Travels In The Blogosphere

Amidst quitting my Crackberry habit, and acquiring a mild case of iPhonitis, I've largely been lurking in the blogosphere this week, reading up on:

• Russian spammers and botnet-sympathisers;
• Opening up government spending data;
• Sampling Chris Marsden's new blog on Internet co-regulation and African mobile roaming exposé;
• Wondering whether wavy Dave can create as many private sector jobs as little Johnny Major;
• Digging into Vince Cable's war on red tape;
• Tearing the flesh off the bones of the FSA, despite it's mammoth fine for JP Morgan Securities' indiscretion with client funds.

Not to mention keeping a beady eye on our MPs expenses habit.

As with last weekend, I hope to spend some of this one writing the next instalment of Green, a literary experiment best described as a gradual story. Hope you like it.

The Turning Of The Screw

All the squealing from MPs about the harshness of their new expenses rules - not to mention the odd high profile resignation - suggests to me the system is working.

We aren't seeing a lot of specifics about why the new system is too draconian. For instance, Emily Thornberry (Labour, Islington South and Finsbury) is quoted as saying:

“It’s not fair that we’re being cut back on the amount of work we can do.”

Nice drafting, Emily. Of course, this is a plea based on moral panic. Only each MP is really in a position to know whether this statement is true. It implies MPs are running their offices in the most efficent manner possible, and they "can" do work now that the new expense rules won't permit. By using the word "can", Emily can wriggle out of any attack on her record, or any other MP's record - she has not said specifically that she or they will no longer be able to do X or Y.

Don't trust 'em, I say. Keep turning the screw.

Living Outside The Paywall

One refugee from The Times paywall is BabyBarista, a fictional account of a junior barrister practising at the English Bar. Author Tim Kevan explained:

"I have today withdrawn the BabyBarista Blog from The Times in reaction to their plans to hide it away behind a paywall along with their other content. Now don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely no problem with the decision to start charging. They can do what they like. But I didn’t start this blog for it to be the exclusive preserve of a limited few subscribers. I wrote it to entertain whosoever wishes to read it. Hence my decision to resign which I made with regret. I remain extremely grateful to The Times for hosting the blog for the last three years and wish them luck with their experiment."

The walled garden of proprietary content is doomed. I won’t link to anything inside a ‘paywall’, not because I'm against publishers making money but because the paywall may interfere with the reader's journey, and the publisher is unlikely to ever link back as part of a meaningful dialogue with those outside its bubble. I will only link to paid-for content when the payment process is seamless and there's a decent chance the publisher may link back. That's how the new media world works. Google and Facebook - about whom the newspapers complain most - succeed by facilitating how we use and generate content, not by bricking themselves in.

Image from EducatedNation

Social Media Icing On Old Media Cake

The social media do appear to be saving old media. For now.

According to the Pew Research Centre's New Media Index, 99% of stories linked to in blogs during the year to January 15, 2010 came from "legacy outlets such as newspapers and broadcast networks. And... the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post accounted for fully 80% of all links."

Of course, while you may be reading a blog that links to an 'old media' story, that doesn't necessarily mean you've bothered to read that story. And every minute you spend reading the blog is time you don't spend engaging directly with 'old media'. Yet the social media are a source of both links and evidence of what resonates with readers.

So the old media may still be baking the cake, but the social media are supplying the icing. And who likes cake without icing? [That's enough analogy now. Ed.]

The reason this dynamic may not last is that the old media seem to be ignoring the stories that resonate most amongst the social media. Pew found that "the social media tend to home in on stories that get much less attention in the mainstream press. And there is little evidence, at least [in the year to 15 January 2010] of the traditional press then picking up on those stories in response."

In fact, you might conclude from Pew's table above that the mainstream press ignored the scale of reader demand for news on politics, foreign events, science, technology, the environment, pop culture, 'oddball', gay issues, consumer news and education. And it's worth noting that news related to "gardening, sports or other hobbies" was not tracked.

It would be interesting to see whether this imbalance is rectified in the coming year. But if it is not, I wonder whether old media will find itself permanently losing readership in these areas?

If so, no more cake!

Image from Petit Pois

4891: Orwell Had It Backwards

Thanks to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, and the film adaptation, most of us over 20 have grown up with the threat of an omniscient, totalitarian Big Brother looming over us.

While this is a tragic reality for the residents of a few countries, for most it is not.

Yet many of us are obsessed with our own privacy, imagining it as a defence to control by organised crime lords, governments, a "New World Order" or Facebook. Others relish the illusory voyeurism in the melodramatic Big Brother television series, and the phoney 'privacy battles' conducted between celebrities and the tabloid media by agents and public relations advisors for commercial gain.

But it is actually the overwhelming dislosure of information about ourselves that defies control by any single institution (as does the inherent unpredictability of human behaviour). The Chinese government, in particular, seems to understand this. Sharing our preferences, desires, fears and concerns (if not our birth dates and passwords) via social, retail, political and other facilitators enables us to gain greater personal control of our own lives. That process results in services adapted to our own actual or desired behaviour rather than a service provider's bottom line or a political party's dogmatic manifesto. There are literally millions of examples of this dynamic at work. But consider how:

• The UK recently opted for a coalition government amidst scaremongering by 'big media' and the major political parties.
• Newspapers complain about our 'promiscuity' when it comes to their content, and our refusal to pay for that content online.
• Sharing more personal data often results in better markets, e.g. in consumer credit.
Our networks are always changing, both within platforms and between platforms - we create new networks and still newer ones, and leave old networks very quickly.

Of course, George Orwell was writing a cautionary tale rather than necessarily predicting the future, so we at least have him to thank for a vivid image of how society must not be allowed to develop. In the meantime, we should go on sharing information about ourselves, even if only as a last defence to totalitarian control.

Image from Online Social Networking