EchoDitto - Weblogs

Empowering Nigerian Women Online - posted by Meaghan Lamarre

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:35:30 -0700

It's no secret, I think, that I have a particular interest in gender in technology -- I came to EchoDitto from the National Organization for Women, after all. I started my computer career with computer camp during my elementary school summers, where one of the women physicists in the building (thanks, Dr. Minichino) took all the girls to lunch one day each summer to give us a little extra encouragement about sticking with the tech stuff. Lucky for me, the lesson took.

So I'm really excited to be able to repay the favor this week as I'm participating in an online mentorship program called Networking for Success. Organized by the Women's Technology Empowerment Centre in Nigeria, the project is designed to encourage Nigerian women in technology to learn more about technology and to use online tools more effectively. Through the Networking for Success blog, I am part of a group of experts who are sharing our experiences and lessons learned about online technology with a really excellent group of participants. Thanks go to Beth Kanter, a fellow mentor, who introduced me to this project via her blog.

There are some really interesting conversations going on and I hope you'll check it out: http://www.w-teconline.org/nfsblog/

More than nerdy news and politics? - posted by Cristen Perks

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:33:31 -0800

Well, you may not know this, but I'm quite the baker and crafter. My parents call me "Martha, Jr." I've been supplying the DC office with sugar cookies for the last 18 mos and I have to say no one has complained. Although Ben is quite the cook as well - he's definitely challenging me for the title of "office baker." Where am I going with all this?

Well recently I haven't had a whole lot of time to spend doing the crafty things that I like to and then, like a beam of light down from the sky, I discovered an RSS link on the food network site. It struck me! I don't have to just monitor news, friends, craigslist with my RSS reader - I can monitor food blogs, recipes and crafy magazines too!!!! [insert sound of angels singing]

I'm not really sure why all of this didn't occur to me earlier. I think I've gotten so stuck in the routine of monitoring work stuff over the last 3 years with RSS that I didn't realize the fun folks had finally caught onto RSS in the last year or so. This has definitely inspired me to make some time for being crafty. Some of my favorite finds are on del.icio.us if you're curious. And if you don't know what I'm talking about with all this RSS mumbo jumbo, watch this video, it's great:

So, being that I'm an internet strategist - longtime fan of crafty bastards - and just now having the aforementioned epiphany, it should be no surprise that I'm also just now hopping on board the etsy train. I'm amazed by the breath and strength of the community surrounding handmade crafts - what a great resource. In the first week, I've gotten personal tips on selling products from another local etsy fan and have even placed my first order. And to think, I can thank my RSS reader for all of this!

3 months the wiser - posted by Anne Keenan

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:01:30 -0800

It’s been three months since I started at EchoDitto—hard to believe, right? I wanted to share a few trends in my life since I’ve been here.

1. Personal content. In the world of non-profits, the personal voice is not the preferred voice. In fact, the preferred voice is generally one that uses words like “community building” “stronger, healthier families” and “together, we can make a difference.” It got so that every time I went to write something, those words miraculously came out, without my even trying. Now, nearly everything I read is written by a real person, and you can tell. Unsurprisingly, I trust the content so much more.

2. Immediate gratification. Once Jason talked me into Amazon Prime, I’ve been hooked. This has saved me from the bonus items that had previously been needed to push me over the $25 free shipping limit. Why not order two USB hubs? Also: 2 copies of it’s called a breakup because it’s broken (gifts), Homicide: A year on the killing streets, Grace After Midnight, a stainless-steel salad spinner, and so so much more. Most of these things were purchased after reading extensive customer reviews. I even wrote a few of my own (see #1).

3. Immediate information. News happens more quickly here, which is probably part of changing my focus from reproductive-rights-only to a broader technology perspective. We watched the Steve Jobs keynote live on Phil’s iPhone, Tom told us about Heath Ledger’s death hours before the office next door heard of it, I just read that there may be a Del.icio.us 2.0, which I’m oddly excited about.

4. Environmental focus. There are only so many Seventh Generation calls you can overhear before you switch all of your cleaning products to biodegradable, non-toxic cleansers. I’ve of course purchased these things on drugstore.com (which I love, see #2), probably negating any positive environmental impact.

I’m pretty sure I could keep this list going forever, but maybe I’ll save some for my recap of the next 3 months.

We R - posted by Anne Keenan

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:53:03 -0800

This year I really needed to watch my champagne consumption at the holiday parties, because in catching up with everyone, I had to explain My New Job and exactly what it is I do at EchoDitto. It’s hard and, trust me, once you’ve had a few drinks it’s nearly impossible.

Descriptions of my job generally followed a set path: first I would go through what the company does—“online community building and innovative web strategies”; hitting a blank stare I would try for street cred—“it was founded by people from the Dean campaign”; still getting nowhere, I’d resort to my clients—“well Rosie.com is my main client.” And after that, well, almost no one cared about exactly what I did, wanting only to know more about Rosie.

Here are the FAQs

Have you met her: not yet, but hopefully soon
So what is she doing right now: she has two charities for kids and an amazing blog. She was thinking about an MSNBC show but that fell through.
What do you do for her: we dream up and make all of the cool things work on the website.
I never knew you were a big Rosie fan: honestly, I liked her but didn’t know much about her before. Now that I see the way she affects her fans’ lives, I’m incredibly impressed with her. I feel like there aren’t really that many celebrities who are so open with their lives, and unapologetic. On her Ask Ro page (that she devotes hours and hours to), she answers questions about everything from what it’s like to be a lesbian parent to her favorite Broadway shows, how she manages depression to her favorite craft stores. I’m impressed.

Lucky for me (and any impending reunions with friends), R Bloggers 4 Peace just posted a new video for Rosie. I have to admit I maybe teared up when I watched it. Just take a few minutes out of your Friday and watch this. It just might make you think a little differently about celebrity and its power to influence people’s lives for the better.

And then I’ll help you set up an RSS feed of Rosie’s blog so she can change your live for the better, too. I mean, it's my job.

(Um, while linking this, I watched it again and have goosebumps. Really--go now! Watch it!)

Pick a blog. Any blog. - posted by Cristen Perks

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:26:34 -0700

I was recently asked what one blog I read religiously every day? Ok, this isn't too tough a question, right? I mean we all use RSS to read 100's of blogs daily anyway. So, the tough part for me was coming up with just one blog, just one answer.

So many options here: there are the amusing hollywood blogs, the political blogs, the "I wish I had more time to read blogs like this" hobby blogs, the "supposed to make your life easier, but consumes your day reading it" type of blog, client blogs, personal blogs, work blogs, etc.... the list never ends. So, simplify it a bit by removing your personal and work-related blogs from the mix - What is the one blog that you read religiously every day? Why?

My answer: Boxes and Arrows, a design and IA blog that I'm addicted to. I'm not sure that's my final answer though.

Rand(SocialLife) - posted by Ethan Winn

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:41:49 -0700

I just came from having lunch with someone I’d never met. We made the plan through NoonHat (which, it turned out, we both found through the O’Reilly Radar blog). The service is prety straightforward: pick a date on which you’re free for lunch and specify a radius within which you can meet and the Noonhat servers will send you and your lunchmate an email the morning of through which you can work out the details. It’s quite a beauty in its simplicity, leaving communication between the parties up to email and with an interface that is a simple extension of Google Maps. Though it echoes local meetups like Lunch 2.0, after-work drink network, facebook lunch groups and web dating, it’s still a pretty unique idea (though my lunch partner had already been working on a similar one).

What interests me is not how Noonhat.com fits into the web ecosystem but what this drive toward web-enabled pseudo-random social interaction is all about. Leaving aside the social drives making such social interaction desirable, there is the question of what participants in the projects are looking for. For me Noonhat’s random lunch was related to a fairly radical dream, in which individuals are unafraid — even eager — to have meaningful, perhaps difficult conversations with those from very different walks of life. But the reality is that it is very difficult to orchestrate and participate in any type of uncomfortable, meaningful conversation, let alone such conversations between strangers who may have very different beliefs and backgrounds. In the case of my lunch we talked about web development (our common profession) and how online networking could be used to find good coffee joints and hot dates.

The danger of the social randomization is that instead of fostering conversational courage and the ability to relate across barriers it encourages participants to develop slick lines of conversation, master the easy hour and focus only on the networking and identity constructions aspects of the experience. The question, then, is how can these models be adapted to encourage genuinely brave and substantial experiences and relationships, if they can really do so at all?

Who Wants to Storm the Men's Bathroom with Me?* - posted by Gisele Toueg

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:11:45 -0700

*Overheard while waiting in line for the ladies' room at BlogHer 2007

The third annual BlogHer conference kicked off on Friday at Chicago's Navy Pier. As BlogHer founders Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Stone and Elisa Camahort told a packed auditorium during the opening session, this year's conference drew 800 particpants, making it the largest gathering of bloggers ever (regardless of gender). Wow. And what a gathering it was. Bloggers from all over the country and around the world came together to discuss the latest trends in technology, the art of self-promotion, effective strategies for building community online, and how blogs help all of us express ourselves and explore our personal and professional identities.

Personally, I was amazed at how many nametages belonged to people whose blogs I'd read before. In fact, the first breakout session I attended, called "The Life Stages of Online Communities," was moderated by Betsy Aoki, one of my former freelancers from my days as an editor at Amazon.com. Betsy founded the Seattle chapter of Webgrrls back when there weren't too many of us in this space. It was so inspiring to hear her and Webgrrls founder Aliza Sherman speak to a packed room of women (and a few men) about how to grow and nuture a successful online community.

Other BlogHer highlights included a session where participants worked together to create a voter manifesto for the upcoming presidential election, moderated by Morra Aarons, a track devoted to helping bloggers hone their public speaking skills and gain recognition as experts in their chosen fields, and a parralel conference in Second Life. Personally, I really enjoyed strolling through the exhibition hall, where I picked up a Butterball potholder and a t shirt from scrapblog, a very cool new company that brings the fun of scrapbooking to the Web. Oh, and I would be lying if I said I didn't eat four tins of free jelly beans at the Yahoo-sponsored Internet Cafe.

All-in-all, BlogHer 2007 was a rousing success, and totally worth spending twelve hours stuck at JFK and O'Hare airports, waiting for the weather to clear up and planes to depart. For those of you who couldn't make it to the conference, check out blogher.org, which is filled with posts from partipants detailing the events of the weekend.

Bad Behavior Anonymous - posted by Terrance Heath

Fri, 18 May 2007 14:38:16 -0700

There seems to be something of a trend happening lately. Actually, it more like a well-known phenomenon online has finally spilled into the public spotlight when the story about death threats against blogger Kathy Sierra broke into the news. Another web kerfluffle became news when the Washington Post reported that anonymous postings in an online forum had cost some law students job opportunities. That same forum later exacted the same price of one of its founders.

In the wake of Kathy Sierra's story, move women spoke up about similar experiences; stalking and threats of violence from anonymous commenters on their own and other blogs. Now a famous female author is making claims of not-so-anonymous cyber-stalking.

There's no mystery about it. Patricia Cornwell knows whodunit, and she wants him to stop.

The best-selling crime author has filed a federal lawsuit against a lesser-known Virginia author, asking the court to force him to stop writing "defamatory and contemptuous" material about her on the Internet, including calling her racist and claiming she stole part of his novel.

An injunction was issued against author Leslie R. Sachs in 2000, after he began writing on his Web site that a Cornwell novel, "The Last Precinct," had a plot much like the one in his "The Virginia Ghost Murders," and affixed stickers to his book that read: "The book that famous PATRICIA CORNWELL threatened to destroy."

After the injunction was issued, Sachs was legally bound to stop his behavior toward her. But he didn't, and instead his blogs grew to include new libelous claims against her, hurting her reputation and causing her emotional distress, according to the most recent suit filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond on April 23.

Cornwell and her lawyers have the advantage of knowing her cyber-stalker's identity — a lesser known writer, Leslie Sachs, who has also accused Cornwall of plagiarizing one of his novels. That's something most people who deal with cyber-stalking don't have, because of maintaining anonymity online, as a recent CNN article on Sierra's story points out.

The beauty of -- and the challenge for -- the Internet is that anyone can publish. Kids can instant message each other while doing their homework; enthusiasts create plethoras of fansites and forums; people with niche interests build communities online and connect on a global level.

The results can be chaotic. As the Internet spans traditional societal and geographical boundaries, the vast majority of people will connect in a civil manner (albeit with some heated debate.) But, as with any large gathering of people, groups with conflicting ideas can clash, while those with more sociopathic tendencies may start out with a trouble-making agenda.

It's also easy to provide an alias online, and with a little skill, Internet users can mask their identities further and target their victims from behind a veil of secrecy. This can give people the sense that they are separated from their words - as computer publishing supremo Tim O'Reilly says in his blog, "When people are anonymous, they will often let themselves say or do things that they would never do when they are identified."

And even if the issue isn't cyberstalking of a particular individual, anonymous agitators can turn the positive experience of an online community into an unpleasant one, as Cory Doctorow describes in his column, which offers suggestions for "preventing jerks from taking over the internet."

It can be distressing. If you're part of a nice little community of hamster-fanciers, Trekkers, or Volkswagen enthusiasts, it's easy to slip into a kind of camaraderie, a social setting in which everyone talks about life, aspirations, family problems, personal triumphs. In some ways, it doesn't matter what brought you together -- the fact that you're together is what matters.

Then, almost without warning, your community goes toxic. Someone in your group undergoes a radical personality shift and begins picking fights, or someone new comes to the party with an agenda. Or, worst of all: Your little clubhouse achieves some small measure of fame and is overrun by newcomers who don't know that Liza is a little bit touchy on the subject of hamster balls, or that old Fred gets into a froth anytime someone asks about retrofitting a bud vase into a vintage Beetle, or that everyone here actually kind of knows Wil Wheaton from reading his blog and he's a total mensch, so jokes about shoving Wesley out the airlock are frowned upon.

Sometimes, you rebound. More often, you tumble. Things get worse. The crowds get bigger, the fights get hotter. Pathologically angry (but often funny) people show up and challenge each other to new levels of vitriol.

Hands up everyone who's been there. That's what I thought. Doctorow's column is full of tips and advice (Mary Brandel has a few good ones too), but he stops short of one bit of advice that I've given to others and practiced myself: don't allow anonymous comments. That can mean anything from requiring registration for users to comment to merely requiring an email address, in order to make people at least somewhat accountable for what they say.

Tracking IP addresses can help too. It can also reveal what I call "the 1% Rule" and what Jakob Nielsen calls "participation inequality", which basically means that only about 1% of blog readers and online community members regularly comment and contribute to the discussion. Another 9% participate occasionally, and 90% are "lurkers" who read everyone else's messages but never comment themselves. That means that it' really easy for a tiny group of anonymous commenters, talking mostly amongst themselves, to create disruption that sees bigger than it really is.

So, why let them be anonymous? Isn't "sunshine the best disinfectant"? Who'd know better than the Washington Post, after dealing with its own comment drama?

You would think Web sites would want to keep the hate-mongers from taking over, but many sites are unwitting enablers. At washingtonpost.com, editors and producers say they struggle to balance transparency against privacy. Until recently, many of the site's posters identified themselves with anonymous Internet handles -- which were the site's default ID. Now, people must enter a "user ID" that appears with their comments.

In any community in America, if Mr. anticrat424 refused to identify himself, he would be ignored and frozen out of the civic problem-solving process. But on the Internet, Mr. anticrat424 is continually elevated to the podium, where he can have his angriest thoughts amplified through cyberspace as often as he wishes. He can call people the vilest names and that hate-mongering, too, will be amplified for all the world to see.

Hal Straus, washingtonpost.com's interactivity and communities editor, says the changes "move us in the direction of transparency." But the distinction is not quite a difference, because washingtonpost.com user IDs can be real names or fictional Internet handles. While the site prohibits comments that are libelous, abusive, obscene or otherwise inappropriate, Mr. anticrat424 could still find a well-amplified podium at washingtonpost.com.

And should Mr. anticrat424 have a "well-amplified podium"? Does he have a right to one on any blog or online community he chooses to visit? Does anyone who maintains a blog or online community have a responsibility to give him one? Does he have a right to be anonymous? To be anonymous on any forum he chooses? To be anonymous on any forum he chooses, and to use it as an opportunity to abuse, threaten or libel someone else? Does anyone who maintains a blog or online community have a responsibility to let him do so in their forum?

After Kathy Sierra's experience became news, Tim O'Reilly led a discussion that yielded a set of voluntary guidelines for bloggers, which included the advice to "consider eliminating anonymous comments."

When people are anonymous, they will often let themselves say or do things that they would never do when they are identified. There are important contexts in which anonymity is important, for example, for political speech in repressive regimes. But in most contexts, accountability via identity changes how people behave. Requiring a valid email address for comments won't prevent people who want to hide their identity from doing so, but it's one more indication that accountability is valued.

Making people accountable for what they post in comments may become an inevitable part of running a blog or online forum, because site owners may find themselves being accountable for what they allow users to post in forums they own. I wrote earlier about a blogger who was sued because of comments made by readers, in a case that was later thrown out. A more recent case, involving a site that matches roomates, suggests that site owners may be accountable for what users post.

A Web site that matches roommates may be liable for what its users say about their preferences, a fractured three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled yesterday.

The suit was brought by two California fair housing groups that objected to postings on the matching service, Roommate.com. The groups said the site violated the Fair Housing Act by allowing and encouraging its users to post notices expressing preferences for roommates based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation.

The ruling knocked down the main defense of the site. In 1996, Congress granted immunity to Internet service providers for transmitting unlawful materials supplied by others. Most courts have interpreted the scope of that immunity broadly.

Though their rationales varied, all three judges in the decision yesterday agreed that the site could be held liable for soliciting information from users through a series of menus about themselves and their preferred roommates and for posting and distributing profiles created from the menus. The choices on the menus included gender, sexual orientation and whether children were involved.

It's not quite the same scenario as running a blog, though, so the jury may still be out on whether "you own your own words" alone or whether you own the words you allow others to post anonymously in your forum and/or allow to remain posted. And while you may not be legally liable, as the young man associated with AutoAdmit found out, you may find yourself held accountable for them other arenas? So, why allow anonymous comments?

Bloggers have pointed out that job applicants might not want prospective employers to Google them and discover their political or religious beliefs, embarrassing photographs or their frank thoughts about their workplace. And employers are checking.

Jackie Thompson, HR manager at PR agency Brands2Life, has rejected a candidate based on what she found out about them online. She told CNN, "I looked up a person and found some content about their previous employers which I didn't think was suitable. I decided not to go ahead with the application."

More seriously, bloggers cite the right of those in oppressed countries to write about their situation without fear of governmental recrimination. As the Pakistani Spectator said on Tim O'Reilly's blog, "Blogging is the great and unique way of protest for the oppressed people against such regimes."

But many Internet users also believe that people using the Internet need to act responsibly online, and realize that their words and actions can -- and do -- affect other users.

So, does the "wild west" atmosphere of the net mean that in order for the rest of us to participate as we please mean that Mr. anticar424 and the "jerks" that Doctorow referenced in his column must have untrammeled ability to post whatever they want, where ever they want, about whom ever they want, anonymously and with no accountability?

Or is there a middle ground?

Auto-Karma at AutoAdmit - posted by Terrance Heath

Thu, 10 May 2007 13:03:28 -0700

It's not nice, I know, to gloat over another person's misfortune, but in this case I think it's alright to marvel at the wonders of Karma. Last month I blogged about a website called AutoAdmit, where some law students say anonymous comments cost them jobs. The owner of the site, Anthony Ciolli, refused to remove those comments after the students, citing freedom of speech as the reason.

Funny how the worm turns. Via Majikethise comes news that Ciolli was recently turned down by a law firm himself.

The Law Blog has learned that law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge rescinded its job offer to Anthony Ciolli, the 3L at Penn Law who resigned as “Chief Education Director” of AutoAdmit in March. He resigned in the wake of a WaPo exposé on how the site in part served as a platform for attacks and defamatory remarks about female law students, among others (see our earlier post here).
…Ciolli took time from working on final exams to talk to the Law Blog. “Three years of legal education has been wasted because of an unmoderated message board,” he said, adding, “The timing is absolutely horrible.” The 23-year-old, who contributes to First Movers, a blog written by law students and graduates, added that “I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

Despite stepping down from his post at AutoAdmit, Ciolli's reputation for facilitating the sullying of others' reputations apparently followed him.

Despite initially blaming his misfortune on "an unmoderated message board" the young law grad soon pointed his finger at another law student whom he claimed sullied his reputation (and who was herself attacked on his site).

My impression from the phone conversation was that this was the chronology:

1) Jill Filipovic from Feministe tells WSJ that I worked at EAP&D

2) WSJ reporter calls EAP&D, and the firm says I had my offer rescinded.

3) WSJ reporter emails me saying they’re going to run a story on it tomorrow.

Believe me, the last thing I wanted was this to be public. I just want to be left alone.

But the timeline doesn't lie. The firm said "No thanks," to Ciolli about a week and a half before the WSJ reporter calls Ms. Filipovic.

As for Ciolli, the law students who complained about AutoAdmit probaby wanted not to be slagged in public, and to be left alone. They didn't get it. Either.

Coping With Tragedy, 2.0 - posted by Terrance Heath

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 07:38:00 -0700

I don't like to think about it much, but I remember where I was for a number of disasters and tragic events. In some cases I remember who called to check on me when events happened closer to home. When the Oklahoma City bombing happened, my phone rang with family members calling to ask if I worked near a federal building. (I worked in downtown D.C., a few blocks from the White House.) I even got a call when the Heaven's Gate cult suicides were discovered.

The events of September 11, 2001, however, stand out in my mind as indicating how technology changed the way people cope with these events. Today's tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, the way students and faculty used social networks and text messaging to communicate during the shootings, provide another example.

Virginia Tech students and staff reported on what appeared to be the deadliest shooting on a U.S. college campus as it unfolded, using blogs, social networking sites, podcasts, and cell phones to do it.

With their Web server down, contributors to the campus newspaper the Collegiate Times filed blog entries on their parent company's Web site beginning at 9:47 a.m. as they attempted to confirm information about two Monday morning university shootings, which left at least 22 people dead and many more injured. ABC reported 29 dead by Monday afternoon.

…Students and faculty communicated with each other during the crisis through instant messaging and e-mail. A student captured the sound of several gunshots on campus.

By the afternoon, the university had posted a podcast of statements from its president, Charles Steger.

In addition, Nicco — our company president — started a Facebook group to show support for the students and faculty of VA Tech, and also created a sign that anyone who wants to show their support can print and display.

When the article above landed in my inbox, via the LGBTPOC listserv I'm on, it took me back to 9/11. I was at work, listening to NPR at my desk when I heard about the planes hitting the towers, and by the time the towers fell I was watching it on television in the conference room with the rest of the staff.

But when I got back to my desk, and for the rest of the day at home, I and countless others turned to email, online communities, and instant messaging to check on friends and family, as getting a phone connection was impossible for a while. I emailed friends in New York to get news on their condition, and watched my buddy list in AIM for my friends in New York to login. Everyone I knew was OK, though one friend revealed that he would have been in one of the towers that day, if a schduled office move hadn't been postponed.

In the meantime, I joined other members of a online forum I frequented on our virtual front stoop, where we exchanged updates while waiting for others to check in. Later we comforted those who'd lost people in the attacks, or who had friends and family missing in the aftermath.

I don't know how much comfort the students and faculty of Virginia Tech, or their families, received from being able to get updates so quickly, and to remain in touch with each other as events unfolded. But I can imagine, being a parent, that any information would be better than no information.

And as I human being I know that being able to connect with another human being — to be less alone in moments of fear and uncertainty — would make all the difference. However trivial our various emails, IMs, blog posts, and text messages may seem, when tragedy strikes, those connections — like anything else that lets us reach out to one another for comfort, strength, or just to share our grief and fear — may matter more than anything else.

Of Links, Blogrolls & Long Tails - posted by Terrance Heath

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 11:30:25 -0700

It was a bigger response than I expected, to a post that I almost didn't write. Two weeks ago I came across a post on Booman Tribune that made mention of a "blogroll purge." I didn't know of any such "purge" at the time, so I filed it away with a note to look into it later.

It it took me another week to return to it, and start researching to find out just what had happened and how. I took it all in, and wrote a post about it after debating with myself over whether I should or not. I'd spent the past few weeks at work putting together a blog training that included pouring over a lot of writing about the subject involved, and I decided it would make good material for a post.

I didn't think that a week-late post about a months-old event would get much notice or discussion. I was wrong.

There has been quite a discussion, with impassioned responses from all sides, which at the very least suggests there's still something important and worth discussing about the whole thing.

Digging through various search results on "blog purge" led me to a number of posts about Blogroll Amnesty Day, which took place back in February, according to a post by Jon Swift, and which ultimately ended up with some high ranking progressive bloggers deleting their blogrolls entirely and then rebuilding them. Bloggers who found themselves deleted from the blogrolls of these popular sites complained. There were still rumblings almost two months later, which is what I picked up on in the post mentioned above.

Reading through the numerous blog posts about "blogroll purge" and "Blogroll Amnesty Day" made me think about some of the material I'd reviewed for the blog training, and how it some of it might apply to the entire blogroll/linking discussion.

Right after that post, I wrote another about the state of the "Black-o-sphere," of African American bloggers, which was inspired by a post at Mirror on America about how African American bloggers made a difference in the case of Shaquanda Cotton. It reminded me of similar stories, some of which I'd participated in myself, that rocketed across the web and eventually made it to traditional media, powered by bloggers who will probably never be on a "top 100" list, but still had an amazing impact.

It illustrated to me something I think is relevant to the whole discussion of blogrolls and linking: that bloggers whose traffic doesn't necessarily qualify them for the "top tier" have more power than perhaps they realize. Call it the Long Tail, or the Magic Middle, they are highly influential in their particular niches (and many occupy more than one).

These mid-level have some noteworthy advantages. For example, they don't have the burdens of popularity that Clay Shirky illustrated in his much-referenced work, in an example of a blogger who has more readers than she can engage in discussion with, more emails than she can respond to, requests from more blogs than she can read, and who eventually "becomes a broadcast outlet, distributing material without participating in conversations about it."

By contrast, mid-level bloggers may have more time for all of the above. They have smaller readerships, but they are likely to have stronger relationships with their readers because they can get to know their readers better and engage in more discussions with them. That's probably why they get more of their readers' attention than some higly trafficked blogs.

More importantly, together they may also have more than some of the most popular blogs. Instead of spending time, energy, and bandwidth over the behavior and blogrolls of others, these "Magic Middle" or "Long Tail" bloggers (of which I am one), may discover they have the potential to do much more if they establish links and create networks among themselves than getting linked by a more popular blog could give them.

Or, for that matter, linking to those same blogs, and thus giving away their potential power.

Of course, the other end of the equation is getting more blog readers to look beyond the top of the curve, for bloggers who may be more responsive and communities where they can build relationships. When I'm not blogging about all of the above, that's something I'm going to be working on a lot more, at my "day job."

Don't Give a Damn About Your Bad Reputation? - posted by Terrance Heath

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:56:25 -0700

I want you to try something right now, especially if you've never done it before. (And if you haven't, why on earth not?) Google your name. (If you've got fairly common first and last names, try using quotations.) Done? Good. You've just taken the first step to discovering who's saying what about you online.

In other words, you've plugged into your online reputation. Didn't know you had one? Unfortunately, if you've ever applied for a job, been in the news, or had a doctor's appointment you may be the last to know about your online reputation. You may also be surprised at what you find there.

And, yes. I did say if you've ever gone to the doctor you may have an online reputation. Why? Because doctors are blogging and some doctors are blogging about their patients.

Hundreds of doctors across the country are writing Internet diaries that sometimes include harsh judgments of patients, coarse observations and distinct details of some cases.

Medical blogging is so new that medical boards, schools and professionals disagree on what is acceptable. Critics say the blogs cross into an ethical gray area and threaten patient privacy while posing liability risks for health workers and their employers.

A medical blogger, for example, wrote this in discussing an 18-year-old who on Christmas Day had her third baby:

"I don't mind it so much when a young single woman comes in with her first pregnancy, because anyone can make a mistake. But when that woman gets pregnant repeatedly, time after time, she degrades herself and her children, by condemning herself to a lifetime of dependency and irresponsibility."

The writer, who identifies himself as a neonatologist working in a U.S. urban area, writes about his practice at http://www.neonataldoc.blogspot.com.

I perused Neonataldoc's archives for last month and found a few more posts where patients (and/or parents) were subject to his spotlight. And while the doc maintains both the patients' anonymity and his own, it's not hard to imagine even a few details being enough for a motivated web sleuth to match them up with an actual person. Or to think they have, because that's all they need to start with.

And if you're pregnant, you don't have wait for your doctor to blog about you. April Branum found out when she had her baby, within days of finding out she was pregnant, just how quickly her online reputation developed. Anonymous commenters on the news article took potshots at everything from her weight to her housekeeping. A second article about the comments attacking Branum inspired even more of the same. (Note: Comments on news sites means no blog is required in order to attack someone's reputation online.)

You don't have to be pregnant either. Law students can lose job opportunities because of anonymous comments on message boards.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, has published in top legal journals and completed internships at leading institutions in her field. So when the Yale law student interviewed with 16 firms for a job this summer, she was concerned that she had only four call-backs. She was stunned when she had zero offers.

Though it is difficult to prove a direct link, the woman thinks she is a victim of a new form of reputation-maligning: online postings with offensive content and personal attacks that can be stored forever and are easily accessible through a Google search.

The woman and two others interviewed by The Washington Post learned from friends that they were the subject of derogatory chats on a widely read message board on AutoAdmit, run by a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania and a 23-year-old insurance agent. The women spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution online.

The law-school board, one of several message boards on AutoAdmit, bills itself as "the most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world." It contains many useful insights on schools and firms. But there are also hundreds of chats posted by anonymous users that feature derisive statements about women, gays, blacks, Asians and Jews. In scores of messages, the users disparage individuals by name or other personally identifying information. Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases. To the targets' dismay, the comments bubble up through the Internet into the public domain via Google's powerful search engine.

Remember that Google search I had you do earlier? Now you see why.

I just take issue, and then only a little, with the Post's assertion that this is a "new form of reputation-maligning. Just last year I posted that the web is the new public pillory, because your worst behavior is no longer private, nor does it stay in the past anymore. A year before that I posted that even college professors lose job opportunities due to blogging, It's an old form of maligning, actually, just applied to a new medium which makes it more powerful and persistent.

It reminds me of something I saw one evening while walking through D.C.'s Dupont Circle neighborhood. I noticed a handwritten note taped to a streetlight, written in black maker, reading something to the effect of "Willy is a _____________ and a _____________ and gave _________________ to ____________________." "Willy" is a pseudonymn, and you can use your imagination to fill in the accusations against him. You might even guess correctly, beause there were a lot of them.

Every few steps, there was another sign accusing "Willy" of some dastardly act or another. I don't know what "Willy" did or why his accuser those that blog. Maybe "Willy" lived or worked on that street, and someone wanted his boss, co-workers, or his neighbors to see the signs.

If that's the case, "Willy" could foil the campaign if he snatched down the signs. Or he could at least limit how long they were visible and how may people saw them. He could destroy them, and that would be the end of it. But if "Willy's" anonymous accuser did the same thing online, there would be little anyone could do about it.

Even law proffessors have thrown up their hands as far as what to do about the attacks posted on AutoAdmit.

One woman e-mailed the University of Pennsylvania Law School associate dean, Gary Clinton, in February to ask for his help in persuading Ciolli remove the offensive threads. Clinton told her that since he became aware of AutoAdmit two years ago, he has had "numerous conversations about it" with Penn officials. "I've learned that there appears to be little legal recourse that we have as an institution," he wrote. He said he has had several conversations with Ciolli and has "pointed out time and again how hurtful these ad hominem attacks can be to individuals, and have asked him to delete threads." The effort, he noted, "has been largely unsuccessful."

Some of the people slagged on AutoAdmit sought the services of Reputation Defender, and online service that (for $30 a pop, or a monthly fee) will "search out all information about you and/or your child on the Internet." AutoAdmit's operators didn't think much of Reputation Defender's efforts, and issued a challenge in response.

AutoAdmit refused to take down the content about law students who complained, and Google merely "cited its policy that the Web site's administrator must remove the material to clear out the search results." Numerous complaints to Google did lead the site operater to remove Google ads from the site, thus losing its main source of revenue. But the site is still running and the operator says there are "far more important things" to worry about than the anonymous personal attacks posted on the site.

That, of course, depends on who you are and how vulnerable you are to the same kind of cyber-smearing. Here's a quick way to check. Do you have a pulse? If so, you're as vulnerable as anyone else. If not, you're slightly less vulerable than the rest of us. If you have a blog, a MySpace account, a Facebook account, a Flikr account, ever posted on Usenet, or joined any social networks where you've shared information about yourself, or just searched for information online... Well, you get the idea by now.

Being a kid doesn't get you off the hook either, thanks to the invention of cyber-bullying.

On this new frontier, instead of just four or five classmates looking on, by using instant messaging, e-mails and social networking Web sites to harass and humiliate, bullies expose victims to a potential audience of millions.

Seventy-five percent of middle school students say they've visited a Web site bashing another student. Despite that alarming number, just 15 percent of parents say they've even heard of cyber-bullying.

To paraphrase one of my favorite movie lines: These days, if you can achieve puberty, you can achieve a reputation online.

Once upon a time, only famous people had to worry about stuff like this. John and Elizabeth Edwards just shared publicly just what would otherwise have been very personal news about Mrs. Edwards' health. But even people as high profile as the Edwards live with the reality that everyday citizens not only have the power of media at their fingertips, but also have the protection of anonymity.

In this era of candidates as open books, they had no choice. More than ever, the personal lives of the candidates running for president - for better or worse - have been brought to the forefront. And voters, more than ever, demand such transparency.

"Some of this has to do with the new reality of politics. Whatever happens, it is now best for a candidate to tell it all, tell it early and tell it himself," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior scholar at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development. "It's far better for Edwards and his wife to tell the story in the way they want to tell it than to have the blogs kind of speculating how ill she is."

It's not just the new reality of politcs, It's reality period, and we all live with it. You don't even have to be famous anymore. In fact, online buzz that you don't know about can make you famous; if only just famous enough to cause you some trouble. At least not until the next online revolution.

Reputation 1.0 is all about working through the ramifications of what we post, what we support, and the viewpoint that corporations might have when considering us for employment. For the viewpoints that our girlfriends or boyfriends parents might have of us when they check us out on line. That our friends and families might think of the things that we are doing now, that later on might come back to haunt us.

The person that codes the solution for Reputation 1.0 takes Web 3.0 and owns it.

Media and Web 2.0 is all about public exposure.

Web 3.0 might be all about getting our data that we voluntarily contributed to the internet off the internet.

Right now, we're all stuck somewhere between the various iterations of Web *.* and Reputation *.*, and we may all have to do our own reputation management. The good news is this: if you're already engaged online in the ways mentioned above, and you've did the Google search at the beginning of this post. you're way ahead already. That's because being engaged online, whether on your own blog or in an online community, makes part of the conversation. And that means that if someone's talking about you online, you can talk back, possibly even louder than them.

RootsCampDC: A WikiConference - posted by Jason Rosenberg

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:47:51 -0800

Michael and I attended RootsCampDC this weekend. It was an amazing conference with an equally exciting vibe. The attendees were all remarkable people with great stories and experiences to share. They included 2006 campaign workers fresh off the trail, a candidate for U.S. Senate and leaders of the netroots community.

The idea of the conference was to bring these ideas together to progressive ideas to reality, and I think it really worked. The sessions I attended were filled with lively discussion and some great ideas were shared.

Everyone I spoke with told me that this was one of the best conferences they've attended. One person told me the reason they enjoyed RootsCamp so much was because this conference didn't have a room full of vendors trying to sell their services. This was a conference of ideas not of products.

What I found the most interesting was how the sessions were formed. On one of the floors of the building was a giant cork board. People that wanted to host a session could simply post a piece or paper with the vital information: Name of event, topic, time and place. The conference was truly a wikiconference.

RootsCampDC was a great success and should serve as a model for other progressive conferences.

Check out RootsCampDC's Flickr pics.

I heart lists. Let me count the ways... - posted by Cristen Perks

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:28:34 -0700

If you're like me you feel like you have a million lists going at once: a couple online, one in a random notebook, 2 post-its stuck to your computer, a list on the magnetic notepad on the fridge... I feel like I need a list of lists sometimes to keep track of everything. Turns out your constituents probably dig lists too (or digg them, if they're super geeky like us).

Using lists on blogs or in communication is something we've been talking about around the office recently. Yeah those super activists that you're trying to reach out to - they're most likely super busy just like you. They're happy to advocate for you - just spell it out for them ASAP. One "ask" is usually all you need, but "how-to's" are great too.

Well, yesterday I attended a business blogging seminar sponsored by Six Apart. The best part of the seminar was listening to Alison Byrne Fields talk about best practices for 2.0 Politics and Advocacy. Alison gave me another reason to be the fan club president for "lists" - bloggers love them to.

To stick with the theme here, I'd like to share with you Alison's top 10 tips for engaging constituents on blogs.

The old dog doesn't need to learn new tricks - folks who are used to on the ground organzing understand the nature of blogs
Listen to your constituents
Start a conversation
Give them something to do
Door knocking works in the political world too - raise awareness and funding
Know who is influential in the "blogosphere"
Make it personal
Be remarkable (easier said that done)
Be honest about who you are and what you're doing (don't be a sockpuppet)
It's not all about the toys - while fun is good, achieving goals is even better

21st Century War Diaries - posted by Gisele Toueg

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:43:15 -0700

War is often associated with the technological advances of the era (eg. Vietnam was the first "television war"), and the current conflict in the Middle East, as well as the war in Iraq, are certainly part of the "Web 2.0 Wars."

The New York Times recently published an article about how Israelis and Lebanese are using blogs and vlogs to chronicle their wartime experiences, and to connect with each other across borders. Gayla, a fifteen year old Israeli, uploaded a clip to YouTube last week that she shot as she ran through her home to her family's bomb shelter, while Lebanese bloggers deliver daily reports from damaged neighborhoods throughout their country.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the article was its title: Anne Frank 2006: War Diaries Online. The Diary of Anne Frank was first published in 1947, two years after Germany surrendered and the war ended in Europe. By then, Anne, her mother and her sister had already perished in the concentration camps. What would have happened if Anne, and others like her, had been able to access sites like YouTube or blogspot? Would the rest of the world have responded sooner, or would the Nazis have stumbled upon her blog and discovered the Frank family's hiding place earlier than August 4, 1944?

There is, of course, no answer to these questions. Even as we watch Gayla's escape to the bomb shelter or read Mana's blog from Lebanon, war rages on in the Middle East. But we have a better sense of what it feels like to be in the middle of it.