Kitten Fluff


Billy Bragg nag
March 23, 2008, 1:53 pm
Filed under: social networks | Tags: , , , , , , ,

So stumbled upon this piece in the NY Times today by Billy Bragg about Bebo’s sale to AOL and the buzz at SXSW music – how musicians can make a living in the Age of the Internet (sic). My immediate thought was, well, you should have come a week earlier to the SXSW interactive bit… My second thought was about something more troubling.

In the piece, Bragg muses about the time Bebo’s co-founder, Michael Birch, came to see him shortly after he had That Spat about residual rights and his music with MySpace. Bebo wanted him help and advice on building an “artist centric platform”.

Bragg is bemoaning that the artists still have had no offer of payment as “thanks” for attracting the community and helping to build something worthy enough of the millions. But I am getting really bored of this.

The reason why is because these platforms, services and “communities” are not all about the professional artist. Yes, music and other parts of popular culture give people social objects to talk around and to build conversations and groups upon. But it is a complex ecosystem. Without the people themselves making the ties, the conversations, the fan art or wom tributes around these artifacts, there would be very little value.

So where do you draw the line? I am reminded of Cory Doctorow’s proclamation that content isn’t king – conversation is. Content just gives people something to talk about.

If Bragg feels he has the right to gain financial reward why can’t the other “sharecroppers”, as Nick Carr puts it?

We hear again and again that service a, application b would be nothing without the cast of community characters who make it so and give it its flavour. Well then, isn’t it about time we/they were recompensed too?

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“It’s all Ze Frank’s fault”
March 20, 2008, 2:58 pm
Filed under: games, socialnetworking | Tags: , , , , ,

Indeed, yes, as Rachel C commented on my post below, the Colour Wars of Twitter* are indeed All Ze Frank’s** fault. See his explanation which he just Tweeted.

Seems it is a leftover from Summer Camp, an American phenomenon of which I have been eternally jealous. Let the wars begin. GO OFFWHITE!

*I refuse to spell it the wrong way.

**I interviewed him once at TED Global. Always regret not having published it. He was lurvely.

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Twitter team games?
March 19, 2008, 9:48 pm
Filed under: games, social networking | Tags: , , , , ,

No idea what it is about yet, but I think there are some team games brewing on Twitter. No one would actually tell me anything, but people on Seesmic have started talking about it too, recruiting for team members for @yellowteam etc.

I decided to join the offwhiteteam. It sounds petulant enough for me and I am liking the updates. Ze Frank is brewing some challenges, so I suspect this has something to do with him, although I have not bothered to check that bit out yet. Too busy eating parsnip crisps and houmous.

But I will, and I will report back.

I like the idea of making Twitter even more playful than it is and I think it will work in quite interesting ways given the integration of Twitter with other services, apps and feeds.

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Jordan’s forgotten refugees: Documentally’s project
March 17, 2008, 10:40 pm
Filed under: iraq, social media | Tags: , , , , , ,

This week is the 5 year anniversary of Iraq War II and there are so many stories of suffering still going on it is sometimes difficult not to feel removed from them all.

Christian Payne, or Documentally as he is better known on Twitter and Seesmic, has just published a really moving photographic/don’t really know what you might call it, account of the plight of thousands of Iraqi refugees who are living in limbo in Jordan.

He was asked by the UNHCR to document their lives through his great photographic work and he teamed up with Emmy Award winning editor Bill Cammack, through the power of social media, to create a really compelling visual story. Now he is encouraging people to shine a light on these forgotten people through social media.

What is amazing to me is how much we take for granted “who” refugees are. These are people who were vets, accountants, shop keepers, who now have nothing to speak of and can’t seem to move back or forwards. What is also great about this is to see the power of photography being used in an innovative way creating a far bigger impact imho than video would have. It suits the topic and the sentiment of the stories so well.

Check it out, share it and join the conversation here.

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The Different Flavours of SXSW
March 13, 2008, 6:03 pm
Filed under: sxsw | Tags: , ,

It’s amazing how much a place can change in the space of 24 hours. The geeks have gone to be replaced by the Different Cool music crowd for SXSW. It is what the festival is *really* known for I guess. I wish I could stay for a bit longer but I didn’t bring my skinny jeans so I guess I have to leave.*

Note to self: the music crowd wear their badges hanging off their belts. The geeks stick them around their necks. What does that say about them?

Anyway, roll on next year: check out Jemima Kiss (Guardian), Chris Vallance (BBC) and I as we take a stroll down Cool Strip Number 6.

*The likelihood of me ever fitting into my skinny jeans again is oooohhh ZERO after all the animal flesh and hops I have consumed this week.

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Jane McGonigal saves SXSW for me
March 11, 2008, 9:09 pm
Filed under: args, games | Tags: , , , , ,

Just when I was starting to wonder what interesting thing I had really seen at sxsw (apart from a couple of sessions friends participated in), along came Jane McGonigal’s keynote. I knew it was The One I Must Not Miss while I was here. It did not fail to please. She has been the only one I have seen who has actually introduced some fresh(ish) academic theory into her talk – that of Happiness. She talked about 10 skills that games can give you which ultimately give you a better quality of “life”. Hence, why there is a mass exodus to virtual worlds.

  1. mobability: ability to coordinate at large scales
  2. cooperation radar: ability to attach who would be perfect collaborator for any given mission
  3. ping quotient: how good you are at reaching out and are good at responding to others’ engagement
  4. influencey: ability to adapt persusive ability: motivating people
  5. multi capitalism: monetary and social captial: recognising diff capital systems: getting people to trade those
  6. protovation: rapid, fearless innovation: failing is fun. fail quickly and a lot means you learn the most: gamers do this a lot
  7. open authorship: giving content away and acknowledging it will be changed: how to design content to make sure people can modify in positive ways
  8. signal/noise management: knowing what is signal and what is noise
  9. longbroading: zoomed out view of higher level systems
  10. emergent sight: you can spot patterns – things you weren’t expecting: being comfy with messy complexity (eg lost ring – multiple languages): seeing opportunities in messiness.

The thing about games and virtual story worlds – no matter how graphically sophisticated (or not) they are – is at least they give you feedback and points for doing things. That way we know instantly what our strengths and weaknesses are, and how we are doing. We don’t really get that in everyday life.

Then of course, she ended the session with a spontaneous Soulja Boy dance. As you do.

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Facebook and Lacy Bitstripped
March 10, 2008, 7:31 pm
Filed under: comic, facebook | Tags: , , ,

Courtesy of newly-launched and very cool Bitstrips.

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Seesmic art
March 4, 2008, 12:34 am
Filed under: art, seesmic | Tags: , , , , ,

What I love about philosophically web 2.0 applications and services is the creativity they inspire or help to display in the people who don’t just “use” but who are part of the fabric of those applications and services.

Take this from a very talented Seesmic member, Till, as an example. These Seesmic portraits are simple really, but just fun.

He (I think it is he and others) has also done some great sketches of some of the community’s characters.

Check them out on this Flickr stream.

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