Oddly Together

Old Media Should Pay Up If It Wants to Tumblr

There goes the neighborhood. Big media is invading Tumblr.

For weeks I had been meaning to blog about how old media might ruin Tumblr. I shouldn’t have waited. Monday’s New York Times story “Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr” raises the topic without rightly razing it. How could Jenna Wortham’s story have been any different, since The Times is among the old media vanguard invading Tumblr. Jenna’s story positions the big media invasion as something good. I most certainly don’t agree, given Tumblr’s free-for-all embrace.

Who’s on the list of other-media Tumblr wannabes? Jenna writes:

Over the last few months, other media outlets have caught wind of Tumblr, which is free to use. The newest recruits include The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, BlackBook Media Corporation, The Paris Review, The Huffington Post, Life magazine and The New York Times.

Earlier in the story she mentioned Newsweek and The New Yorker, and it is the first of the two that had me howling a few weeks ago—when I should have blogged this media invasion topic.

 Mark Coatney—a journalist and not, thank God, a blogger—was the inspiration driving the Newsweek Tumblr. He now works for Tumblr, and here’s where I take another jab at the pathetic state of news reporting. There was a glut of stories both yesterday and Monday announcing Mark’s move from Newsweek to Tumblr, like it’s oh-so new news. Tumblr Staff blog announced Mark’s hire on July 12th. Does nobody check facts or news relevance anymore? These other reports followed the New York Times’ Tumblr profile.

There’s good sense in Tumblr hiring a seasoned journalist, but, so far as I can see, bad policy. Jenna defines Mark’s job responsibilities:

Many of those outlets have done little more than set up a placeholder page. In his new job as a ‘media evangelist,’ Mr. Coatney’s role, and in some ways his challenge, is to help them figure out what to do next.

That’s OK, if they pay. Why should big media get a free social-media platform and in doing so perhaps overwhelm and diminish many of the service’s original voices? If established media wants to play, Tumblr should make them pay. Tumblr’s creative community of bloggers is one of its two major appealing features. The other is the publishing platform. If big media gets a free ride and comes to silence many of the original voices, the community will move along. Tumblr could also diminish as a business, by giving big media a free ride. Founder David Karp and Company can’t sustain Tumblr on venture-capitalist rounds of funding forever.

David has valiantly resisted advertising, but how far will that go if old media and new media mingle together in search of audience they can sell to advertisers or to whom they can pitch advertisers’ products and services? There’s a purity about Tumblr’s technology platform and business model that big media could easily corrupt. David has the right idea about selling extras, like the Premium themes, but Tumblr isn’t doing enough fast enough. 

I’d pay, too, if Tumblr offered more extra services. I’m buying themes. What if Tumblr increased audio and video capacity for reasonable fees? I’d pay. Wouldn’t you cough up a little for a lot more?

Mark should be responsible for a big media consultancy operation working within Tumblr. If Tumblr’s doing something so right in social media, as The Times asserts, then Mark has got something valuable to sell. Big-ass media brands, or those with loads of server-sucking traffic, should pay Tumblr for hosting, design services and Mark’s consulting time. WordPress.com charges nominal yearly subscription fees for HD video and other extras. Then there is the VIP service for those old and new media blogs:

You might be a good candidate for VIP hosting if, for example, you get more than 1 million page views a month on your blog. Pricing is based on a flat rate of $500/month per blog (with a one-time setup fee of $1,500 per blog) but is flexible depending on your circumstances and number of blogs.

But WordPress.com is different, even as it increasingly imitates Tumblr. The community interaction isn’t as tight or established around Like, Reblog or other social sharing features. More importantly, Tumblr has conceptually better expertise to sell to big media. The fees can can help Tumblr generate revenue from big media blogs and act as a toll booth against a big media invasion. Free is easy. Established media outlets have to justify paying for something new and uncertain.

My worries are clear. I started blogging at Tumblr in April 2008, at first in off-and-on fashion. About six months ago, I made Tumblr my primary publishing platform. I believe in what Tumblr represents as a creative community of bloggers and as a blogging platform. But if big media gets a free ride—smashing smaller Tumblelogs into roadkill along the way—I’ll have to go somewhere else, where I will sadly watch Tumblr tumble away.

Do you have a Tumblr story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Does the Net Necessitate Social Media?

It’s the question I’m seriously asking in context of Web users’ constant state of distraction and increasing inability to concentrate for long periods. Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains looks at this state of distraction. I’ve blogged posts: “Internet Attention Deficit Disorder” and “Of Course, Technology Changes You.” Are people losing their minds, so to speak, only to gain another—group mind—through online social interaction?

Distracted Web content overwhelms short-term memory. Nicholas writes: “When the load exceeds our mind’s ability to process and store it, we’re unable to retain the information or to draw connections with other memories.” Information fails to move from short-term to long-term memory.

There’s a group mindedness about social media, which interaction reinforces ideas and concepts and most assuredly drives social trends. What people lose in all the distraction they may partly regain or replace through groupthink.

Social media is all the rage, but it’s a relatively new phenomenon—and I suspect that future research will reveal a natural but inevitable evolution; there came a time when the Net reached a critical mass of users and distraction that demanded a shift from solitary to shared Web consumption.

As I explained in June 2009 post “Iran and the New Democracy,” status quo-destabilizing social technologies started evolving around 2005-06:

YouTube is now very much a part of global culture. Its influence is seemingly everywhere. But YouTube is but a recent construct, only going live in November 2005. Google bought YouTube about 11 months later—less than three years ago. Twitter also debuted in 2006, but only has reached mass awareness within the last 12 months. Facebook opened to the public in 2006, as well. Three years ago. Most of the most popular or growing popular tools for community and self expression launched within the last three years: Disqus, FriendFeed, tumblr, Twine, Qik and USTREAM, among many others.

That’s four years now (since I wrote that paragraph 13 months ago)—nearly five if counting YouTube. But there is an absolute, discernible time of change (which arguably derives from earlier social sharing services like MySpace). Social media is an explosive, pervasive phenomenon starting around 2006. What I don’t often hear asked is “Why?” or “Why then?” Perhaps the answer to both questions is no more complex than need. It’s not so much people seek online social interactions as they need them to fill in for something taken away by the Web: Their minds, or a memory quality of them.

Already, with Google search, wikis and such, the Web is group mind-like. Social media gives it humanity and reinforces thoughts otherwise lost in the constant state of distraction. More disturbing: There’s a hamster-running-the-wheel-like quality about how people click, comment, click, searching for affirmation. The question for which I have no answer: Will groupthink make us collectively smarter or reinforce mediocrity that will sap innovation? Because, historically, the brilliance of one person, rather than a group, has brought the most disruptive and beneficial innovations.

Photo Credit: Molly Wilcox

Do you have a group mind story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

MSNBC.com bets on Readers

I can’t much imagine how MSNBC.com could have designed a news site seemingly more unfriendly to generating static pageviews—unless there is some secret Google gaming formula. The secret sauce is there, and I love it. MSNBC.com’s updated news site pulls readers in rather than sending them out.

It’s a very Web-unconventional approach. Aggregators of the InterWeb game pageviews by driving people to click, click, click. Each click takes them somewhere else. Business Insider has got this method down to a science, using headline stories as landing pages to drive readers to other page(s) for fuller story or to multi-page slideshows. Tip: Whenever you see a slideshow, someone is trying to drive up pageviews. Slideshows are hugely reader unfriendly, which puts the site’s priority in perspective: Money, not news—and certainly not readers.

MSNBC.com seeks to keep readers on a single page, which means the site doesn’t get clicks that count as additional pageviews. It’s a much more reader-friendly approach, by providing the story, related stories and other media in one place. There are no confusing jumps elsewhere or forced click, click, clicks. The approach allows readers to immerse in the content, and they are more likely to remember what they read; distraction can disrupt the transfer from short-term to long-term memory.

The site redesign does something else, which is simply brilliant. Internet usage contributes to shorter attention spans and people scanning rather than deeply reading. Some news organizations have responded by summarizing news stories. For example, CNN.com bullet points “Story Highlights.” It’s a tradeoff that can lead people to read nothing more. By comparison, MSNBC.com provides full-text stories with color-coded markers that jump to topical areas within the same article or to additional media, such as videos. Stories are presented in part with tab to “Show More Text” and another “Show discussion.” The overall approach emphasizes the editorial content, which MSNBC.com paid someone to produce. Why pay to produce something people won’t read or remember?

Show Me the Money
Readers-first is a nice concept but can it be profitable in this era of Search Engine Obsession—er, Optimization? Absolutely. MSNBC.com’s approach is more likely to build audience and, more importantly, time spent on the site. Pageview-obsessessed blogs or news sites often miss the forest for the trees. If the goal is simply to make money, then pageview-gaming tactics are sensible for the organization (not that I approve of them). If the goal is to report news, and in doing so make money, audience and time online matter more. 

The amount of time readers spend on a site can be hugely beneficial to potential advertisers, particularly if ads change rather than statically display. Even if the ads don’t change, people will subliminally see them for longer time. Analytics firms provide time-online data in addition to traffic and pageview stats for a reason. By drawing readers in with richer, more self-contained stories, with the links to more immersive content, MSNBC.com should increase the amount of time people spend on the site. If successful, the approach would satisfy editorial and business objectives essential to keeping the site vital.

MSNBC.com rolled out the new design earlier this week, and I meant to write about it earlier (as the days-old screenshots indicate). The first screenshot was taken on iPad, which near as I can tell doesn’t support the page markers (could they be Flash?). 

For all my praise, something troubles me. MSNBC.com now aggregates a shockingly large amount of content. Many of the news stories come from other services, such as AP or Washington Post. Aggregation hurts original reporting. Aggregation also diminishes the value of news, by generating more content—and much of it the same—than current online advertising models can sustain. The more news there is, the less valuable it is to advertisers (hence, they pay less for it). Additionally, there is more ad space than conceptually be filled. However, since aggregators are typically the worse pageview gamers, perhaps MSNBC.com has found a better. If all aggregators adopted similar approach, which requires more editorial commitment and resources, surely the news organizations and their advertisers and readers would benefit.

Do you have a news media story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

From the Oddly Together Archive: Five Blogging and Journalism Must-Reads

By the feeds, follows and stats, I see there are plenty of new Oddly Together readers since I permanently moved to Tumblr from hosted WordPress (in May 2010). Welcome! For your reading pleasure, here are five past posts about blogging and journalism that I consider to be thoughtful, provocative and worth your time.

Please read at least one of them:

1. “The Price You Pay Google for Paywalls” is an unexpected case study. Camera enthusiast site Reid Reviews is nearly invisible to search engines because Sean Reid puts the content behind a paywall. Anyone considering charging for content should read this post. There are consequences. Posted April 10, 2010.
2. “The Difference Between Blogging and Journalism” explores a fretful trend: Blogs (and some news sites) single-sourcing other blogs or news sites; there is no original reporting. Aggregation of this kind has created a Wild Wild Web of gossip and rumors masked as news. Posted March 22, 2010.
3. “Can You Charge for News? Ask Google” looks at how the Google free economy impacts three sites’ different content strategies. The conclusion: Even paywalls must keep a certain amount of free content to appear in search engines. Posted Aug. 11, 2009.
4. “Process Journalism and Original Reporting” is a rare defense of TechCrunch, which has been harshly criticized by traditional media defenders for conflicts of interest. Maybe, but TechCrunch is successful for a reason. Cofounder Michael Arrington treats news as a process, and it’s a process readers participate in and contribute to; it works. Posted July 20, 2009.
5. “Iran and the New Democracy” explains how social media tools released since early 2006 (November 2005 for YouTube) are empowering anyone to gather news; they, and not Craigslist, are the driving catalysts tearing down traditional media’s informational monopolies. All this change occurred in just four years (three years, when I wrote it)  Posted June 21, 2009.

Photo Credit: Nationaal Archief; Kids read a newspaper transmitted wirelessly, circa 1938.

Do you have a story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

The Comments, No-Comments Debate gets Noisy

People love catfights, which perhaps explains some of the interest in the comments/no-comments debate I’ve been having with Mac blogger John Gruber. It’s a pseudo-debate, really, since the only engagement is blog posting. John and I haven’t directly communicated.

I started it all, by calling out John for not having comments on his blog. I told him to “Be a man,” which I actually meant with some backslapping good nature. But some people are morally offended. Stacia Van Doll reblogged the post as: “QUIT being a douchebag Joe Wilcox.”

She writes:

Does this guy Joe Wilcox think he’s some sort of ancient barbarian man or something?Give me a break. What’s wrong with the world today is everything that stems from shallow, unintelligent macho bullshit like Wilcox’s.

No one has ever accused me of being macho before. I can’t bring myself to be insulted. Whoa, is this irony or what? Look what popped up on Twitter seconds after I wrote the first sentences of this paragraph—from Mark Dagon Hughes: “What I want to know is, what has @joewilcox ever done that was so manly he can make a mortal insult to someone over fucking blog comments?” 

Overnight, John answered my post with “I’ll Tell You What’s Fair,” and I responded with “Blogging: Is Curation or Comments Better?” With my post, I removed Disqus commenting from Oddly Together, as a 14-day experiment trying it John’s way. John described comments as “cacophonous shouting matches” and his Daring Fireball blog as a “curated conversation.” I want to see how right John is and to stir up some meaningful discussion about comments and whether they add or detract from the storytelling. I don’t expect a pat answer, but it’s only Day 1.

Other folks are piping in about the value of comments. I tweeted these earlier today:

• Marco Arment: “Comments”
• Ian Betteridge: “John Gruber, Joe Wilcox, and why comments are anti-Web”
• Matthew Ingram (GigaOM): “Yes, Comments Can Get Noisy, But We Like Them Anyway”
• Doreen Marchionni: “Blogs, Commenting and the Art of Interaction”
• Ravi (Arhen Code): “Comments isn’t free: Gruber vs Wilcox”

A Refreshing Start
My first experiences with curation are surprisingly positive. For the six days Disqus was active on the “Be a Man” post, the majority of comments were rude or condescending. With comments off, I started getting responses by email. Nearly all are civil and well articulated, regardless of their position about commenting or reaction to the “Be a Man” post. In a future post, after asking permission, I will share some of the emails. I treat all emails as private conservations unless the other party has given permission for the contents to be revealed.

Today, I also extended the interaction, by tweeting more often than usual—and predominately about the comments/no-comments topic. I see Twitter as a potentially good alternative to commenting for three reasons:

1. The 140-character limit restricts just how much people can say. They have to be concise.
2. Tweets are more visible than comments tucked away in some blog post, which should make most people more restrained.
3. Twitter easily leads to conversations that many people can join, which extends the reach of the original narrative and its storytelling.

That leads to a confession about comments. Much changed in my thinking about them between my June 10 “Be a Man” post and John’s June 16 “What’s Fair” response; I had already been rethinking comments’ value. It’s a major reason why I so suddenly changed direction and turned on the turn-off comments experiment. Catalyst: Nicholas Carr’s new book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Nicholas’ discourse led to my writing three related blog posts since June 10:

• “Internet Attention Deficit Disorder”
• “Of Course, Technology Changes You”
• “I Was Wrong About Apple iPad”

Nicholas’ book is having an unintended affect on me. I’m a writer, a journalist, storyteller—and it is in these roles I am interpreting The Shallows. Nicholas’ research raises questions about the Web as a training place for distraction. But I see media consumption’s purpose being immersion. The consumer immerses in a good book or movie. In that context, I’m troubled by comments as distractions to the narrative, which admittedly contradicts what I wrote in the “Be a Man” post about comments adding to the narrative. To be clear: Comments would be just one of many distracting elements someone would see on most any Website.

I’m not retreating my position, certainly not on Day 1 of the no-comments experiment. I have long opposed anonymous commenting. If you’ve got something to say, then don’t shout it from the back of the room. Stand in front. Let others see who you are. Don’t cowardly hide behind anonymous comments, which often are the most obnoxious ones. I am now questioning registered-user or moderated comments for many blogs, but not all.

Comments and Process Journalism
One place where comments do make sense, at least as I see them today, is when the Website encourages readers to participate in the storytelling process. TechCrunch practices what founder Michael Arrington calls “Process Journalism,” a concept he picked up from Jeff Jarvis. In summer 2009 post “Process Journalism and Original Reporting,” I explained that many TechCrunch news stories are posted incomplete—later to be extended and expanded through subsequent posts, as more information is available. Readers help shape the story by their comments, other interactions and tips. I further explained:

For TechCrunch, the process can be surprisingly good reading. I haven’t done an official count, but I’d guess that TechCrunch posts more unfinished stories than the more complete kind published by, say, the New York Times. TechCrunch stories evolve—and, I must assert, too often from unsubstantiated rumors. It’s a process I must grudgingly acknowledge that TechCrunch can be quite transparent about. The process, of the story unfolding over time, produces original content that often is interesting reading…[TechCrunch] readers participate in that process, through comments and other social media tools…Social media—reader participation in the evolving story—is crucial to process journalism.

This evening I asked Doreen Marchionni over Twitter: ”Do you see Conversational Journalism value to comments as part of ongoing stories; e.g. TechCrunch’s Process Journalism.” She responded: “You bet there’s value. Whether readers interact via comments or Twitter or whatever works for me.”

Doreen is sharing her “dissertation on journalism as a conversation,” and she has lots of good advice for bloggers or reporters. The distinction I made in my question is process—an ongoing story, as opposed to one that is finished. Comments part of an ongoing story can sharpen the reporting, make the narrative better reading and keep readers coming back for the next update, whether the main post or additional comments. Using TechCrunch as example, the process builds community and audience of loyal, participatory readers.

That’s a wrap. It has been a long day writing.

[Note, June 17, 2010: Original version stated that Doreen is writing her dissertation. She kindly sent a note informing that she completed the dissertation last summer.]

Do you have a story about Web comments that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Be a Man, John Gruber

If John Gruber allowed comments on his blog, I wouldn’t need to write this post, and it has been long-time coming. I considered writing it every time I read something outrageous at Daring Fireball but couldn’t directly respond because John doesn’t allow comments. Finally, this morning, I had enough.

John’s post “John Battelle on Apple’s Banning Google From iOS App Ads” is what set me off. I wanted to comment—to correct the competitive marketing lies asserted by Apple CEO Steve Jobs that John repeated as fact. Since I can’t respond at Daring Fireball, I do so here. If I’m going to respond here, I might as well express something held back for some time: My disdain for the brutal effectiveness of John’s storyline—where he hits and jabs others with sarcasm and spit but isn’t man enough to receive jabs back. The story is incomplete, because only one side is presented. 

I thought to write this post at Betanews but didn’t want to be accused of gaming the pageviews. Also, because of the more personal nature of this post, I felt it inappropriate for BN. It’s only marginally appropriate for Oddly Together, which, at this point, is a storytelling site in the making. I want to shift away from technology being the story to technology telling the story. But John’s writing is storytelling (that’s a compliment), and I have made blogging and journalism ongoing topics here at Oddly Together. So there it is.

Which Bullshit is More BS?
Over the past two days, there has been some controversy about the newest revisions to the iPhone OS (now called iOS) developer agreement. It must be a lawyers died-and-gone-to-heaven-contract. How often is a contract between two parties changed, without notice, every few months (and it sure feels more often than that) by one side but not the other? On June 8, All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka observed that Section 3.3.9 of the developer agreement seems to block AdMob from Apple’s platform because Google has a competing operating system. A day later, John Battelle wrote: “It’s Official—Apple Kicking Google out of iWorld”; John Gruber linked to the post and responded:

Bullshit. Google started this. It was Google that turned its sights on the iPhone. If AdMob had remained independent, they could still sell in-app ads on iOS. If AdMob had sold itself to Apple instead of Google, they could still sell in-app ads on iOS. If Google hadn’t declared war against the iPhone, AdMob could still see in-app ads on iOS. They made their bed, now they have to sleep in it.

There’s no question it’s a dick move on Apple’s part. But what’s the argument against it? That Google gets a pass for being dicks to Apple, and Apple ought to just sit there and take it?

If Daring Fireball accepted comments, I would have responded to John’s fantasy land assertions about Apple and Google there. John mimics Steve Jobs, who in March told employees:  ”We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business.” Steve has since made similar assertion—that somehow Google encroached on Apple’s phone business. That’s simply not true.

Google bought Android in August 2005, about 18 months before Apple announced iPhone and nearly two years before the device shipped. Google effectively announced its intention to go into the mobile phone business when buying Android. Maybe Google’s intentions spoiled secret Apple plans, but there was nothing unclear about them. Responding to Google’s Android acquisition, in August 2005, IDC analyst Scott Ellison predicted: “Wireless is the next frontier in search.”

I was working as a JupiterResearch analyst at the time of the Android acquisition; there I repeatedly blogged about “anytime, anywhere, on-anything” computing. Computing and informational relevance was shifting from the PC to the cloud, with mobiles looking to eventually become the dominant devices. Mobile phones are personal and always with you—and, unlike personal computers, Microsoft doesn’t own the market (even in 2005, when Windows Mobile had more users and bigger marketshare). Google executives would have been hugely negligent by not pursuing wireless devices as the next opportunity for search. Google’s wireless device push started long before Steve stepped onto the Macworld stage in January 2007 and announced iPhone.

John’s Way or the Highway
It’s easy for John to revise history when there is no easy place to respond to him. Daring Fireball is his blog. It’s his voice. He is under no compulsion to offer anyone an easy mechanism for dialog or response. But his no-comments approach is out of place in an era when so many Websites or services provide discussion tools and encourage readers/viewers to use them.

I have to wonder why. Some reasons I see:

• From a storytelling perspective, John maintains a single voice, a single point of view, which helps keep the narrative cleaner and freer from distraction.
• As a writing style, John is freer to jab and punch pretty much anyone he chooses, which makes his wit and sarcasm more effective and even more enjoyable reading.
• The approach also means there is no direct way for those jabbed or punched to respond. Other folks can blog elsewhere as I am doing, but that’s separate from the narrative.
• John’s writing, beret of direct discussion or response, picks up more authority, establishing what some editors call the “God point of view” or “all-knowing point of view.”

John Gruber is not a journalist. He is a blogger and Mac enthusiast with a computing science degree. His posts are often biased in favor of Apple, and he makes no apology for this (that I’ve seen). He needn’t make one. Good writing is first and foremost about audience. John has identified an audience of like-minded Apple lovers, and he writes for them. There’s no rule all writing must be objective. He blogs about other topics, too, but clearly those that interest him. Good for him. John is a successful, self-supporting blogger, and there are too few success stories like his.

But there’s something about the no-commenting approach that irks me. John has whacked me and my writing a few times at Daring Fireball, but I couldn’t respond there. It was a one-sided argument with his supporter minons adding to the noise. (John has loyal followers; some of them are more than just readers, in part because they share the same passion. With no disrespect intended, I’ll call him mini Steve Jobs. Both men are cults of personality.) Then there are the many more posts like the one I respond to here, where I would want to add something to the discussion, whether agreeing or disagreeing with John. 

Something else: John denies his readers opportunity to better benefit from his writing. John is a good practitioner of stock-and-flow blogging. The flow are the many short posts, often with funny or biting commentary, linking to someone else. The stock is insightful analysis—John’s longer posts, and these would be good venues for discussion. Surely readers would like to react and to discuss. In July 2009, Missouri School of Journalism’s Doreen Marchionni wrote about the importance of “conversational journalism.” She offers good advice for John or anyone else writing professionally on the Web. By the way, Missouri’s J school requires Macs.

I allow comments at this blog, which in response to this post opens me to attack by John’s followers. The discussion battle will occur here, if there is one, but Daring Fireball will be free of any scorched earth. That’s the other advantage for John: His followers fan out in attack where others do allow comments. Should a comment battle occur here, for a time, the responses really will stand out. I recently migrated blogging platforms, changing links site wide. So most of the older comments are missing. Thirty days ago, I contacted Disqus and received e-mail: “We’re currently finishing up a tool to make this migration easily and I’ll make sure to let you know when it’s ready.” So hopefully sometime soon I can restore missing comments.

I’ve never met John Gruber. I only know him from his writing. I grew up in Northern Maine, where a man’s worth is his mettle. A man pushes out only as much as he can receive back. By comparison, I see John attacking from a fortified position. He can attack but not easily be assaulted, and, yes, many of his posts are attacks on others. Sarcasm and witticism are the ammunition. Maybe John has different values of what is a man. My values are clear. A man—hell, a good writer—doesn’t hide behind his assertions. He stands by them. Discussion and response test his assertions and expose him to more points of view. So I close with this challenge: Be a man, John Gruber, and allow comments at Daring Fireball.

[Update: John responded to this post on June 16: “I’ll Tell You What’s Fair.” I liked John’s response so much, I’m going to try blogging his way and turn off comments here for the next two weeks. John was a good man to respond. I’ve removed Disqus commenting and will see how the extended narrative works. I’ll report back on the experiment in two weeks.]

Photo Credit: Alex Hong

Do you have a John Gruber story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

New Media is All About Personality

New media—and social media, for that matter—share something in common with old media moguls: Personality, as in the persons so acutely identified with the organizations. The brands are big, but often no bigger than the people behind them.

Ten examples:

• Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
• Henry Blodget, Business Insider
• Peter Cashmore, Mashable
• David Carp, Tumblr
• Nick Denton, Gawker Media
• Arriana Huffington, Huffington Post
• Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation
• Steve Jobs, Apple
• Biz Stone, Twitter
• Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Some people will question why Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs make my list. Rupert was new media before there officially was new media. From satellite TV networks  to MySpace to iPad—each representing a different era of new media—Rupert pushed past the bleeding edge. Wall Street Journal is a much better newspaper since he bought it. Presentation and reporting are better today than three years ago. It’s a more new media organization, too.

So what about Steve Jobs? From iPod to iPhone to iPad, content is king, much of it not traditionally consumed. The iPad is all about content consumption. It’s oh-so new media. Apple also exercises editorial control over applications, including those for publications, and eBooks submitted to the iTunes App Store.

Publishing, radio and television have long been about people. There are reasons why magazines frequently put a person on the cover: People relate to people. It’s not really rocket science. People are interested in other people. It’s all the better for a brand when identified with a strong personality.

New media and its social media cousin are in many ways more about personalities. What does the “social” in social media otherwise stand for? Again, it’s not rocket science. Hollywood—what I refer to as pulp media—has long been about personalities, whether they’re the people behind or in front of the camera. Popular music is even more about personalities.

Social media has produced its stars; some, like Justin Bieber, moved from the new (YouTube) to the old (music label and big media marketing). Others, like Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy, create fresh new media outlets.  

Something else about personality-driven new media organizations: They defy popular conventions about the importance of collaboration or, to a much lesser extent, crowdsourcing. Successful companies or projects (think James Cameron with movies Avatar and Titanic) tend to be led by a single strong personality—the visionary with a brave idea. There may be a team working with or under the personality, but the vision comes from the one person. Social media may raise up these personalities, but it’s my observation that group think is a fallacy.

Who else should be on this new personality list? You tell me.

Do you have personality story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

You’re Zucked!

Perhaps I don’t pay enough attention to Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis. Something, somewhen, somehow bugged me about his blog posts—maybe it was frequency or attitude, I don’t recall—and so I nuked his RSS feed sometime ago.

But post “The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand” has me howling delight, even though Jason rambles on even more incoherently than I do. Thanks to Dare Obasanjo for tweeting the link.

Keeping with the privacy philosophy espoused by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, I pulled this picture from his profile.

From Jason’s 2,000-word post:

You’re Zucked!

Yes, that’s the new catch phrase for when someone either steals your
business idea or screws you as a business partner.

Who’s been Zucked and how? Let’s take a look back:

1. FourSquare was Zucked when Facebook stole their check-in feature.
2. Twitter was Zucked when Facebook stole their public facing profiles.
3. Facebook users got Zucked when the site flipped their privacy setting—three different times!
4. The co-founder of Facebook was allegedly Zucked when he was kicked out of the company he helped found.
5. The founders of ConnectU got Zucked when he allegedly screwed them over by not delivering their social network and then launching Facebook at the same time—and joked about it!
6. Harvard reporters reportedly got Zucked when Mark hacked their accounts to try and stop a negative story/investigation about him.

You can only screw people for so long before it catches up to you. The
entire industry went from rooting for Zuckerberg to hating him and
Facebook–in under 18 months.

Peter Rojas and Matt Cutts have turned off their Facebook pages, and
more intelligent people everywhere are talking about doing so.

I have considered flipping off my Facebook page, too. It’s not that I have anything to hide; just principles. By the way, I noticed that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile has no information, just like mine. I stripped my profile bare following the most recent privacy changes. What? Disclosing personal information is OK for everyone else, but not for him?

Last week, at Betanews I asked: “Which is eviler? Apple, Facebook or Google?” Can you guess my answer?

Do you have a Mark Zuckerberg story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.