BookBlog

Professional women watch tv on the net - I'm a demographic

I occasionally watch television programming - by-the-drink episodes on the internet or by-the-bottle series on DVD. I thought that was just a personal idiosyncrasy - a habit that is one part geeky, one part lazy (plan to watch? remember to record?), and one part ADD (must internet multi-task while watching video).

It turns out this is a mainstream phenomenon, and I'm in the heart of the demographic. Twenty percent of US television viewers watch using the internet, according to a recent study from IMMI. The largest segment getting their TV from the net are busy working women women, ages 25-44. Thanks to strange attractor for the tip.

Wikipediolympics

NBC's internet-like coverage of the Olympics doesn't let you watch coverage from another part of the world. Apparently they use IP address to segregate viewers into national ghettos. If you try to say you're in Argentina or Andorra, they bounce you. It's annoying enough that the NBC coverage for US viewers is mostly US athletes, with human-interest patter drowning out the events. With the Olympics you have no other choice, unlike most other events of international interest, where you can dip into international coverage and get multiple perspectives.

The Olympics are able to constrain the coverage because they have a scarce resource. The Oympics happen once every 4 years. It is feasible to constrain media and presentation. But imagine if the Olympic coverage was handled very differently.

With this year's online Olympics coverage, you can select from a variety of recorded events, with easily searchable topics. Overall, there is more footage than anyone who's not on bed rest can watch. Then there are little informative snippets, like a champion weight lifter explaining the Olympic lifts, or a gymnast explaining the judging rules. But it's all from one perspective. The Olympics are the tip of a large iceberg of sports that are usually obscure. The good news is that the rest of the year these sports are obscure, so college gymnastics can be found on YouTube.

So, imagine if you could watch coverage from any nation. Imagine you could watch coverage from multiple perspectives, including the knowledgeable folk who pay attention to these sports all year long. Imagine people could add links to the YouTube videos of the obscure meets throughout the year. Imagine if people could add links to the coverage of these athletes in their local papers. Imagine if coaches could post tips on running and swimming based on the performance of these world-class athletes. Imagine if there could be ways to find your local clubs for cycling, swimming, volleyball, rowing.

Without a video monopoly, a site that could link together a broader and deeper array of content and conversation would reward more engagement. It would provide more opportunities for sponsors to make money. Broadcast network coverage would probably stay popular because of the production value and brand, even if the monopoly was lifted.

It is not even that large a stretch. Recently, other publishers of popular culture artifacts have started making peace with fan communities, creating hosted, sponsored sites for fans willing to take them up on the offer, and treating independent communities with benign neglect instead of persecution.

The Olympics would benefit from this approach. The producers believe that keeping a monopoly ensures they make money. They are not seeing the large amount of money they are leaving on the table.

Taxonomy is power

There's a saying, "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy." Categories reflect social power. This is true even with fictional things. A friend was describing a fantasy novel series. I googled and found its web page and wiki.

Lo and behold, the categories in the left navigation of the wiki read:

A funny set of categories to characterize this fictional world! And there's a backstory -- some of the fans wanted to classify dragons as people, and organize them by nationality, like people. But the maintainer of the wiki wanted to keep the categories of beings separate. Leading to a heated dispute about human/dragon racism.

No word on whether there is a full-fledged dragons rights movement. Or at least a protest t-shirt.

Even more backstory. That quote about dialects? It was a quote by a yiddish scholar, made famous at a presentation in a conference in 1945, while WW2 was in progress.

Why Twitter updates are better than Facebook feeds - or not

Gregor Hochmuth has a fine but overinterpreted explanation of why twitter updates are better than facebook. I think that Gregor's article attributes to the features of tools something that belongs as much to the differing uses of the tools.

Gregor observes that that Twitter messages go to a defined audience, whereas Facebook newsfeeds don't have the same effect because the items show in the newsfeed are selected by algorithm. This is a good insight, but misses something important - the usage patterns of Twitter and Facebook differ from community to community and from person to person. I recently went on a group mountain bike ride with a group of women who aren't tech geeks. They weren't millennials - ages ranged from mid-thirties to mid-forties. The conversation turned to Facebook. Turns out, they use Facebook like people I know use twitter. They post message updates for their friends to see. And, they don't use Facebook like people I know use Facebook. They don't have lots of apps installed -- not the social, "buy-you-a-drink" apps that presumably appeal to the young and partyish, and not the movie/books/music/scrabble sharing games. It's a lightweight way to stay in touch. They don't use twitter, and they don't need it, because they use Facebook like Twitter. Without the updates "so-and-so rated 12 movies", the personal updates are visible. So its not just about Facebook, but how people use Facebook.

Individuals also vary in the way they use the two tools to describe their social circles. Some people use Twitter to collect friends. Others constrain their following to a degree of relationship. Some people use Facebook to collect friends. Other constrain their friending to a degree of relationship. The patterns vary by tool and by person. So for some people Twitter is more like broadcast. For some people Facebook is more like broadcast. It depends.

Gregor's piece also misses a fun and useful attribute of the more diverse nature of Facebook feeds (for users who use Facebook that way). The diversity of applications -- and the fact that notices are grouped by app not by user -- results in interesting kinds of serendipity. You see movies, or books, or parties, or groups that you wouldn't always run into because your acquaintances happen to mention them. Facebook multiples referral serendipity. Because Twitter affords and rewards reply, it intensifies conversation and news, but has less diverse serendipity.

Context is people

As usual, an insightful post from John Udell about what it takes to make sense of government data - or other data - online.

Udell has been covering the emerging array of tools to expose government and legislative data online. Then he tried to use the tools to follow a bill he cared about:

What I found is that, even with power tools like GovTrack and MAPLight, it’s really hard to make those connections. That’s partly because we lack good mechanisms to track the flow of bits of legislative language through an evolving assortment of bills, and to relate those fragments to the activities and interests of their sponsors.But it’s also because a novice who tries to read and interpret this record lacks context.

In order to understand the progress of a bill, you don't just need a bill number and a tool to show differences in document versions -- you need to understand committee process, legislative calendars, procedural maneuvers; written and unwritten rules; social and political dynamics.

Udell points to tools like GovTrack which are attempting to create a substrate for communities following bills. I'm seeing a trend that is fascinating and a little bit lower tech. National blogs like FireDogLake, local blogs like TransBayBlog, social network communities like the Get Fisa Right network in MyBarackObama.com, provide their communities with more detailed context on the dynamics of legislation and the process of adding ingredients to the sausage. In the context of a community, members learn more about the legislative process than civics 101 class, or than getting email from the Sierra Club.

The data-driven tools that Udell envisions, where the system allows citizens who are tracking the same bill to find each other, are cool, visionary, good right and true. A lower tech solution is here today. Bill numbers are good search terms. Google a bill number and you'll find resources on the bill. The ability to google for a bill number, find a great blog and discussion, and engage in some informed networking and activism, is here today.

Complete Streets Act queued for California Senate

The Complete Streets Act, sponsored by Assemblymember Mark Leno, is queued up for debate in the California Senate. The bill requires local governments to take into account users other than cars when updating general plans. Pedestrians, bicyclists, children, people with disabilities, seniors, all need to be considered. In a "complete streets" world, cars have a vote, not a veto on how streets are used.

More background on the bill from the TransBay Blog. The bill is queued for the Senate floor, but is being held while the Gov. plays chicken with the budget. If you live in CA, call your state Senator in support of the bill.

Mirror, mirror - who's the fairest reporter?

Glenn Greenwald's incendiary analysis reveals that ABC News knew at the time who was spreading the word that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks, one of the threads in the case for war. They still know and they're not telling. Compare and contrast to Matthew Ingram's reflections earlier this year about the internet blurring the lines between fact and rumor.

Traditional media can be influenced. PR and propaganda go back far into the history of mass media because they work. This is why companies have pr departments and famous people have media agents. Representatives of traditional media who believe they report fact without rumor or influence are Snow White's haughty and deluded Evil Queen.

Political blog readership - cause and effect

What does it mean that readership of political blogs in the US is politically polarized, according to a recent study of political blogs in the US. Readers on the right and left reading different blogs, and are more partisan than average Americans. Blogging isn't a tool for discourse across the spectrum, but a tool for organizing and message-building.

Is the partisanship cause or effect? "We don't know if blogs polarize their readers, or if highly ideological readers gravitate to blogs that reflect their partisanship." A comment on Crooked Timber, group blog of one of the study's authors has an insight. MQ writes, "I think this stuff is going to change over time. The blog world took shape at an extremely politically polarized time, and the polarization was still there in 2006."

The connection between blog-reading and activism is supported by a multi-national study showing that blog readers in France, Germany, the US and the UK are more likely to be politically active. It would be interesting to find out how many of the the people reading and organizing using blogs have been partisan and politically active all along, and how many have been mobilized by blogs.

Personally, I've become more partisan as a result of reading political blogs, and a more active participant in electoral politics. I got involved in tech policy activism before the rise of political blogging; but the issues weren't particularly partisan at the time. I've become more partisan in part because of the evolution of the right in the US toward defense of torture, government spying, aggressive wars, unlimited executive privilege and other radicalism. And partly persuaded by the argument by Markos et al that the attitude of reasoned nonpartisanship on the part of Democrats enabled them to be rolled by those negotiating in bad faith, the "bipartisanship is date rape" tactic. I admire the Obama campaign's message of hope, but when Obama backpedals on his commitment to the constitution, the right strategy is to organize. It will be wonderful to contemplate varying points of view when the path to compromise isn't "how much of the constitution do you want to give up."

It would be exceedingly interesting to find out whether there are meaningful numbers of people getting mobilized to political activity through involvement in blogs and social media.

Peripheral canal and farmers market salmon

The man who sells fish at the Menlo Park farmers market with his family is a good guy and a community leader. There is no local salmon for him to sell this year, because the Delta where the salmon grow up -- an estuary at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers -- is dying.

Today, water is drawn from Northern California through the Delta. Too much water is being taken out, and too much fresh water is being drawn through what used to be a tidal flux.

My weekend housecleaning radio listening was a KQED forum program about a proposal to build a Peripheral Canal, which would route less fresh water through the Delta, and would take more water around the Delta. After listening to the program, I'm still not sure what to think about the canal proposal. I think that key questions are how much water is moved, and how we live with less. One of the guests on the program was Peter Gleick, a water expert and Macarthur grantee who's written a report on California water policy.

These water debates are the stuff of Cadillac Desert and Jared Diamond's Collapse, the tactical decisions that affect the rise and fall of civilizations over time.

Why branded communities fail

These are some good reasons that branded communities fail: focus on features; lack of facilitation; lack of success metrics. The title of the piece implies one more reason -- the concept of branded community itself!! The term "branded community" telegraphs the wish that the community will will be about and for the host. Being a good host will surely enhance the reputation of the host. But hosting a party is about making the time and place comfortable and fun for the guests. Communities focused on the goals of the host more than the goals of the participants won't keep participants around very long.