Dave: I've seen so many articles on Wikipedia on subjects that I know that are just plain wrong, and when I try to fix it, the fix gets undone within minutes. Sorry I'm not willing to commit my life, or a big portion of it, to a Wikipedia page. So mistakes live on, sometimes big ones.
Fred: Yes companies need to have privacy policies. And yes they need to adhere to them. And yes, they shouldn't be making public people's search queries. And yes, consumers should be able to easily opt out of these targeting approaches.But cookies and stored search queries are good things. They make it possible for web services to deliver relevancy in advertising, something no other media has been able to deliver efficiently and reliably.
Jeff has a great tag on exploding newspapers. I've been thinking about newspapers a lot since Dan Gillmor's journalism event at Harvard 10 days ago. In another 18-24 months newspapers are gonna hit the bottom and I think I'm gonna swoop in and try and buy one, build out the online portion, and buy a local TV station to go with it. Newspapers are not dead, they just have another purpose in life. "I'm watching you" guys (say in DeNiro voice from Meet the Parents/Fockers while pointing the piece symbol into your eyes for extra effect :-).
Filled under "hello?!?!" -- there is no A, B, or C list in the blogosphere people. There is your list, my list, and the entire list. No one is blocking anyone, no one is in a position of power, it's flat... you can do whatever you want--stop crying about it and post something interesting.
Noted
Reader Comments
(Page 1 of 1)4. Indeed, Philly is a place to be. I invited you to an unconference having to do with this a while back. I have hopes for great things.
On the "blogosphere is flat" myth, that was popped a long time ago by Clay Shirky, in the same piece in where he described the Long Tail of the web.
If you are a believer in the long tail concept, you gotta accept its core tenet - power laws are present themselves on the web. Those in the head end get far, far more influence and attention then in the tail. And the tail is mighty long indeed. The flip side of "The Long Tail" is that is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it represents an opportunity.
The web empowers niches - communities of interest - to flourish. You can target a niche in the tail and do well very well there. A consequence of having zero shelving space and technologies that make it easy for those seeking out their passions and concerns, no matter how out of the *current* mainstream, to find them.
I think you know this however, so why perpetuate the myth?
5. Your system stripped my links:
Clay Shirky on Power Laws and the Web:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
Chris Anderson's The Long Tail:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
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1. You're onto something. Last year when I was at the Google Zeitgeist conference I had lunch with the publisher of the Washington Post. He told me "this morning 51% of Washington DC residents woke up with a copy of the Washington Post."
Newspapers certainly aren't dead. It'll be very interesting to see what you do with one.
Heck, buy the San Jose Mercury News! :-)
Posted at 1:07PM on Aug 16th 2006 by Robert Scoble