Flux Research: Online Business Models

Flux Research & Related Projects Update

For the tiny handful of folks paying attention, I want to update what's happening with this project.

I've been holding off on posting for a few related reasons. The kind of blog I'd want to do about online business models would involve fairly high volume posting and also require my shifting to Movable Type based on what I think would work best for a variety of reasons.

It would also require me to start tracking and processing news and information at a rate that's a little beyond me unless I go in for a really serious commitment. I've been considering doing that because what I envision would be very satisfying, I believe, both for myself and for those trying to do business online.

But I'm not sure I can make that commitment right now and it's suddenly complicated by the fact that I've started blogging about blogging and web publishing at This Business of Blogging (& Web Publishing).

That blog was launched to support some workshop activity I've been developing locally in Raleigh, NC and I was planning on occasionally dropping more general posts about some of the things I've learned about blogging on the way.

But I'm finding myself wanting to post there more frequently and realizing that some of what I would do here could also be done there without the high volume requirement I envision for Flux Research.

So I'm going to work on that blog's design a bit, do some more posting and see how that feels. That might also free this domain up for some more personal posting on the subject of change that has interested me since I first started reading about the late 60s and social change back when I was but a young lad in the early 70s.

I'm also developing some other projects that are low volume but require periodic attention, such as Hip Hop Research, an information resource focused on developing a book list of academic studies of hip hop. If I launch another high volume project in addition to ProHipHop, that would effectively kill these other projects and I'm not wanting to do that.

If I start doing online business model related posts at This Business of Blogging, I'll update here and probably make a final decision at that point.

If you're interested in this topic and want to drop me a line, please do so: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

Otherwise, stay tuned and consider subscribing to This Business of Blogging since, no matter what I decide, I will be doing some related posts over there.

Hip Hop PR Wire Shuttered, Hip Hop Press: Releases Relaunches

Hip Hop PR Wire, a site I launched as an attempt to build with free services and then add paid services, has folded.

In its wake, Hip Hop Press has relaunched with the following subcategories:

Hip Hop Press Releases
RnB Press Releases
Urban Arts and Fashion Press Releases
Music Industry Press Releases

Though the closing of Hip Hop PR Wire was billed as, in part, fallout from the recession, the reality is that other forces were also at play that won't be discussed publicly. It's important to remember when evaluating companies that usually we won't have the full story and, though we can sometimes fill in the gaps, phenomenon like "The Recession" are often used as cover to justify needed changes, such as reducing the workforce.

Fortunately, all is not lost, as the expansion of Hip Hop Press and future developments there are and will be based on lessons learned while building Hip Hop PR Wire.

The struggle continues!

Update from Behind the Scenes

I've been working on this topic a lot, really, I have!  Basically, I don't want to do a lot of posting until I work out some things about focus and organization, though that will continue to evolve over time once I'm posting regularly.

The biggest issue is to bridge my own experiences, watching developments related to online business models since I first started creating websites around early 2001 and exploring those possibilities on my own sites beginning soon thereafter, with the experiences of others that go beyond my needs.

Since my approach has always been to hoard this information for myself, there's a bit of sorting out and broadening to do while simultaneously focusing in on relevant information.

But that process is coming along just fine so, if you're watching, posts will soon come.

Diigo: FAIL [not exactly] [final update: i like!]

Diigo's great till you need it to do something like post to your blog or import your Google Notebook.

Damn.  More failure.

Web 2.0 truly sucks.  So much hype.  So little working product.

My Bad:

I used the advanced option to give them all the info I thought they needed to log into TypePad.  Diigo said it was valid but could never post to TypePad.

I finally tried WordPress and just did the basic configuration and it worked.

So I deleted the TypePad blog and reentered with the basic info and that worked.

Couldn't have gotten this info via Diigo's forums.  So do I trust that it's working now, given that every time I've used something like this it's eventually truly failed?

Don't know.

Final Update:

Now I'm digging Diigo!  Results soon.

Bonus Note:

The Google Notebook import just took a while though I haven't looked at the details!

Flux Research to Drop Publish2, Back to Unpleasantly Delicious [or something]

I'm so disappointed in Publish2.

At first they seemed like the perfect alternative to Delicious for sorting out my research focus for this blog.  Delicious pages load so slowly it's excruciating and I've wasted a huge aggregate amount of time over the last couple of years due to that fact alone.

I thought Publish2 would be the answer for links I wanted to make public while focusing in on where I want to take Flux Research.  In fact, the Publish2 links have been my primary activity on this project of late.

Big Problem: you can't remove tags from your account once they're created and the linking process doesn't offer a drop down menu of your own custom tags.

That means if you misspell something or change your mind about how you want to categorize something or forget exactly what custom tag you used, you still have the mistakes sitting there in your account making things more confusing in a variety of ways.  The tag is gone but it looks like it's still there and includes the last number of links you had under that tag.

Worse still, because of that fact, it took me a while to discover that at least 2 or 3 of my 15 or so categories aren't actually working, though I know they should be.  I'm getting error messages for categories that I created and know I didn't change.

I was actually creating a text file to keep up with my custom tags, stupid as that workaround sounds, when I accidentally discovered that key categories were gone.

Web 2.0.  Disappointing as it ever was.

If you have suggestions for other bookmarking services and you're not just promoting one with which you're involved, please drop a link in the comments section.

Google Monetizes Sex Slavery

So THAT's how the "do no evil" business model works.

Flux Research Returns via "Link Journalism"

So, I decided to try out Publish2 and figure out what "link journalism" is all about.

So far it seems like bookmarking by journalists, which sounds like a flippant remark except that, almost every time I check out web tools for journalists I feel like they're clumsier versions of tools that bloggers and, yes, civilians already use.

I'll come back to that theme, since changes in journalism are one of my interests, though I'm sorry to say it's a field where I'm more struck by the mistakes than by the triumphs.  And I do see some things they're doing that represent the beginning of a useful service tailored to journalists, and that's how I think web tools should be built, so I'm not passing judgment.  I'm just saying.

But I do greatly appreciate being able to use their system, in fact, it may lead to me moving off TypePad and onto another platform because I'd like to publish the links on the site rather than simply having a sidebar widget.  Now that Delicious and TypePad don't seem to get along, I may have to move this project to Wordpress.

I don't want to do that but that's how it goes sometimes.

I also want to thank Publish2 because seeing these particular bookmarks outside my now massive Delicious account is enabling me to initiate a clearer process of thinking my way into certain areas of interest.

Because I've been trained as a qualitative researcher by cutting edge social scientists, with additional methodology classes from and independent study related to multiple fields beyond my doctoral requirements (PhD in Cultural Studies, OSU, 2000), I feel I need to explain that this is one approach in which the rather overmarketed concept of the "research question" is replaced by a process in which things aren't pinned down so rapidly since we don't have to kill it to study it.

More on all this to follow though I'll mostly be going quick and light for the time being.

At Publish2:
Clyde Smith: Links
RSS Feed

Flux Research on Web 3.0 & Beyond

I was just reading Nicholas Carr on Tim Berners-Lee, the social graph and Web 3.0 and decided it's time to jot down my basic take on what comes after Web 2.0.

Web 1.0 - Platform is the desktop
Web 2.0 - Platform is the open web
Web 3.0 - Platform goes mobile
Web 4.0 - Platform extended to objects & the physical environment
Web 5.0 - Platform enters the human system

Like the shift from the modern to the postmodern, each new phase incorporates and intermingles with previous phases rather than replacing them.

In addition, phases will overlap, some may leapfrog others and, in general, developments will be increasingly nonlinear.  For example, while the still closed nature of mobile carrier platforms will be overwhelmed by the open mobile web the extension of the web to objects and into the human body will create an even stronger need for walled gardens and systems that securely mix open and closed elements.

Of course you could focus on other categories of development and explore other trajectories but currently I'm finding the focus on platforms most useful.  On a related note, I find the concepts of the Semantic Web and the social graph very Web 2.0.

A Brief History of the New Media Revolution

Nicholas Carr on Mark Zuckerberg's 100 Year Law

Nicholas Carr skewers Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to overreach his education:

"Once every hundred years media changes," boy-coder turned big-thinker Mark Zuckerberg declared today at the Facebook Social Advertising Event in New York City. And it's true. Look back over the last millennium or two, and you'll see that every century, like clockwork, there's been a big change in media. Cave painting lasted a hundred years, and then there was smoke signaling, which also lasted a hundred years, and of course there was the hundred years of yodeling, and then there was the printing press, which was invented almost precisely 100 years ago, and so forth and so on up to the present day - the day that Facebook picked up the 100-year torch and ran with it. Quoth the Zuckster: "The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today."

Read the whole thing.  It may sound harsh but Carr is rarely harsh without a darn good reason.

That's why Rough Type gets the Flux Research "Hype Slasher" Seal of Approval!

"Part Time Librarian to Chairman/CEO"

Here's are some interesting details from a job description for a "Part Time Librarian to Chairman/CEO":

Serve as librarian to the Chairman and CEO of an investment partnership based in Greenwich, CT...

Develop and track a reading program
- Work with the CEO and staff to develop a weekly reading syllabus
- Set specific reading goals and actively track the CEO’s progress
- Continuously update the syllabus to reflect feedback and new content

Recommend and purchase new books
- Work with the CEO and staff to define and continuously update a list of reading topics
- Proactively identify books, articles, and academic research that address these topics
- Review, recommend, and purchase relevant materials

Research applicable topics
- Respond to research requests as received
- Work with staff to initiate relevant research efforts independently

Perform requisite administrative functions
- Send books and other reading materials to the CEO and staff who are traveling
- Execute other library-related administrative functions as needed

I'm especially interested in the elements that indicate that this will be a position in which the librarian becomes an active contributor to the development of knowledge within the organization.

Of special note:
Set specific reading goals and actively track the CEO’s progress

That strikes me as rare.

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey & New Forms of Editorial Content

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey provides information and analysis for folks in tech pr but I listen to Sam's podcast to find out what he has to say about B2B tech publishing because that's what he follows to keep pr folks up to date.

One of the big themes Sam gets me thinking about is the shift in what constitutes editorial content including new developments in custom publishing and vendor content creation, social networks as publishing platforms and such notions as rss feed aggregation as editorial process.  By "rss feed aggregaton as editorial process" I'm clumsily referring to the fact that these days a web publisher can be someone who combines rss feeds and runs advertising next to the headlines.  Sam regularly considers aspects of this development.

For a simple example of how I've explored such ideas as "rss feed aggregaton as editorial process" please see World Cypher, a one-page website that features mixed rss feeds from hip hop blogs and news outlets plus a Flickr photo strip for pics marked "hip hop" and a Google custom search engine focused on hip hop sites.

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey will be broadening its focus in '08 to include consumer publications so SWMS is going to be an even greater resource for those in tech pr as well as for those wanting to understand how publishers are adjusting to the emergent media environment.

Information R/evolution: Using False Comparisons to Make a Questionable Point

Information R/evolution

I was initially disappointed that Julian had closed the comments on his interesting response to the above video and to Mitch Joel's take on the video but it gives me an opportunity to post here.

One door closes, many remain open.

The above video starts with a model for information gathering that depicts finding objects on library shelves as an example of the old way of finding information versus the new world of the Web where we are freed of experts and expert taxonomies and enter a rich world of readily available information via search engines.

There's more in there but that core comparison is what interests me at the moment though I will briefly explore only one aspect.

Major problem: The library was never the sole source of information and rarely the primary source of information for most of our daily needs in pre-Web days.

Libraries have never been the only way people get information.  We also talk to neighbors, track down experts, go to bookstores, watch tv and so forth.

In a very real sense the web has rebundled those sources of information so that when we go online we might now go to our public library's online databases, talk to peers in forums, read expert blogs and e-books, watch how-to videos on YouTube and so forth.

So if you compare the web, an aggregator of all those sources, to one of those sources, then of course the web comes out as superior, even if one does not replace all those other sources with the web.

That's a rigged comparison which means that what one learns from it will be inherently flawed.

On a related note:

"There is no shelf." [!?!]

Of course there's a shelf.  It's called a server.

From the Dewey Decimal System to Mahalo

I've been thinking about an odd comment in John Battelle's The Search [p. 33] regarding the Dewey Decimal System:
The Dewey decimal system has been updated numerous times over the years and is still widely used, but its subject-based focus would be unable to scale to the enormousness of the World Wide Web.

It's a passing comment from Battelle so I'm not using it to criticize his work but I think it's fairly obvious that the Dewey Decimal System wasn't designed to address search within resources so how could it be scalable in relationship to search?  It's simply not relevant once you get past the problem of a classification system designed to deal with individual objects and move on to the actual contents.

But subject-based classification systems are eminently scalable to the "enormousness" of the Web when categorizing individual resources and allowing for multiple subject categories per resource as shown by the Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory.

On a related note, one has to wonder if the seemingly universal shift to search replacing portals was spurred in some small part by the devolution of the Yahoo! Directory to an overpriced SEO catalog and of the Open Directory to a poorly maintained collection of inconsistent quality.

Obviously even a well-maintained directory of websites is not a search engine.  So if you've got a web directory but a search engine's what you need, just fire up a Google Custom Search Engine, have it automatically add all the links from your directory and then let them provide the search of all the sites listed via one engine that can monetize the service via Google text ads.

Though you'll have to acknowledge Google's obvious involvement, you can then flip from directory mode, make your landing page the Google search box and call your site a search engine.

Similar to the Jason Calacanis/Mahalo model.

[Disclaimer: I'm a former Open Directory editor.]

Introducing: Clyde Smith

It felt like I went public today by linking out to other blogs and sending a trackback so I guess it's time to share a little personal information.

Flux Research: It's a Clyde Thing

Vita Highlights:

MLS (Library Science): Texas Woman's University (2006)
Phd (Cultural Studies in Education): The Ohio State University (2000)
MA (Dance & Performance Studies): UNC-Greensboro (1995)

Academic Research:

Alternative Forms of Data Presentation
Nonlinear Science and the Postpositivist Researcher
Course Proposals: Art for Engineers

Web Publishing:

Cultural Research
netweed
ProHipHop

This is a one man show, like many of my current projects, though I've been a team player before and am becoming one once again [that's called foreshadowing].

If you wish to be in touch, please do:
clydesmith(at)culturalresearch(dot)org

Peace.