Blogcritics Author: Eric Berlin

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Sarcastic and Cynical Stories for Kids? Check Out Barry Yourgrau

Eric Berlin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:53:28 EDT

Author Barry Yourgrau likes to keep it real when penning books for children. Real nasty, that is. Yourgrau's edgy series of NASTYbooks work hard to subvert the niceties of traditional children's literature. Forget caring-means-sharing: herein lies wickedness, mischief, and savagery – with the goal of eliciting massive laughs. Barry's latest NASTY offering is Yet Another NASTYbook: MiniNasties, which features "vicious little poems, dialogues and tiny tales, for kids 10 and up." Ask around and Yourgrau seems to provoke a cornucopia of reactions from his readers. "Barry Yourgrau makes me shudder…" says Lemony Snicket, of A Series of Unfortunate Incidents fame. David Byrne says, "I can never remember my dreams, so Barry Yourgrau's stories are a pretty good substitute." And Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys insists that "Barry Yourgrau manages to articulate your most bugged-out daydreams." Barry himself, in an essay written for Powells.com, describes the NASTYbooks series as "provocative," and "… kind of anti-fairy tales — where everything turns out not for the best but always for the worst." He also dishes advice on how best to chat with a room full of 10-year olds: to open or close with "A boy likes to pick his nose…"? Yourgrau can also keep it adult-minded and even political, writing at The Huffington Post. Of course, the writing there holds the same nasty edge, though for a decidedly different audience (e.g. "Dear Alberto Gonzalez: Living Fart Joke"). Barry's also a self-described battle-hardened spoken word performer. Check him out on YouTube, reading stories and opining on a variety of nastily eclectic topics: Where do ideas come from? Comic writing, fearing the dark, and the art of the anti-fairy tale "My Friend Bill" Inventing imaginary friends Happy Birthday A monkey wants a birthday partyCocoa"I think there's something really strange about the foreign exchange student…"

Eric Berlin is the Executive Producer of Blogcritics.org and publisher of Online Media Cultist. He's also prone to referring to himself in the third person in author bios in an attempt to make it look like someone Less Important wrote it for him. Contact: dumpsterbust@gmail.com

Twitter as Communications Platform

Eric Berlin — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:42:07 EDT

One of the reasons behind Twitter's rapid growth is its open API. This has allowed a multitude of applications to be developed that support and enhance the Twitter-universe. The basis of Twitter's popularity is very simple, elegant, and potentially addictive: send super short messages (maximum 140 characters) to groups of "followers" via web, SMS, or IM and receive the same messages from all of your "friends." Now, TechCrunch reports this morning that "a subtle upcoming change to Twitter's API" will allow for more advanced functionality. Dave Winer writes that there is "no user-level functionality yet to report," but that he will keep us posted. The idea will be that you can send a simple "command" message such as "weather" or "score" to a specific "follower" and that profile will generate information in response, i.e. "It's hailing, take cover" or "Your boys are getting smacked by 'Bama," or whatever. Again, this simple premise may have yet another profound impact on Twitter's penetration, particularly for the mobile set, Twitter has the potential to become a dominant communications tool, not only for receiving and transmitting idle chatter, but for collecting quick and relevant information as well. Businesses will build atop this platform. Sports updates, stock quotes, specific news and information queries, restaurant and club reviews, album and record reviews (send the ISBN or UPC code and instantly receive a 1-10 score as voted on by users, let's say); the sky's really the limit, all focused upon short, simple, and fast. That's the killer app.

Is MyBlogLog Losing Its Buzz?

Eric Berlin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:07:01 EDT

Don't get me wrong, I really dig MyBlogLog, the simple and stripped down social networking tool for bloggers with the killer app widget that lets you see and interact with the readers who visit your site. But I'm wondering if the buzz is wearing off. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the activity level on the site has subsided considerably since the admittedly recent days when blogger-fueled hype was high and the announcement of MBL's acquisition by Yahoo! was making the rounds. Certainly for several months it seemed as though there was a lot of activity on the site itself. I received friend requests frequently for example (see my profile here) without doing much to earn the honor, and it was easy to tell just by clicking around that many people were discovering and making use of the site's features. I'm not getting that sense of late. My activity level on the site is about the same, but the number of friend requests and messages has dropped considerably. Perhaps even more telling is that I haven't read anything about MyBlogLog in a while (this Technorati chart is a bit inconclusive, I must admit). Could it be that the early adopter crowd has incorporated MBL into ho hum everyday online life and moved on? I'm guilty myself, having caught the Twitter wave and am very much fixating on that particular e-vortex as the latest-greatest thing. While Alexa rankings must be taken with a grain of salt, it shows that MBL traffic has leveled off. It's still ahead of Twitter, though it's close now!I still appreciate and love MyBlogLog's best feature: I get to see the faces (or avatars, or artistic representations) of some of the people who stop by my site. I'd love to see what other people think: what's the deal with MyBlogLog these days?

Politics and MySpace: "the leading social networking blogosphere"?

Eric Berlin — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:17:26 EDT

I love Howard Fineman. He's one of the best political writers in the business. He's great on Hardball, and his coverage and analysis of elections and the pure sport of politics is second-to-none. But still, it's hilarious when non-tech-savvy journalists wade into those electronic weeds. The Internet is now a part of politics as it never has before. As Fineman rightly notes, it was Howard Dean's (and Joe Trippi's) success in raising money and building a grassroots community online in 2003 that ushered political campaigns into a new era. Politics and politicians have always followed the money, and therefore 2008 presidential hopefuls are online and actively seeking advantage, dollars, and voters. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama broke away from the long tradition of officially announcing a presidential campaign in a hometown dripping from its very pores in Americana, for example, and instead announced via online video. Politicians are now seeking ways to integrate technology into their relationship with constituents as well. Obama has made at least one appearance on popular left-leaning political blog Daily Kos during the run-up to the pivotal 2006 midterm elections, and '08 presidential aspirant John Edwards delivers regular posts on Twitter, the newest rage of the tech-bloggy set. (Edwards' staff has thanked his "followers" on Twitter for all of their words of support over the recent announcement that Elizabeth Edward's breast cancer has returned.) Journalists are trying to keep up. It's chuckle-worthy every time that Hardball's Chris Matthews (another favorite of mine) announces that features and video clips can be found online. He has a look of smirking wonder that seems to say, "There's this thing called the Internet and people actually do stuff there, can you believe it?"This week, in the midst of an interesting-as-usual piece called "Out of Control," which looks at how technology and the media now leave political candidates with less control over the message of campaigns than ever before, Fineman let this beauty slip: "Last time I checked, MySpace, by far the leading social networking blogosphere, had more than 60 million registered members."The leading social networking blogosphere. If only he had just scaled it back half a notch and left it at "leading social networking website." Or platform, tool, place, locale, or e-shack of misbegotten ill designed schlock. But blogosphere has a pretty clear, if broad, connotation: representing that vast array of millions of blogs, most of which are separate online entities from one another. MySpace certainly has millions of profiles, all of which have a blog feature. So I suppose it would be okay to call MySpace a blogosphere unto itself, though I would wager that's going a bit too far. And it would be definitely be inaccurate to compare that "blogosphere" with the blogosphere. So MySpace is not a social networking blogosphere. It's a huge and monstrous social networking site. The blogosphere is its own universe (thus the 'sphere!) and many who occupy it are more than happy to not be associated with MySpace. Howard, we love you, but you gaffed a little on this one!

Twitters of the Day: Starbucks, Han Solo, and Netscape

Eric Berlin — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:40:49 EDT

Lots of great stuff coming out of Twitter (the wunderkind short, simple, and snappy tool that lets you post 140-character maximum rants, pontifications, links, and random musings about personal peccadilloes to groups of "followers"), I may have to make Twitters of the Day a regular feature. Jason Calacanis: correcting WSJ errors at my blog. uhhhh.... dont even work there anymore and i'm fighting the good fight. i guess i need to let it go huh?Jason is referring to his spirited defense against a Wall Street Journal piece that claims that Netscape traffic is way down since the switch over to the "new" social news-driven platform (which I have declared, with its problems and all, is the future of news). Like many arguments, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle on this one. That said, Netscape is a perfect choice to continue to lead out a broad-based general audience social news experiment. I just wish that their editors were a little less trigger happy on editing/yanking submissions and would more closely cooperate with submitters and publishers, without whom the site would have no content. Bloggers Blog: Will newspapers/magazines make all the journalists Twitter like they made them blog?There are a bunch of great and interesting and probing questions that sweep Twitter everyday. I think this one is a little bit tongue-and-cheek but I do think it likely that some journalists will get on board with Twitter before too long. We may see reporters in battle zones giving live on-the-ground snippets, anchors at the desk musing about life on the news set during commercial breaks, and solicitations for questions prior to interviews. Pretty cool stuff in other words, and it all lies ahead. Bloggers Blog: Poor Han Solo. Darth Vader is crushing him in followers 1250 to 56Bloggers Blog delivered the goods today! There are a bunch of fake Twitter profiles, which I see as a sign of the site's health and popularity. I haven't friended any of them yet, so if any of them are particularly funny, please let me know. Robert Scoble: I told Dave to pop up some Starbucks ads on TwitterVision just to freak everyone out. http://twittermap.com/twittervision -- I'm addicted.Ah, that rascally Scobleizer. TwitterVision is a site to behold, a really easy and mesmerizing way to see how this simple little product is providing yet another short cut to instant and immersive (and even substantive, sometimes!) conversation between friends and followers and lurkers around the globe. Drop me a line at my Twitter page. You'll be hooked before long!

New Mashtracker Tracks Social News Stories, Techmeme-Style

Eric Berlin — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:02:54 EDT

Mashable and news tracker site Megite have partnered to launch Mashtracker, a "memetracker" that focuses on blog conversations stemming from stories published by Mashable. This is an interesting development on a few fronts. Gabe Rivera's suite of memetracker sites – anchored by politics-centric Memeorandum and tech-centric Techmeme – does an excellent job of selecting hot stories (based on an algorithm that uses factors such as links and "influence") and then surrounds them with related stories and blog articles in story clusters. These clusters change and evolve and move up and down the page fluidly, so it's easy to see which stories are hot and being talked and buzzed about across the Internet. Included stories cover a wide range of subject areas and are selected from both mainstream media publications as well as the blogosphere. The new Mashtracker narrows the focus by just tracking social news stories published by Mashable, and the related conversations that spring up around them within the blogosphere. Mashable has a unique opportunity here to be successful, I'll wager, because it already is a trusted source for social news. (No one does a better job of keeping up with the current blizzard of social networking start-ups, for example.)And the particular focus on blogs is another step forward in terms of the blogosphere's credibility. In essence, this is another way in which the blogosphere is declaring that it is in many ways a better source of Internet news, reviews, and opinions than traditional media. While Mashable's layout is similar to Techmeme's, the design is a bit more clunky. That said, I do like that company logos are used to anchor the lead stories. I imagine they'll clean things up and streamline as the new site matures.

There's No Way That Tom From MySpace "Personally Contacted" Tila Tequila

Eric Berlin — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:43:11 EDT

Everyone knows Tom, right? He's your friend, he's everyone's friend. He's the first guy you see smiling back at you from an odd-trendy camera angle when you and 80 million other people sign up for a MySpace profile. Now, like the beginning of a rich and wonderfully Byzantine novel, let me layer in the next part of the story. It's amazing how wrong traditional media and professional journalists can be in reporting on the technology and media industries. I had some level of personal involvement in a story that got some major play last year. It had to do with potential gaming at a major social news site, and while there were wild allegations and a few bits and pieces of the truth thrown in, the actual story – while pretty much in the public eye for a careful journalist to uncover – went virtually uncovered. Back to MySpace. It's well known that MySpace is trying to figure out ways to block some third-party widgets and music/video players so that they can lock in exclusive deals for themselves or flat out force people to use their own products and tools. The trick of course is that one of the key reasons why MySpace became the superstar of the social networking space – and why they leapfrogged Friendster at a crucial juncture – is because they are largely hands off about what people do with their profile pages. Developments in that storyline make for a good story, and The New York Times does a good job overall with today's "MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users." It runs down MySpace's new restrictions on a music e-commerce widget called the Hoooka, and how it personally affected musician Tila Tequila's profile. But it rankled me to read that "the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute."I have no personal knowledge of this story and I don't know Tom (although he's my friend!), but I'd be amazed if Tom took the time to contact Ms. Tequila personally about her use of the Hoooka widget. MySpace has a boatload of customer service employees, and Tom's busy being Tom. My assumption is that someone told NYT reporter Brad Stone that Tom was involved, and it sounded good, so it made the story. MySpace's official reaction, which the piece also covers, makes much more sense: MySpace sent Tequila an e-mail demanding the removal of the widget for violating terms of service. In any event, Mashable rightly points out that MySpace's move against Hoooka is likely because it's trying to better position the Snocap widget, which has a deal in place with MySpace. Snipperoo holds no punches, declaring that MySpace has turned into a Corporate Evil Monster. Overall, I think trying to sell music directly through social networking sites is a short-sighted business. Like Internet content in general, there's just too much free stuff out there. The old music industry in particular is dying, and selling mp3s for indie bands won't save them. Advertising-supported free music is the future.

The Power of Twitter Compels You

Eric Berlin — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 12:13:51 EDT

After a brief and fleeting spell of ambivalence, I was sucked straight into the depths of the Twitter vortex, the finger-snapping, trigger-happy, easy-to-use "mini-blogging" application that lets you send short messages to your group of "followers" via web, IM, or SMS. At its essence – I've spent some time thinking about this – I think that Twitter is yet another shortcut to meeting the compelling need for people to express themselves and partake in the ever quickening Internet conversation. It's really simple and really easy too, which always helps and usually is at the heart of great and powerful tools and products. Sign up, add a friend or two, compel one or two people to "follow" your words of infinite wisdom (say whatever you want in answer to the question "What are you doing now?" just making sure it's under the 140 character limit) and you are on your way. The more I play with Twitter, I think it's a keeper.Another theory: Twitter may be a tool that particularly attracts those who already blog and are therefore already used to publishing online and interested in both attracting an audience and entering the Internet conversation. While I spend a lot of time looking at social networks such as MySpace, I never find a great and compelling reason to stick around. I particularly like MyBlogLog because it's a great networking tool for bloggers (and an experience that lives outside the site through the use of its great blog log widget), but it's simply not fun in the way that Twitter can be. Other Twitter thoughts, culled over the weekend: Twitter has the potential to replace your RSS reader. It's fun to get Mashable and Wired and Techmeme updates via Twitter, and lots of people simply send links around, which becomes a hyperkinetic and viral method of information sharing.I'm apt to add twitter friends that I wouldn't add to my RSS reader. Twitter's an outstanding way to get the shorthand thoughts and tid bits from blogging luminaries (or whomever, it's up to you!) that you don't have time to read on a regular basis. For example, I don't read Dave Winer's or Robert Scoble's respective blogs, but I've enjoyed following their Twitter conversations thus far. Twitter has fake profiles. These include Borat, Darth Vader, Bill Clinton, and fake Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton profiles. I take this as yet another sign that the Twitter is aquiver with buzz. Take note that the John Edwards page is real! Lots of Twitter supporting sites/tools popping up. I'll just mention one here, because it deserves some attention. Twittervision is a mesmerizing Google Maps mashup that lets you watch Twitter messages emerge all across the globe in real time. If you like Digg Spy, you'll love Twittervision. Bold proclamations. Jason Calacanis declares that 90% of his blogging will now be delivered via Twitter. Personally, I love Twitter for its capacity for "casual" blogging, which gives you the ability to loosen up and say whatever you want without worrying overly much about spelling, grammar, or coherence. Blogging is a place to be a bit more structured and meaningful. Of course Twitter and blogs are merely platforms and the great thing is that everybody can help define them. Great quotes. I've seen some great quotes just over the last few days. From Steve Rubel: JCal [Jason Calacanis] will become the first blogger to turn a full-time TwittererGreat businesses and greater ideas will begin as conversations on Twitter.From Jason Calacanis: Who's building a twitter/google adsense widget? I need to monetize this medium before [Nick] Denton.Twitter is like cb radio without the staticAre people talking about Twitter? That would be a 10-4, as this chart displaying the "twitterfication of the blogosphere" shows.

The End of the Twitter As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)

Eric Berlin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:24:53 EDT

Lifecycles and trendcycles keep getting faster and faster. Just as I was getting up to speed and offering some limited pontifications about the mini-phenomenon known as Twitter, its demise is already being predicted. Twitter is a simple to use and potentially addictive service that allows you to post very short messages to groups of friends via web, phone, or SMS based upon the premise of what are you doing right now? So for example, I'm hopping over there at this very second and writing "I'm doing the bloggings" (check this at my personal Twitter page), which automatically sends that riveting message to all of my Twitter friends. web1979, who claims to have "vintage 1979 eyes," boils the argument down to three points: there's no value (or no "there" there), it takes too much effort, and that key users or early adopters will bail. While that's certainly possible, I think Twitter will be one of those things that stick around for the long haul, even when the buzz wears off. When I first wrote about Twitter, I was a little bit negative about it, so here's why I think it will be around far past 2007 (maybe even into 2008!): It has useful applications for events and conferences (the buzz it garnered at SXSW this week will carry over to tech-centric and then business-centric conferences for years to come).It's a very easy way for celebrities and politicians and industry leaders and bloggerati to stay in touch with fans and followers. It's pretty cool and says a lot about the candidate that John Edwards has been Twittering during his presidential campaign, for example. The kids will use it, or The MySpace phenomenon if you like. As much as kids are attracted to social networking websites so that they can connect with one another while defining and expressing themselves, Twitter can act as a short cut to doing all of those things. Imagine high school home run circa 2007. What are you doing right now? I want to stick a fork in my eye. And so on. The web goes mobile. The web-mobile connection can't be discounted here. The ability to post and receive posts via mobile device is really the key functionality that will give Twitter staying power.

Where Some See "Hyper-Localism," Others See More Choices

Eric Berlin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:53:21 EDT

Gone are the days when the vast majority of the public was collectively comforted by Walter Cronkite and other legendary news anchors. Technology alone did not drive this new age of splintered interest, where many people – and many more each day – draw their news from a number of sources, many of which are likely online. A new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism warns that these trends and the resulting loss of audience and revenue for traditional media companies are driving a phenomenon that it calls hyper-localism, "…'hyper-local' coverage in newspapers; encouraging citizen journalism on the Internet; and giving rise to opinion-driven television personalities like CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly." If most people truly choose to get their news from a narrow channel of "hyper-local" sources there is a danger: Jon Stewart likes to joke that members of his influential audience only get their news from The Daily Show, for instance. Likewise, if someone chose to believe the gospel of Al Franken or Rush Limbaugh without visiting a single other news source, that would likely not be a good thing. However, the reality is that with a wider range of choices on offer, people are finding a full and rich palette of news sources; they are able to cobble together their own version of the truth of the whole. This undoubtedly frightens traditional media companies, but ultimately the trend is a good one in that people have the freedom to utilize print, television, radio, and online sources in any way they wish. And while traditional newsroom staff in the United States are sadly shrinking due to budgetary concerns, it is still possible for people to find an enormous amount of high quality news reporting (in aggregate more than ever before, most likely). Excellence in journalism will never go out of style. The way in which people find, access, and integrate that journalism into their understanding of the world will likely forever be on the move, and that's a good thing in most ways.