January 5, 2005

… in understanding very clearly why “the world” is rushing to aid the surviving victims of the tsunami so enthusiastically (not that we shouldn’t) when there are also thousands and thousands of Iraqis suffering and dying through no fault of their own in the face of a persistent “tsunami” of occupation.

I’ve never been happy with the term “insurgent” .. I tend to think of the resistance in Iraq as made up of people who quite correctly do not want to be controlled and oppressed by an invading and occupying power, and I don’t blame them for mounting a continued resistance. There weren’t WMD’s, there was no “imminent threat”, and to many people that seemed reasonably apparent two or three years ago. And, with respect to the possibilities of civil war, in my opinion the USA has created a set of conditions that arguably can’t be worse than any civil war the citizens of Iraq might conduct on their own.

So, I’d really like to know why this is still seen as a justified war, as opposed to a tsunami of a different sort … and I don’t really know why the rest of the world isn’t as anxious to help Iraqis as they are the tsunami victims.

I think we should help both groups as much as we can, as quickly as we can … and part of that help is stopping the occupation and moving towards peacekeeping and reconstruction.

T.L. Pierce provides us with a very comprehensive and well thought out blog post about why blogs are, arguably, essential for small businesses today. Not only do they provide the means for connection with customers through content, but I believe that relatively few people know that the guts of the major blogging applications probably provide a small business owner with a basic IT infrastructure (excepting such obvious aspects such as manufacturing or financial tracking systems or so on .. but even there … one can build pretty easily these days sophisticated interlinked Excel spreadsheets and build or acquire small lightweight versions of ERP sytems).

Anyway … T.L. knows more about it than me, so be sure to go and read the whole piece here.

Here’s an extract:

Small Businesses Are Silently Growing Big On Blogs

Shhhhh! Can you hear that? It’s a evolution of communications happening right now and you might be missing the boat. Each day many new small businesses and solo entrepreneurs are joining the blogosphere and reaching out to their markets faster than ever before. How are you reaching your online markets? Blogs are the next evolution in online marketing. If you are seeing more and more articles harolding the coming of the blog and urging you to get it going I am here to tell you that the message is authentic.

Blogs are your tools to creating this type of customer connection through content. You will build relationships that are founded on a great level of trust as you become the authority and source of information on your topic. Blogs promote repeat visits through relevant and frequent updates. You audience will want the latest information from you and the fact that you publish regularly is reason to return. If your content is of high value then your audience will keep returning. Your audience chooses to have relationship with you and your business time and again as they come back to you for solutions to help solve their problems.

I’ve written a bit about this before, vaguely speculating that networks of blogs and blogging might address some of what was expected or hoped for from public television 20 or 30 years ago.

Today I ran across an article by Om Malik in Business 2.0, pointed to by Doc Searls, in which Om sets out to make the case for a potential “New News Network”.

Here’s an excerpt … read the rest of it here.

The 1990s proved to be the decade when cable news networks replaced network television as the primary source of breaking news for many Americans, just as the 1960s saw newspapers supplanted. In the new millennium, a broadband-enabled, always-on Internet threatens to usurp those cable news networks.

For evidence, look no further than the recent tsunami disaster. While most networks, cable networks included, were regurgitating wire service copy and the same six minutes of videotape, Americans were turning to weblogs for the latest news and to peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent for videos, most of them shot by amateurs. The first images of the tragedy did not come from CNN, but rather were grainy, blurry photos captured by camera phones.

Via Om Malik’s blog:

Six Apart to buy Live Journal

EXCLUSIVE: Folks have been predicting a big year for mergers and acquisitions in 2005, and we are starting the year with a bang. I have learnt exclusively that Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad, and Moveable Type is about to acquire Live Journal, for an undisclosed amount. The deal is a mix of stock and cash, and could be announced sometime later this month, according to those close to the two companies.

If the deal goes through, then Six Apart will become one of the largest weblog companies in the world, with nearly 6.5 million users. It also gives the company a very fighting chance against Google’s Blogger and Microsoft’s MSN Spaces.

I’ll bet these guys are setting an early example of what many people will do over the next decade or so.

Euan Semple responded a few days ago to Stuart Henshall’s declaration that he’s giving up traditional blogging.

Stuart’s initial post was thoughtful and for me “fit” with what I have come to sense of him … my perceptions … as an intensely social AND intensely pragmatic persona online. Social in the sense of entering some relationships that appeared present in a consistent way on his blog, and pragmatic in the sense of his analytic and systems-thinking analytic desconstructions of much of the core online, interconnected dynamics.

And his reasons seem very valid to me. Here’s where he’s going next.

Euan’s response gave a different slant to the purpose and process of blogging, of online sociality … at least that’s how I interpreted it.

As with many good blog posts, the concatenation of the two blog posts stimulated some great comments, some intense thought (to my eyes), and some movement through disclosure and a taking up of a newly instantiated (tho’ I’d say evolutionary) area of interest and activity for the two protagonists.

In either case, these two people (who have been actively blogging for the past two or more years, and have created substantial networks and profiles through their thought leadership) are revealing to us how core elements of the sociality of blogging and online collaboration will keep moving and flowing to more pointedly purposeful application, which will reflect the purpose and goals of the participants.

They have gained fluency and adeptness in this medium, and are now taking the next steps in moving the practice further along in terms of sociological depth and sophistication. They are able to choose and experiment with different forms of social software infrastructure, process and interactivity/online collaboration skills … and I’m anticipating it will be enjoyable and valuable to learn what their experiences will be.