The Chain Will Keep Us Together
Quick show of hands… Who here used to use the computer BBS’es of the ’80s and early ’90s? How about the Compuserve message forums? How about the original AOL People Connection and Usenet gateway? What do these have in common? For the most part, they are all dead as fried chicken, replaced by other technologies and the Internet as a whole. This form of digital Darwinism is one of the reasons techology development still moves at a breakneck pace. Except of course, in the world of online pro audio sites. A recent study (pdf format) by Nielson//Netratings found 75% of all online connections were not using a browser.
As I’ve harped countless times on other forums, it’s not so much about the software as it is about how the community is managed and respected by the members of the community. Over the years I’ve witnessed and even participated in the evolution and sometimes the demise of different communities in different forums, most of them not within the pro audio realm. BBSes, AOL groups, Usenet groups, Web forums have all fallen to the axe in a large part based on how the users acted and how those running the community acted or reacted. Or in the case of Usenet, the commericalization of the Internet. I rarely participate in audio forums other than the LAB or forums I happen to operating, though I do log a metric buttload of time in other forums. Over the last year or three a good part of my social life has migrated to a combination online/live format. Motorsports, dating, job search and several technology communities have replaced much of what I used to try to do offline. Some of it successful (motorsport, tech communities). Some not so successful (dating, job search). I think you’ll find others in that same boat. I’ve met more people in the last few years this way that share my specific interests than I did the entire previous five year period.
This extrapolation of the boundries of a community allows persons to extend their social sphere well past what is available in the traditional network of social interaction. How many bars or social functions would one have to attend to gain this kind of critical mass? Even in the olden days trade show networking was hit and miss. You exchange cards, have dinner, discuss issues of the day perhaps and the occasional phone call and that was about it for most folks. The modern Internet facilitates the ability to keep in touch and foster these kinds of interaction with P2P chat, Webcams, email and the ages old at this point, traditional community forum. There is one slight drawback to this kind of online interaction, particularly when you’ve never met them in person. Who the hell are they and what are they REALLY like.
On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog. Or an audio professional, for that matter. In the days when the Internet was still for the most part “small” it wasn’t too difficult to know who was who and if they indeed had a clue as to what they were talking about. This is particularly problematic when the community experiences either a transient population or increasing turnover of established members. That’s just the nature of the beast. How do you know the guy that just posted to your distro question really knows anything about what he’s talking about? How do you know the guy that just gave you the comparison between the PM1D and D5 has really even used one, or has he just read the stories in the trade mags and been to a demo or two? In many, if not most cases you can’t tell and need to take the person’s word for it. Enter social networking.
Traditional community forums do employ a sort of social network loosely based on a poster’s perceived record and the biases of the person making the decision. In other words, current forum based communities are social networks in that people interact socially through them. Under this new model users would be rated or have “cred” based on the standing in the particular community using a combination of factors. It’s more than just other users rating other users. Rankings are based on a combination of factors with the goal being to give others in the community what this particular person is all about. It’s not so much like eBay’s user feedback section, more like Slashdot’s Karma indicator, based on a variety of factors determined by software not seen to the end user. They can include things such as number of posts, replies to posts, threads started and human factors such as post moderation ranking and user ranking. As with any system, it’s possible to manipulate the technology but the lynch pin is having trust in the administering body. This sort of trust was one of the key components in what made the LAB the resource that it has become. Unfortunately, I see that trust currently eroding at the LAB. My friends and former colleagues are working on it, but I sadly feel all they are doing at this point is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
It doesn’t just stop at the user, it also has to take into account the the quality and nature of the post. Post quality will require a human factor to rate. Posts can be scored by user and administrator moderation features and rated accordingly. Depending on the user’s rank, they should be able to assign an arbitrary value as a moderation score. The more respected one is in the community, the more weight the user has in moderation. Not everyone likes everything so a filter system enabling users to chose a what level they will read the posts. For example, let’s say we have an abitrary scale of -2 to +5 for a rating system. Users should be able to select a level for them to be able to read the posts. From everything to only what the community considers cream of the crop.
Besides the ambiguity and suspect nature of some of the info on open message forums another caveat is the stucture and presentation of the information in the first place. The user is tethered to a site and held to the terms and conditions of that site. It’s generally a Good Thing (TM) but in many circumstances there are other issues that may relate in some way to the subject matter or things that a poster might wish to address. One thing it took me a while to fully understand was that posters are human and not everything that everyone thinks about is audio. There needs to be some other sort of interaction. All work and no play makes for a very dull “boy” indeed. Or a boring one. These include two of the “no no” subjects, politics and religion and other personal matters like “hey I got married” or “hey I had a(nother) kid”. It’s the cold hearted moderator that moderates the latter posts and a smart mod that moderates the former. Just something about politics and religion that seems to set many people off. That said, some do like to expound on subjects other than audio and even a more open format on a single message forum might not allow that or take that into account. Enter the blogsphere.
Blogging has become one of the latest tech fads, though is poised to enter the mainstream in the coming year. It’s introduction was much like message forums, or even email. A few techie early adopters, then some non profits and activist organizations and now corporate and business entities are entering the blogging fray. For some fads, once the suits get ahold of it, it ceases to be trendy or even useful. But not in all cases. Blogging allows persons to take the self publishing to a new level. Just as with the advent of Web pages, there will be many, many dull, uninteresting and boring blogs, just like the “see my dog spot” pages in the late ’90s, there will be, and already are, plenty of boring blogs. The upside is people that are respected and well known that wouldn’t participate on a forum seem to be more inclined to host a blog. Many of the entries are short, often referencing another story or blog. Some are longer, like ABD though most at this point are snippets. So, if we have all these people creating their own content how the hell is it interactive and how the hell to we know where to go to read these earthshattering thoughts? Enter content aggregation, comments and trackback.
Content aggregation, trained search, comments and trackback are mechanisms which take different information sources, traditional sites, blogs, message forums, Usenet and even email and mailing lists and bring the reader info that they want to see. Some of these technologies are already in action here at A Barking Dog, others at iproaudio. See the columns of links to other sites? That’s content syndication using a technology called RSS. When you group of bunch of syndicated content you have content aggregation. You subscribe to things that interest you and the info comes to you. You aren’t going to need your own site to use it. Yahoo is offering content aggregation in MyYahoo and released a beta version last week. There are also tools being released to allow you to get feeds and manage them from your desktop and avatars that search for feeds of content that you like. These can be as easy as RSS search bots, or more encumbered like a user defined, regular search of the Web using something like Google APIs. I made a deal with myself last month that I wouldn’t leak too much vaporware or talk about things I didn’t have ready, but this one is pretty cool. I had planned to show a demo this weekend using the Google API in an app that could be handy for busy audio pros. You type in things you like to be informed of and it goes and gets them for you, new stuff on a regular basis (had that part) and eventually would learn your likes and dislikes and tailor the searches based on past behavior. (don’t yet have that part) Anyway, it’s been a rough couple of months at Roaddog Manor as far as servers are concerned and Sat night the drive controller on poor Tweak bid the world a horrific farewell, taking the latest couple weeks of the current Charlotte crawl (demoing the new search tools) and the dev environment for the next round of Web services. Oh well, hopefully I’ll sort it in the next several days or so.
Now that many of us chuckleheads have blogs, personalized search, social networks and all this other technocrap, how do we interact? Pretty much the same way we do now, gather online using either email, P2P tools like IM, Web forum or portal sites or the good ol’ desktop. The beauty of this new generation of tools is that we aren’t teathered to a specific site (unless we want to be) and we are more or less free to use tools we feel more comfortable with, instead of a Newsclient, email reader or browser. I’m interesting in showing the potential of these new technologies at iproaudio. The hurdles are many, it won’t be a quick fix, particularly in such a vertical market as pro audio. The technology and implementation, as well as getting others to see the benefits shouldn’t be too difficult over time. Developing a business model, however, will be a ballbuster.