<![CDATA[You can hear me stammering my way through a pre-coffee interview with David Berlind of ZD Net and read David’s excellent summary here. Woohoo, we’re rolling.]]>
Category: Influence & Networked Markets
<![CDATA[Fingers crossed. Some progress report and thoughts about launching a Web service here.]]>
<![CDATA[For the past few weeks I've been talking obliquely about the company that we'll be launching next week at PC Forum. For loyal readers of RatcliffeBlog, here's the early look and explanation:
Persuadio LLC develops Web-based data collection, analysis and visualization platform supports commercial and enterprise social and information relationship mapping. Persuadio’s modular system supports rapid development of data-, organization- or community-specific data gathering and normalization modules and our mapping tools can be customized to display a variety of relationship types. Our maps are navigable guides to your customers’ or employees’ relationship to information and one another.
We let you tune into network influence and relationships. We’re going to show the world itself in a new way. Our technology is built to accommodate new data types with rapidly configured modules, called Sensors, and to analyze that data, then display the results visually and as data sets, using modules called, fittingly enough, Analyzers.
Our first public project is MyDensity.com, a free service that maps two degrees of the link relationships around any URL. The maps show only links, not the strength of relationships, traffic flow and so forth that add other dimensions to a map of influence. MyDensity just makes the basic capabilities available. We want to work with companies and others who need to show how they create connections or to explore connections they have that aren’t immediately evident from lists of links.
You can embed links to maps in your Web pages for free. Take a look at my blogroll (down on the lower left side of this page), where you can now map any of the blogs I link to.
Here’s a brief user’s guide to MyDensity mapping—
You can generate a map by typing “http://mydensity.com/map?url=http://[URLyouwanttomap]”_ in the address bar of your browser. We encourage you to drop the MyDensity Bookmarklet into your bookmarks bar; it generates a map for any site open in the browser with a single click.
When the map opens in a Java-based interface, you can mouse over any node to see its name displayed in the Site: field just above the zoom in (“+“) and zoom out (“–“) buttons in the upper left corner of the map. As you mouse over the nodes in the map, you will see the active links between sites illuminated in blue. This shows you the map-within-the-map of the direct connections between sites.
Double-clicking any node in the map will open a new browser window and display the Web site. It’s a simple way to browse the neighborhood around any site.
Our maps open with the site you chose in the center, with the sites it is directly connected to arrayed around that site in a circle. Second-degree connections—the sites connected to the first-degree sites but not to the URL you mapped—around the first-degree sites to which they are linked. Maps of popular sites will be quite dense and you may want to check the Fengshuinate box to see the map of how all the sites are interconnected, which rearranges the map to show the most central sites in the network. Unchecking Fengshuinate will freeze the map in its new arrangement; the longer you leave Fengshuinate checked, the more dispersed the map will become.
Clicking once on any node in the map will reorient the map around that node. If the node is connected only to one other site, it will appear by itself with a line leading off to the right. You can also browse all the sites in the map by clicking the Jump to: menu, which displays a list of all the sites in the map. Many maps will have more than 10,000 nodes, so this is one of the simplest ways to look through a map—selecting a site in the Jump to: menu orients the map around that site.
Changing the map will often make it expand outside the available window. Click the Fit button to resize the map automatically and if you get lost use the Recenter button to place the map back in the middle of the window.
That’s the one-minute guide to MyDensity.
Now, here’s the reason we started the company. The idea of the “long tail” is being touted everywhere these days. The long tail builds on the idea of power laws, which say that the top sites or nodes in any network enjoy a huge advantage—in the form of traffic or attention—over others in the curve. It’s a two-dimensional view of the world and assumes all nodes or sites co-exist in a single curve.
We believe that there are many power curves and that the correct description of the world and markets is that it is a broad topology. Using the mapping system we built, we’re going to bring the topology out of the tail, making it possible to develop strategies and understand the position of anything or anyone in the trailing line on power law curves.
Understand the position of each site or node in a network (which could be a person working in an organization, who acts as a connector of other people and their ideas) as part of a topology and the simple rules of The Long Tail fall into a more pragmatic reality. Simply making things available and eventually it will sell because there is an audience for it somewhere is transformed by seeing that product or idea in the context of the rolling contours of the market. It allows us to better target marketing efforts and better analyze the sources of ideas (if, for example we could map the money relationship between a blogger’s sources and the think tanks that fund those sources, you allow the reader to make much better judgments about the accuracy and intellectual rigor of those ideas).
The tools we’re building start with what you see a MyDensity. We’re going to be delivering much, much more. We welcome queries about partnering opportunities, from customers interested in implementing mapping on their sites or for use inside their organizations, and developers who want to go after specific mapping challenges.]]>
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I've begun chronicling the launch of a new company on my Red Herring Blog with the this first posting today:
There’s a lot of talk about the money coming back to tech investing and, in particular, investing in technology-enabled content, but the reality for entrepreneurs in the trenches is that a company has to show a lot of traction to attract investment on terms that preserve founders’ equity. That’s a reality we confronted tangibly in my startup a few weeks back, because traction often requires significantly increased spending.
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<![CDATA[Taxonomies and Tags:
Now autumn has come to the forest of knowledge, thanks to the digital revolution. The leaves are falling and the trees are looking bare. We are discovering that traditional knowledge hierarchies that have served us so well are unnecessarily restricted when it comes to organizing information in the digital world. The principles of organization themselves are changing now that they are being freed from the constraints of the physical world. For example:
* In the physical world, a fruit can hang from only one branch. In the digital world, objects can easily be classified in dozens or even hundreds of different categories.
* In the real world, multiple people use any one tree. In the digital world, there can be a different tree for each person.
* In the real world, the person who owns the information generally also owns and controls the tree that organizes that information. In the digital world, users can control the organization of information owned by others. (Exception to the rule: Westlaw owns the standard organization of case law even though the case law itself is in the public domain.)
These differences are so substantial that we can think of intellectual order as entering a third age. In the first, we organized the things themselves: We put books on shelves and silverware into drawers. In the second, we physically separated the metadata from the data: We built card catalogs and drew diagrams. In the third, the data and the metadata are digital, untying organization from the strictures of the physical world. In response, we are rapidly inventing new principles and tools of organization. When it comes to innovation on the Internet, metadata is becoming the new content.
An excellent introduction to what must be a great article. I personally believe folksonomies are a mixed blessing that need to be deeply understood and deliberated over rather than welcomed as a simple way to organize data. They carry the potential for as much or more abuse as happens in traditional media, because organized tag-packing tactics can dramatically change the perceived value of any idea. David goes on:
Tagging systems are possible only if people are motivated to do more of the work themselves, for individual and/or social reasons. They are necessarily sloppy systems, so if it’s crucial to find each and every object that has to do with, say, apples, tagging won’t work. But for an inexpensive, easy way of using the wisdom of the crowd to make resources visible and sortable, there’s nothing like tags.
This personal investment in the value of a tag (because of the work that goes into it) encourages emotional attachment to ideas when some dispassion can contribute a great deal to clarity. Now, if we have an active debate over the meaning of folksonomies, I think we can produce a spectacularly valuable system for organizing information, but it is because we tend to laziness generally that I think poorly (or falsely) tagged data (e.g. calling a Social Security crisis “true”) will build up and overwhelm better work that, because it is dispassionate, does not fully contest for its value.
I haven’t given up on consensus at all, but I am calling for wise applications of consensus rather than trusting consensus as naively as, say, we trusted the mass media until someone realized it was a human institution.]]>
<![CDATA[Jeremy Allaire’s Radio :
The theme of the “democratization of media” is one that goes all the way back to my origin interests in the Internet, and to some of the important ideas that framed and drove ColdFusion, and Allaire’s other software franchises. We’re onto the next phase of experiences on the Internet, and the much richer and expressive medium of video.
Jeremy, who founded Allaire, which was sold to Macromedia, has launched an IP-network video content distribution network. I completely agree with the sentiment they offer on the home page of the Brightcove site: “Content owners, video rights-holders and independent producers will get an empowering new direct-to-consumer distribution channel, creating more flexible business models and a greater share of the profit margin than they can achieve from traditional distribution channels.” It’s incredibly important that people with great ideas, great content and who have been stuck under the costs of working with highly integrated media distribution companies, get the chance to sell directly to the people who want to see or hear their stuff. Watch Brightcove’s blog for the company’s public development….]]>
<![CDATA[The Washington Monthly:
CONSERVATISM vs. EXTREMISM….Over at the Prospect, Michael Tomasky argues that conservative are interested in conservative philosophy while liberals are mostly obsessed by strategy:
I’ve long had the sense, and it’s only grown since I’ve moved to Washington, that conservatives talk more about philosophy, while liberals talk more about strategy; also, that liberals generally, and young liberals in particular, are somewhat less conversant in their creed’s history and urtexts than their conservative counterparts are (my excellent young staff excepted, naturally; I’m mostly wondering if young Democratic Hill aides have read, for example, The Vital Center or any John Dewey or Walter Lippmann or any number of things like that).
Hmmm. I haven’t read any of that stuff….
Extremists of all stripes are always convinced that they’re in possession of ultimate truth. That’s true of Larouchites, Trotskyites, Fallwellites, Randites, Scientologists, premillenial dispensationalists, Black Panthers, Nazis, and Islamic radicals. It’s extremism that cares nothing for empirical evidence, not conservatism.
Read. Read Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems, read John Rawls’ Political Liberalism, read …. Read Mumford (an anti-Deweyan libertarian, but still deeply relevant to how we think about the structure of society), read these things because they aren’t extremist. They are rational and committed, but not committed to overthrowing everything opposite their ideologies.
Last week, one of the neocons visiting here asked what I would call a “real conservative.” I was too long-winded in my answer. Here’s the short, sweet answer I should have stuck with: A real conservative respects their political opponents as much as they do their political allies, as Americans with the best interest of their country at heart.]]>
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This is the second of my recent comments over at the Online Social Networks Conference, a response to a question from Nathan Wilcox:
I think there are two limiting factors impeding the development of true “extreme democracy:”
1) Human Nature — people like to be led. The success of authoritarians everywhere is the strongest testiment to this trait. This is the biggest limiting factor to self-organizing.
Nathan, I don’t think this is a barrier, it’s at the very heart of the opportunity for small groups who demonstrate the ability to get projects going (not tech, but organizing projects) and win a following. Extreme democracy is about the fact that with all these tools at hand, anyone with some nerve, a little self-discipline and either techie friends or the willingness to learn how to use the tools can start a movement. It’s not going to be big, at first, but the scope is limited only by the leadership abilities of the people who start things.
This leads to another critical phase in any project, which we know from the business world, as well: There comes a time in every project/small movement’s existence when it is time to join a larger movement (to decide to follow) or to take the lead among other small project teams and movements (to consolidate leadership). Here’s where my experience in caucus systems has consistently shown me that leadership is the essential ingredient and that leadership sometimes involves trading absolute control of the direction of a larger movement for concessions, promises or binding agreements that the priorities of a smaller movement will be integrated into and respected by the larger movement. Knowing when to step aside and let others lead is at least as important as know how to lead; and knowing how to get what you want out of that moment of concession is the art of politics.
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<![CDATA[I’ve been participating in the ongoing discussion over at the Online Social Networks Conference for the past week as we discuss the book, Extreme Democracy, that Jon Lebkowsky and I have co-edited. The conference, which is all online, costs $35 to join (though I think the resulting content will be free after it is over), but a couple postings deal with some things that I have been thinking about in relation to the battles raging over here this week. So, in the spirit of extending the conversation outside the conference, I’m sharing comments I’ve made there in this posting and the next…
Finally, a word about consensus and conflict….
Anyone who has visited my sitein the past few days has seen a small part of the daily flow of words there dedicated to a vicious fight with a group of neocons who decided they would not tolerate my opinions without giving me a good whooping. I stood up to them and gave their bullying a fight back. But I think I got at least one of these people to think a little bit. I felt it was important to go head-to-head precisely because I treated this group as, first, a specific instance of neocon hatred rather than a general example of what’s wrong with conservatives, and then as a group of individuals, some of whom have yet proved they were worth talking to and some who clearly were.
I think conflict is a useful basis for the growth of community, because it is through conflict—even uncivil conflict—that the recognition that we need to tolerate one another regardless of our differences is born. Society doesn’t happen without conflict.
Community arising only out of common interests and/or the creation of safe spaces for those interests is untested and weak; when individuals come into close quarters and find that, despite some differences, they can live together or collaborate, that’s when community takes root.
I think consensus is a wonderful phenomenon, but I don’t think it is consistently healthy or that it should be the singular goal of the political process, since it assumes a growing agreement amongst people that can lead to a mentality that values conformity over individuality (rather than the healthy agreeing to disagree while pursuing common goals). That is, I believe, why the right succeeds, because it has used new technology to extend control from the center through a campaign of cultural conformity. Extreme Democracy assumes the control is at the edges and being ceded to the center, which is the thing the contributing writers are most passionate about—we can all be in control. This has brought the ideas into conflict with conservative commentators, who dismiss it as a naive ideology.
I’d very much like to avoid building an ideology during my lifetime. A philosophy of individual value, however, would be a fine thing to help bring into being. It just seems to me that if you’re going to value the individual the first step in organizing—even before you start a project—is some conflict and resolution about what you agree to pursue together and what you’re going to leave on the side. This process (not ideology) would prevent a project from growing into an overarching demand on participants to conform across a wide range of ideas, beliefs and priorities, unless that kind of broad conensus is the explicit goal of the project or becomes the goal through the process of negotiated integration I discussed above.
Let me add that the key feature I see in many social networking services is the ability to find people with something in common. The most recent example is Jambo, a pretty wicked cool technology that helps people who share physical places, like conferences or crowded airports, find someone with something in common with them. I suppose if the thing in common is general, such as “politics” and not “how much I hate George Bush,” that it can be helpful, but it seems that when we’re feeling unsure of ourselves we tend to find the first easy thing to talk about and the result is often the much more specific option than the general one that may connect us with potential debate and not simply a lot of agreeing with one another. I’d rather meet someone who is conversant but differs with me; however, I’d pay for a bozo filter to avoid people who simply want to abuse people they disagree with. In fact, a tool that isolated the bozos would probably be a powerful influence on people to be civil, which might lead to a lot more small wins for sociable differences of opinion.]]>
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Gliding ants — the only wingless insects known to actively direct their fall — were first observed last year outside Iquitos, Peru, by insect ecologist Stephen P. Yanoviak of UTMB. While perched 100 feet up in the rainforest canopy waiting for mosquitoes to alight and feed on his blood, Yanoviak casually brushed off a few dozen ants that were attacking him and noticed their uncanny ability to land on the tree’s trunk and climb back to the very spot from which they’d fallen.
Ants are the favorite example of people who emphasize emergent behavior over individual leadership. Having actually read The Ants and spent a very interesting afternoon with E.O. Wilson, I’ve long been convinced that the miraculous behavior of ant colonies is made up of many small acts of individual volition (in the ant sense of that word) and not simply an unconscious emergent phenomenon.
These ants are doing something distinctly individual, gliding purposefully, just as individual ants do a number of things with signaling pheromones to establish—almost negotiate—the paths and limits their colonies use. This isn’t to say ants are intelligent on the same level as a person, but that it is over-simplifying to argue their behavior characterizes a better process of collective action.]]>