August 2007

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Faceless

30 August 2007 in Blogging, Social networking | 3 comments

I feel no inclination to network on Facebook. Loads of business and professional people are supposedly doing so now. But what job will it get done better for me?

I’m hugely in favour of using social software tools to do useful jobs. But we’re caught up in a frenzy of interest in “huge massively multi-user public networks” such as Facebook. I recognise that in a large law firm or organisation a Facebook group offers an efficient way for colleagues to interact and collaborate, though I suspect its main function is to replace the water cooler, ie for social rather than business interaction between colleagues and, of course, beyond that (lunchtimes only, please).

But I run a small business and my interaction with colleagues is by talking to them face-to-face. And to develop my business and professional contacts, do I want or need to be a member of a global network open to all-comers of all interests? Wouldn’t something more focussed suit me better? I think so. So for developing business contacts LinkedIn has more appeal. Sure you can’t do much on it, but you are consequently less distracted, more focussed on the job in hand.

Interest in the global social networks will wane as more specialist networks develop. Facebook rules for now, but most of us won’t want to be constrained by its formats and rules. We like to do our own thing and networks that serve our particular interests and to which we can relate better will win through. In fact, though no longer flavour of the month, blogging is a far more productive form of networking. You have to work a bit harder, actually to post something of interest to others, but you readily gain meaningful new contacts and converse with them; you develop new insights in your field; you build up your reputation. And you own it. Why twitter on on Facebook?

And finally, why live in hoc to Facebook Inc? I have read the evangelists: people who manage their lives on Facebook, who couldn’t live without it. Have they not read the FB terms of service?

The Company may terminate your membership, delete your profile and any content or information that you have posted on the Site or through any Platform Application and/or prohibit you from using or accessing the Service or the Site or any Platform Application (or any portion, aspect or feature of the Service or the Site or any Platform Application) for any reason, or no reason, at any time in its sole discretion, with or without notice

None so blind

21 August 2007 in Marketing

Web usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, reports in his weekly Alertbox for 20 August 2007 on banner blindness:

The most prominent result from the new eyetracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it’s actually an ad. …

Most of our eyetracking findings on Web advertising present no ethical dilemmas. For example, we know that there are 3 design elements that are most effective at attracting eyeballs:

  • Plain text
  • Faces
  • Cleavage and other “private” body parts …

So, this is not new, but Nielsen provides some pretty “heat maps” and an eye tracking video of user fixations which illustrate the point.

He goes on to point out the unethical approach, patting himself on the back for doing so:

  • The more an ad looks like a native site component, the more users will look at it.
  • Not only should the ad look like the site’s other design elements, it should appear to be part of the specific page section in which it’s displayed.

This overtly violates publishing’s principle of separating “church and state” — that is, the distinction between editorial content and paid advertisements should always be clear. …

Now the truth is out. As far as I’m concerned, speaking the truth is my highest ethical calling, and it’s better that the facts be known to everyone than that they remain a secret abused by a few.

Now, it’s true that your average punter may not know this, but it’s hardly a secret. Anyone who has made more than a cursory attempt at optimising their Google AdSense adverts will know that the more you visually integrate them into the content of your site, the more effective they are. Millions do this, including everyone from the evil splogger to the national news media. Google wouldn’t have it any other way.

Law 2.0 gaining traction

8 August 2007 in Law 2.0, Web 2.0

The discussion about “Law 2.0″ has been alive for some time with Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighell, the Wired GC and other forward thinkers developing their thoughts over the last 18 months. Here’s the collected wisdom they have tagged as Law 2.0:

And following the SCL’s successful Web 2.0 conference in June, upcoming is Law 2.0?: New Speech, New Property, New Identity, a workshop on the legal and regulatory issues, aiming “to enable participation, to engage with the issues on an inter-disciplinary and international basis, and to take some informed guesses at what business models and what regulation we will see coming next.”

Cutting the mustard

7 August 2007 in Blogging, Law blogs | 4 comments

Every now and then I’m prompted to revisit the question “What is a blog?”

I won’t rehash all my thinking here. Let’s instead consider the rather circular argument: a website produced with blog software is a blog.

This must be true in 99% of cases, though it’s quite possible to produce a site with blog software that is not intended as a blog. For example, I’ve published the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers using WordPress. This has all the trappings of a blog, but is intended and configured to be seen as a bi-monthly newsletter rather than a blog per se.

Can we say, though, that a website not published with blog software is not a blog? Of course not. It’s perfectly possible to produce a respectable “hand-crafted” blog. Charon QC did this quite effectively for some time. before taking my advice and moving to WordPress.

And it’s also possible to publish a blog with a more general CMS. But a blog is more than a bunch of articles managed latest-first by a CMS. You really need standard blog functionality for it to be seen as a blog. This means as a minimum: recent posts on a home page; navigation to post collection pages by month and category; individual post pages with commenting; and an RSS feed. There are many custom blogs that achieve this very effectively – national news media blogs in particular. But there are also many so-called blogs that don’t cut the mustard in my view, lacking one or more of these elements. And there are so many advantages to using standard blog software that you need a very good reason not to.

I’ll leave you to consider these two sites, recently submitted to the infolaw Lawfinder Blogs category. Are they blogs?

[Updated: Life and Death and Taxes from Leigh Sagar was a single news page of recent developments in trust and estate law, but, as noted in the comments below, Leigh has now - having read this post - set up his blog on WordPress.]

Mace & Jones’ Blogs – family and employment posts, navigable by author only.

IP law wiki off the starting blocks

3 August 2007 in Intellectual property, Law publishing, Wikis

Jeremy Phillips has posted on the IPKat about the exciting proposed development of an IP Law Wiki which has already gained some traction with the proposal for funding a feasibility study already under way.

Most interesting for me is the comment that:

if – as seems likely – [the feasibility study is successful], it will then be adopted by a consortium of private practice law and IP practices who would share out the work of maintaining it and who would fund it out of the savings that would be made in their library and information spend. [my italics]

So the prospect is that a number of large accounts would cancel their paid subscriptions to IP law information services and, since it is intended the IP Law Wiki would be public access, many more would soon follow.