When Betaworks’ John Borthwick mentioned on the latest Gillmor Gang an analysis of the speculation surrounding Obama’s Bin Laden takeout announcement before the late night speech last Sunday, I had to look it up.
Check it out. There’s an underlying pitch in it for SocialFlow, a Betaworks company, but that is OK with me since it is a subtle pitch and it tells a tale you won’t hear elsewhere about social media reputation and how news takes shape online. It swirls around in little eddies that gather force and sometimes whoosh into the Main Stream.
Crazy how important Twitter has become in the news system, isn’t it?
It is becoming important for everything, not just news, though some voices are still absent. Funny, I will rail all day against curmudgeons who diss Twitter, but I’ll make a confession: I am glad I don’t see David Simon pimping each episode of his show in my stream. But maybe he would not use Twitter in that way; I’d like to think so.
What does my pleasure in Simon’s abstinence say about Twitter? Maybe that even people like me, a four-year user of the service, still find it vaguely trivial on the whole, increasingly promotional, self-centered. Yeah, it’s pretty much a mirror of the culture, and I suppose that is its value.
As a huge fan of several HBO original series, which are eminently rewatchable, I like having access to the complete archives of favorite shows. Comcast’s OnDemand chooses for me—only letting me at selected episodes of selected series, while HBO Go allows me to dip into whichever season of The Wire I might be in the mood for.
I’ve so fully embraced the whole streaming thing that I rarely watch DVDs anymore, and recently switched to the streaming-only plan on Netflix. I’ll choose to watch something that can be seen instantly and without the physical encumbrance of a DVD. In fact, I’ve developed an active avoidance of DVDs. I can’t quite account for this odd behavior when it means I miss watching things I know I would like, but DVDs have become almost distasteful to me.
There’s one thing I miss: listening to audio commentary tracks, and the studios will have to do something about that. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to provide a commentary version of selected online videos, and while they’re at it, I’ll take an MP3 of the audio for my commute, please. (I might even pay, a little.) With well-loved movies and shows, I already know what’s on the screen. I can see it in my head. And so often the commentary doesn’t necessarily map to the action anyway.
iTunes helped kill innovation in podcasting
In the early days of podcasting we saw some experimentation with amateur commentaries to videos, and I think Battlestar Gallactica even produced an official audio commentary podcast. But podcasting has settled into a rut just generally. There hasn’t been a lot of innovation in recent years. I blame iTunes’ dominance as a podcatcher, which meant iTunes became podcasting’s Billboard top 100 ranking and a main discovery method, which led to elevating the MSM podcasts, and possibly caused amateur efforts to ape old media style and production conventions.
With the rapid convergence of TV and the web there are opportunities to get creative—with show formats, not just technology. Alternate sound tracks wouldn’t just have to be recorded, either; they could be live. I’ve always thought, for example, that sports fans (guys mostly) might like to hear opinionated, partisan play-by-play sprinkled with obscenities. You know, the way guys talk when they’re watching games together. Especially when they are angry at a coach. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Also, there are a ton of podcasts about TV shows. They could mix it up a little, break from their predictable formats and offer commentary tracks, maybe just on occasion, like for season finales.
This cracks me up: the German press is having it out with the government’s press office because a spokesperson announced Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the U.S. on Twitter before it was announced to the press in a traditional news conference.
It’s a little hard to tell from the translation but some members of the media seem pretty pissy about it. The communications guy holding the press conference isn’t having any of it. I wonder if there’s video. I’d like to hear the tone and see the body language in that exchange.
I heard about it in a retweet of Jay Rosen by Dave Winer so I’m hoping they will talk about it on today’s Rebooting the News podcast.
Dave did a solo podcast a few weeks ago and it struck me that he mentioned a reformation of the news media. I thought at the time that it is something like the Protestant Reformation in the sense that both are partly about disintermediation. Providing the Bible and holding services in the language of the people was meant to put them in more direct contact with their religion by cutting out middleman priests and the Latin scripture and liturgy which was understood only by the educated classes.
It all came full circle in little neural connections this morning when seeing Dave’s twitter handle fired off a reminder of the podcast, and the circle was cemented by the irony that that other reformation began in Germany.
Have you been moved by U.S. Uncut‘s citizen’s actions? The group, like its creative British inspiration, vows there is an alternative to cutting worthwhile programs: Make corporate tax avoiders pay.
If you’re like me, you’re not really a group protester, and maybe you’d like to help me try this small solo way to object to Bank of America’s sweet tax deal.
Here’s the idea: Print out this sheet—on both sides of the paper for the best result, so if the slips flip over, the message still can be seen. Keep some with you; fold up a couple sheets and put them in your pocket. When you pass a Bank of America location, tear off a few squares, and drop them on the concrete in front of the bank. Hopefully they’ll blend right in with the pavement, because there’s nothing more delicious than a subtle annoyance. Maybe do it at night for very small thrill.
I always loved the Virlomi character in Orson Scott Card’s Ender series (well, until she got power mad, anyway). She’s an older battle school grad who appears in the later books, and starts a phenomenon called “The Great Wall of India,” starting with one little pile of stones that she claims she saw people in other villages making. Pile-making catches on and the little piles become giant obstructions, hindering the Chinese invasion of her country.
I think this idea must be a blend of Virlomi’s protest and a prank I played on my ex and my dad on major birthdays: thousands of even teenier paper slips that said “40” and “75” respectively, sprinkled absolutely everywhere and still being discovered years later.
I love these animations from RSA. I think we could never have an American Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.
Way too ... what? Brainy, I suppose. Enlightenment isn’t in vogue in the U.S. right now. Which I guess means we’re in the dark ages.
OK, not as simple as the simplest FB plugins; you need an application ID.
I’m just adding the embed code to a single post, not integrating it into my CMS. Which is kind of interesting. You could use it on an ad hoc basis.
Will it improve civility on sites that use it? I think so. Over on Techcrunch, commenters are complaining they don’t like the fact that they see their Facebook circle as their personal social space, and comments on technology articles have no place there. I see that, and also see that it’s not just real names that will promote civility; you don’t want people you know in real life to perceive you as the negative asshole you are when you blurt out drive-by comments on blogs.
Your market may vary, and maybe they’ll dream up some specials by the time Keith Olbermann shows up on air. But upgrading to a higher tier of channels for an extra $16.95 a month isn’t a priority for me, much as I like and admire Keith, so I hope the show is online or they don’t try to prevent fans from putting it online.
Later: Ha! Just realized I wrote “called Comcast” in my headline when I really chatted. Reminds me of my kids saying “Let me show you a song.”
Click on a column header to sort. Can you see what is going on?
A
B
C
Short
Red
Bright
Medium
Blue
Pale
Long
Green
Dark
I looked up how to sort data tables in HTML today, found some easy Javascript and practiced, learned enough to be able to do it for work, then took the opportunity to amuse myself.
Ever since Egypt’s President Mubarak disabled the country’s internet on Thursday, net buzz about a U.S. “internet kill switch” bill has revived. The “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” was introduced last summer by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins and would give the president the power to turn off critical systems in the event of a cyber attack on the U.S.
Like a lot of citizens I’ve had bi-partisanship and harmony in political discourse on my mind lately, so I took a browse around a couple of right-wing haunts this morning. I thought this surely must be one of those occasions when the political spectrum might bend itself into a cylinder and left and right libertarians could connect. I did see a little of what I wanted to see: comments like, “Well, for once I agree with the ACLU.” The American Civil Liberties Union and 23 other groups came out against the scheme in June. (Letter, .pdf file)
More frequent were remarks that dig in on the left-right stand-off. On Free Republic a commenter mentions that Susan Collins is a “full fledged socialist/marxist that sides with the enemy every time.” The crowd over there often seems to get more steamed up about RINOs than it does about Democrats.
Freepers in the thread are also kicking around the idea of getting into ham radio, which fits with the apocalyptic survivalist rhetoric about food stores, ammo hoarding and gold that you see in certain circles. Am I imagining things or is there often a hopeful, wistful tinge to worries about mass deprivation? If there is, I think I understand it a little; one of my kids loves post-apok fiction and movies, maybe as part of a yearning for a simpler world.
At Glenn Beck’s The Blaze site, the talk is scarier. I made a screen cap of this comment because you’d think it might come down once moderators show up for work.
Please remember a very basic truth, and utter constant in this world: “If you shoot a FEMA NAZI in the right place, with a U.S. Caliber .30 Bullet, that NAZI will fall over dead and won’t give you anymore trouble.”
WHEN, the FED-NAZIS do finally get their marching orders, they will face no less than 30 million rifles pointed at them from behind every blade of grass in this country. The “High Entertainment” will commence the very nano second that this Communist Monkey in the White House, or any other, shuts down the Internet, or makes any one of several other “Trigger” moves.
Blaze commenters are not quite sure what to make of making common cause with the ACLU. One comes right out and states that if the ACLU is against the bill, he is for it, while another is more open-minded, stating that if the ACLU is against it, he’s really against it.
On both sites, any accord between the liberty fighters and the liberties union is grudging. A freeper says the ACLU might be right but he feels sure it is unintentional! A Blaze commenter remarks that a broken clock is right twice a day.
Oh well.
(By the way, I never buy that argument that you can’t judge an issue by blog comments. Sure, you can’t hold a blogger responsible for the opinions of her commenters, but I think a scan of comments to gauge the sense of a sub-culture is every bit as legit as polling or focus groups and more scientific than “man on the street” interviews. Why else would Karl Rove follow so many people on Twitter. You gotta think he’s crunching that data somehow—and that social media sentiment analysis will play a big part in the 2012 presidential elections.
Update: In fact, the coming deluge of election coverage by blogs, reported yesterday in the NYTimes media section, could benefit from a smart analysis of net sentiment. Tech types could invent a whole new category of insight measurement to complete with old-fashioned polling. Product marketers already have a start on this. Instead, the political blog focus will be the horserace. “Great!” tweeted NYU J-school Prof Jay Rosen. (It was meant ironically.) It’s an opportunity for a web programmer/journalism partnership like Jay and Dave Winer talk about on their Rebooting the News podcast. You’d need a gifted web database type—somebody who can make APIs stand on their heads and who can fashion out-of-the-box queries to put Twitter’s simple smiley or frowny attitude switches to shame.)
Neat idea: Whitehouse.gov is hosting an “enhanced video” of the live State of the Union speech tonight. Charts and things, I gather.
I may try watching it that way, if only to distract me from watching the VP and speaker. Congress can re-seat itself, that’s fine, but what I really wish they would change is the camera angle or the presence of those two players immediately behind the president. I can never help but watch them deciding when to applaud, and when to really show approbation by standing up to applaud. Drives me nuts.
I’ve been thinking for years that TV shows owe it to fans to properly wind up a story, and I don’t really care how they do it. John Milch could have sent me an e-mail explaining what was going to come next in Deadwood and John from Cincinnati. A radio play would be nice too. Comic book, any medium, really.
Fringe, one of only two shows I make sure to watch every week, will be moved to Fox’s death slot next month, so it doesn’t look real good for a fourth season. Pity too, because Walter is one of the most unique characters I’ve seen on any kind of screen for a long while—a brilliant crazy scientist in his sixties who still loves recreational drugs.
In the case of Fringe they already have a comic book series made mostly to explicate character backstories, so they really should use it to tell us anything at all they have in mind about the future storyline, whether or not they make an attempt to wind up the story in the spring.
Speaking of story, with whatever amount of time they have left, I think something more must be said about Walter’s ownership of Massive Dynamic. He’s one of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world now, yet he carries on pretty much as he always has. Let’s see some wild spendthrift behavior by Walter. I’m talking islands and towns, space shuttles and zoos.
This morning WaPo’s The Fix remarked on John McCain’s statement yesterday that voters were divided on Ronald Regan just as they are on Sarah Palin, bringing up a key difference when it comes to comparing the two politicians.
“There are basically no Palin Democrats. And given the passions she evokes, it’s hard to see how such a group would form,” the bloggers point out.
They make a great point, but I think she does more than EVoke passions, she actively PROVokes them with her continual cheerful sneering at libs. In fact she’s painted herself into a corner. Anything she says to attempt to appeal to Dems will turn off her base because they love love love it—and her—when she gives voice to their resentments about elites, cityfolk and booksmart pencilnecks. It’s kind of a sweet sharing-bonding thing she has with her fans.
And some of her most supportive camps are way, way out there: over on Free Republic they’re saying Karl Rove is a liberal; and some of the Christian groups in 2008 were praying God would smite McCain so their Sarah might achieve her destiny.
If she doesn’t win the nomination she still will want to keep that base (which might be better characterized as a market).
You know how blogs, news sites and entertainment sites put “Sarah Palin” in a headline (which often also puts the words in the URL) to rack up page views? Liberal, conservative, small blogs, big media—it works for everybody for different reasons.
Well, there’s a fair chance I am completely full of shit, but I think the TLC Channel’s new supplemental site for the Sarah Palin’s Alaska show is purposely courting controversy. The site provides four blogs and a podcast to serve as a newer-media add-on to the traditional network show site. One of the blogs, called Not Taking Sides is the place to talk about politics, because, even though the TV series is non-political, politics are going to come into it, the inaugural post sort of explains.
It makes sense for TLC to do this from a marketing perspective. It’s true that the show is going to be political no matter how it’s positioned so why shouldn’t the very entity that’s creating the buzz get in on some of the discussion action? Negative comments about Palin are not scrubbed, and call me cynical, but some of them almost look like seed comments—they’re too well punctuated and use proper capitalization rules.
Head blogger for the politics section will be Matt Gagnon, Deputy Director of Digital Strategy for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He’s busy working on a recount, they don’t say whose—maybe Joe Miller’s? So he will show up later.
It’s a funny old world out there in new media land, when commercial interests get in the game and the genuine might be genuine, or it might be a hustle, or might be a little of both.
You have to wonder, though, if Sarah is down with stirring the pot. Admitting there is a political angle runs counter to every description she has applied to the show. She might be OK with it, since the environment is somewhat controlled.
Of course I like the new PBS iPad app. I like all of that socialist media stuff. My car radio dial doesn’t know there is a station other than WBEZ until my younger kid comes home from school and compulsively hits the scan button to drink in the nicheyness of the Chicago music radio market compared to the less specific range of options in his college town.
But about the app. The rage on the right to defund public media suggests that PBS/NPR fans are a sub-culture (that must be thwarted). We may be a “type,” it’s true, but it’s a loose type, and I think the ideal would be a collection of PBS iPad apps carving out more specific niches. Why not make several apps for different communities of interest and bake social media features right into them? I think they could be supported, just as larger radio markets can support more narrowly programed stations.
I might like PBS but I love literary adaptations. An app devoted to Masterpiece classics could allow users to watch the latest productions and talk about them with each other. (Would they be into talking? Oh yes, yes they would.) I may not care much about migration patterns of bison, but fans of Nature would love an app just for them, too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if contributions would flow in, just because people appreciate it when they have been given a space that celebrates their passions and interests and provides an opportunity to revel in their obsessions in the company of like minds. Engagement follows when it’s all about the affinity group in relation to the provider of the media—not just about the provider.
In fact, I really believe that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the “Here is all our stuff” approach will come to be perceived as an egocentric stance. TV “channels” won’t be established by their creators; they’ll be determined or defined over time based on the density of followers on a scatterplot.
This notion of increasing specialization of social media by affinity and interest has been a minor recurring theme of Gillmor Gang discussions in recent months.
Check it out. There’s an underlying pitch in it for SocialFlow, a Betaworks company, but that is OK with me since it is a subtle pitch and it tells a tale you won’t hear elsewhere about social media reputation and how news takes shape online. It swirls around in little eddies that gather force and sometimes whoosh into the Main Stream. 
With the rapid convergence of TV and the web there are opportunities to get creative—with show formats, not just technology. Alternate sound tracks wouldn’t just have to be recorded, either; they could be live. I’ve always thought, for example, that sports fans (guys mostly) might like to hear opinionated, partisan play-by-play sprinkled with obscenities. You know, the way guys talk when they’re watching games together. Especially when they are angry at a coach. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Dave did a solo podcast a few weeks ago and it struck me that he mentioned a reformation of the news media. I thought at the time that it is something like the Protestant Reformation in the sense that both are partly about disintermediation. Providing the Bible and holding services in the language of the people was meant to put them in more direct contact with their religion by cutting out middleman priests and the Latin scripture and liturgy which was understood only by the educated classes.
Have you been moved by 
I’ve been thinking for years that TV shows owe it to fans to properly 
But about the 
