Dan Gillmor: Blog

There are plenty of reasons to wonder about citizen media’s business model. One, which I’ve talked about many times here and elsewhere, is the tendency of site owners to rely on free labor. The method goes roughly this way: “You do all the work and we’ll take all the money, thank you very much.”

People do things for many reasons, but it’s always about getting something of value back. The value may be a psychic reward of doing something good for someone else. It may be ego. It may be money, or the ability to save money. In community-driven websites it may be contributing a tiny bit of effort to something that gives the overall community, and thereby individuals, great value. Usually it’s a combination.

But when the big money starts to flow to a few who are leveraging the work of the many, a disconnect emerges. And that’s why I’m so bothered by part of an announcement of some interesting new features that will give users or reddit, a news-recommendation site owned by the parent company of Wired magazine, new ways to help each other understand the news. reddit is refining the process in a smart way, by dividing the recommendation system in ways — assuming it works — to make it better and, perhaps, more reliable.

There’s no sense of whether the “private” and “restricted” section of the site, in which the Chosen will presumably elevate the content because they are doing things better, will have any stake in the outcome beyond being given more responsibility. I hope so, and we’ll know more when the features roll out more widely.

What really bugs me most in the reddit blog posting about the changes is the following:

Right now we really only have English and German, but if you would be generous enough to translate reddit into another language, please email feedback@reddit to offer your support.

As usual, if you’re interested in working on reddit, please email jobs@reddit and describe what a badass programmer you are.

Read it again. You are invited to translate the site into another language, because you are such a generous person. If you are a badass programmer, however, you are invited to apply for a job and make some actual money.

I like reddit a lot, and think it’s doing some terrific work with community-driven news. But this request goes beyond the pale.

Conde Nast, a privately held empire that owns some of the most profitable magazines on the planet, paid a bundle for this site. It can afford to pay for translations.

If you are generous enough to do this kind of work for free, please consider doing instead it for a nonprofit site of some sort. Please don’t be giving away your time to mega-wealthy media barons.

Look at the covers of Time Magazine’s current edition:

The rest of the planet gets a pointer to a thoughtful series of articles about globalization and mega-cities that have changed with the social and economic times.

Americans get romance. (To be fair, the article is quite good.)

Because, apparently, we are too shallow to buy magazines pitching serious journalism about global issues. Sheesh…

I’ve gotten rid of the crappy look and feel of my old site (the blog remains as is for now) with the help of Sandvox, an elegant and relatively easy-to-use package from the folks who did the great Watson software. (Apple basically killed Watson by including its functionality in an earlier version of Mac OS X.)

Here’s my home page.

Sandvox needs a few enhancements. Among the drawbacks, putting bullets in text copy requires an odd cut-and-paste workaround. And tweaking templates should be much easier than it is at the moment.

It’s a nifty way to get a site up and running quickly, however. Recommended…

In order to vote in next month’s primary in Arizona, my new official residence, I have had to declare a party affiliation. What a travesty.

I’m independent, and have voted for people from both major parties and several minor ones. I do lean left on many issues, which tends to lead me to more Democrats — though the current Democratic Party is in many ways just a me-too version of the Republicans.

In any event, I registered as a Democrat in Arizona. As soon as the primary is finished I plan to remove that designation. In some future primary I’ll be a Republican, no doubt.

The candidates get to decide how to triangulate the voters. Why can’t we voters triangulate the candidates? Some system.

So the boxes are mostly unpacked, I have a new driver’s license and keys to the new office. About time to get back in the blogging saddle.

A new disclosure: I’ve invested in Seesmic, a Web video company that in my view has the potential to take conversational online video to a new level. The company’s founder, Loic LeMeur, is a friend and a top European Internet entrepreneur.

He has 10 rules for startup success, which I’m reprinting below:

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

Great stuff, and I hope my new students will take it to heart.

I’m in Japan, where it’s turned 2008. Best wishes to all for the happiest of new years.

We’re in the process of moving, so postings will be light for some days to come…

One of my great recent joys has been working (on a part-time basis in my case) with an incredibly talented group of people on a web service called Dopplr, a site that helps people share their trip information with trusted friends and colleagues. The team are world-class folks in every way.

Well, Dopplr is now out of beta. Here’s our blog posting: Dopplr launches at LeWeb3 in Paris.

During the beta period, it took an invitation from someone already in Dopplr to join. Now joining is open to all, and that’s created a slew of new folks who’ve joined in the past day since the official launch.

Of course, being out of beta isn’t the same as being finished. We have a huge amount of work to do on Dopplr, and the improvements will roll out on a regular basis in coming weeks and month.

Heading later today to Malysia for the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference, where I’m a speaker.

AP: Five-Year Mortgage Rate Freeze Looms. Congressional aides say the Bush administration has hammered out an agreement with industry to freeze interest rates for certain subprime mortgages for five years in an effort to combat a soaring tide of foreclosures.

This sounds like the most dangerous bit of fiscal sleight of hand in years — putting off the actual problem and utterly rewarding the people who were the most reckless in the mortgage bubble.

Americans who didn’t join the sleaze will pay those who did. It’s reprehensible, and it’s going to put this nation further into the national bankruptcy that already exists for all practical purposes.

Meanwhile, the local paper endorses this idiocy – and more. Sheesh…

I’m looking for safer places to put my money at this point than my own country. We’ve lost all common sense here.