Category: General

The PayPerPost concept just seems so absurd to me. I mean if you’re going to go that far as a business, why not just go all the way and damn well start rewarding the people out there who are already talking about your product or service. I mean if some person’s site / blog is already generating craploads of traffic to your product / company because they actually truly value your product, why not just send them a “Thank You” cheque in return for their generous selfless advertising of your product / site!

Oh sorry, how stupid of me! Why would a business pay someone for something that they are already doing for free! That would just be “bad business sense” now wouldn’t it!?

“Pardon me but did you just see which way the clue train went?”

Completed.

No idea how practical this BumpTop environment would be but it looks like one of the better demos I’ve seen of a 3D computing environment. It also emphasizes an excellent point that a perfectly clean environment isn’t always a good one. Having a somewhat loose messy environment can actually make things a little more efficient and flexible.

Dave Winer pointed out an article by Jay Rosen on the Washington Post website that indicated the following.

All sites become equidistant from the reader.

Yes the technology we use enables this equidistance but at the same time we ourselves define the distance of these sites based upon their meaning to us. The more meaningful they are to us, the closer they’ll be. The less meaningful, the farther they’ll be away. The problem today is that many of us have lost what’s truly meaningful to us and thus instead of distancing or filtering normally meaningless things, we instead overload ourselves with them. This isn’t just happening online but in the real world as well. Often times the most meaningful things in our lives are the most farthest away from us, even though they may be a few feet from us in the real world.

I just woke up and realized what I need to do. In a sense, a plan of action that relates to my online endeavors in sharing my ideas with others.

In making this realization, I’ve decided to close my Changing Culture journal and moved the contents of it back into my Personal Journal. I just don’t want to fragment my content right now. Instead I’ve got something better planned down the road.

As for when this idea will begin to appear out of the ground, I’m not really sure. I have a funny feeling it is going to be on a separate site but I’ll have to wait and see how things grow. Till then, postings will probably be very infrequent.

Steve Rubel in his post Edelman Acquires Valley Tech PR Giant A&R Partners indicated the following.

I am really looking forward to meeting the A&R team and their clients. Many of these companies are already blogging so I will be really interested to hear about their experiences and what we can learn from them. Welcome A&R!

I’m confused by this statement on two accounts. First it sounds like since they’ve “assimilated” these people, they are no longer their enemy but their friends now. The question I’m wondering here is why is knowledge sharing only occurring when someone is bought out or acquired? I mean why couldn’t they share knowledge even as competitors? Wouldn’t it make the entire PR industry all the better if they did? Secondly, if these guys have blogs wouldn’t he already be hearing about their experiences, as wouldn’t they be talking about them on their blog? Or do they avoid sharing the new things they’ve learnt from blogging?

Anthony has an excellent post on his site that sheds some interesting and humorous light on the wacky world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The proof is in the pudding!  🙂

Imagine a small farming community living within a commons alongside a river. Money doesn’t exist in this community. Each person farms, hunts, raises cattle, bakes bread or does whatever to survive. They survive because whatever they make, they barter for other goods or services that they need.

I see the Web today as part of this vision in that each of us is providing something that benefits others. The only problem is that bartering for goods or services just doesn’t cut it in the real world today because while it is possible to barter online to a degree today, you can only go so far. At some point if you want your online work and creativity to sustain you, you need money coming from somewhere to help pay for your offline expenses (i.e. rent, food, clothing, etc). Here’s a quick example of what I mean.

YouTube is an extremely popular service. When using it, you are bartering with YouTube. You are providing interesting content on it in exchange for pretty much unlimited bandwidth and storage (i.e. hosting multiple movies). If you had to pay a hosting provider for this storage and bandwidth, you’d be spending a substantial amount of money to do this, especially if your content was extremely popular and accessed by millions. Therefore by utilizing YouTube, you are trading your interesting content in exchange for their storage and bandwidth.

YouTube isn’t the only one doing this though of course. There are lots of other services who’ve done it in the past. Back when I used to play id’s Quake a long time ago, PlanetQuake followed this same principle. They’d give you free storage and bandwidth, as long as you create a site within their network that provided interesting content. Google’s rumoured vision of the future, with unlimited bandwidth and storage to everyone, follows this same idea as well. Yet again, one critical piece of this vision is missing. While it shows that money isn’t needed to create and host content in the the online world, money is still definitely needed in our offline world (i.e. again to pay for food, clothing, shelter, etc).

Right now, I only see two ways to achieve this sustainability without ads. One approach is similar to Chris Locke’s Gonzo Marketing, where you get a patron (not a sponsor) to help fund your endeavors. The other approach is opening a tipping jar, similar to Andrew Sullivan’s tip jar, with the idea that instead of being forced to pay for something that you may not be fully aware of it’s content, it is instead hoped that you will reward the person instead by giving them a small amount of funds for their great content that you’ve already seen and recognized as such. Both approaches maintain the important ideals of the Web with regards to having open and accessible content that is available to read by anyone.

It is an interesting approach to things, giving freely as a reward instead of being forced to pay for this online content. Yet I don’t think people are ready to accept such a radical paradigm shift. Mainly because we are so ingrained in our ways. To stop that big massive wheel of payments and instead turn it back on itself and change it to giving as a reward is still too radical a step for people to take right now. People are just used to not paying for something unless they absolutely have to do so.

It is kind of sad though. I mean imagine if you took $20/month (the price of two or three magazines) and decided to give it to those people online that you truly appreciated and valued their content. I wonder what would happen if a large enough percentage of people started doing this (i.e. achieving a tipping point)? Would anything change? And more importantly would people be able to support themselves? Of course for this reward model to work, the money has to keep flowing. So if one popular site received lots of funds in reward for their great content, they in turn would have to give to those other sites in reward for their help in recommending and drive traffic to them. If anyone breaks the flow though (i.e. hordes their funds and stops giving) then it would break the flow.

Thus as noted earlier, the only way for this to be realized would be if a substantial number of people did it (i.e. achieved a tipping point). Again, I just don’t think people’s mindset are ready for this kind of reward / giving approach yet.

Imagine the entire world as one enormous tapestry in the process of being woven. Each of us is a piece of complex fabric that fits into this tapestry. Along our edges are loose threads that help us to weave ourselves with others around us.

The problem in weaving this tapestry is that these loose threads along our edges are different for each one of us. We therefore need to find others around us with similar threads that we can weave ourselves with so as to be able to fit into this grand tapestry.

Therefore, while the richness of this tapestry is achieved by the diversity of these threads within each of us, the patterns within this tapestry can only be achieved if we find commonalities between one another and thus weave our similar loose threads together with one another. If we don’t then we’re only a pile of fabric patches that while beautiful on their own, still can’t create something truly wonderful unless we can weave ourselves together.

Now the question is, what loose threads have you seen in those around you that are similar to your own? And an even greater question is what are you doing to try to help weave those loose threads together to actually create something wonderful?

I think one last thing to note is that these woven threads aren’t permanent. They require constant rethreading and attention to maintain the strength of the weave between us, otherwise they just unravel and become loose threads again.

Whoa! Anthony pulled out all the stops and whipped up an awesome new design for Squarespace. Check it out!