Newspaper site reformation 1.1

Okay. I’m pretty sure I’m going to build a new system to act as the CMS of the new newspaper sites.
Since I’m doing so, I may as well choose the technologies that I feel most confident with.
In this case the web pages will be built with PHP and Apache, and the database will be Postgresql. These will all run on FreeBSD.

Why build instead of using Drupal or Joomla? It is a tough call, but I have yet to see a CMS that isn’t story centric, or even more importantly, “site centric.”

Yes, you can achieve a great degree of “community” with a lot of CMS’s out there, especially with a blogging platform like Wordpress, which I seriously considered for many good reasons.

But the future, IMHO, is in distributed systems, and I don’t see anything that is built specifically with that in mind.

I’m basing the system on RSS 2.0 and all of the data that will be treated as atomic units, whether it was created by a staff reporter or photographer, a site visitor, or it comes from another system or site entirely.

If it sounds like an aggregator, well it is, but it’s a very smart aggregator, because I don’t mean to suggest that we won’t be displaying our original content with some prominence. But that’s just one view of the content. OPML will be the skeletal structure that suports the multiple views. We may even try to implement checkbox news. ; )

You see, it’s based upon a feed-centric view of items, so if the feed is from the editorial department and has a category of sports, we know what it is.

If the feed is from elsewhere, we know what it is.

Ultimately this is based upon a web-centric view of things, not a company-centric.

Also of note, is the idea of groups, or groupings, as Stowe Boyd might more aptly describe them. AdHocracies, is the way I’ve put it in the past. Stowe hinted at this some time back with his blog trees idea.

The concept here is that a feed, or a blog and its items are a thread of expanding contributions. I’ll be using SSE to help that along. Two-way news is something I’ve been ineterested in for a while, but have yet to hammer down.

Greg Narain told me (at Ajax World) that it was too complicated and I agree that is an issue.

The only way this can work is if it’s transparent to the people using it. It’s just got to make sense from a user interface perspective right off the bat, or it won’t fly.

I know. Good luck.

A lot of this decision was based upon the ideas that the projectvrm folks have been throwing around lately. In addition to a distributed approach to the content, we’ll be supporting OpenID and other distributed identity ideas like XRI/inames. (like =matthew)

Lastly, along the same lines as VRM, is the idea of user attention data, but It’s way too early to tell in what ways we can make that useful. But i think we will.

Is AdWords advertising?

This quote [Thanks Doc] from the academic paper written by the founders of Google is interesting for more than one reason.

The first and obvious is that it seems to stand in stark contrast to Google’s most lucrative intitiative, AdWords.

The second is that search itself is a VRMish RFP (request for proposal) at its most embryonic level.

The question, then, is whether Google sold out, or has just laid the groundwork for a new era.

Starbury and VRM

The Starbury is a basketabll shoe endorsed by NBA All Star Stephon Marbury.
It doesn’t retail for $200, but $14.98.
I’m getting a pair.
The idea was partly started to try to eliminate any reason for “getting jumped” for your valuable sneakers.
It looks like the idea has legs, and NBA player Ben Wallace will also be sporting the brand on the court.
We’ve all known for some time how much markup there was on these sneakers, and I’m thinking this is indicative of a greater trend.
In this case, it might just be a marketing gimic, or an actual good gesture to help the community, but it begs the question of whether goods of all kinds can close the gap between price and cost, since most of that is controlled by the brands and the distribution channels.
With the fact that distribution of all kinds is bringing the manufacturer and the consumer closer together, whether it be news, or basketball shoes, we all know that this phenomenon is being actualized.
The next logical step is the consumers creating their own brands, wrought out of the demand side either supplying itself, or leveraging their collective demand to have the manufacturer create a product to their specs.
Enter VRM.
One aspect of VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the ability of ad hoc groups to create a collective demand, and influence the suppliers to meet that demand.
In such a case, it’s hard to see what a brand has to offer, if they are anything but an enabler in the process, much in the same way that the Wordpress brand enables me to blog, though it gets no immediate revenue from me.
The Wordpress brand however, will or might generate revenue from ancillary services, in and around the actual product.
Could it be, that in the future, Nike or Microsoft might only exist, not to sell their products, but to aggregate attention from the demand side, and facilitate a transaction.
That would seem to be where Google is headed. Wise companies might just follow.

Ad Hoc groups are key to media dying

Kent Newsome and Tom Morris both opine about how Techmeme and Techcrunch have become less satisfying than going directly to the sources themselves.

Well, yes those sites have become media themselves and we all know that media is dead.

I like Kent’s idea that the Techmeme algorithm is actually working so well that it’s exposing a Web 2.0 flaw:

Maybe the Techmeme algorithm has deduced that all of this Web 2.0 stuff is really just the media business in some new form. If you have no product to sell, what are you? If your primary or only revenue source is the sale of ads, what are you? You’re not science. You’re not a seller of goods. You’re media. You’re the new TV. A million pages of user generated content broadcasting your AdSense banner over the new air.

I also have to give Kent a hand for referencing Mike Brady. It’s an interesting reference since that popular show was about ten years past the era when it should have succeeded. That type of humor should never have been popular by the late sixties and early seventies, yet it was.

Likewise, mediation should be dead, but it’s alive and well at these sites. Why is this?

Well, I still don’t think we have the tools to manage our own information consumption. Lots of people have been talking about them, but not too many delivering.

Tom is right when he says:

If you are in the media business, you need to fully grok the consequences of AdBlock and BitTorrent. You don’t have to like the consequences, but I imagine most of you haven’t even understood the full consequences of a system whereby anyone can share anything with anyone else without seeing any adverts in the process.

The only problem is we still need a whole new generation of software to help us manage and find information that we like.

A major part of that new software or services is social. For now we have just come to rely on a few bloggers that we trust, but this means we get a lot of junk and miss some important stuff too.

I think applying VRM to news and information will help produce some new tools that gcan deliver the information we need when and how we want it.

Also, I’m still thinking that ad hoc group creation, moderation and subscription will also revolutionize blogging in such a way that that we can slip in and out of conversations, file sharing, and marketplaces fluidly and instantly.
A kind of Share Your OPML writ large.

Identity is the first step toward that end, and then a spec to allow adhocracies to form. It’s not so difficult and SSE might play a role.

There has to be a simple way for people to form groups, and a relatively simple way to develop web applications that use this power.

Until then, we rely on trusted people and services, and some of these become like old media themselves even if spun in a new way.

A new type of newspaper site

I have officially accepted a position of Web Development Director with The Hour newspapers in Norwalk, Connecticut.

The company is locally owned by a trust, a much different scenario than the Tribune owned The Advocate, where I previously held the postion of Senior Web Producer.

The current sites are in great need, and the company is hoping I can bring them up to modern standards.

Hopefully the scenario will offer me the opportunity to make the sites a model for other newspapers of all sizes.

I expect to use many of the ideas you folks have given me to formulate a modern strategy that includes consideration of VRM, Attention, Gestures and syndication.

OPML will be an integral tool building these newspaper sites and services, as will the concept of River of News.

I also plan to use open APIs from other services like Twitter and Flickr and Grazr, to integrate these services into other communities.

Similarly, I’ll try my best to expose whatever services we can offer through the use of APIs.

There are great opportunities out there for media companies that are willing to do things right, and I’m hoping this will be a chance to do just that.

Prediction: XRI will be as big as RSS

For those of you looking for good podcast and interested in new frontiers on the web, there is an excellent IT Conversations from Phil Windley speaking with Drummond Reed on XRI and Identity.

I’ve been watching the VRM space get some legs for a little while now, and this podcast really gave me some great understanding of the identity space and fueled some pretty neat ideas. I’ve got VRM religion!

I firmly believe that XRI will revolutionize how web apps are built, and even how we eventually view the web. I’m already redesigning the architecture of a few of my projects, in anticipation of the huge change that is before us over the next few years.

Quote me:

I think XRI will be as significant as RSS.

Much more blogging to come on this subject.

=matthew (listen to the podcast if you don’t get this signature)

UPDATE: On a side note, I entered blogging late because the first descriptions (from traditional media) of it explained it as a way for non-technical people to update websites. True, but when I realized it was really about conversations, I saw the light.
Similarly, when identity was poised as “a way to sign on to different sites with the same credentials,” I thought it was neat, but now I realize that is only the tip of the iceberg.
It’s really about redistributing control, to the identity. That’s why VRM and identity mesh so well together.

UPDATE 2: Since this blog is predicated on silos of social interaction melting down from a web page based point of control to an individual or “buddy list” basis for social networks, I now adapt my original thesis which claims, as Stowe Boyd might say, “the buddy list is the center of the universe,” to a new crede; “identity is the center of my universe.”
What I mean to say is that once identity is firmly established, the social network, or what I like to think of as the “adhocracy,” will develop in a distributed manner. What, in cluetrain fashion, will inevitably result is “pure conversation.” And all economics will be subject to that and only that.

UPDATE 3:After re-reading what I just wrote, I think I’ll keep the picture of me with a beard on the blog, despite my wife and Greg Narain’s objections. You just can’t seriously talk about distributed control of economics and conversations without some facial hair.

Triblocal launch

The Chicago Tribune has launched a new “citizen journalism” site called Triblocal, meant to cover the Chicago suburbs.
I put citizen journalisn in quotes because they actually call them “citizen contributors.” I guess they didn’t want to let the unwashed masses think they might be on the same level.
BTW, on a recent VRM call with Doc Searls, I said I thought “community” was the right word, and Doc seemed to be okay with it. It puts everyone on the same level, IMHO. Funny thing is that’s what we called it in the nineties.
It took a corporate buzzword like “User Generated Content” to get media organizations to notice.
Anyway, Triblocal uses too many graphics in places that should be text, and could look the same with some nice CSS styling.
It also crashed Firefox once already.
I couldn’t dig too deeply since I didn’t have anything real to post, but I didn’t see much eveidence of any social features.
It look like a way to post stories, photos and events, with complimentary contributions and moderation from the editorial staff.
Not too exciting. Pretty old fashioned. I guess it’s better than nothing.
We shall see.

Bloggers are humans!

Ben Mcconnell points out that Bloggers are humans, not some institution that needs to be cultivated. (sounds like Soylent Green)
Pay attention to your customers, and and a few of them are bound to be bloggers.
That’s cultivating a real relationship, not some PR scam.

Silos are dead

Content is a commodity.
Distribution is a commodity.
Jeff Jarvis says that companies that “enable” are where the value is.
Yes, but the real value is in the relationships, not these companies, themselves.
So, if these companies try to exercise control over the data that is created from their “enabling,” or service provision, they will eventually run into the same problems that current distribution and content silos are finding.
User data wants to be free.
You are right Jeff. No more wire hangers. No more boxes either.

Public Radio Markets

Doc Searls doesn’t explicitly mention VRM, but tells how VRM can save Internet Radio. Make sure to clcik through and read his Linux Journal article. That’s where it gets real ineteresting.

It sounds to me like Doc is pointing out that ASCAP and the others are next for disintermediation, as a new public radio market emerges to replace the drowning old advertising based radio regime.