Anonymous v Scientology

I, like most people online, have been following what news I can find on the "jihad" against Scientology by Anonymous. I can't say I'm saddened by this news, to me Scientology is nothing less than a dangerous cult; most likely a brainwashing cult on top of that. So what else is there to say other than, "Give 'em hell boys".

Analysis of the Digg Fizzle

What strikes me about this whole thing is the denial that Digg is simply operating under typical corporate business practice. As we all know there is one thing on the minds of the Digg brass now, and that is getting the big payout. Quite simply they are doing what it takes to attract venture capital or outright buyers. Obviously the Digg name is quite valuable as web brands go, but that looses value when you consider the user involvement ratios. As Valley Wag pointed out, much of Digg’s Front Page (FP) submissions come from a small minority. We all know and love these users, they are minor web celebrities in their own right, but to Digg they are an indirect enemy. Perhaps this sounds nutty, but consider the recent changes to the Digg algorithm promoting random users to the FP. In the past the FP was basically the domain of that hardcore minority, a change which was certainly made for a reason. Along these same lines, why does the new algorithm merit diggs from friends as less meaningful than diggs from non-friends? So far it all comes back to “penalizing” established diggers who submit a great deal of FP content and hold huge friend lists.
So why the penalization, and why consider top diggers to be the enemy? To me this is all a play to increase attractiveness to potential buyers/inventors which Digg feels must be waiting behind the curtain. When an investor sits down with Kevin and Jay and crunch the numbers, they don’t want to see a small minority of users being put in the FP spotlight. That’s bad for loyalty ratios. If a new digger can submit a few stories and immediately see one of those submissions go FP he is logically more likely to embrace Digg as a favorite web destination. It’s the basic psychology of seeing your name in the lights. What they don’t care about is that same user hitting the FP a year from now, with his large friends list and high submission rate, when he has become well known. They don’t care at that point because that user has already played their part; now it’s time for another new no-name user to FP with his early submissions.
Yes it is a short term play, but that’s really all the Digg brass are concerned with. They are looking to sell within months, not years. Why play a game for long term loyalty when they can boost page views and stickiness today by making all new users potentially much happier? In Digg’s situation this business plan isn’t really unsound or even bad; it meets all of Digg’s present goals. As a social bookmarking user and fan I don’t think it’s cool, but hey, that’s why I use Mixx.

The Digg Rev[fizzle]

When I began reading all the news which had been emailed to me and made popular on Mixx last night I thought something real was in motion. A real “Digg Revolt”! People would stop complaining and take some action. This was not the case.
The Digg users got all riled up and finally organized to demand answers and perhaps a change or 2. They organized in a way which was obviously meaningful enough to bring Kevin and Jay out to answer questions… or so it seemed. What resulted was more of a calming action than a Q&A session. Certainly I wasn’t there, but what was solved? In reading all subsequent analysis I can’t see much of anything which was changed. Sure some questions were danced around and answers hinted at, but that’s about all. Basically this should be used as a case study in crisis management within business school strategic management classes worldwide. It’s really a textbook example; my old StratMana professor would have been proud of these guys (really!).
Honestly I don’t know if I expected anything less. The Digg community most likely has little incentive to actually revolt until they are actually forced out, which is no revolt. I love good online communities as much as anyone, but once people get insulated in their network they rarely want to disrupt that network on ideological grounds. Just look at the proof: a number of top Diggers have been banned, yet the friends of these high profile users remained. They didn’t move to Mixx on principle as their banned brethren were forced to do. With all the negatives floating around Digg and the obvious dismissal by the user community, I suppose we shouldn’t have truly expected much; certainly not an actual revolt.
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Have a good Digg Day, the holiday commemorating a revolution that never was.

The Digg Revolt

I didn’t do any Mixxing last night and I missed all the action. If you have been living under a rock like I apparently was late yesterday you probably missed all the “Digg revolt” happenings. From what I have feverishly read the top Digg users (many from The Drill Down podcast) organized an emergency show to talk live with the Digg brass. This has gotten attention from Valley Wag and other top media outlets.
I will let the links speak for themselves, as they are closer to the action, but I can’t help but wonder: Mixx FTW? I moved to Mixx for a number of reasons, but simply put it is a better social bookmarking site with a better community. I hope the final move will be to Mixx, whenever it may officially come.

The Diggnation PR Machine

When I became a fan of Digg in the past (something I have since moved away from, but that’s not the point) I was really interested in the Diggnation podcast, and all the peer appeal I found within. At that time Digg was already well on the track to shadiness in its business practices, but I was unaware of this, simply not having been exposed to Digg or social media at large. When I watched Kevin and Alex dude their way through each “frat-tastic” episode I felt it to be an entertaining look at Digg stories from the inside. It seemed to be a real enough experience, listening to commentary from the “kid” who created Digg; he seemed to be analogous to my friends and I, and I found connection in that very aspect.
Now when I look back at my attitude during those early months with Diggnation I feel a bit foolish. Having since learned more each day about the common practices at Digg I started to feel my young adult male connection erode. Honestly it’s less about the rumors of the auto bury list, bury brigade, shady super users, or heavy handed bannings, and more about the ideals driving those actions. Obviously those things don’t endear me to Digg, but the motivation to risk user revolt/alienation by employing these actions can only be related to tidying up the community for sale. Digg is obviously cleaning out the frat house before the serious bidders take the next walkthrough. It’s fairly well established in all the articles about Digg always being up for sale, the price tag having risen from around $50M to $300M during this time.
This is where my discontentment with Diggnation comes into play. During the past year or so, when the shadiness was being planned and executed, Diggnation was a constant source of “drinking buddy down the street” PR. Always out there to reassure all of us 15-30 year old users that your old drinking buddy from Diggnation would always be just that. Kevin Rose was a guy who sat on a couch, drank beer, ogled hot chicks, and made goofy observations, just like you. I must say the mercenary angle of it all does appeal to my business instincts. Diggnation is certainly not a bad thing for Digg to rely on for positive user relations; hell it’s really a textbook example of what a podcast should be: youthful new media. The textbook just can’t teach much on sincerity. In the end though, I think Diggnation is forever gone from my iTunes podcast subscriptions, I just don’t think I can buy into it any longer. I just see Kevin as the real, or imagined, emperor of Digg, making all these recent decisions based only on the almighty dollar. Like I said, a good bit of this is really just cut throat business strategy, but does anyone really believe Digg is a “digital democracy” anymore? A better analogy might be a populous third world dictatorship scrambling to clean up appearances for the United Nations, in hopes of attracting investment in its oil fields.

Danny Bonaduce [Finally] Leaves The Adam Carolla Show!

The Adam Carolla Show is one of the greatest radio shows in existence. Many might disagree with me here, but Carolla has consistently entertained me over the past 6 years. This is why the introduction of Danny Bonaduce, in January 2007, was such a blow to me. Here was a man’s show which I followed with near religious fervor being soiled by the constant spouting of a washed up, bad memory of that terrible decade known as the 70’s. A “personality” brought in to “entertain” the ignorant masses… the really ignorant masses. A man whose only draw is his history as a homeless, drug-addled former child star who admittedly is a terrible actor. Apparently in our ultra-low expectation society, this sort of thing appeals to the common man, or so KLSX/CBS Radio thought. This idea was completely insane to me, a person with no experience in the radio industry. I only knew what I knew as a dedicated fan or Mr. Carolla, and that was more than enough to know Bonaduce was a terrible addition.
While Carolla tells of the experiences as an actual common man who worked his way to his dream, Bonaduce could only repeat the same stories, which invariably fell into 4 categories: Poor Impulse Control, Meaningless Tidbits of Self Proclaimed Fact, Shameless Self Promotion, and Personal History of Shallow Relationships. In an attempt to not be so totally hurtful in my analysis of Bonaduce, I will admit he did make me laugh on a somewhat regular basis: his ever present category of Meaningless Tidbits of Self Proclaimed Fact. Despite the fact that I immediately cringed after each, I would in fact laugh… at him. I mean come on, who can help but laugh at an idiot like that? He would actually be terribly pleased with himself after vomiting these “facts” into the microphone.
The fact of the matter is Danny Bonaduce is a very sad case of a sociopathic life gone even worse, never to be a normal sociopath again. All we can do now is attempt to keep him out of our collective, national sight. Which brings up a point, I wonder if we can have him shipped to Mexico, or something like that. I do think it’s cruel and unusual punishment for the Mexican people to endure such a monstrosity of a human, but come on, they send millions of people here; the least they can do it take 1 extremely toxic case of human baggage off our hands. Anyway, exile aside, I’m glad CBS finally fired him from Carolla’s show. I can only wonder at the idiotic management who decided to give him an entire year of wrecking an otherwise great show. They must have been sharing the crack pipe with Bonaduce. As a public service announcement, I’d like to warn everyone: if you see a 5 foot tall man-monster with a face like a thumbprint walking down the street, flee immediately. He may look fairly non-threatening but trust me; he can suck the soul right out of a person.
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Addendum: If Mr. Bonaduce ever learns to actually operate a computer and reads this, please know that no one is impressed with the money you are making. A few million is hardly something to tell the world about these days. You have to get out of 1976, if only for your own good.

DRM in Retrospect

Has anyone else thought about the repercussions of DRM in regards to our future? Maybe this is an arcane thought, but what becomes of our media in 50 years when we have hardware and software saturated with DRM? Aside from all the other common sense and simple business minded arguments and opinions out there, I can’t help but think we are damaging our own history, in real time.
Say someone around my age is cleaning out their parents’ or grandparents’ attic for some reason, and come across a 50 year old film reel or record. Based on the technology of that day only the purchase price was required to access the media. Most any projector can show that film and most any turntable can play that record; it certainly makes enough sense. What about the same scenario for a hard drive from today, rediscovered in 50 years. If we further progress down the path on which we have apparently started, chances are you would need to reconstruct the media player to meet the drive’s specific DRM, or hold some piece of technology which could break all DRM after a certain date. Archival footage takes on a whole different meaning when we consider forcing students or history professors to pay for media accessed decades after creation. Or even force arbitrary tax today, with the knowledge that someone in the distant future will access without paying tribute.
Now I’m not seriously suggesting we are damaging the ability to access footage which will one day be considered historically meaningful. I am suggesting that DRM will need to be broken and stripped away. In some ways this sort of idiotic thinking makes me think of the fight against civil rights; seems weird, but bear with me. Why did some cities make the decision to maintain segregation long after the majority of the country had abandoned the practice? It would seem a logical person could ask themselves “Will this institution be accepted in the future?”, or “What will future generations think of these decisions?”.
The answer to such questions can only be desperate nostalgia/denial. Why else would otherwise logical businesses stick to such backward practices? Just as those last cities desperately fought the civil rights movement in opposition to popular opinion, big media is desperately trying to maintain its own archaic institutions. I’m not necessarily saying all media should be shared freely with no compensation to the creators, distributors, etc. I am saying changes must be made, and delaying that change only increasingly damages those very people each day.
It doesn’t seem like such a difficult question to ask yourself, if you are leading a big media company. “How do my decisions today affect me tomorrow?” It seems to me to be basic strategic planning/thinking, taught daily in business schools around the world. Obviously it’s a slow progression which leads people into these indefensible situations, but at some point you either go down with the ship or enact a plan to save yourself. Of course I think, once enough money is lost and enough customers are totally alienated, they will change their ways. The eventual billion dollar question is how much will they lose in that time?

Creationism in TX

For one of the few times in my life I am definitely not proud to be a Texan. You might think this is simply an arrogance which all Texans hold, tenuously linked to state land mass or belt buckle sizes, but I think everyone should be proud of what their city/state/country/world has done. Of course this attitude is also useful in keeping an eye out for those things your community, by whichever size you define it, does not do well. Unfortunately one of the most recent issues in the news of my state is science education.
I grew up attending a fairly small school district, with little money for educational extravagances, so I was never overly positive, or negative, on my primary education. But massive shifts in educational priorities at the state level can hardly be forgiven, especially when it involves denying science in favor of religion. The sad fact seems to be creationists (a.k.a. Intelligent Design proponents) seem to move from state to state, attempting to subvert science wherever the fight appears most promising. For this I suppose traditionally red states must look like quite a nice target.
We must remember the fight against this anti-science movement is never ending. A victory for science in one state apparently has little bearing on the situation of another. Only our constant attention on the curriculums of our primary schools, and the policies which support them, will allow actual science to be taught. In my mind it should be a rather simple question: Did religion put man on the moon, or operate a super-collider, at any point in our history? Those advances came from the scientific method of man, using logic, experiments, and facts which can be constantly tested and altered as new doors open. Of course religion only changes when convenient for a select few, and rarely for the benefit of anyone other than those select few. Yet if you must credit religion with any of those advances, ask your self just which religion made them happen. There is more than one popular, organized religion.

Thank You Mixxers

I just wanted to take a minute to thank all my Mixx brethren out there. Only a few hours after posting on my love of the Mixx community the story was submitted (by droppyale), and subsequently shared out to me (by joefowler3). My humble blog received readers from 15 countries around the world, and I have only Mixxers to thank.
Thanks again for the love, and most of all for proving my point!

Mixx v Digg

I’ve known about Digg for quite a while, but never really got into it until April 07. Since then Digg increasingly worked its way into my browsing habits until it was basically my favorite site. I was especially fascinated with the Digg Labs interfaces, most notably Stack & Spy. Apparently I’d joined the party at what seems now like a “time of upheaval” with bannings and the associated fallout with all those other gray areas of operation. I read more stories from Diggers who I knew as big time contributors being banned for shady reasons, or no reasons at all. It was from these high profile refugees and their unknown brethren that I learned of Mixx. Specifically it was the blog post on cGt2099.
To me, Mixx is everything I really ever hoped for in Digg. It’s really that simple. While the volume on Mixx may not be quite what I’d like to see, the future of the community more than makes up for that temporary issue. The community was quick to accept me as their friend and posted friendly and thought provoking comments on submissions. No matter how good a story was on Digg that mysterious mob of a-holes would almost invariably appear with mean spirited/vacuous comments. From that group of users I inherently found little sense of actual community. I readily admit I am most probably a victim of circumstance as it pertains to the Digg community. Digg is now something akin to a swirling cosmos of matter and anti-matter where you can easily grow lonely amongst the chaos, something I’m sure was not an issue just a few years ago.
Anyway, if you haven’t checked out Mixx, you should. It’s the social news equivalent of your friendly neighborhood mom-and-pop shop versus Wal-Mart. You love mom and pop, right?