Evolving Web

Mainstream Media's Hypocrisy and Failure

Over the last several years, I've posted many times chastising bloggers for positing that we don't need mainstream media.  I still feel it's necessary, and I feel that there are some elements of of mainstream media that are trying hard to exploit cooperate with the blogging world.

However, the recent events with mainstream media in Belgium - where major media went to court to stop Google from letting people know they exist - shows that there are not insignificant portions of mainstream media that are dangerously underinformed about the modern flow of information.

The NYT quotes:

“Today we celebrate a victory for content producers,” said Margaret Boribon, secretary-general of Copiepresse. “We showed that Google cannot make profit for free from the credibility of our newspaper brands, hard work of our journalists and skill of our photographers.”

And, as a victory for the rest of the world, we will all no longer read any news generated from Belgium.

The other side of Mainstream Media's battle against itself comes from a repeated argument against the validity of blogging by mainstream media representatives.  This argument goes something like, "Blog entries are poorly written and often misleading."

Today, I popped by Yahoo! News and a Reuters article by Joanne Allen was at the top of the list.  The Article One "Bad Apple" does spoil the whole office.  Is very high on the poorly written and misleading scale.  And dangerously so.

This article notes that even one negative person in an office can bring down the attitude of the whole office.

To wit:

Negative behavior outweighs positive behavior, so a bad apple can spoil the whole barrel, but one or two good workers can't "unspoil" it, researchers at the University of Washington said in the current issue of the journal Research in Organizational Behavior.

The fix for this?  To not hire negative people.

This simplistic pap is at the top of Yahoo! News and is fed by Reuters.

In real life people can be negative on Thursday and Friday, have a good sleep over the weekend and feel better on Monday.  In real life people can and often are negative for very good reasons.  In real life, negative people can often help diffuse group-think and serve as a predictable loyal opposition - they can be the ones that ask hard and annoying questions that end up strengthening business models.

Do you want people in the office who are evil and intentionally ruin people's moods?  Of course not. 

But this article does nothing to encourage managers and co-workers to ask why someone is negative, what other value they add to their teams, and if something is systemically wrong with the company that is causing this.

Summarily executing or not hiring people we think might be negative is a foolish recommendation. 

HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT THAN A BAD BLOG POST

So, what would a blog post do?  It might say lame underinformed things like this, but it would link to sources.  Even a bad blog post would provide more source material.  Perhaps the study was much deeper than this, but JoAnne was just underreporting.  Maybe JoAnne interviewed the group that did the study and they didn't interview well.

Who knows?  All we have to go on is a flat article with no references and no links.  Even bad blog posts don't do that.

I still feel that we need mainstream media.  But these are sure indications they at least need to clean house.

 

Technorati tags: Mainstream media, Reuters, JoAnne Allen, management

Blogged at my house in Seattle with Live Writer

Glory is Fleeting, Obscurity is Forever

 Will MySpace be sold for lots of money?

AOL once owned everything.  They even went out and bought Time Warner who, later, became known as the parent company of AOL.  AOL's business model was to dumb down the Internet so much that anyone could use it anywhere.

Later, they maintained some dominance by offering cheap dial-up access. 

But people rapidly tired of the limitations of AOL, the slowness of dial-up and the mundane design.  Broadband immediately made AOL irrelevant.  Yes, it was more expensive, but as the Internet matured, so did the complexity of its content.

AOL went from savior to millstone for users rapidly. Their fortunes likewise declined because of a supreme lack of vision.  They are now a sinking ship and to compensate, they have taken on survivors from other sinking ships.

MySpace is the exact same ship.  It grew rapidly because it brought a group of people into the social networking sphere.  Millions of kids signed on and began to learn how to network, how to communicate in a new way, and learned to customize their own pages.

But that was a point in time.  MySpace was a primer for these technologies and a few years ago was fairly state of the art.  But MySpace has stagnated and the owners know it.  Everyone knows it.  You can smell the rot on MySpace from a mile away.

What's interesting here is the role of assumptions.  MySpace graduates expect MySpace functionality of most applications as a starting point.  They expect to be able to use tools to communicate with their network and expand their relationships.  This is a point of utter power for MySpace, but they are squandering it by not understanding where and how they can improve it. 

This is exactly what happened to AOL.  And Napoleon.

Rupert Murdoch thinks he can sell it for $6 Billion.  Maybe he can.  It's market value may be that high, but its societal value has greatly diminished.

I'm not saying MySpace will disappear.  Like many directionless companies or offerings, they will likely float along, directionless, for years.

Technorati tags: MySpace, AOL, social software, networking, napoleon

Written with Windows Live Writer at My Place in Seattle.

Planning? We don't need no stinking planning.

Society has no need for me to be critical of or snippy with either Google or You Tube.  Adam Lashinsky at Fortune Magazine has handled that for me.  In a snarky piece on Friday the 13th, Adam took everyone to the woodshed.

You all know I think that paying $1.65 billion (in whatever form) for a company less than two years old with unremarkable technology is insane.  Accepting that money, is not.  Lashinsky really pounds on YouTube for not really knowing what is going to happen to them.  These two under-30s are about to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars after taxes.  They don't care how YouTube will fit into Google.  They don't care if they will be "leading the revolution."  They don't care how many takedown notices they are currently processing.

At six percent annual interest, 100 million dollars is worth $11.50 a minute or $685 an hour (including weekends and holidays) every minute of the year.  They will have each, some multiple of that.

They have, in less than two years, entirely created the engine that drove this purchase.  If YouTube goes to hell, they can build something else, travel the world, buy a small country, or become meth heads.

The subtext of this article is interesting though, and Google should really take notice.  The subtext is that Google is a huge corporation that has eaten YouTube and will change it to fit its vision and its culture and its needs.  The subtext is that Google is evil.

Of course, Adam seems to think that at least YouTube Chad Hurley will fit right in with the evil.

Hurley, on the other hand, just might go far in the corporate world, should he choose to stay there. As the CEO, he's an on-message kind of guy, the kind of executive who's comfortable (or at least effective) giving the same answer he's given scores of times already, no matter what question you ask him. As a result, what he says is well-coached and of limited value, a skill that should please his new masters to no
end.

Wow.  Adam's been hitting the coffee pretty heavily.

So maybe Adam has been, but the evil Google mindset is catching on.  There is a perception that Google is hungry.  They want to eat talent, they want to eat content, they want to eat whatever isn't nailed down that Yahoo or Microsoft might be interested in.   The perception is that Google is no longer interested in real innovation, they are interested in control.

Is this perception true?  I don't know.  But I am seeing a rapid shift towards it. 

So think about this.   Two years ago, everyone loves Google and there is no YouTube.  Now things are different. 

Google needs to seriously watch their backs.  They have the same hubris that Yahoo had before there was Google.  If Google wants to stay in a disruptive mode and not become the establishment.  Buying YouTube is not disruptive.  You can't easily acquire disruptive.   

YouTube by itself is coherent.  Flickr by itself is coherent.  Disruption requires focused energy.  Disruption requires clarity of purpose.  When you purchase disruption that energy is dispersed amongst your other holdings.  The energy fades.

So it is not surprising to me when Adam notes

"There's a lot of things that need to be figured out," says Hurley. "On our side nothing will change. If anything, our service will improve. They've built a great product. They'll decide how we fit in."

This will actually be interesting. Hurley says YouTube's integration into Google is yet to be determined. He says he doesn't know to whom he'll report or who Google's point person will be in dealing with YouTube. This from the guy who wasn't selling his company three weeks ago and who hasn't given a moment's thought to his newfound wealth.

Hurley is saying, "I have been taken from my very controlled culture and plugged into a much larger one."  Google met his demands of over $1.5 billion.  No one knows how this is going to work out.  No one ever does.

One thing is certain, YouTube will change.  Maybe it will become more popular.  Who knows? 

It's a multifaceted $1.65 billion dollar gamble on Google's part. 

• Will the further diffusion of purpose at Google have an impact on Google?
• Will the inclusion of YouTube in Google confuse YouTube members?
• Will the deep pockets of Google encourage new legal action?
• Will the focus on YouTube continue to take attention away from Google's myriad of under utilized and unfocused applications?
• Will YouTube energize Google?
• Will YouTube's community services spread throughout Google and provide coherence to their offerings?
• Will the people keep coming to YouTube supplying Google's advertising group with mega revenues?
• Will the fact that Google is supplying more and more content create suspicion of their search results?

The list could go on and on.  The length of the list is an indication of the number of critical risks involved in this sale.  But in the end we know three things:

1.  Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are rich
2.  Google beat out Yahoo! again
3.  Google has a whole lot of money

Other than that, transition plans, coherent product offerings, good business practices, thoughtful growth are apparently incidental.

Photo: Wikipedia Photo Commons

Technorati Tags: google, you tube, steve chen, chad hurley, adam lashinsky, business planning, smart growth

powered with performancing firefox at The Sai Oak 

Shmethics

I've been pretty quiet in the H.P. paranoia attack but I thought I'd speak up after the recent NY Times article outlining the extent to which H.P. considered or actually did go to find their leaks.  What one can gather from this is a few things:

1. Some people at H.P. were very concerned about the legality of their efforts
2. Some people at H.P. were very concerned about finding and punishing the person that leaked the information.
3. Some people at H.P. were unconcerned about the legality of their efforts.

Recently, we've leaks and spying have been center stage in the US.  In the past, spying on American citizens was illegal without going through certain channels.  Those doing such spying invoked the oft-used quote of the oppressor "these are extraordinary times and it's for your own good."

Now we find that such activities funnel down to some of our most trusted corporations.  Due to the general trust of Bill Hewlett, HP has enjoyed a stellar reputation as large corporations go.  I'd imagine he's not sleeping too well these days.

It is always interesting to see what people commit to e-mail. 

The NYT reports:

Concern over legality was reflected in an e-mail message sent on Jan. 30 by Mr. Hunsaker, the chief ethics officer, to Mr. Gentilucci, the manager of global investigations. Referring to a private detective in the Boston area, Ronald R. DeLia, whom the company had hired, he asked: “How does Ron get cell and home phone records? Is it all above board?”

Mr. Gentilucci responded that Mr. DeLia, the owner of Security Outsourcing Solutions, had investigators “call operators under some ruse.”

He also wrote: “I think it is on the edge, but above board. We use pretext interviews on a number of investigations to extract information and/or make covert purchases of stolen property, in a sense, all undercover operations.”

Mr. Hunsaker’s e-mail response, in its entirety, said: “I shouldn’t have asked....”

"I shouldn't have asked."  From any ethics director, that's a pretty distressing statement.  "Please suspend all activity with Mr. DeLia until I can review his methods," would have been preferable.  Would have looked a lot better in the New York Times...

Clearly, this was a program that had gone out of control.  I don't think that many (certainly some) people at HP were deliberately being evil.  But also clearly this will damage their credibility.

From the standpoint of community, we see here that in large institutions actions gather inertia and can go awry in a very bad way.  Whether it's a leak investigation at HP, covering up abuse at Wal*Mart or putting FEMA in an organization obsessed with foreign terrorists.  In the beginning, each of these things may have seemed like a good idea - but groupthink gives them a purpose beyond reason to often disastrous results.

When we have a community - social, corporate, political, whatever - the members of that community need to be vigilant about the direction of the community.  Compare that direction to what is legal, what is within the community mission, and how the action will be perceived by other communities.

HP is learning the hard way that their corporate community intersects with many other communities in not always comfortable ways.

Technorati Tags: DP, Dunn, Investigation Mania

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Who is Responsible for Your Protection?

Mark Goldberg is petitioning to allow Telus and other ISPs to block illegal hate content.

His first example is very extreme.  Involving direct threats of murder and terrorism.  A clear and obvious case.

Over the years, I have fought for the passage of various hate crimes laws in the US.  I have been mildly, but measurably, victimized by hate groups in the past and know others who have spent time in the hospital after run-ins with such groups.

But telling an ISP to "block hate" might be starting down a slippery slope.

Mark Evans says:

I agree with Jon (Arnold) that ISPs (carriers, cablecos and re-sellers) and governments have a responsibility to block content that is clearly illegal.

Blocking hate is like blocking spam or winning a war against terrorism.  Distributed systems are extremely difficult to fully stop and in doing so, you inevitably give up freedoms.  In this case, you'd give up the freedom to go to non-hate sites that were mistakenly blocked.  Similar to good emails that end up in your spambox or honest citizens detained in jail.

I have no problem with adding a hate filter to your Virus Scanner.  Make it a service.  But Telus or other ISPs are in for future legal battles when the loose concept of "Hate" is suddenly transferred to them to define.  Plus, in this case, the Canadians require the ISP to approach the government and ask permission.  The Canadian government is not known for its dexterity any more than the US Government is.  So blocking hate will always lag way, way behind the hate itself.

In addition, there are many ways to thwart that ISP-based filtering. 

ISP based content filtering is onerous, gives ISPs too much power, and shifts the responsibility ultimately to entities that are not built to support it.

Photo by: I don't think I want to know.

Technorati Tags: telus, net neutrality, hate, hate crimes, neonazis, canada, canadians, government, telcos

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Note To Self: Don't Piss off Wired

If you are going to fake information and use the Internet as a tool for your deception - don't do it with a major technology magazine.   Worse yet, don't do it with a magazine filled with fairly playful technopundits.  Philip Chien did it and he was soundly and publicly busted.

From Wired:

An investigation traced the name and Hotmail account provided to a Usenet posting praising Chien's work. Wired News senior editor Kevin Poulsen then compared the IP address of the poster and Chien's computer and discovered they matched. An e-mail sent to Wired News from the Ted Collins account also originated with the same IP address.

Caught by an IP trace.  Holy GeekSquad!

Wired walks a tightrope, they are mainstream media - but they're our mainstream media.  They know that their credibility is highly scrutinized specifically because they do enjoy a high level of trust among technophiles. 

As mainstream media continues to become the seed for conversation and not the entire stream of information, it will find itself under more scrutiny.  This type of proactive fact-checking and immediate and unabashed reporting will become standard.

I'm sure that Chien didn't anticipate being caught by his own IP address though.

One other note: Being caught by your own IP address when crossed with AOL's recent dissemination of search logs should cause us all to pause and maybe look for more anonymous ways to use the Internet.  If this woman can be caught and confirmed to be many things she is not - what might you end up being that you are not?




Technorati Tags: AOL, Wired, mainstream media, accountability, IP

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Woe! Where be mine magick?!

If you're Steve Jobs, an off day means people question if you've lost your magic.  Apple and Jobs have long been joined at the hip.  When he left the first time people rejoiced, but later begged him to come back.  Why?  Because his worth to Apple is in his presence. 

Jobs is a figurehead with punch.  It's apparent that he still has his fingers in the pie, but his real value, again, is simply being the face of Apple.  The guy from the garage. 

At a recent conference, Jobs had a lackluster performance and people are riding him for it.  I think this is mostly because Jobs is a performer.  They wanted a conference and the singer had a sore throat.  Only, no one can really ask for their money back from a keynote - so they question if he's still got it. 

I'd say give the guy a break.

read more | digg story

The Oracle of OMG

Warren Buffett, known for being wealthy and choosing to stay in Omaha, is giving a majority of his money to the Gates Foundation - says the eerie smile of Don Dodge.  This builds up a juggernaught of philanthropy not seen since the gates of Eden closed.

The Gates Foundation has done amazing work and much of it, despite what Dodge says, went to schools and libraries.  At least the portion I worked on did.  Not capital projects, but school connectivity projects.  Which, at the time, was just as important as brick and mortar.

The Gates Foundation has been a leader in global AIDS relief funding.  They do very good work.  Previously, they've seen a bit unfocused.  Much of that was due to their maturation as an organization and their desire to distribute much of their warchest.  I think that the addition of Bill to the foundation will give them that focus and provide some attention to metrics of success.

Not only that, but Bill Gate's particular strength is seeing what has worked - or is capable of working - and finding a way to make that work better or in larger distribution.  Microsoft, right now, needs the guiding hand of Ray Ozzie.   But the Gates Foundation needs Bill Gates.   And 44 billion dollars from  my  fellow Omahan, Mr. Buffett.

"Don't Be Evil" ...

Google's official unofficial motto is "Don't Be Evil".  Apparently they don't extend that to urban design.  The NY Times today ran an article called "Hiding in Plain Sight"  that talks about Google's new activities in The Dalles, Oregon.

This massive windowless concrete-and-parking monster located on the banks of the Columbia is ... evil.  Each of the buildings in the photo is roughly the size of a football field.  Roughly the same amount in parking.  Goodbye livability.

The tone of the article is evil as well.  Google is moving into The Dalles secretly.  No one will talk about it.  No one mentions Google.  This is not the mark of a good neighbor.

Rather than focusing on how fast google is growing, computing as a utility, or available fiber, which are all true and interesting, we could ask - how can Google be "not evil" and antisocial at the same time?

What part of Don't Be Evil don't you understand?

Om MG!

Wow, the blog scene is suddenly a big cluster of hollywood hype.  A few days after Scoble walks from MSFT, Om Malik grabs some green to launch his blog into the stratosphere.

Why leave Business 2.0 for a risky startup?  Om says:

I have written about start-ups for so long, and have always wanted to see if I had the chops to build something from scratch. With well wishes and support of my community, I hope I can.

I started my company because I wanted to see if I could build something sustainable.  I wanted to feel in control of my own life and give legs to software concepts that were nagging me for years.  I love it, even when I hate it - I love it.

Om also said:

The other reason is the fundamental change in the media consumption patterns. In the past, I worked for Forbes.com, arguably one of the more successful media properties on the web, and learnt some vital lessons about online media. From the mid-1990s to today, we have seen some stellar brands emerge such as News.com. They are living proof that large online media properties are a viable business.

This paragraph is why people read Om's stuff.  Rather than being threatened by or whining about the changing patterns of media usage - Om works to make sense out of them.  That is exciting and refreshing.

Good luck in the wilds, Om!