Judge Media Not on Size, but on Merit
Steve Rubel proposes that the distinction between mainstream and social media is obsolete.
The fact is that everyone who is contributing to the dialogue – be it in video, text or photos – has earned the right to be called media. Let’s can the compartmentalization and recognize once and for all the world has changed. We are all media – period.
Now that RSS allows me to subscribe to and unsubscribe from just about anything on a whim, the main distinction I see is between good and bad media. Examples of both abound, in all sizes.
On the large end of bad media, you have TV networks insulting peoples’ intelligence with ripped-off crap. On the small end of bad media, you have cowardly n00bs flaming anonymously and sulking on their LiveJournals.
On the large end of good media, you have newspapers telling it like it is, online and offline. On the small end of good media, you have A-list bloggers breaking scoops and making trends.
Brilliance and idiocy both scale. Let’s stop judging media outlets based on size, and start judging media outlets based on merit.
Happy Fourth Birthday, WordPress!
How appropriate that the world’s leading blog software started out as a blog post four years ago today.
What to do? Well, Textpattern looks like everything I could ever want, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be licensed under something politically I could agree with. Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. What should it do? Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?
Textpattern adopted a GPL in mid-2004, but it was too little, too late. Had it given itself to the world earlier, its code would’ve lived on in WordPress instead of fading into irrelevance. In a remix culture, generosity is the key to longevity.
(Via Mike Little.)
