We create the stories of the connected society

Sometimes Internet startups have a business model. Sometimes they don’t – and the story typically boils down to “we’ll figure it out” or “we’ll sell.” For consumer media and information services, more often than not “figure it out” means build a large enough audience to sell advertising around it. For platforms and tools, founders aspire [...]

Social networking is the fastest-growing activity on the user-centric Internet. The idea is that most anyone can join a large, loosely connected network of “friends” to share personal or professional information, establish contacts, communicate, align social activities, establish a personality or brand, and vicariously act-out life online. You pass your profile to your friends, [...]

In an open letter to craigslist, Steve Outing asks its founders and operators to help save the newspaper industry from itself. My response:

Steve,
It takes real chutzpah to ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of craigslist to help newspapers salvage their classifieds businesses and thus save democracy, or at least the part of it that newspapers [...]

Is Craigslist insignificant? I’ve weighed in to a small debate:
Publishers underestimated Craigslist once with devastating results. Newspapers, which derive nearly 80 of their revenue from classified advertising, lost half or more of their lucrative classified business over the past five years, a loss that now threatens the economic stability of the industry. So while, [...]

It is a big deal, or at least it used to be, when the nation’s publishers and editors gather at an annual conference to talk about business, craft, the role of newspapers in democracy, information technology, and the future. The latter has dominated the conversation lately so the mood has been decidedly somber.
But the despair [...]

From Singapore: Conference Bay, an eBay-style auction marketplace for buying seats at conferences worldwide.
Nothing new here, right? We all know about online auctions. The only innovation is applying a well-tested online transaction model to a different niche -  in this case a potentially high-value niche that may provide real utility – and new buying power [...]

The social web depends on content, tagging and utility created or improved by the good will of the people formerly known as the audience.
Where does good will end and greed take over? That depends on whether you’re a giver or taker. Dan Gillmor at the Center for Citizen Media is bothered by the free labor [...]

I’ve been reflecting on our experiences at We Media Miami and digesting a great deal of reporting and analysis about what happened. It’s ALL been helpful. The diversity of viewpoints again underscores the eclectic and complex nature of “We” – and the promise of invention and innovation driven by the We Media community.A number [...]

From The World Economic Forum comes the news that YouTube will start paying those who upload videos.
First of all… at the World Economic Forum… a YouTube announcement? Shouldn’t the folks there be talking about, I don’t know, currency trading or real estate speculation or climate change?

Yahoo was downgraded today by S&P to “sell” from “hold.” Why?