Peter Fletcher

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Why blogging is different to print publication

January 31, 2008 by Peter Fletcher

Much of the tension created between employers and private bloggers stems from what is said about the company on the blog. This tension is not new though. People could, and still do, publish their thoughts about their employer and their work mates via a letter to the editor or an interview on the radio or television. There is, however, a big difference between a blog and traditional broadcast media.

Broadcast media are expensive to set up and operate and operate in a zero sum game. If a story runs, it does so at the expense of another story. The result is only those stories that are likely to capture and maintain the attention of a mass audience are likely to receive air play or go to print. For mass media operators, big audiences mean big advertising revenues and big profits. It’s a simple matter of creating the highest likelihood of making a profit.

Media metrics, such as these, have, in many ways shielded companies from negative publicity. Unless a story about a company is outrageously compelling it is unlikely to make even the early, early morning edition of the news. Blogs are not subject to the same economic model.

As Clay Shirky attests, blogs have very low barriers to entry (this one, aside from my time, is completely free), have no economies of scale (it’s just as cheap to publish to an audience of 1 as to 1 000 001), and there is a limitless supply (the creation of this blog doesn’t mean that another blog can’t be made). In effect, blogs change completely the economics of publication and therefore provide the perfect environment for the rise of what Shirky calls “mass amateurization”. In other words, anyone with access to the Internet can now be a blogger; and publish their thoughts about their boss, their company, their colleagues.

Never before have businesses faced such an immense risk, and never before have employees had so much publishing power – not to mention a potential worldwide audience – at their disposal. It is small wonder that businesses are becoming so concerned about the power of the blogger. One wonders how long it will take for unions to join in the battle on behalf of their constituents.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: Clay Shirky, economics of blogs, mass amateurization, mass media

Emergent Democracy

October 16, 2007 by Peter Fletcher

I’m in the process of considering what I’ll write my next essay on, what will be the incisive thesis question. I’ve done some work on Twitter and why this (and by extension other micr-blogging platforms) are so important, especially to students in Australia, where the penetration of Twitter appears to be much less than in the US and Japan.

I’m reading a piece from Joichi Ito who comments on the Clay Shirky’s Power Laws saying that the top ranking blogs may end up being mass media sites and almost impossible to topple from the number one spot. But he also points out that blogs tend to form scale-free networks, with some blogs actings as both nodes and hubs thus linking networks together. I’ve seen this discussed somewhere else before and it made some sense in that, people tend to act as connectors to their own group of friends and sometimes become the connectors between groups of friends. It helps to explain why some blogs become immensely popular among groups of like-minded people and are linked to regularly (the hubs).

Not sure if this has helped me work out what my thesis statement question is going to be, but at least I’ve written something.

1 Emergent Democracy

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: Clay Shirky, Joichi Ito, Networks, Twitter

About Peter

Speaker, trainer and coach. I write about living, loving and working better. Love a challenge. More...

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