Puffbox

I finally decided to take the plunge, and investigate Second Life. There are too many smart and influential people getting into it for me to keep avoiding it. So I signed up, choosing a surname from the rather curious selection on offer and downloading the client software. Then – very cheekily – came the bribe. They offer you cold, hard (er, virtual) cash to spread the word to some of your mates. This is before you’ve even fired up the software. And if you don’t take up their kind offer immediately, the cash incentive goes away. So this is how to build a community: make people evangelise a product they don’t even know yet.

Another new blog at the BBC – and this one has real potential. This time, it’s the editors from various parts of the newsroom. In its first few days of operation, we’ve had a piece from Peter Horrocks, head of TV news; and Helen Boaden, overall director of news. Nothing groundbreaking so far… and there’s a risk of it becoming a bit too Points Of View, but another positive step, nonetheless.

Just a quick note to say how much I’m enjoying some of the parallel media for this year’s World Cup. The Baddiel and Skinner podcast, backed by the Times, is good fun – as long as you aren’t averse to some poor banjo, guitar and singing impersonations. And the UKTV G2 spin on the live games is a wonderful antidote to the same old same-old over on the BBC. You wonder if ITV shouldn’t give the irreverent thing a try – they just don’t seem capable of beating the Beeb at traditional presentation. The official website‘s WAP version is proving a useful way to keep up with the live games you can’t watch in the office… it’s just a pity the Mobile Matchcast live match alert thing is available for so few phone models.

Something else I’ve spotted on the various BBC blogs… they’re starting to use Flickr.com to host photo galleries. (I say ‘starting’… I’ve only just noticed. Maybe it’s been going on for ages.) They’re trying out several different implementations – here, here and here.

Incidentally… I think I’m right in saying that the Beeb’s blogs are no longer being hosted at Typepad. Certainly a tracert on blogs.bbc.co.uk seems to take you to a BBC server… and the disclaimer about comments being held elsewhere seems to have been dropped from the page footers.

A very curious appearance by blogging legend Robert Scoble on BBC2’s Newsnight on Friday, to talk the announcement about Bill Gates’s departure. (Watch it here while you can.) I don’t think it was appropriate to caption him as ‘Strategist, Microsoft’… and I’m surprised there was no attempt to quiz Scoble on (a) corporate identity and (b) his own departure.

Gavin Esler’s interview was beautifully moderated, and didn’t once attempt to use Scoble as a ‘company spokesman’… so they clearly knew who he was. (Not a given, of course, when it comes to technology commentators at the BBC.) We often criticise ‘big media’ for making a dog’s breakfast of technology stories. So, credit where it’s due – Newsnight handled this very well, and Paul Mason‘s package was really well pitched.

Needless to say, there’s an inevitable flood of pro and anti feedback on Scoble’s blog.

On Sunday I wrote regarding Robert Scoble’s departure from Microsoft: ‘he isn’t the only person I know to be leaving a very cushy job at Microsoft just now’. How many of you deduced it was a tip-off for today’s big story? 🙂

Cards on the table straight away. I love RSS feeds. I read something recently which described RSS as the ‘third evolution’ of the internet (or something like that), after ‘browse’ and ‘search’… and it’s not a bad way to see it.

I subscribed to my first RSS feed about three years ago, and I haven’t looked back. So I’m delighted – finally! – to see some comment on RSS feeds from usability guru Jakob Nielsen, although I missed it initially: it’s hidden at the bottom of a piece headlined ‘Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion‘. But I just can’t agree with his apparent conclusion that:

Feeds are a cold medium in comparison with email newsletters. Feeds do not form the same relationship between company and customers that a good newsletter can build.

No way. In fact, I have found myself building a stronger relationship with certain companies and individuals precisely because of the feeds… and precisely because they are a cold, or rather a neutral, medium. Email newsletters are invariably about marketing blitz and glitz. RSS feeds, and the content they generally derive from, are pure information. One word for you here: Scoble.

Yes, I scan RSS headlines ruthlessly. But that’s exactly the point. Sites which feed their content to me in its purest form (and it don’t get much purer than XML) are showing they respect me. They give me the control, both in terms of which stories I read, and how I subscribe or unsubscribe. I am grateful for that. And you know what? It builds a positive relationship between us.

Jakob, himself, is a case in point. I don’t subscribe to his email newsletter. And actually, I can only think of one email newsletter I’ve actively subscribed to in the last two years. Email has become my one-to-one communication channel, where the sender knows who I am, and sends something to me specifically. When I get an email, I know it is to me, and intended for me as an individual. There is most likely an action attached.

I have a different place for my one-to-many communications, where the sender puts something out to a mass of anonymous users – my RSS reader. The ‘sender’ doesn’t know who I am, and that doesn’t matter to either of us. There is no expectation of a response, or an action of any kind. I dip in and out, when I want, or when I can. I am in control, and I like that.

If Jakob offered an RSS feed, I would subscribe to it immediately. Instead I am reliant on an unofficial feed created by a scraping service (Feedfire). Says it all.

Better late than never, I suppose, the Telegraph team has responded to last week’s Guardian story suggesting they were planning to hold stories back from their website, in the interests of boosting sales of the print edition. At the time, I was a bit dubious… and, apparently, rightly so.

We now have a response from the Telegraph’s Shane Richmond, on the blog formerly known as Upload, but now apparently just called ‘Technology Blog’ (or Blogs). He lists a number of examples where print and online work together, and where a piece might go to the web before it goes to newsprint. ‘There are no plans to delay publication of newspaper articles,’ he says. And I’m prepared to take him at his word.

But even if you were busy writing an important presentation, Shane, I think it was a mistake to wait so long to publish your rebuttal. This should have been a perfect case study for what a blog could do for your site, and your organisation. By waiting so long after the initial story – during which time we’ve had both a Guardian Friday podcast and a Monday media supplement – no matter how well you bolt that stable door, the horse is long gone.

There’s something really interesting going on here. First, Scoble quits Microsoft. Then, Om Malik – not someone I read myself, but I see the ripples, if you know what I mean – announces he’s leaving his day-job to live off his influential blog. Now this from Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing at The Guardian:

I think the last two to three years have seen an explosion in ideas – and I think that phase is over. What started out as vague concepts and half baked ideas in the blogosphere have now become standard fodder for every media exec in town. Some really believe it. Others just mouth the words as if it was a speech in Greek they’ve learned off by heart. But the overall message is pretty much the same. It’s not that new ideas aren’t going to pop up – just that there’s already a huge backlog between the things that we are all talking about and what we’re doing. The net result of this is that those of us who work within media organisations – even those of us who like nothing more than spouting off in public – have to shut up, pull down the shutters and start delivering stuff.

There are a heck of a lot of people out there saying the same thing. Myself included.

I posted something about this a while back… the BBC was planning to let us access foreign broadcasters' commentary during World Cup games, but it fell through. Thanks to Ben Gallop at the BBC for responding to my query as to what happened:

Simon, as you say we were planning to run foreign commentaries for some of the big games on interactive TV. The prospect of listening to a Brazilian gooooaaaallll or getting an authentic American take on the World Cup had a lot of appeal.

However, having gone a long way down the line with this proposal (including announcing the fact on the website – oops), in the end we were scuppered by rights restrictions.

So I'm sorry we weren't able to offer you the chance to check out some Trinidadian or Aussie commentary – but we'll try to sort something out for future tournaments.

Ah well. Maybe next time, eh.