blogging for dollars - for real

So Google, who owns Blogger now has launched its AdSense program to allow bloggers to share in the ad revenue that Google pulls through Blogger's blogs.

What is interesting is that to take part in the program, you must provide accurate personal information to Google to allow them to pay you. Could this be the tipping point of privacy reversing into publicy? Once people's true identities are linked to the vast amount of blog content, what's left of privacy? For those who still believe the internet is a vast landscape of anonymous activity better catch up quick...

The AdSense program is important because it obsolesces the idea of free, anonymous content being the stock in trade of the blogosphere. Blogs have generally been seen as distinct from content provided by the traditional media - precisely because it was known that bloggers were not benefiting financially from their content. Exceptions existed of course, but the point where readers translate directly into dollars had not yet arrived. So there was a general sense that the blogosphere was inherently benevolent, even if members of the community might be misguided or otherwise less worthy of stating an opinion. But ideas distributed through the blogosphere are generally seen as motivated by the desire to pursuade, to shape opinion, and to generate knowledge. An entrenched advertising scheme will provide incentives that encourage increasing page-views, but not necessarily quality content.

This begs the question, of course, whether attempting to increase page-views will lead to lower quality content. The obvious risk we might anticipate comes from our experience with television. It can be argued that "race to the bottom" or "lowest common denominator"- type behaviour is driven by ratings. But at the same time, the birth of speciality programming illustrates that sizable niches exist to support low-cost, targeted programming that need not resort to cheap tactics to maximize appeal. The blogosphere is more like cable than broadcast television, if merely because of the number of choices available.

Obviously the blogosphere offers a number of choices far beyond what television can offer and this changes the way we look at it in terms of an advertising model.

But like television, blogs will depend on attracting readers by offering content that is not available everywhere else. This makes no statement as to the particular qualities of the content. To attract viewers on the internet, one needs only be unique. This attribute of the internet has led to an explosion of creative content, from jokes to political statements, to multimedia presentations and "mash-ups" where content is re-mixed to create something entirely new.

The importance of the "uniqueness" factor cannot be overstated. In the blogosphere, each blog is a mere speck on the radar. The power of the blogosphere is in the connections, the relationships. A blog that goes unnoticed by the rest of the blogsphere may as well not exist. But tapping into the power of the blogosphere is extremely easy if the uniqueness and quality is there. Blogs maintain their relevance (and in turn their traffic) by posting unique content relevant to their readers. Therefore, it serves the interest of established blogs to find lesser known blogs to link to. The barriers to entry that exist in other media simply do not exist in the blogosphere.

if the internet is the answer, what is the question?

I'm often struck by the developments in the internet, because they seem to happen in the blink of an eye. Before I even knew what a blog was, a vast network of bloggers had already transformed the internet. And it continues to change at light speed.

As a supposedly techno-savvy individual, I shudder to think what it would be like if I hadn't been paying attention to the changes over the past few years. But at the same time I don't believe that those who still don't know what a blog is, or even those who rarely use a computer will actually be "left behind" like those selling books like to say. Instead I believe changes will occur that will bring these laggardly folks into the fold, finally acquiring what the internet seems to demand from all of us, that is, our participation.

Before the dot-com bust, one of the big issues was "content". We have the network, but what will we put on it? Obviously _someone_ is going to have to create this stuff, right? People saw the internet as a TV, and webpages as channels. Surely there is room for a few more channels...obviously we were all wrong. To answer the question about content, blogging was born.

It is striking how the advent of blogging has shifted my view of the internet. What was once seen as broadcasting has become something entirely different in a matter of a few years. And the changes are not complete obviously, with much of the world not yet participating. As use of the internet increases, similar paradigm shifts are bound to occur.

What is intriguing to me is that the answer to the question of "content" came from a place no one expected. As the possibilities of the internet are realized, what big questions will it answer?

building communities

It seems to me that one of the principal effects of the internet is the creation of communities. Communities are built around mailing lists, chat rooms, web pages, and blogs. The effects of these communities are only starting to be realized, since many people have yet to take full advantage of the internet and the technologies exist to make participating in communities possible. And new technologies are still being built that promise to make building communities easier as well as make them more valuable to their users. At the same time, the way to make money from these communities is still mostly unknown.

How to leverage the knowledge that online communities will become more and more relevant in the near future is the key question. Early signs of the value of the blogosphere have started to show, as popular blogs are able to sell advertising. Some blogs have been sold to companies altogether, whether for their content, or merely for the value of their audience, I'm not totally sure. My guess is that the value seen is mostly based on the audience, both for their numbers and for who they are. Communities are based around shared interests, so a popular blog represents to an advertiser a ready-made market niche.

For subject areas where a multitude of voices is valuable, the number of communities will be relatively small, and the size of those communities quite large. One can look at the most popular blogs and see that once they become popular, they tend to stay popular. Of course it is important for the content to be there, but when the content is provided mostly by the audience, it is obvious why blogs are self-sustaining.

So in the future, the internet will be built by community builders. What are the communities not yet mapped out?

tom wolf

Tom Wolf has a new book out, I can't remember the name, but he was on Letterman and Charlie Rose tonight.

An interesting observation he made was that this concept of the Religious Right doesn't exist. There's no Religious Right, these people are just religious. And most of the country used to be that way, too.

Tom doesn't make any judgments about it, either, which is nice. These people are the same people who always vote Republican. WASPs. Hard-working, stubborn about their values, and not afraid to fight. They love their freedom, their guns, and their God. This election was about who's champion to root for, and theirs did this time. They don't care about getting a bit better health care, or stopping jobs going overseas, they're doing just fine thank you. As long as Osama doesn't hurt them, they'll be alright.

Looking at it in this light I too feel a bit silly for tossing blame around for how Bush got be re-elected. Perhaps I was under the impression that we had changed a lot more than we had.

I'm glad I heard Tom's view of the election. I feel a bit better now. (Or at least cynical in a different way...)

the outering: Part II

I'm starting to really understand blogging, and its significance. I know I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the blog culture, but somehow I don't think I should worry about that so much.

I used to think that keeping a blog was possibly silly, because what chance does one have of gaining an audience, with all that competition out there?

Then I realized, how stupid that thought is...I wonder if that's a common misconception. Because it really is the wrong way to look at it.

People are more likely to be consumers than producers of content. But every producer is also a consumer. So it is logically impossible for it to be bad for your blog's chances at gaining an audience, the more people are keeping blogs. Wow. That's a powerful thought (for me, anyway). So someone who starts now, really doesn't have any worse chance of gaining an audience than the first few. (Now there is some appeal to saying you've been blogging since before it was cool, but that won't amount to much in a few years, I don't imagine.) The thought that you have to be "mega-famous" to make it as a blogger is just ridiculous in this context.

Blogging enables you to connect with lots of people as easily as one person.

Blogging

The thoughts are coming so fast and furious right now that I can barely keep up with them. What is that all about? I think that an effect of a lot of McLuhan talk is this brainstormy feeling. I just realized so many things that were interesting, I've forgotten most of them. What I enjoy is this: metaphors. Thinking through metaphors. And thinking through metaphors a lot leads to some surprising ideas. Things are revealed through metaphors.

I really need a way to organize my blog better.

I also need to get on with learning about this stuff, information management type stuff. It always surprises me when it is revealed that what I'm interested in is actually related very closely to my job. Since when have I been interested in my job??

the outering

Over the past few months, I've been outering myself for the first time. Sporadically at first, but I anticipate it will soon take off in frequency.

Yes, the blog may start to grow yet.

Of course that just makes me think "so many things to learn, so much to do."

I feel like I'm late to the show in a lot of ways, but then I remember that I'm the first of my group of friends to start a blog as far as I know. I was also the first of my group to get an email address. Not that that is particularly special, other than to show that if my crowd is any indication, blogging has not hit the mainstream quite yet.

And whether it has hit the mainstream or not may be important, if we assume that the more voices, the better for the world.

What I'm discovering is how blogs coalesce with each other, like drops of oil. They form links with each other, creating vast webs of knowledge and ideas, facts and feelings. Readers respond, lending inspiration and encouragement, or correction and criticism, creating new content by doing so. Blogging begets blogging.

The blogosphere represents a dramatic acceleration of media getting swallowed by new media.

What happens in the non-digital world: A person makes a statement to another, and the second person interprets the statement, restates it in their own terms, and deals with it how they choose, responding verbally (or not), and so on.

The blogosphere allows a discussion such as this to be performed with the entire world at once.

What the blogosphere could enable is creating a pattern of knowledge that reveals a perfectly (not to throw words around willy nilly or anything...) democratic version of the current state of affairs. If a global conversation occurred, what would the world say? And if democracy leads to the revelation of truth, what truths will the blogosphere reveal?

It is interesting that these thoughts come to mind today, as I was starting to lose interest in the blogging thing for the first time recently (probably due to recent events...). But the realization that another person actually read my blog made these ideas take shape. Before I got feedback from another person (other than my S.O.) I was starting to think that it was common for blogs to have no readers. Maybe it was even very common. Maybe all these blog things are actually just personal diaries written by nerds with inflated egos and too much time on their hands. Maybe after Atrios and Kos and Kaus and Milos and Chelios and Cherios (I'm just making this crap up now, I hope you realize...I hope General Mills doesn't sue me.) I don't even actually read Kaus, but I hear he's a "famous blogger".

As a side note, just before I wrote "famous blogger", I searched for information on famous bloggers. I now realize that bloggers who are "famous" now, if you can even say that with a straight face, will disappear so fast they won't know what hit them. As more and more people realize the value of blogs, people will no longer see blogging itself as the medium. Blogs will become something else, less geeky sounding. People won't refer to their blogs as that crazy technical thing they do with their free time, it will instead be a regular part of their professional and/or personal life. It will fade into ground, and eventually disappear.

As a further side note, I just realized how important it is to understand the tetrad. I didn't really understand it when Nui (my first e-reader, hi Nui!) said it: but McLuhan's tetrad really is a framework (my word?) for change. Media over time go through these phases. There's nothing to say at what rate and how long it takes for each stage to pass, but these are definite stages media go through. I can't believe I didn't understand that before.

(But now I do. Thanks Nui, for that.)

As I think about this, I get to thinking about blogging some more, what tools would be really useful etc., how I really want to have it designed, as opposed to my crappy blogger template (no offense to the designer, it's a good design, but obviously generic...fast obsolescence, these templates ;) ).

And I think about this idea of the fifth part of the tetrad is intriguing. Although I know nothing about it.


I remember, I remember Buffalo
It seems to me I remember every single f--king thing I know


It interesting that people talk about their "memory" as if it is a skill, or as a quantity of something they have in their brains. I think when people talk about their memory, they're often talking about their ability to remember useless facts. Because it is striking to me, the ease with which I think of some of McLuhan's statements when something I write or read or see relates to it. And it strikes me that this ease with which I can pull these thoughts is related to the amount of work it took to absorb its meaning. Ah, McLuhan you cool guy, you.

As a completely unrelated (until now!) story: This evening some of my friends recounted a couple of the inane happenings in my life that I told them about some time long ago as if they were interesting stories they immediately associated with me. I was surprised they remembered those stories, and I joked they were sweethearts for actually listening to me. For some reason that struck me as odd, and it is peculiar and perhaps serendipitous that it should relate to this topic.

I guess what I find interesting is related...who da thunk...



But back to my original thought:

It is interesting how inspired I am right now, largely because of the realization that it is not in fact unreasonable to think that every blogger out there can find a big audience. Big meaning...what, though?


I think maybe that's an important question. Anyone know? How big can the average blogger expect to get?

the world according to bush

If you haven't seen this documentary, you really should.

election day

So today it happens. Americans are voting in droves this year, and the stakes are high. I had expected it to be ugly and contentious with polls showing voters split down the middle, but now I think it might not be as close as people think. The republicans are desparate, playing all sorts of dirty tricks to prevent people from voting, but the turn out could be so high that there's nothing they can do. Early reports are saying that people are lining up for hours. To vote. It's like Krispy Kreme franchises opening across the country.

This election has revealed a lot about a lot of people. It has revealed the incompetence and immorality of the Bush administration. It has revealed the bias of the mass media. It has revealed the incredible powers of self-delusion in everyday people. All of this would be considerably less obvious without the internet, of course. The internet has pulled these phenomena from ground to figure.

Most people are not ready to accept what so many of us have been saying for years. This administration is beyond corrupt, beyond immoral, and beyond incompetent. It is without a doubt, the worst administration in memory, and more corrupt by an order of magnitude. It is so bad that it is actually impossible for the average person to comprehend. We've all heard about crooked politicians before-- what makes these guys any worse?

This puts it in context for me: George Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, while ostensibly supporting America in WWII was Hitler's secret banker. While George (the 1st) was flying his plane for the allies, his dad was moving Hitler's money around for him. He was trading with the enemy. He was making money from the war.

When George Bush I became president, once Saddam Hussein was declared America's enemy, Dick Cheney was secretly doing business with Iraq through Halliburton. And now today it has been revealed that the Bushes have been dealing with the Saudis for decades, while their country is the leading exporter of terrorism. These people are professional war profiteers of the highest order. How is it possible that they can get away with this?