Our friend Mark asked me if I had seen an amazing video. Best catch he had ever seen. Ball girl streaks down the left field line at minor league baseball game, climbs the corner of the wall like Spiderman, jumps and turns to catch the foul ball at the peak of her outstretched arm. She lands softly on the field, casually tosses the ball to the stunned leftfielder, then jogs back to her seat with a wry smile as the play-by-play announcer describes the action in breathless detail.

Unbelievable, said Mark. I hated to break it to him. It was.

The video sweeping the Internet is a masterstroke of deception, a staged event designed to create buzz through viral marketing. Chicago ad agency Element 79 created it for Gatorade. When the ball girl sits down after the amazing catch, there’s a bottle of the power drink at her feet. The implication is that the beverage has imbued her with athletic powers worthy of a Sports Center highlight reel. The payoff is not so much in the subtle product placement, but in the buzz that eventually becomes associated with the product.

The real story is how marketers can use social media to manipulate consumers as well as reality. Ball girl is actually stunt girl Phoenix Brown. Film director Baker Smith shot the “catch” after a Fresno Grizzlies-Tacoma Rainiers game last month by attaching Brown to wires and having two stunt men yank her up the wall. Smith combined footage taken during and after the game, then created the illusion of the spectacular catch on his computer using software known as computer-generated imagery (CGI).

The marketing manipulation is so slick that Element 79 never released the video, thereby distancing itself and its client from criticism about the video’s true motives. “Ball Girl” was posted on You Tube by a filmmaker associated with the agency. It has been viewed about 4 million times, has received a glowing review from Advertising Age, and been featured on CNN and ABC’s Good Morning America. Now word is spreading at a concert outside Washington, D.C.

Gatorade has acknowledged that the video has reached critical mass and helped associate its brand with popular culture. While many now know the spectacular feat associated with a power drink is a special effect, a Gatorade spokesperson says millions are still entertained by it.

But many web watchers are still fooled. From the top returns on Google:

Break.com: “A minor league ball girl makes an incredible catch on a foul ball in left field. Her coach later informed her that there is no crying in Baseball.

Digg.com: “Warning: The Content in this Article May be InaccurateReaders have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.”

Feministe: “Love this.”

And, of course, You Tube, the top return: “Amazing ball girl catch. This is the most amazing thing ever”

So we lay back on the lawn, gazed at the stars above, and listened to Lyle and his gifted ensemble elevate our souls with true music and poetry. Pure, real, amazing ….

I discovered that a lot of folks came to PdF for the same reasons. They played catch with familiar ideas. And they used the event to measure influence, familiar and emerging. PdF soared with both activities. An impressive roster of speakers from the converging worlds of political action, civic technologies and individual empowerment stimulated, and occasionally stirred, a network of Web buddies and budding online politicos.

Missing an Aha! moment that changes the world, PdF is more noteworthy for its momentum. At this moment, you can feel democracy shifting amid civic engagement enabled by technology. PdF is a forum where you can almost get your head around that big idea. Organizers Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifrey deserve as much praise for their impeccable timing as their star-studded roster of speakers. In two days of dense programming, content frequently rose to the level of the venue, the stunning Frederick Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center overlooking New York’s Central Park.

Playing catch on an elastic string, a few highlights and insights:

– FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, high-profile tech execs and industry advocates launch an initiative to make broadband access a national priority in the U.S.

– Lawrence Lessig touts the Change Congress movement by using every distracting feature in Keynote.

– Arianna Huffington declares that she knows The Truth that others don’t. About 50 people in the audience who blog at Huffington Post say they agree with her.

– Jay Rosen likens professional journalists to a migrating tribe in the midst of a survival drama.

– Mayhill Fowler demonstrates why she’d be irrelevant without a tape recorder. Did anyone actually read her story (lead buried somewhere in the 7th graph)?

– Virtual Reality pioneer Mark Pesce forecasts that the future looks nothing like democracy “because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him.” The brilliant-but-huh? text here.

– Obama Girl, because she was there.

– Elizabeth Edwards charms the conference via Skype from her living room because her flight is canceled. Husband, John, the former presidential candidate, wanders into the room and is surprised to find his wife talking into a computer.

– Mark Soohoo, the deputy internet director of John McCain’s campaign, defends his boss for not personally understanding how to use a computer. Tracy Russo, Soohoo’s counterpart on Edwards’ former campaign, takes issue. Then fireworks. The video:

At Nokia Beta Labs, the Finnish handset maker lets users test the latest smartphone software. Instead of people recording silly Web cam videos for YouTube or inventing frivolous advocacy groups on Facebook, they help make the mobile Internet more useful.

At Nokia Trends Lab, creative thinkers push the boundaries of how to use mobile technology as part of the creative process through film, music, photography and design. Thousands attend collaborative events and independent experiments around the world, all designed make Nokia devices and products more valuable to them.

At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. Over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones.

At its public Research Center, Nokia posted a mobile phone application called Sports Tracker designed to let runners and cyclists take advantage of the global positioning capability included in some Nokia models. Users can record workout data such as speed and distance, and can plot routes. More than 1 million people downloaded the widget and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding.

For the past week I’ve been playing with the private “alpha” of a new social bookmarking tool called socialmedian. You can also give it a try. To register as a tester, use this code on the signup page: wemedia. (This code is available for 100 testers).

What’s social bookmarking? It’s Digg, del.icio.us, Mixx, or my favorite of the bunch, Diigo. Here’s another one I have’t tried that sounds similar: Twine. NewsTrust, a non-profit focused on group evalutions of journalism to assess trustworthiness, also fits in this group (Disclosure: I’m an advisor there). I think Publish2 is a similar concept designed for professional journalists and newsrooms. These are all tools that allow you to bookmark your links to a web server, share those links with other people (or professional colleagues) and benefit from their links and recommendations.
Here, for instance, is a page that aggregates feeds and links about social media. It aggregates items from various sources I know well, such as TechCrunch and investor Fred Wilson’s blog, A VC.
But it also includes some sources I don’t know well, such as louisgray.com. Socialmedian allows users to rank the relevance of the sources to adjust the feed. I’m not sure how those rankings impact what I see.

Here’s a longer explanation of how socialmedian works at ReadWriteWeb.

I’m not quite sure where this fits. It’s partly an alternative to del.icio.us or Diigo, and I like Diigo too much to drop it; and partly an alternative to personal feed collections. I track my feeds through Netvibes – and I’m not looking to drop that either. Meanwhile, social feed tools that incorporate all of someone’s online behaviors, like friendfeed, suggest another way to learn from the behavior of friends.
In other words – there are lots of companies playing in this space.

Also worth noting: The company was founded by Jason Goldberg, formerly CEO of Jobster. He told me via email that he’s backed by undisclosed angels and an investment (amount not disclosed) from The Washington Post Co.

Long before social media and networks such as Facebook and MySpace arrived on the scene, people were affected by rapid innovation in technology and constant change. It is difficult to keep up with what’s happening in one’s own field or area of special interest. But it is nearly impossible to avoid anxiety, frustration, and confusion when the world around you changes in unpredictable ways.

Certainly we all feel frustration when confronted with new technology. Most often we figure it out and eliminate the confusion. Or do we? Everyone knows how to use Microsoft Word. However, most people use a very limited set of capabilities. They get by until they have a need to do something new, like place a photo in a block of text. Figuring out how can be a lesson in frustration.

Our reality is that we live in a world of abundance and overwhelming choice and, while it may seem paradoxical, these conditions push us out of our psychological comfort zones.¹ We also must contend with information overload, the stress of dealing with the uncertainty and complexity brought on by change, and the time pressures associated with living in a 24/7, always-on world. All of these factors erode our sense of orderliness and safety. They reduce our sense of control, our ability to predict events in the external world. Often we cope by finding a temporary fix or we find ways to avoid these situations. It is easy to assume that each episode has only a temporary negative effect. The evidence, however, reveals a much more pervasive and enduring societal impact.

Recent research presents compelling evidence that anxiety, stress, depression², aggravation³, distrust⁴ and procrastination⁵ have all increased at a societal level. So have alienation, loneliness⁶ and our social connectedness⁷. At a personal level we are disengaged^8,9 or indifferent in more and more situations. This impacts self-esteem and our psychological system’s ability to adapt. At an interpersonal level, we are less connected, especially in trusting relationships that we can count on when the chips are down.

The Need for Sense Making

The human psychological system is remarkable in its ability to make sense out of uncertainties, face what was once complex, and make it understandable and predictable. It enables us to regain a sense of predictability and control. What once created anxiety or frustration is replaced by a new sense of order. This is fundamental to one’s self-esteem which reflects an inward knowledge of being able to adjust to change, to thrive, and even desire the new and novel. It is a critical aspect of mental well being and the foundation of happiness.

In his book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age,¹⁰ Dan Pink argues that we have plenty of information; in fact, we face too much information and too much uncertainty coming at us too fast. As a consequence we struggle with finding understanding and value in change. When we do, it is psychologically rewarding and it enables us to derive experiential value from our new insights.

Relationships and Communities

How does this need for sense making relate to our need for social connectedness? Research by Robert Kelly of Carnegie Mellon University brings it clearly into focus. In 1986 when he asked people what percentage of the knowledge they needed to do their job was inside their own head, the average estimate was 75%. By 1997 the average estimate was below 20%. You can imagine what it is today! We are dependent on relationships with others to deal with knowledge explosion and increasing complexity. Kelly was asking people about their job where they were paid to be competent.¹¹

What about the average citizens trying to adapt to waves of change in virtually all aspects of their lives?

Relationships are the essential medium. However, for relationships to work there must be mutual trust. Without trust there is lack of the openness or intimacy required to allow the relationship to focus on issues.

Peers rank at the top of trust scales. Why? Because there is a shared perspective. Recommendations of friends or associates are contextually relevant. If it is meaningful to them, it is likely to be meaningful to us. The stronger the trust in the relationship, the more credibility we put in the recommendation.

Peer review and consumer generated content are highly trusted, even though they may be posted by someone we don’t personally know. Why is this? Other consumers tend to describe the experiential aspects of purchasing a product and, importantly, focus on the experiential value derived from using the product.

In contrast, trust in companies, their marketing and employees ranks in the bottom third of trust scales. As a result, interactions between customers and companies tend to focus on the economic transaction. Lacking trusted relationships, customers focus on the best trade-off between price and convenience and companies find they must repeatedly compete with each other to win each sale.

Social theorists make a distinction between weak tie relationships and strong tie relationships. In the social networking world, most ties or connections are relatively weak. People with over 500 connections in LinkedIn have mostly weak ties to acquaintances rather than relationships that come from close interaction.

Both weak and strong ties are valuable online. The weak tie connection in a peer review facilitates an immediate decision. As the level of participation and contribution increases by all parties, the strength of the ties increases. Some travel sites start with recommendations but facilitate collaborations that result in strangers co-operatively planning vacation together and sharing real-world experiences. Similarly, online discussions among individual stock traders can evolve into collaborative subgroups that function as a shared brain trust.

Social Companies

If companies are generally less trusted than peers, does that mean they have no place in the networked culture? Are they left out?

They are if they do not become part of the conversations and an authentic member of the communities. When Fiat was planning the re-release of the Fiat 500 car, they started by building a community of interest. Five hundred days before the release, they enticed more than 8,000 people to help them design the accessories for the car. The result: popular accessories AND a highly interactive community sharing a passion and commitment to all things Fiat 500. They advised each other on how to “experience” the car. They evangelized their experiences with the car to prospective buyers. They provided Fiat with the insights to keep this community happy and loyal. And they did so for free.

Psychologist John I. Todor, Ph.D., is managing partner of The Whetstone Edge, a firm that advises companies on how to use social media to foster relationships with customers that have a real world benefit to both parties. He is also a member of the We Media Community [view profile]. His most recent book is Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company.

Notes

1. John I. Todor, Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked On Your Company. (Martinez, CA: Silverado Press, 2006).

2. Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. (New York: Free Pres, 2002).

3. Steve Farkas and Jean Johnson, Aggravating Circumstances: A Status Report on Rudeness in America. A report from Public Agenda prepared for the Pew Charitable Trust, 2002.

4. Richard Edelman, The 2006 Edelman Trust Barometer [PDF], PRWeek, January 26, 2006.
5. Steel, P. The Nature of Procrastination. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65-94, 2007.

6. Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and Matthew Brashear, Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades, American Sociological Review [PDF], vol. 71, 353-375, 2006.

7. Robert D. Putnam. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).

8. Harry Hoover, Why Passionate Employees Matter (MarketingProfs.com, Nov. 5, 2002).

9. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequence of Work in the New Capitalism, (New York: Bantam Books, 1998).

10. Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005).

11. Robert E. Kelly, How to Be A Star at Work, (New York: Times Books, 1998).

Where does good will end and greed take over? That depends on whether you’re a giver or taker. Dan Gillmor at the Center for Citizen Media is bothered by the free labor scheme he sees in a corporate blog post about new features just announced at Reddit, a commercial recommendation service and competitor to Digg owned by the Newhouse family’s Conde Nast magazine group, which, along with Vogue, Glamour and Bon Appetite magazines, publishes Wired (which publishes various blogs, among which we find a recent report on a crowdsourced Shins video shot by fans).

Reddit is looking for programmers to hire – and volunteer translators. Dan is bothered by that explicit distinction of value – cash for coders, air kisses for translators.

The finger-wagging at Reddit raises this question: Is there a qualitative, ethical or rational distinction between Reddit’s overt and explicit request for help with its product, the result of which could be a more valuable service for whoever uses it, and the implied request for help from the multitude of platforms and conversation-fueled media – like Facebook, MySpace, Kos, PerezHilton – or from the non-profit competitor to Digg and Reddit – NewsTrust? (Disclosure – I advise NewsTrust). They all depend on user-supplied content, comments, tags and filtering to create any semblance of a business model. Is asking for free translations going too far? But asking for recommendations, evaluations, comments, photos or trackbacks is ok?

Comment: A backlash against uncompensated contributions to commercial media would be fun sport to watch. Imagine if millions of people decided to dump Facebook next week, just for spite.

Analysis: The hype around crowdsourcing leads, at times, to visions of an open-source digital utopia in which everything online is produced for free by righteous individuals who donate their writing, editing, video, photo, coding, translation or whatever skills to virtuous, free, universally accessible, multi-lingual projects that are made better through the collective intelligence and will of said crowd. Professionals, meaning pay is involved, not necessarily skill, fade to black in this world. Though fantastical, the vision draws on the ancient sense of human connectedness. When people put their minds to it, anything is possible. Even Wikipedia. Indeed, the principle of shared, linked intelligence – through hyperlinks – is the bedrock of the web itself.

The ideal of digital collaboration – all for one and one for all – degrades to a more distopian tragedy when for-profit companies try to persuade unpaid contributors to expand, enhance and add value to their services. AOL built its chat-driven empire on the backs of volunteer chat moderators. But recruiting volunteers to work hard and well for your benefit isn’t easy. Commercial failures in volunteer-dependent hyper-local journalism come to mind – Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere, for one, followed by Backfence. But so do commercial survivors, like delicious, MySpace and YouTube.

Forecast: The crowd will continue to create AND contribute – on its own terms, when and where it feels like it makes sense. Asking for help may at times appear selfish. The willingness to offer it reflects our yearning to link with and help each other.

Technorati Tags: wikis, wemedia

That’s the promise of crowd-powered information aggregators like Wikipedia, which is thoroughly entrenched in the digital-info-culture as the second-best place to find information about anything (after Google, of course). But Wikipedia has a built-in “attitude” called neutral point of view that may not be ideal for helping us resolve life’s toughest questions. Some issues, ideas and arguments are difficult to express without a point of view, or a call to action. Or they beg for it.

A new crowd-powered wiki called Debatepedia aims to be more useful than Wikipedia because it’s modeled on the research, methods and logic trees used by formal debaters, with succinct propositions, evidence and data organized around arguments for and against each proposition.

I chatted yesterday on the phone with Debatepedia co-founder Brooks Lindsay, and he explained that the structure of arguments themselves is an important departure from Wikipedia’s neutral point of view. Debatepedia is the exact oppositie – infused with and structured around point of view. Here, for instance, are the sections built around arguments for and against the death penalty, carbon cap-and-trade policies and partial-birth abortion.

Debatepedia is owned and operated by the non-profit International Debate Education Association. Lindsay, a 2006 Georgetown University graduate, says he has created and organized a lot of the content so far – but he’s hoping debaters and debate societies around the world will pitch in and use Debatepedia as a hub to organize their notes on various topics.

Imagine if Amazon depended on customers searching generic search engines to find books and merchandise they wanted to purchase. People do that – but Amazon built a much bigger business around e-commerce by making it incredibly easy for people to not only find items they know they want  to buy – by searching for them – but also items they don’t know they want to buy – discovered by a powerful recommendation engine that matches your past purchases and opinions with those of other people. Hence: "People who bought this book also bought …"

Back in 2001 Amazon inspired Ellen Kampinsky, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis to re-imagine news as a social process of discovery. It was called Amazoning The New.

Travis Smith (an occasional contributor to the iFOCOS blog), along with HOP studios (and life) partner Susannah Gardner, have attempted a similar "treatment" with a new model: Flickr. See: Flickring The News

Meanwhile, the UK’s Press Gazette pointed me to Oliver Reichenstein of Information Achitects Japan, who re-imagined The Washington Post as if it were a wiki.

Sure, you could now try to Digg the News, Gather The News or Reddit The News; or forget what-ifs and dive in to Newsvine, Now Public or NewsTrust (I’m an advisor); or splice it all together in Netvibes

What I’d *really* like to see is something a bit more radical and a lot more beautiful. I’m ready for Absolut News.

So – anyone interested in launching (and leading) an iFOCOS Design Working Group? Goals: crank out a series of product sketches and concepts – and maybe inspire someone to invest and build a few of them for real.

It’s very fun these days to obsess over various Web 2.0 technologies and how to integrate them into your existing site. But keeping up with the items listed below can do a lot to help companies grow and maintain readership.

Here goes nothing:

Improper copyright year in the footer – If the reader thinks you don’t know what year it is, it doesn’t do much to help credibility. I subsequently found this in a lot of places. When this extends into the second quarter of the year (as it now does as of this posting), it looks much worse than seeing it in Jan. and Feb.

Contact info without a means of communicating via the web — The site listed a collection of phone numbers for News tips, Classifieds, Display advertising, and Subscriptions. But there was no link to pages for these departments or Web-based email forms. This can frustrate the reader and cost your company a good chunk of change in the man hours needed to answer all those phone calls.

Articles with no comment functionality – I had the chance to integrate Topix.net into the iFocos site and was impressed with how easy the integration was. Such a service, or others like it integrated into the bottom of each article, could both enable reader feedback and expose the article to a wider audience. Also this wasn’t a matter of the site not encouraging any comments, as it’s blog had them fully enabled.

Registration requirement — I think the ESPN.com’s Insider approach is much better than preventing a user from seeing anything at all. If you’re going to require registration, I feel you should give the reader a tease of the first two or three grafs.

Hiding back-door views of your site — I’m a view-source kind of guy. I deleted some of the URL for a blog post, down to http://www.DOMAIN.com/CATEGORY/ and found a “test page” was exposed. This should probably be an inventory of all the company’s blogs. I also noticed that it said “Powered by Movable Type 3.16″ Much has happened to Movable Type since version 3.16. Keeping on such an upgrade path can sometimes uncover new publishing, revenue and social networking opportunities for your company.

Make your headlines clickable – Not everyone instinctively knows to click on a “permalink.” Having both the word “permalink” and the headline clickable could result in increased page vews.

OK, I lied. I am now meandering into some more Web 2.0 territory. But don’t worry, none of this requires a computer science degree or anything …

Google maps indexing – I started playing with integrating Google maps into Movable Type recently for a client. I think this is an amazing opportunity for companies to explore. What I envision is a Google map that, when you click on a specific region, your last X number of articles, blog posts etc. that relate to that area show up.

Very targeted advertising could be integrated as well in the pop-up windows in the map. When users mouse over one of the markers on the map. Constructing such a map is no more complicated than creating specialized RSS feeds.

Go where the high school kids are — Why not create an account on MySpace that features links to your latest content? You could get thousands of potential young readers to be your paper’s “friend” and communicate with them on a level newspaper execs haven’t even let themselves ever dream about.

Recruit and host guest bloggers, and make them a real part of your publishing effort – Several news sites are warming up to the idea of “guest bloggers” as part of a citizen journalism effort. However, the areas these fine folks often post into is not always fully utilized by the newspaper company. Including small widgets showcasing “Latest headlines” or articles and features related to what the guest is blogging about seems to be a natural fit that would enhance the user’s experience with the guest blog and the company’s ability to reach a larger audience.

Speaking of reaching a larger audience … claim your blog on Technorati! – Once you’ve created these blogs for guests, take the next step and get them on Technorati’s radar. Make sure the ping settings in your publishing system are correct, and embed the little bit of HTML that enables visitors to make that blog one of their favorites on Technorati.

This is obviously just a small snapshot of opportunities and mistakes out there. We’d love to hear other from you. Comment below and get those gripes off your chest!

Chad Capellman is an occasional contributor and site constructor for iFocos. His LinkedIn profile can be viewed at http://www.linkedin.com/in/capellman

February 15, 2007

A majority of Americans (55%) in an online survey said bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% said citizen journalism will play a vital role, a new We Media – Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Most respondents (53%) also said the rise of free Internet-based media pose the greatest opportunity to the future of professional journalism and three in four (76%) said the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.

The We Media survey results were released by iFOCOS and pollster John Zogby as part of an iFOCOS conference on media innovation hosted by the School of Communication at the University of Miami, with major support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In the national survey of adults, 72% said they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism today. A majority of conference–goers who were polled on the subject agreed – 55% said they were dissatisfied, and 61% said they believed traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.

Nearly nine out of 10 media insiders (86%) said they believe bloggers will play an important part in journalism’s future.

“We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us – the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media,” said Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference. “We’ve arrived at a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society.”

Peskin said that, until recently, many traditional news enterprises have been skeptical about We Media. “They were either fearful or dismissive of our 2003 research forecasting and documenting the change in the media ecosystem,” he said. “Now the Zogby poll provides additional evidence that “We Media” is an essential component – perhaps THE essential component – for the agenda for news and information into the future.”

“The research documents the widespread recognition that control and influence on how we know what we know is shifting to a vastly more distributed network of empowered individuals and organizations,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “This obviously will have a big impact on how media organizations evolve and conduct business, but it’s really about how we all discover, create, share and apply information, and that’s important to all industries, to entrepreneurs, to non-profits, to governments, to individuals and to society as a whole. We are all part of the ecosystem.”

We Media Miami was conducted Feb. 7-9 with major support from Knight Foundation. The conference brought together more than 250 leaders engaged in media innovation. Participants represented a range of sectors impacting media, including new and traditional media organizations, investors and analysts, information technologists, educators and researchers, as well as bloggers, citizen journalists, and news-and-information entrepreneurs.

The Zogby Interactive survey of 5,384 adults nationwide was conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.4 percentage points. The Zogby Interactive survey of 77 members of the media who attended the Miami conference carries a margin of error of +/- 11.4 percentage points. While periodic audits show the results from Zogby telephone and Internet surveys closely track each other, a companion telephone survey of this topic was not conducted.

Dissatisfaction with today’s news reportage is greater among those nationwide online respondents who identified themselves as conservative – 88% said they were unhappy with journalism, while 95% of “very conservative” respondents said the quality of journalism today is not what it should be.

Among those respondents identifying themselves as liberal, 51% said they are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism. Dissatisfaction levels were also highest among older respondents – 78% of those age 65 and older said they are dissatisfied. Most respondents (65%) also said they believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, with the highest levels of dissatisfaction with traditional journalism among those age 70 and older (74%), the very conservative (95%), and libertarians (89%).

Despite concerns about its quality, 72% of those in the national survey said journalism is important to their community. More respondents (81%) said Web sites are important as a source of news, although television ranked nearly as high (78%), followed by radio (73%). Newspapers and magazines trailed – 69% said newspapers and 38% said magazines were important. While blogs were rated as important sources of news by 30% of the online respondents, they were not considered as good a news source as the backyard fence – 39% said their friends and neighbors are an important source of information.

However, a majority of the nationwide online respondents said Internet social networking sites and blogging will play in important role in the future of journalism. But they added that trustworthiness will be important to the future of the industry – 90% said trust will be key.

Liberal and progressive respondents were more likely to say newspapers are their most trusted source than those with more conservative ideological mindsets. But radio is the most trusted source for 28% of those who describe themselves as “very conservative”, compared with just 9% of liberal respondents.

More online respondents nationwide said the Internet was their top source of news and information (40%), followed by television (32%), newspapers (12%) and radio (12%). The youngest adults in the poll, those age 18-24, were far more likely to say they mostly get news from Internet sites—58% said the Internet is their main destination for news, with television coming in second at 18%. Fewer than one in 10 in this age group said they get the majority of their news from newspapers.

For comment or reporting on We Media, contact dale AT ifocos DOT org or andrew AT ifocos DOT org.

For a detailed methodological statement on the survey, please visit:

http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1170
For more on the We Media conference, please visit:

http://ifocos.org/2006/09/01/we-media-miami-overview/

About iFOCOS

iFOCOS is an independent not-for-profit organization committed to enabling a better-informed society. It provides a variety of services, activities and training that help individuals and organizations worldwide understand and use expanding media and communications technologies to innovate as well as to create better-informed global citizens. More about at iFOCOS at: www.ifocos.org

But that’s actually a positive spin on a negative situation for Yahoo. While it’s true that Yahoo has been doing significant development in terms of buying or building content sites powered by social networks, I don’t think that Google is doing any worse.

Consider Yahoo: Flickr, MyBlogLog, de.lic.ous, Konfabulator, blo.gs, upcoming.org, webjay, jumpcut. And they’ve built Yahoo Answers and Yahoo 360 and the just announced Yahoo Pipes.

Google: Blogger, dodgeball, YouTube, MySpace (advertising & serach deal), YouTube, JotSpot. Built Google groups, Orkut, Public Calendars and Maps

So, is Yahoo outflanking Google? Not really. But since Yahoo isn’t making any significant growth in basic search against Google, the area that they are doing well in (social search) starts to look like their strategy. Ultimately, though, revenue comes from page views and advertising, and it’s unclear if Yahoo’s social growth will provide this.

Christine Gambito’s Happy Slip introduced us not only to her work as a performer and actress, but also to the community and lifestyle where she lives. I was definitely drawn to the series of situations she played out in her piece as well as the different ways they were portrayed. Whether she was in the rain even indoors or outside with friends and family, she was consistently engaging. We could have seen just one situation she had conceived, but instead saw a series of portraits similar to what you would expect from a one woman show. When she spoke at the end about some of her goals, it was clear the video represented just the beginning of a process that she would take with her as she moved forward.

JD Lasica took us to yet another space with his work by showing us how much could be done with existing media. Instead of always accepting what traditional media presents as the sole representation of an event or idea, JD’s piece exemplified how media mashups are already reflecting community ideas on the most serious topics. As more and more people use the Daily Show as their source of news, and embrace more comedic interpretations of world issues, the new media community needs to understand the use of the mashups and the influence they have in this participatory media as it evolves.
Finally, there were the students. Whenever we seek to know what the future may hold, we must always look at what inspires a student to create. This group from Miami University was clearly inspired by viewing a story from different backgrounds and embracing the humor that can make the even the most uneasy stories palatable. In the “Minority Hotel” two people were presented with implied stereotypes. The essence of the story begins to reveal the reality. The way they shot, organized, and structured made the piece compelling and kept me wanting to know how it would end. They only had a moment to convey their idea and make me want to follow up for more. The piece was strong enough that I will be looking for their next webisode. Curious what other identity realities and/or misconceptions they may explore.

In the end, the festival definitely reflected the most contemporary ideas being developed for new media environments today. Storytelling today through digital media on various platforms is in a similar space today as film was before Birth of a Nation. It takes one piece to tell the story and create the structure that will lead the rest of the community to longevity. I ended the video festival with more questions, ideas, and a greater understanding of the options. In the end I was humming the same tune presented by one of the pieces “We’re All in this Together” and contemplating what the next image would be.

Lauren C, Executive Director of Rhizome, the online arts organization, introduces the panel of media makers:
Christine Gambito, “Happy Slip” vlogger
Steve Rosenbaum, Magnify Media
JD Lasica, Our Media
And three students from the University of Miami

Christine “Happy Slip” Gambito introduces a sampling of her work, which is very popular on YouTube. Christine is an actress living in New York, and her work is expressive, funny and quirky; compelling and addictive. Her videos engages with and parodies different forms of media, from fragrance commercials to the lonelygirl15 phenomenon to soap operas to music videos. The great thing about Christine’s pieces is that although the production values are low, it’s clear that this work is showcasing a creative, smart, engaging personality. She’s planned them out, really given a lot of thought to each piece, and made pieces that are pithy, well-edited, and that take full advantage of this nascent medium.

Christine talks about these video pieces as a way to be and showcase the actress she wants to be. She started creating videos just to have an outlet, and was surprised by the popularity of her videos. Christine also talks about the need for media makers to make a some money from their creative efforts. Hopefully, as the different platforms continue to evolve, the makers will reap some of the financial rewards that they generate for the big platforms like YouTube.

JD Lasica from Our Media talks about alternatives to YouTube in terms of video storage and publishing. He plays a video of a mashup/edited “exchange” between Dick Cheney and George Bush. JD points out that people can now make stories and create pieces with political commentary; they don’t have to rely on mainstream media anymore (except, maybe, to occasionally mock mainstream media). Ourmedia is trying to form a different model, one that is less ad-driven and more concerned with forming a community of video-makers.

Steve Rosenbaum from magnify.net is up next. Magnify.net “lets you find, filter, and share video from the web and gather it your way.” Steve is from a filmmaking background, and he shows a piece that’s completely made up of still photos from flickr, set to music. Here’s another example of taking pre-existing media and recontextualizing it with a strong editorial eye, creating something completely new during the process.

The thing that occurs to me as I watch these videos is how this is an incredible medium for engaging with pre-existing media. Christine’s work builds off of certain conventions from “mainstream” media that we’re all familiar with, and the work that JD and Steve are showing are mashups. This is all fascinating, but does this dependence on other media also highlight one of the limitations of web video? Of course, it’s also possible that the web video medium is so young that this is only the beginning of its creative development, and that as the medium grows, it will become more original and adopt new conventions in ways that are hard for us to imagine now.

A group of students from the University of Miami created an independent study to make webisodes. They show some of their work, the first of which is called “Minority Hotel” which deal with race and class in a series of parody videos. The episode of “Minority Hotel” we saw was a little bit like pieces from “Chappell’s Show,” and now that I think about it, sketch comedy is an important model for a lot of web videos.

As someone who works for P.O.V., the series for independent documentary films on PBS, I’m really interested in watching web videos, and seeing what develops in the medium. There is still such a high financial threshold for making a feature length documentary, but it’s becoming much easier for people to create their own, much shorter, non-fiction pieces. These pieces, however, are going to look nothing like what we think of as “documentary film.” So what can we at P.O.V. and other organizations do to support the next generation of media makers? And what can we learn from them?

“Scrapblog is a free web service that allows everyone to create multimedia scrapblogs.”

Scrapblog allows users to import their photos and video and music or other audio from their favorite photo or video sharing services and lay them out on pages they create. They can add themes, text, stickers and patterns to their media, as well as rotate, crop, adjust the brightness and make other enhancements.

Scrapblog users can invite their friends and family to see their published scrapblogs and people can navigate the pages, leave notes and comments and subscribe to the RSS feeds. Users can also publish their Scrapblogs to other media sharing sites and can print them.

According to Carlos, Scrapblog currently has 25,000 users beta-testing the product and will launch in a few weeks.

Andy’s story:  as a kid, he was taught to read and respect what he read in newspapers, but also to question what he read–to try to find out more about an issue or story.

My story:  when I was 7, my Dad (a WWII vet–with a third-grade education–)taught me to read a newspaper.  He also taught me to take in tv news broadcasts, and to listen to the different interpretations of the different broadcasters.  He believed that an informed opinion on issues could only come from following different reports and perspectives. 

Andy and I thought that perhaps the best media literacy education actually begins in the home.  Media habits, like many other habits, might come from our parents.  It’s the way both Andy and I were taught as children to consume media with the intention to understand, not re-enforce a preconceived notion–that has made us savvy media participants, not passive media consumers.  Inquisitive minds, a passion for perspective and and a desire to participate in what we had been engaged with since childhood is what motivated us to become a part of media culture–writing and communicating with others through our blogs–not stand apart from it.

Robin Miller also talked a bit about it in this post on this blog.

So, Andy and I thought it would be nice to know stories of others who’ve taken up blogging (or working in media)–how did you learn about media?  Did you get your lessons from family, friends, or someone else? Share your experience with us. . .that’s what the comments are for!

In our open discussion on Thursday at 12.30pm at the WeMedia conference in Miami we hope to engage the community sitting in the audience in a discussion of the different ways of working with communities – without alienating them!

Who are we? I’m Nic Fulton, Chief Scientist for Reuters Media, and a self-styled black sheep who walks that thin line between radical innovation and being fired. I’ll be joined by Mark Jones, Reuters Community Editor whose task it is to make Reuters news a interactive community experience. And finally we’ll have Adam Pasick on the phone, who in Second Life is Reuters bureau chief “Adam Reuters”. Hopefully Adam will also be with us virtually if all network connectivity behaves.

What do we want from you? Questions, anecdotes, experiences and more. Who are the 1% who comment on blogs? Who are the residents of Second Life? What should the byline of a story about Second Life be?

Come along and participate – and of course feel free to post issues you’d like to discuss via the comments below.

As an interactive producer at P.O.V., the question of community and participatory media in this digital age is of the utmost importance to me. As we approach the redesign of the P.O.V. website for our 20th anniversary season in 2007, we have been thinking about how best to serve the communities involved with our documentary films. In a connected world, community means that people who live in different places can work together based on their common interests and goals; the notion of community, now more than ever, is no longer shackled by geography. Communities of people, who otherwise might never have met, can exchange points-of-view, share resources and work toward common goals. The creation of these virtual communities is especially exciting to us at P.O.V.: We’re thrilled to see communities of citizens actively seeking solutions to the social issues addressed by our films; communities of viewers discussing our films after every broadcast; communities of documentary filmmakers sharing their knowledge and experiences with each other; and a growing community of new-media makers learning, creating and experimenting with new technologies in their work both online and off.

Alongside communities of viewers, educators and activists, this community – of new-media makers – is the one that P.O.V. Interactive would like to do a better job of supporting and encouraging with our website redesign. Digital video has taken the Internet by storm, and huge numbers of young media makers are participating in media and making their voices heard. We can support this community by providing the guidance and expertise of established documentary filmmakers, by cultivating a virtual space where they can meet other like-minded media makers to discuss ideas and best practices and share their work, and by presenting their work on PBS.org, acting as the microphone through which their voices could be amplified.

As we think about how to best serve the diverse communities in the 2007 redesign of the P.O.V. website, we’re paying close attention to their needs and desires, and to the trends, technologies and practices of participatory, community-building sites around the Net. We would like to attend the We Media Conference to find out more about new ideas, trends, prototypes and success stories from participatory media culture. We’d also like to meet other organizations that are interested in enhancing communities through digital media to explore possibilities for collaboration. The We Media Conference speaks acutely to some of the issues we at P.O.V. are thinking about as we get ready to re-conceive our website to reflect the “points-of-view” of the various communities that we serve. We believe that attending the conference would be a wonderful opportunity to learn from the organizers, panelists and participants about building and improving P.O.V.’s online community in the 21st century.

Ruiyan Xu
Associate Producer
P.O.V. Interactive

A community on the Internet is likewise a group of people with something in common, getting together or collaborating in a particular area of cyberspace.

Lately, this definition is even expanding. It is because an Internet community takes on a new life of its own; it almost shares the personalities of the members. Therefore, a “community” in a connected world, means an assemblage of persons who share a common stage (cyberspace) and are willing to share ideas, no matter how divergent or not their ideas may be.

I have always held the opinion that the convergence of all the media forms on the Internet will happen faster than anticipated. There is even a prediction that the last newspaper will be produced in April 2040. This may be true because many newspapers today have their online versions, which can be accessed either by paying to read them online or they are totally free. Radio stations are all thinking of or are already streaming live on the Internet (webcasting/netcasting). On a continent like the one I come from (Africa), I observe with pleasure the webcast craze among radio stations. Television stations are also not left out in the convergence equation. They are also streaming and it’s too obvious to talk about photojournalism and its presence on the Net. In my view, connecting digital services to physical communities has become a must. This convergence that will lead ultimately to real physical “community” is, however, fraught with difficulties. In Africa, the convergence is plagued with bandwidth limitations, lack of modern computers, lack of technical expertise to handle what’s available, etc.

For this community to be achieved, training is needed for media handlers to understand their unique role in ensuring a smooth and cost-effective transition. Websites must be professionally produced and managed. Interactivity must be a key feature on websites. I hope to learn more about website management, online content handling, keeping up to date with new technology and ultimately build bridges (contacts) for my professional career and that of my organization.

Isaac A. TETTEH
Web Master/News Editor/PR
Radio Gold 90.5 Fm Accra, Ghana.
(www.ghananie.blogspot.com)
(www.myradiogoldlive.com)
(www.njoyonline.com)

First Life is a 3D analog world where server lag does not exist. Find Out Where You Actually Live! Go Outside!  Membership is Free!

What’s especially notable, other than the dead-on humor, is that Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, responded with a direct anti-”seize-and-desist” letter. It’s nice to see a company that allows, even encourages, parody and derivative creativity — though given Second Life’s ethos, I’d have been surprised by any other response.

The most critical aspect of projects of using ICT to construct community is to understand what forms technology activists will find inviting and how they are likely to use this technology. I have worked most extensively with projects related to Iraq (including a three-week, in-country contract in summer 2004) where there is limited experience with using newer forms of technology. What we quickly discovered was that having access to email did not entail understanding that rapid response should be the norm, or that people would feel uncomfortable about speaking to counterparts in partner organizations without clearing every conversation with their superiors. Introducing new technology in and of itself rarely worked – although giving Iraqi University leaders access to webcams in 2003 did remarkably increase their willingness to communicate. What one needs to do is to map the technical network that one is seeking to build onto the social network of existing personal relations and activities. Our organization has found that universities in contexts such as East Timor and Iraq are the best places to start – since they are most likely to have the infrastructure and the experience – and then to build out to community groups from there. If you can establish a foothold in a university, it is then much more likely that you will be effective in building a community technology center.

I am look forward to better understanding how to construct and maintain long-term, long-distance relationships. I am particularly interested in learning more about how groups have used socially collaborative software such as wikis, blogs and collaborative bookmarking, as well as about experiences with Drupal technology to build community and mobilize folks to act. I am also curious to see how groups are using the newer forms of Web 2.0 technology. I am hoping to get both ideas that I might practically implement and those that I might use to enrich my teaching.

Ted Perlmutter, Ph.D.
Director of Information Technology and Knowledge Management
Center for International Conflict Resolution, Columbia University
Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, College of William and Mary

 . . .You might have heard of a few of those speaking:

• Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr, USA
• William H. Gates III, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, USA
• Chad Hurley, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, YouTube, USA
• Mark G. Parker, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nike, USA
• Viviane Reding, Commissioner, Information Society and Media, European Commission, Brussels
• Dennis Kneale, Managing Editor, Forbes Magazine, USA

Here’s the description from the WEF site.

The rapid rise of online social networks is both a social and business phenomenon, the impact of which is only beginning to be understood. The consumer-powered Web 2.0 creates innovative ways for businesses to operate and people to communicate.

1. What is driving the emergence of virtual communities? Is the rapid rise in their valuations justified?
2. How are companies beginning to use social networking strategies for product and market development, as well as for communication?

“There is a broad trend for people to share their lives with as wide an audience as possible”, Chad Hurley, Co-Founder of YouTube, said. Using his own company as an example, Hurley added that, “since we are now the largest audience, even more people are choosing to share their experiences on our site.”

The panelists also discussed the new and different ways to measure online success. “Page views are becoming less relevant. What’s taking their place is the number of connections that are made on your site,” said Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr, USA.

It’s in Real Media or Windows format. Sadly, you can’t download it and watch it on your iPod. That would REALLY be Web 2.0.

With ready access to computers, cell phones, personal data devices and the like, this community has the potential to be one of the most “connected” of communities and benefit from the shared ideas and goals from those both physically located on campus, to those who share a virtual connection.

As a daily student newspaper and online site (http://www.redandblack.com), The Red and Black already serves as one of the key connecting mechanisms for the University of Georgia community. This independent and not-for-profit corporation is highly motivated towards maintaining and improving this role through improvements to the daily publication, website and development of a forthcoming community portal, UGAToday.com.

From print to broadcast to “new” media, many of these conventional and digital services are already in place in some form or function on the UGA campus. Enhancing these services and making them interconnected through existing and yet to be discovered networking opportunities, could better assist this community achieve the shared educational and personal development goals most all of its members share.

While we already serve a key role in the networking of the UGA community, we’re looking to do more. We believe the next step to improve upon these existing products and technologies lie with the future of digital communications. We’re looking for innovative ways for tying these various forms together through a new online and digital community portal, UGAToday. We already own the domain name due to some forward thinking a few years back. Though not economically viable at the time, we feel there is now opportunity to produce and maintain such a digital site. We are in the early stages of producing a business and operational plan to launch the site in fall 2007.

UGAToday.com will focus on connectivity in areas that don’t fit comfortably within The Red and Black newspaper, online site and similar existing UGA communications. Citizen journalism, social networking and sharing of publicly available databases in user-friendly manner (see ChicagoCrime.org), are a few of the components we expect to implement.

In dissecting the 2007 We Media Conference program, I’m excited to see programming that not only includes workshops and demonstrations of new technologies, but discussions of who and how these new methods of connecting communities will be financed. I not only expect for us to be both inspired and learn a great deal, but also look forward to sharing our ideas on how to better connect the University of Georgia and similar communities.

Harry Montevideo
Publisher
The Red and Black Publishing Company, Inc

This new digital revolution has brought even more benefits to already existing communities, which have found new means of recruiting new members and establishing links with other communities. One cannot afford to remain passive anymore; one has to be actively on the lookout for partners, colleagues, etc. I think that the emergence of social bookmarking, for example, has greatly enhanced the intellectual lives of many users, who are now trusting each other’s surfing and browsing choices. Furthermore, I have a lot of examples from my current job, where blogging and podcasting creates a huge difference in the work of the real communities.

Thus, a Transitions Online blogging project that started in Belarus allowed us to work closer with political and human rights activists, who with the help of blogging managed to raise awareness of their activities among their constituents. A similar blogging project affiliated with Transitions Online in Uzbekistan gave voice to activists concerned with women’s issues, who with the help of blogging managed to start a nationwide public debate about gender discrimination in the country. If not for the Internet, this community would have remained silent and certainly unable to speak with a loud, national voice. Raising awareness of certain marginalized communities—like the Roma in Europe—is another priority for us. Having the real Roma blog about the issues they confront in their daily lives offers the world a chance to feel the suffering of this community firsthand. It would be hard to recreate the same depth with writing an article or shooting a documentary.

In my work with Transitions Online, I’m trying to build from scratch, with the help of blogging and podcasting, new online communities around specific issues or countries. At the moment, we are also trying to launch user-driven social content websites, which would extensively rely on online communities to rank the content. For this reason, exchanging know-how with other professionals from this field at the We Media 2007 conference would be extremely important for me.

Evgeny Morozov
Director for New Media, Transitions Online (www.tol.cz)
Belarus and the Czech Republic

First of all… at the World Economic Forum… a YouTube announcement? Shouldn’t the folks there be talking about, I don’t know, currency trading or real estate speculation or climate change?

But more to the point: If you’ve run an online community, you’ve definitely asked yourself, “How can I attract more people, and give them an incentive to participate more? And how can I reward those who are helping to make the site a success?”

Offering money seems like an easy answer, but it’s an extremely perilous way to build community, for several reasons. One, it tends to attract the kind of person who is motivated by greed, which is often the opposite of the altruistic personality type that are important in forming a support network in your community.

Secondly, any type of reward system is prone to gaming, and if money is involved, the stakes are much higher and the effort involved in monitoring will need to be that much higher, too.

Lastly, while all community sites can, knock on wood, be victims of their own success, this is even more true when a community is supported by payments to the most active members. It’s doubtful that Google’s going to run out of $2 bills for its YouTube users, but for other more modest community sites, the additional, volatile expense of user payments can become a problem.

All that said, Google/YouTube is addressing the flip-side of community building: if you, the community-builder, are going to profit from the efforts of your hard-working members, it’s only fair to share some of that success with those on whom you’re relying. As Google’s David Eun recently said (in relation to Google’s media partners), “In most cases we still give the majority of every dollar we create from a partnership to the partners, so you still get the lion’s share of the money. What about that sounds so unfriendly?”

What do you think?

As a member, I believe Nosamo, an Internet-based fan club for the current South Korea president, which created a revolutionary political movement, is a perfect example of a community in the connected world. In the year 2002, the members of Nosamo shared their dreams through vivid discussion on the Internet and mobilized people using SMS services.

I think current media services in the connected world are not successful enough to enhance real, physical communities. For example, consider the November 7 election. Did the media services deliver policy information or report on the Foley scandal while considering the social conditions of voter communities? Were people in similar conditions able to communicate and create proper reactions? In this example, technologies could be used to identify and connect people who could potentially communicate. Advanced blog-search engines and collaborative bookmarking services could find people with common interests. Moreover, social network information could be extracted through web-link analysis and used to connect people.

After connecting people, certain services may automatically generate and deliver customized policy contents for connected people. Through analyzing the policy contents using text or multimedia analysis techniques, related communities may be inferred. The contents can be published to the members of community through feed subscription services.

Supporting the members of a community to generate and reproduce content will be another important usage of the technologies. By observing the democratic and social nature of the connected world, I envision content created in a much more collaborative manner. Consequently, tools and platforms that support such activities will proliferate.

I hope the conference will be a place where I can share my ideas with people. There are not many opportunities in Korea to learn from so many people of different backgrounds in the area of media. Currently, I’m conducting research aimed at developing an advanced media service architecture and technologies that make the best use of the features of the Internet. As a first step, I’ve made an Internet news service called PolyNews, which can overcome the effect of media bias, a chronic limitation of existing media services. I’m hungry for feedback and comments. Furthermore, I hope to meet like-minded people with whom I can collaborate in my future research.

Souneil Park

M.S student in Network Computing Laboratory

Devision of Computer Science, Department of EECS

KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Republic of Korea

. . . Many musician forums, Jack Johnson’s for example, will have a great deal of distributed reporting about the activities of that band, some by one-post individuals on the scene, but much by a smaller hard-core group.

And then there’s Wii Have A Problem which is doing a great job of documenting the injuries and destruction wrought by those who have just purchased a Nintendo Wii.

Whether it’s news about continuing Wii shortages, the recall of the controller strap, or fatal media stunts, this new community of Wii owners is already sharing stories, tips and clips in interesting ways, and educating each other in the process. For the best examples of this, make sure to check out the “Damage” page.

Well, it just jumped 8%, but S&P believes “Yahoo faces notable competition from emerging social media businesses.”

That is, the ones it hasn’t bought yet… Yahoo also today removed the ability to comment on its news articles, which it had rolled out not too long ago.

It will be interesting to watch as Yahoo tries to build and/or buy success in harnassing user-generated content.

[Oh, by the way, I'm Travis Smith and I'll be guest posting here for the next while!]