Era of blogger’s control is over

Robert, see my comment on Twitter…

I agree with Rachel.

If content and comments are shared for conversational purposes, that’s okay by me, but if someone is profiting from my writing (and I don’t have ads on my own blog so I am not profiting), I’m not so okay with that.

I do believe what we share comes back to us very often in all sorts of ways, but I do consider that what I write falls more in the category of “mine”–maybe I need to put a CC license on the blog to indicate no derivatives

I’m an educator, so just to think outside the commercial box for a minute–what happens with student blogs. Is it okay for them to get sucked into these sites? We want them to be able to be part of the global web and to have readers and to become skilled communicators, but on the other hand, is it all right for their writing to be commercialized, or used by for-profit sites?

And is it any different than if they are using Flickr to share their photos? Would they see it differently because they’re used to sharing on Facebook, etc?

Just some questions I’m thinking about as I read through the comments.

@Kevin Gamble

LMAO – but accurate

The problem I have is that there’s no ability to archive and retain.

Lets face it. 9/10 companies in this space, like most of Web 2.0 will disappear in the not too distant future. It’s just part of tech. We saw it in 1.0 as well. The problem is when they disappear, so does their data.

I love the fact that I can quickly link to a blog post from 4 years ago and all the comments are still there, and intact. I’d hate to loose that.

Web 2.0 is unfortunately modeled around data entrapment. What sucks is when the VC’s decide to pull out, lots of great data disappears forever. That sucks.

We new media types love to tell the old media how much they aren’t in control anymore. This is a dynamic medium. User generated content, mashups, ect. Why should we expect any less for our own content. But it’s getting a little crazy out there. In some ways, Friend Feed is an aggregator of aggregation. Co Comment is the nearest I have seen thus far to keep track of all the different places comments can happen in.

Wow, anyone heard of creative commons, copyright. If you have the drive to make money off your own copyrighted material, you should put some of it away to protect it. Thats what lawyers are for.

If anyone has ever encountered the digg effect you can obviously see the benefits of people promoting your material and commenting on it, without them even copying your material. These communities communicate within themselves (thats what makes them communities) and nothing you do will be able to stop that. It’s the social aspect of web2.0.

Instead of maintaining a totalitarian grip of your material, think of how if shared it may be the basis for material tomorrow. Oh, I’m sorry you can’t make a buck off that, is that the problem? That you can’t get a cut of people making money off your money?

As far as I have ever seen it, greed stifles innovation, yet never the other way around.

FriendFeed should automatically send trackbacks. Bloggers can chose whether/which to display. This is better for everyone.
1. Easier to comment within the tool you are in.
2. Better and more comments.
3. Bloggers can keep up with the conversation they started.
4. FriendFeed gets more attention.
5. Easy to set-up using existing tech.

Come to think of it we need this built into RSS readers and twitter.

I’m all for content sharing and conversations everywhere! The web should be free and content should be free, that’s my whole take on things.

I write alot of unique content and I create alot of code samples that I’m happy for people to take and use.

I find this pretty reprehensible, Robert. It’s easy for you to yammer on about following the conversation blah blah, but blogging is something you just do on top of what you get paid for, which is doing video interviews, finding out stuff about technology, etc. It’s a kind of running note-taking, the icing on the cake. So the more you personally can exploit all this virally-spreading stuff, the more your brand is spread to sell your value at your paid job.

What’s destructive for another works for you, so you’re willing to bless it.

For someone who has advertising on their blog, however, or who looks to measure traffic to somehow establish themselves as an authority in their field or community, these aggregator sites are unjust. They don’t just link and discuss, they draw traffic away from the original place where the discussion can be the most coherent, where there is already a regular community of commentators.

This is a lot like the Copybot problem of Second Life. Tekkies sneer at us that it’s technically impossible to stop “if your client has to see it then it can be copied” (although of course it is stopped in places like World of Warcraft of There.com) and don’t bestir themselves to worry about how people can go on making content if their product is snatched out of their hands like this. It’s one thing if my work is being commented on a site that does not make money with ads, or is linked, but if it is reprinted in full without revenue-sharing with me, and sells that content to sell its ad, that’s unethical.

Tony Curzon Price on opendemocracy.net summarized this problem very beautifully in talking about “the community of content” and how he used the CC license to encourage non-commercial use of content, but to get commercial users to pay.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/media_net/people_copyright/reinvention_scarcity

The site yolto.com particularly earned my wrath because they sold ads for game cards and other products by grabbing the full text of my blog and everyone else’s, then “digesting” them and placing them with what they felt was similar content, then putting a discussion around it — which in fact they themselvse faked by going around goosing it on blogs and writing it in themselves.

Half the time when you see “discussions” on aggregator sites, can you be sure these are genuine people who came there to make a comment, or flaks from that social media company trying to drive traffic and create the appearance of activity?!

Basically, what you are saying, is that Big Important IT Guys and Social Media Mavens like yourself get to exploit the exploitability of everybody else for their own advantage, and I’m sorry, that rots.

jdavey, I fail to see how anyone can monetarize Twitter, unless they manage to get a third-party site widget that has advertising or VC backing that will also pay writers. Um, can you point to such a successful model?!

gregory, that’s not progress, because no one has the attention to pay in the attention economy to all that everythingness

Sol Young, go evolve yourself dude. Do you have some other way to pay your salary besides blogging? I personally blog for intellectual interest, not as a paid activity, but I sympathize with those trying to sell ads or trying to build up expertise reputations. I don’t see why they should embrace a site like yolto.com that sells ads against their content, away from their site, never driving any content back to their site. Why would any reader go back to a site when they have the full article and the discussion in front of them?

Traditional media has attempted to controll and contain their messages through distribution channels they control.

The opposite philosophy is what makes the social web social. Please steal my thoughts and distribute them and if my thoughts and ideas add value then it will attract others and get distributed by the people and for the people.

Steal my content? Not worth bothering, and the time and effort to steal still costs. So even free, isn’t.

Now replace “content” with “gadgets” or “furniture” and we have a deal.

“I’ve found that by being open with my content”

Careful how you use words like “open” – after all, your blog is clearly licensed “All Rights Reserved” under the terms of the Berne Convention and the UCC

Despite the very obvious paranoia being exhibited by more than a few (on their blogs?!), sharing has way more benefits to all of them than not.

A couple of these posts already have Louis completely written off. That’s just crazy. He’s writing some of the best cutting edge commentary around?!

Understandable that the larger monetized sites are worried. They shouldn’t … and they’re probably spending too much time watching the competition, which has proven over time to be a HUGE waste of time.

why are there not more approaches to allow creators/producers/bloggers/… to monetize their content even if it is popular outside their own walled garden?