Socialmedia.biz Archives: November 2007
Web sites for user-generated video
With Hollywood’ writers strike on, the San Jose Mercury News suggests switching off the television and tuning in to Web video. They include Ourmedia.org in their list of Web sites for user-generated video:
www.youtube.com
vids.myspace.com
video.msn.com
www.dailymotion.com
www.veoh.com
www.crackle.com
www.jumpcut.com
www.aol.com
www.eyespot.com
video.yahoo.com
www.metacafe.com
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Making money with citizen media sites
I spent five minutes at the recent Online News Association conference in Toronto chatting with Courtney Lowery, a friend who’s the editor in chief of NewWest.net, one of the premier citizen media sites in the land.
The day before, she gave a presentation about how to bring in different revenue streams to your pro-am citizen media site. Organizing educational events and conferences are two inventive ways. Here’s her interview:
Hi-quality MPEG-4 video (H.264) on Blip.tv
MPEG-4 video on the Internet Archive | Ourmedia media page
Flash version on Internet Archive
Cross-posted to Real People Network.
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The coming Progressive Era
Spent Thursday night at a talk about politics at Adaptive Path in San Francisco, sponsored by Girls in Tech and Good Ol’ Girls.
Peter Leyden, who’s a friend from here and there, gave a riveting talk about the wide sweeps of American history. We’re at another epic moment, he suggests: the dawning of a new progressive era in the 21st century.
Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a progressive think tank, was preaching to the choir, but that’s all right. Many of the 60 or so women and men in the room were here to get a handle on the dizzying changes that are exploding everything we thought we knew about U.S. politics.
The slide show we saw was virtually the same one given by Leyden — twice — before the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi dutifully taking notes in the front row. (He also gave a condensed version of the slide show to the Democratic caucus in the Senate.)
Some of the high points:
• The major changes in the political landscape are coming about because of transformations in technology, media and demographics.
• "Bush has screwed up the conservative brand" just as Herbert Hoover did in the 1930s — ushering in a Democratic victory in the next four presidential elections.
• "For the last 40 years, all of politics has been organized around television." Now, with the "Internet earthquake," the old media world of newspapers, radio, phones and to some extent television is in "full collapse." Newspapers have lost 43% of their readers just since 1984.
• The Internet boom is happening in two parts: The first wave came in the ’90s with the migration of text and photos to the Web. We’re now at the beginning of the broadband boom, with music, television and film — all of media — migrating to the Internet.
• Our culture is turning wireless. Some 90% of mobile phones will soon be Internet enabled. Already, 30% of people with mobile phones don’t have land lines, and this will soon seriously compromise polling techniques.
• This year, Google is on track to have the same advertising revenues as the Big Four television networks’ ad revenues combined ($17.4 billion).
• Within a few months last spring, Barack Obama attraced 325,000 members to his group on Facebook. It took Howard Dean six months to get half that number of supporters signed up online.
California is the future of the country. This drives people on the East Coast nuts.
— Peter Leyden
• He spelled out "ten new properties of 21st century media: Internet-enabled, targeted efficient, consumer controlled, time shifted, prodigious, bottom up, collaborative, global, emergent."
• He spent some time talking about demographic changes. the country is becoming more Southern and Western, more suburban and exurban, more Latino. 24% of the U.S. population will be Hispanic by 2050.
• Young people are becoming more engaged in the political process. In 2004 "millennials" went for Kerry over Bush by a 60 to 38 percent ratio. Almost 50 million millennials will be eligible to vote next year. The younger generation’s full force will be felt in 2016 when 75 million of them can vote.
• Leyden laid out the electoral strategy now making the rounds in some circles: that Democrats could win the White House without carrying a single state in the South if they "flipped" Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona (a tall order) into the blue column. "That means you don’t have to pander to those in South by opposing gay marriage."
• He laid out these "21st century challenges": globalization and global warming — the two mega-issues of our time — global terrorism, mass migration, the energy crisis, baby boom retirement, health system failure, education breakdown, declining wages.
• If you want to look at the future, the old axiom still holds: Look to California. The technology of Silicon Valley and entertainment engine of Hollywood are still the driving forces behind changes in American society. "California is the future of the country. This drives people on the East Coast nuts."
• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is emerging as something of a progressive Republican, "something we haven’t seen for almost a generation." The Republican Party has abandoned its roots as the party of Teddy Roosevelt, Earl Warren and others.
• Prediction for the future: "Some time in the next two election cycles we’ll see a new kind of politician, one who’s more transparent, open, who rolls with the punches. I think people would respond to it. … We haven’t found our voice or heart yet in what progressivism means in the 21st century. But we’re coming to that moment where that vision will be crystallized."
Afterward, a number of the politically motivated folks in the audience expressed worry that Hillary Clinton could blow it for the Dems in 2008. (I agree.) The fact that she’s capable, smart, solid and a warm person is besides the point. The right wing will do everything in its power to destroy her. Lots of support for Barack Obama here. He’s looking to California to make it happen.
It all comes down to Super Tuesday, when California and about 20 other states votes. That’s just three months from now — Feb. 5. Mark your calendars.
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The NY Times — finally! — allows user comments on stories
Public editor Clark Hoyt in the Sunday NY Times: Civil Discourse, Meet the Internet. Excerpt:
How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified
authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the
Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in
coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?The answer so far is cautiously, carefully and with uneven success.
The issue is timely because last week, with very little notice, The
Times took baby steps toward letting readers comment on its Web site
about news articles and editorials, something scores of other
newspapers have long permitted. On Tuesday, readers were invited to
comment on a single article in Science Times and on the paper’s top
editorial, using a link that accompanied each. Few did because there
was no promotion of the change, but as the week went on and more
articles were opened to comment, participation picked up.The
paper is creating a comment desk, starting with the hiring of four
part-time staffers, to screen all reader submissions before posting
them, an investment unheard of in today’s depressed newspaper business
environment. The Times has always allowed reader comments on the many
blogs it publishes, with those responses screened by the newsroom
staff. That experience suggests what the paper is letting itself in for. …Though editors have mixed feelings about it, The Times has so far
bowed to Web custom by allowing readers to use screen names, as long as
they don’t claim to be Thomas Paine, Condi Rice or a famous porn star. …Putting the knowledge of readers together with the journalism of The
Times, said [Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor who is in charge of the newsroom’s online efforts], could result in “news and information of greater power,
reach and quality than even a great newsroom can produce on its own.”
The Times’ decision to allow reader comments on stories and editorials comes about a decade late.
Hoyt unfortunately takes some unwarranted potshots at some of the less erudite postings on the Times website this week. But I don’t have a problem with the Times’ decision to curate comments and remove racist, libelous, dumb-ass crazy remarks. There are plenty of other places where readers can do that.
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3rd European Futurists Conference
I was invited to attend the 3rd European Futurists Conference in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Nov. 19-21. Alas, can’t make it, but looks like a great lineup.
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