Susan Mernit's Blog

Steve Rubel, articulate as always: "Consumers are replacing Consumer Reports. We are increasingly turning to blogs and other forms of consumer generated media to gather the information we need to make informed purchasing decisions."

Someone synced before and after satellite photos.
Take a breath, then click.

It's been just a tad more than a year since the Media Center published We Media, written by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, and edited by JD Lasica. Widely acknowledged as a key articulation of citizen journalism and blogging, this paper reportedly led Dan Gillmor to rethink how he was writing his book, We the Media and influenced former CNN bureau chief Rebecca McKinnon to pursue citizen journalism as a full-time career.
Now, a year later, Karma Peiró, a digital journalist from Barcelona, Spain, has interviewed the We Media authors and they've shared the interview on their site. Points worth noting:

• Change is not coming from traditional competitors but from the audience they serve.
• The speed at which RSS has proliferated is phenomenal.
• ...The leadership and innovation of citizen journalism will continue to come from the edges of the new media ecosystem.
• ...We are more likely to see big media try to purchase and integrate innovation rather than develop it on their own.

Meanwhile, as much as We Media continues to influence, the conversation is racing beyond it.

In the past two months, I have heard of plans to start three or four local blog-based news businesses, three or four ecommerce or vertical market niche blogs, at least two and maybe three blog ad sales networks, one major new community platform, and at least two blog cosmos-related neat tech tools.
--And that's without the impact of the Six Apart/Live Journal acquisition, awareness of the true impact of MSN Spaces, and deployment of any big media plans to have more presence--and better integration--in this more distributed and participatory space.

As Dan Gillmor says "We used to call mainstream journalism the "first draft of history." Now, I'd argue, much of that first draft is being written by citizen journalists. And what they're telling us is powerful indeed."
2005 may be the year when blogging became industralized--the number of conferences, consultancies, marketing agencies, etc. feeding off the growing awareness and usage of blogs is dramatic--but it should also be the year when we all remember that blogging is just a platform.
What I want to watch for is how bigger companies are handling the long tail and the disintermediation of content--and how individual bloggers, like cells in an organism, replicate and divide.

In other words--who will help build true open blogging platforms?
When can we see support for individual effort in the blogosphere that's akin to the platforms eBay and Amazon have developed? I'd like to see the long tail help fund daily media and personal voices, as well as P2P music exchange and book distribution.

--Show me some companies addressing those issues--or individuals crafting solutions--and I will be a happy camper.

Working Smart's got a long post with practical advice on how to position projects to one's boss. One snippet (also true for consultants):
"Most top managers have two basic needs: they want to grow their company and they want to increase their profitability. Whether they are a private company or a public one, this is the ticket to their personal success. If your proposal promises to do either, you've got their ear. If not, you're likely dead before you start."
(Via Fast Company)

How do you decide when to make a (profound) change?
Is it when you're dragged, kicking and screaming, toward an inevitable choice (i.e., no choice?)
Or the moment when something seems clearly right and you have the confidence to go with your gut?
Or, is it a more intellectual process of weighting choices and forecasting scenarios--and then deliberately choosing what seems best?
I'm making some decisions right now. One one level, my impulse is just to continue as is for as long as possible, hoping for the *right* choices to become clear. On the other hand, I need to make active choices--but not hasty ones.

Julie Leung: "I wonder whether I suffer from digital obesity and need to lose some weight."

Internetnews: SmithBarney downgrades Amazon to sell from hold.
AdWeek: Beth Axelrod, HR exec, joins eBay. She is one of the authors of The War for Talent.
BizWeek: Women drove ecommerce buys over the holidays. (Are you surprised?)

True confessions--when Variety started publishing Stylephile, a fashion and style blog, I scoffed.
Seemed totally off-topic.
But you know what?
It's pretty good--one of the better ones out there.
In fact, I can think of a couple folks I know who should consider swooping down and stealing this writer--and I don't mean Gawker.

Nice there's a note to the LJ community from the founder already posted.
Some highlights:
" I love technology and designing the LiveJournal architecture but I hate running a business. While I've been learning a lot of business stuff over the past 5 years and it's been kinda interesting, I just don't love it and I'm not great at it. Plus it just keeps getting harder as LiveJournal grows, sucking away more of my time and youth. I'm ready to pass off what I see as "the boring stuff" to somebody else that I trust and focus on the fun stuff.

Also, Six Apart has a lot of staff that we don't... marketing, designers, usability people, etc. "
Here's the press release stuff

CONGRATS EVERYONE

Update: Dave Winer says the motive could be a planned IPO.

It's so inspiring when publishers spend their ad dollars hiring more and better writers, especially in that lofty echelon known as management aka executive talent.
Lockhart Steele's gone to Gawker, and Sacramento is the New New York has a hysterical Matrix script of the deal.
If you care even a little, read it.
Genius humor.
Oh, and Gawker guys, your steady roll is so fun to watch.

So, Jeff Jarvis had a nice chat with Howard Stern this morning.
Anyone hear Jeff chatting on air from the roadside of Route 78?

Xian: Fave blogs of 2004
Mary Hodder: Dumpster-diving in OPML (yeah, I'm the scavenger.)
Smart Mobs: GroupJazz starts an award in honor of departed online community maven Frank Burns--award is support and services for an organization--check it out.
MORPH blog: Read the posts, subscribe to their feed.
Little Judy, quoting Britney Spears' stalker on his obsession with Brit-Brit: "Maybe I'm a little bit crazy, but it keeps me from going insane."
Kelly Blue Book: Most researched cars of 2004. (None of them are on my list.)

Danah (who's studied social networks and communities in great detail, for those who may not know): "LJ folks don't see LJ as a tool, but a community. Bloggers may see the ethereal blogosphere as their community, but for LJers, it's all about LJ. Aside from the ubergeek LJers, LJers don't read non-LJs even though syndication is available. They post for their friends, comment excessively and constantly moderate who should have access to what."

And: "My biggest concern is that a merger will stunt the cultural growth on LiveJournal that makes it so fascinating. My second concern is that Six Apart will not be prepared to deal with the userbase and will initiate practices that are more detrimental because of fear. [For example, what's the best way to handle an LJ community dedicated to cutters trying to outdo each other via images?] It takes a resistance-based culture to support a community of resisters and Six Apart is by no means a resistance-minded company. My third concern is that LiveJournal will shift because of investor value."

There is a terrific discussion going on in the comments--including this quote from Scott Rafer, Feedster CEO: "With the astonishing, yet probably conservative, blogging numbers that Pew announced Monday, 6A can afford to leave LJ as a separate community and have it evolve into a more direct competitor to MySpace."

Thomas Hawk: "The beauty of broadband, peer to peer, BitTorrent, podcasting, video and audio, blogs, the drop in price of HDTV cameras and the whole rest of new media thing is that it is going to open up media in ways that we have never seen before.

Most significantly, the new media is going to be a great exercise in the democratization of media and will usher in a new grass roots meritocracy based on actual talent (or trash depending on who you are talking to). Every creative college student can potentially become producer, director and actor."

This snippet of a long post on Thomas Hawks' blog caught my attention--The comments are in relation to INDTV, but truth is, INDTV is merely going to be--if they are smart--a distribution point for something that is already happening, not the cause of this groundswell(thank P2P, BitTorrent, eBay communities, blogging for that).

Om Malik writes: "I have learnt exclusively that Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad, and Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal, for an undisclosed amount.(snip)If the deal goes through, then Six Apart will become one of the largest weblog companies in the world, with nearly 6.5 million users. It also gives the company a very fighting chance against Google?s Blogger and Microsoft?s MSN Spaces.

More on this here and here. And here.

Update: Yep, it's true. eWeek story here.

Hey, folks, welcome to the world of managing multiple brands.

# posted by Susan : 2:07 PM |