AR&D Reinventing Local Media

I am more than my brain now. That is – my operating system requires more than my grey matter will provide. I need help. I need my operating system. I’ve occasionally come across this idea from various bloggers, most recently Sam Harrelson(via Steve Rubel). And I think it’s a great exercise to see just how much I’ve come to depend on computing.

I don’t think this is scary, mind you. Steve 2.0 can do a lot more than the previous iteration. The biggest upgrades are to my memory (now backed up in more than one place) and to my communications abilities. Still there are flaws in the system. This past week, we saw outages at Facebook and Twitter. Both of these are tied to my OS. The outages didn’t crash my system, but they sure slowed it down.

Here’s the exercise: imagine yourself as a computer. At the source is your brain – it’s the processor and (hopefully) the memory. Others do this as a “My OS” outline, but I think the computer analogy is more apt. Your brain has part of your OS. Leaving it out is like saying “my OS doesn’t need a kernel.”

Now, draw. Here is Steve 2.0:

At the center is my brain. It’s the processor and the traffic cop for the rest of the information. There was a time when the map would end there. (OK, maybe there would be a straight line to my TV.) Now, I’ve outsourced much of the brain’s responsibility.

I have my head in the clouds; MobileMe, Google, Facebook and Twitter are all part of “cloud computing.” (I argue that Facebook and Twitter are 1/2 cloud, hence the circle and cloud in the schematic.) They are my memory, my search and recall and my communications cores. They also have the nice benefit of backing up my grey matter memory. If I forget a phone number, MobileMe has it and feeds it to me. Mac Mail and GMail (A cloud) contribute to the communications schematic, but they are less important in this iteration than they were before.

Part of my visual memory, pictures, is also in the clouds as well as stored locally. For visual recall, iPhoto keeps track of the images – not just the pictures themselves, but also data about the pictures, including who is in them and where and when they were taken.

My eyes are critical to see the world and take in data. Online, browsers provide windows for the eyes. (Although not always – Tweetdeck, for example, is its own program and requires no browser.) As for presenting information to others, talking won’t always do. That’s why I have MS Office.

I’m pretty Open Source (MS Office aside). People can change me with their input and, hopefully, do so for the better. I can’t get a full rewrite (nor, sadly, upgrade the hardware) but I can learn better now.

I rely on lots of other programs, but none are at my core. Photoshop is great, but its primary task is to manipulate images. That’s a secondary function. I can run plenty of fun, secondary programs and routines; they’re just not mission-critical.

Try this out for yourself. No rules. I’m sure I’ve left out stuff you could argue should be there. Embrace your inner android.

I had another gathering of high school friends last night, and it was fantastic. We now have a group of regulars who meet frequently and enjoy each other. We’ve gone past the early stage of “Hey! What have you been up to?” and are now simply regular ol’ friends. We have rebuilt a long-dormant community and added spouses and friends along the way. Herein lies one of the many wonderful values of social media. If eBay is “The Nation’s Garage Sale,” then Facebook is “The Nation’s Reunion.”

I should probably call it “The International Reunion,” as I hear from friends in England and Belgium, but for the purposes of this brief entry and the desire to coin a phrase, I’ll leave it.

We have reunited through Facebook in a way that’s just not likely (if not impossible) via email. We set up a page for our high school class (and anyone who graduated within a fair amount of years in either direction). A couple of us told friends. They told their friends. Now we update each other regularly and hold spontaneous meetups.

Beer is occasionally involved…

What happens at a regular reunion? You go reluctantly (or avoid it), see who looks fatter, and strike up a few brief conversations. (”Really? I have a Nissan too!”) You show a picture of your kids or pets or both, and that’s pretty much it. You say “let’s get together soon” and then you don’t. Why would you? These are people with whom you stop sharing experiences 5, 10, 15, 20, 25+ years ago.

Our little coterie doesn’t have reunions that are divisible by five. We have a Thursday gathering, a Saturday meetup, a “we can’t do this until August, but everyone send in your dates and I’ll pick one” barbeque. It turns out there’s a reason you were friends in the first place.

You meet and you clarify. Karen says “I thought you hated me in high school.” I tell her I didn’t recall hating her at all, and it’s entirely possible I liked her and couldn’t bring myself to say so. Paul talks about being a teacher now, and what it’s like to be on that side of the desk. Dave, Tony and I share thoughts on the Sox and remember a friend who was killed on 9/11. Kristi tells us of this magical land called “Nantucket.” We compare notes on adulthood: matters serious and funny. It goes on.

There are plenty of strange “friendships” on Facebook. You will be friended by people and think “Do I know this person? Do I want to?” You will hear from old girlfriends and boyfriends and think “You know, there’s a reason we broke up.” You will, at some point, be friended by your parents and rethink your choices in status updates.

But if you’re lucky like me, you’ll also rediscover a community; a Pompeii of friendship waiting to be unearthed and brought back into this world. You’ll stop obsessing over whether Facebook (and Twitter and MySpace etc.) is “news” or “silly” or “for people with too much time on their hands” (my pet peeve insult).

Instead, you’ll reinvent those friendships. You’ll rediscover how funny P.J. is and how Kristin’s remarkable perseverance inspires you. Hopefully, you’ll get Chris to buy you a beer, too.

Where newsrooms fall down in understanding the power of social media comes in the details. We think of Facebook as a way to get “fans” who will then watch us on TV or come to our Website. But it doesn’t work that way. We need to use it to build small communities, one interest at a time; a niche approach to those ideals our towns cherish. You can’t monetize that any more than I can monetize my friends. But you can connect and reconnect in a way that is more meaningful and long-term. You can remind people why they loved local news before things started to go haywire.

My friends and I are long past the “I knew someone who went to Vassar too!” stage. We’re back, like a band that reunites and discovers how much fun it is to jam together.

The music’s damn good, too.

UPDATE: July 13. After reading this, the “Kristi” mentioned above writes:

My only addition would be that there are people you didn’t know in high school and are just meeting now as old friends of old friends. You have a lot in common, can share a lot of the same old stories, but didn’t know each other 20+ years ago. It’s like a new old friendship (or an old new friendship?).

The other thing that’s great about Facebook is … that it’s nice that you have support whenever you need it. All you have to do is mention having a bad day (one of my friends posted “–is fascinated by the mean things people do”) to get a barage of support and anecdotes agreeing with your sentiment and offering help, if needed. Another of my friends was venting about a leak in her bathroom that made things unliveable for a while. Within 10 minutes she had over a dozen offers of plumbing help and places to stay. It really does feel like there’s always someone looking out for you.

“Looking Out for You” is often a news tagline. With Facebook, it’s a reality. Thanks for the extra words. The Web and its works are always in beta. Just as we are.

I blog a lot less than I used to. For years, I posted at least four entries a day at Lost Remote. I felt compelled to do so, and felt I’d be letting the community down if I didn’t. Now, I blog less. What I do more is engage in social media. And I’m starting to feel that social media is to 2009 what blogging was to 1999. It’s an act of rebellion, in the sense that it mystifies those who don’t do it. Social Networking causes endless debate, just as blogging used to. You hear all the same negativity about it that you used to hear about blogs: “It’s for egomaniacs who want to detail the minutia of their lives.” And it causes debate about that old red herring: “Is this journalism?”

Twitter, for example, is freeing. You’re limited to 140 characters. And no matter how much you want to expound, you can’t. One or two lines is all you really need anyway. It’s great practice for TV journos who need to keep things tight. In TV, every word matters. On Twitter, every letter does. Facebook is where you can expand a little, but not much, on the articles that interest you. And only those who are interested enough in you to follow you get the updates. So you try like hell to find stories that you think will interest your friends. This is the micro vs macro world, and I love micro audiences.

A few people may share your blog entry. But a larger percent will share your Tweets and FB entries. And there’s something that feels wonderful when people “RT” you.

I also realize that not everyone is interested in reading 500 words from me every day. So a quick one-liner along with a good article is a great filter. It’s what blogging aims to be – meta-reporting.

So I blog less and use social media more now. While we encourage everyone at stations to blog, we equally (if not more so) encourage the use of social media. Blogging is a gathering, but social media is a cocktail party.

The inauguration was an event that was truly worldwide, and the Web was seriously stressed with traffic. The broadband video traffic pushed the Web to its limits, and many people experienced slowdowns – or even outages – as they tried to watch video. Wrote James Klatell at CBSNews.com:

“We here at CBSNews.com experienced streaming difficulties due to an unusually high number of requests…Clicking around to some of the other major news outlets, they seemed to be having similar issues. CNN.com had a note posted for potential viewers who came to see the historic moment. “You made it!” the message read. “However, so did everyone else.” The only thing to do? Wait in a line online.”

Depending on where you were and when you tried to log in, you may have struck out entirely. Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press found trying to watch video a maddening experience:

“I tried them all – Freep.com, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, CNN, the New York Times, CSpan and others – and without exception, they all failed. After about eight minutes into the speech, I had sporadic luck with the Washington Post stream, which, despite hiccups, delivered the only available live stream I could find on my Comcast broadband connection. Judging by the running commentary on chat rooms form others who couldn’t get the video streams, my experience was the norm.”

But those who did get through set records. CNN heavily promoted its coverage on Facebook. It wound up with traffic triple its previous record. According to C|Net, as of 1 pm EST, 18.8 million viewers had tuned in to the live feed, with 1.3 million concurrent live streams watching President Obama’s inaugural address. The numbers stretched CNN to its limit. Many visiting the live feed were put into a digital queue and had to wait for a “space” to open up.

The CNN Facebook Application paid off in promotional value as well. As of 1:15 PM EST, 600,000 “status messages” had been set using the app. An average of 4,000 status updates were set every minute. Millions of Facebookers checked in during the inauguration. CNN got plenty of facetime on Facebook.

Mogulus broke a company record, with 105,000 concurrent users and more than 1 million total users. Twitter was running at four-five times its normal rate. I experienced slowness updating with it, and I wasn’t alone.

Akamai notes that Tuesday was not a record day for Web traffic. Election Day, 2008 holds that honor. In fact, Inauguration Day traffic barely makes the top five. But alas – all that video…

It’s not surprising that the inauguration put such a stress on the system. To use the cliche, this was a “perfect storm” of demand. It peaked at Noon ET – prime time for the Web. It was video-driven, and was an event with international interest. Remember that much of our audience was at work, and because we were providing so much information online, we were doing the first job of journalism: informing.

So does this mean that video doesn’t work online? That the Web will never support a big video-driven event? Hardly. It only proves two things:

1. The enormous demand for online video
2. The woeful state of broadband in the U.S.

The pipes will get bigger and faster. The demand will grow. The infrastructure will support the Big Events. In the meantime, “normal” Web video traffic is supported very well. In the meantime, it’s good to see media outlets embracing complimentary technologies like Twitter and CoverItLive to supplement their TV coverage.