{"id":185,"date":"2009-07-29T13:10:42","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T13:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=185"},"modified":"2009-07-29T13:10:42","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T13:10:42","slug":"blogger_book_club_iii_little_b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2009\/07\/blogger_book_club_iii_little_b\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger Book Club III: Little Boxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Guerrieri<\/a><\/p>\n

Am I the only one that finds it funny\/odd that so many Web 2.0 terms
\nsound like they should be characters on a kids’ TV show? Whuffie,
\nTwitter, Flickr, Wiki, Bebo, Plurk, Yelp–I feel like I’m naming the
\nLost Boys. And I think it points to something about Internet
\ninteractivity: the services are, at least initially and sometimes
\nexclusively, driven more by the gee-whiz novelty of the technology
\nrather than filling an actual need. Reading The Whuffie Factor<\/i>,
\nI similarly sensed a solution in search of a problem. I noticed that
\nboth of Hunt’s key points–that online social networking covers an
\nenormous, unignorable demographic swath, and that social capital will
\ntranslate into financial capital–were illustrated anecdotally, not
\ncomprehensively. The case studies were interesting enough: obviously,
\nsome entrepreneurs have been able to leverage social networks with
\nsome success. But every time the book moved into its broader
\ndon’t-miss-the-boat rhetoric, it felt a little like a salto
\nmortale<\/i>. And I think it’s because the book is studiously ignoring
\nthe quirky limits of social networking.<\/p>\n

I find Twitter the most
\nfascinating of these platforms, because a) it’s the first piece of
\nwell-known technology that kind of makes me feel like a cranky old
\ngeezer, which is even more fun than I had imagined, and b) it’s an
\nunusually pithy example of how Internet technology is full of hidden
\nrestrictions that make the Internet a lot less stylistically universal
\nand democratic than we like to think. I’ve been reading Hegel lately,
\nwhich gives rise to an easy Hegel-on-Twitter joke:<\/p>\n

The
\nobject has the form and character of thinghood, i.e., is independent:
\nbut self-consciousness has the conviction that this independent
\nob<\/big>
1807 from
\nJena<\/font><\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One could certainly argue that a
\n140-character limit might have made Hegel a little clearer, but that’s
\nthe way the man wrote, and, by design, the style is inseperable from
\nthe content. More importantly, though, it’s a style criticism that’s
\nbased not on aesthetics, but on the technological limits of Twitter
\nitself. Now, all language is limiting in this way, but it’s normally
\nnowhere near this restrictive. (For perspective: everyday English is
\nflexible enough that I can be meaningfully networked, even through the
\nscreen of translation, printing, and physical distribution, with a
\nlong-dead German without much trouble.)<\/p>\n

This is an extreme
\ncase. But think about the shift from the old classical-music industry
\nstructure to an online classical-music industry structure. The old
\nsystem was plauged by inequities based around aesthetics. But the
\ninequities of the new system are based around the technology that
\nholds up the system. I’m not sure one is better than the other. As
\nsomeone who loves a lot of, well, unpopular music, my spider-sense
\nstarted tingling as soon as Hunt started talking about the 80\/20 rule.
\nIs this argument going where I think it’s going?<\/i> Yes! Yes it
\nis.<\/p>\n

Finding out what your customers need, then designing
\nfor the features that most of them need, while cutting the extra
\nfeatures that only some of them need, will help you design your
\nproduct for your wider audience…. This builds more whuffie for you
\nas those customers spread the word that they love your product because
\nit’s so easy and straightforward to use. (p. 86)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pick any
\nmusical genre you want, and it won’t be hard to come up with a list of
\npieces for which cutting the extra features that only some listeners
\nneed would take away everything that makes that piece special.
\n(Real-world example: iTunes’ distinction between 99-cent tracks and
\nlonger, “album-only” tracks, which leaves those 20-minute symphonic
\ncanvases at a marketing disadvantage.) This is not to say that online
\nnetworking can’t be a boon to musical entrepreneurship, but there are
\nsome genres and styles that lend themselves more readily to it; for
\nthe rest, I think the necessary decision between changing style or
\nwaiting for the technology to catch up somewhat blunts the sweep of
\nthe book’s prescription.<\/p>\n

Then again: I’m still skeptical just
\nhow well social capital translates into actual profit. An awful lot of
\nHunt’s case studies are Web 1.0 companies integrating a social
\nnetworking element into their already fairly mature business model. I
\nkept thinking of Burger King and McDonald’s–Burger King has spent the
\npast couple of years rolling out an elaborate, attention-grabbing
\nmarketing campaign with lots of online interactivity and social
\nnetwork presence. McDonald’s has stuck largely to boring traditional
\nadvertising. Guess
\nwho<\/a> increased their market share? Hunt mentions the cautionary
\ntale of Federated Media (which includes Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow’s
\nsite) taking money from Microsoft. But this spring, they
\ndid it again<\/a>, taking money from previously-criticized Comcast.
\nMea culpa<\/i>: just more anecdotal evidence. But maybe whuffie is
\nharder to monetize than Hunt is letting on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Guerrieri Am I the only one that finds it funny\/odd that so many Web 2.0 terms sound like they should be characters on a kids’ TV show? Whuffie, Twitter, Flickr, Wiki, Bebo, Plurk, Yelp–I feel like I’m naming the Lost Boys. And I think it points to something about Internet interactivity: the services […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-bookclubiii","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}