When Politics Invades the Tech Blogosphere
With elections in the United States just two months away, it’s not surprising that political talk (and blabber) has invaded the technology blogosphere.
TechCrunch got involved early - it launched the because it wanted “to provide a voice for digital policy and technology issues in the upcoming U.S. Presidential election.” Fine, but recently, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld took some heat for a political post that was read by some as being in bad taste.
Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins at Mashable is also known to interject his political opinions into his writing. His recent post about Sarah Palin looked a bit out of place on Mashable.
Scoble: The Idiots vs. the Non-Idiots
I was sent another classic Robert Scoble post from a reader in which Scoble coins another Web 2.0 euphemism - “passionates.”
Who are passionates? Early adopters. Which means, of course, that there are non-passionates, or late adopters.
Scoble discusses passionates and non-passionates in the context of a post by Dare Obasanjo, who points out that Web 2.0 companies should consider that building products that appeal specifically to early adopters can be problematic because early adopters don’t represent the mass market consumer.
Obasanjo concludes with a pragmatic piece of advice:
Google Shows Its True Colors, Says Privacy Cannot Exist in the Modern World
One doesn’t need to be incredibly perceptive to detect that while Google professes its respect for privacy, its actions demonstrate a profound disregard for it.
In its efforts to “organize the world’s information” (and make lots of money doing so), the more information Google collects, the better.
This, of course, includes information on Google users and as Viacom’s lawsuit against Google , there’s an awful lot of it.
When Google launched its Street View initiative last year, which enables Google users to view street-level panoramic photographs on Google Maps, it didn’t take long for people to become aware of the privacy implications.
Introducing The Conversation Sphere
Recently, Web 2.0 partygoer, photographer and PR guy Brian Solis introduced the Conversation Prism to the world.
Calling it his “contribution to a new era of media education and literacy,” Solis explains the importance of the Conversation Prism:
The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.
Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand.
Chris Anderson: Google Has Eliminated the Scientific Method
According to Chris Anderson, “the future of business is selling less of more” (). And “every industry that becomes digital eventually becomes free” ().
In my opinion, Anderson is a master of exaggeration. He takes observations about business and technology that alone are usually marginally interesting and exaggerates them into grandiose theses that serve as the foundations for appealing, marketable books.
While I certainly expected Anderson to continue finding new subjects to exaggerate about, I didn’t quite expect his latest exaggerration: “the data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete.”
University of Minnesota Discovers “Tremendous Educational Potential” in Social Networks
Researchers from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota’s (UMN) believe they’ve stumbled onto something amazing: the educational benefits of social networking services like MySpace and Facebook.
In their “first-of-its-kind study,” the UMN researchers have come to the conclusion that “students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today.”
How exactly did UMN researchers find out what students were learning from social networks? Apparently, they simply asked them what they learn from using social networking sites:
Inspiration Proves Increasingly Elusive for A VC
Last week, a commenter on this blog pointed me in the direction of an interesting post by Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist in New York and the author of the popular blog, A VC.
In his post, Wilson lamented that he’s not finding much inspiration in the technology blogosphere these days.
He wrote:
As technology blogging has become defined by blogs like Techcrunch, Gigaom, VentureBeat, Valleywag, PaidContent, AlleyInsider, and many others that are quickly becoming news organizations optimizing around scoops and driving readership, I am feeling that we’ve lost something, or at least we need to look elsewhere for that magic that was existent back in the first half of this decade.
Are Americans Using the Internet to Go Beyond the Sound Bite?
Back in January, I argued that “Politics 2.0 is politics as usual” and stated:
In my opinion, Web 2.0 has become little more than the technological equivalent of the candidate-holds-a-baby photo opportunity. It looks great that politicians are answering questions from Internet users, making themselves appear more accessible and encouraging grassroots campaigns, but it’s really little more than marketing fodder. I don’t see any evidence that politicians are going to change the way they do business.
According to a new Pew Internet and American Life Project study, the Internet is playing an increasingly important role in the 2008 election:
Apple Is to Geeks What Breasts Are to Men
Yesterday was a special day for geeks around the world. They finally had something besides Twitter to write about.
Yes, that can only mean one thing: Apple released a new iPhone.
Blogs like Engadget and TechCrunch dedicated a chunk of their daily “coverage” to the iPhone and the mainstream press was equally guilty of indulging in the hype.
Given that I’m not easily amused by technology gadgets and am not particularly fond of cell phones (I value both my and my ), I always get amused when I see throngs of geeks - mostly male - lining up to see what Apple is going to release.
Drama 2.0’s Dictionary of Web 2.0 Doublespeak
I’ve always been amused, and at the same time disturbed, by the way the Web 2.0 “community” degrades language. In my opinion, some of the words and phrases it often uses have been degraded to the point where they are essentially meaningless.
I finally decided to jot down a quick list of some of the words and phrases that have become little more than doublespeak in the world of Web 2.0.
In the list below, you will find English words or phrases and what they mean/become in the Web 2.0 community.
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Drama 2.0 spikes the Web 2.0 kool aid by providing critical analyses of Web 2.0, its people, its startups and its impact on the world of media. Other topics are explored when Drama 2.0 has been drinking too much 1975 Dom Perignon. Read more about the Internet's version of Keyser Söze here.
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