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Down the pub in the falling snow, waiting for the rest of the village to arrive…

I’ll be interested to see if the Commission come to consider Google to be a monopoly. It dominates in search, and its maps and mail are wildly popular but it’s definitely second choice for microblogging (g+) where it’s outgunned by twitter and facebook, identity assurance where Google Profile trails behind twitter and facebook, picture blogging (Yahoo), bookmarks (delicious and reddit) and blogging (wordpress).

via Well Red » Blog Archive » Search Neutrality goes to Parliament.

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Where Google is not a monopoly: Well Red » Search Neutrality goes to Parliament # HT @DaveLevy

You can see why that might cause disquiet at Sky because that sharing, collaborative culture is at odds with the fiercely competitive ethos of its newsroom – and every other worth its name. Why should Sky journalists promote stories broken by rivals, and why should they use Twitter as a platform for breaking news when their employer has poured huge sums into reaching audiences via satellite?

And these are questions that we debate all the time at the BBC too. As someone who was an early Twitter adopter – and an evangelist for its usefulness as a tool for journalists – I have on occasion been involved in discussions about how our social media policy should be framed.

But tonight for me marks a milestone that I’ve expected for a long time – perhaps it had already passed and I’d not noticed, but tonight is the first time that I have heard it with my own ears:

Last week BBC Radio 4 trailed and broadcast a production of Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful – presumably in the wake of Morpurgo’s War Horse, and in anticipation of an upcoming movie production of Peaceful – and from the coverage and broadcast slot one can only assume that it was a big production of which they are immensely proud; I have not listened to it myself yet, but I may.

However: tonight they ran a trailer, and essentially said: in case you missed it, Private Peaceful is available for download from the BBC website, now with extra binaural widgetry.

And that is it: they trailed a programme that they had already broadcast – and from what I caught were not planning to immediately broadcast again anytime soon – and were essentially advertising something only available online in a prime (“PM”) slot.

It could all be a vast experiment on their part, but for me this is the crack in the dam – the move from broadcaster to content-producer, and the start of a drift away from scheduling; the internet doesn’t care that it’s 6pm on a saturday evening and it’s therefore time for Dr Who – all they want to know is how the story progresses and whether the next chapter is out.

Scheduling won’t die – but it will become as artificial as the 140-character limit in Twitter, something honoured in the breech; but maybe Pick of the Week will have to become Pick of the Month, or Best of the Feeds, or somesuch.

And as for news coverage… why should we wait for 6pm? Perhaps BBC News 24 will start aggregating and streaming stories to Twitter, instead of the onscreen ticker…

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On Rory Cellan-Jones, Private Peaceful and the growing primacy of online… (HT @BBCRoryCJ)

• butternut squash

• cabbage

• green beans

• onions

• shallots

• mushrooms

• juniper berries
• peppercorns
• fennel

Bring to a simmer, then blend and correct seasoning. Will let you know how it turns out.

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Random vegetable soup on the stove

But, like Sky News, we are still pondering a couple of key questions. Is it right, for instance, to break news on Twitter before it reaches any broadcast outlets? In a long-running court case, a series of tweets from the reporter who is following proceedings can be an invaluable way of keeping both the newsdesk and the world informed.

Yep, I can see that, however regards (say) the Assange hearings I was watching @fieldproducer as one voice amongst many, perhaps 1/3rd of them accredited journalists.

He continues:

But when it comes to the verdict, surely the reporter should rush to the live microphone or camera first – even if that means being beaten by a rival tweeter? (Breaking news – I’ve just had guidance from my bosses that yes, breaking news should be passed to the BBC first rather than Twitter.)

Poor guy.

Well, yes, I can see their point, they want to vet the story for risks before reporting; one of the key events demonstrating the modern failure of that perspective is/was “Trafigura”.

Also there were the Norwegian bombing/shootings which we on Twitter were all following hours before the BBC picked up the story, let alone the awkwardness evident on Radio 4 when a Norwegian interviewee broke the story of the island shootings before news coverage had been arranged or confirmed – the Beeb’s coverage up to that point was only of the car-bomb, whereas we on Twitter were receiving snippets from local Norwegian journalists and passing them samizdat.

Oh, and when a plane lands in the Potomac, Twitter is first with pictures, too.

Orlowski made a decent stab at illustrating some of the problems, yesterday; the remainder of issues are summed up in Guido’s byline: You are either in front of Guido, or behind him.

In one sense the number in front diminishes, daily.

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Re: @BBCRoryCJ “Is it right to break news on Twitter before it reaches broadcast outlets?” # when did it last happen…

From Something Positive.

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“It’s like someone hit the reverse button on evolution” – I _will_ steal this…

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Hot milk + Angostura Bitters. Works. Damn…

Must try harder.

In the meantime, 10yo Port as a chillout.

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Exercise is getting easier… which means it’s getting harder to exercise…

Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source | Onion News Network.

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Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source | Onion News Network

Is there an issue with the obvious solution?

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So using your own posters, @SW_Trains, shouldn’t the 0651 from Basingstoke be a trifle longer?

Stranger’s Bar, House of Commons.

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@DaveLevy in a bar in Westminster

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Shot of single malt, dash of Angostura, blend into a mug of whisked hot milk.

Out now!- Red Grow the Roses

It’s here! – Red Grow the Roses is released TODAY on Kindle! My cruel, tender, filthy mutha of a vampire erotica novel is out on the prowl, in the dark, looking for blood…

Here’s a excerpt. Wakefield has just something very very bad indeed; something that will detonate an explosion under the city’s whole vampire society. But this is a flashback to when he first became a vampire, back in the 1850s…

[...continues]

I’ve never even read Twilight and even I can tell that it’s not Twilight; actually Janine’s books are not really to my taste, but I do consider her prodigious and joyful output of smut to be a fabulous cottage industry – good for the adoption of e-books, the economy, and crow-bar style mind-opening of the British public at large.

–
* eg: “Inferno”

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Another new book out today from my friend who writes porn women’s erotica, #JanineAshbless

Sometime later they mentioned who’d been playing.

I don’t think they got as far as the score…

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And the media complain that the public has attention deficit disorder…

This week’s ‘Patience of a Saint Award’ goes to whoever runs the @Daybreak Twitter account for the early morning ITV show. It seems their role consists mainly of explaining to viewers watching on ITV+1 why the clock is wrong:

via Daybreak viewers: Confused by time… – The Media Blog.

Click the link…

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Daybreak viewers: Confused by time… – The Media Blog – HT @mjrobbins

Macroblogging is a social network activity performed by someone who re-homes the majority of his social network updates – status updates, Likes, +1s, and other creative content – as postings on a non-mainstream blog-like platform, subsequently re-using his mainstream social networks (aka: stovepipes) to distribute links to this content.

The technical goal of macroblogging is for the macroblogger to obtain greater control over the format, structure and inclusion (eg: of video) of content that he creates, and for him to retain control over that content in the long term.

The human goal of macroblogging is to focus the macroblogger’s energy on better, more cohesive and elegant communication.

Challenges

Macrobloggers are not in control of how readers will respond to their postings; albeit he may have posted to his macroblog, responses to that posting may include Tweets, Facebook comments, and other feedback provided within these individual stovepipes.

Macrobloggers should not be assholes about this; if someone tweets a response then do reply in kind; don’t get in a hissy-fit that someone hasn’t worked out that they can comment directly upon blog postings – it would be rude to criticise someone who has bothered to respond at all.

Stovepipes

What constitutes a stovepipe?

• Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are clearly stovepipes, and so is LinkedIn.
• Tumblr and Posterous? Probably stovepipes.
• WordPress.com? Perhaps, or perhaps not.
• WordPress.org personal blogs? Probably not stovepipes.

Requirements for not being a stovepipe include:

1. ability to completely customise look and feel for the visitor
2. ability to post arbitrary content – text, image, audio, video, zip, even PDF – of arbitrary size
3. ability to completely back up all content in original formats
4. freedom to define (if desired) concepts of privileged third-party read/read-write access to content
5. freedom from content-level editorialising by third parties
6. freedom to delete the macroblog in its entirety

Corollary to the latter two requirements:

• executive authority over the domain name used to access the macroblog.

Don’t get too anal about stovepipes – someone who is arguing about this is not spending enough time blogging about other stuff such as “the importance of macroblogging”.

Guidelines

• Macroblog blog post titles may be as long as you like
• Macroblog blog post bodies may be as short as you like
• Macroblog posts may contain what you like
• Macroblog blog post titles will provide hyperlinks back to the original macroblog post, once submitted to stovepipes

Why

Macroblogging is partly about regaining control over your own data; but mostly it’s about the avoidance of passionkillers – that if you tweet about something then your drive to communicate may be lessened without providing the closure or completeness which would come from more complete communication.

Further: with the preponderance of stovepipes the question is which stovepipe should I choose, to alienate the least number of people with whom I communicate?

Macroblogging’s answer is choose none of them, and instead use the whole web.

Wherefore

I needed a word for it – I believe that this will take-off in the next year or two.

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#Macroblogging & #Passionkillers – a definition & manifesto; Macroblogging is a social network activity performed by …