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A very interesting post by Steve Rubel entitled Thomas L. Friedman Says “Uploading” Contributing to Flat Earth got me thinking about the kind of world that technologies such as Web 2.0 are enabling. Rubel’s post gives me a renewed sense of optimism that some of the early hopes of the information revolution are now finally coming to fruition.

Here, then, are just a few comments on Rubel’s post. 

First it’s great that Americans are starting to see that they’re citizens of communities that physically exist outside of their national borders. Isn’t that what the Internet is all about? We in other lands like to think that we can also make a contribution to the development of ideas. 

Jeffrey Treem made some tongue-in-cheek comments about “being a nobody” in the blogosphere after he saw an editorial deminishing a blogger who was called a ”nobody”.

In the Blogosphere is that you don’t need to be somebody in order to be heard. The power of an idea in a blog can be just as compelling as the identity of the blogger.

The Social Computing/ Social Media revolution is hearalding a shift in power, with the power moving from large corporations to the individual. Another way of looking at it is that the power is shifting from the somebodies to the nobodies.

I was intrigued to read a number of suggested manifestos for the blogosphere posted on Jaffe Juice.

My dictionary gives the following definition of manifesto:

 

 

/manuh’festoh/ noun, plural manifestos, manifestoes.  

a public declaration, as of a sovereign or government, or of any person or body of persons taking important action, making known intentions, objects, motives, etc.; a proclamation. 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for manifestos, and yes, I know these guys are approaching blogging from a marketing perspective. However, I wonder whether by trying to create a manifesto, and in effect setting an agenda, that they’re actually missing the point of what blogging is about.  

While there are many podcasts being produced, and there is a growing audience (whether on a computer or on a MP3 player), it’s not clear what the economic driver is.

I expect that many podcasters are driven by the hope that one day they may make some money. I know a couple of podcasters who operate exactly on this basis. I do seem to recall that many dot.com companies had a similar strategy during the dot.com boom… and we all know what happened to them.

According to Online Media Daily, NewsCorp is looking to “broaden the advertising pool for MySpace to attract more brand advertisers”. As part of the initiative the company is putting more resources into deleting risque and offensive content, and has so far removed more than 200,000 profiles it deemed questionable.

One of the reasons why MySpace is cool and attracts so many 18-to-34-year-old users is because some of its user generated content is risque and offensive. On the other hand, its this content that makes the big companies reluctant to use MySpace as an advertising vehicle.