Founder of weblogs inc, he has a nice blog and has already blogged about the people who blogged him after his conference on blogs (…).
Photo by Heiko.
The most interesting speech so far. Funny, experienced and insightful person. He’s the only one who talked about the future. Here are some point he made (interesting points start at the third paragraph hang in there):
Jason talks about CCJ or Collaborative Citizen Journalism. The power of what’s happening with blogs does not come from individuals taken as individuals but as a whole. Blogs get their value from the fact that they are exposed, discussed and debated sources of information.
To illustrate the power of blogs, Jason recounted the story of a fight they had with an american manufacturer:
– he reviews a product positively on his blog
– a reader comments, says that there have been issues with the product
– a new post is made, reconsidering the positive verdict on the product
– the company sends a legal letter to ask him to remove the negative opinion
– he manages to make the company understand the potentially devastating effects of going the law way (the blog has thousands of readers daily)
– the manufacturer issues some kind of disclaimer on their site, like “you might have heard that some people claim that our product sucks, don’t listen”
– jason delivered the final blow by uncovering a paper that proved the company had been sued on the subject, was aware of it and did not move
– the manufacturer had to admit their mistake, and their reputation was done
(I’m sure I missed a few things here but you get the point: consumer have the power to force corporations to face their mistakes). “Blogs are really more powerful than you think”
Jason points to how this whole story (read above) could never appear in the traditional media. They do not publish readers comment, can not work stories like that, as they develop. They are not reactive enough. Some information can not be passed by the traditional media
Blogging is like throwing many tiny snowballs on top of a mountain. Some will stop after a few meters, some will become avalanches. You don’t know which one but it happens.
Blogs are subject to an increasing pressure, face challenges to their integrity. He showed some emails he got from Siemens proposing to pay flights and hotels for engadget editors so they can go to a particular tech show in exchange of some presence in the posts. Engadget refused, and weirdly the first seven posts of Gizmodo (their main competitor) on that show were on Siemens products… Really weird ;-) and to be expected.
RSS = Real Simple Stealing. As a publisher of 80+ blogs, Jason sees more and more of the following:
– I syndicate feeds, or create a new feed via a technorati watchlist for example.
– I create a web site that displays the feeds
– I put some google adwords on the site
– I make money from content I do not generate.
Jason thinks that at some point publishers will turn off RSS feeds.
We all heard that blogs are not good sources because they do no fact checking. This is not true, readers comment = realtime fact checking, much more powerful than traditional media fact checking. If the NYT makes a mistake, it is gonna correct it one week later in a tiny column on page xx. Blogs talk about their mistakes, stand up dans take the hit -> users are in the know much faster.
The evolution of the search for truth:
Before the internet, Media detained most of the truth
Before blogs, Media and people detained the truth
Now the truth is shared by media, citizens and bloggers, with people navigating from one category to the other
Jason is about to launch on one of his blogs a “star system”. The idea is to recognize that readers can be bloggers, and that readers can for free improve the content of the site. So he has:
– a certain number of editors for this blog, shown on the right side of the site
– when an editor appreciates a reader’s comment (=thinks the comment has value) he “stars” the comment, the reader gets one point.
– readers are ranked below the editors, and clicking on a reader’s name takes you to that person’s website.
So this system is encouraging people to contribute and is valorizing the right person. More content, quality content, for free. Smart
Jason finished by saying that he has an increased number of bloggers that acquire fame and credibility on one particular blog, then move to another blog in parallel. Their credibility follows them (not amazingly).
