www.josschuurmans.com

Happy New Year! Gelukkig nieuwjaar! Hyvää uutta vuotta!

	Happy New Year! Gelukkig nieuwjaar! Hyvää uutta vuotta! 36894712@N04.jpg?1238381324#36894712@N04" border="0" height="24" width="24" /> Uploaded by Creativity103 on December 31, 2011 Some rights reserved. Creative Commons Attribution: »  http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0097009/photos/creative_stock/6603724951/

Posted via email from Jos Schuurmans on Posterous

Last post on TypePad

Last night I mapped my domain "josschuurmans.com" to my WordPress blog at http://josschuurmans.wordpress.com, away from this TypePad blog at http://ojamies.typepad.com/josschuurmans/.

There shouldn't really be any reason why you'd stumble upon this blog anymore since, as far as I know, there are no links out there pointing at this blog's TypePad URL - except, well... there will be one soon if I tweet this :-)

See you at http://josschuurmans.com.

Compleet interview met Julian Assange | NOS Nieuws

WordPress moves, #1: The Decision

Now that I've decided to move to WordPress as my main blog platform, I thought I might as well document the steps involved.

By "main blog platform" I mean the one which I would like to contain all of my blogged content, the one with the permalinks and consequently the one to which I will map my domain, josschuurmans.com.

(Well, I reserve the right to consider using josschuurmans.org or josschuurmans.net instead or in parallel)

Up until now, my "main blog platform" has been Typepad. I have simultaneously experimented with Blogger, WordPress.com, Blogsome, Posterous and Tumblr (and perhaps some others).

My main drivers for moving to WordPress include:

• It’s free as in “speech”;
• It’s free as in “beer”;
• WP the company has recently transferred the WP brand name to WP the foundation;
• I can host it myself (with a little help from my friends);
• It has a huge user and developer base;
• Design is highly customizable.

So, what's move #1? The decision :-)

A definition of the "Social Web"

I came to this first attempt of a definition in my previous post, but hereby would like to take it forward separately for a more focused context and easier reference. So here we go once again:

The Social Web is a construct of Internet infrastructure and services which enable and facilitate that the way Internet users sense, think and act on-line is a function of other users’ on-line behavior.

Two terms that I consider useful in this context are "social objects" (as propagated by Jyri Engestrom) "social software". Both are essential components of the Social Web, and they are more concrete and perhaps easier to determine than the "social web" itself.

In other words: where there are social objects AND social software, there is the Social Web.

And of course, one could argue that also "users", or "social actors", are a sine qua non.

The Social Web vs. Social Media vs. the rebooted system of news

There is an omnipresent intelligence on the Finnish web and her name is Pauliina Mäkelä. Wherever I roam, I never seem able to “be the first among [my Facebook] friends” to "like" any page on the .fi domain space (and beyond).

I just want to express my gratitude to Pauliina for her responsiveness, proactivity, sense of initiative.

The other day I was trying to identify the most relevant Finnish-based social media services for the purpose of monitoring public conversations on the Net.

It’s something I was working on for our media intelligence product, Cluetail Radar Pro. For one of our customers I had already set up a way to monitor and analyse their brand exposure on a broad range of Finnish mainstream media websites. So now I needed to expand into the Finnish social web.

I tweeted my need, and fired a handful of emails to people in my network who might be able to give me a head start.

Not only did Pauliina swiftly reply; she offered a collaborative solution by setting up a Facebook page to draft a directory of Finnish social media sites. Fantastic!

And just yesterday, following a suggestion by Johanna Janhonen, Pauliina created this wiki page.

 

Defining the Social Web

Now, looking at the list and reading some of the comments triggered a few follow-up thoughts in me.

I noticed that several people mentioned sites like Heiaheia and Habbo Hotel, which caused me to realise that people think about different things when using the term “social media”.

So what I would like to do is to make a distinction between “social media”, the “Social Web”, and “social journalism”. (Perhaps they are synonymous  to “new media”, the New Internet, and “new journalism” - but I’m not sure yet)

The widest in scope is the Social Web. I’ll have a go at a definition:

The Social Web is a construct of Internet infrastructure and services which enable and facilitate that the way Internet users sense, think and act on-line is a function of other users’ on-line behavior.

I am a journalist by training and have been working as a journalist or communications expert for the most part of my career, mostly on-line. I have always interpreted “social media” as an advanced form of “media”.

 

"Social" is nothing new

As I tend to point out in my presentations at seminars, “media” have always been “social”. They’ve always had a function in society, the facts and values expressed in the media have always had a social impact, and there have always been social feedback mechanisms for the “users” of the media (i.e. readers, listeners, viewers).

Hence, when we include the qualifier “social” in “social media”, we talk about the degree to which media are social, i.e. the degree to which the way the media behave is a function of their social relationships, in particular the behavior of their users.

The web has not invented social media, but it has significantly advanced the social component of the media, in particular the way the users can influence the conversation in and about the media.

So, what’s interesting to me is to find that people add services to a shared list of social media which I wouldn’t have come up with. Habbo Hotel has a large component of user-generated content. Heiaheia is clearly built around the “social object” of logging, sharing and discussing physical exercise.

(And to add a non-Finnish example:) Amazon.com makes personalized purchase recommendations based on the purchases of previous users.

Yes, this is all social software. It’s the social web. But is it media?

For those who see media as an industry, a business, probably yes.

 

What remains is... "journalism"

Which means that for my purposes, I need a narrower concept. One that emphasizes journalism and public discourse. Possible terms within this scope include “new journalism” or “social journalism”.

Setting aside the now familiar objection that indeed, also “journalism” has always been “social” and taking into consideration that it won’t be “new” forever, we may soon be left with simply “journalism”.

And yet, what’s happening is a qualitative shift, not just a quantitative one. We need a term that expresses the historical change. 

Jay Rosen and Dave Winer call it “the rebooted system of news”. They say that, once the news system has been rebooted, we will also have a rebooted political system.

I’m their biggest fan, yet I’ve been reluctant to accept that it’s just news that we’re talking about. (Again, as a journalist, when I think of “news”, I think of news reports and news reporting. When I think of “journalism” however, I tend to associate it also with opinion, analysis, conversation, discussion and debate)

But I digress... so, let’s cut this short.

I am most interested in how people on-line converse about certain brands, certain people, certain events, and certain topics.

What I was looking for were the most influential (Finnish-based) web services which facilitate conversation by Internet users around any topic in the public domain.

Pauliina, even though the scope of your list is a bit broader than I anticipated, I certainly found what I was looking for on. Thanks again!

The question is no longer: "Typepad, Blogger or @WordPress?"

On New Year’s Eve, while having a sauna alone I got a couple of ideas for blogging.

I should really move to WordPress. The question is no longer: “Typepad, Blogger or WP?” But rather: “Posterous, Tumblr or WP?” While Posterous and Tumblr may be easier to use, the main reasons for going with WP are:

• It’s free as in “speech”;
• It’s free as in “beer”;
• WP the company has recently transferred the WP brand name to WP the foundation;
• I could host it myself if I wanted to (and I might);
• It has a huge user and developer base;
• I have seen reasonably nice layout templates lately.

Hesitations:

• The effort involved in migrating my Typepad blog content to WP;
• What will happen to the URLs? Will they all stay intact and work after domain mapping?
• What will happen with the images and files that I’ve uploaded to Typepad? And to the URLs pointing to them? (BTW: this concern should prompt me not ever to upload images or other files to blog tools ever again. Instead use embed code, pointing to such objects on other services; just like with the videos)
• Dave Winer made a good point after talking with WP’s Matt Mullenweg: There is something not-this-century about having a content management interface which looks different from the published content. Generations of people who’ve become familiar with the Web through services like Facebook don’t understand why all isn’t WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

Reasons why I would want to host it myself:

• If something bad happened to WP the company, I would not only “own” but indeed have my own data;
• I can probably arrange my domain mapping for a better price than at http://wordpress.com (maybe via Google);
• Self-hosting allows for more flexibility in features and modules, compared to http://wordpress.org, where availability of features depends on approval by committee.

Typepad export - WordPress import fail; @wordpressdotcom support fail :-(

<update>

Okay, it seems to have worked now after I tried uploading for the 4th time, emulating Lucy's sigh of relief:

"After multiple tries with this, it finally worked. Whew."

Immediate observations:

• Some embedded media content (images, video) shows fine, other doesn't (video, audio);
• Category link syntax differs from Typepad, hence my old category permalinks won't work this way;
• Like on my Typepad blog, I want a category cloud not list;
• I need to work on the right-hand sidebar widgets to add things like easy email subscription and my microblog (Twitter) stream;
• Now that I see the same content in the Wordpress "monochrome" theme - which I like best of the 102 themes available yesterday - I realise how fresh and pleasing the layout of my Typepad blog actually is;
• I like the form factor of the "monochrome" theme, showing blog post metadata in the narrow left-hand sidebar;
• I definitely want Disqus and AddThis integrated in each post;
• I pray that permalinks can be restored without too much suffering after domain-mapping the WordPress.com blog (currently josschuurmans.wordpress.com) to www.josschuurmans.com.

</update>

I can't describe it better than jantink did some 22 months ago, on the WordPress.com Forums:

"(...) I tried importing my blog from Typepad after creating a new blog here at WordPress. I exported the blog from Typepad onto my desktop, then attempted a couple of times to import the blog into WordPress. I selected the option, "Import from Moveable Type or Typepad", then selected the file I exported from Typepad and pressed "Upload".

After import has finished, it prompts me to assign an author to associate with the user name of the imported posts. I do that and after I hit "submit", nothing happens. There are no posts imported at all. All it says in the bottom status bar is "Done", but the screen next to the tool menu below the header is blank...there is nothing there. (...)"

And here' are some other users who've encountered the same problem:

Can't import from Typepad

Trouble importing from Typepad

Typepad blog won't import into Wordpress

It's one thing that the WordPress.com support people are on holidays when you need them most. It's another that these forum topics get "closed" without the problem being resolved.

Fail :-(

Felicxa Nova Jaro!

Creative Commons Attribution: by nathalie56

Found: Sketches of Love Pt.4 - Ghost Train West | dingen (Rob de Haan)

Found at http://eenhaan.tumblr.com/post/2144013664/sketches-of-love-pt-4-ghost-train-west:

Sketches of Love Pt.4 by Ghost Train West by mistermacjones

november 2010
found it on a MC.
recorded Live @ ‘Dy & Dodo’ (U-pop radio). 29-12-1991
Gost Train West (feat. Jos Schuurmans)
this song is part of ‘the project GTW’.

<object height="81" width="100%"><param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F7830539&show_comments=true&color=000000"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F7830539&show_comments=true&color=000000" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed></object><span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/mistermacjones/sketches4">Sketches of Love Pt.4 by Ghost Train West</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/mistermacjones">mistermacjones</a></span>