As I May Think...

Can Social Media replace News Media in Newark?

At a CommonGood lunch meeting today, I asked Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark NJ, if the decline of the mainstream media has made it harder for him to engage with his community. He responded that while he felt that journalism was very important to democracy and society, its recent decline has had little impact on him since he has been able to use social media technology such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to build direct, personal and often real-time connections with his constituents.

Today, although Newark NJ has fewer than 300,000 citizens, Mayor Booker has almost a million followers on Twitter, almost 17,000 supporters on Facebook and 550 subscribers to his YouTube channel. Booker regularly posts status updates to both Facebook and Twitter and has uploaded 75 videos including a regular "Week In Review." He regularly posts updates to his schedule, links to speeches he's given, quotes from things he's been reading, calls for participation in "Night Patrols" of Newark's streets, and kudos to local organizations whose work he admires. 

Mayor Booker's comments reminded me that at the recent FTC Workshop on the future of journalism, Matthew Gentzkow of the University of Chicago presented research on "The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on Electoral Politics." His research, which spanned the period from 1869 to 2004, indicated a fairly weak connection between the health of newspapers and electoral participation. He concludes that "monopoly paper closings may cause small to moderate declines in local [electoral] participation" and that there was "no evidence that newspaper closings will affect party vote shares or incumbency advantage." This evidence, combined with the personal experience of Mayor Booker, may indicate that communities are much more robust in their ability to obtain the information needed to sustain political and community engagement than some may be suggesting. Perhaps, just as on the Internet where we tend to "route around" anything that impedes the free flow of traffic, communities also find ways to route around forces that would otherwise limit discourse. Thus, it may be that rather than assuming on faith that it is vitally important to prop up and sustain the existing newspaper businesses, we should be seeking instead to determine what other tools and/or media best provide the platforms for discourse and engagement that we need.

bob wyman

PubSub.com V2.0 is live Under New Management

Well, it seems that PubSub.com is live again -- over three years after we took it down and handed all our assets over to our creditors in June of 2006. Frankly, I've been wondering what has been taking the new management so long to relaunch the system. PubSub.com was the first "real-time search" engine on the web and given all the attention that real-time search has been getting over the last few years, it is amazing that more effort wasn't put into getting the service retooled and up sooner. Although PubSub V1.0 was widely recognized as the first in its field (even though few people at the time recognized the importance of that field...), PubSub V2.0, as a late entrant into a crowded field, may be seen as simply "yet-another" real-time search engine...

I have no idea if they are using any of the old PubSub.com code but would be surprised if they weren't. The prospective search system that we built for PubSub was the best technology in the market at the time and probably would still be the best among those systems that are currently in public use. In any case, PubSub V2.0 is a somewhat different offering than PubSub V1.0 was. They have added a traditional retrospective search system (we had been experimenting with Lucene for that) and they are now provide streaming updates to HTML pages (something that we had implemented with technology from KnowNow, the company that first popularized "hanging GETs" and with whom we had been planning to merge. Unfortunately, issues caused by a disgruntled ex-employee and apparently irrational investors caused us to cancel the merger and close shop before exposing the live-update capability.) -- PubSub V1.0, as released, had only provided real-time updates via Atom/RSS feeds and XMPP PubSub streams. I can find no evidence of support for syndication feeds or XMPP on PubSub V2.0

It will be interesting to see if PubSub.com V2.0, after so many years of letting the competition get ahead, will be able to build a market for their service. They have lost the "first mover" advantage, but may still be able to have some success. Time will tell. 

bob wyman
ex-CTO and founder, PubSub.com V1.0

ASNE sans "Paper"...

The American Society of Newspaper Editors is planning to remove "paper" from its name and expand its membership to include editors of online-only news Web sites and journalism educators. (see the release)

Of course, this isn't the first time that a professional society has changed its name in response to changing technology. An example I'm particularly familiar with is the association that began life in 1943 as the "National Microfilm Association" or "NMA." In 1969, in response to a broadening in the technologies used by its members, the association changed its name to the "National Micrographics Association." Then in 1983, as the NMA's members began to focus more and more on digital, non-image data, the association changed its name to "Association of Information and Image Management." Apparently, the association is once again in the process of changing its name. In the future, they will be known as the "Enterprise Content Management Association."

Had the NMA insisted on sticking to the old "microfilm" name, it surely would have closed its doors years ago. Certainly, it could not have been seen to be working in the interests of its members... Each time the old "NMA" changed its name, it was in recognition that the scope and range of opportunities for its members had grown. I'm sure many in the newspaper business will see the loss of "paper" in the ASNE name to be a loss for the industry. Hopefully, they will learn, as have the members of the NMA, that this kind of name changing is a good thing -- a very good thing.

bob wyman

Newspaper Classifieds: A franchise lost.

In the early 90's, and for some time afterward, the newspaper industry had an opportunity to lead in the development of online classifieds and, in a number of forums, I actively encouraged them to take the opportunity... Today, I argue that they shouldn't put much effort into online classified ads. What made sense 15 years ago is no longer sensible.

In the early 90's, even as Internet technology was being rapidly deployed, there was still very little commerce on the Internet. The newspapers came to this new environment with an existing database of classifieds, relationships with vast numbers of advertisers, and a clear position in the minds of Internet users who had learned, through years of exposure to the paper-based pre-Internet world, that newspapers is where you went to find classifieds and job postings.

Given this opportunity, the newspapers could have not only maintained the revenue streams that then supported them, they could have vastly increased those revenues. What is the ad business of Google today, what is eBay or Monster today, could have been (some would say *should* have been) a business created, owned and dominated by newspapers. Of course, as we now know, the newspapers forfeited their historical franchise in classifieds and advertising. The result is that they will probably never recover from the loss of those revenue streams. As a secondary result of their forfeiture of these revenues, we, as a society, are now faced with the problem of finding an alternative means to fund and organize the paper-free dissemination of the news and information that we require. The newspapers have done more than just hurt their stockholders, they have failed the society that they once claimed they had a special duty and privilege to support.

But, by simply forfeiting the opportunity, it is probably the case that the newspapers simply sped up the working of inevitable economic processes. The advantage the newspapers once had was a temporary one based on the dynamics of an older and rapidly obsolescing technology. Their advantage wasn't rooted in any inherent binding between the business of journalism and the business of advertising. As such, it was always inevitable that news and ads would become distinct businesses.

Decentralized Twitter isn't hard.

Cliff Gerrish writes on his Echovar blog:

The consumption strategy that makes the instant messaging model of Twitter work is to follow a core group and then track keywords of interest. Tracking keywords adds people you don’t follow into your stream and provides a proper level of noise and negative feedback into the information ecosystem. ... It’s tracking that makes a decentralized Twitter nearly impossible. ... This feature radically changes the shape of the social graph underlying the information stream. Since you don’t know who might use a tag you’re tracking, the regular RSS style contract around publication and subscription doesn’t work.

Gerrish's claim that tracking makes it impossible to decentralize Twitter seems to have convinced Steve Gilmore of Techcrunch who writes: "Decentralizing Twitter is unnecessary, if not impractical." Fortunately, both Cliff and Steve are wrong.

Distributed tracking of Twitter-like streams is easily accomplished using what are now well-known systems for distributed publish/subscribe. Certainly, it is easier to implement tracking if you have everything going through a single choke-point in the network, but it isn't necessary. In fact, as long ago as the 80's we had USENET based systems that handled the distributed fan-out of messages (news posts) that were then "matched" against user's local subscriptions (Yes, matching was normally trivial "topic-based" matching, however, "content-based" matching systems were often deployed locally). What we could do in the 80's we can do today -- but do it better. After all, we've learned a great deal since then.

Of Liquidity, Competition and Platforms

Fred Wilson, of "A VC" recently sparked a great deal of controversy with his post: "We Need A New Path To Liquidity".  Fred suggests that with the IPO market "closed," we now need new thinking about how to reward innovators for their work. Today, getting bought out seems to be the exit strategy that innovators build for, but buy-outs, while enriching those who sell, have tended to result in many innovative solutions languishing or being diluted in the process of assimilation into the purchasing organization.  Luminaries such as Jeff Jarvis and Umair Haque have already commented on the main body of Fred's piece, so I'll limit my self to something he writes in response to comments:

Fred Wilson wrote:

The web is decomposing into smaller and smaller pieces And those pieces are sustainable as standalone opportunities

I think we'll find that these pieces aren't quite as sustainable as Fred would like them to be... Its a simple matter of economics.

As the pieces become "smaller and smaller," the barriers to entry are lowered and thus there are more opportunities to enter the market. Lower barriers lead to intensified competition, reduced differentiation and lowered returns for individual developers even as the overall market grows. In such a market, the qualities of your implementation eventually become irrelevant. Sustainability in such an environment comes from one of: lowered expectations, integration with a larger platform or branding. Getting bought out early is the best thing you can hope for...

3:00am Phone Calls: Genetic Testing for Presidential Candidates?

In the recent debate over who would be best to answer 3:00am phone calls at the While House, most commentators have focused on the relative "experience" of Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John MacCain. However, experience alone is the not the only measure of who is best to be hauled out of bed and faced with a crisis call. We should also consider basic elements of personality such as the degree of emotional response to stressful situations... Which candidate is most likely to answer the call with a level head and respond rationally, not emotionally?

Today, the NIH described research that finds a genetic factor in stress response variability. According to the press release:

Inherited variations in the amount of an innate anxiety-reducing molecule help explain why some people can withstand stress better than others...
Scientists led by David Goldman, M. D., chief of the NIAAA Laboratory of Neurogenetics, identified gene variants that affect the expression of a signaling molecule called neuropeptide Y (NPY)...
"NPY is induced by stress and its release reduces anxiety," said Dr. Goldman. ...
The researchers evaluated the NPY gene variants' effects on brain responses to stress and emotion. Using functional brain imaging, they found that individuals with the variant that yielded the lowest level of NPY reacted with heightened emotionality to images of threatening facial expressions. ...
In a preliminary finding, the low level NPY gene variant was found to be more common than other variants among a small sample of individuals with anxiety disorders. The researchers also found that low level NPY expression was linked to high levels of trait anxiety. "Trait anxiety is an indication of an individual's level of emotionality or worry under ordinary circumstances," explained Dr. Goldman.

So, will we one day be asking presidential candidates to submit genetic profiles so that we can objectively determine which is most likely to respond rationally and unemotionally to these 3:00am phone calls?
What sort of a world will we have once scientists are successful in working out the genetic code? Will genetic testing become a common criteria for a wide variety of jobs?

bob wyman

Am I a "Natural Born" American Citizen? (I think so...)

Like Senator McCain, I am an American citizen born overseas to American citizens. As a result, I'm deeply and personally interested in the latest furor over whether McCain's birth in the Canal Zone disqualifies him from running for the US presidency. All my life, I've been told that because I was born in Germany I was a kind of "second class citizen," unable to even consider running for President.

Unlike McCain, whose father was in the military, my father was an American diplomat. Thus, I must admit that I'm not sure what to think about Senate bill S.2678, introduced yesterday in the US Senate by Claire McCaskill (D-MO). The bill is entitled: "A bill to clarify the law and ensure that children born to United States citizens while serving overseas in the military are eligible to become President." Of course, my question is: What about the kids of US Diplomats? What about the kids of folk that worked for Agriculture, Customs, FAA, CIA, or any of the many other US agencies? Are we somehow less worthy, less American, less good than the military kids? In fact, what about the kids born to US citizens who weren't working for the government at all? (Does the fact that one's parents worked overseas or had an unexpected birth while on vacation in the Carribean make one less of an American?)

I strongly encourage Congress to finally resolve the long standing debate over the quality of citizenship experienced by American kids born overseas. However, I feel it will be insulting and counter-productive if only the children of military families are to have their status clarified.

bob wyman

Hackers fear Electronic Voting

When the hackers warn that your machines are easy to hack, it is wise to listen.. ComputerWorld reports that the famous German hacker club, Chaos Computer Club, has gone to court to get an injunction against the use of electronic voting machines in German elections. They argue, quite sensibly, that as an organization of hackers, they are quite confident that they could hack whatever machines might be used. Hopefully, people will listen more to these people than they have to organizations of computer professionals like the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) who have consistently argued against the use of paperless electronic voting machines.

The Chaos Computer Club press release on this issues says, in part:

"There is a growing resistance stirring among the population against the use of the NEDAP voting computer, known to be vulnerable to manipulation", said CCC spokesman Dirk Engling. "After a virtually identical voting machine from the same manufacturer was recently completely rejected in the Netherlands, more and more concerned citizens have turned to the CCC. The voters do not understand why the same rejection cannot also be drawn in Germany. The legal path which has now been chosen is the last chance to save the transparency of the elections in Hesse."

 

I find it amazing that even though respected members of the computer industry have consistently argued against the use of paperless electronic voting machines, non-technical people and journalists keep suggesting that the industry might be able to build reliable machines that we could trust. Perhaps now that the hackers have spoken, the non-technical types will finally begin to realize that those of us in this industry understand what we do much better than they do...

bob wyman

A New "Classic" blog post -- with no original content

Some blog posts (very few) are so brilliantely written that you know the instant you read them that you'll be seeing links to them for years to come. Such is the case with Mark Pilgrim's post "The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)" which will hopefully teach people an important lesson about copyright, DRM, and the future of authorship online.

Mark does a wonderful job of pulling quotes from a variety of sources.  By combining these purloined texts into a logical sequence he delivers a powerful message without actually ever writing a single word that is original (other than the title and section names). Mark's original contribution is all in the selection and sequencing of the texts -- a great demonstration of the power of "mashups"

My only criticism of his piece is that he didn't find a way to quote from Spider Robinson's "Melancholy Elephants."

bob wyman