Month: February 2008

The user is the content.

You may have heard me before railing at the term user generated content. It infuriates me because it embodies two ideas: “you mean we can get them to make films for us for free?” and “Well yes they can use our space but only when and how it suits us”.
It begins with the assumption that you can’t trust the public – or rather the public is just too risky to trust. This has shaped too many public and private sector approaches to sharing with the audience.
Websites don’t exist without links, they don’t exist without readers and hence they don’t exist without community. It is the users, the comments they make, the virtual, intellectual and actual links they establish through using your content that turns it from a string of one and noughts into something with influence in the world.
Without the user there is no content, so learn to trust us.

Twitter and the Birmingham (ish) Earthquake.

twitterquake

I thought I was going mad – but only if Jon is too. We both know that twitter knows best and (thanks again jon) the Dutch are tracking the story for us.

Update 3 Jo Geary found this link – 4 earthquakes dotted arou nd the country – nearest is Nottingham. Beats phoning the police press line.

Update 4: Others experienced it in similar ways with confirmation coming through twitter of similar.

https://johnleach.co.uk/words/archives/2008/02/27/300/

Should I laugh at “Well, either a fat bloke just fell out of bed or there has been a minor earth tremor in
Nottingham“? In Leeds Ross at Democracypr tells us: “And the BBC web site? A note on the ticker – “Reports of tremor felt in West Midlands. More details soon.”
No need to bother, I’ve found out all I need use my own network of citizen journalists.”

Update: 01.33 Lisa Dowd on Sky tells us that because she can’t get through to the police she can’t really tell what has happened and only new it was an earthquake because she felt it last time – the Dudley earthquake. Get social Lisa – we can tell you what’s going on.

Update: 01.35 Joanna has google map up with epicentre before sky know what’s what.