the fire hose approach that Scoble takes. He follows everyone that follows him and then some, and that’s over 21,000 now. Too much noise to signal for me. Anytime someone follows me I check out their feed and see if it’s interesting to me. Often it’s not—just very personal anecdotes from someone I don’t know. That’s a fine use for Twitter, just not for me, so I won’t follow. But if there are interesting bits I’ll follow them for a while and see how it goes.
Every so often I’ll prune who I follow. Usually I’ll notice someone’s just not as interesting to me as I thought or maybe they’ve become too self-promotional (moderation is key in this area). But I’m constantly trying out new people that I discover. Everyone’s view of Twitter is different, and the idea for me is to get just the right balance of interesting people and people I know and care about.
Interesting bit: I’ve found that I consistently have about 30 percent more followers than folks I follow. Pretty neat, but I’m not going to follow more folks for the sake of getting more followers. I’m happy with my zen balance and I hope you’ll find yours, too. So, if you haven’t already, go out and hit some follow buttons!
New episode of In Conversation is up: Nerds in space.
Scoble on the friend divide
For folks who just signed up for Twitter and tell me they stil don’t get it, Scoble has a good answer:The friend divide means that people who have no friends on these services have poor experiences and aren’t getting any interesting information or apps or photos or music, etc. People who have tons of friends have HUGELY different experiences on these services. I’ll demonstrate those differences in a video soon.
So true. Once you’re on, the first thing you need to do is start following some interesting people. You don’t have to know them to enjoy their musings. I recommend @hotdogsladies and @jdickerson.
Twitter + meatspace
Twitter is incredibly amazing and I will not relent in talking about it ad nauseam. Yesterday I was one of those caught in the American Airlines kerfuffle and treated to their classy service. I found myself bored at LAX’s Gate 44, which seems to be in an undisclosed location, because I can’t describe to you how to get there; I think I was blindfolded part of the way there. So to amuse myself I nudged everyone I knew on Twitter. I got back some neat replies from lots of folks who don’t Twitter often. The coolest one, though, I got a few minutes after I had landed.It turns out my friend John, who lives in San Francisco and who I haven’t seen in a while, was in the air when I nudged and had just landed as well. “Just landed at IAD. Maybe I’ll run into @jerrybrito in the Star Wars-esque people mover,” he said. Holy crap! He didn’t even know where I was traveling, yet there he was. Sure enough, we met up a few minutes later at baggage claim. He had come in on another flight. Totally serendipitous and totally wonderful.
In other news, Flickr now does video.
NYT: “To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. [However, we will publish a story about death by blogging anyway.]”
A testament to the insincerity of politics: John Edward’s Twitter status hasn’t been updated in 4 months. Not even a “dropping out of race” tweet.
Do you know about nicechat.info?
In case you don’t know, I bifurcate my online output. While this is my personal website, I post the really personal stuff (photos, videos, wacky YouTube memes) at nicechat.info, my tumblelog with Kathleen. I need to figure out a better way to point to that site from here since I don’t think that content belongs here (do you?).Here’s something I just posted. It’s a video of a couple of Flickr sets I recently uploaded. It’s made with an amazing tool called Animoto. Very cool. I might spring for the paid version.
Scoble argues that the “secret to Twitter isn’t how many followers you have, but how many people you are following.” I’m not sure there’s any secret to Twitter and I’m not sure it’s an either or proposition. Having lots of followers is valuable because you can crowdsource. Chek out Merlin asking for video help. Calacanis calls it “the world’s greatest focus group.” I get what Scoble means, but I’m afraid of the signal to noise ration would be weak. By his rationale he should give away an Air to get to top of this list.
Just discovered dctechevents.com. Very neat. (You bet I’ll be at Podcamp DC.) Wish it had an iCal feed (though I made one by running it through Google). Would also benefit from more tech policy events, but that’s something we can all fix by suggesting events.
Me on the Cato Daily Podcast
I totally forgot about this, but last Friday I was featured on the Cato Daily Podcast. Marking Sunshine Week, I spoke about online transparency. You can grab the MP3 or take a listen here: NBC’s new Hulu video site launched today and you can now watch The Big Lebowski in its entirety for free on your computer anytime you want. Productivity everywhere just took a dive.
More Twitter talk
I’m seeing more and more people joining Twitter and I thought I’d share a few thoughts about it. My initial reaction to Twitter was skepticism, but I became a convert after I subscribed to Clay Shirky’s feed and received a tweet from him a couple hours later about his talk in D.C. that I would have never known about. That was useful, and since then I’ve found Twitter more and more useful.First of, I’d like to explain what it is for the sake of those who don’t know. I’ll do so by way of video:
The first thing to note is that Twitter is a classic example of network effects because its usefulness increases relative to the number of users on it. Its usefulness also increases exponentially when people you know and care about make there way onto it. The network seems to be growing in concentric circles and while it’s been dominated by the elite digerati in Silicon Valley so far, it seems to be making its way to DC now.
The video presents Twitter as a way to let people know what you’re doing at the moment. In fact, Twitter itself suggests that you use the service to answer the question, “What are you doing?” But if we took that literally, like some do, Twitter would truly be dull: “Going to the bank,” “Eating ice cream,” “Going to sleep.” Alex King suggests that the “what are you doing” question be replaced with the imperative, “Say something interesting.” In practice that’s what most people have done.
My friend Julian Sanchez uses Twitter mostly to announce at which bar he is currently so that anyone nearby who gets his tweet on a mobile phone can drop in an join him for a drink. I’m sure people join him who otherwise wouldn’t have. Blogger Robert Scoble uses it to crowdsource. Recently he was scheduled to interview the CFO of Amazon on stage before a conference. He’s got about 13,000 people in his network and he asked them what he should ask the CFO. He got back many insightful questions he would never have thought up himself. (As an aside, I’m curious if you know of other innovative uses. Post in the comments.)
Ultimately the best thing about Twitter is that it’s a different experience for each user. You only see the tweets of the people you follow. If someone’s not your cup of tea, you can silently boot them. The result is a stream of interesting stuff that only gets more useful as more people you know get on it. In the short while I’ve been on it I’ve been pointed to more interesting article, sites, and videos than I could have imagined. Give it a whirl… and follow me!
Yes, Wikipedia should take the money
Over at Techdirt, Tim Lee takes issue with my post suggesting that Wikipedia should consider selling ads instead of asking for donations. He has a good point, which is that right now the only reason to volunteer to work for Wikipedia is because you’re passionate about it, but that might change if money became involved. But I think Tim overstates his case:
Being a member of the Wikipedia board would no longer be a thankless exercise in public service, but would be a relatively glamorous opportunity to direct hundreds of thousands of dollars to one’s pet causes. Over time, the senior leadership positions would be sought out by people who are more excited about doling out largesse than editing an encyclopedia.
I’m not sure why that would be the case. By that rationale we could never have large philanthropic foundations because they would attract self-interested directors. As long as their actions are transparent and they are accountable to the wikipedians, I don’t see why the money couldn’t be directed for the benefit of Wikipedia. And if the directors enjoy some vicarious “glamour” as a result, then I think that’s a fine reward for hard work—it might even attract better candidates than are interested today.
Since it’s Sunshine Week I’ll stress that the key is transparency. And Tim is right on this point, too: institutions matter. Right now Jimmy Wales is taking some heat for conducting his Wikipedia business in a less than transparent manner. If that’s how Wkipedia is going to operate, them perhaps money will corrupt it and Tim is right that “there’s no reason to think an institution built to edit an encyclopedia is going to have any special competence to oversee the spending of millions of dollars.” Still, I guess I’m just more optimistic about what the Wikipedia community is capable of.
Pentagon: Why post it online when we can mail it?
McClatchy reports that a Pentagon analysis of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the invasion found no operational ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. This is of great interest to journalists and citizens, so it’s a good thing the study was publicly released. No doubt your thinking you can go to the Pentagon’s website and download a copy, right? According to the NYT:[T]he report will not be posted on the Internet, as originally planned, and no one will conduct any briefings on its conclusions. Anyone wanting to read it will have to ask the United States Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., for a copy. Officials promise to send it by mail.
One of the themes in my forthcoming paper on online transparency is that although there are many laws that require government to disclose information to the public, few require that disclosure to be online. Because the internet is the way we disseminate information today, paper disclosure is not meaningful disclosure. The good news is the corollary to that idea, which is that if government doesn’t disclose online, third parties will. So it’s amazing to me that the Pentagon thinks it can stifle interest in a story by refusing to disclose online.
So, grab your copy at ABC News (PDF).
Cuba’s digital undergound
A “digital underground” is at work in Cuba spreading videos and reports critical of the government, according the the NYT. Since the internet is so controlled, they use a sneakernet powered by USB thumb drives. One hot item of contraband is a video of students asking pointed questions of National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón.I love the way one brave student asked about why he wasn’t allowed to travel overseas. He asks, If I work all my life on a farm and save up some money and want to take my kids to visit the spot in Bolivia where Che Guevara fell, to honor his memory, why can’t I go? Awesome.
Wikipedia’s tin-cup approach wears thin
Spurred by the recent buzz around Jimmy Wales’s ethics, The L.A. Times has a good piece asking, Why doesn’t Wikipedia just sell ads? That would solve the site’s perennial money woes. (The story mentions the incredibly creepy fundraising video I blogged about last year.) By refusing to seek any serious income aside from donations Wikipedia is tying one hand behind its back.The idea that monetizing their traffic would somehow corrupt the snow-white purity of the Wikipedia experiment is bogus. As long as the ads are placed by computer, there isn’t a problem. The story doesn’t mention them, but the Wikimedia Foundation should seek inspiration in the Mozilla Foundation and Craigslist, two non-profits that are making gobs of money without losing their altruistic visions.
Nerd improvement
The latest episode of my podcast with Cord Blomquist, In Conversation, is now up.In this episode, Cord wonders why websites can’t be truly off-the-shelf, while Jerry obsesses over goofy Web 2.0 stuff that Cord’s still skeptical about. Also: Murphy’s Law and the Peter Principle, Napoleon Dynamite vs. the Wes Anderson oeuvre, web ads, why Elliott Spitzer’s unsafe at any speed, and nerds can fix things, so why can’t you? Check it out. To subscribe in iTunes, click here.
Gene Healy’s attitudinal forebear
I’m reading my friend Gene Healy’s great new book, The Cult of the Presidency, and it reminds me why I like him so much. In describing founding-era Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay, Gene could be describing himself:The Maclay that emerges from the journal is a dyspeptic grouch, the sort of personality that too few people properly appreciate. Yet, as doctrinaire and exacting as Maclay could be, he was also funny and irreverent. He didn’t take himself overseriously, and thus found it impossible not to laugh at his self-important colleagues.
You can pre-order the book from Amazon, and stay tuned to Gene’s triumphant return to blogging on his new site designed by yours truly.
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This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
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