Five ways mobile changes the world. Forever.

Brian Solis has a great wrap-up of a developing (and inevitable) collision between Twitter, the reigning social presence flow app, and Jaiku, it's less well-known but worthy competititor. Leo Laporte's now well-known defection to Jaiku from Twitter has led to a lot of folks checking Jaiku out for the first time. Solis characterizes the impact of that break this way:

[from Twitter Me This, Is Jaiku a Threat? Let's Ask Those Defining the Landscape]

[...]

Now, there is a line in the sand. A division between Twitter and Jaiku. No one thinks that two can survive, that this tournament of arm wrestling will divide the community.

However, I don't think so.

Both offer points of value that will appeal to different market segments (left and right) as well as those who can enjoy playing both sides of the fence (the middle).

[...]

Back in December I joined Jaiku to test it out and I had this to say:

[from Jaiku by Stowe Boyd]

Basically, you are pushing out status messages to a list of buddies (and the whole damn world, if you want to) like Twitter, including by texting on your cell. The added wrinkle is that Jaiku allows you to add RSS feeds from your blogs, Flickr, and del.icio.us accounts, so that Jaiku becomes the pulsing bloodstream of your online identity.

I returned to Jaiku again in March, after I had become a confirmed Twitterholic:

[from Trying Jaiku As A Better Lifestream]

I was fiddling with Facebook today, to see if it could be tweaked into being a better single stream for all my traffic, and I managed to crash Firefox by putting Technorati tags into a Facebook 'share'. I have decided to continue using del.icio.us bookmarks because I can tag them, even though they feel awfully static.

The answer might be to add more streams to Jaiku. I have included my Last.fm recently played stream, the Ambivalence feed, and I have the nice folks there trying to figure out why Upcoming.org RSS feeds don't work (missing the '.xml' suffix?). I already had Twitter and Flickr streams there.

One nice thing about Jaiku: comments are possible on all stream items. Look at this screenshot, based on an interchange with Petteri Koponen of Jaiku. Note that the initial start was a Twitter that was streamed into Jaiku.

This comment notion is great, and provides an interest new dimension to social presence flow. In Twitter, we do something similar by direct messages to others, or via a 'shout out' into the stream by writing a message with an '@' preceding a person's name: "@ briansolis - nice post". [Note that the latter spontaneously occured on Twitter, invented by some savvy user. It's not a supported feature.]

But in Jaiku, comments get added to the initial message: a neater solution.

Also, Jaiku has the flavor of a tumbler blog as well. Various flavors of elements in the stream are denoted with different icons. Any sort of RSS feeds can be flowed into the traffic, and passed along to your downstream buddies. In this way, it actually feels much more like a Facebook profile page than Twitter.

Both Twitter and jaiku are mobile, although at the moment Jaiku is only supported natively on S60 phones. Jaiku's ambitions with mobile seem more advanced than Twitter, involving a sophisticated client on the phone that supports presence and messaging. Twitter is limited to SMS, at the moment.

So, is this the final bout for supremacy in social presence flow apps? I don't thinks so. It's early days yet, and the apps are rudimentary at the moment. I think we will see a lot of innovation, as well as efforts by the majors to get involved -- either by acquisition or by their own efforts.

tags: twitter, jaiky, leo+laporte, brian+solis, twitter+v+jaiku, social+presence, flow, traffic+and+flow

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Andrew Kantor on "Andrew Kantor on Twitter"

Andrew Kantor responded to my recent post, Andrew Kantor on Twitter, (or perhaps my tweet announcing the post: "I disembowel Andrew Kantor's rant against Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/36enpd"):

Interesting that you jump from my argument, 'Twitter is another way to get overloaded with useless information' to "I know we are supposed to only talk to people we work with, our families, and a handful of friends."

Did I say that? Did I even imply that? Perhaps you didn't read the column thoroughly. My point was clearly *not* "You should only talk to a handful of people" as you imply.

It was, rather, that you don't need to be in touch with your five or 10 or 500 or 5000 friends every moment.

Please read things more carefully before commenting on them.

Actually, I was jumping from your argument, based on these statements:

1. "Twitter is a bad, bad thing — not just because of what it does, but because of what it says about all of us and our need to be connected."
2. "And what could be better than knowing what everyone is doing at every moment? Heaven forbid you should miss that kind of detail. (And if you do, you can "nudge" your friends — continuing the preschooler metaphor, you're like a four year old saying, "What are you doing now? What are you doing now? What are you doing now?")"
3. "Twitter.com also features a public timeline, which tells you what every Twitter user is up to. It's full of startling revelations like "time for lunch.... Hmm what should I have. Ssoooooo many choices," (that from "magicman18") and "Slow roasting a brisket" from "jonnyblujeans." I don't know about you, but I'm ever so glad random strangers took the time to share those insights. (You can disable the "public" function. Would that more people did.)"

And then I was extrapolating at the underlying mindset involved, Andrew. You state that Twitter is bad, and that we are morally weak or sick in the head for wanting to be connected through a medium like this to our 'friends.' Then you mention the public timeline -- a more important part of the experience of Twitter than your superficial tinkering might have led you to believe -- and suggest that we are four-year-olds for communicating our social presence in this way.

Perhaps I read too much into your piece, but I did read it closely. I should be surprised by the arrogant tone in your comment that suggest that my comments went off track because I didn't read your purple prose closely enough.

Returning to the public timeline and the general pattern of Twitter use, Twitter "friends" are not necessarily real-world friends. Many of my Twitter 'friends' are people that I hardly know at all: they are just people that are interesting sources of observation about the world. Of course, in general, these are not people who are posting "I just brushed my teeth," or "going to the bathroom." Consider just these examples from my recent feed:

• chrispirillo Bayesian filter god, Paul Graham, claims Microsoft is dead: http://www.paulgraham.com/m
• dhowell If you're hell bent on being a person with a bowl of potpourri in the house, don't have kids; or learn to revel in it all over the floor.
• emilychang frustrated that the features of highrise aren't integrated into basecamp. in fact, the two paradigms compete and overlap and need 2 logins..

So, I had assumed that since you were talking about 'friends' you meant it in this more liberal, generous, and open way: any of the interesting folks in your Twitter traffic. In which case, my subsequent screed makes more sense, where I presumed that you were suggesting that this great involvement with a larger world -- one of the key points of Twitter -- is also bad, and immoral. Since giving up Twitter means throwing away this sort of connection, I thought you were arguing that this kind or degree of connectedness is in itself bad, and that we should just go back to the conventional model of email, IM, and f2f interaction with people already well known to us.

But, perhaps you have completely missed this aspect of Twitter. Your superficial and prejudiced examination of its workings led you to believe what you wrote, and you missed the real deal: that Twitter -- like other flow apps -- is a revolutionary shift in how people online make sense of their world, how they engage, and how apps are supposed to augment social networks.

So, in the future, please do a deeper 'reading' of the social context of these apps before going to print with small-minded, dismissive, and insulting condemnations.

tags: andrew+kantor, twitter, social+presence, traffic+and+flow, flow+applications

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Some Questions For My SIIA Panel On "Enterprise 2.0"

I am going to be herding some serious cats down the beach at the upcoming SIIA conference in San Francisco on 17 April in a panel on "Enterprise 2.0: Democratizing IT." I thought I would write up a few questions and send them along to the panelist, who are George Hu, Chief Marketing Officer, Salesforce.com, Ross Mayfield, CEO & Co-founder, Socialtext,
Lior Nir, Director, Product Marketing, Nokia Enterprise Mobility Solutions,
Zia Zaman, Senior Vice President, Strategic Marketing, FAST.

Questions:

1. Web 2.0 is a swirling collection of metaphors, like 'the social web', 'web as a platform,' and 'open APIs', for example. What aspects of Web 2.0 do you believe are most relevant to Enterprise 2.0?
   
2. As businesses begin to adopt Web 2.0 technologies and effective techniques to use them, what changes can we expect in management and IT practices?
   
3. What is the single largest impact of Enterprise 2.0 on your company's product strategy? And the single largest challenge?

Of course, I plan to dream up some more, too.

tags: siia, enterprise+2.0+panel, ross+mayfield, lior+nir, salesforce.com, nokia, socialtext, george+hu, zia+zaman, fast

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McKinsey Survey Suggests Enterprise Aversion To Blogs

Putting People First reports that McKinsey has conducted a survey that suggests that business is starting to adopt Web 2.0 technologies, but remain skittish about blogs:

[via McKinsey Reports Businesses Loving Web 2.0… Except Blogs]

[quoting the McKinsey report]

Expressing satisfaction with their Internet investments so far, they say that Web 2.0 technologies are strategic and that they plan to increase these investments. But companies aren’t necessarily relying on the best-known Web 2.0 trends, such as blogs; instead, they place the greatest importance on technologies that enable automation and networking.

Big surprise. Eric Bonabeau once said "Managers will continue to use techniques that don't work instead of techniques they don't understand." Or maybe, can't control.

Business leaders are afraid of bottom-up, emergent voices and the power that they shift from the center. They are afraid of real dialogue, having grown confortable and then addicted to inauthentic propaganda in the form of 'marketing speak.' They are terrified of enabling anything that will even slightly increase the likelihood that people will say bad things about their products, practices, or the number of commas in their paychecks. They live in fear, and it has become so entrenched that they believe it to be the natural order of things.

Those of us advocating something else, something looser, more natural, more human scale... well, obviously, we are a bunch of peyote-chewing loonies howling at the moon after a wanton fertility ritual. It unamerican! And any employees jumping on this bandwagon will be dooced unceremoniously and immediately.

Bruce Nussbaum of Businessweek supports this 'too-scared-to-move' argument:

Corporations Like Web 2.0 But Not Blogs. They're Afraid Of Their Own People. by Bruce Nussbaum]

Only 16% of the companies surveyed said they were investing in blogs, compared to 63% for web services, 28% for peer-to-peer networks, and 19% for social networks.

78% identified web services as the Web 2.0 technology/tool most important their their business.

McKinsey doesn't try to analyze why execs aren't investing in blogs as a Web 2.0 tool but I will venture to suggest that most managers are afraid of blogs. Very few blog themselves and when they do, it runs through the marketing or PR departments. Managers in general still worry about loss of control with blogs. Letting their employees and consumers into the conversatohn and allowing them their say frightens them.

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Julian Bond on The Weakest Blog Post Trick

Hates blog [posts] that end with "what do you think" in a pathetic attempt to get comments

tags: julian+bond, blogging

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Andrew Kantor on Twitter

Andrew Kantor does us all a service by snidely collating the most conventional arguments against Twitter in one place. Where better than square, middle-of-the-road USA Today?

[from Twitter is just too much information - USATODAY.com]

Twitter is a bad, bad thing — not just because of what it does, but because of what it says about all of us and our need to be connected. Twitter's whole existence is based on the premise that we aren't yet in touch with one another quite enough.

According to Twitter, you see, we should be in touch every second — every moment. This is madness, and down this road lies overscheduled kids, over-prescribed Ritalin, and anti-depressants in value-sized jars.

Twitter operates on the theory that people need to be in touch every moment of every day. But that philosophy — and Twitter is just the latest iteration — is doing us all more harm than good

[...]

An even moderately active Twitter user is like a four year old, giving a running dialog of her life to anyone within earshot. "I'm eating lunch. Now I'm throwing away the wrapper. Whoops, I got some ketchup on my shirt. I'm going to the bathroom to wash it off."

Remember that Rock&Roll, premarital sex, and instant messaging have been hailed as being bad for us too, and no less immoral.

I just love the sanctimonious tone that the Twitter haters take. Oh yes, this connected life choice flies in the face of the disconnected norms that we are supposed to blindly accept.

Imagine the following letter to Kantor:

Yes, Andrew, I know we are supposed to only talk to people we work with, our families, and a handful of friends. I know I am supposed to point my attention at only the most obvious and predetermined activities. I know I am supposed to keep the shades pulled down, and my head down, focused on my work. I know that twittering is sick, sick: a perversion.

Perhaps someone will set up a de-twitterification program, a 12-step path to freeing myself from this demon Twitter?

Thanks, Andrew, for giving me the strength to acknowledge that I have hit bottom: I am a Twitterholic!

Idiot.

But I expect that the transition to a web of flow -- based on social relationships, transient and ambient intimacy (thank you Leisa), and an open and generous spirit -- will bring out the Calvinist lurking not so very far below the skin of our self-appointed arbiters of morality, like Kantor.

The real problem is that Kantor et al do not understand the benefits -- or even the possibility -- of moving to a flow state of interaction. They believe that you have to transfer 100% of your attention from task to task, and that you can only do one thing at a time, all of the time. (Yes, and you can only have one friend at a time, or love one person at a time. Or read one book at a time. And don't mix the peas with your mashed potatoes, either.)

tags: andrew+kantor, twitter, a+web+of+flow, traffic+and+flow

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Commuter Marriages

Married couples living apart for job-related reasons are on the rise:

[from Making marriage work from a distance - State of our Unions - MSNBC.com]

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates 3.6 million married Americans, including military families, live apart. That's a 40 percent increase since 1999.

A 40% increase in seven years!

tags: commuter+marriages

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Is The Internet Changing The World?

JD Lasica recently asked me a (softball) question: "Is the Internet changing the world?" My answer: It better, because otherwise we are sunk. See the video. Tell your friends.

tags: jd+lasica, is+the+internet+changing+the+world

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Technorati value is in the data

Hey, I am not disputing that Technorati may be on the block. Personally, I have argued for years that it would be better for the community of users is some large company (Google pre-Blogsearch, or Yahoo or AOL today) would scoop it up, and fix all the damned annoying bugs and scaling problems.

Based on Dave Sifry's recent State of Technorati post, the rumors about being teed up for a sale have been flying right and left, including Arrington's post. He argues that the sequence of events at T'rati -- like Kevin Marks departure, and so on -- added to the spin in Sifry's post equates to a plan to sell out. But after Sifry denies it all in a comment, Arrington writes:

Dave Sifry responds in the comments, saying “I’ll be very clear about it - Technorati isn’t for sale.” Which means, of course, that Technorati is for sale.

Now it is true that he may be covering things up, but it's a bit much to say that denying something like this means it is happening. If Arrington has some support, he should cough it up, instead of this Orwellian wordplay.

tags: technorati, dave+sifry, mike+arrington, state+of+technorati

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Speaking

I do a lot of speaking these days, so I guess I am at least keeping people awake.

Here's some of the presentations I have in my portfolio:

• Building Social Applications -- Presented as a 3 hour workshop at Lift 07 in Feb 2007, and at the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo in Apr 2007. I did a 1 hour abbreviated version at a Mar 2007 AOL University conference. Kevin Farnham, the Managing Editor of the AOL Developer community called it "a superb presentation on the state of Web 2.0 and the characteristics of successful modern social apps/sites."
• Social = Me First -- A shorter presentation on some of the key drivers of the Web 2.0 social revolution, which I have presented in various venues in the past few months, notably Lift 07 in Geneva.
• Social Media: The Ecology Of Participation -- a distillation of my thinking about social media, how it works, and why it matters. Presenting in a few week at the Clickability VIP conference.
• Overload, Schmoverload -- A workshop I led at the recent Mar 07 Emerging Telephony conference: a contrarian view of information overload.
• Web 2.0: A Social Revolution -- a keynote for the upcoming Cutter Summit, May 2007.
• Bloggers and PR People: Why Can't We Just Get Along? -- keynote for the upcoming PR Online Convergence conference, May 07.
• Flow: A New Consciousness For A Web Of Traffic -- proposed talk for the upcoming Reboot conference, May 07, Copenhagen

Over the past two decades, I have spoken literally hundreds of times, in North America, Europe, and Asia. I find that presenting is one of the best ways to develop my thoughts on the topics that animate me, and as a result, I think of speaking as a improvinizational performance art.

tags: clickability+vip+conference, reboot, etel, aol+university, web+2.0+expo, traffic+and+flow, social=me+first, building+social+applications, the+ecology+of+participation, overload+schmoverload, speaking

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The Work I Do

It's actually been some time since I sat down to describe what it is I do.

My work falls into three parts:

1. Media -- Principally my media work is associated with /Message. It's primarily my perceptions about social tools and their impact on business, media, and society, but includes a growing amount of public speaking. I also am involved in the planning of various conferences, such at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference, and an unannounced event with SF Beta. I am launching a talkshow, called /Talkshow, on 12 April 2007, sponsored in part by Blogtalkradio.com.
2. Consulting -- Over the past 15 years, I have worked with many large software firms -- Microsoft, IBM, Lotus, Oracle, Novell, AOL, and so on -- as well as dozens of start-ups, like Imeem, Mog, TravelPod, MyCurrency, Freshbooks, MyPickList.com, and the like. My consulting is strategic, by which I mean I generally try to work with my clients over a long period of time, at least a year. My focus is product design, but I also guide clients in market planning, business development, and development.
3. Advisory Capital -- I coined the term 'advisory capital' in 2006 to describe my involvement in certain start-ups where I act, more or less, as a part-time founder. In these highly entrepreneurial engagements, I dedicate considerable time in exchange for discounted consulting rates and a stock grant in the company. Of course, I am quite selective in these sorts of deals, and my time constraints mean that I can only take on a few of these relationships at a time. At the present, I am working with two companies in this way.

These three elements of my work are quite complementary, and all influence the others.

tags: the+work+i+do, advisory+capital, /message, /talkshow, blogtalkradio.com, enterprise+2.0

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Spam Poetry

The spam apps must be sucking from my RSS Stream, since "Ted Rheingold," "should buy joyent," and "StoweBoyd" all appear in this spam poem:

[from dreamyr: You don't say]

Subject: With

Firefox whoot cool though! Links weblogs reference fixing jrb.
Media feedburner get web talkplus.
Actual starts become, important again good helps.
Dubious meaning therefore taken pinch, salt, there around?
Weblog until author approved themif typekey, or typepad. Great fanfare but study etre suggests, millions be. Appear weblog until author. Am ptdopplr consensus widgetanne zelenka gender diversity.
Should buy joyentthe startup epicenter interview with scott lanejason.
Dont reflect way final renders pages exactly means rendered! les various bugs tends struggle most sites, those. Standards amongst companies have, insulated them somewhat, ies various.
November, october september august. Different reminicent operaso can take crunch minimum! Helps us sift, chaff wheatthere many anyway. Wheatthere many anyway claim, long term ease.
Arent think, results, pretty findings. Dont reflect way final.
As whole which, admittedly dubious meaning therefore.
Rendered correctly since, handles ajax? Woot, cool though like microsoft, copied. Admittedly dubious meaning therefore taken pinch, salt, there around! For by search www recent ted, rheingold, of dogster.
Woot cool though like. Fixingby stowe boyda giant step backwards microsofts.

[pointer Ted Rheingold]

tags: spam, spam+poetry, joyent

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A Prairie Stowe Companion

I am launching a new project next week: a weekly web-based talkshow. My first guest is my long-time buddy, Ted Rheingold, the founder and CEO of Dogster, the award-winning social networking site for dog lovers. This will be the inaugeral show, on 13 April, 10:30am - 11:00am PT. The topics to push around with Ted:

• What's online community really mean, anyway?
• The elements of sucessful social applications
• Spidey Senses Tingling: The Ted Rheingold Story

For more information, check the /Talkshow channel, where you can subscribe for RSS feeds and to be notified immediately before the show starts.

And, yes, /Talkshow is a call-in talkshow. Thanks to the Blogtalkradio.com sponsors, I will be able to take callers -- using conventional telephones -- during the show. I will also be archiving the shows' audio, and setting them up for podcast download and distribution. More about that coming soon.

During the next few months, I will be writing a series of posts on my experience using Blogtalkradio.com -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- so that others can get some understanding of the pros and cons of this technology. I have to say that I am excited about /Talkshow, and that I was unaware that this sort of solution existed until the founder, Alan Levy, called me a few weeks ago. The solution is completely free for users.

As I said, Blogtalkradio.com is the sponsoring the experiential marketing project and sponsoring the show for the next three months.

I plan to have mindblowing guests on every week, covering topics that line up closely with what I am investigating at /Message. So, I think /Talkshow will be a perfect companion to this blog.

tags: /talkshow, ted+rheingold, dogster, online+community, social+networks

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Dopplr Update

Interesting that I was still the only San Francisco-based user of Dopplr until I invited Ted Rheingold today.

Things there continue to heat up as many of my 'fellower travellers' come on line. Note the British spelling. (I wonder if the Dopplr folks know that the term 'fellow traveller' was used by socialists and communists to represent 'fellow members of the underground'?)

I also note that Dopplr is not doing the right thing vis-a-vis non-travel. Ted Rheingold is based in San Francisco, and he has no travel planned and he has not explicitly stated he will be in San Francisco in April, but Dopplr shows us overlapping so long as I explicitly state travel to San Francisco. But if I remove my explicit trip there, the overlap with Ted and other people visiting San Francisco drops from 'My Trips'. I guess we should all adopt a modern nomad outlook, and explicit denote where we will be, even if it is being 'home'. That way I will also be able to keep track of the status of local users too.

Interesting side note: Christopher Herot pointed out via email that the domain name is owned by... Dan Gilmore!

tags: dopplr, fellow+travellers, dan+gilmore

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Dopplr Invite

Can anyone hook me up?

tags: dopplr

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Social Consciousness, Consensus, and Impact

Everything converged on socially conscious sites yesterday. I was asked to join in a discussion down in Palo Alto at Socialtext's offices pulled together for Social Media Consensus. Participants included Ross Mayfield, Britt Bravo, Sara Olson, Vinnie Lauria, JD Lasica, Jim Lawn, Bronwyn Kunhardt, Erik Sundelof, Eszter Hargittai, Sam Perry, Julia French, and Pim Techamuanvivit. The goal of the meeting was to discuss the notion of social impact of social media from the different perspectives of different communities: techie building social tools, policy folks, and those involved in various socially conscious projects and sites.

I found that couldn't help but fall smack into the rut of a technoid blogger, and evaluating impact based on things like design of the sites, or Technorati or Alexa ranking. Some of the others, who understand the dynamics of the world of non-profits and policy organizations, broadened my horizons by pointing out that impact can be measured in other ways.

For example, I really dislike the poor design of Global Voices Online:

The use of tag clouds at the top of the page means you have to scroll past to see anything: they should be sidebar navigational elements.

I also found the lack of a description problematic: if you know what they are up to, fine, but for a first time visitor there was little to guide me.

(Note that even in this context, Twitter shows up: see the top story? A Malawian blogger is cited talking about Twitter and why it is better suited for Africa than alternatives.)

I wandered over to the manifesto, which suggests that the org/site exists to support free speech, but the actual stories wander a bit from this. I was informed later on by others in the know that the real impact of the site was in the policy sector, as opposed to activism. If so, I was misled. And the endless text, broken by a few photos, wore me down.

There seems to be little opportunity for social interaction -- no voting, no polls, no comments, no people -- very old school journalism model. Which of course I dislike intensely.

In the final analysis, I doubted that the site/org could be having big impact, but again, if it influences the policy sector, even though the numbers of readers involved are small, the final impacts could be quite large. And the policy wonks might like the newslettery feel of the site.

I was introduced to another site, Change.org, which is everything that Global Voices Online is not. Change.org is a social network -- with a surprisingly rich set of social features -- that allows people who care about various causes to find others with similar outlooks and goals, and perhaps take action jointly on the issues.

Here's my profile:

I have joined a few 'changes' -- the issues that I wish to affiliate with -- and when you drill into a 'change' you discover other people, events, photos, and videos on the topic.

I also created an 'action' associated with the Stop Global Warming 'change':

People can also raise money, organize events, and get involved in other sorts of collective action.

I find the design clean, very social, really exemplary as a social tool, and from my perspective therefore more lilkely to have grassroots impact, although the policy wonks might not want to get their knees dirty this way.

Following in the vein of socially conscious apps/sites, last night at the SF Beta event one of the demoing companies was FreePledge.com, whose motto is "Shop. Donate. Feel Good." A marvelously simple -- although non-social -- site, FreePledge allows users to buy stuff from major retailers online, and donate the affiliate fees toward good works of various sorts.

How does it work?

So, sites don't have to be social or even well-designed to have an impact. Global Voices Online is (from my perspective) both badly designed and non-social, but it influences policy, which leads to potentially big impact, indirectly. FreePledge could have a big impact by allowing people to direct affiliate fees toward green causes, without any sort of social architecture involved.

My sense though is that the social architecture that animates Change.org is necessary to have large scale, sustainable social impact. Something like FreePledge looks like a feature, or an 'action' that someone might have implemented within Change.org, if the site allowed apps to be developed within it, or if they exposed the API so that 'actions' could be external sites. I believe that the largest social impact will come from social tools that build on the motifs that appear in many if not all of the most successful social applications, and Change.org looks like a great example of that.

Apropos of that, Britt Bravo emailed to let me know that the CEO of Change.org, Ben Rattray, will be speaking on the topic "How Nonprofits Can Use and Build Online Social Networks" on April 10th at Citizen Agency in San Francisco at Net Tuesday (RSVP on Meetup or Upcoming.org). Ben will be joined by Gina Bianchini, the co-founder and CEO of Ning.

tags: citizen+agency, britt+bravo, ross+mayfield, sara+olson, vinnie+lauria, jd+lasica, jim+lawn, bronwyn+kunhardt, erik+sundelof, eszter+hargittai, sam+perry, julia+french, pim+techamuanvivit, ben+rattray, gina+bianchini, ning, change.org, globalvoicesonline, freepledge, social+consciousness, socially+conscious, social+tools, social+media, social+media+consensus, socialtext

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Jangl Widget

I added a Jangl widget to the right margin of /Message, so I can have people call me without posting my cell number and getting deluged with telemarketers. Strangely enough, no one has called me yet.

I spoke with Tim Johnson of Jangl the other day, and he suggested that some other partnerships are in the works -- like the one with Match.com -- which will open up Jangl to a broader userbase. He also says that SMS support will be coming out in a few weeks.

tags: jangl, anonymous+calling, widgets

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Anne Zelenka on Gender Diversity At Conferences

Anne gets personal (in a good way) about her recent reactions to being asked to participate in two conferences, and refers back to my recent Gender Diversity piece (sparked by Kottke), and also reveals the fact that she turned me down for the Enterprise 2.0 conference:

[from Are Women More Likely to Say No to Conference Invitations?]

Thanks for the invitation, Stowe. I turned it down because right before that conference I’ll be in Hawaii for a wedding. I guess I could fly from Kona to Denver and then immediately get on a plane to Boston. If I were a man, would I? Maybe. I don’t know. If I were a man, I might feel less ambivalent about my brilliant career in technology. If I were a man, I might not be made to feel like a freak of nature because I’m a woman who likes tech.

This week I was invited to be on a conference board. I said no again. I don’t have a schedule conflict. I could do it. But the calculus of work for me is necessarily different than the calculus of work for many men.

That's my sense: many women have more complex lives with greater time demands than do most men.

Anne goes on, enumerating the time pressures on her, as a married mother of three, spinning the universal from her condition. And then she closes with both the good and the bad:

I don’t know that you’ll see me at any more conferences this year. Here’s what I’m looking forward to: continuing to nurture Web Worker Daily to its full potential, visiting Volcano National Park on the Big Island in June, making our now-annual trek to Estes Park/Rocky Mountain National Park in July when I’ll look for lakes instead of climbing mountains, writing a book, welcoming and making our Paraguayan au pair feel at home, taking up painting again, learning to play guitar like that guy from the Foo Fighters, and cherishing people like Stowe who inspire and stretch me, even if they might shake their heads at how I live my life and pursue my career.

I am not shaking my head at you, Anne. I too make sure to put time aside for creative work, guitar playing, time off, travel, and writing the occassional bit of poetry. I guess if I want to see you again this year, I am going to have to travel to Denver to do it!

tags: anne+zelenka, kottke, gender+diversity, its+different+for+boys,

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Death Threats in the Blogosphere

Alan Herrell, the former Head Lemur, has sent an email to Doc Searls, which Doc has posted:

[from The Doc Searls Weblog : Tuesday, March 27, 2007]

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 07:25:52 -0700
From: alan herrell
To: Doc Searls
Subject: Kathy Sierra

Doc,

(sorry I haven't written before this as I have been doing damage control for my clients)

I am writing this to you as the guy who can forward it to everybody that matters.

I am writing this from a new computer, using an email address that will be deleted at the end of this.

I am no longer me. My main machine despite my best efforts has been hacked, my accounts compromised including my email. and has been disconnected from the internet.

How did this happen? When did this happen? shit doc, i don't have a fucking clue. I thought i was pretty sharp. I guess not.

just about every online account that i have has been compromised. Most importantly my digital identity and user/password for typepad and wordpress. I have been doing damage control, for my clients. How the fuck i got to be part of this mess is revolting.

The Kathy Sierra mess is horrific. I am not who ever used my identity and my picture!!

I am sick beyond words over this whole episode. Kathy Sierra may not be on my top 10 list , but nobody deserves this filthy character assaination.

But everything I have written about her or anyone else has been in public.

Jesus Doc, In the ten years I have been online, i have never used any sort of screen name or hidden behind psedonyms.

I have always posted and written as me. I have prided myself on the fact that I stand behind everything I wrote. Blogging made it much better in keeping the dialogue public.

That folks think that this mess is the sort they believe I would do is disheartening.

I may not be the the most popular guy, but I like to think i have been honest. And I say again I have *always* done this publicly.

For Kathy and Maryam and anybody else I am deeply sorry. Nobody deserves this.

Whatever credibility I may have had is down the toilet. For this I am profoundly saddened.

I liked being who I was warts and all.

I have over the course of my time online met some of the brightest people that I would never have the abilty to sit across from to break bread or share coffee with from around the world. How wonderful is that.

In 1997 I wrote that I believed that the internet was the most important invention of the human race. I believe it even more today as I write this.

It will probably some time before I attempt to join the great conversation again, but, Please don't let bastards grind you down.

sincerly

alan herrell the head lemur (retired)

I wrote the other day that I have come to know Alan, and that I couldn't believe he would be involved in something like this. Doc concurs:

I've known Alan for the better part of a decade. He has been a good friend — the kind you call on when something bad happens and you really need help. And he has delivered. Yes, he can be tough on people, especially when defending a principle. But that's one reason I believe him.

Me too.

tags: alan+herrell, doc+searls, kathy+sierra, maryam+scoble, meankids, trolls

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Spot-On: Chris Nolan: Papering Over Problems

Link: Spot-On: Chris Nolan: Papering Over Problems.

Yes, well. Newspapers are in trouble. The number of lay-offs and buy-outs that reached a peak last year will probably be topped this year. And, as with the San Jose Mercury News, the Chron's troubles may well be more dire and more dramatic than other parts of the country. The move away from paper started in here about five years ago when CNET's News.com became the homepage of Silicon Valley. It may well be too late for either paper to entirely recapture that audience.

But the contempt many of those who live and work online - the very folks who turn to CNET - have for paper-based news doesn't mean those traditional outlets aren't serving someone. And it doesn't mean that they can't figure out ways to do what they do better in this new environment. Like many news folks, Dave Lazarus was using his column to cast about for a way to see where he, as an experienced columnist and writer, will fit in in the new scheme of things. It's a good set of questions he asked, but it's a set of questions the Geeks can't answer with anything other than glib cliches. Why? Because tech folks' ideas about the news business are guided by their own prejudices: They think raw, unfiltered data is the best form of information. Since the web allows for unlimited forms of data to be displayed and accessed, filters - newspaper reporters and editors - are deemed unecessary.

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