It’s important to realize that right now, we’re still figuring out how to handle platforms like YouTube and how to deal with copyright because it’s all so new. These nascent values (like fair use etc) are still up for debate, so we’ve got to work hard to understand what they mean for the ecosystem and how choices one way or the other might affect behaviors and outcomes in the future.

Now, I do realize that I’m asking you to spend 30 minutes here, which in the world of the web is an eternity, but here’s the thing….in my opinion, if you want to wrap your noodle around these issues, these two videos do a great job of getting you informed quickly. In the context of all the content that’s out there on this stuff and the density of a lot of the text you’re likely to come across, 30 minutes of video is pretty quick. Agreed? Ok, here we go…

This first video is quick (just 5 minutes). Margaret Gould Stewart, YouTube’s head of user experience, talks about how YouTube’s technology works and polices the massive number of videos uploaded to its site every day, as well as how they work with copyright holders and creators to foster creativity and mutual benefit in the ecosystem. It gives you a glimpse into how YouTube is thinking about remix culture and how to facilitate a system that seeks to reconcile creative freedom with marketplace competition. The scale of the technology is staggering. This gives you a nice macro view of the volume of content that YouTube’s trying to deal with.

In this second video Harvard professor Larry Lessig, an authority on copyright issues, takes a look at remix culture from the point of creators,  society and community values. If you watched the first video, there are some great points where Larry cleverly paints a very different picture of what it’s like to be on the other end of YouTube’s system. Because you havent watched the video yet, I wont spoil it but (because it’s my blog) I’ll still say that I think Larry is really freakin smart and ask that you pay attention to the minutes around this quote:

“Freedom needs this opportunity to both have the commercial success of the great commercial works, and the opportunity to build this different type of culture. And for that to happen you need ideas like fair use to be protected and central to enable this kind of innovation…between these two creative cultures, a commercial and a sharing culture.”

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

How YouTube Handles Copyright, and Some Thoughts On Remix Culture

It just goes to show you, when one person finds a smart work-around for a common problem and uses it in public, that idea will propagate across the network as it is adopted by more and more people…until it becomes part of the culture.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

New Behaviors To Maintain Old Habits

Here are my 23 Rules of Thumb for Effective Blogging…

Rule #1: No one cares about you.

Every time you sit down to write, remind yourself that there are a trillion other websites out there competing for attention. Then remind yourself how little time you have these days to spend reading the news, books, all your friends’ Tweets and Facebook status messages and blog posts. Got it? In that moment, ask yourself honestly whether you’d spend time reading a 10,000 word blog post about your cat.

People invest their time reading posts that educate and enlighten, or organize complex information, or bust myths or provide pointers to great resources. Internet users have evolved into ultra-savvy scanners when it comes to web content, and they’re insanely good at figuring out whether there’s something in it for them in under 10 seconds. If they don’t get the immediate impression that what you’ve written is useful or entertaining, they’ll leave and go somewhere else. Web time is “me time” for readers. So write stuff that other people will find useful, and save the stories about your cat for your mom.

Rule #2: Avoid Self Promotion At All Costs.

We all want to get noticed for what we’re doing. It feels great when people read your stuff, and give you recognition for your penmanship and your ideas. But nothing turns people off more quickly than when you try and tell them how much of a mind-grenade you think your latest post is.  The moments when you’re the most excited about something you’ve created are when you need to be most thoughtful about how you get the word out. Sharing links to your stuff via social media is fine, but no one likes the guy that emails every person he knows with a message full of exclamation points asking them to share his content with all their friends. You won’t be able to completely avoid self promotion, just keep it to an absolute minimum and be tactful and tasteful about it when you do.

Rule #3: Write The Way You Speak.

Writing for the web isn’t like writing an essay or a dissertation. That goes for business blogging as well. Always write the way that you speak. Let your personality and unique voice come out in your writing, and be conversational. Swear if you like if it’s how you talk with your friends. Just be yourself. Your readers value authenticity. They want to know you’re a real person just like them. If you sound like an academic reading a dissertation, it’ll turn people off. Besides, if you can’t explain things simply, you probably don’t understand them well enough to be writing about them anyway. So put down the thesaurus and write with the voice that your friends and family are used to.

Rule #4: Don’t Flaunt Your Ego. Be Vulnerable, Admit Mistakes, and Discuss Your Failures as Well As Your Successes.

No one out there expects perfection of you, and no one likes a self-important know-it-all. Be human. Show us your underbelly.  It’s endearing.

Rule #5: Know Your DNA

The medium you chose could have a big impact on your success. Some people aren’t great writers and hate writing. Others love it. Some are super comfortable on camera and would be better suited for video blogging, others not so much. Pick the medium that best suits your abilities and comfort level. If you’re trying out video blogging for the first time, I suggest using free tools to test how your audience is responding to your videos in real time.

Rule #6: Reveal Thy Curiosity and Thy Passion

Write about stuff you’re genuinely interested in and passionate about. I say this for two reasons. The first is obvious; If you don’t, blogging is going to feel like a chore and you’ll burn out quickly. Sitting down at the keyboard to write has got to be fun if you’re going to sustain the habit long enough for you to be successful. And trust me, unless you’re already a huge celebrity, it takes a while.

Second…and this is really the whole essence of what makes this blogging thing worth it…Ready? What makes readers want to connect and build a relationship with you is when they feel your energy and genuine enthusiasm for the topics they love. I cannot emphasize this point enough: Blogging is about creating conversations and building relationships. The magic happens when your writing resonates with people on an intellectual and an emotional level that makes them feel like they’ve suddenly found someone that likes what they like, that feels the way they feel and that they want to talk to. Life-long friendships are built this way, one person at at time. So are readerships.

Rule #7: The More You Create, The More You Connect With Others

See rules 3, 4, 5 and 6. Rinse and repeat.

Rule #8: You Don’t Have To Write Every Single Day

Do. Not. Let. Blogging. Stress. You. Out.

I have heard so many top bloggers say you have to post every day to be successful.  OK, yeah, if you want a readership in the hundreds of thousands a month and you want to turn your blog into a full-time career, yeah, you do. But let’s get real. 99.7% of us don’t have time for that. We have businesses to run, families to take care of, and day to day stuff we need to accomplish just to keep our heads above water.

Writing a blog takes time away from your other activities and can become a heavy burden and source of intense stress if you get hung up on the idea that you’ve got to be super blogger in order to be successful. So forget about posting every day and just post when you can. You can have plenty of  fun and make big things happen for yourself writing just one or two really good posts a week – the trick is to decide on a schedule that’s realistic and works for you and just keep at it.

Rule #9: Blog For Humility, Perspective and Growth

Rule #10: Take A Long Term Approach, Own Your Name, Build Your Own Long-Tail

When I started blogging 2 years ago, a Google search for my name got 11 hits. The information was thin – just my name on a few pages from my high school’s newspaper that had been posted online, a link to my Facebook account and some candid photos that a friend put on Kodak’s slide share of me driving a beat up Nissan Sunny. That same search today will yield over 114,000 hits thanks to blogging and social media. Because my social profiles are active and my blog is regularly updated, my best and most recent content has risen to the top of search engines – and it’s stuff I’m proud of. Taking control of your search results is important because Google results are your resume (whether you like that fact or not). Search is the first place people go to find out about you, and that’s especially true for employers. Most importantly, though, putting yourself out there in an open, transparent way builds reputation and authority, establishes credibility and gives you access to people and resources. If you want to read more about the impact of having your own personal long tail, Seth Godin has a great post titled Luckiest Guy that’s instructive.

Rule #11: Don’t Niche Yourself Too Early.

Embrace the fact that the process will change you. Blogging is a long journey with lots of unexpected twists and turns. As you continue to write and interact with others, your opinions and perspectives will change and you’ll develop new interests and old ones will fade. Over time you’ll find your unique authentic voice and get a great sense of what type of topics you really want to write about over and over again. Even if you’re not good at blogging yet, if you stick with it, you’ll get good at it, and you’ll find yourself along the way.

Rule #12: Don’t waste your time worrying about typos on your blog. Just post.

Rule #13: Don’t Be Afraid of Your Friends, Family Or Co-Workers.

Fear that your friends, family, co-workers and potential employers will read your blog and judge you harshly can cripple and demotivate you. I would be lying if I told you that I haven’t had moments of intense insecurity as a blogger. Doing this takes confidence and courage. The good news is that with time, insecurity about sharing your ideas and experiences publicly wanes and eventually fades away. Not everything you write is going to be great, but that’s not the point. What matters is the growth, humility and perspective you get from continuously showing up at your keyboard and sharing ideas.

Rule #14: Don’t Worry About Finding The Perfect Domain Name And Title For Your Blog. Just Use Your Name.

The number one hangup that seems to stop novice bloggers in their tracks is that they feel that before they get started, they need an awesome blog name. Here’s a reality check: Other bloggers don’t care. In fact, no one cares about gimmicks on the social web – they only want you to be transparent and authentic and produce great content. A funky name or a gimmicky title can actually hurt you in the long run. If your content is good and spreads online, people will get to know you and search for your name in Google. Having your name in the title of your blog and in the URL of the site address will help you own your name in search results and get found on the web.

Using your name as the title of your blog also takes some of the pressure off you to stay on topic. Believe me, if you go with reallyspecificthing.com you will immediately regret it when you suddenly decide to change directions, or develop new interests etc. Yourname.com, on the other hand is timeless and will keep racking up Google juice as long as you are producing content.

Rule #15: Acknowledge and Respond To Your Readers, Especially The Ones That Comment Frequently.

Don’t ignore your readers. If someone takes the time to read something you wrote and start a conversation with a thoughtful comment, respond if you can. Doing this one little thing says “Thank you for reading and for making a contribution. I’m here. I’m listening.” It’s just as important for first time commenters to get this type of acknowledgment as it is for people that comment a lot (i.e. your biggest fans). It keeps people coming back and encourages them to build a relationship with you. The bottom line is, if you press the “publish” button, you’re starting a conversation, not delivering a sermon.

Rule #16: Master The Zen Art of Comment Curation

Don’t be afraid of the spammers, the haters and the hoi polloi showing up at your blog and messing with your Chi. The comments other people leave on your blog are like letters to an editor. They belong to you and you have total control over whether they are displayed or not. Allow people to respectfully disagree, but feel free to delete anything hurtful, inappropriate or that you think detracts from the quality of the conversation. Seriously. Insist that people be cool, behave themselves and add value. Other commenters will appreciate it and your blog will be better for it.

Rule #17: Comment on the Utterances of Other Bloggers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy

Join the conversation on other peoples blogs often. Leave insightful, thoughtful comments without promoting yourself or your blog (see Rule #2). Showing genuine interest in the ideas, thoughts and feelings of others is a fundamental element of relationship building on the web. Dont’ worry about tooting your own horn. If you’re friendly, smart and add value to the content of other people’s sites, they’ll come and find you.

Rule #18: Learn How To Say Thank You On The Social Web In Ways That Have Impact And Meaning To Others.

Rule #19: This Is Blogging, Not NASCAR

When you’re just starting out it might seem like the more buttons, widgets, ads and share icons you have decorating your blog, the better. Avoid the impulse to treat your blog like a sponsored stock car. Too much visual clutter is irritating for your readers, and, whether you like it or not, it can ruin your credibility with other bloggers who see the bells and whistles as unnecessary distractions. Edit down to just the essential tools you think your readers want to see, and always make sure your primary content is the start of the show.

Rule #20: Don’t Act Like A Used Car Salesman.

In retrospect, this should probably be higher up on the list. I thought it might make more sense here closer to the bad NASCAR joke. Also, I apologize if you are actually a used car salesman.

Rule #21: Reality check: You’re not going to make money from your blog

Rule #22: If something you’re about to publish gives you pause, hold off on clicking submit.

Nothing you don’t publish will ever come back to bite you.

Rule #23: Always Write Your Titles Last

Arguably, the title of a blog post can make or break someone’s decision to spend time reading what you’ve written. Enticing people to actually read what you’ve written is half the battle. Brian Clarke is the master of this. He’s got an entire blog devoted to how to write for the web. Highly recommended.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

23 Rules of Thumb for Effective Blogging

The engagement cycle is almost always the same on new social networks with a lot of hype (Google Buzz is a perfect example). The alpha geeks “follow”, listen and interact a lot early on when the community is still a small, tight-knit group of early adopters. They amass large followings quickly, and while they develop dense networks of influence, they are also less discriminating about who they interact with and “friend” because the frenzy is highly social.

Eventually they all hit a saturation point, though. The numbers get too big, their sense of true community dissipates and the initial excitement wears off. The second the enthusiasm for the shiny object disappears, they start spreading their attention out evenly again on the tried-and-true social spaces where they get a real sense of intimacy and personal connection. That’s why, in the long run at least, the technology doesn’t matter much and why focusing relationships to achieve long-term social goals is so important.

I’ve made these observations from interacting online and joining and leaving social networks for years, but I don’t have any hard data to back this up. It’s just a hunch, so I’m really interested to hear other people’s opinions and ideas on this or get pointers to any good examples. It’s sound long-term strategy to focus on relationships over technology, but if it’s the early adopter crowd you want to notice to you, there doesn’t seem to be a better time to get their attention than on someone else’s launch day. What are your thoughts?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Sometimes It IS About The Technology

The way we experience the web is moving quickly towards a standard where content is not linear, but relative. When content is linear, one piece of content leads us to another. But when the model is relative, any piece of content can be accessed via contextual triggers anywhere, any time and on any device.

Location is going to be a primary trigger that changes how we experience web content. In fact, it wont be long before a lot of the content that exists on the web will also exist as overlays to our senses as we move through the real world. Sound crazy? It’s not. It’s what the augmented reality movement is all about, and it’s coming fast.

A few days ago at TED, Bing engineers demonstrated that they are going way beyond Google’s Street View technology, using backpack cameras to capture pedestrian spaces, Flickr integration to provide a more diverse picture of a place over time, telescope data to allow people to get information on celestial bodies, and live video to show what’s happening in a place in real time. It’s pretty incredible.  If you’re not impressed by this 6 minute demo, I’d take a moment to chew on what you’re seeing for a second, and consider for a second how evolved this still-young this technology is…

What Does This Mean For Us and The Web?

Well, first of all, putting content into context this way gives an unprecedented level of depth of information and understanding about place and our relationship to it. As Blaise Aguera y Arcas told Fast Company in a recent interview…

“If you want to explore, if you want to really understand more about a place, you really need to be able to get right down in there, and see if from the point of view that people actually experience it. As great as it is to use cameras on top of cars for building that visual trellis, that’s not the actual human perspective.”

With a layer of user generated content on top of maps we can look around and explore where we are with a completely new set of lenses.

• It’ll be social – other people’s photos and videos will give us a unique perspective of the history and social context of where we are,
• It’ll be personal – Our own location-tagged photos, videos and content can allow us to relive moments when we visit places that are meaningful to us.
• It’ll be educational – instead of having to read and learn in a linear way, you’ll be able to put yourself at the center of the action, in context of place (and eventually time).

Most importantly, the rise of the Geoweb will open up completely new categories for business and innovation. It’s not hard to imagine a variety of commercial applications for virtual augmented reality tours or rich entertainment, educational and social experiences. With consumers rushing to buy location-aware smart phones, expect to see a lot of movement in the mobile market for these types of experiences in the next few years. Exciting stuff.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Maps, Meta data and Augmented Reality