by Rob Paterson
April 14, 2008 at 11:34 am · Filed under
Andy Carvin, Blogging, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Paid Work, Seth Godin
Jeff at NPR with Andy Carvin, me and David Weinberger taken by Doc Searls
Jeff Jarvis writes today about the value of his blog - He says that it has got him all his work over the last few years. The same is true for me. NPR, all my work in New Media, Blackwater, Education - all my paying gigs have come through this medium.
Our money comes largely as a side effect: Here is Seth on that -
At a seminar at the local library, someone asked, “how do I make a lot of money blogging?”
My guess is that at least week’s seminar, the one on growing orchids, no one raised his hand and said, “how do I make a lot of money growing orchids?”
Sure, people make money growing orchids. Some people probably get rich growing orchids. Not many though. And my guess is that the people who do make money gardening probably didn’t set out to do so.
Blogging is much the same way. The best bloggers make money, but mostly as a side effect, not as a direct result of setting out to use a blog to make a profit. It’s just too long a ramp up time, too frustrating and too uncertain to be the best path to make a living.
If it makes you happy (and your readers happy) it’s a great place to start. Step by step you get better at it, and then you discover the ancillary benefits. But the benefits kick in best when you don’t set out to achieve them.
What about you?
by Rob Paterson
March 13, 2008 at 7:07 am · Filed under
Disney, Jeff Jarvis, Terry Heaton, TiVo, YouTube
You Tube are opening their API - Terry Heaton thinks that Google have a plan - to host all video on the web!
…YouTube is not just white-labeling its video-hosting infrastructure for other sites, devices, and desktop applications. It is offering video-hosting for free. This could prove highly disruptive to other video-hosting platforms such as Brightcove, Maven Networks (now part of Yahoo), and Move Networks.
By offering developers the ability to actually alter the user interface of the player, Google is making it very hard to say no. One day, we may see local news sites using the YouTube player instead of their own. If they can customize and monetize it, why not? The hosting and bandwidth costs go away. It certainly raises the bar for creating an appealing local video portal.
Google continues to confound the experts by giving things away. And that, my friends, is why it is so bloody disruptive
YouTube and TIVO have announced that they will work together to deliver more TV on demand - folks it’s getting easier for the mainstream to leave TV as we know it.
When it is introduced this year (the exact time has not been specified), the YouTube service will be available only to TiVo users who have up-to-date hardware — a Series 3 or HD set-top box — and a broadband connection.
Of the four million TiVo users nationwide, more than half get their set-top box from a cable operator. Of the 1.7 million who bought their box directly from TiVo, only about 800,000 have the necessary broadband connection.
Users will be able to log into their accounts and gain access to playlists on the video-sharing site directly from their televisions. The company also plans to let users subscribe to video feeds from across the Internet by using software called an R.S.S. reader.
“TiVo should be the best experience for all video options, whether it’s coming from cable, satellite or off of a server,” Ms. Maitra said.
The integration of Web video and TiVo was a result of YouTube’s decision, announced last August and made public Wednesday, to open the YouTube platform for outside developers. The platform promises to make it easier for other sites to upload and manage videos.
So what to do if you are invested in regular TV? Here is Jeff Jarvis speaking to a presentation by Disney’s Bob Iger. Disney is going where the people are - the customers and the staff. Iger knows that he cannot persuade people who can’t get it - so he recommends hiring them instead
Disney’s Bob Iger: He has shifted from protecting the brand to projecting the brand.
Another: He says Disney isn’t embracing the internet so much as embracing consumers and to be relevant to and reach them, they need to use the technology.
He says they will generate $1 billion in digital revenue in the company up from $750 million the year before (not including online sales to the parks). He says they’ve sold 4 million movies on iTunes and 40-50 million TV episodes, which pales into comparison to streams. Both are incremental — that is, new and additional — to their existing business. He says the DVD business won’t go away but there will be a shift to online delivery.
He cautions that social media isn’t just about Gens X and Y. It’s about kids now. He believes that the broaddband enabled computer will be come a primary entertainment medium for kids. “It’s just as important to them as television.”
Asked what’s the trick for an old-media company to get it, Iger responds, “Hire new people.” He says you need people who look at technology as a friend not a foe, not talking about challenges and fragmentation. (The kind of people at SXSW.)
Google is no threat, he says. Disney is a popular search term. He knows that Google sends him people and rather than seeing Google’s ad sales on top of that as a problem, he wants his company to find ways to make the experience of coming from Google better.
He talks about Disney as an American brand worldwide. He says he respects the need for local creation of content and so in local markets they set up creative centers, not just distribution centers. (I wish he were around in 1991 when my bosses at Time Warner killed — muzzled — my column at Entertainment Weekly because I dared to say that local content support could be a good thing. “How can you say that?” demanded one of the company’s editors. I stopped writing my column then, in protest, and soon quit the magazine. This was only one of my problems
by Rob Paterson
November 12, 2007 at 4:05 pm · Filed under
BBC, BBC Manchester, COSI, Enterprise 2.0, Flickr, Hyper Local News, Jeff Jarvis, NPR, Ning, PBS, Public Media, Robin Hammam, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Objects, Twitter, WOSU
This Wednesday, Nov 15th, the guys at WOSU will meet with may of the leading local bloggers in Columbus to see if they can find things to talk about and to do with each other. Here is the invitation:
We at WOSU and COSI have been wondering how we could do more to help our community cope with some challenging issues. We asked ourselves:
What if we — your local public broadcaster and science museum — and those of you who are the local blogging experts got together and learned how to use Social Media to bring back that great American tradition of the community taking charge of its own problems?
Here’s what we’re wondering:
Could we use social media and our many talents and resources to breakthrough the bureaucratic barriers that seem to block so much local reform?
Could we gain enough support and understanding to shift our education system so that our children are equipped to face the sometime harsh realities of the world?
Could we start to make sense of what our aging population, our health care system and even our food system may mean to us?
What other issues should we be discussing with an eye toward change?
Many local bloggers have deep subject knowledge and are also part of existing communities that also care and know a lot.
We have a big megaphone—radio and web site—and some great resources—a centrally located facility with cutting-edge technology (studios and a mediaLab) that we could add to the mix.
Can you imagine what we might be able to do together?
Interested? We would like to invite you to the first meeting of the Columbus Social Media Cafe — a “Town Hall” Open Space Meeting — on Thursday, November 15 at 6:30 pm, to see if we can find an agenda that we can all get excited about and to see what will emerge if we get together.
The meeting is at WOSU@COSI inside COSI at 333 West Broad Street in downtown Columbus.
Tim Eby, retiring Chair of NPR, will be blogging here - see the picture above - and he will be Twittering here. Scott will be vidoing some of the participants and WOSU will put the clips up on their site soon.
There will be pictures here on Flickr
This is a look at part of the amazing space at COSI.
The hope is that this may be the beginning of a new approach to Hyper Local Coverage - where the bloggers and the public TV/Radio - can combine their talents and efforts.
Many thanks to Robin Hammam at the BBC and to Jeff Jarvis for inspiring this efort.
