Noah Brier's Barbarian Blog

One Billion Creators

noah@barbariangroup.com(Noah Brier) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:02:25 -0500

Just some random thoughts on being a content creator.

Whenever I tell the story of building Brand Tags , I explain that I finally decided to launch the stupid thing because I was feeling guilty about not having blogged in a while. (In the post where I introduced the idea I opened by explaining that, “In lieu of actually writing something interesting (which I haven’t done in a while), I’ve decided to release a 70% done project.”)

Just today I was feeling it again as I looked at the last time I wrote a “full entry” (which is what I call those things on the left side of the blog). It was December 31st , which is over a month ago and that post is hardly an insightful or interesting piece of writing, it’s just a list of a whole bunch of blogs I steal ideas from.

None of this is to say much, except that I think it’s funny that in the 21st century we have the luxury to worry about things like whether our blog audience is feeling as though we’re paying an adequate amount of attention to them. In some ways it’s incredibly egotistic, as if there’s a whole bunch of you sitting around waiting for me to write something (which you are obviously not). In another way, though, it’s the flip side of the whole “attention thing” people love talking about (I refuse to call it an economy).

As a content creator, albeit a small-time one, I feel constantly on the hook for finding interesting things to share with all of you. I scour the internet daily, looking for tidbits and ideas that are worth of your time and attention. It shapes what I read and, maybe more importantly, how I read it, as I am constantly reading with a critical eye towards insights.

I guess the point is that too little attention is paid to the effects of so many of us being content creators, since the consumption part is the topic-du-jour. Just think about how it changes the way you look at everything, even if you’re only a creator amongst a tiny group of friends or family. Look at how differently you judge photos that are going to the web or how you’ve learned to describe experiences on Twitter.

Pretty soon we’ll have a world with a billion-plus publisher/editor/creators and only focusing on the mass of content they create is probably missing the larger cultural impact of them all being this other thing that puts content out into the world.

More, More, More

noah@barbariangroup.com(Noah Brier) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:02:25 -0500

We’ve all read about “the fear” or talked to someone who has it. It’s that feeling that there’s too much stuff out there, that some time in the near future that we’re going to stop talking, that the kids are going to shit. I don’t disagree with any of it really (well except that we’re going to stop having human contact, that argument is stupid). George Packer had a good one last week where he wondered how it was all effecting us. I wonder that too sometimes. But in the end, instead of worrying about it, I just admit to myself that I really like it.

All of that is a long preamble to “this quote from a piece titled In Praise of High-Speed Overload over at The Awl :

A friend told me that there is a “Slow Media” movement brewing out there, somewhere or other. The Internet confirms. NO. I only want food to go slow! The growing advance of knowledge, the tantalizing proximity of answers to all our questions, the new ability to share and synthesize our knowledge, almost instantly—we’re so lucky to be experiencing all this. If the price is more anxiety, then let me wind up like the Tasmanian Devil, just a blur of anxiety. Of unbelieveably knowledgeable, totally undeceived anxiety. So what if the Internet has turned each day into a panic-ridden informational hot-dog-eating contest? So what if with the incomparable gift of access to limitless knowledge comes also a little melancholy, and anxiety that waxes sometimes into an Ernest-Beckerish sense of impending doom?

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Best Community on the Web

noah@barbariangroup.com(Noah Brier) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:02:26 -0500

As far as communities on the web go, I think Metafilter takes the cake. So it was with great interest that I read this interview with the founder, Matt Haughey (via rc3.org ). In it he says pretty much everything I’d expect him to say (but as those brands building “communities” never think of).

In my mind the most brilliant feature of the site is the five dollar signup fee. Haughey explains the rationale:

It’s mostly just putting a huge hurdle in front of having to deal with new users. ‘Cause it’s such a pain. The last ten years have shown that any time there’s press, like the New York Times writes something about us, 300 people sign up and then wreak havoc for a while, and then go away. [Without barriers to entry] it would just be a nightmare.

On size, growth and just how much work it is to maintain:

It grew naturally over first few years. I never sort of advertised the site anywhere. It just sort of grows all the time. Just sort of randomly. I’m not doing anything to goose that or anything. Because [the site] doesn’t work if it’s big. Metafilter is actually run by me and two moderaters and a programmer. It’s really done by hand. We’re constantly emailing people, contacting people personally. It’s a ton of work and would never work if tens of thousands of more people joined. I’m not interested in it going to twitter proportions at all.

And finally, on just how un-sexy building a regular old profitable business can be:

A lot of people obsessed with venture capital see Metafilter as a lifestyle business, but in my mind, it’s a mature business. It works really well and yet nobody aspires to do something like this and I don’t know why. Nobody celebrates just simple businesses that work.

Seriously, I could pull about five more quotes, but just go read the whole thing.

via rc3.org

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Un-Representative Representatives

noah@barbariangroup.com(Noah Brier) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:02:28 -0500

Over at Snarkmarket, Robin points a fun Washington Post article that imagines new ways to divide Senate seats . Here’s the income plan:

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets—with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.

Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.

Obviously this won’t be happening anytime soon, but it definitely puts into perspective just how un-representative our representatives are.

via Snarkmarket

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Seeing the Internet

noah@barbariangroup.com(Noah Brier) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:02:21 -0500

I really loved this article about the many ways people visualize the internet . It brought me back to great scenes in movies like Hackers, where the internet is this totally ridiculous looking thing. The author attempts to explain the phenomena:

The problem isn’t really that we don’t know what the Internet looks like. It’s that what it looks like is so horribly ugly: not a glistening Tootsie Roll pop, not an open freeway, not a shimmering clear pool of chlorinated water nor a siren-littered sea, not even a chiseled movie star, but giant, hulking factories dotting the landscape of the Pacific Northwest and the Eastern Seaboard, covering old landfills, sprawling, like dozens of Costcos smashed together, stacked with metal and diesel generators and powerful cooling systems, crossed by power lines that deliver 2 percent of the world’s energy to the so-called cloud, where your tax returns and credit card statements cross paths with Medicare files and corporate budgets and your old love letters and the photos of Jennifer Aniston’s newest boyfriend.

While reading I got so inspired I decided to set up a little site to catalog all the great ways the web gets visualized. So, with no further ado, I present Gallery Interweb . If you’d like to add your favorite, you can do that to (thank you Tumblr submit functionality). Excellent. Let the fun begin.

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