Notes from the technology panel at the NYBloggers event run by Gothamist.
Panelists: Meg Hourihan, Anil Dash, Jason Kottke and moderator Paul Ford.
No grudge matches going into this one, so we'll just have to wait to see where the fights start. Note, Kottke seems to be missing.
And we're off...
Paul asks what's changed over the past several years.
Meg: Originally people thought there was no need for Pyra since it was so simple. But 99% of people have no interest in the technology. This was similar to the idea behind Kinja, where people don't have to worry about RSS, syndication, etc.
Anil asks the audience how many have blogs. Pretty much unanimous. Anil makes the point that we may find it easy, but to most other people it is still extremely complex. There still are high barriers, it has to be simpler to get started and to share with others. "We are assuming a model of 'pundity' as the model of blogging, which misrepresents the future -- communicating with friends and family, the people I care about." The tools are still assuming audiences of thousands of people. And the few people who are generating tools for small audiences don't give any of the real tools that people want.
Paul: What needs to change?
Meg: We've made a tremendous amount of progress. "What do I write about?" There's a lot of potential to help people focus on what to write about, with the technology becoming more integrated into daily life. Like having a book club, with a related blog, or a knitting group.
Anil asks whether this is a "prompted" technology, or is it more closely tied to your identity? (ed. I don't know what he's talking about). Oh, he's saying that if you're reading a book, you should post about it.
Paul: Isn't that the most boring stuff about blogging right now?
Meg: "There's a finite number of people who want to write about their lives." The same people who write offline journals are probably already online. People who want to write about things which aren't personal journals but want to communicate with friends and family.
Anil: "I have a cousin across the country and I want to share how my baby is growing with them." But people want to control who's reading and we have a lot of work to do on this front. With gradations of access. And also to be able to track who is coming to the site. We shouldn't have to know our friends' IP addresses to control access.
Paul: How do we address the uniformity and small number of vendors in the industry as it relates to privacy (ed. paraphrased)?
Meg: Yes, this can be a problem. In developing Kinja I pushed for multiple identities so that I could put porn in one, and normal things in the other.
Paul: "Like, 'Skullfucking'". (ed. this site is now going to be the #1 hit on Google for skullfucking. Great.).
Anil: We're looking at our company sort of like Adobe where there are a range of products around the same basic concept of image manipulation. The idea being that SixApart will have a range of products for different audiences. And, like Adobe's plug-ins, the connections between the products to other products is key. That interoperability will be the differentiator. (ed. Finally, an exciting and insightful point!).
Audience member asks whether expanding the pie will mean abandoning the early adopters?
Anil: We plan on supporting both groups, with "pro" tools for some and other tools for others.
Anil: Why are people assuming that blog publishing tools should be the starting point for sites even though they don't always do everything they want? Because the other ones are "hairballs" in comparison. Even people who are having a hard time with implementation are using blogging as the core, which is an endorsement (ed. This is exactly why ENY is built on MT, it doesn't do everything, but it does 90% and I can add whatever widgets I want). With phonecams and other technologies coming out, having MT support those will enhance the 90% core. It will be the default set of tools needed for these complex projects.
Audience: Will MT Pro ever come out?
Anil: Yes. MT 3.0 is coming out, after that something vague will happen which will turn out to be pro. (paraphrased)
Audience: What about bookmarks since the browsers suck? (ed. Ha!!)
Meg: That's an interesting idea but you can't do that now.
Anil: The percentage of people who keep blogs for their links is going down. There are plugins for Mozilla which update sidelinks. I don't know if this is core functionality since "regular" people don't really like to manage this information as much as the link enthusiasts who dominated the early audience.
Audience: What about del.ici.ous?
[Me, to myself: What about BlinkPro the online bookmark service owned by the founders of ENY?]
Paul: What would you track if you had two years in grad school?
Meg: How can we bring weblogs into school. Kids can learn to write, etc. Expanding the social reach.
Anil: Kids see books as something to read not to write. Blogs change that in a way other media such as TV can't. If I had 2 years of grad school I'd work on tech projects, interesting small, data-heavy analysis projects.
See also: Publishers Panel, Editors Panel.
uuuy aebeo.
