Reading Hacker News today I stumbled on this article titled "Why NPR is Thriving (They're Not Afraid of Digital Media)".  In it the author forms conclusions that, as far as I can tell, are false.  Below I address those conclusions.

But before that let me just make one point.  I, given my tech industry bias, am obviously a big fan of digital media.  Most of the media I consume is digital media.  But in saying that I also realize the way the industry provides this digital content is lousy.  Podcasts in particular are backwards to the point of preventing average users from listening to them.

That's why I'm making this post.  Artificial claims of success will only encourage the industry to keep providing digital media in the same way they are now and that, imho, is unacceptable.  With that said...

First Claim: NPR's listenership is booming.

True (but probably not related to digital media).  The article I'm quoting didn't give an actual number of listeners but a quick Google search turned up  20.9 million listeners.  But here's the thing, that same news source also puts Rush Limbaugh's numbers at about 25 million and he keeps his digital content behind a paid subscription wall. 

So this increase is probably due to everyone feeling more political after an election and not NPR's open policy on Digital Media. 

(For the record, all these ratings numbers are disputed but no one seems to be disputing the trend which is that both went up)

Second Claim: NPR.org grew 78% from 2007 to 2008

Maybe True but I doubt it.  Though it can be inaccurate with smaller sites I've found Compete.com to be fairly accurate with larger ones.  Looking at their numbers for NPR.org it shows that NPR.org's traffic is wildly inconsistent (which doesn't gel with the idea that people are coming to the site regularly).  More to the point they got 9.1 million visitors in April of last year and 8.5 million in February of this year and then 9.8 million in March of this year. 

So while their numbers are going up and down they are doing so in about the same range as they were a year ago.  That indicates to me that there's been very little actual growth. 

Third Claim: NPR is listened to by as many people as are watching Network TV News

True if you define the word just right.  The article doesn't openly make this claim but leaves it to this chart to make the claim for them.  But when they say "Network" TV news they are only talking about the non-cable networks.  In fact, much of the drop in "Network" TV news is attributed to those viewers going to cable. 

Oh, and for the record, if NPR was doing so well last year why did they lay off 7% of their staff in December '08?

Conclusion

There could be a lot of reasons why NPR is doing well but I sincerely doubt any of them have to do with embracing Digital Media.  Every indicator I've seen has said that podcasting is a miniscule market and that streaming audio is only slightly larger.

In the end NPR's success is really just the result of an era of political polarization.  Liberals are rushing to radio programming that they know will give them news tailored to their political ideology (just as Conservatives are rushing to Limbaugh for the same)

I’ve never made my admiration for Meg Whitman a secret.  She essentially created the eBay we know today and did it while generally keeping the eBay community happy.  A difficult task as anyone who has paid attention over the years knows.

That’s why I find this piece by Saul Hansell of the NYTimes so obnoxious.  He starts by saying…

Before voting for Meg Whitman for governor, California residents would do well to consider what has been happening at eBay since she stepped down as chief executive. John Donahoe, her successor, has pretty much disassembled all of her major strategic moves.

Now the first thing to notice here is whose side Mr. Hansell is taking.  He’s comparing Meg Whitman (whose last year running the company showed a sales increase of 29%) with John Donahoe (whose first year running the company resulted in their first ever quarter-to-quarter sales decline) and is claiming Ms. Whitman is to blame for Ebay’s current state (almost a year and a half after her departure). 

Let’s take another quote…

Mr. Donahoe is excited about one of Ms. Whitman’s acquisitions: PayPal. I’m not sure that this is an unadulterated credit to her, as eBay wouldn’t have had to buy PayPal if it hadn’t been so slow to expand its own credit card payment system.

So even when the results are unquestionably good Ms. Whitman was wrong.  I’ll be the first to admit eBay’s competitor to Paypal was weak but I think Meg Whitman deserves credit for realizing that and bailing when she did.  Plenty of other tech companies have chosen to support their  homegrown variant at any cost and failed because of it.

One last quote…

That’s Mr. Donahoe’s challenge. He needs to find some proposition for the PayPal brand and the eBay brand that still makes customers (both shoppers and merchants) excited, not a drag. If he can do so, that will be something that eluded Meg Whitman for years.

Really?  So this woman, who saw continued success through her entire run at the company, never managed to make customers happy?  Never managed to define the eBay brand?

Right.

Let’s face it, the reason there IS an eBay brand is because of Meg Whitman.  When she took over the company it had 30 employees for God’s sakes.  So painting her as a failure because John Donahoe didn’t know how to capitalize on what he was given is ridiculous. 

Jesse Stay posted today on how Twitter's new restrictions, and the complete lack of forewarning to developers, have combined to make his life difficult.  To me this is a sign of a bigger problem in the developer community in that they are far too willing to trust big companies.  Which gives those companies a lot of power over them.

Power does corrupt and companies that get power tend to become corrupt even when the management is well intentioned. 

I know that sounds weird but in my experience most of the abuse doled out in the world is done not out of malice but out of a simple lack of empathy.  For example, people don't think about how they feel when someone yells at them when yelling at the tech support guy on the other end of their phone and in not thinking they cause that tech support guy pain.

But notice a distinction here.  When people are inconsiderate it's only with someone they have some kind of power over.  The same guy who would yell at the tech support person would never think of treating his boss like that.  Because his boss has power over him.   

Like the old saying goes "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."  Power makes people stupid.

That brings us back to Mr. Stay's issue with Twitter.  For a long time the software industry was ruled over by Microsoft.  Microsoft had all the power in the beginning and because of that they treated people badly.  This led most software developers to latch onto the idea that Microsoft was just an evil company.

But they weren't.  They were just powerful and stupid.

That's my point.  Any company that gets a little power is going to push developers around.  So software developers who believe it was just a case of one company being evil are making a big mistake.  As a result of that they're putting unimaginable amounts of trust into other companies on the assumption those companies "aren't evil."  Whether it's Apple with the app store or autofollow with Twitter these developers have built whole businesses around these powerful companies without any contractual guarantees.  Which in turn has led to those companies burning a lot of developers.

I think it's time for the software industry to realize the rest of the world might have been right when they started using contracts and demand that services like Apple, Twitter, and others provide some kind of guarantee in the future.  Only then will developers really be safe to create things based on someone else's product.

So…

OK, But…

Maybe I’m missing something.

Back in December '07 I wrote a post called "Making Everything A Crime Out Of Self Defense."  In that post I detailed why I think file sharers and the RIAA are BOTH being unreasonable in their conflict.  I'm thinking about this because the people who ran Pirate Bay have just been found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail and a nearly $1 million dollar fine (per person).I think this is a harsh punishment but I also think it's inevitable based on the way things have been going. 

Which is why I'm reposting this material from my Dec. '07 post.  I think it explains how we as a society got to this point.  So with that said...

Making everything a crime out of self-defense

A real quick post on the RIAA's suit against Jeffrey Howell which has exploded due to an article in the Washington Post.  In it the RIAA is claiming that Mr. Howell committed an illegal act simply by copying the music to his computer even before he illegally distributed it.

The reality here is that this issue is much bigger than the blog posts I've read are making it out to be.  The issue isn't the RIAA's greed it is the fact that the United States is becoming an increasingly litigious nation.  So someone gets hurt by a defect in a product that the manufacturer could never have foreseen.  That person then gets a lawyer who convinces a jury to award the person a million dollar settlement out of pity (as opposed to the facts of the case).  Not being able to afford another suit the manufacturer then turns around and changes their user agreement to essentially say "if this product blows up and destroys your whole neighborhood because of a defect that is completely our fault you still can't sue us"

The same issue is at stake in the RIAA's case in that you may not like the RIAA but their product is being stolen and most people don't see it as a big deal.  So they in turn have made an unreasonable user agreement saying that it is illegal to even copy your music to the computer at all.   I honestly don't think anyone believes the RIAA would prosecute someone who was only storing legally purchased music on their PC and had no plans to distribute it.  The RIAA is simply doing what the manufacturer in the above example did and making an unreasonable user agreement to protect their interests.

Saying that its illegal to store music on the PC is simply a way for the RIAA to have an iron clad case against those who are distributing the music illegally.

So Is the RIAA right?  Hard to say.  When society doesn't take things like theft seriously it invites an over reaction from the person being stolen from.  I do think the RIAA's claim is unreasonable on the surface but I'm not sure you can blame them for following the advice of their lawyers.  As long as people continue not to equate the stealing of music to the stealing of a physical product I think you'll see more unreasonable claims like this.  If you want to stop those claims then your argument is for tort reform not against the RIAA.

On a side note, the idea that the media industry will be "utterly destroyed" by digital technology as put forth by Scott Karp is ridiculous.  These issues will exist even if artists self distribute.  The RIAA explained simply is just a group of lawyers hired by the music industry to protect their interests.  So if the labels disappeared tomorrow people would just start stealing directly from the artists who would then hire a lawyer to stop it and be advised to do the same thing the RIAA is advising the labels to do now.  Music will still have to be paid for no matter what happens. 

I’m going to ask for some indulgence here as I walk you through a series of quotes from this ReadWriteWeb article.  The article is about a nasty video that was put on YouTube by two Domino’s employees and Domino’s efforts to fight against it via Social Media.  As they point out here…

In terms of its social media presence, Domino's Pizza gets a lot of things right. It has a YouTube Channel, a Twitter account, and both a Facebook and MySpace profile.

Then the article details how the YouTube video features Domino’s employees…how shall we say…defiling a sandwich.  Trust me you don’t want an explanation any more specific than that. 

From there the article goes on to point out this video has been viewed more than half a million times and has severely hurt the Dominos brand.  Then they say…

In response to this uproar, Domino's decided to release its own video on YouTube, which features Domino's president Patrick Doyle. Of course, Doyle's video, which refers to the story as a 'hoax,' will not be able to draw half a million viewers, but Domino's Pizza is doing the right thing by going to YouTube, where, after all, the whole affair began.

Finally they quote an article from today’s USA Today.

Bruce Horovitz, in USA Today, describes some of the lessons that other companies can learn from from this controversy. Among other things, he recommends that companies actively monitor Twitter and other social media channels, so that companies can response quickly when problems appear. Comcast is a good example for a company that is using Twitter to rebuilt its image.

OK, after all that what is my point? 

To answer that I have to ask a question: How do we learn from each other in life?  My understanding is that we learn by watching someone do something and then watching the result it produces.  From that we can decide whether we want to (A) emulate those people or (B) do the exact opposite.

So lets breaks this down.  Dominos had a crisis situation.  They responded with Social Media outreaches.  And then what happened?

The answer is that it seems to have been completely ineffective.  In fact, the true irony is that Social Media did more damage than good in this case.  ReadWriteWeb and USA Today wrote stories that drew people to the offending video which is exactly what Dominos doesn’t want happening.

And what drew ReadWriteWeb and USA Today to the story?  Domino's use of Social Media. 

Honestly, I don’t know if there is a lesson to be learned here.  I do tend to think it’s a good idea for companies to be on Twitter because that’s where people would look for a response.  But even so I have to admit it blew up in Domino’s face here.

That’s my point.  Social Media is a new medium and none of us have quite figured out how to use it effectively yet.  So in looking at it’s various uses and seeing what they produce we have to be honest in assessing the results.  Because that’s the only way to determine what is and is not effective.

So Social Media Advocates who see what they want to see are counter productive and, in the long run, actually hurt the cause of Social Media.

Addendum: A little further down the RSS Feeds I found the New York Times also covered the story, albeit with a slightly different take.  Also, Podcasting News provided my favorite laugh line of the story...

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Domino’s employees Kristy Hammonds and Michael Setze’s videotaped antics in the Domino’s Pizza kitchen - putting boogers on sandwiches, sticking cheese up their noses and wiping their behinds with the sponges that they use to clean up with.

I monitor over 500 rss/atom feeds and I hadn't heard about this.  The video had only been viewed half a million times which isn't that much when you consider YouTube is available worldwide and there are surely people who watched it several times.  In the end my point still stands: This didn't start getting mainstream coverage until Dominos jumped in and tried to use Social Media to respond.

I've already wasted far too much time on this #amazonfail thing.  But this guest post by Mary Hodder of Dabble.com was just too easy a target to pass up.   The last few paragraphs really make the bulk of her point so I'm going to quote those and address each one.

This of course doesn’t explain how the problem arose two months ago, and why when Amazon was notified, they didn’t look into it then. I would suggest that the same underlying assumptions that drove their classification and algorithm system to be built to filter “gay” into “adult” also led their investigations in February and March to lead to nothing. It was only public outrage this past weekend that caused them to look harder, beyond their own assumptions, to find the underlying problem.

Well, to be fair, if you click on the link you'll find the author of that post didn't really try hard to get heard.  I received a damaged book a while back, sent it back to Amazon for the replacement and then got charged for 2 copies.  The run around I went through with Amazon very closely resembles the author's experience.  So I don't think Amazon was trying to ignore or discriminate against him.

Also to be fair, the public outrage hasn't necessarily accomplished anything that we know of.  Right now Amazon has just made a brilliant PR move in that they apologized and then claimed the glitch impacted a number of books too large for anyone to verify.  Doing that means no one can really know what they did or when they've fixed it. 

I don't doubt Amazon will restore the sales rank of some books.  My point is just to show that Amazon is walking the line between offending two opposing camps and their only real desire is to keep making money from both of them.  Not to purposely discriminate against anyone (if they wanted to discriminate they could do a lot worse)

The bar for ethics in creating algorithms and classification systems should be very high. #AmazonFail proved it’s not, at least at Amazon. I would venture that Amazon’s classification and algorithm system have more of these discriminatory assumptions, and while their tagging system does allow users to correct for some of this, Amazon is using it’s internal classification system in it’s filters, not user tagging, that I can tell.

Here's where we get to the meat of the problem.  Ms. Hodder is saying "the bar should be set high" but what she really means is "the bar should be set where I want it."  I don't particularly agree with them but I know several fundamentalist Christians who would consider Amazon's "glitch" to be setting the bar high. 

Which again brings me to my point: There are two camps in a culture war here and Amazon's just trying to stay neutral. 

Because the truth is a lot of their customers consider all material regarding Gays and Lesbians to be "adult" material.  Now obviously Ms. Hodder thinks that's wrong and would like Amazon to ignore those people.  But she should at least be honest with herself and realize doing that isn't removing bias from the algorithm it's just putting her bias in place of the bias that's there. 

While the bias that's there (post-"glitch") is Amazon's best attempt to make everyone happy (flawed as it might be)

I would suggest that the company, because of its position in the market and power over both authors and publishers, as well as users and the intellectual marketplace of idea, ought to be doing a complete and public review of their classification and algorithm assumptions. Publishers and authors should push for it, and so should users.

Right, because that info wouldn't be proprietary or anything. 

That aside this just completes the thought from the last paragraph.  All ranking algorithms have bias.  That's by definition.  Amazon is a company that wants to appeal to every side so they are trying to target the center.  Which is exactly what they should be doing.

The reality is companies have an external review process and it's called their sales.  If they discriminate against Gay and Lesbian material they'll find they lose sales of that material.  At that point you can consider them "publicly reviewed"

Addendum: One point I forgot to make.  Some would argue that the authors are penalized if Amazon removes the sales rank from their book.  Ms. Hodder points out that the first result you get after searching under homosexuality is "A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality" (which I'm sure is in part due to the aforementioned "glitch").  Honestly, I consider this a bit of a non-issue.  For this to hurt authors someone would have to search for the term, get that result and then just conclude no books exist.  Does that seem likely?  Or does it seem more likely that the person would just find another online book store and repeat the search?

2nd Addendum: Last One, I Swear, but this is important.  If you want companies to be more transparent you have to accept the reasonable compromises they have to make to stay in business.  It's unreasonable to expect Amazon to take a side in the culture wars. 

3rd Addendum: Yeah, I said the 2nd would be the last one, sue me.  But it seems from the comments I didn't make one point clear so I wanted to elaborate.  This post is based on the assumption that Amazon is at least trying to treat homosexual books in the same way as heterosexual books.  That's what their public statements indicate and I'm choosing to take them at their word.  The issue I'm addressing is Ms. Hodder's contention that Amazon has some built in bias that they can't control and that the answer to that bias is to let her and other members of the public decide which books are acceptable.  So the issue here isn't "does Amazon discriminate"  it's "who should get to make the decision on what is discrimination".  My contention is that Amazon should get to make it's own decisions based on it's customer base.

I wanted to elaborate on my post from yesterday because it’s something that increasingly bothers me in today’s online world.  It seems like the ability to quickly amass a group of people has led many to jump right over the “reasonable conversation” stage and straight to the “mob putting someone on trial” stage.

Take the Amazon story from yesterday.  I don’t know who initially found the alleged discrepancy but they couldn’t have tried to discuss the matter privately with Amazon.  Because the story broke on Easter Sunday meaning anyone who would have responded wouldn’t even be in the office. 

So they almost certainly went straight to the crowd.

Now ask yourself what the root of this behavior is.  When you try to get a crowd to support you what are you doing?  In my mind you are preparing to use force against who ever opposes you.  Because you don’t need a crowd to have a reasonable discussion.  That just takes two people. 

The only function a crowd serves is to represent a threat.  Whether it’s “we’re going to do something to you” or “we’re going to stop buying stuff from you” the intent is the same: To prove you have enough support to do harm to the other party.

Now, just to be clear, I do think there are times when amassing a group is good.  But only after you’ve tried to reason with your opponent.  That’s where the bullying comes in.  When you don’t even try to allow for a reasonable compromise and instead opt to strike out before anything else you are being a bully. 

The internet is a wonderful thing but it brings with it the ability to cause pain to each other in ways we could never have imagined before.  Given that I think we’d all be well advised to think before lashing out at people.  At the very least you should make sure you’ve given someone the chance to meet your demands before going on the offensive.

Amazon is attempting to segregate adult material from their catalogue by removing that material from the sales rank list.  This has members of the Gay community upset because they think their literature is being targeted to a greater extent.  From Mashable...

Probst also notes, however, that Amazon has de-ranked heterosexual romance novels in its erotica section. So the allegation is not so much that Amazon is removing all gay romance (some still remains), but rather questioning whether Amazon’s standards for what constitutes “adult” material are biased against homosexual romance. It should also be noted that Amazon still sells these books: they simply no longer appear in public sales rankings.

In the comments of that post, and elsewhere on LiveJournal, readers have been searching Amazon to find bias in the books removed from the rankings. The examples found do appear to hold water:

The book blog Booksquare has posted an open letter to Amazon regarding the change, and the topic “#amazonfail” has been trending on Twitter for most of Sunday. Whatever Amazon’s response to the issue, they’ll need to respond quickly and publicly to the allegations.

This might not appear to be a tech issue but it very much is so bear with me as I explain..

Logically the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, and Transsexual) community had two choices here.  Stir up trouble publicly or try to deal with Amazon privately.  They chose the former.  That was, in my opinion, a mistake.  A mistake caused largely by technology.

You see making a big fuss pushes Amazon into a very uncomfortable position.  If Amazon does respond to the perceived bias against LGBT books the other side of the coin (Religious groups, anti-gay activists, et al) will cry foul claiming Amazon is giving special treatment to LGBT books.

So then it becomes an issue of size.  Whose political faction is bigger?  Because I honestly don't think Amazon cares.  They are out to make money and while they'd prefer no one be mad at them if given a choice they are going to take the path that makes the fewest people angry. 

So it all comes down to whose support is bigger.

But on the size issue the LGBT community almost certainly loses.  Take a look at the controversial subject of gay marriage and you find that 48 states have some kind of ban on it while only 2 allow it.  So in this political arena the deck is obviously stacked against the LGBT community.

Which is how we get back to tech.  Whatever your cause you have to think strategically to get a positive result.  Thinking strategically means having a realistic view of what your support is. 

Tech people tend to think everyone is on the Internet and actively participating (e.g. contributing rather than passively reading and/or purchasing).  So when everyone on Twitter seems to be on one side of an issue they assume there's significant support there.  But in truth the group actively participating on the Internet is very small and very one sided.  So looking at it gives you an inaccurate view of your support.

That inaccurate view is surely why the LGBT community chose to make this into a public issue.  They think they can force Amazon's hand because of their massive support.  But, as shown above, they are starting a confrontation they're likely to use.

Had they looked realistically at things they could have contacted Amazon privately and kept the issue from blowing up into something the other side of the political spectrum feels they need to respond to. 

Again, Amazon wants to make money.  They'd surely respond to a reasonable private request.  Meaning the LGBT community had a good chance of getting exactly what they wanted by doing things privately.  A much better chance than they have now.

Addendum: I've gotten a few e-mails about this article where a Rep. from Amazon claims the issue was "a glitch" and that it will be fixed.  When asked to elaborate on "the glitch" she can't which makes me think this is an attempt to placate the LGBT community without actually doing anything.  Most people have short attentions spans and usually if you tell them you'll fix it they stop paying attention.

Lee from Right-Thinking.com is dead.  He was 38. 

This isn't a sappy post.  Truth be told I did not like Lee.  But on hearing of his passing I did feel a loss.

I've been thinking about that over the last day or so.  A lot of people say it as if it's some kind of noble thing.  "To feel a loss."  But really it's a selfish thing, albeit justified selfishness.  You can feel bad for their family, friends, kids, and so on but in the end, when you say you've felt a loss you're talking about what you've lost.  This person was worth something to you and now that they're gone you've lost that.  It certainly sounds cold when you say it that way but that's what it is.

Again, it's completely justified but it's none the less selfish.  The two aren't mutually exclusive. 

So why do I feel a loss.  I didn't like the guy right?  Well Yes, but here's the thing: I did read his blog (when he was the one maintaining it).  In that I feel a loss.  What it comes down to is this: Lee was many things but he wasn't stupid.  I'm not saying his beliefs were right all the time, probably not even most of the time, but he had a reason for having those beliefs and he was skilled at defending them. 

So yes, I didn't like Lee.  If he entered a room I would probably try to leave it.  I'd certainly never want to sit down and talk to him.  But his opinion mattered to me.  It shaped mine and on occasion proved mine wrong.  I would be a lesser person if his blog didn't exist. 

And that is my point.

Lee wrote thoughtful things and in doing so he gave the best of himself to me and to the world.  That's the point of this post.  The Internet, when used right, can allow someone to shed their negative traits and in doing so influence the lives of people who they'd never be able to otherwise.  Even people who dislike them. 

We should all be more like Lee in that way and that is why I feel a loss today.