I’m the little guy, the small business person who always gets mentioned in the abstract but who rarely gets a chance to speak for himself directly. I, and many others like me, are trying to pioneer a new form of video entertainment and information exchange, outside the traditional forms of movies and television that are dominated by large conglomerates. This new cottage industry needs Net Neutrality desperately to survive. We’re in direct competition with large companies like Comcast Cable and Time-Warner just as blogs were in competition with newspapers and magazines six or seven years ago. Because the net was “neutral” back then, blogs (for good or bad) were able to broaden the scope of the marketplace and bring information and opinion to the public at large that the big media news organizations weren’t. That’s what we are doing in the video space. We are creating video content that big companies don’t want to take a risk on and we’re delivering that content to millions of viewers who thank us every day for providing something new and different. Please don’t shut down this new innovative marketplace by giving those who control the wires of the internet the power to discriminate against certain data. The consumer’s and the producers should decide what content is readily available, not the middle-men who control the wires.
I share the concerns that Union Square Ventures has outlined on its blog:
I urge you to work together in the coming weeks to improve this proposal along the lines described in their post. I support your effort to create an application-agnostic regulatory framework for the Internet.
Robert Scoble is a blogger and technical evangelist who also does something I know a bit about, web video. My wife CAT and I met Robert in person at a podcasting conference called New Media Expo in 2008. We were all speakers at that conference.
Earlier this year my wife, who is VP of Enterprise Architecture at a large well known company in NYC, had some dealings with Rackspace which is where Robert works. Because we met at New Media Expo she was able to e-mail him and smooth out some business problems. It’s crazy but that’s how this new social media thing works. Because we do a knitting show, Rackspace got some potential business. The connections are not always obvious.
I point out all the above so you can know exactly where I was coming from when I clicked “Add as friend” on Robert Scoble’s Facebook profile. After I clicked I got this:
OK, I’ve met Robert personally so this is some kind of mistake. I go to the help center to resolve the problem. I get this:
Huh? This doesn’t sound like a way to resolve the problem. It actually sounds like a reprimand. Let’s take this a step at a time. I’m going to be very detailed about my personal Facebook account statistics to give the discussion the proper context, so please bear with me. Facebook says:
Facebook is a place for connecting with friends, family and other people you know personally.
Is that what Facebook is for? I’m not sure how fan pages, online games, corporate products, and companies, etc. fit into that limited definition but, OK… Let’s accept that narrow frame for the sake of discussing what follows. I’m sure that’s the entire purpose of this introductory sentence.
If you’ve been prevented from adding friends on Facebook, it’s likely because many friend requests you’ve sent recently have gone unanswered.
I have a few friend requests (12 out of 173 total) that have gone unanswered but none of them have been even close to recent. I actually forgot about most of them until I looked just now. It’s also less than seven percent of the total, not even close to spammer territory so I doubt that’s the problem.
This may be because you’ve sent friend requests to strangers,
I haven’t but OK… Let’s figure this out specifically. I just checked. The last person I friended on Facebook was my roommate from collage. This was maybe a week and ½ ago. He accepted almost instantly. I guess he remembered me. Before that? I don’t know. It was probably two or three weeks ago. I’m extremely conservative about who I friend on Facebook compared to other social networks. If I had to guess I maybe click on “Add as friend” two or three times a month. Out of my current 161 friends, I’ve met every single one personally except for nine. Basically I don’t friend anyone unless we’ve met in person at least once. The exceptions are, if we are likely to meet for some reason in the near future, or if we’ve known each other online for a very long time (like years.)
This brings up a deeper question though:
How does Facebook know if I know someone?
Does Facebook assume that if one of my friend requests goes unanswered for a period of time that I don’t know that person? That’s a pretty big assumption on their part. (Note to self: I’ll have to remember to call my father-in-law on the phone and demand he respond to my Facebook friend request I sent three months ago.)
Also, does Facebook assume I don’t know somebody if they deny my friend request? I don’t know how many friend requests I’ve had denied but it can’t be that many. Different people use Facebook different ways, some restrict it only to family, or only friends from collage… Some accept everyone who clicks on their profile. Certainly they understand this at Facebook, right? A denied friend request simply means that you don’t fit the other person’s filter. (Or maybe they just don’t remember you. High School was a looooong time ago.)
Does Facebook think I’m a spammer?
I’m extremely conservative about who I friend, certainly when compared to many of my friends who are podcasters, web video creators, or otherwise on the vanguard of the social media scene. They have thousands of “friends.” I have 161 and make maybe two or three friend requests a month. Spammer? Not even in the same universe.
OK, let’s get back to Facebook’s message to me. This is where it starts to get darker:
…or it may be due to other behavior that Facebook members have reported as unwelcome.
What the heck does that mean? OK… I’m sure the last person I friended (my collage roommate) didn’t badmouthed me to “The Friend Police.” But now I’m thinking. Who of my friends would go behind my back and complain? I look over the list. Well there’s this one guy – I had a fight with him once in collage. Oh, and then there’s this girl – She used to kick me in grade school. Maybe one of them complained?
Shame on you Facebook. This bit is downright evil. “Other unwelcome behavior” should really be dealt with specifically and not as vague innuendo implicating my friends.
I want to know what the issue is!
If Facebook is going to scold it’s users for bad behavior, it doesn’t make any sense to make the issue vague. Why treat regular users like spammers and then give them no way to resolve whatever the problem is? It just doesn’t make any sense.
You’ll be allowed to add friends again soon.
Soon? How soon is soon. An hour? A day? A month? When can I have new friends?
At that time, please remember to only send friend requests to people who you already know personally.
OK, now you’re starting to sound mean and arrogant, but you’re a big faceless corporation so I’ll try to ignore it.
Otherwise, additional limits may be placed on your account.
Wait a minute… Did Facebook just threaten to cut me off from my friends online? Based on what? Because their pathetic algorithm says I’m a spammer? And I have no recourse? Are these people MYfriends? Or are they Facebook’s friends?
Is Facebook becoming too powerful?
Some time ago internet entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calicanis closed his facebook account in protest. He did it live on episode #53 of his show This Week In Startups. (Discussion of deleting Facebook starts at the beginning of the show, the actual process starts at about 13:45)
In the video at about 33:48, just as he finishes deleting his account Jason says something very telling. He says, “How you write these dialog screens is how you get judged in this industry.”
I agree. Which is why I went into great detail above.
Around the same time technology broadcaster, author, and entrepreneur Leo Laporte also left Facebook behind.
Recently however, Leo came back to Facebook mainly because he needed a Facebook account for his work. He reviews software and sometimes needs a Facebook account to use that software. (I looked for a reference link where Leo stated his reason, but couldn’t find one. I think I heard him say it on TWiT Live in between one of the show tapings.) Leo’s dilemma only illustrates the problem. Facebook is a giant now. I know many people (including myself) who can’t leave Facebook mainly because that’s where all the people are, especially non-tech people. Getting all your friends to move over to another service would be impossible and Facebook knows it. In the future I’m sure things will be more open but right now they aren’t.
So…
Is Robert Scoble my “friend?”
I don’t know. I guess that’s up to Robert. Like everyone, I’m sure he has his own filter for who he friends and who he doesn’t. If we both agree then we will be “Facebook friends.”
…and that’s the way it should be because:
Facebook should not be able to decide who can be friends!
What do you think? Have you had trouble friending people on Facebook? Are you dependent on your Facebook friend connections? Leave a comment.
This is brilliance in action. A funny video directed at an unlikely person with a large social network. Old Spice gets their brand to geeks everywhere. (And it’s funny too. This won’t work unless people want to talk about it.) Old Spice has made scores of personalized message videos to invade other demographics too. Check them all out in their YouTube channel.
After her reaction, Old Spice Guy recorded and posted a response video.
Then Kevin Rose sees the video directed at him and replies on Twitter. Then Old Spice Guy records and uploads another video to continue the conversation.
Two years ago, (almost exactly) I had the idea to make you a Jayne Hat so that you would have something to wear during your new venture on TWITlive. When you received the hat, I was so excited to see that you really appreciated it.
Over the years, fans of both TWIT and LetsKnit2gether would send me pictures of you, your daughter and others wearing your hat as part of a “Jayne Hat sightings” picture collection.
Recently, someone sent me a picture and pointed me to a video of Colleen happily wearing the Jayne Hat as she was leaving the TWIT cottage for her new adventure at Google. Now, although I am thrilled that amongst all the hats that you have in your collection, she chose the Jayne Hat to grace the halls of Google, I couldn’t leave you without one.
So, here is Jayne Hat #2. Wear it well and remember, “A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he’s not afraid of anything”.
New Mediacracy is an audio podcast about web video featuring industry producers, directors, writers, and other content creators. It’s not for everyone to be sure – it’s in the form of a casual conversation which usually means that it goes on for hours. Being a web video producer myself however, I find it an incredible resource. Creating web video can be very isolating and it’s nice to hear about other web video creators’ successes and failures in this depth of detail.
Episode 13 of New Mediacracy was a discussion that happened after the first meeting of the IAWTV in Los Angeles. You can hear the episode here. What follows are my comments about the episode:
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Great discussion. There’s so much to comment about in this episode.
First impression: The most surprising thing I realized after listening to this episode is that the actual members of the IAWTV don’t really know much more about what’s going on than we do on the outside.
My thoughts on Steve’s “gatekeeper” frustration:
I’m frustrated by it too but I think that it may partially be an illusion. I know I’m still over here doing my thing and I’m guessing there are lots of others that we never hear about in other places doing their thing too. I think an echo –chamber has started up in new media and we’re all beginning to believe our own press. Nothing has changed. Everyone can still do their own thing. Keep doing it.
That being said, I think an overall attempt to re-structure new-media (open media) to resemble old-media (gatekeepers) is inevitable. I personally see new media not as a new medium, but what old media is becoming. They are not separate, just in various states of becoming if you will. The transition is going to be very painful because old media won’t want to give up their control. It’s going to get worse over the next few years as the old media ways become more and more threatened farther and farther up the big business food chain.
OK, so we all know that. Big media would rather sue Napster than buy it. We’ve seen it before. What I think Steve is reacting to is that it seems that some in new media are actually trying to mold OURSELVES back into old media, presumably to gain some sort of “acceptance” from old media. I see it too and it’s really sad. I came from old media. I jumped off that ship on purpose and I can tell you there’s no reason to go back. Old media is dying. All my old-media friends think I’m crazy for doing what I’m doing now but they are also in a lot of pain with their own old-media careers. Right now, temporarily, old media still has some advantages, like traditional revenue streams, but those are drying up. Don’t make the mistake of jumping backwards onto a sinking ship. You’ll just go down with it. The only way is forward. (What “forward” means is unknown but I guess that’s the curse of being a pioneer.)
end of rant –
My thoughts about the IAWTV
Unfortunately I don’t think the IAWTV has any substance to it. There’s a lot of potential there and I see a lot of people (including myself) projecting their HOPES on this organization, but what is the IAWTV really doing right now that is worth saving? What does it have right now to build on for all those future possibilities? I don’t see anything. I just see a big mess. I think we’re getting distracted trying to solve all the problems with the IAWTV and we’re not noticing that there’s nothing there to begin with.
I think it might be time to put the IAWTV aside and redirect all our energies elsewhere to build the organization we all really want and need, from the ground up. We can bypass ALL the IAWTV issues by starting up a new organization with a mission and an organizational structure that is aligned with the core values we all care about. I know there are some who have put a lot of time and energy into the IAWTV and they won’t want to abandon that hard work but that’s not really a good reason to put more work into it. If there was some core asset that the IAWTV had that was worth saving I would say go for it, but from here, at this point, I don’t see anything. Just a thought…
Best quote from episode 13: “The Television Academy isn’t called Visual Radio.” – Barrett Garese
As someone who has been working very hard for four years to try and bring credibility to web video, I’m extremely disappointed in what I saw on the Streamy Awards Sunday night.
The Streamy Awards which is run by the newly formed International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV) touts itself as the “…most prestigious awards ceremony devoted to honoring excellence in original web television programming and those who create it.” That’s what it says on their website and that’s what everyone was expecting during the months of publicity that led up to the award show streamed live on the internet on April 11. What we actually saw during the award presentation itself however was a different matter.
The tone of the entire ceremony was crude, vulgar, superficial, and unprofessional. There were multiple masturbation jokes in the host’s monologue, a scripted bit with an actor playing a vulgar porn producer that goes on and on and on, presenters in nothing but underwear, not to mention unplanned events like two male streakers and people rushing the stage to molest the presenters.
@streamyawards This is insulting & not funny. Gay jokes & dick jokes are not funny when Vanity Fair called you the Oscars of the internet.
There was a point in the show that I was like “Is this really happening?” I can’t even imagine how the brands and sponsors felt being a big part of the event. This is one of the biggest hurdles in online video is getting brands to trust the content they are advertising against. Now, they can’t even trust a show ABOUT online video!
Worse, the bulk of the prepared jokes played off the stereotype of Elitist Hollywood v. Web Show Wanabe. From the host’s introductory monologue:
Tonight we have 35 awards to give out but let’s not forget the real winners, the 4 people who actually made money on the internet.
One or two of these types of jokes would be OK but it really seemed like this was the theme of the evening. You can’t make money on the internet (not true, we do, and so do others) and nobody watches shows on the web (also not true. We’ve had a thriving and growing community watching our show for years.)
About a third of the way through there was a pre-recorded “man on the street” video that I found particularly insulting. The host repeatedly asked random people on the street what their favorite web show was. Of course no one they asked even knew such a thing existed, leaving the impression that the industry is a complete joke. This meme went on and on through the evening…
My biggest personal issue with the show was that it disrespected the professional industry that I (and many others) have been working so hard to build over the past 5 years. The constant jokes about lack of funding in web series, lack of viewers, etc. cheapened our hard work, especially when a lot of the attendees ARE making money and have more viewers (and less publicists) than cable television shows.
To be fair, there were a few very positive moments, mostly by the award recipients themselves, like the Auto-Tune the News gang who sang their acceptance speech in four part harmony. Amazing. Or Felicia Day who, in spite of having to take the stage only moments after what happened in the picture above, managed to deliver an extremely uplifting, generous, and authentic acceptance speech. Very classy.
The Streamy’s could have been about the pioneering spirit of the creators, the excitement of doing something different, the possibilities of the future, but no. Instead it was about snarky, crude, superficial, mean spirited jokes. They spent the evening making fun of what I’ve been successfully doing for the last four years of my life. In short the newly minted IAWTV has brought the absolute worst of stereotypical Hollywood snobbery to my industry and frankly I resent it.
Telling a thousand people that their jobs, content, livelihoods, and dreams are a joke, and that the only way they’ll amount to anything is to beg their “betters” (read: “celebrities,” but the unstated implication was made very clear) to slum it in their crappy webseries…well, that’s not gonna go over well. Repeatedly joking that it’s subpar quality, or that there’s no money, future, or reason to get involved only hurts us all.
I can’t fathom what the producers of the show were thinking during the months preparing for this broadcast. How could they get it so wrong, insult their own membership, and frankly tarnish their own brand on purpose like this. The producers have posted an apology and have promised to do better next year. Fine… I don’t think simply trying harder is going to resolve the issue though. The problem goes to the basic core values of the IAWTV. What kind of organization do they want to be? Do they represent all types of web video? …or only those that try to mimic broadcast television? Do they truly support all web video creators? …or are they only interested in getting the attention of a few large studios? Are they going to be inclusive and truly international as their name suggests? …or only cater to the worst superficial stereotype of LA based “Hollywood.” Time will tell…
Today Consumer Reports asked me to do an online survey. Normally I don’t do this type of thing but I’ve supported Consumer Reports for a long time and I was curious what was in their survey given the dire state of the magazine industry. The “bait” in the e-mail was the opportunity to choose their next magazine cover. These were the two choices.
Really? You couldn’t figure that one out? You don’t know which cover is going to attract more readers at the newsstand?
After filling out the rest of the survey I was actually surprised at how low I scored Consumer Reports. I used to read the magazine every month and I used much of the information. I don’t get the magazine anymore obviously, but I do subscribe to their website. I used their ratings to buy a vacuum cleaner about six months ago but not for much else. The internet now gives me access to lots of other product users and I can get information from them directly. The product information available online is also so vast that any one company just can’t test and rate everything. It’s too bad. I think an organization like Consumers Union provides certain “watchdog” services that you can’t get anywhere else. I don’t think they will survive though unless they figure out a way to add more value to their ratings.
The big budget movie “Avatar” gets the top three spots. Why? The official music video version of Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? has almost the exact same title and also has WAY more views than any of the other three, yet it gets bumped to fourth position. The movie “Avatar” only matches one word in the title of the current video but it gets the top three spots. I sense something fishy. Are small independent producers getting pushed down in the rankings in favor of companies like 20th Century Fox? It looks like it to me.
