Death by Wikipedia: The Kenneth Lay Chronicles July 10, 2006
Posted by rajAT in citizen journalism, media2.0, peer production, web2.0.5 comments
Frank Ahrens of Washington post is quoting the incident of wrong reporting of Kenneth Lay death, CEO Enron as an example that shows the Wikipedia model doesn’t work.
News organizations began reporting Lay’s death around 10 A.M.
At 10:06 A.M. Lay’s wikipedia entry said he had died “of an apparent suicide”.
At 10:08 A.M. the entry reads Lay had died “of an apparent heart attack or suicide”.
At 10:09 A.M. another author backtracked the article and said that the cause of death was “yet to be determinded”.
At 10:11 A.M. article concluded, “The guilt of ruining so many lives led him to his suicide”.
At 10:12 A.M. the article was corrected and it says the cause was a massive coronoary heart attack.
The incorrect informatin was there on the website for total 6 mins. Durinig these 6 minutes the information got updated 5 times. And finally the correct information was posted. Now whether those six minutes were crucial that depends on the information and decisions that will be taken based on information. So lets not get into a subjective debate/discussion.
The question that needs to be asked here is, “Should wikipedia be used to check breaking news”. Wikipedia never claimed that they gonna throw Reuters out of business or BBC. Britannica sure 
!!
So IMHO Frank Ahrens is trying to match apple with oranges and that is insanity.
Case closed.
Enterprise 2.0 June 6, 2006
Posted by rajAT in blog, entrepreneur, india, media2.0, peer production, social, startup, technology, vc, web2.0.add a comment
Ray Lane takes a shot at an enterprise 2.0 in an interview with Businessweek. Ray Lane is a partner at KPCB and before that he was president and COO at ORACLe. Now he is working with startups like Visible Path ( MySpace for enterprises ) and SpikeSource. Now that is quite a career shift , isn't it.
Some of the key points from the interview with my thoughts on them -
1. Innovation is a six month cycle instead of a 3 year cycle. This means window of opportunity where you can cash on your idea is now 6 months. Think, Build, Sell your idea in a six months time. Not because if you fail to capitalize on it someone else would do it, but the idea will get obsolete.
2. In the enterprise 2.0 the IT decisions will not be taken by the CTOs or CIOs, but the individuals. Some might be wondering how this will happen. If people will be free to use their own software,imagine the havoc that will be caused. Ray give some examples of the technology which was adopted bottom up – Blackberryl, Good Technology and Skype. Another good example is that a small group wants to collaborate on some project and they use any wiki software that is available out there.
3. The advantage of providing software as a service is huge. Another benefit is that corporations don't have to commit big sums of money for this. A typical enterprise software implementation take couple of years and millions of dollars.
4. Data is a concern though. Executives will nt like confidential enterprise information residing elsewhere. But for a moment, think of a teen who is living on myspace today when he joins workforce tomorrow, is he going to give a damn to such concerns.
5. All software cann't be provided this way.
6. Existing giants cann't adapt to the service model because they just can't.
7. America is not China. So employees will talk about what is going in the company through podcasts, blogs and any other channels available. You can't dooce them . Companies view this as a grave security concern but see the brighter side of it. It can take customer enagement with the products they love, to a different dimension. I now can know who has designed the Tshirt I am wearing. Voila !
Btw all this is going to be a great boon for the developing countries. If Indian people are going to leapfrog to mobiles, Indian enterprises are going to leapfrog to all these light weight enterprise solutions. .
Any enterpreneurs out there listening ?
Peer Production: Boon or Bane June 3, 2006
Posted by rajAT in blog, citizen journalism, collectivism, digg, media2.0, peer production, technology, web2.0, wikipedia, youtube.add a comment
Nick Carr and Jaron Lanier say that rise of digital collectivism is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise. They argue that this is different from meritocracy where the best gets awarded. Nick is of the opinion that the peer produced goods will be mediocre. But as these average goods are available for free that undermines the economic incentives for creating something that is better than mediocre.
Nick points out that markets are good at setting prices for commodities as markets filter out individual biases. There are things where markets are not good like writing books, encyclopedia entries or editing newspapers or magazines. Let me try to expain Nick’s argument by an example – It says that Wikipedia is a mediocre product as compared to Britannica encyclopedia or any other encyclopedia. Now that there is a free mediocre product i.e. Wikipedia in the market people will not buy Britannica anymore. The sales of Britannica will drop and Britannica will take its encyclopedia product off from the market. So, how Britannica should survive in the wake of wikepedia? If Wikipedia is mediocre then I think there is an opportunity for Britannica to tap in. People are always ready to pay premium for the best knowledge. I really don’t think that this behavior will change in future also. The knowledge worker viz consultant, lawyer, doctor faces this competition daily but does he feel threatened from a consultant who is providing his services free of cost. No. Because the costly consultant knows that the cost is not the differentiator but the specialized knowledge that he is having. And that is going to attract the client.
If Britannica thinks that they have a superior product than Wikipedia, they shouldn’t fret. In fact they should see wikipedia as its free version. Let me give you some real life example. Couple of my friends got hooked to wikipedia. They were spending tones of time reading articles on it and they ended up buying Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. I asked them why they have bought two encyclopedias – They said Encarta got lots of multimedia content and Britannica got lots of wonderful long articles. And now they have best of both the worlds. Now if they want to check on a particular thing they first saw it on Wikipedia and then on the regular encyclopedia. Society overall has benefited by having a wikipedia. It gives people a choice and people are smart enough to figure out what is good for them.
Let us have a look at newspapers and magazines. Will Ohmynews or NowPublic will replace NYT or BBC well I don’t think so. Citizen journalism will perform an important role in our society and they give a refreshing new choice to the people. The established media houses because of certain restrictions, generally don’t report things in full. This could be because they are related to one political party or because of the nationalist agenda. Citizen journalists don’t have any such prejudices and give unbiased view of the situation. And it is great to have this alternative available. Similar reasons can be given for consumer generated videos and pictures. We cannot compare the pictures present in Flickr by the ones that get published in National Geographic. But people would like to see both. No video on YouTube can be compared to any oscar winning movie.
Jaron Lanier argues that American Idol can’t give you a John Lennon. I am not sure of American Idol but the singers who won in Indian Idol are signed by big music houses. In fact some of the singers who won in other popular singing competitions got nominated as best playback singers in Filmfare awards (Indian Oscars). Shows like Indian idols give such a great platform to the budding stars and motivates millions of other people too. And this also puts pressure on the existing established singers to give their best. As a result, the society gets benefited.
In the end, I will say that connected production or peer production or whatever you want to call it is a great boon to the society. It challenges the authority of the existing established players who have to come with more innovative ways to survive and sustain. People are going to buy / favor / consume the product which is the best.
Peer production has just raised the bar.
