The Real Doomsday

Doc Searls points out that the Doomsday Clock is now five minutes to midnight.

Makes you realize how unimportant the Old Media Doomsday Clock is, although it would be interesting if they went hand in hand.

Leave out the bad stuff Daylife, not the good

It’s funny how quotes can deceive.

Dave Winer quoted Mike Arrington about Daylife and I thought the quote was a positive one.

I though it meant that Daylife left out all the garbage you find at typical newspaper sites.

Turns out Mike meant leaving out RSS feeds. That’s not good.

RSS (and OPML) is more important to me than HTML. I think that trend will grow. Will that become a truth for the mainstream soon? I don’t know, but IE7 will certainly push it in that direction. No?

Just for that, the Old Media Doomsday Clock may be making a shift back a minute or two in favor of Old Media. Wow!

Stay tuned.

Economy of Abundance changes the way we do business

Great post from Chris Anderson about the Economics of Abundance.

More evidence of the commoditization of everything. Technology and Media are just not valuable in the same old way.

If Barry Diller gets it, maybe the tide is shifting for Old Media companies. Perhaps the Old Media Doom sday clock will click back a minute or two.

Still, there are many people in these companies who are calling the shots who will not be able to break out of the mold. These types have such a great fear of failure, that they just can’t adjust to the methodology of “failing your way to success” which is necessary in this user-centric world.

Media is dead

Something has been bothering me since Adam Curry talked about media vs. technology on the Gillmor Gang.
And I’m also left wondering why Jason Calacanis pumps up AdSense and yet gets labeled a “media guy”, or even calls himself such.
I think it’s a dis-credit to himself. He’s much more than that.
He’s an “Attention” guy.
You see, media by it’s very nature can be disintermediated, and I don’t think any strategy that could fall prey to that is a good one.
Is Google a media company?
No.
Media companies aggregate content makers and act as mediaries between the advertisers and the media consumers. (sorry to Doc, i don’t like the word consumer either)
Google is doing more than that.
They are an Attention clearing house.
It’s what Jason might call an enabler, and it’s why the successful new companies we adore all seem to be doing just that. (del.icio.us, grazr, edgio, top ten sources etc.)
They are enabling an attention transaction to occur. Think eBay or Craigslist. OPML, not HTML. Tom Morris, not Morris, the Cat.
There is no enabling happening here, just intermediation.
Jason’s latest venture is about enablement, so I think he’s on the right track. Paying people doesn’t change that, as long as a service is open.
Attention enablers can’t be disintermediated. They can be replaced, but not disintermediated.
I don’t come from the software industry. I much more relate to what Dave Winer calls a himself, a “media hacker”. And that’s what he calls Scoble too.
It’s not really about technology. That is a means, not an end.
Technology itself can be disintermediated or commodified. Soon, we will plug into technology like we do into electrical outlets. It’s happening now.
So I say that the winning companies are not media companies or technology companies, but Attention companies.
And if PodShow is a media company, it may succeed in the short run. But to last and grow, it will have to transform to an Attention company. So will Tribune, New York Times, Microsoft, Podosphere.com and the whole lot.

Old Media Doomsday Alert!

The Old Media Doomsday Clock has been moved forward from eight minutes to midnight to six minutes to midnight.

The Old Media Doomsday Clock is ticking again

For any and all still subscribed, I’ll be back posting about the conversational web here at Everybuddy.

I was getting heat from my company about the Old Media Doomsday Clock and decided it wasn’t worth it.

The fact is I can’t stop myself anyway so I might as well revive it.

The Old Media Clock is at eight minutes to midnight. It will most likely change in coming days.

The Golden Fleece

I’m hoping part two of the latest Gillmor Gang will prove more interesting.

If you remember the Jason and the Argonauts tale, you might know how Jason succeeded in conquest over the Seed men by casting a stone at one, who thought it was his neighbor, and letting them all kill each other.

That’s what Steve Gillmor seems to do by letting the fellas discuss the importance of Google algorithms and whether site owners can get a cut by having search engines bid for their site search.

If Steve would have put the “knockoff” Cheerios down for a sec I know what he would have said.

It’s not whether Google’s algorithms hold up, it’s whether they can garner more stock in the conversation with all their attention data.

The winners of the future are not the best technologies. We’ll all be able to plug into those the same way we plug into an electrical outlet.

The winners are the services which add value to the conversations happening throughout distributed web networks.

These networks and conversations are fluid and changing constantly in response to our gestures.

Those who don’t get this are either thinking too hard or just not enough.

In a similar way that facial and hand gestures are a meaningful supplement to spoken conversations, the gestures which we talk about with attention are the metadata of the conversations happening on the web.

That equates to economic power because markets are conversations.

I agree with Jason Calacanis that many in the SEO business are trying to game this system, but I disagree when he says the system works. People are trying to game the system because it does not work. It just works better than the previous systems.

I can prove it Jason. I’ll write a better piece on a new cell phone than Engadget and see which shows up higher on Google.

No. Those dynamics are only part of the game.

The richer system envelops us with answers using our data and our network’s data in a chameleon like fashion, never static like Google. That’s child’s play.

Jason(Argonaut) succeeded in getting the Golden Fleece but was fickle and left Medea for another Princess.

Likewise, in the shorter term companies may succeed by amassing link attention.

The true winners won’t be seeking the Golden Fleece at all. They will be removing the barriers and letting the crystal waters flow in, filtered and clean, Pure Conversation.

Governments need to join GestureBank

The Human Rights Amnesty report claims the war on terror is draining attention from other issues.
Perhaps the governments of the world need to join GestureBank. They gotta be in it to win it.
Then, apply a filter based upon the anonymous pool of attention metadata and figure this all out.

There are some important discussions happening this week about open formats for attention metadata.
ET better phone home because the clock is ticking on everybuddy. The “Duh” Vinci code is unraveling.

I’m closing comments soon. My contact info is mobile:203.219.5159 email:mattatglistndotcom IM:mterenzio@gmail

New some ideas for Mercury News

Kent Newsome points out how to save the Merc in eight easy steps.
Don’t think that’ll do it.
Of course I’m with Kent on the RSS stuff, but he leaves out exactly what Newspaper companies have been leaving out for the last ten years.
There is no mention of the users as contributors or community at all. In fact, he’s calling the users “subscribers.” Those days are over.
The only thing that can save any local media company is to become a local community, again, and somehow leverage those relationships.
I’m not even sure it’s possible, and if it is, we are looking at a drastically smaller organization.
I’ll go so far as to say that everyone using the word “save” is sending the wrong signal.
The only chance is to leverage the existing business to create a new one.
The old one will surely die. (Old Media Doomsday Clock)
The answer is to step down and join the conversation. Be leaders of the conversation, not enders.
One last note. I don’t believe any Newspaper bringing in substantial revenue from print has the guts to pull the plug on that and all the jobs it affords.
Is that to say that the price of buying the company would be worth the brand name and the editorial staff?

Old Media Doomsday Update!!

The clock is now at eight minutes to midnight.