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David Carr: How much more powerful is (…) networked intelligence than a reporter with a phone, a Rolodex and the space between his or her ears? As the former newspaperman and Web evangelist Jeff Jarvis (…) has been saying since before broadband, the Web is not just a way to shout, it is a way […]

Iain M. Banks: Part of the training of a Special Circumstances agent was learning a) that the rules were supposed to be broken sometimes, b) just how to go about breaking the rules, and c) how to get away with it, whether the rule-breaking had led to a successful outcome or not. Matter Kevin Kelly: […]

As could be expected from the Boing Boing gang, they have come up with a new set of policies that we all can use as a model. Cory says: Our insurance company asked us to come up with a bunch of policies — DMCA takedowns, privacy, etc — and set us off on a quest […]

Mitch Joel: Think about it – what if everything we knew about Marketing and Advertising until now really was just an anomaly, and the new ways that are spurting up as we Blog is the way things were meant to be? Human beings are often great at being able to adapt as situations unfold, but […]

In his new blog, Steph Lagrange reports a conversation we had last April about my work: Proximity (i.e. “always available”) is another key concept to Bruno. Whereas in traditional media the distance between the ad and the store can be miles and/or days away, on the Web the distance has narrowed down to a mere […]

People often ask me to describe the job of a moderator. Luckily for us, MetaFilter member SpacemanStix asked this question: Dear mathowie, jessamyn, and cortex: how many hours do you commit to keeping MeFi afloat? Is it a huge time commitment, not a big deal, or somewhere in the middle? It seems like a lot […]

All mass media would benefit from a community of their readers and most are strategically well placed to create one but most of them don’t seem to see why they should do it. Jeff Jarvis writes today about Rupert Murdoch’s strategy to attack the New-York Times’ brand. Independently from the Times’ situation, Jarvis’ diagnostic could […]

It’s high season for community building. People are asking “Build me a community” like they would ask “Draw me a lamb” or “Cook me a tuna casserole”. But communities are not things that you can build away from people and then give away like a mass media or a chocolate bar. Communities are not things, […]

The always brilliant Mark Pesce just published That Business Conversation, the text of his latest speech. The conclusion should be on the screen of every business leader. The balance of power has shifted decisively into the hands of the networked public. … unless you embrace conversation as the essential business practice of the 21st century, […]

Chris Wilson gives in Slate a good introduction to the importance of moderation in online communities: The Wisdom of the Chaperones: Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy. His title is a reference to the famous James Surowiecki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds. And yes, communities don’t work by magic: they are created, […]

Social networks allows every organization or business to start up the participation of their community at very low cost, as the Brooklyn Museum does it so well. On its Network page the Museum invites visitors to contribute through facebook, flickr, MySpace, blip.tv and twitter. Moreover if they write about the Museum in their blog, they […]

In the last issue of The New York Review of Books, Russell Baker draws a dark portrait of the state of newspapers. It’s a fascinating read, if a little depressing: “The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. It […]