Category: The Power of Many

eBay Acquires Minority Interest in craigslist Craig’s take on it seems to be that it’s pretty benign. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. This sounds big. Let’s keep an eye on this. Update: Commenters on Craig’s blog seem to be wavering between hopeful worry and cries of “sell out.” My sense is that…

Brian Dear wonders who is behind Multiply (brianstorms weblog: Multiply? Subtract 1.): You know what? A customer should not have to search high and low to find out simple things like this. Of all the kinds of web businesses, SOCIAL NETWORK businesses really owe it to their customers to share some of their information about…

Online Communities in Business: Past Progress, Future Directions is “a survey report focusing on how companies and other large organizations are using community and collaborative technologies.” (via Nancy White)

Routledge has published an academic tome called Democracy Online: The Prospects for Political Renewal Through the Internet: Taking a multidisciplinary approach that they identify as a “cyber-realist research agenda,” the contributors examine the prospects for electronic democracy in terms of its form and practice – while avoiding the pitfall of treating the benefits of electronic…

JonL just invited me to join Multiply, which seems to involve social networking, photo sharing, blogging (journaling), a calendar, a place for reviews and recipes,a nd something called Market (I’ve only started poking around). Here’s my barebones page there: telegraph.multiply.com (xian was taken!). Looks like an ambitious play, leapfrogging Flickr (although I have no idea…

Uncredentialed bloggers at the RNC now have a headquarters to work from (MyDD :: NYC GOP street bloggers): the venue is called the tank, and it’s located at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater, about a 15-minute walk NW of Madison Square Garden. the proprietors of the tank have generously offered to open their internet connection and…

Zogby Sound Bites! reprints a commentary by alan Bisbort of The Valley Advocate noting that al Jazeera and the bloggers did a better job of covering the convention than the major networks did. An excerpt: Before examining this any further, let’s take time out for a word from our sponsors: the Bloggers of America, the…

Party for America isn’t the only organization out there trying to use social bonding as a building block for political engagement and activism. There’s also Drinking Liberally, which is geared towards younger adults. Their slogan is “I only drink with liberals.” Maybe someone needs to start an analogous 12-step program?

Erin Aubry Kaplan takes a look at the DNC and notices the prominent role played by African-Americans there as well as the reluctance to address some long-simmering issues with the party in that community (in LA Weekly: News: Bringin’ Da Funk): The biggest elephant under the Boston big top, almost bigger than the economy and…

Dave Johnson from Seeing the Forest has posted a two-part convention retrospective and promises “more to come.” I’ve been remiss myself, but I plead visiting family. It’s just hard to write long entries about politics and activism when you’ve got two incredibly darling two-year-olds asking you to draw pictures for them. I do have a…

Most of this chronology is recounted in Chapter 2 of the book (after all, I interviewed Kos and Jerome Armstrong gave me some crucial last-minute insights and corrections* when the chapter was in galleys), but Kos’s brief history of his site is well worth reading to get the story from the horse’s mouth. A few…

OK, this post should bring up the new design (although a few of the links are still not active yet).

We’ve had stealth mode for this site, then the soft decloak, then the informal prelaunch, and now we’re just about ready to launch the site. Review copies are going out this week so it’s time to spruce up the site with a design that reflects the book cover. (There will be one more big milestone…

Cam Barrett thinks the convention blogging could have been a great deal more directed as well as more participatory. He was consulted early on but apparently most of his suggestions were not acted on.

Brian Dear has some photos and a brief write up from Dan Gillmor’s Book Release Party.

Seems worth noting that it almost doesn’t seem worth noting that Kerry plugged johnkerry.com in his acceptance speech. Was a time, that would have seemed a novel thing.

Alan at The Command Post did a little local reporting around an anarchist protest today: Here’s something else I found interesting: the protest was not organized … it just emerged from the morning ether. Seems there’s a local organization that was giving out free breakfast and dinner to people in from out of town to…

Scot Peterson of eWeek interviewed me on Monday and filed a thoughtful report today: Bloggers Make Their Presence Felt at DNC. In stringing together my quotes, I think he was forced to manufacture some connecting words, and the result is a somewhat awkward rush of words that nonetheless reasonably represents my motormouth way: Perhaps the…

Maybe for scoops this week, we should be paying close attention to the people who are both “real” journalists and “real” bloggers, people like Micah Sifry. Speaking of whom, meeting Sifry (he and Dave each refer to each other as they’re their [spell much? –ed] “smarter brother”) has been one of the highlights of this…

Wow, the D triple C and SpeakerPelosi.com really put on the dog for us bloggers. A great restaurant. VIP treatment (meaning, open bar for bloggers). Good music. Pretty decent swag. Most of all good company based around a core of people who are sharing a bonding experience, a kind of trial by fire. I tell…

Bob Jacobson called the bloggers here at the DNC “irrelevant” in comments on this entry: Good analysis of convention blogging @ Radio Free Blogistan. My reply: Well, everything’s predictable in hindsight. Dan’s analysis is the first I’ve seen. (David Weinberger agreed with me that he nailed the concept of event blogging.) It’s one thing to…