Steve Gillmor:

On the Net, word of mouth is driven by attention.

Structured blogging is an initiative to add structure to blog posts of similar content. For example, let’s say that I write a review of a piece of software on my WordPress blog and someone else writes a review in their Movable Type blog. Not only are these two posts structured differently, with the blogging platforms […]

Continue Reading: Structured Blogging: Who is Benefitting and How?

Seth Godin interview with e-consultancy

Q: “Interruptive online ads are thought to damage brands, yet we still see an awful lot of advertising clutter on the major publishing sites. What would you say to these publishers and advertisers?”

A: They’re not listening, so I can’t say much of anything.”

Also:

“There’s zero evidence that you can build a brand with interruptions online that don’t lead to action. Zero.”

David Newberger’s interview with Doc Searls:

“One of the main points we made in The Cluetrain Manifesto, way back in 1999, was that the real revolution with the Net was not an increase in the power of supply, but an increase in the power of demand. Customers were no longer mere “consumers”, and not only graced with far more choice –the power to pick and choose among vendors’ products and services. Thanks to the Net, and to features such as blogging, the demand side now had the power also to *supply*. This is what’s so disruptive.”

and

“Blogging is also disruptive because it violates the whole notion of mediation — of a “medium” serving as a conduit between producers and consumers. Blogs speak directly to readers. They don’t have “consumers”, or an “audience”. What’s more, many of those readers are also writers, are also producers. The *unmediated* nature of blogs is very strange for those whose minds remain framed by traditional media notions.”

also

“To me blogging is about rolling snowballs. Whether I start a snowball rolling, or add mass to one that rolls by, I have no sense that it’s ‘mine’ in either case. I do, however, have a sense, quite often, of what works and what doesn’t, what’s interesting and what isn’t.”

and the best for last:

“I can’t think of anything that demonstrates the sovereign nature of the self better than a blog.”

Thomas Vander Wal is one happy man. Wouldn’t you be if you had been written up by Daniel Pink in the New York Times? Vander Wal, as many of you know, coined the term “Folksonomy”. He used it to describe what was happening on two up-and-coming web sites: Flickr and Del.icio.us. Now those two sites […]

Continue Reading: Folksonomy Has a Big Year

I haven’t seen a quick and easy introduction to Web 2.0 yet, so I created one over at Squidoo:

Introduction to Web 2.0

Continue Reading: An Introduction to Web 2.0

Alex Barnett and I were fortunate enough to get two of the foremost Identity thinkers on board at the same time for a podcast recently. Dick Hardt is Founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, and is well-known for his Identity 2.0 talk he gave at the OSCon and Web 2.0 Conferences. Kim Cameron is the […]

Continue Reading: Identity/Attention Podcast

In Living in a Networked World: is Less More? I suggested that we’re seeing a dramatic and unique shift in software: to social software that is much more valuable than the siloed applications we were used to. In this dramatic shift, Less is More becomes a well-deserved battle cry, but it is more a result […]

Continue Reading: Living in a Networked World: Redux

Lots of people ask me this question. I used to say that we help make web sites easier to use. Now, I can simply point to this:

What UIE is all about

On our Brain Sparks blog, UIE founder Jared M. Spool explains in detail what we do, outlining our biggest themes in the process:

• The Scent of Information
• The Goldilocks Content Framework
• New testing methods like the 5 Second Test
• Challenging widely held assumptions like the Three Click Rule
• And our ever-expanding library of research

New, easy-to-use applications make it seem like “Less is More”. But is Less really More? I don’t think so. The new wave of applications are great because they’re networked, not because many of them just happen to have less features. Human needs rarely change. We need to be watered, fed, exercised, sheltered, talked-to, challenged, appreciated, […]

Continue Reading: Living in a Networked World: Is Less More?