A VC - Latest Comments in Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

jaredrbrandt — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:14:44 -0000

Great post and comments - and I think you are right, correspondence and discussion are coming back.

I find the most meaningful discussions occur when those present have a relationship (past conversations, whether real or virtual, direct or even indirect and a reputation) and take the time, as Jer979 points out, to be respectful and civil.

One of the interesting balancing acts for 2009 for FF and Disqus (and maybe even twitter) will be how to promote real discussion through features or lack of. Discussion on forums seems rare - even within the niches that they serve. Features promote multiple posting (ranking systems) at the expense of carefully crafted thought. Multiple communication channels, such as private messages on a bulletin board, are often used at the expense of the public discussion. Reputation is also hard to nail as ebay is well aware.

It is exciting to see passionate people focusing energy on these issues.

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:28:06 -0000

michael - i quoted from this comment in today's blog post

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/200...

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Morgan Brown — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:56:09 -0000

Hi Fred,

I think they are too. I guess my concern is more with the medium. Like digital pictures. Thousands of great photos are lost every year when a hard drive crashes, a digital camera dies, etc. It's more that people have to remember that these repositories aren't permanent archives. We need to learn to become somewhat of our own digital historian to ensure that we protect that which is important to us.

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Morgan Brown — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:54:43 -0000

Fred,

Great post. I believe we're starting to see some of the other pain points of this conversation, particularly around the "ownership" of a particular question. Ownership under each of the following: FriendFeed, blog comments, and commenting systems like Disqus the ownership of that conversation and content, looks a little different in each scenario.

The breaking down of walled gardens of conversation while working out this "ownership" question is going to be one of the challenges of the next few years.

The reason I like Disqus so much (and FF) is that the conversation can move and flow easily, ownership in the conversation belongs to the commenter and not just the property that it lives on.

The one thing I worry about and hope is protected is the wonderful legacy of these conversations. With so many valuable conversations being had on various platforms (of various levels of financial stability) it would be a shame to see great conversations lost forever simply due to a company folding.

Great post and happy new year!

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:21:06 -0000

I think disqus and friendfeed are well funded and are in good shape. But I agree with your concerns

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 04:31:06 -0000

That's pretty definitive. Thanks for the link. Fascinating post

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

majorwho — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:35:29 -0000

Here's an interesting piece on exactly this subject:
http://makeshiftmusician.bl...

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

mccv — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:07:26 -0000

I'm not a pro, but play a few instruments pretty competently. The technique for Guitar Hero is definitely different, but there are some fundamentals that I think *do* transfer to playing real instruments. Sense of rhythm, being forced to play in time with accompaniment, left/right hand coordination, and general finger dexterity are all basic things that I'd be willing to bet do carry over. I'd be really interested to see somebody take two groups of inexperienced guitar players, one with Guitar Hero experience and one without, and see how each progresses on picking up guitar over a 6-12 month time span.

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:33:42 -0000

Right. My brother is a real musician who has played guitar professionally
and he sucks on guitar hero

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

MikePLewis — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:09:10 -0000

Couldn't agree more with your post. Love it. I often look at the hierarchy of participation:

- Read
- Favorite
- Tag
- Comment
- Subscribe
- Share
- Network
- Write
- Refactor
- Collaborate
- Moderate
- Lead

And i realize that there's quite a distance between "read" and "comment" even if it is only 2 steps. It's amazing how few people do it. Even i don't do it as often as i want to. The key is making it easy and compelling to do so

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

majorwho — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:16:46 -0000

Many of my musician friends find the technique involved in mastering Rock Band and the like to be quite different from playing actual instruments or writing songs. It opens a new frontier of music commerce but I don't think it does much to stretch the creative and virtuostic realm among would-be musicians. It's a bit early to tell. If what Tyler says is true, that it will help people to become interested in playing real music on instruments, then it helps the trend.

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:09:17 -0000

I don¹t know enough about facebook to tell you how

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Facebook User — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:51:34 -0000

I loved this post as a positive perspective on the power of social media and networking tools to advance public discourse, rather than kill it or dumb it down. It's encouraged me as someone who loves writing & thoughtful discussion via the more traditional means.
I'd love to share this specific blog post further on my FB wall. Anyone know how I might be able to do that?

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Alvis — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 07:07:27 -0000

Sure, though (disclaimer 1) many of them are necessarily incremental developments setting the conditions for further correspondence/conversation/comm expansion. I also want to point out for technical purposes (disclaimer 2) that I see the distinction between blog comments and blog posts (including twitter) fading gradually. -- Some examples:

Disqus: Obv, I'd include Disqus, a new way to link multiple comment threads over time.

CommentPress: Split-screen software for wordpress posts that opens a commenting window/layer that can also be accessed via links at the front of each paragraph. This is a better structure for commenting over time. Example here: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:-e4mC4bnyM4J:usapetal.net/wp... Run by The Institute for the Future of the Book, a project of USC's Annenberg School, which is also dabbling in something interesting looking by underwhelming called commentgraph.com. - On some levels I find this similar to TweeTree.com - more structure.

Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect: Social Identity/Network + Content + Monetization (soon) = robust new socio-info graph that will catalyze new longitudinal and comprehensive applications and bodies of structured data.

Comment Repositories: Usually private databases, but more-or-less comprehensive public lists also count. I'd also include sites like CNN's FanNation (http://www.fannation.com/fa... and iReport.com. These structures may eventually be rendered moot by really smart semantic search, but will be very important until we get there, helping us to develop better relational maps along the way. - I find it amazing that there's no serious general commentpedia out there. Perhaps a cousin to Wikipedia is in order - just imagine the value if it's open-sourced.

Comment Ratings: Simple up/down votes on comments (ie daily kos, reddit, blog platforms) will go a long way as we assemble sortable comment databases. Other emerging metrics will help hugely.

RSS/Email Comment Alerts: Allows comment threads to keep growing. Allows people to structure conversations into folders (more structure). There will be much room for interesting innovation here.

Gradual Patent Reform: I'm not to familiar with the software, but am aware that the patent system is changing to better utilize the web. The result will be a structured body of idea "trails" that will serve as the basis for much high-value and contentious communication. Patent troll nightmare.

Dear Idea (speculative): A philanthropic concept that some NYC friends and I kicked around in which content is embedded with drives and supported by a structured format that rewards idea evolution through augmentation, bonding, recruiting. Core concept is a points system that rewards creators, facilitators, commenters and bonders. Think it's possible to setup such frameworks now, but open-source model will work best.

etc.

Once again, the above structures are catalysts for both faster/easier blog commenting as we know it, and also open up a new realm of correspondence and complex knowledge assembly. I expect there will be applications geared specifically toward longitudinal conversation built atop these and other structures.

Hope these examples are of use/interest.

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Tyler Willis — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:25:48 -0000

Lessig made a similar point on Charlie Rose recently ( video: http://www.charlierose.com/... ). That the tools of the internet were actually bringing us back to participant culture. It's just after the 10 minute mark in the interview.

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Tyler Willis — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:21:12 -0000

I would say it helps drive more creation, it engages more people in the context of "playing" music instead of consuming music -- which gets them moving on a path towards creation.

In terms of the business, I think interaction with music in a context of creation drives consumption faster than just interacting with music as a listener. Millions of songs have been downloaded into the game (big profit for the game and the musicians) so that effect is known, but I'd bet that the people who play the game also spend more on music outside of the game than non-playing peers do -- but that is a theory, and would be interesting to see proved or disproved.

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:04:09 -0000

Does rock band, guitar hero, and the like help or hurt this trend?

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Scott — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:59:57 -0000

Nice. That would definitely mitigate the lack of participation via online google reader; however, I believe that the major area of need would be the commenting ability on mobile devices :-)

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

majorwho — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:51:38 -0000

An interesting parallel is occurring in music right now. With GarageBand and other collaborative tools available, more people are getting involved in composing, playing instruments and performing for friends and each other. The current climate brings out the musician in all of us and a heightened awareness of the creation and mechanics of music making is developing. We are becoming a more 'musical' society while the music business continues to become less and less relevant. We live in interesting times (an old Chinese curse, actually).

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:32:18 -0000

Sweet. I gotta check that out. Thanks for the tip

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

Riaz Kanani — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:14:57 -0000

its not perfect but have you tried gReader? It originally used Greasemonkey and Firefox to add disqus to Google Reader (http://www.sixteenseven.com... but now there is a Firefox addon as well. You can find it here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/...

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:37:07 -0000

That's not good about FB connect. It was working fine. I'll look into it

I totally agree with you. Whenever people leave nasty comments with anonymous profiles, I beg them to use their real identities instead. I think they would behave differently in that situation

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:30:12 -0000

Have you seen anything live on the web that starts to showcase some of these ideas?

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:26:06 -0000

Wow. I had no idea!

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

fredwilson — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:15:11 -0000

I would love to see google reader do more to support the comment services on blogs. I wonder if disqus could build a ff extenstion for google reader that would make commenting from google reader seamless

I also think its interesting to note the impact of mobile devices on blog reading. I find that same effect with my blackberry