Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody - The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations is essential reading for everyone seeking to understand how our world has been redefined by the web. I threw sticky notes in a few pages and wanted to highlight a quote that warrants more discussion. This is from page 246, where the open source movement is being discussed:
In traditional organizations, trying anything is expensive, even if just in staff time to discuss the idea, so someone must make some attempt to filter the successes from the failures in advance. In open systems, the cost of trying something is so low that handicapping the likelihood of success is often an unnecessary distraction. Even in a firm committed to experimentation, considerable work goes into reducing the likelihood of failure. This doesn’t mean that open source communities don’t discuss — on the contrary, they have more discussions than in managed production because no one is in a position to compel work on a particular project. Open systems, by reducing the cost of failure, enable their participants to fail like crazy, building on successes as they go.
This is a game-changer for your business. Continue reading...
The social web encourage a constant churn of news, videos, articles, events and all types of content to be produced each second of every day. Users thirst for streams of fresh content at a pace never before seen in society. We are a culture of information and news junkies.
Content on the Internet has always moved quickly, but lately it feels as if the pace has accelerated even faster.
Why is this? Because we have created a culture in healthy competition with each other to churn out new material, and fast. Concurrently, we have created avenues and networks to distribute that content even faster directly to the reader. Continue reading...
Image Credit: David Armano
This topic keeps coming up around the blogosphere, on Twitter, on FriendFeed, even in Wired and The Economist. Let me bring a dose of reality to the situation: microblogging won’t “kill” blogging: they are not the same tools nor are they even in competition.
In fact, I refuse to link you to any of the articles talking about the death of blogging because they merely are great examples of linkbait. The people writing the articles on the death of blogging know perfectly well that blogging is thriving and use that to their advantage. They know merely by writing that blogging is dead, they’ll cause an uproar of attention for themselves. Continue reading...
This post isn’t meant as a kick at traditional media - what I want to show you today is how the playing field is now level for all people who want to have a say in our world. This is an exciting time for everyone involved in the media industry. In fact it has been like this for awhile, but it is worth reiterating.
Even with everything else that is happening around us (down economy, newspaper layoffs) you do have to look around in awe at the communications revolution we are living through. At no time in history have individuals and organizations been on such equal footing.
Despite what area of communications you are involved in, you have to admit this democratization of media is a positive for society itself. Even if a few people are hurt short term, we must look at what is going on from a long term perspective and embrace the changing world around us and the possibilities it brings. Continue reading...
I previously wrote an in-depth piece on entrepreneurial journalism and writers as brands. In it, I noted that in fact there has never been a better time to be a passionate writer, and I stick with that statement. A quick excerpt from that post:
The web enables anyone to create their own, personal brand of media and share their ideas with thousands or even millions. When you develop content for a publication that is all your own, you:
- Retain 100% of the rights to your work
- Maintain editorial control and total freedom to write on whatever you please
- Retain 100% of the advertising revenue brought in by your work
- Are working to build your own brand and web property
- Are creating something that works for you and makes revenue while you sleep
- Are free to work on your own timetable
- Are free to work from wherever you want, whenever you want
- Can create a group of people loyal to you who will work to promote your content (similar to what Kevin Kelly suggest with 1,000 True Fans, but for writers)
- Begin to build your own network and carve out influence in your writing niche
So it was exciting to see today to that professional blogging platform TypePad, owned by Six Apart, has created “The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program” as an easy path for journalists to step into the world of digital publishing with the ability to monetize their work already built-in. Continue reading...
