Open Source Media Posted by: Jon Henke
on Thursday, November 17, 2005
I'm not sure I get the generalantipathy on the Lefttowards the new Open Source Media project....but then I'm not terribly sure I get the Open Source Media project, either. Perhaps they have a forthcoming plan for that $3.5 million in start-up capital, but it's hard to see any kind of coherent, useful application so far. To wit:
TRADEMARK: OSM appears to have some trademark problems right off the bat. An Open Source Media, Inc already exists—and they seem to be a bit upset that their name has been been blatantly stolen. Steven Den Beste is weighing in, too, both criticizing the new organization and recommending the original Open Source Media, Inc "cue the lawyers".
His trade name is Open Source – and Open Source alone. He’s filed a trademark application under Open Source alone, not Open Source Media.
Our trade name is OSM, and please note that we have a TM after OSM, not after Open Source Media. We consider Open Source Media to be a description of what we are and do, not a trade name.
WEBSITE: The OSM website is very clean. Unfortunately, it seems to be clean because there's just not a lot of content. Dig a bit deeper into the site—the Politics page, for example—and you get your basic news feed of headlines. No different than the Breitbart page, but minus the always helpful links from Drudge.
WEBSITE II: What does the OSM site offer that you can't get more easily from other sites? News aggregation is done better by Yahoo News, Google News (and others); they can't really be considered a blog aggregator, since—as far as I can tell—they just link to their own bloggers. There are many blog aggregators who do that better, and much more widely.
CONFUSION: Many people—including participants—still seem unsure about what they're actually doing at OSM. Lots of people want in on the ground floor, but not many seem to know what's on the second floor.
"Has been received by the blogosphere with a far greater amount of skepticism than it has where the mainstream media are concerned"? You'd think they'd write their very first sentence crisply!
And why should anyone care what these bloggers think? Who are they? Unless you're already sold on blogging, the teasers are laughable: "Blogger Joshuapundit seems quite unhappy," "War to Mobilize Democracy is 'nervous,'" Anything They Say "is pleasantly surprised."
There's nothing snappy or exciting in any of that, no sense that these bloggers are likely to come out with anything more interesting than whoever was sitting next to you in the living room where you watched the evening news.... And this on the day when you are asking for attention, trying to hook new people.
The day after the big launch, the site is, Althouse writes, "stupefyingly inactive and as yet devoid of sharp commentary."
More commentary at Riehl World View. He sees a need for change—an inevitability, really—and links to some praise and criticism.
I wish OSM participants the best of luck, but so far it seems like an expensive attempt to do what Memeorandum already does better.
First, Phil, we pretty much know all that, because it’s been exhaustively discussed on this site. Second, why are you posting it on this thread concerning Open Source Media? Did you type into the wrong comment page by accident?
[I’ve deleted it. Copy and paste spam unrelated to the post is a waste of readers time—Jon]
I’d like to think the OSM effort will make a difference, too, but I suspect that it won’t.
I’m all in favor of MSM replacement, because the MSM plumbs new depths of incompetence every week. If I understand OSM’s thrust, they want to monetize the gathering of news by non-MSM sources, and serve as a portal to make the content available. They would reward news-gathers directly based on how much people want to read what was gathered. This general approach has potential.
But ironically, it might do better if it weren’t associated with such high profile blogging names. As Jon’s posting shows, the real intent of the OSM effort has gotten obscured by the well-known people involved (well, well-known in the blogosphere, anyway).
And while I think the overall idea has merit, history suggests that the first entity to try something radically new such as this often just paves the way for the entity that eventually succeeds. The first attempt inevitably makes many, many mistakes, as everyone involves attempts to understand the new market involved. And traditional competitors, with still-deep pockets, can sometimes take the lessons learned and reform themselves to claim the new market.
There are exceptions, of course, in which the first attempt succeeds beyond anyone’s expectations. So if these guys become multi-millionaires by offering a monetized alternative to the MSM, hey, I’m all for it. I’m behind anything that forces our dinosaur media to do better. And goodness knows I’m not rich, so anyone using me for investment advice is probably making a mistake. But I’m glad it’s not my money being spent.
"That which you are seeking is that which causes you to seek," - Thic Nyat Han
The OSM effort reminds me of a dog chasing its tail, because, well - it can. It seems an attempt to create redundant real interpersonal connectivity in addition to the blogosphere’s profound virtual interconnectivity.
Wretchard hints at the unnecessary redundancy of the effort in today’s post. Based only on a blogger’s virtual presentation, he found he could predict the "physiques" of the bloggers he met.
The faces and physiques, the ages and the backgrounds were often unexpected; but in a surprisingly high percentage of the time, the person you saw was exactly who you’d thought you’d meet.
Why screw up a good thing? I always thought that one of the advantages the internet offered is freedom from social friction caused by irrelevant personal appearances. Besides, if you can interconnect sufficiently online, why waste the gas-money to make the cameo?
I’m guessing it was a bacchanal bash, and probably a bit of a meat market - what with all these hip, net-savvy folks sitting around in their pajamas and all. I’m sure the local bars did well, and the hotels, super-marts and gas-stations all cashed in - just as though the Shriners had herded through town. I guess if someone got laid, it was a good thing! -Steve
Have you read their TOU? They’re not even open source:
Our Site and all its contents, which includes, but is not limited to, text, graphics, photographs, logos, video and audio content, is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. All individual components of Our Site, including, without limitation, articles, content and other elements comprising Our Site are also copyrighted works. Additionally all of the weblogs linked to by us are likewise protected. You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained on this site and our linked weblogs.
3. You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, publish, enter into any database, display, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this site. The only exceptions to this are that you may download material from Our Site for your own personal use, provided such download is limited to making one machine readable copy and/or one print copy that limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. No other use of the content of Our Site is permitted. Please contact our Sales Department if you wish to have rights other than those stated above.
This is the blogging equivalent of the dot-com boom entering its most hubristic stage. Guarenteed, this will flop. Mark my words.
Seems like their heart’s in the right place, I just don’t think that they’ve got a particularly good model.
First of all, they seem to be attempting this from the same king of pose of being an invisible, objective observer in the tradition of the old media news anchors. Frankly, I don’t think that that works too well for the current MSM, and it’s an impossible position to put yourself in when you’re sorting through blogs that, by their very nature, wear their personality on their sleeves.
OSM’s goals are, I think, too lofty for its own good.
There can be no gatekeeper of the web. It is simply too vast.
What there can be is a place to get helpful perspective.
As you say, the OSM as its currently stands is easily replaced with the standard bookmark list on any web broswer. I can scrounge through blogs on my own, thank you.
What would be nice would be a place that had the resources to look at and interpret things that I cannot. Why not hire analysts who are fluent in English and Farci to scrounge through the Iranian Blogistan and give those of us Persian-impaired readers a little insight, even if we have to accept that we’re gettig it through the filter of someone else’s interpretation.
Why not get some people whose job it is to track stories that buzz in the blogosphere and keep a close eye on which stories get picked up by the big media, documenting where it’s appropriate and offering a theory on why it happens sometimes and why it doesn’t at other times.
And as for the stories that don’t get picked up by big media, why not have someone who makes the attempt to measure how much of the purely-blogosphere reported stories get out to the general populace?
As it stands, I agree with Matt—if OSM continues on the road it’s on, it will crash and burn. The web cannot have a gatekeeper, nor does it particularly want any.
But bloggers are amateurs by nature. It would be nice to have some professional analyists taking a look, not an objective one, but an honest one, at all the stuff that we can mostly only speculate about.
Setting aside the way they’ve stumbled out of the gate with the embarrassing trademark screwup and the way they don’t seem to have any kind of coherent mission statement, one major reason why this is going to fail is this: amazingly, the people behind it have completely failed to understand (or perhaps simply lost sight of) what blogs actually are and what they’re primarily for.
Blogs are online representations of people, and this is what grants them cred. Steven Den Beste’s offhand remark about the Borg Cube was apt. When I’m reading Jon, Dale, or Bruce, I know I’m reading straight-shooters and I feel like I could converse with them over drinks. When you read a blog that’s sponsored by some company, do you feel that kind of personal connection? Or do you find yourself wondering if the views expressed are truly those of the writer or those of the mothership? This project, insofar as it can be said to have an aim, seems to be aiming at taking something spontaneous, human, pluralistic and decentralized, and turning it into a money-making machine. I’m all for making money, but it seems to me that this approach partly destroys one of the essential parts of the product.
When I’m reading Jon, Dale, or Bruce, I know I’m reading straight-shooters and I feel like I could converse with them over drinks.
That would be enjoyable, Matt. If you ever make it down to the States—Virginia, specifically—I’ll buy.
In the spirit of full disclosure, though, I should point out that, while I do write what I genuinely think, I only think what my wife allows me to think.
