:: Sense - The Way I Sense ::

Well, you read that right. Isn’t that like, an oxymoron? Well, If you still think so, then I guess its time to take a hard look at it. The web 2.0 community scene has been in the throes of a significant debate on the decision by Jason Calacanis, he of weblogs fame, to reward top posters at Netscape ! This is part of his efforts as a General Manager at AOL handling the netscape.com transition to a user-driven content generated site, much like the popular Digg & Reddit. Just in case you were not aware, sites like these have a transparent (?) voting mechanism where the links most voted are shifted to the home page and others get buried deep under. Both these sites enjoy a very strong community, more so with the nouveau tech savvy people to whom sites like slashdot are relics of the past ! Jason’s decision has indeed sparked a strong debate on if, and how, top contributors in a community are to be recognized. Is monetary compensation a just solution, considering all such sites make money off the back of these users that bring in traffic. Or would attaching a $ tag to top posters defeat the very purpose of the community? Jason spars with Digg’s co-founder Kevin Rose and the story is currently the hot point of discussion.

While Kevin of Digg goes on to say that they will have some sort of recognition system for top posters, however, he makes it point blank clear that $$$ won’t be involved. And this line of argument has clearly helped Jason in showing how Kevin isn’t sharing the $$$ that he is making off the adverts ! Mediashift has a very good coverage of the entire issue; worth more than a read !

 Having been associated with a community that, I like to believe, is a strong one, this debate holds a lot of meaning and direction. In fact, for everyone that is involved in creating and nurturing online communities, this indeed is an excellent point that has been raised. Why are top posters at community driven sites, top? Did they always have money as a motivating factor at the back of their mind. Or are they any less motivated to contribute once they realize the community also makes $$$ for someone. Can, and do, top posters draw motivation that monies raised by site promoters are almost always used (ofcourse, in part) to develop the community even more? Or do top posters keep site-hopping in the face of blatant commercialization of communities? Would the offer of money push away not just top posters, but the larger audience? Lotta questions. Sure would be mighty interesting to see where this all leads. Any takers? No, I wont pay for a discussion

And before I even realized, its been a coupla years since I started blogging ! Not bad, I should say, for I did not really think I would last thus far But yes, in the true sense of the word, mine might not be a blog at all. I don’t really talk much on personal life or work life, although I have been intending to do for quite a while. To me, it’s more an indication of what I was doing at a particular point in life…Sometimes more, sometimes less, But at the end of it all, something to sit back and read later and smile….Hopefully, it shall go on ….

Just in case you’ve missed, M$ has finally taken the wraps off their digital music platform, Zune. And this has in turn created a flutter in the market. Analysts predict that this is likely to antagonize M$’s partners such as Creative, iRiver and many others and many in the blogosphere have already made it sound like a project gone horribly wrong. If you look at media/blog/analyst coverage on all things M$ and google, its kinda interesting. When google says it is building a toothpick, people predict the next renaissance in the toothpick markets, otoh, when M$ makes an announcement, one only finds dooms day predictions for its product, and not the market. Definitely, while google may still be struggling to reduce spread of revenues from search ads, it has made sure the buzz factor is at resonance ! Personally, I think Zune definitely has enough potential to shake up Apple’s stranglehold on the market, and more importantly, it gives M$ a toehold into a consumer’s digital media landscape.

Closer home, you simply cannot miss this amazing & exclusive interview with the God of Marketing, Dr.Philip Kotler, published right here on PaGaLGuY ! I had an opportunity to go to his seminar here at Chennai, Courtesy Great Lakes, and its not tough to see why he is named one of the world’s top management gurus ! The interview was done by Allwin, who has now headed to Wharton. All da best pal !

So some wise souls sitting up there thought a few websites were spreading anti-national sentiments. And in typical babudom style, bring up a circular/note banning a dozen odd websites. And it so happens a few happen to be blogs hosted on blogger. And our dear ISPs in their over zealousness to play pally with the regulator go overboard and block the entire blogspot and geocities domains. And then, all hell breaks loose ! They hyper-inward looking blogging community starts the censorship bandwagon, and very soon mainstream media picks its up and its all mayhem. Right from /. to BBC, everyone compares India with China and rues about how democracy has failed us as a country repeatedly !

As I see it, its a case of a foot-in-mouth on part of the ISPs, and if I could, a very large foot ! was the extreme reaction from blogosphere really justified? Is bungling up considered censorship ? I know many might not agree with my understanding of the situation, but what the heck. I still consider India a democracy

No, I am not moving on with blogging and life That’s the title of a competition that was recently held to promote an eponymous budding travel community. And what better person to win it than our friendly neighborhood Journalist Apurv ! The guy’s currently travelling on a pre-determined route and blogging about it at OKTataByeBye. His pictures and depiction have been a treat to the eye. Do check it out. While his postings sure do make the site come alive, I was more than a tad disappointed at how a site that intends to build a community actually promoted the whole event. The noise levels on the blogosphere were negligible, to say the least

India, as an online business, is still in its nascent stage. There is an acute lack of good sites/communities on a variety of fields and that essentially opens up a wide range of sites that one could get into. Communities have been hard to come by, since the Indian populace is unique in that it tries to look for alternate grounds once it sees the first signs of any monetizing of communities that is inevitable after a time. Questions are raised on credibility, feasibility and veracity once communities start looking at raising monies. India still does not have your Weblogs, Inc style chain of blogs where user-generated-content is pretty high. People still have a very push-pull relation with websites where they either subscribe to feeds/newsletters or just browse around to sites that offer what they need. The interaction levels, are abysmal, to say the least ! Elsewhere, building communities around blogs written with an attitude seems to be a sure-shot way of off-setting some of the concerns of members on credibility ! Of-course, Content still rules and thats the reason why blogs such as Gizmodo/Engadget still attract the kind of premium rates for ads that many other full-blown sites can only dream of. No wonder, Weblogs found a suitor for $25million a while back ! Sure will be interesting to see if and when someone comes up with communities on these lines