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

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?

Running out of RSS to subscribe to? Amazon has the answer

Amazon has broadened it's support for RSS. Even more stuff to subscribe to via Particls :)

I think it's time for a SubscriptionPlugin.

Thanks Amazon!

Update:
Paul saw my post and made an Amazon SubscriptionPlugin in a few seconds. Download it, unzip it and put it in your "[Particls installation folder]\SubscriptionPlugins" directory!

We will have to make the installation process easier for these - perhaps register a file type for the browser to recognize and route.

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.

Google needs notification

This is a great list of improvements to make Google Apps better.

Each section seems to have 'notification' listed in one form or another. Lucky there is Particls.

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

iPALS - Identity, Presence, Attention, Location, Status

Sam Sethi posts a fantastic post about Twitter, Attention and Information Overload.

He refers to Twitter as a great conversation tool to help reduce the friction and increase the pace of innovation by bringing participants closer together.

Some, however, have given Twitter credit for killing the aggregator and becoming the ultimate tool for incoming alerts and information.

Both Sam and I disagree.

He writes:

I think we are getting closer to the point in time where our social networks, search & discovery engines and the semantic web combine to provide us with said relevant timely information based on our current location, attention and status.

Sadly Twitter is not the answer, it is just another example of us trying to acquire better information faster from our trusted social network. In fact Twitter is just another disorganised stream of information for us to manage.

While Twitter helps to lower the barrier to getting a message out fast, it does not help you route incoming messages particularly effectively.

Think of Twitter as the outgoing pipeline. What's needed is an incoming pipleine. One into which we can put our Twitter stream, our friend's lifestreams, our favorite authors and the applications we track and through which we can route messages based on a number of criteria.

Sam describes these criteria as iPALS:

In the future to help us manage this vast array of data that has overloaded us with information, I envisage us trusting online services where we share our identity, presence, attention, location and status - i.e iPALS in exchange for timely relevant information

Well I’m Sam Sethi (identity) sat at my desk using my PC (Presence), whilst listening to Paul Weller, (Attention) writing this post, at home in sunny Cookham Dean (Location), but I’m busy so don’t disturb me (status). i.e iPALS

I love it. The pieces are emerging. It is now time to stitch them all together.

• Identity = OpenID + hCard
• Presence = Does anyone know a definitive Presence service?
• Attention = Jaiku (An aggregation of all your Attention data from Twitter and beyond)
• Location = Plazes
• Status = Anyone know a definitive status service?

So if we combine these services, we have what Sam calls an iPALS application. I call it Attention Management. Whatever it's called - it's the personalized incoming pipeline of your life.

We also like to call it Particls.

Announcement: APML Open Source Libraries in C#

In yet another milestone for the APML Workgroup and the APML format, we have published the first open source libraries for loading and manipulating APML files.

From the site:

APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.

The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests.

These libraries are a result of months of R&D and iteration by the Faraday Media development team and we donate them to the community in the spirit of open collaboration and mutual benefit. They are released under the extremely liberal Apache 2.0 license.

We encourage anyone who would like to support or modify the libraries to get in touch so we can help in any way we can.

My thanks to Ashley our CTO and Mike and Paul the two ninja programmers who have been involved with the library and the APML workgroup who's input has helped to create the 0.6 spec.

We look forward to seeing what new and interesting projects get created with this resource.

The repository can be found on Google Code.

Maybe professional journalism is dead?

The Scobleizer is once again (for the 495th time by his count) launched an attack against partial text feeds.

The most interesting part of his post, however, is the comments - in which he tells the guys at ZDNet that their content is good, but he would rather read coverage elsewhere because of their partial feeds.

The ZDNet guys claim they can't make money from full text - they need the traffic back to their page.

This comes back to a more long term question - how does one make money from the long tail.

In my post on the subject I quoted Chris Anderson who wrote:

Producers. Effect: Largely non-economic. I responded to a good Nick Carr post on this last year with the following: "For producers, Long Tail benefits are not primarily about direct revenues. Sure, Google Adsense on the average blog will generate risible returns, and the average band on MySpace probably won't sell enough CDs to pay back their recording costs, much less quit their day jobs. But the ability to unitize such microcelebrity can be significant elsewhere. A blog is a great personal branding vehicle, leading to anything from job offers to consulting gigs. And most band's MySpace pages are intended to bring fans to live shows, which are the market most bands care most about. When you look at the non-monetary economy of reputation, the Long Tail looks a lot more inviting for its inhabitants."

So four questions arise from this statement in the context of ZDNet and partial feeds.

1. Are ZDNet part of the long tail? After all, they publish mainstream IT news. Perhaps the long tail can be seen as replacing the head?
   
   
2. Is the Publishing/Advertising model dead as long as content, in its full form, is syndicated and repackaged by an aggregator resulting in little need for users to head back to the source and generate page views?
   
   
3. Will we tolerate (and can we monetize) ads in the feed? The ZDNet guys say feed ads do not pay the bills.
   
   
4. Do Aggregators have a social responsibility to somehow give back to producers?
   

This ties into another debate that has sprung up on Brian Oberkich's blog about his feed being used as part of a collective newspaper. He claims that it was OK with him until it seemed like the newspaper was running ads (which was against his CC) and he was being grouped with commentators he did not want to be associated with.

That page is, in essence, a single topic aggregator. What responsibility does it have to the publisher?

If professional publishing can't be monetized to sustainable levels, are we biting the hand that feeds us (as aggregators)? Or are we 'all the media' now and we don't need professional journalism?

Update: Brian says that the "Edge is not about content".

"You could always publish something to the Web. Now someone can acutally find it in real-time, relay it through their own attention signal systems (blogs (including link and tumblelogs), email, bookmarking services, social news sites, twitta, etc.) and help the collective swarm around things it finds useful."

Announcement: Track the Web 2.0 Expo using Particls

Can't make it to the Web 2.0 Expo? Keep in touch with a special Web 2.0 Expo edition of the Particls Client.

It has a special skin and is pre-set with all the feeds and the right Attention Profile so you can great real-time coverage of the event while you work.

The download is actually the full featured Particls client so you can re-skin it back to the standard skin or add-remove your own feeds and OPML after the expo is over.

More about Particls
Particls is an Attention Management Engine. Check out the screencasts to learn more how it works or check out the website.

Wondering how we did it? Watch a video of Particls (then Touchstone) being reskinned and pre-set in 4 mins here

Web 3.0 - Attention Management

I've written a few times about Web 3.0 before. I have been pretty dismissive to say the least. The definitions keep shifting and none of them particularly convince me that the paradigm change is sufficient enough to justify a version number change.

In recognition of that confusion, there has been a fun competition run by Read/Write Web for a one line description. As part of the converage, James Brown claims that Web 3.0 is actually about better metadata and smart agent-side filtering.

As an example - he cites Particls:

"But perhaps the next step is for it to analyse attention data, like which articles I delete and which I click through; then apply some clever filters appropriately. It looks like Google is on the way to doing this.

And then there's tools like Particls. Formerly called Touchstone, this is a "personalised news and alert service" which monitors the internet, your feeds and other information like your calendar and emails, learns which are important to you, and alerts you in different ways according to their importance."

I do think that intelligent filtering on the agent-side is important (what a surprise hey!) but I am not sure it's called web 3.0. It's called Personalized Aggregation, or Personal Relevancy or Attention Management - and it can fit neatly into the current web.

And next... it needs to move into Media 2.0

Conversation Economy

There is a fantastic post about the Conversation Economy on BusinessWeek by David Armano.

There is really nothing more I can add to it. It is beautifully written.

Here's an excerpt:

"Conversation architects move marketing beyond the idea of one-way messaging. Traditional marketing efforts were founded on this tried-and-true format and are still prevalent within the industry. Consider the example of a typical creative brief template, which usually says something like, "What are we trying to communicate?" Can you can see the old-world residue in the word "communicate"? It lacks the dimensions of experiencing something and having an ongoing two-way dialogue. "What are we trying to communicate?" implies a one-way conversation. Maybe we should ask ourselves: "How can we facilitate?""