Interesting article on online communities and social networking which reports a survey done for eBay - "Want Community? Go Online" by Pamela Parker (8/11/04):
"Nearly 40 percent of Americans say they participate in online communities, with sites around hobbies, shared personal interests, and health-related issues among the most popular. That's according to a survey conducted by ACNielsen and commissioned by eBay.
The survey was conducted in late September. Of 1,007 respondents, 87 percent say they are part of a community. Of those, 66 percent say they participate in shared personal interest sites. Next comes hobby sites (62 percent), health community sites (55 percent), public issues sites (49 percents), and commerce sites (47 percent). Others participate in social or business networking sites (42 percent), sports sites (42 percent), alumni sites (39 percent), or dating sites (23 percent).
"We are finding that affinity is quickly replacing proximity as the key driver in forming communities," said Bruce Paul, vice president of ACNielsen. "...
"Researchers note that among offline communities, only membership in religious congregations (59 percent), social groups (54 percent), and neighborhood groups (52 percent) are more common than participation in online communities (39 percent)
The study also shows that though 30 percent of online community members interact on a daily basis, only 7 percent of offline community members interacted that often. It also reveals that 47 percent of offline communities have an online component, such as e-mailing or chatting online."
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Monday, November 08, 2004
Web of Influence
I really must stop posting about Blogs, as I have bombarded you with articles and references over the last few weeks. However this article, "Web of Influence" by Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell is really good and if your were to read just one article about blogs, this should be it. Here are some extracts:
The blogging revolution is making its mark on the media, to be sure. But a real revolution does normally require people to get out of the house...
The Perseus Development Corporation, a consulting firm that studies Internet trends, estimates that by 2005 more than 10 million blogs will have been created...
The top five political blogs together attract over half a million visitors per day...
The Iranian blogosphere has exploded. According to the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education’s Blog Census, Farsi is the fourth most widely used language among blogs worldwide. One service provider alone (“Persian Blog”) hosts some 60,000 active blogs. The weblogs allow young secular and religious Iranians to interact, partially taking the place of reformist newspapers that have been censored or shut down. Government efforts to impose filters on the Internet have been sporadic and only partially successful...
An international protest campaign also secured the freedom of Chinese blogger Liu Di, a 23-year-old psychology student who offended authorities with her satirical comments about the Communist Party. Yet, even as Di was released, two individuals who had circulated online petitions on her behalf were arrested. Such is life in China, where an estimated 300,000 bloggers (out of 80 million regular Internet users) uneasily coexist with the government...
One should also bear in mind that the blogosphere, mirroring global civil society as a whole, remains dominated by the developed world—a fact only heightened by claims of a digital divide. And though elite bloggers are ideologically diverse, they’re demographically similar. Middle-class white males are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the blogosphere...
The blogging revolution is making its mark on the media, to be sure. But a real revolution does normally require people to get out of the house...
The Perseus Development Corporation, a consulting firm that studies Internet trends, estimates that by 2005 more than 10 million blogs will have been created...
The top five political blogs together attract over half a million visitors per day...
The Iranian blogosphere has exploded. According to the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education’s Blog Census, Farsi is the fourth most widely used language among blogs worldwide. One service provider alone (“Persian Blog”) hosts some 60,000 active blogs. The weblogs allow young secular and religious Iranians to interact, partially taking the place of reformist newspapers that have been censored or shut down. Government efforts to impose filters on the Internet have been sporadic and only partially successful...
An international protest campaign also secured the freedom of Chinese blogger Liu Di, a 23-year-old psychology student who offended authorities with her satirical comments about the Communist Party. Yet, even as Di was released, two individuals who had circulated online petitions on her behalf were arrested. Such is life in China, where an estimated 300,000 bloggers (out of 80 million regular Internet users) uneasily coexist with the government...
One should also bear in mind that the blogosphere, mirroring global civil society as a whole, remains dominated by the developed world—a fact only heightened by claims of a digital divide. And though elite bloggers are ideologically diverse, they’re demographically similar. Middle-class white males are overrepresented in the upper echelons of the blogosphere...
Sunday, November 07, 2004
review of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People For the People
From the Guardian, November 6, 2004
Good review of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People For the People "by Dan Gillmor O'Reilly,
Gilmour is living what he talks about by makig the full book available online. Tio access it click here
Quotes from the review:
"When this book was in its earliest stages, the author, a respected Silicon Valley journalist, posted an initial outline on his weblog, asking for comments. He was besieged with emails offering suggestions and advice. More, in fact, than he could handle. Later, he posted draft chapters as they were finished. One reader, the publisher of a small newspaper in upstate New York, whom he had never met, sent back a draft chapter dripping with digital red ink, commenting: "The time is right; the subject is right. But your book deserves to be better than this."
For most journalists or authors the idea of putting yourself through this process, while trying to get a book out, seems about as smart as standing on a street corner with a sign round your neck saying: "Please poke me in the eye."
For Gillmor, however, it is a proof of his underlying thesis. Throughout this book, he argues that the growth of internet and related technologies is changing the balance of power between journalists and their readers; you can succeed in the coming decades only by acknowledging that shift in power and changing your behaviour accordingly. "Big media ... treated the news as a lecture. We told you what the news was. You bought it, or you didn't. You might write us a letter; we might print it ... it was a world that bred complacency and arrogance on our part. It was a gravy train while it lasted, but it was unsustainable
"Tomorrow's news reporting and production will be more of a conversation or a seminar. The lines will blur between producers and consumers, changing the role of both in ways we're only beginning to grasp. The communication network itself will be a medium for everyone's voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multimillion-dollar printing presses, launch satellites, or win the government's permission to squat on the public airways."
..............
"Gillmor's ultimate hope is that the result is going to be better for everyone. Journalism, politics and major corporations will all engage with this former audience in new ways to become more transparent and therefore trusted. The result will be better media and better democracy.
His fear, however, is that this won't happen, and based on a number of examples he gives, the future is more likely to live up to his fears than his hopes. "If today's Big Media is a dinosaur," he writes, "it won't die off quietly. It will, with the government's help, try to control new media, rather than see its business models eroded by it."
Read more here
Good review of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People For the People "by Dan Gillmor O'Reilly,
Gilmour is living what he talks about by makig the full book available online. Tio access it click here
Quotes from the review:
"When this book was in its earliest stages, the author, a respected Silicon Valley journalist, posted an initial outline on his weblog, asking for comments. He was besieged with emails offering suggestions and advice. More, in fact, than he could handle. Later, he posted draft chapters as they were finished. One reader, the publisher of a small newspaper in upstate New York, whom he had never met, sent back a draft chapter dripping with digital red ink, commenting: "The time is right; the subject is right. But your book deserves to be better than this."
For most journalists or authors the idea of putting yourself through this process, while trying to get a book out, seems about as smart as standing on a street corner with a sign round your neck saying: "Please poke me in the eye."
For Gillmor, however, it is a proof of his underlying thesis. Throughout this book, he argues that the growth of internet and related technologies is changing the balance of power between journalists and their readers; you can succeed in the coming decades only by acknowledging that shift in power and changing your behaviour accordingly. "Big media ... treated the news as a lecture. We told you what the news was. You bought it, or you didn't. You might write us a letter; we might print it ... it was a world that bred complacency and arrogance on our part. It was a gravy train while it lasted, but it was unsustainable
"Tomorrow's news reporting and production will be more of a conversation or a seminar. The lines will blur between producers and consumers, changing the role of both in ways we're only beginning to grasp. The communication network itself will be a medium for everyone's voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multimillion-dollar printing presses, launch satellites, or win the government's permission to squat on the public airways."
..............
"Gillmor's ultimate hope is that the result is going to be better for everyone. Journalism, politics and major corporations will all engage with this former audience in new ways to become more transparent and therefore trusted. The result will be better media and better democracy.
His fear, however, is that this won't happen, and based on a number of examples he gives, the future is more likely to live up to his fears than his hopes. "If today's Big Media is a dinosaur," he writes, "it won't die off quietly. It will, with the government's help, try to control new media, rather than see its business models eroded by it."
Read more here
Friday, November 05, 2004
Blog glossary
There is a very good Blog glossary at Samizdata.net. Seemingly endless lists of definitions of everything from Blogistan ("The totality of blogs; blogs as a community") to Blogorrhea ("An unusually high volume output of articles on a blog"), through to Blogroll ("A list of links in the sidebar of a blog, often linking to other blogs")... and that is just the 'B's' !
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Bookmarklets
I don't know if you have ever heard of bookmarklets, but they are useful little javascripts that you attach to your favourites on Internet Explorer. They are simple, safe and free. Take a look at the Bookmarkets homepage. Of particular use is the page freshness bookmark which gives you the date that a webpage was last modified in a little pop-up window. This is useful in that when you are referencing a webpage, they frequently do not state when they were written. So when you are referencing such pages it is good practice to add the 'date last modified' to your reference
A good description of bookmarklets is available on the about.com webpage Bookmarklets for Power Users
A good description of bookmarklets is available on the about.com webpage Bookmarklets for Power Users
Monday, November 01, 2004
critique of claim that the internet is reinvigorating civil society
"Progress doesn't just 'emerge', by championing spontaneous collectivism, internet geeks and gurus are giving up on human agency"
This is a good article in Spiked Online (22/10/04) by the prolific and controversial sociologist, Frank Furedi, which is a critique of the claim that the internet is reinvigorating civil society and a critique of two recent book articles:
'Prospects for a new public sphere', Peter Day and Douglas Schuler, in Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace, ed Peter Day and Douglas Schuler, MIT Press, 2004,
"Day and Schuler admit in Shaping the Network Society that 'it is too early to state with certainty that the initiatives we introduce here are representative of a transnational civil society movement', but they still claim that these initiatives are 'indicators of an emerging grassroots potential and openness to social change in the network society'. They also declare proudly that 'our goals are diffuse, impossible to specify precisely, and possibly contradictory' "
'We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People', Dan Gillmor, O'Reilly, 2004,
"Gillmor disparages the idea of the journalist as an authority on their subject, insisting that journalists should be self-deprecating by nature: 'I take it for granted...that my readers know more than I do - and this is a liberating, not threatening, fact of journalistic life. Every reporter on the beat should embrace this.' He goes on to explain that he welcomes corrections and feedback from his readers, and that 'being the least knowledgeable person in the room has its advantages; I always learn something'
While it's important for journalists to be open to criticism, Gillmor's suggestion that they should profess ignorance goes further than this. Conveniently for him, it absolves journalists from having any responsibility for getting their facts straight in the first place. But hard facts are not Gillmor's principal concern - instead, he revels in the unreflective immediacy of online reportage."
"....it is the same rhetoric used by the new anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation and anti-war movements to argue that their diffuse character and lack of clear principles are strengths rather than weaknesses - or, to use the technological argot, features rather than bugs. The term 'grassroots', used to convey the democratic credentials of these new social movements, fulfils a similar purpose to the term 'emergence'. It comes across as granting power to the multitudes, but is actually about relinquishing responsibility for ideas and actions and submitting to the spontaneous."
This is a good article in Spiked Online (22/10/04) by the prolific and controversial sociologist, Frank Furedi, which is a critique of the claim that the internet is reinvigorating civil society and a critique of two recent book articles:
'Prospects for a new public sphere', Peter Day and Douglas Schuler, in Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace, ed Peter Day and Douglas Schuler, MIT Press, 2004,
"Day and Schuler admit in Shaping the Network Society that 'it is too early to state with certainty that the initiatives we introduce here are representative of a transnational civil society movement', but they still claim that these initiatives are 'indicators of an emerging grassroots potential and openness to social change in the network society'. They also declare proudly that 'our goals are diffuse, impossible to specify precisely, and possibly contradictory' "
'We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People', Dan Gillmor, O'Reilly, 2004,
"Gillmor disparages the idea of the journalist as an authority on their subject, insisting that journalists should be self-deprecating by nature: 'I take it for granted...that my readers know more than I do - and this is a liberating, not threatening, fact of journalistic life. Every reporter on the beat should embrace this.' He goes on to explain that he welcomes corrections and feedback from his readers, and that 'being the least knowledgeable person in the room has its advantages; I always learn something'
While it's important for journalists to be open to criticism, Gillmor's suggestion that they should profess ignorance goes further than this. Conveniently for him, it absolves journalists from having any responsibility for getting their facts straight in the first place. But hard facts are not Gillmor's principal concern - instead, he revels in the unreflective immediacy of online reportage."
"....it is the same rhetoric used by the new anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation and anti-war movements to argue that their diffuse character and lack of clear principles are strengths rather than weaknesses - or, to use the technological argot, features rather than bugs. The term 'grassroots', used to convey the democratic credentials of these new social movements, fulfils a similar purpose to the term 'emergence'. It comes across as granting power to the multitudes, but is actually about relinquishing responsibility for ideas and actions and submitting to the spontaneous."
Ad agencies get on blogging bandwagon
From Agenda.Inc (Nov 1st)
"Web logs have had an astonishing season this year, enough to freckle the faces of bloggers who do not, as a rule, get much time outdoors. Although political blogs have received the most attention, advertising agencies and communications professionals are using blogs to create discussion.
"Blogs are in fashion, and it is easy to hop on the bandwagon and say that every company should have one. The questions any smart marketer should be asking are, 'Does this provide a platform to connect with their most relevant audiences and how will this address business objectives?"
"Web logs have had an astonishing season this year, enough to freckle the faces of bloggers who do not, as a rule, get much time outdoors. Although political blogs have received the most attention, advertising agencies and communications professionals are using blogs to create discussion.
"Blogs are in fashion, and it is easy to hop on the bandwagon and say that every company should have one. The questions any smart marketer should be asking are, 'Does this provide a platform to connect with their most relevant audiences and how will this address business objectives?"
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