More from the Web 2.0 Summit:
Citizen journalism
Tuesday afternoon, Barry Diller and NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger shared the stage with emcee John Battelle. (Moments earlier, when Google CEO Eric Schmidt walked backstage, Diller joined him. Would have loved to have listened in on that conversation.)
I asked Sulzberger — who’s a hero in the media world for supporting some of the best journalism in the world — why the Times doesn’t showcase more rich-media citizen journalism. There are astonishing examples of user-created photos and video on sites like Flickr and Ourmedia, and sites like BBCNews.com and the Dallas Morning News showcase amateur works, and NY Times reporters can’t be everywhere. When a political rally or disaster occurs, why can’t we see a citizen journalism showcase on the Times?
Sulzberger said they’re working on just such initiatives, and that we should see it soon. I’m looking forward to seeing the results.
Best quote of the conference so far came from Diller, who said, "It’s impossible to argue against net neutrality. Who’s on the other side? [AT&T’s] Ed Whittaker?"
Related: Paul Krugman’s column in the NY Times critcizing Diller for earning an exorbitant income last year after a mediocre year for his company: America’s Laziest Man? "Last year, Barry Diller took home a pay package worth $469 million, making him the highest-paid chief executive in America."
Open media profile
One of the event’s highlights was Tuesday afternoon’s appearance by Six Apart founder Ben Trott (a friend). Ben announced Vox, a way-cool new blogging platform that aggregates all your social media sites.
SixApart has managed to find a way to tap into Web services and open APIs such as Amazon’s open search, Google GData, Yahoo Media RSS, Flickr’s open API, etc., so that you can bring all (or many) of your online presences under one umbrella.
"We took open search as a base, extended it, and come up with an Open Media Profile" that you can take with you," Ben said. Want to get your API hooked into this service? Get the whitepaper at development at sixapart.com or contact Ben.
O’Reilly
From Tim O’Reilly on stage: "This is the start of the real disruption. … The bubbling up of user-generated content is just the beginning of Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 of next year is going to be very different rom the Web 2.0 of this year. " Still waiting to hear how.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Leave a Reply