Ian On The Red Dot

I read this post by ShadowFox. I totally enjoyed it. Like my sis would say - guilty indulgence. Like Yoda might say:

“Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young ‘ShadowFox’ is in pain. Terrible pain”

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

His blog posts, comments and links led me down a rabbit hole which makes me feel that the Malaysian blogging Scene is 100times more happening than the Singapore blogging scene.

Nice.

Damn. I’m feeding the trashy self. Must resist. Must resist.

Resistance is futile….

If you watch the TV shows done by Joss Whedon, you would notice that he seems to cast some actors regularly into his various works - it’s like he has managed to command a loyalty from them as well as displaying it to them. Now, why does this matter? I believe a big reason why Joss Whedon has a particular status in the world of fandom is not just because he writes well and produces/directs brilliant episodes but also because the actors he has chosen to work with have somehow proven to be accessible to fans.

This is an old story - despite the scifi series Firefly being canceled quite early in its run, it managed to build up quite a passionate group of fans. There was a convention for the fans which got canceled by the organizer and apparently people had arrived for the convention only to realize it was not happening. They then proceeded to organize their own fan convention. Here is where things got interesting - the actors of a canceled show learning of what the fans were doing actually came down on their own accord without any appearance fees and participated in the convention.

Read the comments and follow the links here:

Flanvention canceled.

Serenifly cast turns up to canceled convention.

Nathan said how sorry he was to hear about our con being …. maybe another definition of ‘con’.
He then shouted out, who is from Australia, one young lady came forward (she came from Australia for the convention but she also has family to visit in the area) anyway he gave her a gift from the box, I think it was a book that ties into his next project…
then he asked for others from Australia, those from Great Britain, and other far away places and he gave them stuff from his box….
Turns out Nathan had pulled out books and tapes and ‘Serenity’ money from his closet, dumped them in a box and gave them away!
I didn’t try to get anything I was just marveling at how amazing he was to even think of doing this! So amazingly cool.

Buzzfeed has a ton of links about a new tv series from Joss Whedon - Dollhouse. I am positively salivating in anticipation. The premise of the series is tantalizing, from nymag:

Dollhouse stars Buffy’s Eliza Dushku as Echo, a woman who is programmed to be a fantasy-for-hire in a supersecret, illegal facility known as the Dollhouse. Echo is programmed to forget between fantasies, but she starts to remember and become self-aware as the show gets under way.

I am unashamedly a fan of Buffy and Angel. I used to follow every episode when it was shown on Channel 5 until my National Service days when it became almost impossible because there was only 1 tv in camp, and everyone else wanted to watch Chinese sitcoms and just couldn’t understand the attraction of a girl, albeit a hot one, killing vampires. Thankfully, when I was in university, there was a period that Star World did a run of all the seasons for both Buffy and Angel with daily episodes.

The thing I loved about Joss Whedon is the way his writing is sprinkled with pop cultural references and almost every episode has at least a scene which is a homage to something. You also never know what you might get with each episode in term of filming stylistics. Like the movies of Woody Allen, each episode rewards you when you watch reruns; the writing rewards you for getting smarter and more exposed to our world and its history.

Another thing, the characters in TV shows done by Joss Whedon actually grow as the seasons progress - like Willow who grew to become a powerful witch, Xandar who matured from the clown in season 1 and Watcher Wesley who has probably one of the most interesting character arcs in television history - they aren’t stuck in some time-warp-time-frozen caricature.

This series stars Eliza Dushku. While I love Buffy, I always thought Faith was a more interesting slayer and way hotter - something about the fun spunky damaged self-hating middle-finger-to-authority ‘bad’ girl with a bitter grudge against the world who tries to do good in her own way but just seems to make all the wrong choices. She made the series Tru Calling actually bearable to watch. She also starred in what is probably the greatest cheerleading movie I have ever and will ever watch - Bring It On.

Below is more faith we could do with:

Beware: This is a long long post. Longer than usual. I think.

So, I was invited to The Open Room event hosted by Ogilvy. Daryl Tay from Unique-Frequency shared about his interactions or rather lack of interactions with the people from the companies. By his standard of using namecards, I think I was slightly luckier than him.

I think it might help going for such events alone. Why? For brief moments of the evening, without the support group of friends, I did feel slightly isolated. Damn that room. There was nowhere to hide! Thankfully for me, Brian and his colleague Mel really are the consummate PR professionals. They introduced me to a bunch of really interesting people.

One of them was Keith from Nokia and he demonstrated Nokia’s sharing platform Ovi.com. Seemed easy enough to use. Sadly, my phone doesn’t come preloaded with the software. I really should explore my phone more besides just using it for phonecalls, messaging and taking photos.

I lamented to Keith how each new variation of Snakes on the Nokia phones just disappointed me and I really preferred the original 2d Snakes on the Nokia phones. Keith was helpful enough to suggest a site I might get that version. I realized while I am perfectly comfortable tinkering with the hardware of my desktop and installing new software on my MacBook just to test test play play, I really haven’t gotten into the mindset that my phone can be ‘messed’ around with. Hmmm…

Anyway, Keith also showed me the pictures of his kids. I think his oldest was like 9 years old. And he didn’t look old enough to be a father of such a big kid. Apparently the products of NiuSkin really work.

Ok. The one thing I really took away from that night was the Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics shared by John Bell.

Ogilvy PR’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics

* We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.

* We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.

* We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.

* Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.

* If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.

* We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.

* In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issue, event or message.

* We won’t leave you hanging. If your contact at Ogilvy PR is going out of town or will be unreachable, we will provide you with an alternate point of contact.

* We encourage you to disclose our relationship with you to your readers, and will never ask you to do otherwise.

* You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)

* If you don’t want to hear from us again, we will place you on our Do Not Contact list – which we will share with the rest of the Ogilvy PR agency.

* If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.

* Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.

I think this is a brilliantly conceptualized Code of Ethics. Why? Because they are applying the principle of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. Secondly, they show the understanding that blogs have their place in a marketing campaign, just another tool to use, but isn’t the end all be all of online marketing. One of the problems with people peddling ad spaces on blogs is that they hype up the effectiveness of blogs in online marketing. We don’t get it from these guys. Nice.

Pause.

What exactly is a blog? Is is a word that describes a tool or a form?

Take TechCrunch for example. Is it a blog? Well, it uses a blog as the publishing tool. But the form? By the way, what is the form of a blog post? Can it even be defined?

Is the form of a blog post distinguished by its relative informal style of writing as compared to that of an article on a newspaper or other more old-school, mainstream media properties like nytimes.com. Or is just the bad English, limited vocab and grammar like this blog.

Ok. Where am I going with this. It would probably be superfluous to note that there are many types of blogs. One of the types which I suspect constitutes a high number in Nuffnang’s community of bloggers is exemplified by blogs like Xiaxue, Estee and Dawn (list compiled in increasingly level of hotness).

Firstly, Nuffnang is used as an example because they are the highest profile local blog advertising network (at least in my view of this world).

Nuffnang has this pitch for bloggers:

Firstly, there are the monetary gains! We’ll do all the groundwork looking for advertisers and link you in with them. Once an ad is served on your blog, you start making income!

It is our sincere belief that Blogs should be credible and rich sources of information. Correspondingly, we will do our utmost best to ensure the ads served on your Blog match your content and readership as closely as possible. What this means is that your readers will be up to speed with the best deals in the market place!

How people using Nuffnang can try to monetize their blog:

1. Cost Per Unique Visitor Ads
2. CPC Ads
3. Advertorials

What Nuffnang is doing for the bloggers:

1. Blogger Partners
2. Blogger Outings
3. Affiliate Programme
4. Networking Sessions
5. Sponsorship for Blogger Related Events

The stuff Nuffnang is trying to do for the blogging community isn’t new. It resembles a lot what a manager running a Rewards / Loyalty Club Scheme might do. The monetization strategy for blogs is the same as any form of media advertising. Get something which pulls in lots of traffic / eyeballs and stick ads. Of course, we can make the ads more relevant. Really? Are these ads any more relevant then the sort I see when I watch soccer on ESPN. The conceit of people plying the online advertising space is that contextual advertising and demographic targeting is way better than say what we get on radio, print and tv. Really?

Seriously. Really? Think about your experience with Google ads on blogs.

If you need a reminder, see this post - Christian blog against gay lifestyle has Google Ad promoting the gay lifestyle.

Even if it is better, what ad networks like Nuffnang is doing is basically just turning blogs into ad spaces that do not take advantage of the uniqueness of blogs as a form and tool. Sure, blogs give more people a voice. Opinions of most of these bloggers wouldn’t have had a chance to be heard before blogs and these opinions do matter. But, what this just means is that you got more people producing content at more places, and more places to stick ads.

Nothing done so far seems to be born out of the uniqueness of blogs as a medium and form. What do I mean? What am I actually looking for?

Blog based marketing shouldn’t just be about bloggers talking about your products in advertorials or reviews or posts after an event.

Blog based monetization shouldn’t be about ads or about writing advertorials, reviews and post-event news.

Then what should it be about? The key was this line - We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.

See, if you read my blog, you will know I am interested in Christianity. If you really read my blog, you will know more about this interest - that I’m not a hardcore Christian who will faithfully go for Festival of Praise nor am I a person who wants nothing to do with Christianity. My feelings and thoughts about Christianity is somewhere in between and if you read my blog to understand, you will know where exactly in between.

My point? Contextual advertising probably can understand the content for individual posts. Maybe even understand what the whole blog is about. But as of now, it cannot understand me as a person. The algorithm does not have the ability to meet me in person over a cup of coffee at Starbucks below your office to talk shop (hint to someone mentioned above).

So, here is why I think the future of blog (and here, I’m referring to a very specific form) monetization (and I believe there are many ways a blog can benefit you monetarily without exactly putting dollars, and in Nuffnang case it seems, cents into your bank account) and blog based marketing isn’t more algorithms for contextual advertising or more ad networks just to treat blogs as ad space and bloggers as anonymous content producers that draw traffic but PR companies like Ogilvy who bring their offline skills in understanding people and connecting people in the online world.

Now, Nuffnang lovers, I do recognize Nuffnang is trying to connect people. Maybe even understand people. But let’s take a look at some numbers - they have thousands of blogs in their network. If you tell me they have a relationship with everyone of those bloggers and understand them as individuals, either you are lying or you are on some narcotic (hint. I might like some cos whatever it is, it seems to put you in a happy happy place).

Nuffnang business model is about numbers.

Ogilvy is talking about people actually reading the blogs. Obviously there are limitations. It might not scale so well. Now. The key then is to build the (or just tweak existing) tools for PR people to do their job easier and better.

Now, here is something I want to add. When I get to know a person better, I stop caring so much about their interests. I do of course. But more importantly, I care about how their life can be better. The last line is a hint where I think the new companies focusing on blog based marketing and blog monetization should focus on.

Was invited by Brian for The Open Room event hosted by Ogilvy. The goodie bag was nice to look at, but the contents were the same except for one small surprise. The N-gage box was empty. Now, I know what was supposed to be inside. A thumbdrive!

Karma’s a bitch.

Singapore’s main English language newspaper is The Straits Times. I tried finding a definitive history of the newspaper but couldn’t so I’m making a not too presumptuous assumption that the newspaper was named because Singapore was once part of the Straits Settlements - a collection of territories of the British East India Company.

At this current point in its history, the newspaper has been accused of being a mouthpiece of the government. Its journalists and editors have been accused of pandering to the ruling party and writes fluff pieces to further the government’s agenda.

True? A little bit true? Totally unsubstantiated lies?

Who knows.

A strait is defined as:

1. a narrow channel of the sea joining two larger bodies of water
2. pass: a bad or difficult situation or state of affairs

The first meaning is rather ironic considering how there seems to be a general impression (at least online) that the government and the newspaper is out of touch with the rest of the citizens. The divide between both groups cannot possibly be considered narrow. It is more like a gaping chasm wider than whatever Indiana Jones had to swing across.

The second meaning is prophetic in the sense that one could imagine the unenviable position some of the people working at The Straits Times are in. I do not suppose anyone ever dreams of growing up to be in a career where being labeled a stooge of the government is an almost everyday affair. I do suppose that a good number of those who aspired to be a journalist do find it rather unpalatable that there are real and imaginary out of bound markers to what they can investigate, analyze and write.

I asked a question a while back about how Singaporeans themselves can improve the public transport system?

I learned of a new transport company started by NUS undergraduates to help get students to NUS easily. The company’s name is Veloce and I think it is a terrific idea. They saw a problem - getting to NUS was not easy for people not staying in the west. They saw a significant number of people having the problems which usually means a business opportunity and they seized the opportunity.

Go check their site out if you are a NUS student tired of the hassle to getting to school. The site and their service just induces a warm fuzzy feeling.

Success is due to my efforts, Failure is the team’s fault.

I have rarely met a leader in Singapore who has not said the above, but instead the bottom:

Success is due to the team’s efforts, Failure is my responsibility.

Aaron seems to think the option we choose will

either we create a culture of aversion to mistakes or we create a modern day nobility.

I’m assuming that Aaron is saying if we force Minister Wong to resign or fire him or demote him or just plain make him suffer beyond the current high level of stress he definitely looks like he is going through, then we will create a culture of aversion to mistakes.

I think Aaron’s post had to do with what our Prime Minister said:

‘I will ask the same questions of the minister: How is he involved in the matter? Has he been incompetent or negligent? Most serious of all, is there a question of integrity? If so, he has to go, even if the actual incident is minor.

‘I will also ask: Is the minister able to put things right or does the situation call for a new pair of hands not encumbered by what went before to take charge and make a fresh start? Of course, the Prime Minister himself is accountable too, to Parliament and ultimately to the electorate.

‘However, we should not encourage a culture where officials and ministers resign whenever something goes wrong on their watch, regardless of whether or not they are actually to blame. That would be the easy way out. It may temporarily appease an angry public but it will not fundamentally solve the problem.’

from: Beyond witch-hunts to sanction for lapses

or was it this line:

“If you generate the culture that nobody wants to make mistakes and (is) afraid to do something for fear of making mistakes, that - as Dr Goh Keng Swee used to say - would be the biggest mistake of all,”

from: Endoh’s post quotes PM as saying the above.

I learned something new about how to assess the situation when something goes wrong from Lucky Tan:

Look at - 1. People 2. Processes 3. Checks

Now. People who don’t do their jobs get fired all the time. So the question is, whether Minister Wong was doing his job. What was his job? I don’t know what his bosses say his job is, but as a citizen, I had always assumed the job of the Minister of Home Affairs was to ensure that the proper processes and checks was in place for the whole of his Ministry to do what their site states - to bring about a safe and secure best home for Singaporeans.

Obviously, he can’t come out with all the processes and checks. He has people under him to do that.

The question, then, is did he ensure those people under him were doing their job. If yes, then someone lied to him and the chopping knife should probably stop with that liar. Of course, the next question then is why isn’t there a check to ensure people can’t lie to our Minister of Home Affairs. Did our Minister ensure that there was such a check to prevent people lying to him. If yes, then the one responsible for the checks should be given 100 times jialat jialat. We could keep going on. The check on the check. But let’s be reasonable.

If the answer to any of the above questions is no, then clearly, Minister Wong has failed in his job. Of course, we are ALL assuming what his job scope is.

I think Endoh has the questions pegged down.

A. Is Mr Wong unaware/not kept in the loop/advised on the latest development in a high-security facility housing terrorists, especially when it is guarded by two prominent units - ISD and Gurkhas?

B. Is Mr Wong not briefed/aware/advised on major projects like the construction or renovation of Whitley Detention Centre governed by his Ministry?

C. With so many lapses as I have stated above, why is Mr Wong always not in the loop?

D. If the answer to all or any of the above is yes, why weren’t these flaws spotted by Mr Wong during all his meetings and briefings?

E. If the answer to all or any of the above is no, is Mr Wong even proactive and involved in all these development?

Here is the thing. There are many kinds of risks. There are super dumb totally unjustifiable not calculated type of risks like jumping out of a window on the 21st level of a building with no parachute hoping you will survive the fall and there is the calculated albeit slightly crazy risk like jumping out of the same window with a parachute.

Punishing people for not doing their job is different from punishing people for making mistakes. The question that needs to be asked is the severity of the mistake and how the mistake came to be made. Was the mistake made in earnest because an attempt was made to do the job? Or was the mistake made because nothing was done to do the job?

It isn’t just action that is risky or that leads to mistakes. Inaction by itself can also be a risky choice and can lead to mistakes.

Punishing people for mistakes also isn’t a bad thing. What it does is force people not to take unreasonable risks.

The keyword here is unreasonable.

The end product isn’t a culture that is risk adverse. The end product is a culture that is risk sensitive.

In fact, I would say not punishing the Minister makes future Ministers risk adverse in initiating change. Why do anything differently from the last one if he could get by with the current system and still draw a million dollar salary. Why make the extra effort?

If however, there was some sort of punishment for our leaders who failed to do their job, they might be more on the ball to ensure the risk of their rice bowl being lost is protected. They will then take calculated risks to do their job.

There are many types of risk and risks that are assumed by different people.

When people aren’t punished for not doing their job, the risk of them not doing their job is assumed by those who depend on them. In this case, the citizens of a country bear the higher risk that the Minister will not do his job.

Finally, one thing which hasn’t been emphasized enough is rewards for taking on risk and responsibilities. The members of our government are being paid quite a bit. They are being compensated for having to manage more things than the people under them. Also, they are being compensated because the risk of something not directly under their responsibilities messing up is higher than a guy under them managing a smaller organization.

You create a risk adverse culture when the people aren’t able to assess risk and reward effectively or when you skew or break the positive correlation between risk and reward.

So, if indeed Minister Wong really didn’t not do his job, then yeah, no point making him a scapegoat just to appease the mob with their pitchforks. But we shouldn’t be afraid to punish our leaders if they had failed us just to prevent creating a risk adverse government.

Cos everyone takes risk.

This was a chance for our government to take the red pill and wake up to the reality of how the rest of us feel about the current system of leadership, rewards and responsibilities and do something about that reality. Instead, they chose to take the blue pill and remain oblivious or to twist what Aaron said, to remain in a state between hardness and rockness.

Over today’s lunch, my colleague asked me if I love my country. I told him I did but I didn’t like it or rather disliked certain aspects of it.

I asked him how he felt about China. His answer was the same but he added:

You only really dislike aspects of something if you love it. If not you don’t care. You don’t bother. You hate the whole thing.

My government has constantly talked about whether Singaporeans were stayers or leavers, whether we have a national identity, whether we have people who are loyal to the country …

At the same time, the government seems to want to suppress dissent and negative opinions about stuff in the country and more specifically about the government.

True, not all dissent and negative opinions are equal. Some come from people who hate the country who don’t really care if the country changes and even if they do, they probably won’t be satisfied.

But, a lot of it is really coming from people who dislike only certain aspects of the country. We still care.

Suppress the voices, and very soon, two things will happen - the voices of those who care will disappear (we don’t hate or love the country, we become indifferent) and those who hate the country will just get louder.

Two interesting posts today related to social media ( whatever that means ).

Jerry Springer For Programmers: Only A Matter Of Time

Giles Bowkett has this to say:

Advertizing-supported media gains much more from your attention than it does from your edification.

and the below paragraph is the one that ‘inspired’ the header of my post:

Blog ads encourage a fundamentally trashy form of “journalism.” Keep this in mind the next time somebody suggests building a business on ad revenue. To the extent that it functions as an economic incentive to useless, divisive gossip, ad revenue is fundamentally erosive to the communities which generate it. That makes it parasitic, and nothing to be proud of.

Are we building Universities or Amphitheaters? by Reg Braithwaite neatly separates the two extreme types of social media aggregators that can be built.

Such things quickly drive out all useful information, but they bring slavering crowds into the amphitheater to watch the Christians battle the Lions.

Universities of old: places of learning where people shared and debated ideas for the purpose of advancing knowledge.

So, do companies like Nuffnang, Advertlets and others providing blog advertising products and services destroy the social media aggregators like Ping.sg.

I make no reservations when I say that I hope Ping.sg will become more like a university than an amphitheater. So, when I use the word ‘destroy’, I actually mean ‘decrease its chance of becoming an university’.

Hmmm…I was thinking about the posts mentioned above. There is only one way to get attention - provide content that people want. Sadly, a good number of us enjoy lowest common denominator sensationalistic content - this is the reason why Britney Spears must die.

It is easier to provide trashy content than insightful, helpful and intelligent content.

I would like to believe that if you do not like trashy content, then after the first time of being ‘tricked’, the site will no longer have your business. It is the ones providing content that edifies you that will get your business. In this way, it is perfectly alright for individual sites to want to provide trashy content - let them attract their kindred spirits, those who are different can go elsewhere.

The problem is when there is a confluence of these 3 factors:

1. Many such individual sites sprout out because of the ease in providing lowest common denominator content.
2. The marketing of blog advertising companies that make you believe that it is desirable if not profitable to stick ads on your site.
3. Aggregaters like Ping.sg become popular and a community develops around it.

The openness of Ping.sg works against it in this case to becoming an university.

Which brings me to a message I posted on Twitter. The problem with a lot of social media filtering services is that for the service to be useful to one person, many people need to use it - think Digg. AideRSS works to solve this problem by using other metrics (like the number of comments left on a post) not dependent on its own users. The problem is that these metrics depend on other humans which to me seems like a rather big flaw.

Is there a way for social media filtering without relying on human signals. Without explicit human signals?