May 6, 2005
AO / Technorati Open Media 100 Nominations
Open source has revolutionized software, and now it’s doing the same for media. We are realizing the first, truly democratic, new world of Open Media, where every online user can create, share, and participate in media of all forms. And it’s just the beginning.
We used to think of “collaboration” in terms of bringing together the people we know, those pre-qualified to fit the task, to sit around a table and hash out, refine and execute ideas. The Internet has become the platform that enables learning and sharing amongst millions of people, escalating collaboration—and ultimately progress—to exponential levels.
AlwaysOn and Technorati call this phenomenon the Open Media Revolution. With the AO/Technorati Open Media 100 list, we are honoring those individuals who are driving the proliferation of Open Media and leveraging the power of community, not an individual or a corporation. The purpose of the list is to provide a framework of this emerging industry. It will include the key players who are proving the impact of Open Media and building the infrastructures to facilitate it.
We’d like to hear from you. Who are your nominations for key players driving the Open Media Revolution? Comment on this post and list your nominations, up to 5 per category. You can also tag your own blog posts with Technorati tag: AOTechnorati100. We’ll be closing our call for nominations on May 16, 2005 and we’ll be watching.
The final AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 will be published in the June issue of the AlwaysOn Blogozine, and of course I'll blog it here.
Here are the categories for nominations:
The Pioneers: industry luminaries who created the vision of open media and continue to shape it.
The Tool Smiths: web service entrepreneurs and companies building the open media tools (blogs, social software, wikis, RSS, analytic tools, etc.).
The Trendsetters: the influencers driving and evangelizing the adoption and applications of Open Media.
The Practitioners: the top bloggers in politics, business, technology, and media.
The Enablers: the venture capitalists and investors backing the Open Media Revolution.
The Open Media industry is rapidly emerging and changing. We've barely scratched the surface of what’s out there. This is our collective attempt at creating the framework and defining the key players driving Open Media at this point in time. The list will evolve and change just as quickly as the industry. We expect the 2006 Open Media 100 to look very different!
UPDATE: Sorry about the insensitivity, and good comments from all of you, I am asking the folks at AO to change the category name from "The Founding Fathers" to "The Founding Fathers and Mothers". Sorry about that!
SECOND UPDATE: Thanks to Ross Mayfield, I think that "The Pioneers" is a better category name. I'm changing it again. Thanks again for the criticism and feedback.
Technorati Tags: AlwaysOn, AOTechnorati100, blogosphere, OpenMedia, OpenMedia100, tags, technorati
Posted by dsifry at May 6, 2005 9:04 AM
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The "founding fathers"?
If it wasn't so depressing, it would be funny.
Just by way of seeking clarification, how does "With the AO/Technorati Open Media 100 list, we are honoring those individuals who are driving the proliferation of Open Media and leveraging the power of community, not an individual or a corporation." fit together with "The Practitioners: the top bloggers in politics, business, technology, and media." given that the latter inherently is about individuals, not the power of community?
The more things stay the same.
DUDE!
Founding fathers?
Do I need to send 100 angry blog sheroes your way? Does Kevin Drumm ring a bell? Or is this kind of "there is no such thing as bad PR" stunt?
First, what is the basis for believing that AlwaysOn and Technorati are entities that are worthy of bestowing "honor" on anything or anyone?
Second, what indicates a need for "a framework of this emerging industry?" What is the framework for? Who will use the framework and to what end?
Third, isn't the purpose of this list really to draw attention to Technorati and AlwaysOn? Don't those two entities have a need for attention that is greater than any "need" for a "framework of this emerging industry?"
Finally, where's all the transparency here? After all the nominations are submitted, who will decide? Are they really nominations, or votes? What is the process for final enumeration of the list?
You guys are right, I have asked the AO folks to change the name of the category from "The Founding Pathers" to "The Pioneers". Many thanks to Ross Mayfield for the suggested category name, and to Marc, Liz, and Susan especially for the criticism.
I apologize.
Dave
Thank you Dave. A simple, direct way to handle this.
Could we add the Troublemakers category?
And do Trotts count as one or two?
Why just these topics for "practitioners" -- politics, business, technology, and media. Why not just open it to best bloggers and not make it topic-specific? It seems way too limited for the blogosphere.
For instance, some of my favorite blogs don't focus on any of those topics. For instance, there's WorldChanging (http://www.worldchanging.com), and Ms Musings (http://www.msmusings.net) and Science Blog (http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/index.php)
If you must have winners in those four specific categories, then why not have an "other topics" category to explore the topical diversity of the blogopshere?
- Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS
The real, but addressed issue (and my wasn't that a Freudian slip) of Founding Fathers aside, and Dave Rogers' questions being very relevant, why don't we just rename the same old lists these new categories, because these are guaranteed to bring the same faces and voices, as other '100' lists of this nature have in the past.
Can't we just fill in who will be in these lists? Can we leave aside the pretense that it is going to generate anything fresh and exciting? Or introduce new people or thoughts or ideas?
This is one of the most disappointing things I have read in months.
Echoing Shelley's concerns, I think there should at least be a category for non-A-Listers. May I suggest something like:
The Up-and-Comers
or, The New Voices
or something along those lines...
Yes. Moving from the, "Founding Father's" to the, "Pioneers" is a start but keep digging. To make your language more congruent with open source values, words like the "top" bloggers in politics... can be replaced with language that better reflects how bottom up or flat cultures actually work: Replace the word "top"
with the word "influential" and you'll get a little closer to becoming what you profess to be about.
Open source awards ceremonies that mirror
proprietary awards ceremonies are unconcious award ceremonies.
The open source movement empowers the citizenry to reject proprietary top down culture by making it possible for communities to supply their own demand by bridging unnecesary supply line boundaries.
You can help point this out by honoring online communities working together across disipline boundaries that challenge outdated proprietary oligarchies and the entrenched ranking systems that sustain them.
Please consider replacing a couple words in your description of "the Practitioners" so it reads:
The Practitioners: influential communities
of bloggers in politics, business,
technology, media and the arts.
A "Top" blogger may not be an influential blogger
and an influential blog may not rank very high
in the technorati 100.
Question: How does an open source awards ceremony demonstrate it's credibility if it doesn't know how to suss out influential, little known bloggers or communities of bloggers who none-the-less demonstrate a potent challenge to an existing proprietary order.
Wow, who died and made you guys the grand poobas? Okay, possibly that's a little harsh but the underlying question seems valid: Why are Technorati and AlwaysOn the right place to have this poll, why these categories, why now, and what are the rules? Neither your post or the almost identically worded one on AO to which you link give answers to any of these questions?
The fact that you've announced this without laying out any ground rules is especially puzzling. Not the standard legalese but just the basics: How are people or groups nominated? What's the process for moving from nominees to winners/selections? How are you going to validate these processes to avoid ballot stuffing and similar issues? What if someone starts a Babba Boey stunt, how will you handle it?
You and Tony really surprised me and a lot of other people with this project, not in a good way for the most part I'll wager. Credit for the nerviness but since the poll is about 'open media' don't you think a more open, community-centered approach to developing this 'framework' (whatever you mean by that) should be used as the starting point?
A site I saw today, http://www.thosebastards.com/, covers the site in more detail, but there are some serious issues in all of this.
Quite frankly, I don't want any group coming out and saying "hey, we're the pioneers" or "we're the founding fathers", especially in an incestious organization that has become the blogosphere (see Technorati 100). Imagine -- 9 million voices boiled down to 100 authorities or so.
(Or, since I've been running my blog since 1999, I didn't seem to the email...)
One of the beauties (and curses) of the internet is that we all get to determine our own credibility of the poster. Granted, there are rankings and recommended readings and blog rolls, we to a certain extent we choose where to go.
Granted, Top 100 lists help the media and evetually help certain people to some money and fame but in effect hurt the whole community because of the limited number of people that are heard. Otherwise known as business as usual.
Tread carefully -- don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Let's be sure to include those who are designing for the open media revolution such as:
37 Signals
and
Adaptive Path
Zeldman and a few other design sites also qualify.
What is abundantly clear from the comments above is that this advertising effort by Technorati and AlwaysOn isn't very well thought out.
The Webby Awards have named a Best Blog: BoingBoing. Those guys and girl do a great job.
Let me echo some others reactions. Do we really need another way or platform to promote already popular blogs and bloggers? This is an old media approach to a new medium.
If you want to contribute something to the blogosphere, develop software that solves a problem. The problem that exists in the blogosphere is overcoming the existing Top Ten Lists. The talented staff at Technorati could solve that problem if they tried, no?
here are my nominees (technorati is unable to catalogue tags on my site):
pioneers: Garret Vreeland of dangerousmeta. http://www.dangerousmeta.com Garret has been maintaining his excellent filter weblog since 1999, and organized what I believe to be first international weblog project, Behind the Curtain, http://web.archive.org/web/20001204173700/http://www.zopesite.com/behindthecurtain on September 17 and 18, 2000.
trendsetters: Rashmi Sinha, of Dialog Now http://www.dialognow.org/ . Rashmi created Dialog Now in the aftermath of the December 2001 standoff between India and Pakistan. Seeing that face-to-face communication was no longer possible between people in these countries, Rashmi created her website in order to keep them talking. Her rules are simple: state your opinion--then listen. Be civil. Break the rules, and you're booted off the site. The site is still going strong.
practitioners: My Apple Menu Reader http://www.myapplemenu.com/reader/ is just a model of good linking. Every day, Singaporean Heng-Cheong Leong provides a few high-quality, thought-provoking links. And Leong has been doing it since 2000.
practitioners: Food Policy Weblog http://usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com/ : A newcomer to the blogosphere, Parke Wilde focuses on the facts underneath the food policy debate, and the politics that drive it. Outstanding information and analysis.
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Dave Warlick has created Blogmeister. This has enabled my class to start blogging and venture into the great online conversation. Blogmeister is designed to give a teacher editorial control over their classroom blogging. I find it full of exhilarating possibilities.
I nominate him in the Tool Smith category. Dave has updated and adapted his software in response to suggestions. He is visionary and far sighted.
He is inspiring in his blogging, providing thought provoking topics and wisdom. His podcasts are legendary and not to be missed.
How about changing tool makers to just tools?
I'm founder and CEO of Technorati. I was the cofounder and CTO of Sputnik and Linuxcare, founding board member of Linux International, and board member of AOTC. I've been around the block a few
times. Some might call me a serial entrepreneur. A more personal but less-updated site has more information about me - pictures, speeches, software, etc. You can contact me at david-blog@sifry.com.
