Stritar's chronolog

How the #hashtag took over the world

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:57:39 GMT

Ever since the times of IRC, there has been a need to categorize specific messages on the internet. With the rise of the social web and increased amounts of information, this habit became even stronger. First popularized by Twitter, the hashtag was introduced in 2007, and since then, found its way into standard offering of the most popular social services (Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, etc.). It seems even Facebook will introduce its own version soon, though people already use them overthere anyways. The hashtag changed the way we create and consume content, and it became a symbol of collaborative publishing in the social era.

On the technical side, the hashtag is nothing more than a clickable search query, a simple keyword that is attached to the post to add a bit of context to the content. An emoticon with a few more options. But for something so fundamentally basic, the hashtag turned out to be so much more, something almost magical. Sociology, communicology, computer science and other fields would probably have a lot to say about this phenomenon.

Today, hashtags form the ultimate crowdsourced media channels, some even managed to construct themselves as brands. It's hard to imagine something happening without its hashtag, and most TV shows and commercials already include them. Actually, they remind me of the Web's beginning, when everything had the AOL keyword attached to it, except now, keyword creation and curation is decentralized and distributed.

A graffiti in Ljubljana, Slovenia, persuading people to join the protests against corrupt elites. Hashtag included.

But there's something that's much more important than commercial applications: the planned or ad-hoc hashtags that form themselves in case of disasters or other extreme events. Millions can tune-in to to these instant channels, and participate with their own information. Such streams can go beyond a single service, existing above specific social media. These hashtags have the power to help people in need, and assist activists in making the world a better place. They are the ones that made the hashtag the word of the year 2012, marking the transfer of power from publishers to ordinary people.

How Facebook and Twitter are messing up Slovenian journalism

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:56:08 GMT

Before I proceed with this rant, I would like to point out that I strongly believe in social media. I think it can do magical things, hell, we've already seen it has the potential to change the world. But that's just me, a person consuming information, deciding what's real and what not, riding those waves that I like. The media - they should try harder - it's their job to report the truth. In the past few weeks, we've encountered a few slips from the mainstream media here in Slovenia, feeding us with bogus information they've copied from the (social) web. I know it can be hard to track everything that's going on, but still, double-checking a few things and sources wouldn't hurt that much. And since Slovenia is in a quite critical stage at this point, with a fucked up financial situation, austerity measures, protests and everything, this makes it even more important for journalists to do their job properly.

Case 1: the major mayor situation

Those that are acquainted with the current situation in Slovenia, know that we currently have two major protest venues. Maribor, who started it all, and whose protesters have already succeeded in persuading their mayor Franc Kangler to step down (and they aren't stopping there), and Ljubljana, whose activists are protesting more against the Slovenian right-winged government lead by Janez Janša, and no so much against the capital's mayor. You should know that Ljubljana's mayor Zoran Janković is an interesting person, one of those guys that's a bit shady, but since he has done so much for the development of the city, the general public still likes him (but not for much longer it seems).

In a similar fashion as the other protests (who are currently happening on a weekly basis), there was one protest in Ljubljana organized using Facebook and other social media channels, targeted specifically against the mayor. This event had hidden attendees, and their wall was covered with posts such as "10.000 confirmed guests", "15.000 confirmed guests" etc. There were a few of us that laughed at this, but this didn't stop the radio and television from reporting an expected record amount of protesters on that day, based solely on that Facebook event's wall posts! The result: a few hundred people, and some of them had a transparent "Thief, we love you".

The cached version of the event against Zoran Janković - with 15k hidden attendees. The event is no longer available. Spotted by @loudandwicked.

Case 2: the bogus response to the anti-corruption commission report

Today, another interesting thing has happened, and we still need to see how it will turn out. The national Commission for the Prevention of Corruption released a report saying both prime minister Janez Janša and Ljubljana's mayor Zoran Janković have more money that they were supposed to have (in hundred thousand euros). When this happened, Janša's SDS party's parody Twitter account with 30 followers at that time tweeted that this report proved the commission has finally dug into the corrupt communist hole.

The tweet that got mistaken for an official statement.

When I saw this tweet, I instantly checked the profile, since the tweet seemed very unbelievable, concerning the fact their leader is also inside the report. I instantly knew it's a bogus account, but this didn't prevent the Slovenian Press Agency from putting this tweet as a quote inside one of their news (no longer available), and from there on it was instantly picked up by other media as well. We are talking about one of the most important Slovenian news sources!

The citation of the tweet, copied by demokracija.si from STA. Spotted by @miharejc, amplified by @multikultivator, read the the thread.

Time for real journalists to shine

There are probably more cases like this, and it needs to stop! Social media is a wonderful tool for providing additional information about something specific, but as we've seen in the two cases, it often can't be the primary source for the news. Journalism needs to go a step back, and provide credible information from trustworthy sources. Otherwise, there won't be much truth left for our descendants, since too many people will simply have the power to make things up. But everything's not bad - situations like this could provide clear distinction between real journalists with original sources, and those who do nothing else but copy others. Something we critically need in this age of data abundance.

Occupy Wall Street and Other "Revolutions" as the Ultimate Reality Shows [Repost]

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 12:11:17 GMT

This post was originally published in November 2011 in a special two part series transatlantic blog post about Occupy Wall Street, on Nick Taylor’s thetwohalves.com, which is no longer available.

The situation isn't peachy. The global economic system is collapsing, the middle class is disappearing, and financial institutions have taken control of the fate of many countries and corporations. People are frustrated and want something else, they want a predictable and stable future. Hence the global Occupy Wall Street movement has been born, supported by various public figures and activist groups such as The Anonymous. Fueled by the success of the Arab Spring, these people are demonstrating against the domination of the rich 1% (or the ultra rich 0.1%), hoping to achieve a better world built on equality, opportunity and optimism.

When history looks upon the events that unfolded in 2011, it will probably view them similarly to 1848, when the Spring of Nations took place in Europe. But this time it's a bit different, it's a bit more theatrical. We're watching it live, and participating in it real-time. Everybody is in it, one way or another, the technology allows it, the people and the media amplify it. Even if you are just an observer, you pretty much know what's going on. People are squatting the streets, the police are trying to prevent it (violently), the corporations and political elites ignore it, some people support it, others don't.

These days, everyone can be a reporter. And most activists are. Equipped with laptops, tablets and smart phones, backed up by social media, thousands of tweets, blogs, pictures and videos are broadcast to the Web each minute. Uncountable number of actors, cameras and commentators make this event bigger than Big Brother, even bigger than The Truman Show. Occupy has become the ultimate global crowdsourced reality show happening non-stop, every minute, every hour, for days, even months.

The fascinating fact about this story is that you can choose the channel you want to watch. You can go directly to the source, to the people who are living it. You can consume it on the secondary level, where television and print media report their own, perhaps biased versions of what's happening. You can study the higher level interdisciplinary implications, such as these great Twitter visualizations of Occupy Wall Street or the Egyptian revolution. The Web is the playground with infinite toys.

But it's up to you if you want to get involved and contribute to the critical mass of this movement. Everybody can be a part of it, even if you're just watching or sharing information from the coziness of your living room. Perhaps you've finally been awarded with the opportunity to change the world. Probably not, but there's always a chance. And if the world won't change, you can at least participate in the show that will go down as one of the greatest reality shows of our time. Are you the 99%?

Check out the complete Occupy Wall Street series.

Dear Twitter, please reconsider this madness

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:01:53 GMT

Dear Twitter. You were always one of my favorites. I love it how you managed to create a subculture, something that Facebook will never be able to do. You've allowed people to collectively create information that travels the world in seconds. Your role in many global activist projects is invaluable, and your stance on privacy issues something that inspires the world. You help us find out about things before they actually happen. When the Icelandic volcano was erupting in 2010, I was watching the #ashtag word clouds being broadcasted live on CNN. It was then that it struck me that the media will never be the same again, the power of thousands reporters wins every time. You made it to the mainstream, shaped transmedia into Twitter + television. You were becoming the ultimate foundation for real-time information. You made me realize so many things by being one of the most prominent platforms of the social era. You were the man.

And now you are starting to kill the platform.

Anyone who's read What Would Google Do? would know this is a huge mistake. This book (from 2009!) has a chapter about the value of platforms and distributed systems, and I've been obsessing myself with this revelation ever since. Wrote a blog post about it, which was retweeted by the book's author Jeff Jarvis himself, and it made me even more in love with the idea. Now I'm sure platforms are the future, because they have the ability to outlast services.

The most important things about platforms are the ecosystems around them. Yours was always more appealing to me than Facebook's. Because of the information Twitter has (almost all of it public), because of the culture that's emerged around this information. Twitterers, Developers, even Lurkers and Ninjas, the amount of innovative things that people have managed to build around your core is amazing. Not just silly games and marketing schemes, actually valuable and inspiring things (we've tried it too!). I always believed you were cooler than Facebook, that you have a brighter future, since you weren't trying to keep people inside your services. You seemed to know what made you in the first place.

I understand it's the high level mashups you are interested in, but still, the platform is the most important thing you have. Why not let other people reinvent your user experience, like others are trying to reinvent email? You want that, you want people to make Twitter whatever they want, while creating, consuming and curating the data that's inside you. You need thousand of different clients that feed your infinite hunger, enabling you to build your business model around the tweets that are generated. You want developers to use, abuse and reshape your essence. Because platforms are like networks, there value grows exponentially with the number of nodes they have, and these nodes help platforms evolve even further, in unimaginable ways.

And now you are trying to kill bits of this platform, those bits that help create the most valuable thing you have - hundreds of millions of Tweets every day. They may be just Twitter clients, but they might as well be the most important thing you've ever had. Your fans, your supporters, your ambassadors, your army, your ecosystem. Your future is more important than your monetization, not just to me and to them, to everybody who loves what you are, and to those who don't get you. Your future is important to mankind. That's why you should stay what you were meant to be. You should stay the open platform.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 6: A trip to the Internet Archive

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:28:09 GMT

Those that have read my previous post about visiting the technology giants of Silicon Valley, might have gotten the idea that organizations around here aren't that welcoming to strangers. Well, that might not be entirely true. One of my stops in San Francisco also included a visit to the Internet Archive, a foundation that is trying to preserve all the information our civilization possesses. And they were more than welcoming. Besides giving Andraz and me a full tour of their headquarters, they've also invited us to one of their staff meetings, where the Archive's members and volunteers present their activities and results from their specific fields.

The Internet Archive is located in a former church in San Francisco, so there's more than enough room for all the people and hardware. Two main projects are currently taking place; one is the Wayback Machine, which makes snapshots of websites throughout history, and the other is the Archive, which represents systematic digitalization of movies, music and books, manually done by its members. A never-ending task that can only be done by activists who genuinely want to protect the knowledge of mankind, and you can contribute to the effort as well.

During our tour, 2.5 petabytes (that's 2.5 million gigabytes!) of data was mentioned, but I'm not sure if that's just one of the projects or both. This data is well protected, with mirrors all over the world. Impressive stuff, good enough to currently make archive.org the 223rd most visited site in the world (according to Alexa), get to the front page of The New York Times, and receive various prestigious awards.

One of the most fascinating stops of my Silicon Valley trip was indeed educational and inspiring, and it got me thinking: If there's a modern Library of Alexandria in the making, this would be it. Thumbs up.

Internet Archive's Headquarters in San Franscisco. It goes well with the logo, even though they came here only a few years ago.

The staff meeting, where members from various fields presented their achievements

Everyone that is an employee for more than 3 years, gets its own figure inside the church

Brewster Kahle, the chairman, passionately presenting the Archive's servers. There is no air condition, since heat is used for building heating.

The irony: since consumer hard disks are cheaper, they buy those and get rid of the casings.

This is how scanning of videos, microfilms and books looks like

Are we there yet?

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

Impressions from my first guest blogging experience

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:47:43 GMT

Nick Taylor is probably the person who has the most to do with me starting blogging in the first place. That's why it makes even more sense my first guest blog post was on his blog, thetwohalves.com. Luckily, he was interested in guest blogging too, since these types of exchange can bring additional exposure and new readers. But we wanted to make something special, something a bit more interesting, so we've agreed on writing a mutual post on the same topic, both publishing on each other's blog. After looking for a proper theme for months, we've finally decided on Occupy Wall Street, something that's very actual these days.

The eye of the beholder

We both approached the situation from our point of view and style. Nick's direction went more into politics. He has just returned to the States after a few years and saw how big the movement was and how differently people perceive it. He justified the importance of Occupy and criticized the problems of the current system. Here's his post: Occupy Wall Street – why it won’t go away and why it matters.

I, on the other hand, discussed the technological implications and the role of social media in the Movement, fascinated by the fact we can watch and support today's "revolutions" in real-time, using multiple channels. Here is my blog post: Occupy Wall Street and Other “Revolutions” as the Ultimate Reality Shows.

The publishing

It wasn't easy. The logistics of publishing two cross-referenced posts with the same form were quite complex, also because Nick and I are 8 hours apart. It took us hours to make coordinated support and marketing activities on different social media channels, tweeting, retweeting, sharing, liking, plusing, upvoting, stumbling, mentioning, commenting and everything. We also wanted to post the two articles simultaneously, which perhaps wasn't such I good idea, since not all times are appropriate for sharing, and one of us (or both) would perform worse than the other. But it was our first time doing such a thing, and we did have a lot of fun with it.

The results

Actually, the results were nothing out of the ordinary, so I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. We did get a very good amount of interactions on Facebook, since our co-branded post was surely interesting for people who know us both. But nothing special on other platforms. Perhaps this topic is already saturated or the mentioned timing wasn't appropriate, resulting in the visits on both our blogs being quite average. But you have to learn somehow, and we'll just have to try a bit harder the next time.

But who cares about the results. Guest blogging is fun. Even if it takes twice the amount to do it in such a way that we did, I would and will do it again. Perhaps also with other bloggers interested in such a project, or a similar one (if this made you think for a bit, give me a shout). As for Nick - I'm really happy we've finally agreed on something. This world could be a better place, and I hope our effort did help to move it a bit into that direction.

Occupy Wall Street – why it won’t go away and why it matters [guest blogger Nick Taylor]

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:27:26 GMT

This is part of a special two part series transatlantic blog post about Occupy Wall Street. Come check out my cross-branded blog post on Nick Taylor’s thetwohalves.com*.

The Occupy movement has gone global ever since it’s fiery start on September 17, 2011, in New York City's Zuccotti Park. Strangely enough, the phenomenon was initiated by Canadians, the founders of Adbusters magazine, not Americans, lending further credibility to South Park’s famous "Blame Canada" motto. But I digress.

Why should you care? It’s just a bunch of stupid hippies and jobless freaks expressing their angst because they can’t get a job with their smelly dreadlocks, right? Well, maybe not. This movement is tapping into the very core of the reasons underpinning the Great Recession, tapping into ancient history and even potentially changing the course of the political debate in the United States and around the world through its grass roots and social media approach. Click here for a global map of protest locations around the world. More interesting than the countries on the map IMHO are the glaring exceptions: quasi-communist China, formerly communist Russia and most of Africa. Freedom of expression is a wonderful thing.

The drivers of the movement are many, however one of the more powerful statistics (click here for a primer) is that the top 1 percent of Americans possess a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent. What’s making people angrier still is the drop in lower and middle class income against this top 1 percent. While no one is really talking about the reasons, it’s pretty simple. While the middle class in America grew wealthy primarily due to rising home values tied to mortgages, the wealthiest decile was predominantly invested in their own businesses and didn’t rely on loans for their wealth, so when the bottom fell out of the housing market worldwide, they were immune.

But enough about money. What this post is about is recognizing the political impetus for change evident in OWS. Some have called it the left leaning version of the Tea Party movement. And it is. In fact, I have great respect for both movements, as impossible as that may sound to Europeans. And I am not one to shy away from controversial positions, as evidenced by my post on WikiLeaks. Both organic movements were born out of a frustration with the current self-serving political structure that is willing to change absolutely nothing. So much for Obama! But what the OWS is sorely lacking is a well-defined set of goals and more importantly, a charismatic spokesperson. From my strategic marketing perspective, what they need to ultimately succeed is a leftist version of Sarah Palin. And much like the billionaire Koch brothers (whom the only viable Republican candidate for President of the US, Mitt Romney has been courting) were soon outed as the financial engine of the Tea Party, it’s only a matter of time before the people financing the Occupy movement are exposed.

The grassroots model which OWS champions, based loosely on the Egyptian protests which made effective use of social media to spread discontent with an unpopular and autocratic government worldwide is the closest the modern world has seen to a direct democracy since ancient Greece. Could this be the way forward? Say what you will, but the Occupy movement is absolutely right about one thing. Money should not equal political influence. The will of the people should. If it weren’t for the crack rock habit corporate money represents to US politicians, Congress would have changed legislation to outlaw the dubious financial instruments which nearly sunk the global economy years ago. Shame on you, elected representatives.

Sadly, while most Americans still want to believe in the Dream and many will tell you that hard work is the key to success, the stats offer a much starker reality. Income inequality in the US now ranks in the bottom third of the world, is greater than in most of the developed world (including Europe) and is in fact very close to Russia’s. Not exactly the comparison Americans aspire to. Slovenians reading this post can take comfort in knowing their country is best in the world when it comes to income equality, even if it could be doing a much better job in attracting FDI, reforming its 3rd world judicial system and job creation.

Way forward? You tell me, but change is in the making, and if history has taught us anything, it’s that revolutions can be sudden, unpredictable and harsh. France’s Marie Antoinette learned that the hard way. America was forged through a revolution. Will it be re-born through one? Or will the OWS movement simply fade into oblivion? Only time will tell, but the clock of political change is ticking, many people are fed up and the younger generations are the ones with a future to lose… Not to mention the whole world is watching.

Nick Taylor is a social media, PR and marketing consultant, blogger, politico and wannabe geek based in Scottsdale, Arizona (US). He shares his thoughts on thetwohalves.com.

Check out the complete Occupy Wall Street series.

Are we on the verge of a full-scale cyber war?

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:15:15 GMT

The whole world is talking about WikiLeaks, and the drama has reached its peak with the arrest of Julian Assange. The leaked diplomatic documents are obviously a major thing, something that could change the world as we know it. The main battleground of this conflict is cyberspace, where troops of different armies are already fully ready for combat. WikiLeaks.org is currently offline, being a constant target of attacks of all sorts. But the civil initiative is striking back, putting hundreds of mirrors online (even Slovenia has one!), and hacking the bank that closed Julian's account. Even the good boy Twitter is behaving weirdly, denying accusations of censoring #wikileaks as trending topic.

We've seen similar cyber battles before. The Anonymous (who are also defending WikiLeaks) had their fun with the Church of Scientology and Google had its showdown with China. But WikiLeaks is a probably a few levels higher. I always said that internet could be the main tool of the next revolutions, because information travels really fast and it's almost impossible to prevent it from spreading once it's out. But the problem with the Wikileaks situation is that it may be too much for our society to handle. Diplomacy was exposed, which means the current political situation, already in a weak equilibrium because of the upcoming shift in global power, will struggle to digest the information presented by WikiLeaks. And there's more to come.

All of this is probably history in the making, because we have never seen an event of this sort going so mainstream. And while we wondered if the blind woman's prophecy about World War 3 starting in November 2010 was about the Koreas, we might have missed the point. This could be the start of a civil revolution or even a real war, in which governments would surely have problems identifying hackers and double agents inside their ranks. I have mixed feeling about it myself, it's simply too overwhelming. But the general reaction of people, now matter how dangerous and foolish the revelation may be, clearly shows disappointment and lack of belief in the current "democratic" system. Are you ready for a new world?