TechFlash Guest Post: Would You Pay to Twitter?

From my March 13 guest post on TechFlash: The best way to characterize Twitter is to use a cocktail party analogy. At a cocktail party you’re talking to a lot of people, usually in pretty short sentences, usually in a small group, back and forth. You segue from group to group, exchanging pleasantries.
If at the end of the evening all those comments were transcribed under their originators’ names, it would look something like Twitter.
Now you may be wondering where all this is headed. Why would someone want to post cocktail party conversation on the Web?
The answer is that, like many new social-networking vehicles on the Web, Twitter represents a potential ecosystem, with a potential business model. To see how this might happen requires an understanding of the Web’s (and social networking’s) evolution toward more of an oral, rather than print, tradition.

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TechFlash Commentary: PC as TV

Today’s Guest Post on TechFlash has to do with the dis-integration of television content by the Web, and how a couple of $25 adapters can turn your Mac or PC into a somewhat inconvenient but generally serviceable TV. Many are doing it. Here’s how.

If the cable industry is smart, this will soon lead to better roll-your-own cafeteria and/or on-demand (micropay-per-view?) pricing — one might even hope for a paid content model that other content providers can emulate:

“If the TV industry can get people to pay for content, it hopefully will spread virally to other content on the Web. This is a nut all content providers have to crack — the news industry most urgently.”

Here in Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer is facing imminent demise and The Seattle Times‘ books suggest it will at minimum have to declare bankruptcy for a reorg. As John Cook asks, can a wiki come to the rescue? Uber-newsman Chuck Taylor has started one, Seattle Post-Post-Intelligencer, to explore life after newspapers — Read All About It!

Guest Post on TechFlash: Google and a Penny-a-Click

I’ve posted another guest essay on TechFlash, this time on how all roads to paid Web content run through Google:

“Google’s role would start with the Web searches that have become as second-nature to the Web as flipping channels on a TV. The highest-ranked searches (Google determines that today, of course) would be tagged for pay-to-click. Metadata, either a balloon or pop-up window (similar to Netflix’s stellar browse system), would display a sentence or two related to the full content of the selected piece…”

TechFlash: My guest column on Microsoft’s new retail stores

TechFlash gets online journalism

TechFlash, started by John Cook and Todd Bishop, former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters, is a rarity: Professional journalists who truly get the Web. I’ve admired John’s and Todd’s work for years of course and was intrigued and surprised when they launched, given that most projos have resisted throwing their fates (and healthy salaries) to the vast ether of online journalism. But they quickly established that they know what they’re doing. When Todd asked if I’d be interested in contributing a guest post, I jumped at the chance.

My ultimate hope remains a Seattle-based, locally focused version of Huffington Post. The technology slice of such a publication would look a lot like what TechFlash is already doing.

My guest post looks at where Microsoft is headed with its foray into retail stores.