Video auf YouTube |via jilltxt

Update: I still don’t know what happened. But the posts are back. It turned out that they didn’t appear because I switched the Category Visibility Plugin back on. And probably it wasn’t ready for that (?). Puuuh.

But even if it gets very popular, I don’t see any tsunami coming. Because it lacks the network effects of peer-to-peer systems (unless there is special BT file-sharing application which the music industry would try hard to impede – remember: mobile phones are not the universal machines that PCs are). So you’ll only share files one-to-one which isn’t the most effective way of distribution.

So I don’t see Bluetooth file sharing really taking off. Or do I miss something?

(via Om Malik)

Blogging

There is a built in Blog Editor. As far as I see, it’s small, quick and very useful. The configuration was wonderfully done in 5 seconds. It has a richt text interface. On top there is a toolbar where you can either display Flickr photos (see picture) or your latest blog entries. What I didn’t like: It does support Technorati Tags, but not the blog’s own categories (!), it’s not making strong things strong, but bold.

Flickr Toolbar

The Flickr Toolbar displays the latest photos of a Flickr user you choose (see picture). It works great with the Blog Editor. You just drag a photo into a post and it’s there – nicely formatted and linked to the original photo page. What else does the Flickr Toolbar do? We’ll see. It’s nifty anyways.

Del.icio.us

The del.icio.us integration is good. It synchronizes your local favorites and your del.icio.us account. It just works. Nice. But we’ll see if it’s really better than a del.icio.us favelet.

So – I like it. I don’t know if it’ll replace my Safari, Ecto, 1001, del.icio.us combination. Probably not really. But it’s a good one.

What others say:

Paul Stamatoui is blown away
Om Malik is unsure
A lot of talk about Flock at Icerocket
Thomas Gigold findet Flock genial

Update [24.10.05]: Using Flock more or less for three days now, I still wonder if it’ll finally replace my well trained team Safari + del.icio.us (pop-up posting) + Ecto. And one reason why I might not switch, is what Jill Walker points out. Flock is just too good as a connector of our digital lives:

I removed my Flickr feed from my blog because I don’t want my students and colleagues and neighbours to find my photos. I use del.icio.us for links that I’m happy for the world to see – if it’s integrated with my browser, I’m going to need an option for private links as well.

Tim O’Reilly posted on Cory Doctorow’s novel being remixed like that – there is an RSS feed which gives you a couple of pages each day. Similarly, podiobooks publishes novels as podcasts delivered to you in small snippets of a chapter a week. Great idea!

Sounds to me like a clever new way of publishing. Though, maybe more apt for tutorials, language courses etc where the schedule is more homogenous. Or why not TV series or alike as a (subscribtion-only?) Video RSS Feed that is delivered each week. I’m sure there are more ideas.

1. It’s not who you are, it’s what you say.
2. Actually, it doesn’t matter what you say, it matters who you are.

These – at first glance – contradicting laws reflect the discussion on gatekeepers in the blogosphere. Since the means of production and distribution are so cheap, everybody can publish. But that doesn’t translate automatically into people reading your stuff. Every rich communication system differentiates roles, and – of course – different blogs have different audiences and different functions. Kottke.org has thousands of readers, I’d be happy to have ten. And that obviously implies a different impact.

I see two striking difference between the structure of power in the blogosphere and in mainstream media: First, as I agreed with Seth Finkelstein, there’s a switch from gatekeeperes of production to gatekeepers of audience. The bottleneck is now attention of users, not channels or means of production.

Second, and this rather paraphrases the first point in economic terms, there is a switch from supply side economies of scale to demand side economies of scale. It is utterly expensive to hold buy and maintain a printing press, but the costs of printing a single paper more (the marginal costs) are tiny. So the more you can produce, the cheaper it gets. That’s supply side economies of scale. Demand side economies of scale is about network effects: the more people reading your blog, the more people will discover your blog and – maybe – start reading it.

Tags: blogging, economics, gatekeeper, intermediaries, public communication, scale

Garfunkel argues that the very structure of the Blogosphere demands gatekeepers. Since easy-to-use blogging tools enable everyone to publish the level of noise raises and structuring and filtering of information is badly needed. He refers to Seth Finkelstein‘s words that the change is not about getting rid of gatekeepers but that there is change from gatekeepers of production to gatekeepers of audience. I totally agree.

Actually, it’s a savvy way to put what I wrote about disintermediation prophecies. The function of intermediaries is not only about organizing production and physical distribution (that’s the aprt we rarely need in digital enivironments), but also about filtering information, organizing attention and audience, matching supply and demand. And that’s a function we badly need in the digital world.

What I disagree with are the conclusions. Finkelstein thinks that

exchanging one set of gatekeepers for another, is no net gain overall. What’s so superultrafantastic about yet another media oligarchy?

Well, if we wanna call it a new media oligarchy, it is at least an oligarchy that builds upon economics of attention and not upon the power of a 30 Mio $ printing press. Of course, there are gates. But it seems a lot easier for someone from the margins of mainstream discourse to jot a thoughtful comment on the blog of an A-List-blogger and be linked from him in the future than buying a million-dollar printing press to reach only a regional audience. The new media regime seems to be a lot more fluid than
the old one.

Garfunkel argues that aggregation is needed to overcome A-List hegemony. That’s a fine point. But I don’t think the best way to achieve that is his proposed system called Viewpoints. There are seventeen categories divided in four sets (Viability, Position, Quality, Process) that can be assigned to a content element. Isn’t tagging on free-form basis the more succesful way (see Shirky’s piece on http://Ontology is Overrated? Aggregation via del.icio.us, Technorati, PubSub works wonderful. I track a lot of issues and find loads of interesting stuff from people of the Long Tail.
Tags: del.icio.us, gatekeepers, hyperdistribution, journalism