901am

The Blog Herald has a sibling. Yup, a sister site has come along and been born. As The Blog Herald has covered blogging news for a long long time. So the Mobile Herald will be to cellular technology,mobile content, and the mobile tech industry. With a crew of 5+ bloggers, and a creative designer we are very proud to announce the beginnings of this sister site.

The Bloggers:
Ben, our foreign correspondent from Australia
David Krug, the artist formerly known as Cowboy
Jen Lima, a spicy latin cell phone and gadget enthusiast
Chris Pearson, Designer and Cell Phone Enthusiast
Marcus, (me), Freelance Journalist + ProBlogger and Cell Phone Nut

The Sibling: Mobile Herald : Subscribe to the Feed

At E-Tech earlier in the week Ross Mayfield blogged a conversation between Esther Dyson, editor at large for CNET, and Release 1.0 and Pierre Omidyar, the founder of Ebay.

O: Generally less choice can lead towards more satsification. I feel the need to reframe it. If less choice is good, then is users in charge good? It is so important because we are talking about individual self empowerment. When they are empowered, this leads to making the world a better place. What is important is what environment they are in when they are excersizing their choice and their power. With eBay, I focused on the environment where when people act in their interest it leads to a greater good.

Esther: a certain number in the middle that if you treat them well and give them power, they will become better and better. But some will do bad.

O:Focus on environment. I founded eBay on the notion that people are basically good, and 10 years later we have evidence this is the case. The kinds of structures I think are important:

1. Access: open access, level playing field, transparency, equal access to information are attributes of any environment with positive outcomes
2. Connection: enabling individuals to connect and interact with one another. Market solutions, collaboration and wisdom of crowds.
3. Sense of ownership: skin in the game lets individuals feel there is an investment required to participate and accountability (e.g. reputation systems).

One of the ways that you can limit choice is by creating a structure, a set of rules that says this is what this environment is about. So you do not have a choice to behave contrary to the rules. Doing this can make people uncomfortable despite wanting to be inclusive. Be most things to most people. If you are a bad actor we don’t want you in the community. I map rules to limiting choice in this context.

Esther: start with one set of rules, what are the rules for changing rules?

O: And interesting set of questions. If you start with the notion that people are good and enabling them to persue their self interest makes the world a better place, then you have to have the default assumption that allowing them to make their own choices is the right thing to do. That means for eBay, Meetup or other systems — you start with as little structure as possible, watch what they are doing and limit the behavior that is contradicting the environment you are trying to create. Lots of consequences for over regulation. Important to pay attention to what people do when they don’t make a choice.

At eBay we have made a lot of decisions where we had to respond to the community. In the early days we thought of the economic system and taxing behavior that we thought that was okay, but not great. E.g. imposing a tax on reverse price action because the price discovery mechanism was less transparent. That was a good way to do it, can’t think of a negative example offhand. You don’t want to legislate or criminalize all negative behavior.

Esther: many people have free services here and are trying to find how to charge for them appropriately.

O: My approach to this kind of problem is that if you are providing a service of value to users, you as the provider, designing for the user, create a sustainable business model. The best way to do that is derive revenue from the core value you are creating. With eBay, the transactions, rather than something that is happening on the side. We need to be looking for businesses that are a force for social good. But a lot of people do not believe this and think you have to make up for profits through contribution to charity. If you can charge a fair price and can use that to build more services at charge that pays employees and puts their kids through school — all this is a good thing.

Zoe Baird: can you talk a little bit about what you see as the next wave of tools to have both transparency and privacy?

O: Transparency in a system doesn’t mean transparency around individuals actions. Not every user action needs to be transparent. Having control over identity is critical. If you are in an economic system, buyers and sellers need to know each other or intermediaries need to be known, but full transparency is not directly complementary with commerce. Need to protect individual information with their own control, but some level of transparency is important.

Esther: allowing a second pseudonym that authenticates your identity (e.g. Opinity)

O: These are great solutions for privacy without loosing the ability to conduct commerce.

Gary Bolles: with eBay you have an infrastructure, but with the Network what are the kind of rules?

O: One of our important realizations is that business cannot be left out of the equation and can be a force for good. I recently rediscovered Adam Smith, the classic baker selling to shoe maker example where the profit is evidence of the quality of life increasing for both parties. Smith held that we needed competition and no negative externalities, but our modern economies are more complex. Which is where we get to Access, Connection and Ownership.

The wonderful thing about an enabling environment is that it leads to trust. Buy something from a stranger and it can teach you that you can trust a stranger.

Christina Koukkos: what example investments can you share? Someone else asks about clean tech?

O: Example of our investments would not include clean energy. Clearly clean energy is an example of a business that can be a force for good, something that can be sustainable as a business and a sustainable contribution. Compare to the current industry which has a ton of externalities, an industry you cannot be convinced that you are making the world a better place if you work for in it.

A lot of ON investments in this room. Linden Lab demonstrates connection and collaboration, shared interests within world sometime, shared ownership. Meetup: how does my group work? Eventful: has an event demand aggregation tool that increases the level of ownership and user empowerment.

Someone asks: how do I extend my reputation I built within eBay into other environments?

O: Because you can have different environments with different rules and different structures, the reputations you build don’t necessarily map to other environments. There is a desire to say a local reputation should be extended nationally (Mayor of a small town to President of the US), but while it is relevant it may not necessarily map.

***
This guy really is a genius. Ebay is a company that listened to its users and suceeded.

I’m fairly new to the “blog network” space. Over the weekend the best and worst comes out in people. I usually take the weekend off to spend with the wife and kids. I found this great quote over at BusinessLogs

At Jason Fried’s keynote with Jim Coudal, Jason talked about how the majority of the people who complain about their products (either via email, or by trolling in their blog entry comments) are the ones who use the free versions of 37signals products. The people who are paying 1 or more monthly fees don’t complain, because they feel as though they’re getting $100 value per month for $14, or whatever it is and love 37signals. If you’re using a product for free but still feel the need to complain, I think you need to learn The Art of Sucking Down :)

Likewise,
Many people don’t realize blogs are the independent newspapers of the Internet. We operate using free products, and even the news itself which garners a significant amount of traffic from a variety of sources is free. We may not always operate the way some want. And we may not always operate it the way we want. Much time and energy goes into these blog networks and much of it is hardly re payed. What so many people have to understand is this: The Blog Network Owners aren’t the audience of this publication. That makes about as much sense as Les Moonves setting up a TV Channel for Ted Turner.

Let’s realize there are more important issues to talk about. I even chide Matt Craven, our managing Editor for this one. Seriously why isn’t the Blogosphere alive with talks about Net Neutrality and its importance to Blogging,and the future of New Media. OK, chide’s a heavy word. But seriously. Let’s have a discussion on bandwidth,and potential legislation on Net Neutrality before I have to report on some new legislation that could affect us all negatively.

Brad Fitzpatrick the founder of LiveJournal has announced they have crossed over to the dark side. Ok not really. Here’s a few questions he asked himself. I think a lot of LiveJournal users talk to themselves.

If I’m a free user, will I see ads on my Friends Page? (sorry, the link is for the non-LJers who might be confused…)

No.

If I’m a free user, will I see ads on my friend’s entry pages once I click off to their journal from my Friends Page?

Yes, if your friend has turned on ads. The way we see it: your Friends Page is just your aggregator of all your journals/blogs/news you read, and people on LiveJournal already read lots of ad-supported websites. So if a new user comes to LiveJournal and enables ads, and you find them interesting and want to read them, how are ads on LiveJournal any less offensive than ads on a remote site?

What about your Guiding Principle to avoid banner advertisements? What about things you’ve said in the past? Why should I continue to trust LiveJournal?

Well, we’re not forcing it on users. It’s purely a new option that users can enable if they want, so we don’t feel it’s that evil.

I am morally against ads. Why should I keep supporting/promoting LiveJournal? If you’re going to bring in so much money now, why should I keep volunteering for you?

That’s a question you’ll have to ask yourself. We’re not going to try and convince you to like ads or what we’re doing, if you’re morally opposed to it. Hopefully you respect at least how we’re going about this.

What if I see an ad that is inappropriate?

We won’t be accepting inappropriate ads, but the definition of “inappropriate” is very subjective, so we want to eventually let users control their ad options (if they want) and have very easy ways to complain about ads they don’t like. We won’t launch with this level of control right away, but we will work on developing it over time. Of course, you could also just turn them all off too by switching to another level.

Will free users ever get any new features or just ad and paid users?

Free users will continue to get new features. Our model’s always been to give out a little to get you addicted, then hope you pay if you’re happy with the service and want more.

And what about communities?

Currently communities can choose either the free or paid level. Eventually community admins will be able to opt-in to the new level with ads if they choose. We’re working on what we will offer communities in the new level. We’ll talk more about this later and solicit your suggestions.

Will any of my “personally identifiable information” be sent to advertisers? Will my email address be sold?

No.

Are ads going to slow down the performance of the site?

Not any more than any other site with ads. Your browser will have more stuff to download!, but LiveJournal’s performance will be exactly the same. The ads will be served from different machines, unrelated to the LiveJournal servers. If you have a fast computer and fast Internet connection, you won’t notice.

Why is this being posted to [info]lj_biz and not [info]news?

[info]lj_biz is where we’ve historically discussed stuff like this, although we regret we haven’t been using it as much as we used to. It’s also a smaller audience for us to get initial feedback/questions/fears/etc, so when we do our [info]news post it’ll be more comprehensive. Also, we like to reserve news for stuff that’s available immediately, not plans for the future. Plans for the future are better in [info]lj_biz and [info]lj_dev. Please share this post with your friends and others that might be interested if you don’t think they read this community.

When are you launching the new level?

Not for another month or so. We’re trying to do it very carefully, taking our time, trying to get everybody’s feedback incorporated. I’m sure it won’t be perfect at launch, but we’ll continue to improve it over time, as we have with all the other levels and features. Check back here and in news for more information, and in the meantime leave your feedback in the comments below.

How can I trust any of this information?

I guess you can’t. I’m just the old fogey poking my head in again with my ideals. It’s easy for me to make statements, but like I said earlier, actions speak louder than words. Don’t just blindly trust me … wait and see. We’re working hard to do this in a way that won’t suck, and we’re going to listen to you and do what we can to make sure we make as many people happy as possible, even if we can’t please everyone. Check back in later to make sure we’re being nice.

Via LiveJournal Community

Six Apart recently received 12 Million in venture capital something company outsiders have looked at with a wary eye. This may actually turn out to be huge if as CEO Barak Berkowitz says to the Silcon Beat is even an ounce of truth.

He’s going to get a group together to fight spammers. He’s looking to press Washington to pass legislation to ban computer generated comments on blogs. Right now, computer generated spam is legal, and spammers just keep coming up with more sophisticated ways of getting around filters. “I’m going to start getting a group together to take this forward,” he said. “There’s no real advocacy group for blogs, there’s no blogging association.”

– Silicon Beat

Speaking of spam I am off to clean up another pile of it. Legislation. I’m very much for blog spam legislation.