John Tropea describes an APML enabled world

John Tropea has an amazing ability to keep in his head (and subsequently on his posts) a big map of all the related tools and applications that are remotely related to any given topic.

As a result of his encyclopedic knowledge of all things RSS/Attention/Recommendation, he has written a lengthy post about various applications of APML in every day web 2.0 tools.

He has a fantastic view of an APML enabled world that puts the user at the center of their Attention driven experience.

Read it here.

A Flow of Particls through your life - Stowe talks at Reboot

I just finished watching Stowe's talk at Reboot about something he calls 'Flow'.

You can watch it on CoRrElate.

Eric Norlin on the Defrag blog summarized the talk pretty well:

Stowe's basic argument (simplistically paraphrased) is that the tools we're using (social networking, etc) are actually changing the way our neurons are dealing with things - and that has led to 2 central propositions:

1. Time is a shared resource.
2. Connectivity is more important that productivity

As I have written before about Stowe's thoughts on Flow, I think that, for the most part, Stowe is on to something very interesting.

In fact I have been touching on the subject for a while now by arguing that news and alerts should not be treated like email with folders and items to be marked as read. They should flow by you in a news ticker, river of news and/or popup alerts.

As I wrote in my last post on the subject, the only concern I have with Stowe's thesis is that he seems to quickly dismiss the concept of the 'Attention Economy' without quite understanding the implications.

He claims that Information Overload and the economic metaphor for Attention does not fit. He means that we can not assign units of measurement to our Attention and allocate it as a finite resource because Attention can actually be tuned and improved with a physical changing and training of our neurons to perceive the world as a flow - letting the information flow over us. Just like a juggler learns to juggle many balls as a matter of instinct.

That may be true - and he is right that part of the Attention Economy is about assigning value to attention and trying to allocate it most effectively.

However, he is missing the fact that there are 2 aspects to the emerging Attention space that invoke economic theory:

1. Attention is a finite resource and can be dealt with in terms of economic units that can be consumed - therefore an abundance of Information creates a scarcity of Attention.
   
2. Attention data can be used to better target goods and services. The trading of this attention data, and the resulting efficient selection and presentation of advertising to drive sales is becoming an important economic driver.

Stowe seems to disagree only with the first point (I could be wrong - care to clarify Stowe?).

Firstly, I don't think it is as black and white as he states when it comes to point 1 - efficient allocation of our Attention.

Sure we can change our neurons and practice living a life of flow - in fact I advocate that we do - that's why Particls' primary interface right now is a news ticker and not a set of folders and items.

However, I think that tools that use Attention to better focus our stream can only help the process. A tool to funnel and tune the incoming information and present it in a method that is conducive to flow thinking can only be helpful.

On point 2. People are making money off your Attention. They are observing it, recording it and fine tuning advertising and content around it. They are also selling the data to each other. This gives it economic value. The question then is who owns this value and what are our rights as generators of the information and recipients of targeted information.

There is a real economy developing around this practice and standards like APML are about giving us participants some control back.

CBS getting attention for Jericho using AdWords

CBS is using AdWords to great effect to thank the fans for their show of support for the recently cancelled (and then saved) TV show Jericho.

Learn more about it on TVSquad.

I think it's a great attempt to reach out to fans and use the back channel to generate good will and publicity.

Well done CBS!

Continuous Partial Attention Revisited

Stowe has recently written about his ideas of 'Flow' and Continuous Partial Attention (CPA).

His premise is that we are not necessarily information saturated - that our brains are evolving to a point where we can let the information flow over us and stay continuously partially attentive to many things at the same time. He claaims that this is a perfectly natural change in our concentration and mental abilities.

He writes about Linda Stone - the guru in CPA.

"Linda and many others will tell us it will rot our teeth, disrupt family life, and lead to hair on our palms. I for one am not eager to turn off my devices and pay all my attention to one thing at a time, one moment at a time. There are too many targets on the horizon, too many members of the tribe, and too many jaguars lurking in the shadows for that. In my tribe, we don't do things that way."

I'm young - my brain can handle it for now - so I agree with Stowe (to a point) - however he also writes about Linda Stone's concerns about Continuous, Continuous partial attention having deleterious affects on the body and lumps us Attention people into it.

"[Linda's CPA concerns], along with Toffler's Information Overload (it's driving us crazy, he asserted) and the Attention Economy mavens (free information leads to attention scarcity). I don't buy any of it."

I disagree with Stowe on this point. We "Attention Economy mavens" and our focus on Attention are not antithetical to his ideas about information flow.

Actually I think, particularly we here at Faraday Media and Particls, we are exactly in tune with his message.

Information (particularly news) should typically flow - not pool.

Reading news in a folder/item email style metaphor is not as effective for the mainstream as having it flow by.

Note that I say the mainstream. Many of us early adopter control freaks like to read every item and have plenty of time to bury our heads in news readers. But that is not always the case - not all the time. An information flow (river of news, news ticker, popup alerts) is typically more effective.

Our work in the field of Attention is not about fighting off flow, it is about regulating the flow so that the stream is full of good content.

The APML Business Imperative

Ian has a great write-up about why he loves APML.

He writes:

This got me thinking too, what if other more established places like Trustedplaces, Last.FM, etc also gave away a APML file as part of the profile of each user?

One of the things I loved about APML is the Implicit Data (U-AR) and Explicit Data (I-AM) elements. You can just imagine how simple it would be to output APML from something Last.FM. (whats below isn't true APML markup, just my lazy json like writing)

Implicit (U-AR) last.fm {
concept{ Ferry Corsten = 0.87 }
concept{ Armin Van Buuren = 0.90 }
concept{ Sugar Babes = 0.1 }
concept{ Lemonhead = 0.00001 }
}

He also mentions being asked "What is the business imperative to support such a thing".

In other words - if companies make their money from data lockin - then why would they want to give that data away.

I would suggest that anyone asking that question consider that publishers used to think like that. Now they all support RSS.

If feed readers thought like that, then OPML support and the rise of proper and continued innovation in the space may not have occurred.

If you are a smaller guy, supporting APML means that users can jump in and get started quickly. The barrier to entry is lowered.

If you are a bigger player it means an increasingly savvy user base will continue to trust your data mining activities. Also it means you can get a more complete picture of your users if they choose to share their APML from other services. It also means you become part of an ecosystem instead of a data silo - data silos are dead.

In the era of user empowerment, the business imperative is: play nice or users will move to other services that respect their rights. Just watch the mad rush to Facebook.

Web Analytics Demystified - Getting there at least

Jermiah, Web strategy guru at PodTech and fellow Media 2.0 Workgroup memeber has a great video interview with Eric Peterson posted on his blog.

They discuss Engagement, Attention an Analytics. Great chat - well worth a watch.

I have previously proposed some new concepts for syndicating Attention analytics information called Audient and Attent Streams which will go a long way in helping us move beyond pageviews and server logs.

I also appreciate Eric's approach of multiple factors for measuring Engagement. Very much like our Personal Relevancy engine, we don't think that any single factor or method is enough for determining the importance of an item to a user - so rather we create a complex algorithm that takes many things into account proportionally.

Check out the interview on Jeremiah's Blog and check out Eric Peterson's consulting company Web Analytics Demystified.

Collaborative Recommendation 3.0

Every now and then someone asks 'Why don't you build Collaborative Recommendation into Particls'.

In case you don't know, Collaborative Recommendation is when a system uses the recommendation of many people to 'decide' that a piece of content is worth seeing. So, like Digg for example, if 100 people vote that something is great (vote is a word I use loosely here), then it is probably worth seeing.

There are a few answers to that question.

1. Particls is really about filtering noise out - not discovering new recommended content (even though we provide some of that functionality just to get novice users started).
   
2. There are plenty of other great collaborative recommendation services out there, stick the RSS feed into Particls and there you go.
   
3. Google's PageRank and Technorati's Authority is already a form of Collaborative Recommendation - it isn't really very new.
   
4. The next generation of Collaborative Recommendation is actually something different. Let's call it Collaborative Filtering 3.0 or... Peer LifeStreams + Personal Relevancy

You have friends (hopefully); they have lifestreams (or at the very least RSS feeds from all their social/sharing sites) - plug their feeds into Particls and we filter out the stuff you don't care about. What's left? Stuff your friends 'recommended' that you actually care about. Collaborative Recommendation done right.

If you want to add me to your Collaborative Recommendation lineup, you can find me on Jaiku

Getting Attention by Yelling Really Loud

Have you ever wondered why TV commercials sound louder than the TV shows they interrupt?

There's an interest piece about the Volume of TV Ads that explains how and why it works. It's part of a new law being proposed to add consistency to the 'perceived volume' of shows, their ads and between ads.

Under the proposed rule, broadcasters will be told that "A consistent subjective loudness must be maintained between individual advertisements and between the advertisements and programme and other junction material."

It is interesting that the Media 1.0 people believe that shouting loudly at the audience produces the best result. 1.0 thinking at its best.

As I have written somewhere else:

"Advertising was fun, for you, for a while. You made us sit there for 5 minutes at a time watching people jam messages down our throat. Most of them didn't even apply to us. We don't care about that sale or those shoes. We care about our own personal and individual interests. Interests that are both specific and diverse.

If you have a message to tell us, make it compelling. If you have something to say, make it worth listening to. If you have something to sell, make it worth buying. If you have something worth knowing, we will hear about it without you yelling about it. We have friends, social networks, personal profiles and search engines which will tell us what we need to know when we need to know it - our schedule - not yours.

If you want to reach us, come and find us. Talk to us, have a conversation with us. Ask us questions. Listen to our answers. Act on our answers. Empower us to share your message. Because the only person who can tell your message, is us."

Information Burnout - A generation of participants turning off

Mary Hodder writes:

"I'm looking for some filter to go through and just grab what I need and not have to know about or read or watch the rest, or reply to it, unless I want to and it fits in with an event or need or desire."

I'm looking forward to hear her thoughts and feedback about Particls.

I'm concerned, though, about a few people who have responded to her post (either in comments or their own blog posts) saying 'Just turn all that stuff off'.

That's exactly the scenario we are trying to avoid with Particls - a worldwide user base of social participants turning off from information burnout.

Announcement: Particls goes into Public Beta

After many months of anticipation, we are happy to announce that Particls is going Public Beta today.

For users: Particls is a filtered news reader or widget that learns what you care about and alerts you to important news and information while you work. More at www.particls.com

For bloggers and site owners: Particls allows bloggers and site owners to create a custom version of the application. Particls will share revenue with partners. More at www.particls.com/about/publishers

For developers: Particls is freely extensible by developers. Reach into corporate databases and web APIs to grab and display data in new and interesting ways. More at http://www.particls.com/extensions/

How much is it: Particls is a free download with some ads. Later, an ad-free Pro version will be available for a small subscription fee. It is free for Partners to create custom versions.

What's new in public beta: Particls is now no longer invite only. Anyone will be able to download it from the download page. Also, bloggers can now embed Particls widgets on the blog sidebars or create white label version of Particls. Learn more here.

Got a Mac: We love Mac - A Mac native version is coming. Here are some instructions to use parallels or watch the demos.

Sending feedback: The Particls team loves feedback - get int touch via: Email, Tangler, Twitter, and of course, right here in the comments

A little about Particls - for end users
The web is just too big. No one has time to keep track of all the sites, conversations and interesting bits and pieces that are out there. We each have real work to do and lives to live!

Particls helps you track your favorite sites and applications by displaying desktop alerts for important changes.

Subscribe to the sites you like best, and then when they change you're notified. Particls can even work out how important the new information is and display an alert that is proportional to its importance to you.

For example, general information might be displayed on a news ticker, important stuff might appear on a popup alert and urgent information might be SMS'd to your phone.

Think of it like a highly advanced widget or filtered feed reader.

A little about Particls - for bloggers and site owners
Through the Particls partner program, bloggers and site owners can create a custom version of Particls. They can change the skin, default feeds and default Attention Profile to give users their own branded desktop notification system.

By integrating Particls into their site, partners get more return traffic, their brand on desktops everywhere and a share of revenue.

This service is free for partners to participate in. Learn more at www.particls.com/intouch

A little about Faraday Media
Particls is owned and operated by Faraday Media. Faraday was founded by 2 'Twenty Something' Australian entrepreneurs.

Faraday Media focuses on helping users deal with information overload by creating tools that generate a highly personalized view of worldwide information and entertainment media.

The company has been in operation since July 2006 (product development started earlier in January 2006). In that time it has launched Alpha and Beta versions of Particls to over 4000 self-subscribed testers, secured Angel Funding and attracted attention from global media and financial services brands as well as high-profile technology leaders.

The company has also been an active contributor to the community founding the APML and Media 2.0 workgroups and open sourcing some of its software.

More Information

More information for bloggers can be found on the website or contact Chris Saad (Co-Founder/CEO) at chris@particls.com

Thanks
We would like to thank all those who have made it possible for us to get to this major milestone. Your generous help and advice has been always been very much appreciated.

Coverage
Coverage has already started:

Liako
Read/Write Web
Profy
Mashable
StartupSquad
The Podcast Network
Techcrunch
Techmeme
Daniela Barbosa
Daniela's awesome Video (must watch!)
Emily Chang
Cleverclogs
Interview with Chris Saad on Gizbuzz

Should We Be Afraid Of Google's Total Information Awareness?

Scott Karp asks "Should be affraid of Google's Total Information Awareness?"

I think that's the wrong question.

The question should be how can we create and support tools and standards that force open portability of our personal information so we can choose to opt out of a given service and move to another.

Attention Metrics and the Enterprise

Tim Bull takes up my post about Audient, Attent and Life Streams and asks how it can be applied to the Enterprise (Tim himself is responsible for adopting cutting edge stuff for his major enterprise employer).

He writes:

"I'm going to add to the call-to-arms from the Enterprise point of view. The ability to understand not just what people click on, but the attention they give to elements of the new, rich media world is crucial. Detailed information that goes beyond "IP Address loaded page X" and various derivatives of this is crucial."

He goes on to write:

"...I think we DO need a standard for aggregating attention data from all the different clients people use during a day, for the very simple reason that in Enterprises understanding what people are using and how they are using it is a crucial part of the delivery eco-system for information. It's the feedback loop that lets you know you're getting it right.

It may be useful for bloggers etc. as well, but I think the problem should be focused on the Enterprise as this is where the "real" need is (I show my bias here, but I don't believe I as a blogger need to know in great detail who looks at what, but as an Enterprise of 160,000 people globally I do need to understand where and how my information is flowing)."

I commented on Tim's post about Enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and philosophies. I will re-phrase and expand it here...

I agree that Enterprises would greatly benefit from the sort of tools and philosophies that are happening out here on the edge. The marketplace, however, does not make it friendly for startups to target the enterprise.

Most enterprises are wary of change. Even when they are open to trying new things, most (rightly) require many more features to make the solution work in an enterprise environment - which can be a cost that startups can't absorb straight out of the gate.

Even if a startup is willing to tackle these barriers, however, they have to invest in sales and support teams to generate adoption. After all that, most enterprises don't trust small startups and just wait for the big vendors to come with similar offerings.

Attensa and Newsgator are doing a great job fighting to create adoption in Enterprise 2.0 - but they are, by the nature of their target market, forced to be conservative in their implementations and focus on a lot of plumbing and command and control issues that bog down investment in innovation for end-users.

All that being said, however, it is clear that consumer technologies are quickly being adopted by enterprises because those technologies are usually more end-user focused.

There was nothing worse than the old CRM and ERP systems that ended up causing a lot of headaches for end-users because they focused on enterprise objectives rather than making someone's day better.

By breeding technologies in the consumer market and then adapting them to the enterprise, the result is much more user-friendly. They have to be. Because end-users don't have management telling them they have to use the given tool. In the end, enterprises are forced to adapt to the most popular tools. They are still working on getting IM support right.

Getting back to the original subject, however. I agree with Tim that forging an open standard for Audient and Attent Streams can have profound impacts for both the media and for business. It could be based on Attention.XML but it would need to encapsulate far more information than just clickstreams and form data.

Dangerous Moves - Google news cutting content deals?

According to Techcrunch and the rest of the Techmeme world:

"Scotland's Sunday Herald is running a story reporting that Google has secretly
reached deals with several large UK news groups to formally license content for Google News."

They go on to write

"The issue is not Google's alone. In theory any site that indexes and provides snippets of content from big media companies could easily face the same problem. Topix and Digg immediately come to mind, let alone the many smaller startups and personal sites that index news from the mainstream media."

Kevin Burton from Tailrank and Spin3r posts in the comments:

"You're wrong that Google News would face problems if they ran ads. These publishers needs Google News more than they need them.

Even if they DO run ads everyone wins. Google News only shows a small fraction of he article mandating a clickthrough . A rising tide lifts all boats.

We run a pretty deep crawl with Spinn3r (and have similar issues with ads running on Tailrank) and we've only had a few people ask to be removed.

Kevin"

Unless these deals are about expanding Google's rights beyond fair use (i.e. the right to use full content rather than just snippets), this is a dangerous move for the syndication and aggregation ecosystems who rely on fair use and opt-out mechanisms

As Duncan says on Techcrunch, this can affect all sorts of services everywhere and if Google makes these deals it could:

1. Set a precedent that could be destructive for innovation and fair use.


2. If Google makes moves to make the deals exclusive the implications could be even more significant.

This is an unsettling move that should be followed closely.

Life after pageviews: Proposing AudientStream and AttentStream

There is an ongoing discussion about the usefulness of the pageview. Scoble has once again raised the issue as well.

I'd like to make a proposal. Why can't the tools themselves - embedded players, browsers, second life clients, readers etc report back deep Attention/Engagement metrics?

First, some background...

A Lifestream

A LifeStream is an established concept and has been talked about by a number of people including Emily Chang, Stowe Boyd and others. It is an outgoing channel/record of everything you do/produce aggregated into a single feed.

Consider though, that this is actually a stream of your Attention Data. Data that represents what you have paid Attention to in the past. Some call it an Attention Stream.

In keeping with this theme, I would like to propose 2 additional concepts.

AudientStream 

An AudientStream (An Audient is defined as someone who pays Attention to another) is a channel/record of everything you might need to pay Attention to in the future. 

A simple example of an AudientStream might be all the RSS feeds in your OPML file aggregated together. 

A more sophisticated example would be an aggregated feed of your OPML file ranked against your APML file (using something like Particls).

Unlike a Lifestream, it is a list of things you are YET to see.

Unlike just you OPML file, it might include Twitter items, email, etc.

AttentStream

This is where I think we can make an impact on the Pageviews and metrics problem.

An AttentStream (An Attent

is defined

as someone who receives Attention from another) is a channel/record of others paying Attention to you. This would be a stream of events (preferably attributed to people) that signify Attention given to you by another.

The AttentStream would come from the tools that people use to pay attention. Browsers, Readers, Embedded Players, the Flash Player, Adobe Reader, the SecondLife Client etc, etc. Because the tool itself does the reporting it can report more subtle information that can't be gathered on the server. Think of it like distributed analytics.

An example of an AttentStream might be if the YouTube player reported each time a video was played - how much of the video was played and by which user. This way authors can get Attention information about content they were involved in producing.

The information would not just include page impressions or views. It would include richer things like time spent, partial views etc.

Each tool might produce an RSS feed that can be aggregated together by existing or new metrics companies like Compete, Buzzlogic and Feedburner.

With an AttentStream one could do basic things like displaying the identity of your subscribers (those that grant permission) much like Twitter shows your followers.

It could also do more advanced things like going beyond the pageview to give you more information about who is spending time on your content with or without a click.

I would volunteer

Particls

to testbed this type of system for publishers. If the community likes the idea and we come up with a concrete implementation we will be the first to provide reports to publishers about the amount of visibility their content has received from our users who opt into providing that information.

This does not just mean just click throughs (which can already be measured with Analytics packages and Feedburner) but rather more subtle gestures like 'time spent' viewing the content via a popup alert or on the ticker. These are more subtle, yet equally important forms of Attention giving and engagement.

Join the conversation

This is just the beginning of an idea. Join the conversation and suggest some concrete implementations.

Drop me a line

if you are interested in helping out or join us on

Tangler

for real-time chat.

Update

Elias has

written a follow up

discussing the motivations behind collecting this sort of data. I have also responded in his comments to further clarify my thoughts.

Particls in the Wall Street Journal

Thanks to Jeremy Wagstaff who has written up a great piece about Lifestreaming, Attention and Particls Attention Management.

He writes:

"Attention plays a complex role in this new world. Google quietly makes money from the data we unconsciously give out when we do anything online. But then there are the data we consciously put out when we post photos to Flickr, add a post to our blog, or send stream-of-consciousness messages to services like Twitter. Put all this stuff together and you have an "attention stream," painting a picture of what we are paying attention to during our day."

He goes on to explain Particls' role in the Attention Economy.

"Particls (www.particls.com) looks simple enough: a downloadable ticker that runs across the top of your screen, pumping you information. Nothing new about this; the difference lies in what information it presents, and how it appears. Instead of shoveling data at you, Particls tries to figure out what you're paying attention to."

Thanks for your intense curiosity in researching this story Jeremy and the great review of Particls.

Head on over to the WSJ site and read the full thing.

Rupert Murdoch on Media 2.0 "Media companies don't control the conversation anymore"

There is a statement from Rupert Murdoch about his impressions of Media 2.0. Let me comment between his comments (found here via Particls).

Special Report
Mixed Media
Rupert Murdoch 05.07.07

Traditional companies are feeling threatened. I say, bring on the changes.

Rather than adapt his traditional businesses, though, he seems anxious to buy himself out of the paradigm change (with acquisitions like myspace). Maybe this will work - maybe it wont.

Everyone knows that networking--once a face-to-face affair, sometimes captured in a Rolodex--is now worldwide, instant, and impervious to constraints of distance, time or cost.

However he has not recognized yet that Networking can not be contained within a walled garden. Myspace can continue to block widgets and architect its site to generate as many page views as possible - but in the end, open and transparent platforms that play nice will win.

Those of us in so-called old media have also learned the hard way what this new meaning of networking spells for our businesses. Media companies don't control the conversation anymore, at least not to the extent that we once did. The big hits of the past were often, if not exactly flukes, then at least the beneficiaries of limited options. Of course a film is going to be a success if it's the only movie available on a Saturday night. Similarly, when three networks divided up a nation of 200 million, life was a lot easier for television executives. And not so very long ago most of the daily newspapers that survived the age of consolidation could count themselves blessed with monopolies in their home cities.

He's using the right rhetoric here - "Big media does not control the conversation anymore". He alludes to the limited choice of the past vs. the hyperchoice of today and tomorrow. How will people make choices amongst this information overload?

All that has changed. Options abound. Fans of small niches can now find new content they could never before. Going elsewhere for news and entertainment is easier and cheaper than ever. And people's expectations of media have undergone a revolution. They are no longer content to be a passive audience; they insist on being participants, on creating their own material and finding others who will want to read, listen and watch.

He knows the language well - does he know its meaning? Participants don't just know what they want to read, listen and watch - they know they are not a commodity to be traded and disrespected. Just look at the recent Digg fiasco with the hex code. They brought that platform to its knees because they perceived that 'the man' had violated their rights.

The point is not that it's easy to find content elsewhere - to change the channel so to speak - but rather that its actually imperative that users have the ability to mix-and-match content. To personalize their experience. This doesn't mean adding a background to my myspace page - it means using the widgets and content I want on my social networking page, and having the right to share and remix content from Fox.

Participation is not sending in emails and changing background images - it's controlling the medium as well as the message.

Consequently the old media are threatened by the erosion of our traditional profit centers. Certainly we can't count on things like print classified advertising being around forever. Similarly, DVRs undermine the mainstay of broadcast television's business model: the commercial.

Nonetheless, it would be wrong to conclude from this that the age of content is over. On the contrary, people want content more than ever, and there is a role for companies that can provide good stuff--"good" being the operative word. Quality is more important than ever, because the marketplace is more ruthlessly competitive. Options are not merely one click of the remote away; devices undreamed of a few short decades ago are at least as tempting as a change of the channel.

Good content will always been desired and consumed. That doesn't mean we are willing to watch it on your schedule, or even in your container. It doesn't mean we don't want to remix it and share it on our own terms and on our own social networks - networks you don't own.

But what he misses here is that 'Good' is not the only criteria for consumption any more. Good was the way you stood out in the movieplex. Good is no longer good enough. What we need now is relevant - Personally Relevant.

While there will always be the blockbuster - the thing we all talk about around the water cooler (or on the social networks), the next big shift will be getting access to the personal stuff.

A video shot by my daughter on her mobile phone is not 'good' - at least not by Mr Murdoch's standards. It is grainy, low resolution and has 0 production values. But it is Personally Relevant.

Old media can survive--and thrive--in this new environment, but they must adapt. We must learn how younger generations of consumers prefer to receive their news and entertainment, and we must meet those expectations.

The good news is that we are learning--and fast. Take the type of media I know best--news. News is in more demand than ever, but the vast network of Internet-savvy news junkies want their news with several fresh twists: constantly updated, relevant to their daily lives, complete with commentary and analysis, and presented in a way that allows them to interact not just with the news but with each other about the news. They won't wait until six o'clock to watch the news on television or until the next morning to read it in isolation. This plainly provides a challenge for news providers but also an opportunity to be far more engaged with the audience.

He's right about all that. But he still seems to think that he can control all these distribution platforms. He still dreams of vertically integrated media production, distribution and monetization models where Fox owns the content, the platform and maybe even the device. Then they own your eyeballs as well.

Companies that take advantage of this new meaning of network and adapt to the expectations of the networked consumer can look forward to a new golden age of media. Far be it from me to suggest that either I or my company have all the answers. No one does. But the future of media is a future of relentless experimentation and innovation, accelerating change, and--for those who embrace the new ways in which consumers are connecting with each other--enormous potential.

Rupert Murdoch is chairman of News Corp.

As long as he remembers that the definition of 'Network' is 'The Internet' - the network of networks. Not the Fox Network.

I have singled Rupert Murdoch out here - only because he has had the vision to engage the issues, so I had his comments to pick on. I actually applaud him for joining the 'conversation'. At least he knows one is going on.

Where are the others guys?

Extending the conversation - From Fishbowl to Mainstream

Chris Brogan has a great post about reaching beyond our fishbowl to the mainstream. He writes:

I’m still convinced that we’re in a complete and utter fishbowl.

This might not be bad.

I think the trick is this: we’re VERY much where the old web world was, when people were logging on, creating Geocities accounts, and trying to learn how to change the background from olive to yellow. I think blogging is getting much closer to mainstream, especially as almost all the mainstream media outlets have succumbed and built their own blogs. This, by extension, gives us even more of a chance to make a difference and build our own blogs into something of quality.

Two of his points are 'Gather' and 'Outreach'. This is effectively what we are doing with the Media 2.0 Workgroup. If you are part of a Media 2.0 entity trying to reach out or a mainstream entity trying to reach in - let us know.

Another important aspect, of course, is to build products and message your marketing for audiences that don't know what RSS and Tagging is - much less appreciate the aesthetic qualities of rounded corners and gradients.

By the time the people in the center get to the edge, however, we will all be onto the next frontier. But that's ok of course.

Mix 07 Ray Ozzie Keynote - Winforms apps are dead

The Mix07 Keynote by Ray Ozzie was incredibility interesting for those of us in the software development community. Here are the highlights - some of which you may not have heard said in these explicit terms.

• Silverlight now enables the development of complete XAML based applications in a browser - they can be just as powerful as if they were installed on the target device - and they are lightweight enough to deliver over the network - on both Mac AND Windows.
  
  
• Those same applications can be packaged to run on the target device and outside the browser (both PC and Mobile Devices). In addition, the same tools and assets can be used to develop server-side business logic (web services etc).
  
  
• So this means you can use the same languages and tools to create technology that runs anywhere in the ecosystem.
  
  
• You can now make rich vector based (flash style) applications using dynamic languages AND object orientated programming - making Flash/Apollo and vanilla AJAX look like child's play.
  
  
• Just because they are child's play does not mean they are dead. People have used, and will continue to use, 'Good enough' solutions for many reasons.
  
  
• 95% of desktop apps (and scenarios that justify building winforms/desktop apps) will therefore die over time EXCEPT apps that require outside the browser notification or compact/persistent presentation. This excludes the browser itself of course.
  
  As shown by Apollo you can now build Photoshop as a web-based app - imagine what Microsoft is doing with Silverlight (Let me help you out - Office Online).
  
  
• Many of the demos shown are about creating customized players for streaming video. Do users want highly immersive media players that change from vendor to vendor? Or do they want a Joost that has a consistent user interface with plenty of cross-network functionality? The MLB.com demo for example, basically showed a Joost style user experience for a single site.
  
  Some scenarios might support it - but most users would prefer to be able to surf from provider to provider while keeping the same User Experience.
  

This increases the opportunity for 'Internet Operating System' infrastructure plays such as storage, contacts and, of course, a universal, personalized incoming events and notification pipeline.

Update:

Other coverage is on Techmeme

Robert Scoble writes:

"Jeff Prosise, co-founder of Wintellect. He told me that yesterday will be remembered as the day Microsoft rebooted the Web. Hyperbole? Maybe, but don't miss why he's excited: he's going to be able to take his .NET skills and make Web experiences that are going to be far beyond what you can do with HTML and AJAX."

He also writes

"Is it enough yet to say that Microsoft has an internet strategy? Not quite."

I think he's wrong there. They are just not spelling it out for us. The strategy is to reshape the Internet in their image. You know that emerging Internet operating system everyone is talking about? Well it will look like Minority Report. Just watch their intro graphics with people standing around touching holograms. And it will all be running on XAML and .NET.

These are the first pieces of the platform that will make Google Docs look like the shadow of an office suite that it is.

Blogs are dead - Participation is over

According to Valleywag and Technorati the number of active blogs have stalled at 15 million,

I guess that's the end of the inexorable and exponential expansion of participant created content?

I don't think so...

Blogs only represent a small fraction of what can be considered content creation and participation by...well... participants.

Other forms of content creation include comments, video, audio and lifestreams. Participation, however, includes an even broader set of 'gestures' such as clicking, voting and rating.

Web 2.0 and Media 2.0 are alive and well.

Web 2.0 and Media 2.0 destroying communities?

In a recent discussion on a show called 'Difference of Opinion' on ABC TV here in Australia, a panel and studio audience discussed the impact of Web 2.0 and Media 2.0 on community and 'Gen Y'.

While it was nice to see traditional media engaging the issue, most had very little idea what was really happening out here on the edge.

After the show, Chris Saad, Cody Robb and Nick Hodge joined a call to discuss the implications. The result was this recording.

Questions discussed include:

• Do online communities have the same value as offline communities?
• Do parents have a responsibility to control their kids on social networks?
• What role do teachers and schools play in education about ethics and morals?
• Are internet online problems just magnified manifestations of offline problems?
• Online identity vs. Offline identity?
  
• Chris' Twitter Habbits?
• What is Windows Messenger called this week?
• Privacy on the network
• Transition of old media and baby boomers into Media 2.0

Listen to the podcast

Show Links:

Tim Brunero - Ex Big Brother housemate and new media junkie