Written on April 23, 2008 – 5:30 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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Since its incredible rise (and with no fall in sight), Wikipedia has been giving the old-school encyclopedias - the ones that are made from paper - a hard time. Some even say that the online user-edited reference book will eventually rule out the paper version like Brittanica. German publishing giant Bertelsmann now wants to prove those critics wrong by publishing the world’s first reference book based on the work of web volunteers: the Wikipedians.
“The Wikipedia encyclopedia will help allow knowledge to be spread worldwide and become more accessible,” the publishing director at Bertelsmann Lexicon, Beate Varnhorn, said in a statement.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
“The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia” will include 50,000 of the most popular search terms of the last two years and will be in stores from September.
According to Varnhorn, “The abridged, one-volume print edition will reach new target groups which will get to know the Wikipedia project and take part in it.” I’m sure this is right, though I doubt whether those groups will have the mind-set that is needed for an user-edited encyclopedia. I mean, it’s one thing Wikipedia is an online medium, but the fact that ordinary people have enough authority for editing a reference book might be a little hard to take for some people.
Anyhow, it’s a charming initiative that explores and broadens the boundaries of publishing. Especially as one euro from every 19,95 euro copy goes to the German chapter of Wikimedia, the non-profit group behind Wikipedia.
Written on February 2, 2008 – 7:53 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Issuu offers people the possibility to publish their own illustrated magazine. It’s just a matter of spending some time on a pdf file - so start working on your Indesign skills - and uploading it to their beta site. Issuu then publishes your magazine with a slick tool and makes it findable by archiving it in categories like fashion, architecture, arts and.. sex. Yeah sorry, I couldn’t help noticing that the founders aren’t afraid of really explicit sex magazines.
Users can then tell their friends about the magazine they’ve created and embed it on their blog or social network profile. Not that they necessarily need to, since the founders of Issuu also want their service to be a ‘creative community’.
Sounds all pretty publishing 2.0-like, but is it really?
- Yes, it is, because: Everybody can upload pdf-files and gets a really fancy tool to show it. I must admit, the interface looks awesome.
- No, it isn’t, because: Web 2.0 is also about finding stuff, just ask David Weinberger. And an online pdf file sounds a bit 1.0 to me. You can’t link to a particular article and people can’t tag a page on del.icio.us or Fleck, or comment wherever they want. And don’t even think of embedding a YouTube video. It reminds me of the newspapers in the early years of the Internet who just published their articles on-line and that was it.
Yet Issuu is a good stepping stone for everybody who wants to get used to on-line publishing. Think of the people who hardly know what a blog is. They might like the idea, since it reminds them of a ‘real’ magazine. After this getting-used-to-process, they can switch to Wordpress with a magazine-style theme. So they can experience the REAL benefits of publishing 2.0 style.
So imagine that this large group of people who wants to get used to the web starts using Issuu. Then the service might get really popular. However, I don’t think that it will ever become a successful community. Because, in the end, the sex magazines will flourish and frighten other visitors - that, for example, publish magazines about wine from Tuscany.
Not that the founders probably mind, since sex has never been bad for advertising revenues. Yet if they really want a lively community, a ’safe mode’ is a must. A 50-year old lady who uploaded a magazine about interior design, doesn’t want her tennis friends to stumble upon a porn magazine.
Written on January 2, 2008 – 6:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
“Could open-source blogging platform WordPress serve as your next social networking profile?”. With that question, Anne Zelenka started a post on GigaOM that created a fairly big buzz in the blogosphere (143 comments and trackback plus 541 diggs). She wrote about DiSO, a project that by using OpenID as an identifier and Wordpress as publishing platform wants to “build a social network with its skin inside out.” With some sophisticated blogroll-related plugins, bloggers would be able to build a social networking place that’s customizable to the max, since it’s their own place. It’s an idea by Chris Messina, co-founder of Citizen Agency.
It sounds like a great idea, especially now everybody seems to look for ways to connect their abundance of social services. Remember what Marc Canter said in Paris on Le Web 3: ‘We ALL want social systems that DO connect with other social systems.
However, Zelenka added a critical remark in her post, stating that not everybody wants one place to present their digital identity. Some people prefer several places to present themselves in different ways for different audiences.
I believe that DiSO might get popular, but I doubt whether it will get picked up on a massive scale. It seems like a nice tool for the geeky crowd out there. The ones that actually care about their on-line identity and think outside the borders of their group of friends and acquaintances. Who already have a well-styled and written personal blog. For them it’s a nice extra.
For the large audience however, it’s just a little too complicated. Yet for them, there are also interesting blog tools emerging. Tools that make blogging more accessible and look better than the old-fashioned Blogger.com design. Have a look at Blogonize for example. It’s basically an AJAXified blogging platform that makes it easier for users to create ‘one heck of a blog’ and thus might stimulate a huge crowd to finally start blogging.
Tumblr also fits perfectly into the trend. Ok, it’s not 100% blogging, but it sure looks like it. They say that when blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks. It’s another easy way for users to easily share what they create and find on the web, in a gorgeous way.
So yes, blogging will get more popular for the normal users, since it’s a way for them to present themselves in a more personal way. But the process of installing a blog on a server and activating plugins is just a little too much to ask from them. Or will the guys from DiSo find a more accessible way to create the so-wanted personal social networkingtool?
Tip: Read this inspiring article by Hugh MacLeod in which he explains why he prefers blogging over social networks.
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