The web-wide social network

Ross Dawson has an excellent summary of a Gartner presentation on the Distributed Social Web by David Cearley. A web where each participant is their own central node on a web-wide social network. It is the only natural conclusion of the vision of Data Portability.

It will be made possible by a series of futurists, technologists, philanthropists and engineers developing core building blocks like OpenID, oAuth, APML, PortableContacts, XMPP, RSS/ATOM, OPML, Microformats and more.

It will be commercialized by a series of entrepreneurial start ups with stars in their eyes running in and around the feet of the giants who are each fighting each other to keep up. Startups like JS-Kit.

It will be fueled by traditional and not so traditional media companies, steered by young, idealistic intrapraneurs, who are willing to take a bet in order to stake their claim on the next generation of social networking and human communication.

It will be monetized by a recognition that one can't monetize word-of-mouth. Instead Attention will emerge as the ultimate way to measure, discover and interact with participants. See Faraday Media.

It will be popularized by bloggers, smart IT journalists and conference organizers who understand the importance of open over closed.

We have already started to see a preview of the world to come via the early attempts at rudimentary aggregators and proprietary data portability implementations. This is just the beginning of the beginning.

For a more details around the emerging trends, check out Ross' post.

Time to get started

In times of change, new opportunity is always created. Always. Many have written on the opportunity created by this economic downturn. Here are some of the excerpts:

Mick from Pollenizer writes:

1. You don't need a boom to grow. 2. Better access to great people. 3. A slump doesn't stop spending, and it increases in some areas. 4. There is still money available if you look hard, and you deserve it. 5. The community is still here to support you. 6. The big guys cut back on R&D letting you do the innovating. 

Paul Graham writes:

The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.

When Microsoft and Apple were founded. ... If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it's rounding error compared to the founders. ... So maybe a recession is a good time to start a startup. It's hard to say whether advantages like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn't matter much either way. It's the people that matter. And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now.

And Rajesh Jain writes:

For entrepreneurs, they need to forget about the craziness around and just focus on the business and market. The stuff that's happening has little or no impact on the business of most early stage companies — in most cases, their revenue base is too small to see any negative impact from "market conditions." So, any sales person giving market slowdown as a reason for not meeting targets needs to be given a talking to!

I also think this is a great time to get alternative / disruptive ideas to consumers and businesses. Everyone is much more receptive to  discussions about solutions which provide better ROI. (And without a simpler, cheaper solution, entrepreneurs don't really have much of a chance anyways.)

Getting started today with the right idea is indeed an attractive prospect. If, however, you are two years in to your company and looking for extra funding without real traction or poof points, times are going to get very tough.

 

For startups in this category, I would suggest taking a long hard look at the value you bring to the table, and finding a partner who can absorb and propel your assets through these tough times.

  

I was interviewed fo the NYT on Friday on this very subject. I suggested the same thing to the reporter.

 

More conversation over on Silicon Beach as well (I got many of my snippets from there).

 

Who is JS-Kit?

The news today is that JS-Kit just closed a $3.6m round of funding and I have joined the company as a Strategic Advisor. I'd like to take this moment to explain who JS-Kit is, what it could be, and why I decided to get involved.

First, I get offered a lot of advisory roles or full time jobs. It's always very tempting to help entrepreneurs pursuing their dreams.

The reality is, however, between my company Faraday Media, my work at the DataPortability project, APML Workgroup, Media 2.0 Workgroup and other projects there simply isn't enough bandwidth left to give the attention required.

The JS-Kit opportunity is different. When I first met Khris Loux (The CEO of JS-Kit) it was clear very quickly that we had a unique connection and a shared vision for a distributed Personal Web. As a result I have broken my own rule and accepted the offer to consult with/advise the company on a formal basis. It will be a significant commitment and take up a large part of my time.

The company he has quietly built over the last 2 years reflects our shared vision and its success is unmatched in the marketplace. With more than 550,000 registered sites, JS-Kit is the largest provider of light-weight plug in social features on the web. More importantly, though, it has no destination site. A philosophical choice that allows it to execute on a strategy of powering the edge to get more social - and more personal - without siphoning traffic back to a proprietary center.

JS-Kit technology powers some of the biggest sites on the web - with more to be announced soon.

This combination of scale and a focus on the edge makes the company uniquely placed to build something very special.

There are a number of challenges ahead for the company though - challenges of which Khris and the team are all too aware.

The name is not great! It was the name of a prototype product that became very successful very quickly despite not being ready for prime time so it sorta stuck. Blame Nick Gonzalez for writing it up in Techcrunch only days after it was put live for preliminary testing (just kidding I love Nick in a manly platonic sort of way)

Adoption is easy, but customization (it's possible to make the widgets unrecognizable from the default style) is far too hard to do for average users.

The design is Web 1.0 at best. The site, brand and products lack a cohesive visual language and a modern look and feel.

These are just some of the things I will be helping to change over the coming months. The funding round also allows the team to execute on these opportunities quickly. These changes will be a precursor to a much broader strategy that we hope will delight users, empower publishers and surprise the industry.

In the mean time though, Faraday Media is still very much alive and kicking with both my involvement and the involvement of my best friend and co-founder Ashley Angell. I believe the core technologies developed in its labs will change the web. Faraday Media and JS-Kit will continue their business development activities and my role will help to shepherd the process.

So too is the DataPortability project under the stewardship of the stellar new steering group lead by none other than Daniela Barbosa.

So in this time of Economic woes, failing companies, staff layoffs and uncertain times I am proud and honored to be part of a team that is continuing to have a sustainable and positive impact on the web and actually growing the opportunity for a distributed personal ecosystem.

So now I'm involved, I'd like to encourage you to try out the tools on your sites and blogs and send me feedback directly. I'd like to start a conversation with you to improve the company and the web together.

Also follow Me, Khris and Nancy on Twitter!

Coverage has already started

• Techcrunch
• Next Web
• InformationWeek
• Cnet
• Download Squad
• Web Ware
• Read/Write Web
• RedHerring

Revolution of Me Chapter 3: Family 2.0 - Continued

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

Family 2.0

IMPLICATIONS OF THE CLUSTER

TABOO AND BAGGAGE

Marriage is a highly emotional subject for many. Our initial instinct when asked ‘Is an increasing divorce rate a normal and healthy trend’ is to scream no! How can it be?

When people get divorced they are hurt and betrayed. They leave with emotional baggage and are forever affected by the painful experience. “No” seems like the only obvious answer.

Without passing judgment one way or another however, consider that many of the downsides of divorce outlined above are actually not from the act of divorce, but rather our impressions and social taboos associated with it.

Social expectations and pressures result in many feeling a great deal of pain when trying to make the decision to separate. Once the separation occurs a lot of animosity and anger is based not on the failures of the other person, but rather on the failure of the marriage, wasted time and other external factors.

Besides the normal feelings of losing a long term loving relationship, perhaps a change in social dogma to families as flexible clusters of people who love each other, some who might have been married at one time or another, would improve the resulting fallout from divorces. Perhaps if the act of disolving a marrige was more normalized, the time would not be considered wasted, but rather well spent with a partner - a learning and growing experience for both.

Similarly, if parents and adults recognize families as more flexible clusters and behave accordingly, children would also experience less emotional turmoil when relationships change and evolve.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

See you in NY and Vegas

I will be heading to NY this coming week (Starting Sep 15) to speak at Web 2.0 Expo and Vegas to hang out at BlogWorldExpo over the weekend (Starting Sep 19). Please drop me a line if you'd like to meet up to chat.

The mythical value of data lockin

When talking to people about Data Portability there is a couple of questions that always gets asked first.  

Why would a vendor allow users to leave their service?

Why make it easy for users to take the preacious data you have about them and use it on other sites?

or...

What is the business justification for letting data walk out the door?

You spent a lot of time and energy to get users to sign up and give up their data right?

My answer always consists of a number of parts. There are a number of reasons why vendors should get involved in an open ecosystem of data interchange. User respect, reduced barrier to entry, reduced network fatigue and more.

Today, however, I'd like to focus on one particular reason why the value of Data Lockin is a myth.

Here is a diagram that represents the data you have about your user. 100%. Awesome right? You have a complete view of the proprietary data you have managed to collect about your user.

Have you ever considered, however, that your user's data actually looks like this?

Even if you are Google, and you know every search your users do, every document they write, every chat they have - you still don't know their facebook social graph. You don't know their tweet stream. You don't know the books they bought on Amazon.

Your view of your user's data pales in comparisson to their complete data set.

Not to mention the data you think you have is out-of-date weeks after you aquire it. Interests change, friends come and go, projects, assignments and jobs change and much, much more.

So, Data Portability is not about letting your users 'walk out' of your service. Data Portability is about enabling, empowering and encouraging your users to bring all their data with them, to connect your data to the rest of their data ecosystem and to continue to refresh and maintain the data on an ongoing basis.

The value of Data Lockin is a myth. Data Portability is an opportunity to have true visibility into a user's friends, interests, content and comments.

Are you thinking about joining the data web?

Revolution of Me: Chapter 3: Family 2.0

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

INTRODUCTION

Unshakeable family units have given way to an increase in constantly evolving family clusters.

GETTING A DIVORCE

If you return to the core truth about Marriage, it is an institution designed to lock two people into a contract for the sake of raising children in a stable, predicable and balanced environment. It is a container for building a successful life and offspring together in a family unit.

The institution has its roots in ancient history when work was hard (and potentially far from home) and survival was even harder. People had limited choices for partnership (mostly inside their immediate geographic area), life expectancies were short and life moved very slowly.

In modern times, in developed countries, life looks very different. Work is not always hard or far away. In a lot of cases it can even be done from home. Survival is not as hard. Technologies and medicines have ensured that life spans average around 80 years and dense cities and the broad Internet access has created a hyper-choice for companionship.

Is life better? Who’s to say? Perhaps our fast pace, shallow connections and increased life spans have only served to further isolate us from real relationships. The purpose of this text is not to judge.

It is clear, however, that the contract of Marriage now exists in very different times.

It seems natural, then, that Marriage as an institution (a container) seem to be changing shape as well.

From Wikipedia article about ‘Divorce’: 

“In many developed countries, divorce rates increased markedly during the twentieth century. Among the states in which divorce has become commonplace are the United States, Canada, South Korea, and members of the European Union, with the exception of Malta (where all civil marriages are for life, because civil divorce is banned). In addition, acceptance of the single-parent family has resulted in many women deciding to have children outside marriage, as there is little remaining social stigma attached to unwed mothers in some societies. Japan retains a markedly lower divorce rate, though it has increased in recent years.”

So with changing social pressures, perhaps a change in the success rate of the basic social contract of Marriage is both healthy and expected adjustment? Perhaps a change in definition from a formal container into more of a loose cluster of familial associations will ultimately serve our new living conditions better.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0 - Continued

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

OPPORTUNITIES FOR EMPLOYERS & COMPANIES

PERSONAL BRANDS

These changes highlight how the container known as ‘The Corporation’ is now disintegrating into individual, personal brands.

As a result, staff are increasingly working from home offices, and changing jobs more frequently. This is not necessarily a bad thing for employees who are able to find positions that keep them passionate and engaged.  It is indeed ‘The Revolution of Me’ because the individual ultimately benefits.

It can, however, become a burden on corporations as they continually try to compete not just for market share, but for the right people and talent to fulfill their HR needs.

The key, in fact, is to stop considering staff as ‘Human Resources’. They are no longer commodities. The corporation needs to redefine its role from one of an all encompassing entity to a loose affiliation of individual partners who are focused on common goal.

Corporations need to start considering staff as partners and service providers. Staff must provide quality services to the corporation, and the corporation must have clear, reciprocal value propositions for its partners.

Or partners will move on… or worse.

CREATE PASSIONATE PARTICIPANTS THAT BECOME EVANGELISTS

It’s not all bad news for Corporations though, because as partners move around, they take your message with them (as well as your corporate secrets – but that’s another story).

If you treat your partners well and they remain passionate about your message, they become evangelists.

Evangelists create more evangelists – and evangelists are free PR departments. Nothing is as powerful as a personal recommendation and an impassioned rant from a friend who tells you all about a product or service they just discovered. If markets are conversations, then Evangelists keep the conversation on topic. Hopefully your topic.

The secret for business in an increasingly personal world is really not a secret at all. It’s a basic truth. Build a great product or service and people will pay attention. Don’t – and they won’t care or will actively resist you. As many are now starting to understand, the best form of marketing is building a great product.

If however, your partners don’t feel passionate about your company and its products, then you can end up with brand atrophy on a grass roots level.

Huge marketing budgets can only stem the tide and generate so much buzz until the increasingly efficient word-of-mouth networks reveal the truth.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0 - Continued

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDIVIDUALS

DEVELOP YOUR OWN BRAND

With individuals in a company becoming increasingly visible, the container we once thought of as “the corporations” – an entity with a single, homogenized voice - is now disintegrating into a chorus of loosely coupled individuals.

As a result, individuals are starting to (either deliberately or not) create an identity for themselves that goes far beyond that of their employer or their resume. Their own personal brand.

Try it. Do a Google search for your name and you will begin to see an emerging digital identity – a living resume of your online legacy. This is especially true in the IT world where early adopters have rushed to try new Web 2.0 tools. It will become increasingly true in most industries everywhere.

You’re resume is now just a starting place. Not only will employers vet you with Google, but they will increasingly expect to have heard of you through their social networks and online interactions. They will check your LinkedIn profile and see how many friends you have on Facebook or Twitter.

Those who have made a lasting and visible online impact with unique and relevant things to contribute to their niche have created a personal brand and have a real and significant advantage in the job market.

Similarly, corporations who look for and recruit these personal brands will be able to make better hiring decisions, and put themselves in a position to positively influence their partners and customers.

SURFACING NETWORK VALUE

One of the inherent results of individuals communicating outside the boundaries of their corporate containers more regularly, especially on the Internet, is that their network of influence becomes visible.

Your LinkedIn contacts, your blog comments, your Skype list and other recorded forms of connection and collaboration can now be measured and valued.

Consider that while your resume details your level experience and qualifications, your online interactions demonstrate your value as an influencer – and individual brand.

This, then, has implications for salaries, hiring strategies, bonus packages and more.

Increasingly (and appropriately) corporations will have to factor in this reality as a significant part of an individual’s potential contribution and value to the corporation. And pay them accordingly.

JOB SATISFACTION

The trend for increased individual visibility in the marketplace has both positive and negative effects on lifestyles and job satisfaction.

Where once corporations and PR departments shielded staff from the burden of after-hours support, spin and general customer hand-holding – now staff are increasingly tasked with taking a personal interest in the success of their products, services and customers.

This will, of course, result in longer work hours, added stress and a general change to the way most people approach their work and home life – and the boundaries between.

On the flip side, however, by extending their reach of influence and creating their own personal brand, employees have the opportunity to become more than just commodities. To set their own terms and find employers that respect their capacity for community engagement.

This careful ballancing act changes the relationship between employer and employee to one of master and subordinate to more one of partnership and mutual respect. In the end, though, corporations themselves may give way to loosely coupled groupings of specialized individuals who are determined to get something done.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0 - Continued

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

THE CHANGING WORKPLACE

JOB DESCRIPTIONS CHANGES

Remember when the PR, Sales and Support departments handled most of the external communication with customers? They always knew the right thing to say.

The problem now, however, is, the right thing, is not what customers and users want to hear. They want to hear the real thing.

If you write the code for your software company, then your users want to hear why you made the architecture decisions you made. They want to know why that bug occurred. They want to know what you think of the latest software innovation.

If you sing in a band, they want to know what inspires you. They want to know what it’s like living on the road – meeting other celebrities. They want to know about the emotional journey you’re on and how it informs your music.

If you’re an accountant they want to know what you think about new legislation proposals, new accounting practices, the latest accounting scandals and your ideas for corporate governance and account keeping.

And on it goes. For almost any job or industry you can think of, people want to have a personal connection with their service providers and they want honest, ongoing conversation.

You are no longer just the programmer, celebrity, accountant or knowledge worker. You are also the best person to speak with authority about your niche in the world. You are your own PR department. Except we don’t want to hear PR speak – we want you to listen, and we want you to hear our reply. We want a dialogue.

Blogs are the most obvious way these sorts of interactions are occurring; however there are also social networks, wikis, forums, newsgroups and more.

Add it to your Job Description. Clear it with the PR department. Make sure your boss knows. Read books about corporate blogging and the social media revolution. A good place to start is with the “Cluetrain Manifesto”, and then move onto “Naked Conversations”.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

BUSINESS 2.0

Introduction

Further Reading: The themes of this section are explored in more details at these locations: The Starfish and the Spider

---

Customers, employees, markets and corporations are increasingly speaking in casual voices.

This phenomenon was thoroughly predicted and discussed in the book “The Cluetrain Manifesto”.

To summarize, The Cluetrain Manifesto predicted the blogging and social media revolution whereby the blank, benign committee vetted language of “The Corporation” would give way to increasing customer/market demand to hear real answers in a normal, casual and conversational dialogue with individuals inside a corporation.

The book encourages corporations to enable their staff to engage with markets on a one-to-one basis to provide authentic engagement.

Now that blogging and other social tools have emerged and are becoming increasingly common place, the Clutrain’s predictions have become an accepted reality. As a result, a number of other trends are emerging that continue the theme of the disintegration from containers.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Revolution of Me: Chapter 1: Media 2.0 - Bloggers Vs. Journalists

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

BLOGGING VS. JOURNALISM

Comparing Blogging and Journalism is like comparing Text (print) and Video (TV). Where there is a change in medium there is always a change in message - or at least the way the message is composed, shaped, delivered and consumed. Blogging has had the same effect on the journalism world. Neither is particularly worse or better and neither will kill the other.

Before digging much deeper, it must clarified that there are a broad spectrum of bloggers; even broader than the spectrum of journalists. The definition of blogging includes kids keeping journals about their lives on MySpace right through to serious professionals who investigate and report on news much like traditional journalists.

The reality, however, is that irrespective of the kind of blogger or their intentions (personal gratification, personal brand building or even making money by building an audience), the result is often the same. An individual telling a passionate audience a very personal story. A story filled with bias, timeliness and opinion. A story that is published in near-real time and is open to participation by the audience.

Often a blogger will connect with a very small audience. In the case of a young girl on Myspace, she is only reaching her friends and family. In the case of a tech blogger he or she is probably only reaching the small community of readers they have managed to pull together. The fact is, though, that the writer has connected with his audience on a very personal level. Their style, substance and 'news' often resonates in ways that mainstream, mass-market news never can.

Because the salience of news is not determined by its impact on the world, but rather the impact on you - personally. Your daughter doing well at a school play is probably the most important news of your day.

The result is that blogging often has a total lack of objectivity and is often done by 'amature' reporters.

Why is the absence of objectivity and saturation of amature reporting such a desirable thing to so many people? Because the growing social media population implicitly understands that bias has always existed, that we have always told stories to each other (without the need for intermediaries) and that people are in the best position to tell their own story. Story telling is a basic human need.

An employee working in a company can blog about their strike better than a reporter can. A CEO involved in a controversy can tell his side of the story with more passionate and verve than an impartial reporter. So can his shareholders.

The characters in these stories now have a voice.

There will always be a place for high level reporting however. There will always be individuals who specialize in packaging the bigger stories for a broader audience. Even still, the existence of personal reporting and storytelling can and must play an increasing part in the process of composing these overviews.

In this new storytelling ecosystem, mainstream media companies have an opportunity to play the role of human-powered aggregators. To encourage their communities of interest to submit their perspectives for aggregation into a broader story.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Revolution of Me: Chapter 1: Media 2.0 - Continued

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

MAKING COMPARISONS

In this section I will write in the voice of Media 2.0 participant. Why? Because we are all Media 2.0 Participants.  I will compare and contrast the practices of old media against the expectations and demands of the participant.

OBSERVERS VS. PARTICIPANTS

Observers sit on their couch and surf channels. Participants surf the web. Observers are sampled by Neilson boxes. Participants can be carefully monitored – each and every one. They click to watch and click away just as quickly as soon as they lose interest. The act of clicking, while seemingly small, is profound. It reveals what Neilson boxes only hint at. It’s a gesture of Attention - or of being ignored.

Professional content producers think about media production in terms of creating and distributing content – usually at great cost and with high production values. We need to broaden our definition of production. Production and participation can now take the form amateur journalism (blogging), amateur radio (podcasting) and amateur video (video podcasting).

Uncomfortable? It doesn’t stop there. The definition of production is broader still. Commenting on a piece of content is an act of content creation. So is voting. So is clicking. So is browsing the web.

By an act of clicking, or linking, or sharing, participants are co-creating their media experiences. They are changing the face of their own personal front pages.

PASSIVE VS. ACTIVE

In more traditional media, broadcasters told us when to watch, and what to watch. They selected the programming and scheduled it on their own timetable. Online, we decide the schedule. We decide the format and the presentation.

We don’t want to watch it on your website; we want to watch it on ours. We don’t want to navigate your menu, we want to link to it directly. We don’t want to check back for updates, we want the content to come to us. We don’t want to use your rating system; we want to invent our own. We don’t want to listen to what we’re told; we want to tell you what we thought.

MONOLOGUE VS. DIALOGUE

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 share your message, is us.

MAINSTREAM VS. THE LONG TAIL

Are you an editor? Do you have final say on what appears on your broadcast, on your site, in your magazine? Does your publication deal with broad categories of things? Is it for the mainstream – the masses, the lowest common denominator? You lose.

We are sick of hearing a little about everything and not really knowing anything. You constantly miss-represent or gloss over the real facts. We don’t trust you anymore. We are not the mainstream, we are individuals. We want to know things – real things – not just the things you think are worth sharing.

They call us ‘The Long Tail’. Don’t know what that is? Read the book by the same name. In short, The Long Tail is the opposite of everything the mainstream is. Amazon, eBay, Google, YouTube and many others have made a fortune by understanding how the tail works.

If you want to tell us about cars, we want to know about engines. If you want to tell us about engines, we want to know about pistons. If you want to tell us about pistons, we want to know about rivets.

Get specific or get out. Get intimate or go away.

YOUTUBE GENERATION

The YouTube generation is all this and more. YouTube caught lightening in a bottle because it allowed the audience to become the publishers. It allowed the viewers to become the editors of the front page. It allowed us to watch what we wanted when we wanted. A click was the most powerful thing around.

But YouTube is still only part of the way there. They still trap our personal profiles and content in their own data warehouses – their silos. Next up – even more user control. Control of our identities, our own profiles, our own content and our own value.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Revolution of Me: Chapter 1: Media 2.0

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

THE AUDIENCE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

There is no more audience. There are no more users. There are only participants. Participants in a human scale network.

Participants do not passively consume what an author, creator, director, developer, editor, critic or media outlet has to publish. They do not accept the authority. They do not sit silently ready to have their eyeballs converted into cash.

Participants participate. They create their own original information, entertainment and art. They remix their own version of mainstream pop culture - copyrighted or not. They post their thoughts, publish their fears and fact check every announcement faster than any newsroom. They share with their friends to discover the quirky and interesting, making it an instant blockbuster - at least for 15 minutes.

Participants have ideas to be declared. Individually they are a market of one. Collectively they are a trend, a publishing powerhouse and a voice to be heard. A voice that has something to say.

Participants have changed the way media is published and interactions are monetized. But more broadly and importantly than that, they have changed the flow of global information from top down to bottom up. They are changing the tone and tempo of the conversation.

Elvis? Who is he? The audience who has left the building. The only people left are fellow participants. We are all authors, creators, directors, developers, editors, critics and media outlets. We are a million voices saying one thing - listen to me.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Open Web Foundation

Tomorrow, David Recordon will announce the Open Data Foundation at OSCON Open Web Foundation at OSCON.

As a co-founder of the DataPortability project, I'd like to be the first to welcome the Open Web Foundation to the conversation that was crystallized by the project early this year.

It seems like the foundation is well placed to provide a much needed level of oversight and legal protection for fledgling open standards. These standards will ultimately contribute to the 'data portability' vision of an inter-operable, standards-based web of data. In our investigations of the various standards, this has been a key concern for us and we feel encouraged people are stepping up to remove this potential roadblock. there is enormous value in getting more people involved in working towards a vision we all share, and for that reason I am genuinely excited by this development.

Two points to note however. I have always had concerns about using the term 'Open' when describing data - it sometimes invokes fears of a lack of privacy. Also, exclusive councils are somewhat of a dichotomy which don’t seem to be in keeping in dealing with 'open' technologies. Both these concerns, however, should not overshadow the value of a group of people working towards a vision we all share. For example I'd hope that the group is open to standards not developed by the founding individuals and companies.

We believe that governance is at the center of making these kinds of initiatives truly open and aligned with our shared visions of an open web. As such the DataPortability Project has ratified a radical new governance model that allows maximum participation while maintaining agility and accountability. This consolidates months of experience in managing a large, high-profile community, to go beyond a "benelovent dictatorship" or smoke filled rooms towards total transparency and community participation.

I have personally received a number of requests from other groups to learn from our model. With this in mind, I think there would be value in abstracting our governance model and providing it as a sort of 'open source' implementation of Roberts Rules for distributed, asynchronous groups that other global and transparent projects could use and contribute to.

Further, as per our governance framework, we have introduce a deliverable focused "Taskforce" model, whereby anyone in the community can create a Taskforce that fits with the goals of the DataPortability project to promote data portability in the community. Some Taskforces can be made official by the Steering group and will, as such, become responsible for official deliverables of the DataPortability Project.

So far a 'Vision' Taskforce has been created to describe our definition of 'Data Portability'. Also a 'Status Grid' Taskforce to develop and maintain a grid of vendor compliance with various open philosophies. This was inspired by Marc Canter at the Data Sharing Summit and will be lead by Daniela Barbosa. We expect a number of new Taskforces to spring up with the common goal of promoting data portability throughout the technical and mainstream communities.

It's exciting times for the web. We are watching the dawn of the data web emerge before our eyes, which is finally bringing together multiple efforts under simple memes to capture the attention of the mainstream. It will have as profound an impact on the world as the document web and social web before it.

I look forward to continuing the journey with all of you.

Revolution of Me: Overview

As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

OVERVIEW

In recent years The revolution of Me has increased in tone and tempo as new technologies help us to better visualize and broaden our human scale network. Technology is actually a key driver of disintegration.

Technology allows us to find and communicate with more people at once. It helps us to reduce the cost of distribution to, in some cases, zero. It helps us bypass mediators and magnify the once insignificant to make it (seem?) profound. It helps us to visualize broad patterns and it can also cause us to lose ourselves in the noise.

In effect, technology has changed our perception of things while also giving us the power to far exceed our grasp. With this new found power, we find new economies of scale that diminish the need for our containers and enable greater personalization.

Continuing with the examples of Marriage and Music; We now have access to more potential mates, more potential temptations, more potential opportunities for travel, more work pressures and more distractions than ever before. Our exposure to more content and greater voyeuristic insight into other people’s lives has demystified our social structures to the point where people feel overwhelmed with choices for a partner, more distracted by travel, work and entertainment and more aware of how taboos and social conventions don’t always apply.

In addition to these the social changes, technology simply allows us to be in close contact from greater distances. The idea that people had to live in the same home in order to nurture and connect to each other is losing value for many. The result is an almost global selection pool.

Music has been affected by technology in other ways. It is now economically feasible to distribute music at almost no cost. The cost of a single download pales in comparison to shelf space in a record store, packaging, shipping and materials. Music production has also decreased in cost dramatically to the point where anyone with a computer can make a song. With the barrier to entry, production and distribution reduced to next to nothing record labels are being forced to compete in other ways.

Shipping individual songs electronically now costs the same as shipping the whole album. With access to more customers, artists and record companies are forced to cater more to individual tastes of audiences who now except to pay only for what they love. And there is no shortage of music to choose from.

So as we see in these two very different examples, technology has had a profound effect in creating a personalization revolution.

It is important to note that, in this text, I do not propose to pass judgment on the trends, only highlight them. For some, the breakdown of the family container of Marriage may be horrifying. There may be plenty of psychological, spiritual or economic reasons why this trend is not constructive for society. Or maybe not. This does not change the reality that the trend is indeed occurring.

What follows is a more detailed exploration of these two examples, as well as many others in the areas of Media, Business, Politics, Family and War.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Introducting the "Revolution of Me"

I've had a book outline kicking around in my head for more than a year now and I have posted most of it to a wiki page. I thought I might also publish parts of the outline here from time to time to get feedback in the comments. So here's the first try.

Except from "Revolution of Me" - A book outline by Chris Saad

INTRODUCTION

Our lives have many containers. Containers group things together so that they can be managed, distributed or understood more easily. Some of these containers are very old. Marriage for example, is a container of individuals who have a common goal for creating a life together. Some containers were created more recently. Albums, for example, are a container for individual songs compiled together for easy marketing and distribution.

These containers, however, are starting to disintegrate into their constituent parts. Marriages, for example, are starting later in life and more frequently ending in divorce. They are very often turning into dynamic combinations of steps and halves. Album sales are giving way to songs sold one at a time on iTunes and played on iPods.

This disintegration takes many forms and touches many aspects of our lives. The effects can be both positive and negative. A common result, however, is an increased emphasis on empowering an individual to make more granular choices as a free agent.

In the case of Marriage, individuals are now less likely to tolerate unhappy circumstances or bad pairings for the good of the family unit. They are choosing themselves - their individual needs - over the container.

In the case of iTunes, individuals are now able to have more personalization when choosing the songs they buy. They don’t have to buy a whole album just to get the 4 songs they really like. In fact, they can fill their iPods with just the songs they love.

In these two examples, we see two ends of a broad spectrum of changes occurring all around us as containers disintegrate and life becomes more personal. I call this disintegration process and the resulting personalization “The Revolution of Me”.

In this text I propose to highlight some examples of disintegration occurring in our social, political and economic containers, and examine how it results in greater personalization. My personal interest is in Technology, so I will tend to focus on anecdotal evidence in my field of interest. It is my hope that others will contribute to the text to fill in the blanks, provide supporting evidence and expand the other sections.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

Speaking at Future Of Media Summit 2008

Are you in Sydney or the Bay Area? If so - come join me, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur and our host Ross Dawson at the Future of Media Summit 08. A Cross-continental conference. Otherwise track #fom08 on the various social networks.

May Monthly Report for DataPortability Published

Daniela has done an amazing job with the May DataPortability Project report. Be sure to check it out.

8 ways to sabotage an organization

Phil Wolff posted this into one of our chat rooms today - I thought it was very interesting and timely. David Weinberger citing instructions from a 1944 manual on how to sabotage a business.

1. Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expdite decisions.
2. Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per­ sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
3. When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
5. Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.
6. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
7. Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason­able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
8. Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­ diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Pretty smart tactic hey? Stuff of leadership.