If you are the subject of the news, people will judge your actions and how you react to being in the spotlight. If you are the distributor of the news, how you message that news, and how accurately you report that news, will also be dissected. On the Web, especially in our sliver of Silicon Valley, where real time is becoming the standard, analysis of said news is itself happening in real time. From many corners, often from the more technically-oriented folks on the Web, I am seeing discussion around the tech news industry's alleged failings, inaccuracies, and usefulness (or lack thereof). While some of the feedback no doubt has merit, it too comes in simplified form, without offering potential solutions, taking into account how the creators and publishers of this tech news blogosphere are incentivized and rewarded.

On Sunday, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, as he often does, started a discussion around what he termed "fast food content", saying that "hand crafted content is dead", summarizing a piece that lamented sites which steal content without attribution, and more darkly, sites that employ people to rewrite others' content, without adding anything new or doing "real reporting", the kind one learns in journalism class, or is required to do when working for a "dead tree" newspaper or magazine.

Given Mike's focus, running one of the more widely read tech news sites on the Web, his concerns lie around those who borrow much of his and his writers' content and publish it as their own. But I have also given a lot of thought, especially of late, to the vast number of tech news sites and blogs that are out there covering the same stories, and are jostling amongst each other to beat their competition by a few minutes - opting not to win on quality, but instead, on time. In this case, it's often not another tech blog's news that is being borrowed, but official announcements from companies.

One of the easiest things for tech blogs to do is repeat updates from the official blogs of interesting companies, add a few internal links to previous coverage they have done on that topic, add a paragraph or two of analysis, and hit the post button. I've no doubt done it myself over the last few years, even with this self-awareness, but you can see the process unfold practically every day. Watch for phrases like "According to a post on the official Twitter blog..." or "In an update on Google's blog this morning"... as many of the better-known sites all post their own interpretations of the news that came from the top.

This, in my opinion, is the very definition of the "fast food news" Mike is talking about, and time spent both producing it and consuming it could be put to better use - as in these cases, links could serve just as well as full articles.

I am by no means an ombudsman for tech media and the tech news consumer. I am but one person who takes in a lot of content, and produces a little on my own. But I see a few other areas where the tech news engine is falling short for news consumers, news makers and the news authors themselves.

I believe "fast food news" also can refer to the mass hysteria over making sure every site posts the news that a major browser or a major operating system has issued a point release, or when a popular site has an outage, that the incident becomes front page news for every blog. At some point, given the vast multitude of interesting tech stories, individuals and companies out there, one must take a deep breath and realize that being the 10th site to report that Twitter got hacked last night didn't really add a lot of value to readers.

In fact, when Twitter did get hacked Thursday night, Mike (again) had a solid post that added information, and, as he gained more knowledge of the incident, he updated the same post multiple times throughout the night. Because he was the first to the scene, with real data, his post had meat, while many, many others that followed were just echoes of the obvious.

So why is this happening? There are a few reasons:

First, the advertising model that forces many sites to drive page views and social interactions, through Digg, StumbleUpon, and Twitter retweets, is turning many tech news sites into post mills, staffed largely by inexpensive writers and freelancers. Instead of deep analysis posts that require interviews, backgrounds, and research, these sites are instead home to excerpts from YouTube, polls, user surveys, and whatever happens to be trending on Twitter that day. Quality is exchanged for quantity.

Second, many of these sites operate under the guise that they are the only site their readers see. Just because one major tech site covered a story 30 minutes before doesn't mean they should assume their readers already know. That is why if you do subscribe to many technology blogs, as I do, you can expect the vast majority of them to report the same story around the same time - instead of choosing a specific focus that can set them apart from the competition.

Third, thanks to competition and personal interactions, not every site likes the others. Years of infighting and annoyances, thanks to individual posts, personalities, or business priorities means that some sites really dislike each other. They won't link to one another. They will ban the competition from their user conferences, and when they aren't taking potshots, they will act like the other doesn't exist. Thus, if the competition "breaks" a story, the other will post it anyway, or try to find a wrinkle that makes their own version of events "improved" or invalidating the other.

Fourth, the rise of aggregation sites makes piling on to the news something that is rewarded. If all competitive blogs have covered a major story, many others will follow suit, be it to get into "discussion" on Techmeme, to see TrackBacks on the originating posts, or to come up when the popular terms are searched for on Twitter, Google and other engines.

In essence, the incentives, for the most part, do not tilt in favor of writing unique stories or doing the required research necessary to get a full story, to get quotes from a source, or find data points that back up analysis.

That's why you see people like Alex Payne (of Twitter) complain, saying "Rarely does technology journalism produce informed, correct, relevant, and readable content. This is a sorry and damaging state of affairs." in his rant from March (Towards Better Technology Journalism), and why Marco Ament, the lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper creator, this week, wrote: "Over the last few years, I have unsubscribed from nearly every tech-news feed. I have never regretted the decision afterward, and I haven’t missed anything important. Tech news needs help. Badly. It’s truly terrible."

Keep in mind that it's not unexpected for the more technical among us to dislike the way their works are interpreted. Engineering distrusting marketing is practically a requirement and a religion. But we know they are somewhat right. As much as we can complain about the public relations industry as a whole, many flaks often find that their offers for reporters to speak with the CEO or an official representative of the company go without interest, either due to time issues or a lacking skill set. It's always a lot easier just to ask for the press release ahead of time, and an embargo date.

In an ideal world, those who are acting as our news filters would take the extra time necessary to ferret out news before its time, would ask those making the news the questions they didn't want to answer, would understand competitive landscapes, and wouldn't worry about getting a post up in a few minutes to hit a quantity threshold, without it first passing a quality threshold.

Lest we think Alex and Marco are the lone cries for help, you can see other comments this week from The Angry Drunk, and from Google's DeWitt Clinton, who posted to Twitter, "Don't worry. Save some time. Your story doesn't need a shred of truth to it. It will be retweeted just the same." in response not to a tech blog story, but a mainstream media piece that had missed the mark. (He later, in contrast, praised Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb for solid reporting)

Content producers need to make choices in terms of what it is they cover, and where their field of expertise lies. If not breaking the news, or having access to the technology elite, there are many other ways to make your voice heard, through analysis and personal use cases, as well as the option to find new stories. Content consumers too have the choice as to where they get their news. I would hope that those people who are being spoon fed repeats of others' original reporting, or are waiting, jaws agape, for recaps of company blog posts, recognize what it is they are really missing.

Given the low cost structure needed to create content, it doesn't look like there is going to be a painful consolidation any time soon. In the meantime, the system is set up to reward those who publish quickly and pile on - for extra effort doesn't bring home the page views. There are going to be pockets of the Web that harbor original ideas, a focus on quality and data, and there are going to be other places where copying, scraping, and shortcuts are going to rule the day. I know what I hope to be. The question is, can we do our part, as publishers and consumers, to somehow reward those that do things right?

Early in 2008, I tried to illustrate how I go about consuming data online, prioritizing some networks over others, and finding time to get everything accomplished, even as social sites and the sheer quantity of connections proliferated. While that routine has not changed dramatically in the last year-plus, what has changed is that I am consuming much more of this same data while mobile, on my iPhone 3G. Using the iPhone has its benefits, but also, its detractions, the smaller screen, and reduced bandwidth, relative to a hardwired desktop connection, which mean I need to be more selective in what I take in and how I can find the right information.

Last week, after arriving in California, after a week in Paris, France, at LeWeb, followed by 12 hours in the air, I found myself stuck in the airplane, as we taxied, and then waited for other passengers to retrieve their items from their respective overhead bins. This gave me the chance to execute what I see as my new iPhone workflow, aimed to get caught up quickly.

The process is as follows:

1) E-mail

It may not be as sexy as many of our more modern apps, but as I mentioned with my desktop process, everything begins with e-mail. To ignore e-mail outright, which could have the most personal messages, requests, action items, and updates, would be a step backwards. Not only do I still get a lot of information out of e-mail, it is also the repository for many online actions, which could alert me to relevant data elsewhere, such as saved search results, following notifications, etc.

2) my6sense


my6sense surfaces most relevant RSS feeds and tweets

As I follow hundreds of RSS feeds in Google Reader, the service's mobile application, while good, isn't robust enough for me to power through and find the most relevant data to me quickly. my6sense, a client of mine who I advise at Paladin, is built specifically with mobile in mind, and, having watched my own activity for the last few months, has a fantastic idea in terms of what stories are going to be most interesting to me. Now the the company also has mytweetsense, it will also surface relevant tweets that contain links.

Essentially, it's like sifting through the top 1% to 5% of my Google Reader feeds. I know I'll get the other 95% to 99% when I get back to the laptop. If I find items that catch my eye and are worth sharing, I can use my6sense's built-in capability to reshare this content to my downstream social networks.

3) Tweetie


Tweetie Lets Me Peruse Lists, Searches on Multiple Accounts

Tweetie is my default Twitter application both on the desktop (Mac only) and on my iPhone. It lets me review the multiple Twitter accounts I monitor, and quickly track down relevant Tweets, which may or may not contain links. Using Tweetie, I can browse my @replies, thumb through saved searches, or even check in on any of the Twitter lists that I am subscribed to. While I may still prefer RSS over tweets, ignoring Twitter would be as dumb as ignoring e-mail. When I find interesting content, I can either reply or retweet from within the app, from any of my accounts.

4) FriendFeed for iPhone

FriendFeed has many 3rd party client iPhone applications, but no one official iPhone app. In its place is the Web URL: http://www.friendfeed.com/iphone, which offers the same capability of one of my favorite social networks, from lists to prior discussions, search groups, and the ability to take action on any content, including comments and likes.

Using this workflow enables me to power through not just the top content sources, including e-mail, RSS and tweets, but the most relevant ones to me. Relevancy is more important on a screen like the iPhone, and when you only have limited time. While it may be comfortable to sit in front of a laptop for 8 to 16 hours a day (as I tend to do), your thumbs can really only take a good 30 minutes of iPhoning before it seems tedious.

This workflow does not mean to indicate that there are no other good sources of data. On rare occasions, I will hit the Facebook application and pull down messages or see feeds, but only after the first four major items have been hit. Other good news source apps for the iPhone include those from MeeHive, Regator and Techmeme's new mobile page - but none are more tailored for me than the above.

Do you have a workflow, or have you just been scrolling blind?

Disclosure: my6sense is a new Paladin Advisors Group client. I am Managing Director of New Media for Paladin.

After an initial test of Spotify back in August, I said the product was the best streaming music service I had ever tried. While I still listen to much of my music through the dozens of gigabytes I have in my iTunes library, Spotify makes searching for practically anything or finding new tracks I haven't yet purchased very simple. After meeting with Shak of Spotify last week at LeWeb, I was given early access to Spotify's iPhone application - still not yet approved here in the United States - and my experience with it has me rethinking my traditional marriage to purchased and downloaded music. While there has been a lot of recent talk about Apple's purchase of LaLa and their future plans with the service, Spotify has me seriously thinking if I even need a stored music library at all.


Search and Find Artists, Tracks on Spotify for iPhone
As I told you back in June, I subscribed to Sirius XM satellite radio after the company debuted its iPhone application. Combined with my iTunes library, I have a solid archive of music I've purchased, and access to new music through Sirius' stations. Now that I have Spotify on both the desktop and the iPhone, I haven't found a need for Sirius, and I have even avoided opening iTunes, which has become far too bloated for me, slowing down my computer as it loads my ever-growing database.


Some of the Great Tracks (and art) on Spotify for iPhone
As you might expect, the iPhone version of Spotify mirrors that of its desktop sibling. Its two core sections are Playlists, both those you have made and friends' who you are following, and Search, which will find you Tracks, Albums and Artists that match your search criteria.

Click on any song in the search results, and it will start playing, streamed onto the iPhone. Hooking it up via my audio cable to the car stereo gave me excellent sound, as good, if not better, than Sirius has. Selecting an artist displays their albums on Spotify. You can choose an album and have it shuffle the songs, or start from the top.


Spotify Playlists Are Available and Sync to the iPhone
As one needs to log in to their Spotify account to gain access to music, the application synchronizes the playlists you have made or follow on the iPhone as well. This means that if you have selected any number of tracks and made them part of your personal playlist on the desktop application, the iPhone knows about it. And most interestingly, you can set up the application to use one or more of these playlists in an "Offline" mode, which will store the tracks to disk instead of streaming them over the air and hogging your bandwidth. While you are streaming, the app displays in green. If you are "offline", the background is blue, reminding you of your current state.

One of the selling points of the iTunes/iPhone phenomenon is that you can take all of your music with you anywhere you go. But as my own personal music library has expanded, now reaching 6,500 songs, comprising 41 Gigabytes and 26 days worth of tunes, Apple doesn't even make an iPhone large enough to do so, forcing me to synchronize a subset of my content. Even if it could, it's not as if the iPhone battery could last long enough to play every song once. That leaves only convenience as a benefit to having all of one's music with them when they are on the go, as well as possibly the feeling of self-satisfaction from knowing you paid for the individual tracks. Also beneficial to iTunes? Your own manufactured playlists, of course. But Spotify does that too. And with the speed at which you can search for tracks and find them anytime, it's close to that proverbial "any song on demand at any time" panacea we have always wanted.

My laptop, which I have been using for more than two years, after I bought it in September of 2007, often feels like it is getting a little long in the tooth. Apps don't boot up as quickly as they once did. The spinning wheel of death is a frequent visitor. Launching iTunes and its 40 gigabyte library isn't exactly something I am as fond of as I once was. With more and more applications moving to the cloud, Spotify seems well positioned to replace iTunes for me, if I ever were to take the plunge. The sheer geek pleasure of driving around town while streaming Spotify's hand-made playlists through the car stereo has been great, and the sound quality is excellent. The world of music has changed, and I am thinking differently about the value of music ownership and music access in general.

As mentioned in my last post on Spotify, the service, very popular in Europe, is looking to make its way to the US for more than just the select few using it now, in early 2010. The iPhone application is already being used outside of the US, and should arrive here around the same time. It has already changed the game for me, and I bet it will for many others once it debuts officially.

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FTC Disclosure: I have gained free access to Spotify premium, as well as access to the iPhone app prior to its US debut, without cost.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with good friend Sunshine Mugrabi, and she picked my brain on a number of topics, ranging from the best ways for businesses to leverage social media, to my thoughts on relevancy, social networks, advertising on blogs and Web services. After some editing (which makes it sound like I am talking only with myself), she posted both videos in a pair of posts on her site. (Part One and Part Two)

While I am just going to have to ignore the non-glorious look I have in the paused frames of both videos, some of the content might actually be relevant to you. So check them out if you like. You can find Sunshine on her blog, and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/sunshinemug

Louis Gray on Advertising from Sunshine Mugrabi on Vimeo.

Louis Gray on Participating in Social Media from Sunshine Mugrabi on Vimeo.