Tag: Social Media

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Comments, No-Comments Debate gets Noisy

People love catfights, which perhaps explains some of the interest in the comments/no-comments debate between me and Mac blogger John Gruber. It’s a pseudo-debate, really, since the only engagement is blog posting. John and I haven’t directly communicated.

I started it all, by calling out John for not having comments on his blog. I told him to “Be a man,” which I actually meant with some backslapping good nature. But some people are morally offended. Stacia Van Doll reblogged the post as: “QUIT being a douchebag Joe Wilcox.”

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You’re Zucked!

Perhaps I don’t pay enough attention to Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis. Something, somewhen, somehow bugged me about his blog posts—maybe it was frequency or attitude, I don’t recall—and so I nuked his RSS feed sometime ago.

But post “The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand” has me howling delight, even though Jason rambles on even more incoherently than I do. Thanks to Dare Obasanjo for tweeting the link.

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I was gouged by the Macalope and Lived

I am not the most popular journalist among the so-called Mac faithful. I’ve written some tough stuff about Apple over the years, and most of my analyses proved right long after my public lynchings. One of my posts from summer 2009 set off John Gruber, aka “Daring Fireball.” The  blog post was a personal challenge to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs to return to work and do well.

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Journalists Must Socially Publish or Perish

News has gone social, claims Pew Internet. LOL, tell me something I don’t know. 🙂 Pew’s report, “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer,” is an informational treasure trove for journalists or would-be journalist bloggers. But it would be much better had Pew surveyed Americans under 18. Instead, the organization surveyed 2,259 US adults, ages 18 or older, between Dec. 28, 2009 and Jan. 19, 2010. Crucial demographic “Internet users” is 1,675. Why did Pew ignore the most important socially active demographic group? Teenagers?

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Michael Arrington, Talk Dirty to Me

There’s something dirty feeling about watching Michael Arrington’s interview of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. I don’t mean that as criticism of Michael; plenty of other folks have done that all too well. It’s this new media thing, where you sleep with the people you write about. You do business with them and for them.

Who am I to criticize? The new media thing is working out rather well for TechCrunch, which makes oodles of money, commands huge traffic and pageview numbers and mingles with Silicon Valley’s dealers and stealers.

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Process Journalism and Original Reporting

On July 17, I posted, “The Michael Arrington Matter,” where I came down hard on the TechCrunch cofounder for publishing stolen, internal Twitter documents. I wouldn’t have done it.

But in fairness, TechCrunch is successful—and for a reason. TechCrunch publishes lots of original content, as much in the comments as the stories. Readers participate in the process.