Posted by: Heather Green on November 18
This is an incredible development for me, given what's happening at BusinessWeek. And I do mean hard to believe. But in an encouraging and intriguing way.
As the traditional media world is being hacked to tiny pieces by the Internet, Pierre Omidyar, that guy who harnessed the Web so powerfully, says he's founding a for-profit news service in Hawaii that will be staffed with, gulp, professional reporters.
Omidyar's pr person Sarah Steven says that Omidyar's motivation is simple: He's seen the decline of the industry and believes that a strong democracy needs a strong media to help keep citizens informed and involved.
The facts: Omidyar will be directly involved, not just an investor. The service is expected to launch late in the first quarter of 2010 or in the beginning of the second. It will be online only. The venture is based in Hawaii because that's where Omidyar has lived for nearly 3 years. Steven says there aren't any plans to expand right now.
The fascination: For one thing, this is someone who gets the Web and who has done a lot with citizen journalism. He backed Backfence and Bayosphere, two high profile early pioneers in citizen journalism that both failed. Clearly he hasn't given up on that, given how he talks about it in his blog post. But he also believes that you can't just leave the future of media up to the grassroots forces or the blog ventures that are shaping news online right now. Clearly he feels like journalism needs more help.
Just as important, he's convinced there's a business model for news. Goodness knows, for that reason alone, his venture is one to watch.
Posted by: Stephen Baker on November 17
Bloomberg annouced today that we'll have a new editor-in-chief at BusinessWeek. His name is Josh Tyrangiel. He's 37 years old and has little background in business. Those are both pluses, as far as I'm concerned. As a young editor, he's not likely to be steeped in the very legacies that weigh our industry down. And business coverage, to be interesting and vibrant, should be tied to broader trends in society. Stand-alone business pieces tend not only to be boring, but also blinkered.
Here's a vision I wrote last week for BusinessWeek. From my point of view, the key question for Josh and his bosses (Norman Pearlstine and Matthew Winkler) is whether they're interested in gaining a readership "outside of" business. Based on what I've been hearing, I doubt it.
I would like the magazine to become not only required reading, but also a source of pleasure, for the most curious and intelligent people on earth, inside and outside of business.
Posted by: Heather Green on November 11
I'm back at BW and what timing! I'm landing right in the midst of BW's ongoing drama and all of us wondering where we'll be when the deal closes Dec. 1. So, being back on the blog is a bright spot and I really look forward to chatting it up with y'all again.
I took 6 months off for maternity leave. I decided that during that time, I'd stay away from work and focus on my daughter Lilly. And what that meant for me was staying away from blogging and Twitter. I was at the computer about to do some Twittering a few weeks after my daughter was born, but I couldn't type anything in. It didn't feel right to me, though I've done personal tweets before. I realized that my digital persona feels inextricably wrapped up in Businessweek. That there was a real distinction between what was appropriate and what wasn't. Or actually, what people who signed up to follow me would expect. And it felt like it should mostly be things from an official BW person, not a majority of things from Lilly's mom.
I know folks like Fred Wilson have split up where they write about their personal lives and where they write about their professional ones. And I guess I did that as well in a defacto way. Since I'd made the conscious decision not to think about work while I was on maternity leave, the follow on decision was to let my tweets and blog posts go silent. Breaking that silence now feels liberating in a way I hadn't expected. I'm happy to be back on the blog, happy to start thinking about tech in a reporterly way again.
Posted by: Stephen Baker on November 05
With a new Google dashboard, unveiled yesterday in Spain, we'll be able to monitor the information Google has about us in its various applications, from gmail to YouTube. This is the kind of disclosure privacy advocates have been calling for. I think it will enhance Google's reputation--and entice us to share more data with them (which may be the ultimate goal).
I also think this new dashboard will help Google get a better look at each one of us. Here's why. Last summer, I was having a not-for-attribution chat with a senior Google official. I asked him what Google knew about me. He told me that within Google's data centers, there were gazillions of data bits about all of the company's users, their searches, click, emails, YouTube uploads, etc. But he said it would be loads of work to bring all of this data together and build individual profiles. What's more, it would require lots of computing, and there wasn't a clear business model for it.
UPDATE: JUST GOT THIS CLARIFICATION FROM GOOGLE:
Its not an individual profile of the different products and doesn't correlate the data. Instead, the Dashboard was designed to scan the different products and services you use for a summary of the user data they each store individually. The Dashboard does not access raw data from the services, does not correlate any cross services data and it does not collect or store any additional user data. And when refreshing or closing your Dashboard page, all data is removed from the Dashboard.
But now, there appears to be a model. To address privacy concerns, Google appears to be bringing together much of that data. And once they have it, they're much closer to a coherent look at each one of us. Perhaps there's still not a business model for such personalized data. It'll be a while before advertisers can come up with 500 million customized pitches. But who knows what correlations Google will find between our various activities. (NOTE: Google says none.) And if this dashboard generates trust, the pickings should grow even richer.
(cross-posted on TheNumerati.net)
Posted by: Stephen Baker on November 04
I've been carrying out a small experiment in one of the areas of greatest potential abuse of social media: Twitter marketing. If you Google "Twitter buy followers," you'll see lots of choices. One outfit called Quick Online Tips offers 100,000 followers for a mere $3,479.
I didn't want to spend money, so I went to a far tamer site, FastFollowers.com. It functions as a sort of Lonely Hearts Club for Twitterers. Every time you follow a person, you get a point. You give the points back when people follow you. So, if you have lots of patience (I don't), you follow thousands of people, and eventually thousands follow you. (You can take a shortcut by simply buying credits, 5,000 of them for $99.50.)
I set up a new Twitter account which now has 208 followers. (I'll keep it secluded, for now, in my little laboratory. I want it to remain a purely FastFollower beast.)
Those 208 people "follow" me. They appear to pay no attention to my Tweets. They don't respond when I send them @ messages. They're too busy branding themselves to their followers, including me, to listen. Their only communication is spam in my direct-mailbox. Example:
martinbastin
Wishing you health and happiness....I look forward to Tweeting with you....for FREE marketing information check out my blog at http://bit.ly/4OyKe
It would be easy to write off all the people on FastFollower as spammers. But it doesn't appear to be the case. Some are actually sharing observations and links. But they want a crowd.
Why is this? Could it be that having 10,000 Twitter followers gives people the social media version of a face lift? Does it make them more employable? Open doors? All I know is that people are willing to pay for it, and they're not all spammers.
