The Me Meme

Brian Caldwell over on EponymousX has written a fantastic and poetic post about the Me Meme.

He writes:

Our own personal lifestreams, or "public timeline's" if you prefer, are slightly more mundane that the one from Final Fantasy, however it can still be pondered in an analogous manner. Our lifestream threads together everything that we are. Where we go, what we say, who we interact with, how we express ourselves, concepts inside artwork that we create, symbolism that we identify. All can be considered "us" or "me" in some, hopefully non-banal, way.

We say "me" a lot in our lifestreams. Not always directly. Indirectly also. Off the top of our heads. Well thought out over hours of writing and editing. At the snap of the shutter on our iPhone. While visiting at parties and gatherings. By connecting/friending/following through social nets. Generating our APML wake and bow waves through the public timestream. We are the social seed for our downstream online and offline, everyone has a built-in personal wetware network and many people let this stream filter back online, forming a personal lifestream wake.

It's a great read full of all-too-familiar names and experiences. It reminds me of the little rant we posted at AreYouPayingAttention.com.

He also makes an interesting point. If the question of 'What do you do' becomes redundant at conferences, maybe we can move on to deeper conversations more quickly when we meet?

I know that I regularly talk with people I have never met. I trust them as much as people I have known in person for years. They are my advisors, my confidants, my partners and my friends.

The social consciousness is humming now. Can you feel it? Our Lifestreams and APML files are bursting at the seams. The best is yet to come. As our reach and reflection grows, maybe so too will our influence and insight into world affairs - both mundane and monumental.

Yes I love alliteration.

This whole advertising revenue thing could implode at any second!

Can I ask a stupid question? Is online advertising profitable... for the advertisers? (ok that was two stupid questions).

I have seen a LOT of content about how people can make money from advertising on their blog etc etc. But I have seen very little in the form of case studies or testimonials that the ads work for the advertisers.

Can someone point me to that info?

If we are not satisfying our advertisers then this whole advertising revenue thing could implode at any second.

Follow up: Making money in the long tail

Guy Kawasaki has posted a follow up to his post 'A review of my first year of blogging' which sparked a flurry of interest from bloggers because it revealed just how little Guy actually makes from advertising on his blog (and by implication, how little money there is in online advertising)

The new post - entitled 'The Short Tale: Much Ado about Not Much' goes further - explaining that he did not mean to cause any controversy and explained, if not for money, why exactly Guy blogs.

He says:

In case you’re interested, the reasons that I blog are:

1. To increase the likelihood that “two guys/gals in garage” with “the next Google” will come to Garage for funding.
   
2. To help companies and people that I (a) like, (b) have sometimes invested in, (c) am sometimes advising publicize their products and services. This is also known as “alignment of interest” as opposed to “conflict of interest.”
   
3. To be able to tell Web 2.0 entrepreneurs how full of shiitake they are if they think that advertising is a slam-dunk business model. Essentially, a Web 2.0 company would have to be 10,000 times better at selling advertising than me before it gets interesting.
   
4. To test ideas with “reality checks.” How many guys have 30,000-person focus groups?
   
5. To tap the “wisdom of the crowd.” For example, ideas for my next book. How many guys have 30,000 people providing new-product ideas?
   
6. To make meaning and fulfill my mantra of “empowering people.”

As I explained - I personally never imagined that individual bloggers would blog for the advertising revenue. Not successfully anyway.

In case you're interested - here's the reasons I personally blog here on the Touchstone blog.

1. To join the daily discussion about topics and issues I am passionate about.
   
2. To explain to our testers/users, partners, investors and anyone else who will listen why we should all be paying attention to Attention.
   
3. To keep everyone up-to-date about our challenges, goals and intentions with Touchstone (as guy says, how else can you get such a large focus group).
   
4. It helps me structure my thoughts and clearly express them for our team and the wider community to see.
   
5. To encourage people to connect with me if they have similar ideas or potential opportunities that could benefit us both.
   
6. To be heard...

The Disintegration of Reality – no really….

For better or worse, there is an emerging trend that goes beyond the web or media – the very fabric of reality is changing.

Reality is disintegrating. No wait hear me out.

Granular parts of our established systems are being dislodged from their containers and only reforming via temporary, loosely coupled connections.

Content is being disintegrated from the Page, TV and Radio via RSS and Microformats.
Functionality is being disintegrated from applications (loosely coupled smashups are starting to overshadow complete applications).

People are being disintegrated from families. Divorce is now common place and starting to lose its taboo. As a result families are forming all sorts of strange and lopsided combinations where ex’s and steps come together for special occasions and in support of ‘the children’. At all times, however, the individual seems to be achieving more freedom and importance than the ‘family unit’.

And finally (at least in my list of examples) people are being disintegrated from companies... People work from home or freelance more. They change jobs more. And most recently, via blogging and other online identity management tools, people are now building their own brands - their name.

They are establishing themselves as free agents of opinion, action and connections - they are forcing companies to treat them as valuable resources because they are, in fact, one of the scarcest.

Companies have always been about relationships first – who you know rather than what you know – however in an age of LinkedIn and blogging, a person’s individual worth (beyond their monetary compensation) is being measured, respected and leveraged like never before.

Media 2.0 Roadmap

I have been thinking a lot about 'Media 2.0' lately. So I quickly wrote up a roadmap from the distant past media landscape to our near future opportunities. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Distant Past (Local Radio Stations)

• Distribution: Costly, via radio towers and dedicated ‘wireless’ receivers
• Content: Local news and radio plays
• Advertising: Local sponsors
  

Past (National Radio Networks and TV Networks)

• Distribution: Costly (via radio and TV towers, TVs and Radios)
• Content: National shows targeted at demographic groups
• Production: Costly
• Audience: One way broadcast from the top to the masses
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by editors) is on the air – segmented by broad demographics
• Advertising: Local and National sponsors
  

Recent Past (Internet – Web 1.0)

• Distribution: Cheaper (via modems and PCs – unstructured content in HTML)
• Production: Costly (in terms of time and skills)
• Audience: One way broadcast from the top to the masses – now also on the web
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the editors) is on the air – segmented by more niche demographics
• Interaction: Interest groups and communities trapped in silos
• Advertising: Local and National advertisers splitting revenue across web, tv, radio.
  

Now (Internet – Web 2.0)

• Distribution: Mostly Cheap (existing TV, Radio towers and across multiple devices using the Internet – structured content via RSS)
• Production: Cheap (just click publish on your blog)
• Audience: Two way participation within the audience (‘the bottom’) with democratic editorial control in the grassroots
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the audience) as measured using services like Technorati, TechMeme and Digg etc. Segmentation in the mainstream continues by more thinly sliced Demographics)
• Interaction: Interest groups unbound by silos (due to RSS)
• Advertising: Context sensitive Ads targeted at the page – served by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
  

Coming (Media 2.0)

• Distribution: Cheap (across multiple devices using the internet as the ‘universal pipe’ – structured content via RSS). Aggregation is the main user interface.
• Production: Cheap (just click publish on your camcorder and mobile phone)
• Audience: The audience is gone, only participants are left: Two way participation with all stakeholders and democratic editorial control of what’s on the web and what’s on the air
• Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the participants and measured by services like Technorati, TechMeme and Digg) is played on air. Segmentation by niche interest groups.
• Relevancy: With hyperchoice, ‘What’s personally relevant’ becomes far more interesting that 'What's popular' – Audiences of one.
• Advertising: Ads targeted at the individual – served by aggregators

Can blogging create World Peace?

I was chatting to an old (as in long term - I would never call her old) friend of mine today and we got to talking about Politics and Justice and all those light weight things (as you do). We are both very interested in those topics.

We got to talking about how the latest wave of social software might help improve the world. I almost alluded to it in a recent post about Web 3.0 (*cringe*).

We came up with this interesting line of thought (if you look closely you could imagine a small green Muppet saying the words).

War is based on fear, fear is based on ignorance, ignorance is based on a lack of information, lack of information is based on bad/biased editorializing and/or audience apathy

So by that logic – perhaps if we can further empower the mainstream to share their unedited stories it might actually broaden our understanding and acceptance of each other - even those scary people over there (that place that is different from ours). Perhaps if we are able to connect in new and powerful ways governments will be forced to listen to the will of their people in a way never before experienced. Perhaps transparency in government will improve.

If this were to occur to a sufficient scale, would ignorance not begin to dissipate and interconnectedness grow? Would fear begin to give way to understanding of commonalities. Would wars and injustice based on fear become extinct?

Apathy may still be a problem – anyone got any suggestions?

It is probably far too idealistic and naive - Maybe wars are not based on fear but rather on energy crisis’s - I just thought that it was a fun piece musing late on a Saturday night.

From Conversations to Influence via Attention and Intentions

The Cluetrain Manifesto was a massive influence on me. It changed the way I think about my entire field from technology to marketing and public relations. Cluetrain was a revolution in my mind. It still sits next to my bed with little post-it notes sticking out of it where I marked down my favorite parts. There are almost as many post-it notes as there are pages.

Since then, Doc's (and his co-author's) writings, I feel, have inspired (or at the very least been validated by) the entire blogging/social/casual revolution.

The result has been an explosion of information. We have all become participants in the ecosystem of giving and getting attention. More importantly than that, however, there has also been an explosion of transparency, accountability, participation and genuinely participant focused technologies and media experiences. It has literally made the world a better place.

This movement has spawned entire fields of study and innovation starting at Attention Management, moving into Intentions and now the most recent blip on my radar - Influence.

I only started to consider Influence seriously when I discovered BuzzLogic. Their demo at demofall and their blog is interesting and insightful. They have added even more depth to the picture for me.

I love their app (based on what little I have seen) but better yet I love the philosophy. As the Knight Foundation would say "One Man Can Make a Difference". Perhaps in the remake of Knight Rider the quote will now state "One Blog Can Make a Difference".

Influencers are all around us. Being able to map the landscape will be a powerful tool indeed.

Another interesting development has been that Doc has given the Buzzlogic guys permission to post the original manifesto in wiki form so that the community can begin updating it for the next phase of our little revolution. What a nice thing to do.

I also noticed that Buzzlogic's tool sends email alerts based on various conditions being met. I wonder if they need a client-side alerting platform.