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Socialmedian Exits Beta; Goldberg Charged With Grand Theft Content
Anthony Ha at Venturebeat reported on Friday that Socialmedian has left the beta stage (whatever that means). Ha says it’s an important milestone for the company. Ha went on to note, "I’m not seeing anything that will tempt me away from social messaging/sharing sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, or the sharing option within (the newly redesigned) Google Reader."
What I see with Socialmedian is that founder Jason Goldberg has committed grand theft content. Basically what Socialmedian does is take content from around the Web, put it onto Socialmedian and let you comment about it. If your post is very long (and I mean VERY long), Socialmedian offers a read more link but the majority of content I see on the service is full scraping. What this means is that for most content on Socialmedian, a reader will never find their way to the source.
While I don’t see any ads on the site yet, I am certain that Socialmedian’s business model will be based around generating revenue from everyone’s hard work creating the content.
But wait, it gets even better! If you share an item from Socialmedian, by default it sends the Socialmedian link, not the original source link. Here’s a Twitter share example. For some reason I started receiving emails from Socialmedian daily about 10 days ago. All links in the email point to Socialmedian.
I see that now Engadget sends along a terms of use link in every feed item in their RSS feed. It will be interesting to see how long services like Socialmedian remain popular with content creators.
Socialmedian has raised about half-a-million dollars in funding and their team is mainly in India. If Socialmedian wants to aggregate comments back to their site from their users commenting on the source, fine. I’ve read their extensive about us and history pages, but I really don’t see the appeal of this service.
Microsoft’s Dare speaks about commenting in his latest post regarding Windows Live. Dare notes, "The more sites Robert (Scoble) imports his blog feed into, the more it fractures and steals away the conversation from his blog post. This is in addition to the fact that there is some confusion as to where people should leave comments on his blog post."
It’s almost like the idea is to create the laziest possible application - the lazier the better? Each app that comes out moves the lazy needle a bit further along. I wonder what’s next in lazy apps?
Check out Adrian’s look at people and content aggregators.
“lazy apps” lol
Posted for Jason Goldberg as it somehow got caught in spam:
Allen: In a word, wow. There are so many inaccuracies in your article I don’t know where to start. You are certainly entitled to your opinion if you don’t like socialmedian as a service but at least get your facts right. Grand theft content while a nice sensationalist headline is just plain wrong and a silly accusation. It might get people to read your blog post but it’s just not true. Next you’ll probably accuse us of being linked to a hothead pastor, of not really being born in the U.S., and of associating with Bill Ayers. First off, socialmedian is publisher friendly. We enable users to discover content on the web that they in many cases would never have seen/discovered.
We promote popular sources and help users find new sources of content for the topics they care abotu. Like other social news sites, socialmedian enables people to aggregate and discover content from multiple sources and then link off to the original source. socialmedian does not scrape content from any source. We only grab RSS summaries from sources that our users have personally selected to use our tools to get feeds from (like Google Reader).
socialmedian abides by a fair-use policy for content on our site. We only grab summaries of content and then link off to the original content. Every article on socialmedian includes a read more link which clicks out to the external source. When viewing a list of stories, the title of the story links directly to the original story on the external site. When viewing a list of socialmedian user activities that the title of the story directs to a socialmedian internal page.
Yes, socialmedian encourages our users to carry on the discussion on socialmedian. We do this as a service to our users, similar to Digg, Facebook, and other social sites. When a user shares a story from socialmedian onto twitter, they have the choice of either sharing a link to discuss that story on socialmedian or to direct their twitter followers to the original story. Above all, the benefit of socialmedian to the end user is being able to get the news they need filtered by people who share their interests. This works rather well and has been greeted with great response by our users who use socialmedian to find and discuss content of interest through their social networking contacts. Whether socialmedian is labeled "beta" or not, it continues to be a work in progress.
Our model from day 1 has been to listen carefully to user feedback and to adjust very quickly and provide enhancements. We likewise work closely with publishers to learn how best to enable socialmedian promote their content. This is all an ongoing evolving process. We only removed the "beta" tag because we heard feedback that even in this day and age of every Google product being labeled "beta" there are still many non-techy/mainstream users who are skeptical of trying a news service that is still in beta. So, we decided to continue our public evolution of socialmedian without the beta tag. The philosophy of listen, learn, adjust, repeat still follows. Thanks for stopping by to check us out.
Best, -jason
Allen,
While I appreciate giving props where props are due and being appropriately respectful to content creators, it seems to me you are missing a key value of community: communication.
Aren’t we missing the point if we become so obsessed with driving traffic that we forget to slow down and appreciate the conversation?
I found this blog (your blog) on SocialMedian. I wouldn’t have found it if Jason Goldberg hadn’t submitted it. People I respect are discussing this and that is why I am here.
You don’t need to feel threatened. We’re the ones paying attention. We’re driving the traffic.
Also, you are flagrantly inaccurate, but I’ll leave that bone for someone else to pick.
Regards,
Sarah
Sarah - where in my post did I say it was about traffic? I didn’t even use that as part of the case. It’s about the conversation and in SocialMedian’s case, it’s also about the content.
Firstly, I have no connection with Social|Median except as a user.
Secondly, I’m surprised at the accusation that it’s another site making money of someone else’s efforts. There is, of course, a whole load of new news and information out there every minute of the day, and it’s good to have somewhere that aggregates it together, AND allows comment too. Google Reader is a good service, but of course, you have to subscribe to each sites feed; you can’t communally comment, and you will miss news reports that haven’t been posted on the sites you subscribe to, as there is no way to link to subjects or keywords in GR, only to feeds.
I look in Social|Median itself at least once a day, and often find articles of interest that I wish to read more about, and I click through to the site that’s posted it.
When I find articles of news that I think may be of interest to other Social|Median users I add it to the site, using the Social|Median bookmarklet in my browser. I usually copy one or two lines of text from the article, and add as a teaser so users get an idea what it is about. They would then have to click thru to the site, that I found it on to read the whole article.
I’m perhaps an atypical user in that I rarely watch TV, and get the vast majority of my daily news from online sources, so I value a site like Social|Median greatly, as it’s collecting links to what I want to read in one place. It’s also interesting, and part of one’s own lifelong continuing learning process to be able to comment on articles and get comments and replies to comments back from other users that may or may not agree with your views.
Therefore Social|Median not only gives me links to news in one place, but promotes debate about it too, and that can only be a good thing for people in general, and a good thing for the sites that get extra visitors to articles they might otherwise have never seen.
Jason, here are my replies below each paragraph….
Ham: Allen: In a word, wow. There are so many inaccuracies in your article I don’t know where to start. You are certainly entitled to your opinion if you don’t like socialmedian as a service but at least get your facts right. Grand theft content while a nice sensationalist headline is just plain wrong and a silly accusation. It might get people to read your blog post but it’s just not true. Next you’ll probably accuse us of being linked to a hothead pastor, of not really being born in the U.S., and of associating with Bill Ayers. First off, socialmedian is publisher friendly. We enable users to discover content on the web that they in many cases would never have seen/discovered.
– discovering content is awesome… if you read CN, you’d see I am all about discovery. Same reason I fought against Friendfeed and Twitter offering defaults. I totally love content discovery and those parts of Socialmedian are great!
We promote popular sources and help users find new sources of content for the topics they care abotu. Like other social news sites, socialmedian enables people to aggregate and discover content from multiple sources and then link off to the original source. socialmedian does not scrape content from any source. We only grab RSS summaries from sources that our users have personally selected to use our tools to get feeds from (like Google Reader).
– but did I give you the right to take my content, place it on your site and use it in the manner to which you’ve done. I’ve given my readers the right to read the content, that’s all. It’s like this… I give Mary permission to drive my car. Mary takes my car and lets Diana drive it. Diana didn’t have my permission to drive my car. Neither did you.
socialmedian abides by a fair-use policy for content on our site. We only grab summaries of content and then link off to the original content. Every article on socialmedian includes a read more link which clicks out to the external source. When viewing a list of stories, the title of the story links directly to the original story on the external site. When viewing a list of socialmedian user activities that the title of the story directs to a socialmedian internal page.
– right and as I noted, since most blog posts appear to be shorter than whatever your cut off is (which certainly seems WAY long) so you are displaying the full content of a post. I see the read more links and the title links which might be a good baby step, but as for embracing the content authors, it’s nowhere near where it needs to be. I think it will be interesting to see what happens over the next year with regards to feed usage - look at the big terms of service that engadget sends along with every story now.
Yes, socialmedian encourages our users to carry on the discussion on socialmedian. We do this as a service to our users, similar to Digg, Facebook, and other social sites. When a user shares a story from socialmedian onto twitter, they have the choice of either sharing a link to discuss that story on socialmedian or to direct their twitter followers to the original story. Above all, the benefit of socialmedian to the end user is being able to get the news they need filtered by people who share their interests. This works rather well and has been greeted with great response by our users who use socialmedian to find and discuss content of interest through their social networking contacts. Whether socialmedian is labeled "beta" or not, it continues to be a work in progress.
– See this post about the "<a href="http://www.centernetworks.com/the-conversation-monetization">stolen discussion</a>". It’s clear that services like yours have realized that the discussion/conversation are where the money are and so everyone wants to take it. Without offering anything back to the source content publisher. If you are going to tell me it’s traffic back to the source, it’s going to take way more than that as I’ve seen maybe 1 person a week coming from your service. I’d still like to see the same thing…. conversation centralized at the source, whatever that source is (photo, video, text, whatever).
– While we’re at it, what’s your business model?
Our model from day 1 has been to listen carefully to user feedback and to adjust very quickly and provide enhancements. We likewise work closely with publishers to learn how best to enable socialmedian promote their content. This is all an ongoing evolving process. We only removed the "beta" tag because we heard feedback that even in this day and age of every Google product being labeled "beta" there are still many non-techy/mainstream users who are skeptical of trying a news service that is still in beta. So, we decided to continue our public evolution of socialmedian without the beta tag. The philosophy of listen, learn, adjust, repeat still follows. Thanks for stopping by to check us out.
– i like that… never cared much for alpha, beta, gamma - everyone provides support at all stages so why not just "go live". I believe your service has some promise - I actually think we’ve chatted about it earlier this year. As long as you add value without lifting content and stealing the discussion, ya have a chance!
– don’t worry my man, I don’t want to see you in social media jail - I am willing to be bail you out too. Happy to continue the discussion anytime!
Great discussion about this going on over at FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/e/8d8fac6b-ef3e-deb2-35fb-40772990c839/new-post-Socialmedian-Exits-Beta-Goldberg-Charged/
Yes, the conversation has shifted.
I am a user of Social|Median and have been pretty much since its launch. I am currently wearing a Social|Median shirt. I am not in any way affiliated other than a user, but I am a fan, so my opinion is biased.
I love the site and think it should continue to function pretty much as it does. By allowing the ease of submitting news from other services I already use, it has become far superior to Digg in actual utility for me. It is not gamed, there are no established “power users” per se, and it regularly serves me up news I am interested in. However, the fact is that Allen has a point: people post the full content and others then have no reason to visit the link. This disassociates the creators of content from their content, in various ways, and can interfere with the livelihood of others and may also have copyright issues.
I see a couple solutions…I have run a few online communities in my time, and on forums we had a rule that people could post no more than 25% of any copyrighted content; anything violating that rule was removed.
Another solution would be making republishing granular: items under CC or a GNU license can be reposting in full and those under normal copyright can only be reposted in part.
Neal - thanks for stopping by - there are many ways SM could handle the content issues with absolutely no worries from people like me.
Allen-
It just seems to me that you are unduly concerned about where your readers find you. You really can’t control that. How many people engaged with you today because of SocialMedian? You’ve got quite a conversation going here (and on FriendFeed and S|M). It all got pointed back to you and ignited a rather stimulating conversation spanning the globe.
Who cares how we got here? We’re here.
And I’m absolutely going to keep reading CN (and I may clip it and talk about it on occasion) because I want to see this conversation continue.
Best,
Sarah
I found Social Median a few weeks ago and have been using it as a user-friendly way to get at new stories quickly. In all cases, i click to the source site of the article/blog. If the content is well-written and the site is easy to navigate, then I typically will bookmark it (delicious, stumbleupon, digg, etc).
Many of the articles are from well-known sites like NYT, CNN, Huffpost, etc, but quite a few gems are from sites that I never would have heard about in a million years.
I can’t speak for others, but for me, finding a thread of news or information and following the thread until my curiosity is satisfied is how I use the Web. Social Median isn’t quite there yet, but its a good start. One thing is for certain, we’ll see dozens more cohorts of Goldberg’s platform in the months to come. I will not be surprised if we don’t start seeing them integrated with Calais or other semantic Web technologies that will allow for greater, serendipitous discovery of content from completely unrelated Web brands.
I disagree with your comments about SocialMedian.com is out to “create the laziest possible application.” Maybe you have time to scour the web for everything that interests you, but I don’t. I work full time and am a full time graduate student with a family. SocialMedian.com gathers the news I am interested in and displays it in one place for me to review in my rare spare time. If it hadn’t been for SocialMedian.com, I would have never found my way to your site and been able to comment on your errant viewpoint.
Allen, you know I disagree with you on this. That’s why we’ve talked many times about it.
Here’s the thing. Even if you are right… which is debatable, this is a trajectory that will not be undone. It is over. FriendFeed is not going away. socialmedian is not going away. Both are growing. So either embrace it or keep being unhappy (or both).
Things have changed. You can choose to ride their momentum, or you can fight it. But you can’t make it stop.
So… Your issue is that the conversation gets taken away from the source… Pffft, deal with it. Places like FF and s|m are the water coolers, book clubs and coffee shops of this new century.
It’s interesting, this discussion mirrors one I’ve been having already with someone else. When it comes to good content, the discussion always leaves the site, either it goes to other blogs, or digg, or whoever else wants to pick it up. Your content lives outside where it was published now, it lives in your RSS and in online communities like FF and S|M. Your post inspired me to put down my thoughts in this ongoing argument that’s not just here but very similar to the old vs new media argument as well. This is the way the web works, anything other than acceptance and adaptation endangers your property and just works to disenfranchise your current and potential readership.
I tried to break it all down in my blog post (http://rwv.blogspot.com/2008/12/old-vs-new-media-creative-commons.html) but it ran a little long. It’s a big issue and there is a lot invested in keeping conversations on the site that originated them, not just to generate traffic but to prove the viability of a news source. However, if you can start looking at things at a different angle, I think you may find that these changes are for the better.
Allen: I’m setting aside your traffic-seeking headline, and the main thrust of your discontent (I see others have addressed this)…
As far as commenting and re-self-publishing, I fear you yourself betray the folly of the A-lister.
FOR MOST OF US Z-LISTERS, WE’RE GODDAMN LUCKY TO HAVE A CONVERSATION AT ALL TO FRAGMENT.
You know what? I’m going to have to stop myself here, as I try to converse less on blogs that don’t allow the conversation to escape.
P.S. “Lazy”, “Theft”, “Fragment”, “India”, “Confusion”. Too little focus, too little support for your headline.
thanks for your comment. just to clarify - not only am i not a-list, but if you regularly read my site, i do everything i can to help pimp the sites and startups that will never get coverage from the "a-list".
It’s obvious the usefulness of social|medial escapes you.
I get two newspaper delivered to my home everyday, I rarely get the chance to read them both. s|m provides me the opportunity to not only zero in on the news that I’m interested in and the news of others in the community, but more importantly exposes me to hundreds of new sites. I add blogs like yours and others to my bookmarks because I found them using s|m.
Restricting content use will only cause those doing so to be left behind. How many time has a site asked you to register to view something, it’s the fastest way to get me to close the window and find the information elsewhere.
HEY STUPID-NAME-CALLER-FACE!!! NOT LIKE I REALLY NEED TO EXPLAIN, BUT CALLING ME ONE OF “JASON’S ARMY”, AFTER I TRIED TO BE CIVIL, IS PERHAPS WHY YOUR SITE ISN”T MORE POPULAR.
TODAY I CLIPPED MY FIRST STORY ON “JASON’S ARMY’S SITE”
I DON’T THINK I’LL STICK AROUND TO BE TOLD THAT I DON’T READ YOUR CONTENT THOROUGHLY OR ASK YOU QUESTIONS. UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, I HAVE ZERO QUESTIONS FOR YOU NOW.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: socialmedian
Date: Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 8:58 AM
Subject: You rock, paper, scissors, and CLIP
To:
Hey there — we just wanted to thank you for clipping your first story on socialmedian. Your clip just helped other members discover news.
…
@reechard thanks for your comment. just to clarify - not only am i not a-list, but if you regularly read my site, i do everything i can to help pimp the sites and startups that will never get coverage from the “a-list”.
@centernetworks Fair enough! Care to pick a letter? Surely you’re big enough to be concerned over ad revenue dilution - or maybe I’m mis-reading between the lines :-)
@reechard unfortunately you and the rest of Jason’s army haven’t taken the time to really read or ask me to what I mean at all. It’s too bad too. Trust me, if it was all about ad dollars to me, CN would be a very different place and perhaps I could pay the rent this month.
NOTE THE LACK OF SMILEY FACE. NOTE THE CAPS. IF I HAVE TO COME BACK TO THIS THREAD, YOU WILL BE SORRY.
AND NO, EXPENSIVE CHOCOLATES WILL NOT CLOUD MY MEMORY.
@Richard Dude, chill. Threatening people on the internet and posting in all caps is the easiest way to get written off as an idiot and a troll, and nowadays these things follow you around.
Neal “thePuck” Jansons: Thanks! but I stand by what I wrote. The “threat” consists of leaving comments, LOL. Whatever,”dude”, I’ve heard this advice, but THIS is what happens when a BLOG acts like a troll. Thanks tho, no doubt you mean well.
I don’t think Allen is trolling, I think he raised a real question in the field that is worth considering, albeit with a bit of a sensationalistic title. And I do generally mean well, even if you dislike my use of common familiarities. You should check out the FriendFeed thread (posted above); the issue is getting some good discussion. @Chronotope wrote about it here, as well: http://rwv.blogspot.com/2008/12/old-vs-new-media-creative-commons.html .
Thanks Neal - I just tried to have a bit of fun with the title that was all - if you read most of my posts, titles is something that I generally am not good at - people tell me to make more sensationalistic titles all the time and I just can’t do it - because both I don’t want to and because it really does no good.
"stupid name caller face" - i just bust a rib laughing that was good :) please don’t get mad and yell, it’s taken me 30+ years to learn that there’s really nothing worth getting so mad about. Especially not a blog post - and i really mean that.
I sure hope you will come back sometime - and yes, i mean that too. as for fancy chocolates, my friend just sent me a fancy chocolate bar from switzerland - if you’d like it, i would be happy to mail it plus some CN stickers to you.
Allen, I loved the title for this blog post, so you did good with this one. Thanks Neal for linking back to me :). But seriously, your point of view is absolutely legitimate and is held by a hell of a lot of people, but a lot of those people are now going bankrupt because their policies stand in the way of building an audience and a brand, which should give you something to think about.
Allen, I don’t think you wrote this to talk about profit, but that is a factor in what we are talking about here; it is one of the reasons you want the conversation here and it should be, we all need to make a living. But considering the way things are going, it doesn’t look like the old model is going to keep working forever. We need to put less energy into trying to hold on to the old thought-model and more trying to figure out something new, because what we’ve got isn’t working very well anymore.
I think that Social|Median is a step in the right direction when were talking about the way the future is going, we need to figure out how to take advantage of new systems (example: I’ve seen that some blogs which tack ads on to their RSS posts have the ads end up on social media, when it comes to trying to make a living, I’d bet that helps a little).
here is the best part about this comment… Allen really will send you that stuff, he’s not one of these who just blow smoke. that’s why I respect him. I don’t always agree, but I never doubt him.
in this case, I don’t have an opinion… socialmedian is, to me, a more cluttered attempt at friendfeed. I don’t much care for either. all of these places are ultimately ego-driven as opposed to content driven… (early-adopter niche/self-promotion minded… these cater very much to that model.)
Thanks Anon - while I don’t know who you are, I am glad we don’t always agree. It’s better to have good disagreements because we both learn something.
I agree that SM is an early adopter tool as is FF - it’s why they won’t hit the mainstream. There’s no reason that SM needs to snip any of the content. Except perhaps if they are trying to grab some SEO benefit from others work.