I woke up to Laurel Papworth this morning, which is always pleasant. Of course, she was in my aggregator and half way around the planet. But we were still having a conversation.
Her article this morning discusses the misconceptions businesses have about what blogging is and what on-line communities are.
A few weeks ago, I did a series of posts on how, perhaps, corporations weren't the best stewards of our on-line infrastructure. Cable companies and telcos, which currently control much of our access to the Internet have motivations that run contrary to their roles as gatekeepers to the digital commons.
My friend Ken noted that perhaps the term "commons" wasn't appropriate for the Internet, as the Internet is not a finite resource and gets better as more people use it. This may be true, but the access to the commons is not universally controlled, nor is the infrastructure inside it.
In her article Laurel quotes an article in the Sydney Morning Herald which describes, albeit unwittingly, exactly why there is a tension beyond the members of on-line communities and companies that try to build a business out of providing community space.
The most telling paragraph in the Sydney Morning Herald is this:
"The audience for blogs is infinitely small," says Cole, who is also director of the Centre for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California and who helped start the World Internet Project study six years ago.
The audience ... is infinitely small. Here we see the bias of a single-point-source media provider and the lack of understanding of the evolution of content provision. The crux of the article is the NewsCorp owns MySpace and is freaking out because their audience doesn't stay in MySpace after they leave high school.
Laurel notes:
Teenagers don't hang around any scene for too long. Clubs have been known to shutdown, do a quick interior design change around and re-open with a new name (but same owner, same staff, same everything else). MySpace will need to do the same from time to time to retain teenage connections.
From NewsCorp's perspective, this means:
"We try to distinguish which behaviour teenagers, for example, shed when they become adults, spouses or workers and which ones they keep. We think blogging and communities like MySpace people will shed as they get older. They don't have the time."
Which is like a sports car manufacturer saying that when people get married, have kids, and buy a minivan - they stop driving. People transition out of the MySpace product because it no longer works for them. They grow out of MySpace, not communication.
NewsCorp here has allowed their current business model - MySpace - which caters to kids to think that on-line communities and blogging end at 20. NewsCorp then makes business decisions based on this erroneous assumption. Since NewsCorp is a major provider of news, this gets picked up by other news sources like the Sydney Morning Herald. This allows News sources, already threatened by on-line communities, conversations, and blogging to say things like this:
He will learn that interest in blogging is grossly overrated - except when mainstream journalists find something interesting and shift it into the broader public debate.
One could note that since I'm quoting this article, perhaps this might be true. But a quick review of my blog, which enjoys a healthy readership, will show that this is not the case. Media is relevant and quoted when relevant. Other people are quoted when relevant. Laurel is quoted when relevant. And that conversation is important.
NewsCorp's inability to profit from my conversation with Laurel does not concern me. Their definition of "audience" is measured in millions. You can't have a meaningful conversation with millions of people.
Paul McIntyre's (of the Syndney Herald) views of the subordinance of blogging to the media do not concern me. His definition of "conversation" is one-sided and dictatorial. Having a meaningful conversation with someone who isn't interested in your response is unrewarding.
I'll stick to waking up with Laurel. You can keep your newspaper.
Updates: This article about Second Life shows how an evolving on-line community and a business community can run divergent courses - even when the on-line community has a strong business element.
Photo: Jane Sawyer
Technorati Tags: newscorp, online communities, community_indicators, blogging, MySpace
Comments