Developing a Buzz:Mailing Lists and Blogs

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Mailing Lists

  • QUESTION: What is a mailing list?
  • DEFINITION: "A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers are referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the list"." [1]
  • Offline and Online Distribution
  • In mailing lists, the individual can subscribe or unsubscribe themselves.
  • Mailing lists are often bought and sold
  • Your Hosting Company Should Provide
    • QUESTION: Where is yours at?
  • Free Mailing Lists

What is a Blog and How can it Help You?

  • QUESTION: What is a blog?
  • QUESTION: Is it the same as a journal?
  • Definition: A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. [2]
  • There are blogs for every type of tiny niche out there...
  • Parts of a Blog Post
    • Title - main title, or headline, of the post.
    • Body - main content of the post. Blogs use a conversational style of documentation.
    • Permalink - the URL of the full, individual article.
    • Post Date - date and time the post was published.
    • Optionally
      • Comments - comments added by readers
      • Categories (or tags) - subjects that the entry discusses
      • Trackback - links to other sites that refer to the entry
  • Examples
  • QUESTION: Do you all read blogs? What blogs do you like? Do you have a blog?
  • What is the point?
    • Communicate personal information to community
    • Function as a journal (possibly to no one)
    • Gather statistics about who is interested in what you have to say
    • Develop ideas informally (and formally)
    • Provide your content in multi-media as feeds (podcasts, vlogs, etc)
  • Articles
    • Audience, structure, and authority in the weblog community by Cameron Marlow
    • What is Web 2.0 by Tim O'Reilly
      • QUESTION: What is Web 2.0?
      • "Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage. The pretenders are given the bum's rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other."
        • He outlines web 2.0 as:
          • The Web As Platform: google vs. netscape, akamai vs. bittorrent
            • leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.
            • Blogging and RSS: "the incremental web."
            • permalinks: a form of "2 way links"
          • Harnessing Collective Intelligence: ebay, myspace, wikipedia, etc, bn.com vs. amazon, flickr, upcoming, open source
            • "Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era."
          • Data is the Next Intel Inside
            • Who owns the data?
            • "The race is on to own certain classes of core data"
            • tendency towards users controlling own info (creativecommons, wikipedia, etc)
          • End of the Software Release Cycle
            • Operations must be core competancy and Users must be treated as co-developers
            • "release early and release often" in fact has morphed into an even more radical position, "the perpetual beta,"
          • Lightweight Programming Models
            • Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems. (php, perl, etc)
            • Think syndication, not coordination. (RSS vs. Web Services)
            • Design for "hackability" and remixability.
          • Software Above the Level of a Single Device
            • iPod and iTunes
            • gmail on web, phone, etc
            • services that avail. on multiple devices
            • QUESTION: Why is it important to use HTML + CSS and not just for computers?
          • Rich User Experiences
            • AJAX (several technologies coming together to make things dynamic visually and data-wise)
              • standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
              • dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
              • data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
              • asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
              • and JavaScript binding everything together."
            • Examples: gmail, google maps, digg, flickr, ccmixter
    • Social Software and the Politics of Groups by Clay Shirky
      • QUESTION: What is social software?
        • "Social software, software that supports group communications, includes everything from the simple CC: line in email to vast 3D game worlds like EverQuest, and it can be as undirected as a chat room, or as task-oriented as a wiki (a collaborative workspace)."
        • "Social interaction creates a tension between the individual and the group. This is true of all social interaction, not just online. "
        • feedback mechanisms: "Any system that supports groups addresses this tension by enacting a simple constitution"
          • Example: Slashdot - "No Censorship"
            • moderation (users evaluate other users)
            • meta-moderation (moderators who moderate the moderators)
            • karma points (point system for contributions)
        • "We have historically overestimated the value of network access to computers, and underestimated the value of network access to other people, so we have spent much more time on the technical rather than social problems of software used by groups."
        • barriers for participation: "What kind of barriers work best?"
          • QUESTION: What types of barriers
            • password, development practice, language, contributions
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