The Newseum website has an awesome feature that shows the up-to-date front pages of the print editions of 630 newspapers in 63 countries.  Check it out and kill an hour.

A few weeks ago the McCain campaign launched a “Spread the Word” feature on their campaign website that encourages volunteers to comment on prominent left and right leaning blogs as a way of getting the McCain message out. The feature was written up in Wired and has attracted a mixed reaction. Some think it is nothing more than astroturfing while others think it is a clever outreach strategy.

My take is that the idea is a good one but that the execution could have been better.

The piece includes very brief instructions, a long list of blogs to participate in (94 are listed) and a few talking points to copy. Intentionally or not, the tool seems to aspire to create an army of Ron Paul-style shills, who inject promotional materials about their candidate of choice into every discussion no matter the topic, alienating the very communities they are trying to reach. Bull, meet china shop.

I think the tool would have been better received and more effective had the campaign provided volunteers with better instructions as to how to participate in these blogging communities. Off the top of my head, here are some of the tips I might have included:

1. Read the blogs and familiarize yourself with their communities before posting comments.
2. Read the actual post you are commenting on before posting anything. Read other people’s comments as well before posting.
3. Make sure your comments are on topic.
4. Participate in the community beyond simply posting pro-McCain materials.
5. Be civil and respectful of others members of the community.
6. Etc.

Basically, I’d try to give volunteers more information so that they conduct the outreach in a manner that is respectful of the blogs they are participating in.

Simon Owens of Bloggasm, a blog that focuses on online media and journalism, recently conducted a very intriguing ‘mini-study' centered about the idea of personal blogging done by reporters, journalists, and other professionals.

He was inspired by the recent firings of two prominent writers, both of whom were fired due to participation in personal blogging.  Chez Pazienza, a former producer for CNN, was fired from his job in February because he wrote for Huffington Post and other high-profile blogs.  CNN has a policy against any outside writing without prior approval.

In April, Michael Tunison was fired from the Washington Post after he revealed that he wrote for the sports blog Kissing Suzy Kolber. His bosses told him that he had brought "discredit to the paper" through his blogging.

In order to find out how other newspaper editors and higher-ups felt about this issue, Owens contacted 250 of them, basically asking if they would be against personal blogging on non-beat issues by their writers.  Of those that responded, 44% "either required disclosure of the blog, issued caveats over what subjects couldn't be covered, or had outright bans on having personal blogs at all."

(more…)

At one point in my life, I considered myself to be an avid reader. Over the years, I have noticed that my reading habits have changed — my literature agenda includes only required assignments and the occasional pleasure novel or "must read" (Malcolm Gladwell, Levitt and Dubner, unread classics). I attributed most of this to a decline in free time, increased commitments and responsibilities, and you know, being a college student. After reading Nicholas Carr's article for the Atlantic on how the internet is not only changing the way we gather information, but probably changing the actual way our minds work, I was forced to explore the possibility that Google is at least partially to blame for my decreased appetite for literature.

In summary of his article (the very streamlining trend of the internet he describes), he compares the pre-internet methods of information gathering to the way information is sought after today. What used to take hours, maybe even days of research in the stacks of libraries is now readily available in a few clicks and keystrokes in the comfort of your office, home, or pocket. Carr goes on in his examination of this phenomena through a variety of different lenses; the psychology of mental development, an ominous comparison to Stanley Kubrick's unearthly futurist masterpiece, and philosophical points to ponder from both past and present.

As Carr touches upon, this is not the first time an exponential shift in access to information has occurred. Johann Gutenburg and his infamous press changed the history books — and for the first time, enabled the mass production of such texts. During this period in history, a shift from oral learning to a more textual style of information seeking occurred. There just weren't developmental and cognitive psychologists there to document it.

I am certainly no futurist (nor do I want to be haunted by the nightmares of my own imagination), but I do know that I embrace evolution of the collective human ability; as a result I tend to embrace technology readily. It comes as no surprise to me that in an age of pop-up advertisements, instant messaging, twitter, and wikis, my mental processes have probably been altered to accommodate for a different style of data exposure. One can call these "advantages" or "disadvantages", but I see it more as just plain differences.

What these differences will amount to in years, even generations from now is not incontestable, nor is it an easy task to judge them with a viewpoint only history can reveal. While there may be a decreasing number of Tolstoy scholars in years to come, I simultaneously ponder how many lives biotechnology will have saved, or how advances in quantum computing will have shaped the course of mankind.

To answer Carr's fundamental question: No. Google is making us different. What do you think? Is the decreased attention span and the shift away from long works of prose really a threat to human intellect? When does the streamlining of data gathering efficiency threaten individuality?

P.S. - Less pretentious posts to come. I promise .

One of the most useful (though sadly, often forgotten) aspects of the Internet is the ability to contact with people all over the world, in real-time.  Just this month, I have exchanged email with a friend overseas, bought a Father's Day gift, and done research through an Australian library.  The Internet has greatly increased our ability to do personal things, but it has also increased our ability to give to others.

The best part about online charities is that you can feel secure knowing that you can receive up-to-date information about where your money is headed.  A friend of mine proudly displays email in his office, written to him by a child in Africa to whom he donated a laptop.  This sort of real-time exchange is what makes charity a viable option for busy web browsers.  While there are many (many!) worthy charities, I decided to highlight three very unique ones that are fledging, worthy of attention, and in need of support. (more…)

Last October Microsoft announced a $240 million advertising investment in Facebook, which put the valuation of the social media company at about $15 billion.

While it is shockingly common to see businesses throw around dollar sums with seemingly little attention to the number of digits left of the decimal point, big business has goofed up before.  I'll cite the current mortgage and credit crises as evidence of this.

That is why I'm wondering why companies value Facebook at such a high amount.  Granted, it and other social networks are currently business darlings with their rapid growth, loyal customer base that can have targeted advertising directed at, and great ability to furtively extract valuable demographic information from people through those pesky applications while playing hard-to-get since it is hard enough to monetize them to make the pursuit interesting enough.  However, while I'm an avid Facebook user now, I highly doubt that the site will do well in its current form in several years.  Social networking seems like a fad to me.

So, why are companies so eager to spend billions on a short term fad?  I don't know.  For awhile, I thought that the value of the sites is not what they are but what they will evolve into.  Will Facebook soon become the site that people use for e-mail, instant messaging, calendaring, photo sharing, networking, news reading, etc.?

If that's the case, I can see the value as a site can horde and maintain a loyal user base in which it can target advertising to while its users do a variety of activities.  But then I thought about the World Wide Web of the mid-1990s when portal services like AOL and Compuserve (remember that?) reigned.  They aimed to provide their users — who likely used them for Internet access — with everything that they needed (news, weather, reference material, e-mail, entertainment, etc.) on their portal sites in an attempt to keep people there.  In a sense they tried to act as if the whole purpose that the computer was invented was for you to visit and stay on their portal sites.

Well, what's happened to this business model?  It no longer works.  Granted, social networks like Facebook can gradually introduce more services to their users, but companies like AOL and Compuserve had more or less captive audiences, too.

After that thought process, that brings me back to my original question: Why are social networks like Facebook worth billions of dollars?

The Wall Street Journal published a great piece yesterday about the struggles of LoudounExtra.com, the Washington Post’s bold attempt to provide hyperlocal news coverage for the DC suburb Loudon County (I’m sure the Post really appreciated the free press here). A year in, the site has yet to build a significant audience. The article interviews key players such as the well-respected Rob Curley, who led the effort, and Post executives Jim Brady and Don Graham, about the reasons for the site’s struggles.

The whole piece is worth reading, but if I had to distill the article down these would be the takeaways: (more…)

Photos on news site are often made deliberately small and/or buried in annoying Flash slide show software. Good photography ends up getting marginalized. Boston.com recently launched a dead simple photo blog called Big Picture that shows how powerful online news photography can be if you out of the way and let the pictures tell a story. Big Picture’s formula is simple: present high resolution versions of outstanding photography in a blog style, with a minimal amount of accompanying text. The results are compelling, as this post on an uncontacted Amazon Basin tribe shows.

Alan Taylor, who came up with the idea for the Big Picture, explains the thinking behind the piece in a blog post:

When I see quality photography consigned to the archives, or when I see bandwidth readily given up to video streams of dubious quality, or when I see photo galleries that act as ad farms, punishing viewers into a click-click-click experience just to drive page views - those times are the times I’m glad I was able to get this project off the ground (many thanks to my friends within boston.com).

Check out the Big Picture.

<via Jason Kottke>

In 2006 and 2007, we performed studies that examined how U.S. newspapers are adapting their web programs in the face of an increasingly competitive online news market. These studies looked at the features of the top 100 newspaper websites in an effort to gauge what areas they are investing resources and what areas they are not, and compare how things are changing from year to year. We are about to begin our 2008 study and would like your input as to the features we should look for. Here is what we have come up with so far:

(more…)

We’re proud to announce that The Bivings Group will be one of the sponsors of this year’s Personal Democracy Forum, an important conference that covers how technology is changing politics. This year’s Personal Democracy Forum will take place in New York City June 23rd and 24th.

The preliminary program looks fantastic, with a great mix of big names (Craig Newark, Michael Arrington, Elizabeth Edwards), journalists (Jose Antonio Vargas, Anna Marie Cox, Clay Shirky) and political professionals from the left (Joe Trippi, Joe Rospars, Peter Daou) and the right (Michael Turk, Austin Walne, Patrick Ruffini, David All, Mindy Finn) sides of the aisle. I had a great time at the conference last year and learned a lot in the sessions and in the hallways.

You can register to attend this year’s conference here.

If you end up attending, please be sure to stop by our demo table to meet the Bivings team, check out our media monitoring platform, ImpactWatch, and to pick up some free goodies. We hope to see you there.

The Bivings Group is a busy web development firm, and as such we don’t always spend the time we should on our own websites. As a consultant, you focus so much on helping clients that sometimes you don’t spend the time to help yourself.

In an effort to improve the performance of our own online program, we are going to take some time this summer to update the content, graphics, etc. on our main site, our blog and the website of our principle product, ImpactWatch. One of the first things we are doing is looking at ways to improve our performance in search engines. Our sites do pretty well in Google, but, like anyone else, we want to do better. We know that search engine optimization (SEO) is an ongoing process, and that if we don’t consistently put in work our ratings will drop. (more…)

Advertising in television commercials has been met with some fierce changes in recent years.  With the invention of the DVR system, it seems that more viewers are ‘fast-forwarding' the commercials in favor of watching their program in less time, with less interruptions.

Obviously, there are ways to use DVR systems to measure what commercials and specific parts of programs the audience is most watching (as was mentioned in my American Idol analysis), but this blog post offers an interesting notion that perhaps we are measuring the wrong metric.

(more…)