Time to look East

One of the new authors that is joining the blogosphere thanks to our /think initiative (I’ll talk about /think as soon as we have finished implementing a new design, so far it’s beta) is Marc Laperrouza. Marc is an old friend of mine, and one of the best specialists of China around. His blog is called Time to look east and is starting strong with articles on two drivers for innovation in the next 20 years and national champions and techno-nationalism.

We will soon have even more luminaries joining us, the likes of David Galipeau and Steven Ritchey are announced.

Low frequency of posting = more chances of subscription

I just subscribed to a few more feeds after reading a nice post on White African. I noticed one thing, before adding a new RSS feed to my reader, I check the frequency to which the author is posting. The less frequently the authors writes, the more likely I am to subscribe.

I already get hundreds of updates a day, I still want to open up a bit but my margin for adding more information is thin. Is writing a lot counterproductive in terms of building an audience? I think so.

Cyberviolence in Korea

Here in Seoul I stumbled upon the story of TV star Jeong Da-Bin and pop singer Yuni who reportedly committed suicide earlier this year after suffering cyberbullying. This country, the most wired in the world, has already been through the Kathy Sierra/Code of conduct debate and as a result is now considering radical measures like banning anonymous comments from all website (how?) and forcing a true identity system behind every online account.

In South Korea, a law aimed at cracking down on Internet misuse means cyberbullies will no longer be able to hide behind false identities, South Korea’s ministry of information said this month.When the new law takes effect in July, the “Internet real-name system” will mean cyberbullies can be traced because major portals and news media websites will be compelled to record the real IDs of users when they post entries.

Portal operators will be obliged to disclose personal information such as names and addresses of cyber attackers when their victims want to sue them for libel or infringement upon privacy.

Link

This sparks a lot of questions (central ID system, freedom of speech, etc…), and beyond a set of official measures what is needed is an evolution of our society’ etiquette (as usual lagging behind innovation), new ethical standards (the limits of what is tolerable will surely be pushed) and more maturity on the victim side (easier said than done, but ignorance is 99% of the time the right answer).

It would be interesting to pick up the brain of members of the english royal family on this. These guys probably have as thick a skin as anybody, and a few tricks to avoid sleepless nights over personal details publication.

More on this:
• ‘Cyberviolence’ Plagues South Korea
• “Dan Gillmor: there appears to be a correlation between willingness to stand behind one’s own words and the overall quality of what’s said”, bringing ID will increase the quality of content?

Arvetica

Two of Geneva’s brightest minds just started blogging on Arvetica.ch, their company’s website. Follow these guys, they are doing very interesting things, trying to help large organization understand and cope with the realities of our changing world.

Alex: I would suggest you stop saying “hu-hum” and “ok-ok” when you do video casts ;)

(Disclaimer: these guys are good friends of mine, and regularly pay me a coffee or two).

Blogging is probably peaking

Steve Rubel made an interesting collection of data about blogging, and says that it “may be peaking”. I would say it IS peaking.

I have long thought that blogs will very soon disappear. The word blog at least. The underlying principles of blogging will still be with us for years to come (the real revolution is micro-publication and micro-discussion) but get diluted in every single web page. Putting a special label on a website because it has comments and permalinks won’t make sense anymore when all website will propose these features right?

The same thing happened to the good old “homepage” if you remember well. Back in the 90s homepages were the personal web pages, a special kind of places on the web. Now that everybody has a homepage in very diverse forms (blog, mySpace profile, personal portal, squidoo lens, suprglu, whatever…) the word became meaningless and disappeared.

That’s why all the blogging consultants out there should rethink their title. Time to reinvent yourself again!

PS: Steve, my invitation still stands ;)

Update: Gartner says blogging will peak in 2007 (via Micropersuasion again)

39% of blog readers

The latest PEW report confirms blogs are going mainstream.

Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs – a significant increase since the fall of 2005.

Link (via David Weinberger)

Just a few months ago there were debates about whether blogs would become mainstream. Time to focus on the next question.

70% of large companies will have blogs

More evidence blogging is going mainstream:

Jupiter Research: Corporate Blog Deployments to Double in 2006

Some 35 percent of large companies plan to initiate corporate blogs this year – and combined with the existing deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent of such companies will have deployed corporate blogs by the end of 2006

And it does not even appear like a bold prediction. Blogs are serious. The exception is NOT to have one. What a shift. Corporate communication has been turned upside down in two years. When was the last time change was happening that fast? We are living through exciting times.

A-listers are irrelevant

One of the key asset of coComment – the company I am currently helping spin out of Swisscom – is the fact that the service works across different silos that are emerging on the web. It is important because there isn’t ONE blogosphere anymore: there is a Technorati sphere (the most famous), a mySpace sphere, a Skyblog sphere, a Flickr sphere, a Digg sphere, etc…

All these social platforms are independent worlds with different opinion leaders, values, histories, and nobody can consolidate what is REALLY happening in global conversation because nobody can see through all these worlds at the same time.

One consequence is that, on a global scale, a-listers are less significant than they used to. And the reason is not themselves. These guys are still as good and relevant as before. It is just that the a-listers’ kingdom (i.e. the Technorati blogosphere and it’s 47 million websites) is weighting less in relative terms. One single fact: MySpace’s 90 million users are not included in Technorati.

Need another proof? Check this out.

Pete Cashmore has the shocking news: Flickr is irrelevant! The photo sharing website that we bloggers have been using and praising for the past years is in fact a non-factor on the global market.

Let’s do a quick search on Technorati. 23’189 bloggers with a lot of authority talked about flickr. Only 2’724 about Photobucket. 9 times less blog posts, but 7 times more market share.

What happened? The online planet has moved past the blogosphere as the only place where conversation happens. Blogs and a-listers are relevant, but they aren’t the only conversation going on anymore. It’s about time we start thinking bigger.

Conclusions?
• Stop bothering Scoble, Hugh, Arrington and co about links. They can only get you 25’000 irrelevant users anyway (I’m trying hard to free your inboxes guys, don’t hit me too hard ;-).
• The pulse of the global conversation is NOT Technorati. Technorati will give you hints of what early adopters think, not what the global population thinks. We should all search Technorati but also mySpace, Google News, Skyblog for the French market, Digg, YouTube, etc…
• We need a live web search engine, one that does what Technorati does but on a global scale.

blonk (v.)

To blog without notable creativity, inspiration or merit; covering the same ground trod by countless others in the echo chamber; blogging as an alternative to thinking.

“I was going to write a considered piece about climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, but I’ve just been blonking pictures of my cat.”

The blonkosphere, blonker.com, that opens a lot of new perspectives suddenly ;-)

Link

60 millions de chinois

Le nombre de blogueurs chinois devrait atteindre 60 millions � la fin de cette année selon une étude sur les médias Chinois de la prestigieuse Tsinghua University.

Lien (via MicroPersuasion)

Il est grand temps de préparer une version chinoise de votre site web… 60 millions de personnes, comme si toute la France se mettait � bloguer.