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The slow blogger takes it easy

November 28, 2008

Earlier, Blade commended the rapidity with which Twitter covered the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. And, like many of those who work in the Web 2.0 space, Blade has been known to make a virtue of speed for speed’s sake, almost as if the need for speed were not a hackneyed line from a Tom Cruise film but a prerequisite of the human condition.

Speed is good, but so, too, is a steady hand.  Each will have its apposite moment; only good judgement can say when. It has taken Blade a few hours to ponder this (if not to write these words), for he is mindful of the phenomenon of slow blogging. Its credo? “A rejection of immediacy … an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly.”

So says Todd Sieling, a Canadian technology consultant and evidently one of the emerging movement’s high priests. No doubt he would enjoy Harry Eyres’ Slow Lane column in the Weekend FT; so, too, can he be expected to agree with the Slow Food fraternity. Sieling probably knows that the Italians, who pioneered Slow Food, have also brought us the ideology of Slow Cities.

Speaking for himself, Blade has no idea who is responsible for the idea of Slow Sex, referred to by the Guardian, but he can say that a Google search of the term takes him into another world (or rather, series of worlds) with astonishing rapidity. Whether this is a good thing, or not, will perhaps be the subject of a subsequent post, but until then, enjoy your weekend, be it slow, fast or a happy medium.

Pictured: a contented snail moments before he met members of the Slow Food Party (France).

Twitter: daft name, extraordinary news resource - and hostage to fortune?

November 28, 2008

Blade will remain unconvinced by Twitter’s name for a long time. But he is increasingly impressed by its capabilities.

As this story in the Guardian confirms, Twitter’s “Mumbai thread provided a stream of snippets, not all accurate, from observers on the ground, with details of casualties, sieges, gunfights, and even the suspected names of terrorists.”

Elsewhere, the point is made that the blogosphere yet again beat newspaper and magazine outlets to coverage of the tragedy unfolding in Mumbai.

But is there a price to pay for the rapidity with which the Web 2.0 world moves? Although Twitter was updated faster than TV networks, let alone those antediluvian entities known as newspapers, various threads were plain wrong.

What price a libel claim, if the wrong person is accused of being a terrorist?

Image: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters.

A Life Lived on Twitter (but not on aeroplanes)

November 27, 2008

Is it possible, for all the upsides to Web 2.0, that some people might take their commitment to it a tad too far?

Blade muses over this having just read an illuminating piece on Brand Republic about Web 2.0 guru Rohit Bhargava. The piece is headlined ‘A Life Lived on Twitter’, and if he’s not on Twitter, Bhargava, an author, marketer and public speaker who runs the must-read Influential Marketing Blog, seems to spend his every waking moment on one form or another of 21st century communications device.

Indeed, he says - via Twitter - that he “can’t wait” for the internet to be available on planes: “Eight hours undisturbed online while travelling by air would be the world’s most awesome thing.”

Pictured: A Quantas ad for its WiFi access on A380 and 747-400 planes (available, Blade believes, from February 2008). 

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