Olympic great Michael Phelps has acknowledged "regrettable" behavior and "bad judgment" after a photo in a British newspaper showed him smoking marijuana.The only regrettable part of this story is that a photo turned up. If it's 'roids, it should make headlines. If it's weed, we should admire the fact that he was able to keep up that training regiment with all those Cheetos in his gut.
Also in attendance were several members of the geek elite, including Jay Maynard, better known by his nickname Tron Guy for a spandex bodysuit rigged with blue lights to resemble the main character from the 1982 Disney movie “Tron”; Rex Sorgatz, a well-known blogger; and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of social bookmarking news site Reddit.Being mentioned in the same sentence as Jay Maynard is enough to make someone feel like a geek elite -- Jenna went and put icing on that florescent TRONcake.
Alexis Ohanian is one of the founders of the popular site Reddit.com, which launched in 2005 and is used by thousands to rank which news stories appear on the site's home page. Based on what he's seen with Reddit, he said, most Americans won't bother going to a site to rank projects to fund, and of those people who do visit, most won't contribute a vote. What will remain, he hopes, are people who consider themselves informed enough to cast a vote. For his part, Ohanian takes transparency a step further, dreaming of a day when the Internal Revenue Service lets Americans log in to see how their individual tax dollars are being spent and then lets them redirect their money.Reading it this way, I felt compelled to clarify what appears to be a rather bleak forecast for participation.
Based on what he's seen with Reddit, he said, most Americans won't bother going to a site to rank projects to fund, and of those people who do visit, most won't contribute a vote.My belief that most Americans wouldn't bother going is a combination of apathy (something I believe these technologies would ameliorate) and that the majority of reddit traffic is not logged in -- and thus non-voting.That said, the motivations for visiting reddit.com and this policy site are quite different. The majority of redditors just want to be informed or entertained and needn't affect the rankings. Whereas I'd envision a significant portion of traffic to this site would be visitors arriving to make an impact. And you can be sure a number will be driven by email blasts from interest groups.Ultimately, the more transparency that can be brought to the process, the better. Lessig is right to point out that replacing the decision-making process with ill-informed citizens would have a negative impact. But this technology can be just the thing to make citizens better informed about their government. If we can get up to the minute stock quotes and news about Apple, we ought to demand (and get) the same from our representatives.After all, we're paying for them -- let's get our money's worth.
And Reddit is equally unworried.Yes, I did leak it. And I'm not ashamed of it. But I'm even happier we didn't need to use it.
"Actually, we're expecting a bigger traffic spike on Wednesday as people come back to their computers loaded with stories to share from the day before," Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said in an e-mail. "Granted, there will be plenty of people watching the inauguration with a computer on their lap, but it won't be a surge significant enough to affect us."
But Reddit has thrown together a new "site is down" image (pictured at left) in case any problems arise.
Steve McKee wrote a piece for BusinessWeek explaining Why Social Media Is Worth Small Business Owners' Time. Although I'm not entirely convinced social media is really worth small business owners' time, I enjoyed the zen-like opening to his argument:
The first thing I want to encourage you to do is relax. Take a deep breath and release that tightness in your chest. This column isn't about making you feel stupid for not knowing what Reddit.com is, or chastising you for not having three extra hours a day to spend tweeting and blogging. I simply want to encourage you to get started. (For background on social media, check out this story.)But the implication that not knowing what reddit.com is grounds for making someone feel stupid is a nice touch. Evidently, the alien is worth knowing about. Fear not, reddit-virgins, we'll welcome you with open arms -- probably. And if you do find yourself at odds with various communities, you can always just create your own reddit.Steve's tone is much gentler than the approach one redditor took when leaving a note on the car of a digg fan. Thanks for that, Steve. Although you could still be the person responsible for said note...
Trying to find the ideal news aggregator on the Web can be difficult. Depending on your definition, there's conceivably hundreds of services that package the best stories into one page. But it's the "social" news aggregation services, like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon that lead the pack. And although Digg is the most popular service in that grouping, I'm a firm believer that Reddit deserves to stay in your portfolio as your chosen news aggregation service.Normally, I would pick the social site that offers the largest and most engaged community. But when it comes to news aggregation sites, Digg simply doesn't cut it. Sure, it's the biggest and arguably the most important to content sites, but that alone doesn't make it the best. Instead, I find Reddit's site design, while simple and ugly to some, incredibly useful and designed to help users find the best stories as quickly as possible without gaudy extras. But the most important differentiating factor working to Reddit's advantage is its community. It might be smaller than Digg's, but generally, the comments on each story are more edifying and lack the invective that has become a staple for Kevin Rose's brainchild.Reddit may not be the biggest, its site design may be odd, and its community not as rabid, but in terms of providing interesting stories on a slew of topics without as much "gaming," it leads the pack and deserves to be in your social network portfolio.Needless to say, team reddit is pretty pleased with the review. The quote our community manager, Erik: Smaller, odd, rabies-free, and pack leader. reddit = Cesar Millan!
Alexis Ohanian described reddit as a site that allows users to rate what stories are worth keeping around and what stories should be sent to the lower parts of the list. Ohanian stressed that online, “great, fresh content is king.” It’s a world where a story from the Baltimore Sun could be the more important story to read than the one in The New York Times.Readers are fickle,” he said, which can be a bad thing since users are only one click away from leaving a site. But it can also be a good thing if the site is providing good, fresh content—people won’t leave right away and a connection could be born. “Once it gets online, brand is less important. It’s still important but content is king.”Ohanian encouraged magazine publishers to build up their online content in order to take advantage of those readers who are fanatics about the publication. They can read the print edition every day for the month and net the publisher nothing, or they can visit the site every day and net the publisher some gain.He also encouraged publishers to get involved with user-generated content. “They’ll do a lot of work for you and for free,” he said. One example he used was an editor posting a question and readers posting their thoughts alongside other content. “It feeds itself for relatively little work,” he noted. Letting that kind of conversation occur will help build a loyal community.
