www.josschuurmans.com

The Live Web Will Be Federated

Under the headline 'Blogging 2.0: Moving Toward Conversational "Flows"', Bill French wrote a piece on MyST Blogsite, in which he observes that conversations on the Internet are increasingly moving away from being contained within blogs, towards being distributed among lifestreaming or micro-blogging services (Bill calls them "flow applications") such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

He quotes me by saying:

"(...) Ironically, in this comment, Jos Schuurmans equate sthe emergence of social networks with the end of “channels”. (...)"

I subscribe to the view that online conversations will be less and less contained within channels, while more and more federated among and across different platforms and services. To the extent that channels can be seen as walled gardens, the emergence of the blogosphere itself was the disruption that started taking down those walls.

The point I was trying to make earlier, under 'The End of Channels?' and ''Channels' does not sufficiently describe the dynamics of distributed online conversations', is that conversations take place across and between channels, not just within, and that it is therefore less useful to think of the Web in terms of channels. As David Weinberger and Doc Searls have pointed out: the Internet is a place, not a medium.

Indeed, enablers like Jaiku, Twitter, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Ping.fm, and Facebook are speeding up the trend of conversations being more distributed. But what these services represent most of all is the shift from a more static Web to the "live Web".

Another application worth mentioning in this context is Disqus, an enabler of blog comments federation. If Dave Winer will have his way, something similar is going to happen to micro-blogging as well... And why wouldn't he?

Tags: Bill French, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Dave Winer, lifestreaming, micro-blogging, federation, channels, conversation

Dugg: The Giant Zero, Part 0.x - SuitWatch | Doc Searls / Linux Journal

On October 12, 2006, Doc Searls wrote in Linux Journal how "(...) it helps to think of the Net as a "giant zero" (...)"

(The above video features Doc speaking about the Giant Zero at a Berkman Luncheon Series event on September 19, 2006.)

(Further, here is a podcast on IT Conversations from March 6, 2007, in which Doc talks about the Giant Zero with Phil Windley.)

I was just reading chapter 2 of David Weinberger's 'Small Pieces Loosely Joined - a unified theory of the web', called 'Space', when Doc Searls came out of hospital and the first thing he "cached up" was a link to when he first explained his idea of the Giant Zero in Linux Journal. I thought, if this was the first thing he thought about when climbing back on the saddle, it must be highly relevant.

Together, Doc's notion of a giant vacuum and David's notion of the Web being "place-ial" but not spacial, make a lot of sense. David writes:

p.40 : "(...) We could think of the Web as a giant photocopier that delivers copies of sites. We could think of it as a medium through which we see sites. We could think of it as a library from which we request copies. But we don't. We experience the Web as a web: a set of nodes that are linked one to another, creating a space through which we travel. (...)"

p.45: "(...) While big companies have an advantage when it comes to location because their fatter wallets can buy better positioning, big sites don't have a leg up on being interesting. In fact, often it's quite the contrary. (...)"

p. 50: "(...) in this city, nearness loses its symmetry: my Broadway show room may be near (linked to) your Gershwin room, but your Gershwin room need not be near my room. You may not even know that I've brought my room near to yours by linking to it (...)"

In Linux Journal on October 12, 2006, Doc characterized his Giant Zero in twelve steps:

1. The Net isn't a medium.  It's a place.
2. Distance is the main issue.  Not bandwidth.
3. The vacuum in the middle of the Giant Zero is sustained by light.
4. The Net is pure infrastructure.
5. The Giant Zero is built to support an infinitude of business.
6. The Net is a public utility, like electricity, gas, water, waste treatment and roads.
7. We need to understand The Because Effect, and how it explains the real value of pure infrastructure.
8. The Live Web is branching off the Static Web.
9. On the Live Web, immediacy matters more than mediation.
10. Works of art, good or bad, are not commodities.  Nobody writes (or draws, or shoots, or sculpts) cargo.
11. There's a new economy coming together around The Live Web.
12. In the Live Web economy, the value chain is replaced by the value constellation.  There are only stars here.

Ping this! | read more | digg story

Dugg: Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams | YouTube

"(...) Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture. (...)"

(Via Doc Searls)

read more | digg story

Mobile Internet sucks (= conclusion of 3 wks without ADSL)

I've been without broadband Internet at home for about three weeks - I was "between providers", so to speak.

Must say that, while I was still able to consume some of my daily Internet fix - browsing RSS feeds on my mobile phone -, it was at the same time a sobering experience of how embarrassingly ill adapted the applications on my Nokia N95 are to mobile Web 2.0 participation.

I'll probably remember this period best as the time when Doc Searls went in and out of hospital and blogged  it all. Good health and happiness to you, Doc!

Data speed is not the bottle neck. It's the lack of mobile client-side participatory software.

With my Nseries device and 3G coverage I could browse and email, but that was about it. No tagging, no digging, no blogging with any level of convenience.

So what I ended up doing was to bookmark the URLs I would have liked to tag, digg or blog and thus collect them in my mobile phone's browser for future reference.

I hope to catch up blogging some of those bookmarks over the coming days.

Dugg: Lessons of Silence | Strategy+Business / Bruno Kahne

Bruno Kahne: "(...) As I immersed myself in their visual, intensely expressive language, I realized that through their deaf people had developed certain communication skills more thoroughly than most hearing people, which made them uncommonly effective at getting their point across. (...)"

(Via Doc Searls, who summarized:

1. Look people in the eye.
2. Don’t interrupt.
3. Say what you mean, as simply as possible.
4. When you don’t understand something, ask.
5. Stay focused.)

read more | digg story

Dugg: Blogging as a Form of Journalism | J.D. Lasica / OJR

"(...) Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices (...)"

When cleaning up my paper (sic!) archive the other day, I came across a printed article in two parts, by J.D. Lasica for the Online Journalism Review (OJR), published on May 24 and 31, 2001. Just before I'm throwing this away for the benefit of the paperless office, I'll quote what I highlighted back then:

From: 'Blogging as a Form of Journalism', May 24, 2001:

Dugg: The only real social networks are personal ones | Doc Searls

Doc Searls writes:

"(...) The best collections of [social networks] for me aren’t on facebook or LinkedIn. They’re in my IM buddy list and my email address book. (...)"

My comment:

Couldn't agree more on Facebook and LinkedIn being walled gardens.

However, it keeps amazing me how the transformative power of mobility just doesn't seem to sink in on the other side of the Atlantic, even among the brightest scholars of the computer networking age.

Doc, I don't want to sound funny or anything, but the best collections of my social networks are found in the contacts application of my mobile phone.

For a good introduction of where mobility may take us fairly soon, I suggest Stephen Johnston's excellent essay in two on Nokia's innovation story: part I and part II.

read more | digg story

Dugg: We are all authors of each other | Doc Searls

"(...) Informing is not the same as delivering information. Inform is derived from the verb to form. When you inform me, you form me. You enlarge that which makes me most human: what I know. I am, to some degree, authored by you. (...) What we call "authority" is the right we give others to author us, to enlarge us. (...)"

read more | digg story

links for 2007-07-29

• The Doc Searls Weblog : Saturday, July 27, 2007
  "(...) This comes to mind as I read Jos Schuurmans' The Cluetrain Manifesto on the rebirth of conversations, wherein he excerpts a long series of quotes that remind me of three things: 1) I haven't read the book in years; 2) There's a lot of good stuff in
  (tags: Doc Searls Cluetrain Manifesto josschuurmans)
• The Doc Searls Weblog
  Weblog of Doc Searls, one of the four authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto.
  (tags: Doc Searls blog Cluetrain Manifesto)
• Doc Searls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  "(...) Doc Searls (born on July 29, 1947) is a widely-read blogger and a columnist and senior editor for Linux Journal. He is often credited for originating the quote "Markets are conversations", which is also the first thesis in The Cluetrain Manifesto,
  (tags: Doc Searls Cluetrain Manifesto Wikipedia)

Dugg: The Doc Searls Weblog: Saturday, July 28, 2007

"(...) This comes to mind as I read Jos Schuurmans' The Cluetrain Manifesto on the rebirth of conversations, wherein he excerpts a long series of quotes that remind me of three things: 1) I haven't read the book in years; 2) There's a lot of good stuff in there; and 3) The future, as William Gibson said, is not evenly distributed. (...)"

read more | digg story

The Cluetrain Manifesto on the rebirth of conversations

IMHO, the Cluetrain Manifesto is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

From where I stand, the three most relevant themes in the Cluetrain are:

1. The significance of conversations, and how the Internet is bringing them back.
2. Why and how businesses need to change as a result.
3. The power of storytelling.

Below is my collection of references from the book, with an emphasis on the first theme, the rebirth of conversations.

[UPDATE, July 29, 2007: Doc Searls refers to my excerpts from the cluetrain on The Doc Searls Weblog:  Saturday, July 28, 2007. In response, I submit that we should combine the teachings of the Cluetrain and the Long Tail theory to be able to engage in the conversations that matter most to us.]

We need to learn to let go!

The five-member team I work with (we develop and content-manage internal news and participatory media channels) have decided to (re-)read the Cluetrain book over the summer and discuss it when we're all back at the office.

A colleague from another team the other day requested ideas as to whom we could invite to speak at our yearly global corporate communications days. (The name Andrew Keen came up.)

Even though things have moved on since 1999, to me the Cluetrain is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

Many corporate communicators, I feel, are still struggling with the concept, clinging on to an illusion of "controlled conversation" or some such compromise. Well, it won't last, will it? And the sooner we all grok this, the better for all involved: WE NEED TO LEARN TO LET GO!

If I had to suggest a speaker to our communications teams, I'd be humbled should any of the four Cluetrain authors be willing. Perhaps the chapters that spoke to me most were those written by Christopher Locke and David Weinberger.

links for 2007-03-28

• the cluetrain manifesto
  Markets are conversations. (...) Through the Internet, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter faster than most companies. (...) [Companies] will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.
  (tags: Cluetrain Manifesto Christopher Chris Locke Doc Searls David Weinberger Rick Levine markets conversation conversations communication communications)
• The Cluetrain Manifesto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The Cluetrain Manifesto is a set of 95 theses organised and put forward as a manifesto, or call to action, for all businesses operating within what is suggested to be a newly-connected marketplace. The ideas put forward within the manifesto aim to examine
  (tags: Cluetrain Manifesto markets conversations Wikipedia)
• ZoomInfo.com
  ZoomInfo, the premier summarization search engine, delivers fresh, comprehensive information on over 35 million business professionals and 2 million companies across virtually every industry.
  (tags: Zoominfo people search)
• scott chambers 3ghr
  Scott is a highly experienced management consultant with extensive knowledge at a strategic Human Resource level in the UK and internationally.
  (tags: Scott Chambers 3GHR bio organisational leadership HR human resources development)

cluetrain more relevant than ever

I wonder when exactly the cluetrain manifesto was first published. A colleague of mine referred to it again during a seminar on blogging that I intended the other week. The cluetrain and its central theme of "conversation" just seems to become more and more compelling, even six years down the road.

Revisiting the cluetrain manifesto

In his presentation to the Nokia Blogging Seminar today, Jussi-Pekka brought the cluetrain manifesto to the table. The manifesto, written up in 1999, received widespread critical acclaim as a plea for straightforwardness in marketing and communications.

And yes, there was that word again: "conversation."

"A powerful global conversation has begun," the creators wrote. "Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter faster than most companies."

"If you only have time for one clue this year," they wrote, "this is the one to get...
we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers.
we are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasps."

Provocative stuff, followed by 95 theses mirroring the structure of the Protestant Declaration of Martin Luther. Obligatory reading for any marketing or communications professional, and indeed for anyone who needs to have clue about how the way we communicate online is changing.

A message that is even more timely now than it was six years ago.