Are Weblogs the Next Platform?
- Nick Denton, Weblog Media
- Meg Hourihan, Consultant and Writer
- Dave Winer, Userland
Dave is blogging Kevin's intro, who is what where exactly?
- Dave: Weblogs are like the word procesor and printer for the web. We did it to open writing for the web. So you want to use tools like the word processor, hooking it up was next step (XML-RPC, etc.). Web services is not just for enterprises.
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- Nick: Im a media guy, this is a way to produce media cheaper than possible 3-4 years ago. Promise similar to online media in 98, there is unfinished business.
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- Meg: Web service potential is how protocols can be transparent to users (think she meant opaque). Interest is potential ubiquity and how content and people use technologies easily. Took us to this point in technology to get the writable web.
Kevin: Why is it going to go to the next level?
- Meg: People want to talk to their friends.
- Nick: Snow was the big story for bloggers last week, they wanted pictures of the snow. Easy distribution of media and a good media experience.
- Dave: Wasnt just local, the west coast participated, its like
- Dave: There were tools that let you build web pages, starting a weblog is different, its like a magazine. There are more readers than writers (I hope so). Continual process of evolution, in two years radically different, but you wont notice the immeadiate change.
Kevin is the is a personal market or potentially mainstream?
- Nick: you have companies using weblogs for cluetrain style outreach, small businesses (like his Gizmo, they pay the writer $1k/month, $1-2k overhead, scalable small business)
- Dave: this might be like word processors in the early 80s, may not be a VC investment (bah)
- Nick: Tina Brown's post mortem of Talk magazine vs. weblog niche media product
Kevin is this word processing or hypercard?
- Dave: Hypercard went away b/c people didnt support it. Here there is support, hobbists are having fun and there is healthy competition
- Meg: The buzz is not sustainable. Needs to be embedded in other media and technology forms so its not a buzz word.
- Dave: Kevin's weblog is a perfect example of where its appropriate, now I know him
Marc Canter: vs. wordprocessing its decentralization and there will be a fragmented market (not likely if the opportunity is large enough). Untapped markets are there (believe Marc sees the opportunity in micromarkets)
Bob Franken: are we talking about Blogging(TM) or the generic idea of easy publishing.
- DW: there is a third term which is Blog as a tone of voice
- Nick: this is why the term has got to expire
- Meg: this is just blocks of hypertext
- Dave: My first Davenet post was in 94 was a blog post, although it captured some essence of what blogging is about. Written by an individual, unedited and you just put it out there. Journalists, not management, fear blogs
Rohit: Wiki is part of blogging. Help me understand your definition of platform. If a tool allows you to create docs, its just a tool. If you can use the output to combine with others and make something larger its a platform.
- Dave: Even the most primitive blogging tool uses Macros. They also come with programmability to some degree.
- Marc: Radio is a platform for us and we are going to do alot with it.
Kevin: What's missing?
- Nick: Weblogs help define the writer. Could imagine a personalized news service (already there with Radio, IMHO), online dating services.
- Meg: How do you find all this stuff? Many dont know it exists?
Glen Flieshman: when do we get around the monolithic blog article problem? And what about women?
- Dave: NYT has been writing for 3 years about blogging, each time assigning a new reporter.
- Dan Gilmore: More articles saying blogging good.
- Dave: But they aren't very convincing because they always present both sides
- Phil Wolff: The issue with women is that blogging is a social activity and its spreading from an early adopter center. The average user of Live Journal is a 16 year old girl. The market is fragmented.
- Nick: Elizabeth Spiers is an example of a young female blogger turning pro
- Doc: different social network show up in different ways. It shows up in Google. Dave said: The first blog was Tim Berners Lee. The importance is living links.
- Nick: alot of the activity and growth is in right wing
- Meg: there is unlimited bandwidth, most people start blogging to connect with a small groups, no reason to fear the right taking it over like talk radio
Kevin: 5-10 years from now what percentage of online will have a weblog?
- Dave: everyone
- Nick: Ten times as many people writing in public as you did in print
- Dave: In ten years all congress reps will have blogs
- Marc: everyone will have their identity online
Mitch: Arguing about what blogging means is like arguing about how many angels will be dancing on a pin. More people using their own voice. In the future will the net be primarily a medium of consumption or interaction?
- Dave: center is meaningless
- Nick: you are the sun of your own solar system
Audience: where does it fit in the spectrum of media? is the scalability and maliability of what this is the power?
- Dave: it has a flame retardant built into it unlike email, which is part of the popularity (vs. Spam). Weblogs demand respect. You have to listen to the author and they dont have to respond, if you choose.
- Meg: its like an IM to the world. has the off the cuff nature of IM
Phil Wolff: applicaiton of blogging in collaborative work
- Meg: thats why blogger got built
- Dave: we needed content management systems in 99. Best experience is with the instant outlining stuff, and this is where it will go. Will it all need the web browser. Blog browser? Brent Simmons, net newswire. Nielson. Everything looks like an outliner to me
- Meg: Evan and I wanted to share and we were bad with email and knew that it diappears and interrupts. Stuff creates a space, and a chronology of the startup, which was a must read for new employees, a place for corporate culture.
Cory: thing that makes it most interesting is how a tool can be put in the hands of a domain expert (YES!). Allows people to write who didnt write before, despite the demographics looking like tech conference demographics, people saying things they wouldnt have said before. Homeless guy finds an audience in social workers -- the feedback loop.
Dave: this is a backdoor proposition and enables people to get their jobs done
Moses Ma: weblogs which are distributed commentary systems are an ideal platform for pontificators (windlogs). Mass market doesnt care for this stuff. Ryze is what appeals (YES?)
Kevin: What are the next features?
- Meg: Push for weblogs (same as my previous post)
- Doc: Search
- DW: Blogfriends
- Marc: Topic Server, which Im working on
- Florian: percieved complexity
- Nick: News front page, within a social network
- Doc: ideosyncratic google (people I like linked at the top)
Remaining questions for me: How do we get this platform to the mainstream and how do you deal with MS's Sharepoint & Onenote
7:12:47 PM 
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