News is supposed to be fresh and current. An encyclopedia is a reference for archived information not news. Right? Read\Write Web is reporting that Google News alerts are now turning up Wikipedia entries.
Google News May Add Wikipedia as a Source

When was the last time you used Google News?

Either those Wikipedian’s are wicked fast or Google News keeps getting slower. I remember when Google News used to bring you (what seemed like at the time) near real-time news results. Now thanks to Twitter, FriendFeed and other real-time social sites I don’t even remember the last time I used Google News.

Seems to me that integrating Twitter into Google News as well as Wikipedia would really provide some value. You’d combine traditional news with crowd sourced reference and real-time context. I’m sure there’s a Grease-Monkey script for that.

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• On Being a Human Filter (newcommbiz.com)
• What I’m doing to fight the social media echo chamber (newcommbiz.com)
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Recent studies and observations have showed that 90% of tweets are made by 10% of the people which is closer to the user behavior of Wikipedia than Facebook (see links at the bottom of the post). One of the primary uses of Twitter by working professionals (the major demographic on Twitter) is for link sharing.

While some felt early on that Twitter would kill blogging I’ve always thought of it as a resource for my blogging. I primarily find and share links via the Tweet Stream. In order to help me explain that to others I created a simple graphic (because I’m not capable of anything else) and I thought I’d share it with you. Feel free to use it yourself. Although if you have any artistic capabilities I suggest you improve on the concept. If you do, please share it back out.

UPDATE: I suck so bad at design that this little project was beyond my grasp. Version one is here, I’ve replaced it with version 2 which ads the arrow at the bottom (signifying the flow of the Twitter stream) and the “Links” so people get that people post blogs and news stories, share the links, which people find via the “Twitter Stream” and that spawns new posts. Yeah, anyway I’m a dork.

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This week marks my 2 year blogiversary. To commemorate one of the things I thought I’d do is re-post some of my better older posts. Oddly enough this is my #1 blog via search engines. Apparently this is still a very popular quote by Michael Scott. I attribute it’s high search ranking to the fact that I posted this just hours after the original show ran. This blog was originally posted on 4/10/07

“Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world, can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.” - Michael Scott

I am a huge fan of The Office. The above quote is from April 5th’s (1997) episode. in a very tongue in cheek way, the writers of The Office are highlighting an ongoing social debate. There is constantly (and will continue to be) a debate over the validity and accuracy of information on Wikipedia. To me this is a non issue, for others it is THE issue.

For me what it has done is shown what is possible. People want to share knowledge. People want to colaborate. People will use New Media tools. And most importantly when I talk to clients about wiki’s it gives me an example of a technology that everyone is familiar with.

A wiki is a great piece of technology. How you use it is up to you. If anyone is using a wiki in their workplace please leave a comment here. If you have an example of wiki’s that you use when trying to explain them, other than Wikipedia leave that comment as well. Or if you have your favorite Office quote you can leave that here too.

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Image by Martin LaBar via Flickr

Some people have a hard time being called a consumer or a user. I don’t have that problem.

I consume/I use

As human being it is essential to our survival (and I would even say our mental well being) to consume. Food, resources, time, money, electricity, etc.

I use your Web site for my own personal enjoyment/gain. I use the information you give me to make myself smarter and I probably won’t give anything back.

I’ll use your freemium service and probably never pay you a dime (even though most of the services I would pay for don’t charge). I read your blog and never click the adds.

I use Google search, mail, calendar, iGoogle, Google Reader, and everything else you throw out there (except Orkut) and never click on an ad.

I’ve never donated to Wikipedia. Have you?

Prosumer

We’ve even invented a new word for those of you who have issues with the reality of your consumption habits: Prosumer.

You think we created a hybrid word from producer and consumer but really all it means is professional consumer.

Prosumers consume phones, laptops and other geek toys like most people consume double venti late’s. (And don’t even get me started on how they consume those.)

Get Real

Many of you like to point out that you produce. You blog, Twitter, upload photo’s, video and life stream. Let’s get real. Do you know what being a 1% really means? It means that if you blog, comment, photo, video, life stream you’re still only producing 1% as much as you consume.

If you take offense to this post please see my previous post.

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There is a lot of confusion around the definitions of Web 2.0 vs New Media. You will hear a lot of people use them interchangeably. Even the above linked to Wikipedia definitions don’t offer much differentiation. So while theses may not be definitive this is the difference as I see them.

Web 2.0 is the technology.

This includes things like: AJAX, Blogs, Wiki’s, podcasts, RSS, widgets and tagging.

New Media is the philosophy.

This is the new approach to how we communicate with each other. This is what makes things like social communities so powerful.

It’s the combination of these two factors at the same time that have created the change that we are experiencing. One without the other is not as powerful.

Web 2.0 is cool, I like the technology but without the philosophy it’s just a cooler way to experience the web.

New Media is great, the approach of many to many and knowledge sharing across multiple groups is extremely powerful but without the technology you are limited to off line geographically limited groups.

Combine the two you you achieve exponential results.

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“Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world, can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.” - Michael Scott

I am a huge fan of The Office. The above quote is from April 5th’s episode. in a very tongue in cheek way, the writers of The Office are highlighting an ongoing social debate. There is constantly (and will continue to be) a debate over the validity and accuracy of information on Wikipedia. To me this is a non issue, for others it is THE issue.

For me what it has done is shown what is possible. People want to share knowledge. People want to colaborate. People will use New Media tools. And most importantly when I talk to clients about wiki’s it gives me an example of a technology that everyone is familiar with.

A wiki is a great piece of technology. How you use it is up to you. If anyone is using a wiki in their workplace please leave a comment here. If you have an example of wiki’s that you use when trying to explain them, other than Wikipedia leave that comment as well. Or if you have your favorite Office quote you can leave that here too.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!