Comments by Neil Gorman

Chris,

I enjoy your news letter, but I do think that one thing I'd like to see on the news letter is a guest writer (picked by you or the community that reads your blog).

I think that this would be useful, because it would add a new voice to a great content distro system. Also, it would expose me (the reader) to other great voices that I may not have heard yet.

Example: have Julien Smith write about some thing like "How To: Stat productive when you work on the web"

... That's my thoughts.

Take care

-N

-N

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@Emil — I really enjoyed your comment as well. I hope that my comment did not come across as an attack on JT. I did write it when I was in a rush, because I wanted to get the thought out of my head before I forgot it

I wanted it to be a general comment about the difference in these three things.

1. Creating something authentic just because you want to be creative
2. Creating something creative and getting paid as a result
3. Creating something (a “product”) with the only intention being to make money.

If it (my prior comment) came across like I was taking a shot a JT that is *not* what I wanted.

Take care.

-N

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For me (and I’m only speaking for myself here) new media like blogging is very much about creating a contribution, a way to GIVE BACK to the network of people on the internet.

Doing new media as an amateur is NOT something to be looked down on. In fact I’d argue that it is something to be celebrated, because it is such authentic forms of expression for expressions own sake.

I sort of look at new media the same way that I look at musicians. I don’t see anything at all wrong with a musician getting paid to make music. But, I think that most musicians make music out of a love of making music, rather than out of a love of getting paid to make music.

i.e. getting paid is a by-product of creating good music / content.

I believe that when people who make music or new media focus too much on the monetary aspect of content creation and distribution they frequently lose sight of creating quality content for its own sake.

If the authentic joy that flows from self expression is diminished, or disappears all together, the quality of the content sufferers as well.

Am I making sense?

-N

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Mark,

This is a great post (and to Eden, Connie, & Jay: great show!)

I really think that it is VITAL that we realize / remember that PEOPLE make up a community. A company can make the best communications tool, but if no people use it than… well… it does not matter how good it is.

I think that many people in the new media community are to quick to give credit to the services, and the people who create the, and too slow to give credit to the users who are really the heart, soul, and fuel of any community on the web.

-N

P.S.

I can talk more than Jay. Did someone just get told? Yeah? OH SNAP!

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Congrats on this, being in the TechCrunch 50 a is a huge deal for a start up.

(It is also a big deal for people who use the web, because lots of great services, Mint for example, get launched there. I look look forward to it for that reason, and because it is a great show cast of extraordinary human creativity and innovation.)

For what its worth I hope that Akoha goes far.

Take care.

-N

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Ok,

I’ve been following this concept on Chris’s blog, and I commented on it over there… but Julien’s post here has put some new thoughts into my head.

Social capital is VERY difficult to define, but I’m going to take a crack at it and with some luck not embarse myself.

I have worked as a substance abuse counselor, and a a teacher of BD, LD, ED students. In both jobs I wanted my cleints / students to enjoy more success in life.

The first steps that in a mutually beneficial therapeutic are…

1. Get the client to trust you.

a. you do this by doing things that are in the client’s best interest, with out breaking any laws.

b. you are honest with the client. Period.

c. you treat your client with unconetional positive regard, at all times.

2. You get the client to internalize the relationship that you have built (on trust) with him / her.

a. If the client HAS internalized the relationship, than their actions will be influenced by the way that the client believes his / her actions will affect the relationship.

b. i.e. the thoughts “what would Neil do / what would he like me to do” will cross their mind before they take an action.

IMHO trust agents do the same thing. People on the web are their clients, just in an unofficial way.

Dig?

-N

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Chris,

This comment is written in a sort of haphazard way, because I thought it was more important to get the ideas down in text, than to have them “flow” together in a meaningful narrative. Hope thats cool…

~The Start of what I consider to be the time of the “trust agent”~

Going back to one of the key ideas of the Cluetrain Manifesto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluetrain ): Markets are Conversations.

Theses 1 – 6 of this document focuses on the idea that Markets are conversations.

What this means is that because of the telecommunications revolution, lead by the development and exponential growth of the Internet, CONSUMERS (normal people) are TALKING to one and other more and more. The talking that takes place between consumers is now the most effective way that markets can grow.

i.e. If a person who you TRUST tells you about a good or service that is a better way to get you to spend your money on that good or service. If a company can produce word of mouth about their products by (paying a TRUST AGENT) to directly engaging CONSUMERS in a conversation, they will get more ROI than if they use traditional forms of advertising.

[[Side Note:]]
In the book “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson There is a fictional company that sells products to the 25-35 male demographic. This company pays one of the characters, who is an attractive young woman, to go into bars (where the 25-35 male goes looking for attractive women), and engage men in conversation and casually drop the name of their products into the conversation. The company does this because they believe it is the best from of “advertising.”

I just thought that was interesting…
[[End Side Note]]~Trust Agents Today~

I personally believe that the modern Trust Agent can take a verity of forms, but that he or she will probably fit into at least one of the two camps.

1. The altruistic trust agent — This trust agent uses the Internet via blogs, podcasts, etc, to tell people about things that they think are cool. Often this is an enthusiast of something who enjoys telling people about a good product or service because they feel connected to the community of like minded consumers. In other words: They tell people in a community something that will better that person spend or save their money. The altruistic trust agent does what he or she would want another member of their community of like minded consumers to, namely inform the rest of the community about things that are great, and things that suck.

IN theory this trust agent can be trusted because they have not yet been “tainted” by money. However, even though many of them are not being paid to be trust agents they harbor a desire to become a paid trust agent at some point.

2. The trust agent for hire — This trust agent gets paid to learn about a product and service then to actively engage both current, and potential consumers in a dialogue that will increase their trust in that good or service… perhaps even that “brand”.

In theory, members of this second group will only be effective if the dialogue is authentic (Re: Scobal calling Micro Soft out when they do something stupid, rather than defending them.)

That is all I have for now.

-N

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I have not tried this, so I can’t say for sure if it works…

Someone told me that a “travel hack”. If you NEED to check luggage, and you want to make it less likely that the airline will lose your bag do the following.

1. Travel with a starter pistol.
2. When you check your bag tell the airline that there is a starter pistol in the bag.

I guess that a starter pistol is considered a weapon, and the LAST thing that an airline wants to do is lose a bag with a weapon in it. Thus they treat bags that have weapons in them differently (as more of a priority) than the regular non-weapon carrying bags.

I can say that I have seen airport personal putting some bags aside and putting a tag on them that says WEAPON on it, so I’m guessing there is something to this.

-N

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Chris,

I enjoy your news letter, but I do think that one thing I’d like to see on the news letter is a guest writer (picked by you or the community that reads your blog).

I think that this would be useful, because it would add a new voice to a great content distro system. Also, it would expose me (the reader) to other great voices that I may not have heard yet.

Example: have Julien Smith write about some thing like “How To: Stat productive when you work on the web”

… That’s my thoughts.

Take care

-N

-N

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My thought = this is all ready **sort of** going on.

Examples:
1. Amazon.com lets people review products on the site. You don’t even have to have bought the product from Amazon to write a review of it.

The user based of Amazon.com then provides feedback on that review (feedback on feedback) by stating if the review was helpful to them.

The people who consistantly write good (good = USERS found it helpful) reviews get perks from amazon.

Granted, products on Amazon.com are not ads in a triditional sense… But I don’t think they are that far off. There is a blurb from the publisher / producer of the product that talks it up attached to damn near everything there.

You see what I mean?

2. With things like Stumble Upon, and GreaseMonky people can comment on everything they find on the web. Including ads.

True, not a huge amount of people use this service. However, some people do. There is potential for this to grow.

3. Last thing is services like Reddit and Digg. I can see them adding a section where people post ads and enable their users to “talk” about them via comments.

I don’t know if this is happened yet.

4. iTunes reviews. I would say that every listing in iTunes is very similar to an ad for the album / podcast / film / etc.

-N

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I like Twhirl, it is a great little app.

But I like Tweeteck better, because of the way that TweetDeck allows me to organize the people that I follow into groups. (If I could share the groups across several computers I would be ecstatic… maybe someday it will happen.)

Also, the way that the TweetDeck app looks is great. I like apps that look slick. I know that might not be big deal overall, but it is a big enough deal to mention it…

As Tweeteck continues to improve I’m SURE that it will become the number one choice of the hard core twitter user.

-N

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@ Semeer: I had a similar problem that you did at first, comments that i would leave were not showing up. However, after I submitted the blogs that I was commenting on to Back Type (http://www.backtype.com/addblogs) the comments showed up real quick. For real, it took less than 3 hours after I submitted them.

Side Note: I’m posting this comment now so that the people who read the comments here on Dave’s blog will see a positive story about how fast Back Type is in regards to indexing comments of their users.

@Dave: I would not have started to use Back Type at all if you had not exposed me to it via Twitter / this post. Thanks! Using Back Type has been a great experience for me.

@GC: I’m sure it is clear from the rest of this comment, but I’ll say it anyway. I really love what Back Type is doing. Keep up the good work!

-N

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Calvin —

You said “Ideally, Jerry Pournelle’s approach might have worked better (raze a city block or two as punishment, put up a monument honoring our dead, then spend a bunch of money on energy independence, instead of on a war), but I don’t think there wouldn’t have been public support for it. (both for the revenge aspect, and because a large number of Americans would have felt bad about the plight of the folks in Afghanistan).”

But in your other comments I seem to hear you saying that public officials should do what is best of America (put America first) _regardless_ of the public’s opinion. i.e. do what is right rather than what is popular. Am I misunderstanding your point of view, or perhaps reading in between the lines to much?

Harry,

I think you raise some really great points about the dangers that both candidates pose. However, I find that I’m more in line with Doc’s “natural and otherwise groundless optimism” because I like to believe that the network (i.e. the U.S. and all the people and systems that make it up) will find a way to correct mistakes that get made.

Granted the corrections may not be very fun, but I don’t think that they will be impossible to make either.

The worst case is what Chip said the “nothing to lose” situation coming up. I just can’t believe that (short of Yellow stone’s super volcano erupting, or an asteroid impact, etc) that humans will allow one person to get us to that point.

I might be wrong. But I choose to be optimistic.

-N

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This is a question (not a statement) that jumped into my head after re-reading the comments above. I ask the question because I’d like to hear what people have to say…

Does anyone think that perhaps our “nation building” in Afghanistan could be a good intention, but the wrong idea? i.e. does the U.S. (an outside force) creating a nation in another part of the world going to have lots of negative unintended consequences (AKA “blowback”)

I ask that because so much of the problems that happen in places like Iraq could be linked all the way back to the English cutting up the map into areas that would later become nation states, regardless of the cultural differences of the people who lived there. (Thus we have Sunni V.S. Shiite fighting today.)

Also, take a look at what happened with the Mujahideen fighters, who were backed by many different people / governments in the west.

Personally I think that enabling economies (or the large networks that create wealth: as per my prior comment), rather than government, would be the best way to empower the people who live in Afghanistan. What do you all think about that?

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I’m currently considering getting rid of my facebook account, but I can’t figure out if doing so would be a good idea.

The main reason I was considering getting rid of it was because recently I had people who I know in real life asking me about “email” that they sent me, but I did not remember receiving.

Now I live and die by email. I check my email several times a day. I use the inbox zero stuff that Merlin Mann talks about.

Long story shot: I know when I got an email from a person.

When I tell people “I did not see that email… When did you send it?” They tell me when. I scratch my head and ask “you sent it to my gmail?” Then they say “No, I sent it to you on facebook.”

Ahhhhh. Right.

Facebook is not email. I know that this might be a dumb reason to think about throwing the baby (my facebook account) out with the bathwater, but I just cant help it.

And now I shall go think about this some more.

Cheers.

-N

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