Like Hulu, But With An Audience
Okay, Fine: Links!
October 15, 2007
Put these in your browser, and shake well.
- Facebook apps are not a long tail. So says Chris Anderson, who oughtta know. The tougher question is: Since the recent changes to app distribution on Facebook's platform, will there ever be another popular new application on Facebook again. Or is the era of hit F8 apps over already?
- Prince is Rolling Stone's most underrated guitarist. The article's got a great shot of Prince's most ridiculously entertaining affectation of recent years: His habit of throwing his guitar away in faux-disgust at the end of his solos. His poor guitar tech Takumi is gonna take one of these spiky symbol-shaped guitars to the head one of these days while trying to make the catch.
- I loved Ian Rogers' post about digital music, "Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses". Choice quote: "Back in 1999 ... We naively and enthusiastically suggested to labels that we’d be a great place to sell MP3s. The response from the labels at the time was universally, 'What’s MP3?' or 'Um, no.' Instead they commenced suing Napster." Working in music promo online back then, I got to see those reactions first hand, and I guess I was equally naive.
- Rafe points to Jeff Atwood's great post about copyright and YouTube. I have the opposite conclusion than these guys: If YouTube has created something fantastic, and it required copyright violation to do so, then copyright law should be changed to make it legal. Laws are ours, people -- they're not carved on stone tablets.
- The PlayStation 3 is a complete failure for casual gaming. That's not news, but it's never been articulated as well. Especially damning is that even the fanboys can only dispute minor facts, not the fundamental conclusion.
Gawker Reckoning
October 15, 2007
I've had the chance to follow Gawker Media since before it launched, really, and so it's been interesting to see a couple of items pop up recently about the direction of some of its titles and practices. The big story, of course, is New York Magazine's piece, which is appropriately petty, self-indulgent, and honest, as any piece about Gawker should be.
A lot of the complaints in the article seem to boil down to "but they're not nice!" and I have to say -- I think that's a completely fair criticism. Not that media has to be nice, but because journalism in many of its forms aspires to having a sense of social responsibility. I've had enough friends or acquaintances who've had their day (or week, or reputation) ruined by one of the Gawker blogs that I've gotten a lot less willing to say "oh hey, they're just trying to drive traffic". I'm all for snarky-smart assed blogging, I just think that emulating traditional media's willingness to destroy people who aren't villains isn't a strategy for long-term success.
From the New York mag story:
It’s long been known to magazine journalists that there’s an audience out there that’s hungry to see the grasping and vainglorious and undeservedly successful (“douchebags” or “asshats,” in Gawker parlance) put in the tumbrel and taken to their doom. It’s not necessarily a pleasant job, but someone’s got to do it. Young writers have always had the option of making their name by meting out character assassinations—I have been guilty of taking this path myself—but Gawker’s ad hominem attacks and piss-on-a-baby humor far outstrip even Spy magazine’s. It’s an inevitable consequence of living in today’s New York: Youthful anxiety and generational angst about having been completely cheated out of ownership of Manhattan, and only sporadically gaining it in Brooklyn and Queens, has fostered a bloodlust for the heads of the douchebags who stole the city. It’s that old story of haves and have-nots, rewritten once again.
The problem with this conveniently simplified narrative about Gawker's sites, particularly its flagship namesake blog, is that it's always accompanied by assertions that this sort of sniping is what blogs are about. This isn't just inaccurate, it's the kind of assertion that is easily disproven both qualitatively and quantitatively. But whether it's Gawker in NYC, Wonkette in DC, or Valleywag in the Bay Area, people who have loud mouths want to believe that news about them must truly be all the news that matters. Therefore, if the blog that talks about me and my friends is snarky, all blogs are snarky. Which is, you know, kinda obviously horseshit.
This hoary-but-false chestnut makes its requisite appearance in the NYMag piece in reference to Elizabeth Spiers and Nick Denton: "They didn’t exactly invent the blog, but the tone they used for Gawker became the most important stylistic influence on the emerging field of blogging and has turned into the de facto voice of blogs today." (Personal note to those who follow in the steps of Vanessa Grigoriadis: This is false. Stop saying it.)
The misrepresentation of blogging is especially tragic because not even all Gawker blogs are snarky. Case in point is the excellent Lifehacker, the best-written of all Gawker blogs, helmed by Gina Trapani. Since they're public, I don't feel too wrong pointing to her recent Twitters, one in praise of a recent attempt by Gawker editors to object to advertising encroaching on editorial on the site, and one celebrating Lifehacker's omission from the recitation of snarky Gawker sites in the NYMag story.
I'm not sure one of the best editorial talents at a publishing company should be reduced to celebrating such small victories. Don't get me wrong: Gawker gets a lot right. There's absolutely a value in speaking truth to power, and there is truly something noble in deflating the self-importance of the various industries that the Gawker sites poke holes in. My contempt for those who insult journalism by pretending it shouldn't evolve remains as strong as ever. At the same time, there should be a sense of social responsibility to the community of bloggers, if not to the traditional media. And to my mind, that means highlighting the humor, incisiveness, and lack of favoritism that made sites like Gawker such a breath of fresh air when they started. Put more simply, tearing apart the innocent bystanders in these industries isn't just bad journalism, it's boring blogging.
And really, as long as print magazines like New York Magazine are still quoting the likes of Julia Allison as an authority on blogs, there will be no shortage of material to poke fun at. But these points of reckoning should serve as useful milestones for making sure we're not becoming the worst of the legacy cultures we're trying to criticize.
Disclaimers, such as they are: I've got a million little connections and biases about this story. I'm an unabashed blog promoter, even after all these years, so I'm protective of the medium. I don't read many posts from Gawker blogs, but still have an inexplicable affection for them, and am quite pleased that at one point years ago, I think I knew almost everybody in the Gawker organization. I like Nick Denton, both personally and professionally, even though he exasperates me regularly and antagonizes my friends almost constantly. (And I certainly admire Nick's diplomatic abilities, which allow him to maintain friendships with people even as he's paid others to publicly embarrass them.)
I've known Liz Spiers for a few years socially, and may even have introduced her at Nick, at a MetaFilter meetup, of all things, and think she's underrated as a blogger. I consider Gina Trapani a friend (which will now be particularly awkward if that's not mutual) and I think indirectly had a hand in her meeting Nick as well. Gina is perhaps the most underrated high-profile blogger in the world. I'm a fan of Gawker editor Choire Sicha, and have a genuine affection for both his talents and charm. I pitched a fit earlier this year at Valleywag editor Owen Thomas because I think some of his pieces on the company I work for were full of shit, though we've since sorta made up and Valleywag continues to publish wacky and wrong articles about our work. I also like New York Magazine, though I only read it when someone sends me a link to a story. And both Gawker and NY Mag use Movable Type for parts of their publishing, which I work on and means I probably indirectly get paid from some of these sites. Batteries not included, your mileage may vary, my name is Anil Dash and I endorse this message.
Update: Can't believe I missed linking to this one, but Nick Denton weighed in, going predictably meta with the absolutely accurate assessment that traditional media has to stop using "bile" to refer to bloggers. I always use "unkind" -- it feels satisfyingly quaint.
Blackbird, Rainman, Facebook and the Watery Web
October 9, 2007
I've seen a number of people make reference to Facebook's application platform without knowing a lot of background about some historical examples that might be useful to learn from. So, since I remember a good bit of info about these things, I figured I'd share it for future reference.
In 1995, Microsoft believed that its proprietary development tool, codenamed "Blackbird" would be the dominant platform for creating rich online experiences. While it would eventually evolve into a tool that created reasonably standard HTML, Blackbird's ability to make attractive and pleasing aesthetic experiences for MSN was considered a no-brainer to replace regular HTML for anything that needed to seem polished. It wasn't an unreasonable assumption at a time when most browsers were showing ugly text on a plain grey background with almost no advanced layout or design.
In 1999, AOL believed that its proprietary development tool, called RAINMAN (Remote Automated INformation MANager) would be the dominant platform for creating rich online experiences. While it would eventually be replaced by tools that created reasonably standard HTML, Rainman's ability to make attractive and pleasing aesthetic experiences that integrated seamlessly into the AOL client was an effective replacement for HTML for tens of millions of users who wanted a polished and social first experience on the Net in the late 90s as they first got online. This wasn't an unreasonable constraint to impose on the experience at a time when having a rich interactive experience meant downloading complicated browser plugins for video, or configuring temperamental client software just to read email.
AOL was always secretive about Rainman, and remains so to this day, even though Rainman has been largely retired in favor of standard HTML, which has let AOL open up much of its proprietary content to the public web. But Microsoft really wanted to get the word out about Blackbird. There were even conferences for developers, to promote Blackbird for their applications. Ironically, MSN would reverse direction from Blackbird almost immediately after launch, eventually building much of its original content around a small vector plugin called FutureSplash. One big reason you have Flash in your browser right now is because MSN aggressively distributed millions of copies of the FutureSplash plugin with all of their client software, and eventually, with Windows itself. But that's a whole 'nother story.
Back in late 1995, the venerable Release 1.0 newsletter offered an analysis of Blackbird that's well worth reading in its entirety. Some highlights:
Microsoft's challenge is to make MSN flourish soon, so that it won't be eclipsed by more open systems, making Blackbird irrelevant, or at least obsolescent. ... The question at hand is whether Microsoft's networked-application architecture makes it beyond MSN's walls and becomes more commonly used. The innovations Netscape is introducing, described above, make this a difficult task. This is where the battle between proprietary operating systems and the Internet is being fought.
...
Microsoft wants Blackbird to be an inviting environment for third-party tools. The pace of technological change will help. Connectivity will change all standalone applications, making many obsolete. With Blackbird, Microsoft is attempting to offer traditional Windows applications a viable path to re-create and re-validate themselves in the networked world. ... Blackbird has its own representation format, the Blackbird Markup Language (BML), which is a variant of HTML enhanced to be OLE 2.0-aware.
In 2007, Facebook has released its proprietary development platform, codenamed F8. Blackbird was to provide better presentation, and Rainman promised better social abilities, than open standards of their time made possible. F8 promises a combination of both aesthetic and social capabilities, with the key feature of the platform (presented as an "innovation") being the social APIs for friends lists. F8's ability to create broadly-distributed social applications that integrate seamlessly into the Facebook environment offers an experience that, for now, exceeds what publicly-available social APIs can do. It's not an unreasonable behavior that people are building and using applications on the platform today.
- Just like Blackbird, Facebook's APIs offer more features than the available open standards do today.
- Just like Blackbird, Facebook's APIs have inspired conferences and development toolkits and a lot of reactive responses in the industry.
- Just like Rainman, Facebook APIs offer native integration with social functions like buddy lists.
- Just like Rainman, the user experience for integrating those applications is far easier than the equivalent behavior on the open web.
- Just like Rainman, Facebook's APIs support applications that have millions of users, users that the conventional wisdom says could never be displaced.
It's not true to say that Facebook is the new AOL, and it's oversimplification to say that Facebook's API is the new Blackbird, or the new Rainman. But Facebook is part of the web. Think of the web, of the Internet itself, as water. Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water. And maybe they make it better when they do.
Some links:
- We're opening up the Social Graph. Six Apart, where I work, is committed to helping create, promote, develop for, and popularize the open standards that will be needed for helping grow social platforms from Facebook or anyone else.
- The O'Reilly Radar Research Report on Facebook's application platform. Interestingly, given the Release 1.0 report I quoted above, that publication has evolved into Release 2.0, which is now an O'Reilly publication.
- Jason Kottke on "Facebook vs. AOL". He covers much of the fundamentals that I've discussed here, and helped inspire me to offer some more concrete examples of the history of these sorts of efforts.
- Somehow I'd missed it at the time, but Scott Heiferman had drawn the analogy to Rainman first. I still feel people aren't very familiar with that point in web history.
- Graphing Social Patterns, the conference on Facebook and its applications that Dave McClure is currently hosting.
- The circle of web life, another similar historical lesson.
Mainstream Media is Really Hard
October 8, 2007
In his post this weekend, Rex Sorgatz points out that "mainstream media is hard". It's a truth I know firsthand -- I used to work both in the music industry and at a newspaper, and still get the chance to work directly with the people at the largest media companies in the world who are bringing them into the modern era.
The thing is, I want them to survive the changes, and to thrive. I detest that there's such an adversarial relationship; This weekend a conversation with a veteran of the book publishing industry reached something of a breakthrough when we agreed that framing the ebook conversation in terms of DRM was like picking which Barnes & Nobles to stock books in based on how much shoplifting they see at that location. It's not about stealing -- it's about making fans happy.
Similarly, news can be about making worthwhile journalism that respects both tradition and contemporary life. So I was really, really happy to see Rex and Mike Davidson announce that MSNBC has acquired Newsvine. We usually talk about big companies acquiring little ones in term of the survival of the smaller company, but this may well be one that boosts the longevity of both organizations.
And more to the point, I love the conversations that I have with (or pick up from the blogs of) Mike and Rex because, like me, they're part of a large, somewhat quiet, number of us who truly love both old and new media. It's been a failing of both parties that people still talk about giant media corporations as dinosaurs, or that the giant corporations see new media like blogs as a threat instead of an opportunity.
As Mike points out in his post, MSNBC sites like Rising From Ruin really show off the potential for companies to combine the reach of traditional media with the emotional resonance of the best of social media. I've had the privilege of getting to watch the site mature from its launch the weekend that Katrina hit (it's a TypePad blog), and seeing how human the stories are on that site, compared to, for example, the manipulative and off-putting versions of similar stories that one might see on TV was really a gratifying example of how a big company can do social news right.
I'm hoping, too, that the new relationship will somehow mean I get to finally meet either Rex or Mike. Despite traveling in the same circles for years and having avidly followed their work for more than half a decade, somehow I haven't met either of these guys yet.
Almost There!
October 5, 2007
We're really close to funding music education in Cassell Elementary School in Chicago -- you should contribute a couple of bucks! As MetBlogs Chicago kindly mentioned, I am gonna match 10% of whatever you give. I promise I'll get back to blogging about other topics as well next week, but I think there's a really great chance to have a direct impact, and I hope you'll join me.
Of course, if you like any of the other proposals in the Notes for Class challenge, I'm happy to match those donations, too. One that jumped out at me is from right near my wife's hometown: Music Bingo sounds like a great effort, at Salem Elementary School where they're moving to a year-round class schedule and need some help to expand their lessons in the new schedule.
South Side Sounds
October 2, 2007
I've gotten a lot of really good questions (and some fantastically generous donations!) about the Donors Choose blogger challenge I wrote about yesterday, but by far the most common is "what should I do?" There are a lot of options, so let me make it easy: Let's help kids on the South Side of Chicago.
Help Us Listen to the Music is a great example of how you can participate. A teacher at Cassell Elementary school writes:
In the upcoming year I would like to have a music listening center in the classroom where students could go and listen to music of various genres, styles, and composers. Eventually this music listening center will include classical music, Jazz, world music, early childhood music, and electronic music. While at the music listening center, students would analyze and describe music, identify instruments, recognize musical elements in music, and complete other listening activities.
All you've gotta do is chip in a few bucks. Throw in the five bucks you were going to spend at Starbucks today, or chip in $25 bucks to buy a couple of CDs. And as I mentioned yesterday, I'll personally match 10% of whatever you donate -- if ten of you pony up $30, we'll have this proposal covered and kids from kindergarten up to 8th grade will be making their first steps towards learning music appreciation and music theory.
Choosing to Help Kids
October 1, 2007
I've been a big fan of Donors Choose for some time. It's a charity my readers may well have heard of, which helps students in public schools by letting regular folks like us directly fund the requests that teachers make for classroom essentials.
I'm supporting Donors Choose with a campaign called Notes for Class, which is designed to support music initiatives in schools.
There are a lot of elements of that model that appeal to someone like me, who's familiar with technology and more than a little skeptical of the level of accountability in traditional charities. Instead of my money contributing to some nebulous "good deeds", I can choose exactly how I want to have an impact: Which schools, which students, which projects. Donors Choose and its work have been so compelling that I've been eager to help promote and participate in the Blogger Challenge initiative.
But that's not the only reason that I found it easy to support Donors Choose. I've also had the opportunity, a few times now, to meet Charles Best, CEO and Founder of Donors Choose. He's a former school teacher, an incredibly charismatic yet modest guy, and most importantly, he's a true believer. It makes it clear, from the top down, that the entire organization really believes in what they're doing. I didn't realize how much that mattered to me until I saw it.
So, I'm urging all of you to participate. First, go to the Notes for Class page, and pick an effort that you think is worth sponsoring. And then, for every $10 you donate to any of the proposals, I'll add another dollar on top of yours. Donate $100? I'll add $10. Donate $1000? I'll add $100. I'll be matching every donation from my readers, up to $10,000. (That's a $1000 contribution.)
I do have an agenda here, of course. I want to show people what I've seen: That the blogging community I've had the privilege of belonging to is one of the most generous communities anywhere. I believe it, and I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm also helping out with promoting this effort at Six Apart, where we've promoted the Blogger Challenge to our communities on LiveJournal, Vox, TypePad and Movable Type. In fact, for a few more hours, you can email us at donorschoose@sixapart.com and request a $30 gift certificate for making a donation to Donors Choose as well.
I'm hoping we can do a great job of showing the world the positive side of what the blogging community can accomplish. And I'm really hoping we can help fund that tenor saxophone or any of the other needs that teachers have listed on the site.
Freedom From Choice
September 27, 2007
A.J. Jacobs, master of the year-long book stunt, spent a year trying to live by all the rules dictated in the Bible. As stunts go, it's not that interesting to me ("Hey, I grew a beard!"), but one of the lessons he mentioned learning in this Newsweek interview indicates he really did go in with an open mind:
We all talk about freedom of choice, but there’s something very attractive about freedom from choice. Religion provides structure, mooring, anchoring. Should you covet? No. Should you give 10 percent to the needy? Yes. It really structures your life. After my year I felt unmoored, overwhelmed by choice. I have adjusted, but I’m still overwhelmed by choice, as we all are in America.
There's an analogy here about why those who preach simplicity in the realm of technology sound so much like they're preaching religion, and why those who agree with them often take on a near-religious fervor, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
