Luke Brynley-Jones

My guest post on Cybersoc.com

Robin Hamman asked me to guest on his blog - cybersoc.com - this week. I think I offered some light relief among the more heavy duty posts, but I hope I also made my point: the Internet shouldn't be the domain of an elite and we shouldn't forget about the 90% of the population who don't know their blogs from their wikis... Anyway, here it is:

An online community consultant by trade, Luke Brynley-Jones has advised many of the UK's largest non-profits about their online communications. Part of the team behind etribes, he recently oversaw the launch of etribes Life - their new personal publishing service. This is Luke's personal view of the world behind the scenes of a social software start-up...

I have to admit to being a little apprehensive when Robin asked me to guest-blog this week. When I saw the list - I was the only expert I hadn't heard of! It felt like the time I was asked to speak at the Institute of Librarians. What could I possibly say that they would find of interest? (And in that case, visa versa). That said, I think I do have an interesting story. Since Cybersoc the blog was born a year ago, the Internet, society and my life have changed radically. So, here's my take on it all.

Our man in the street

I view the Internet is very much from a dumb user perspective. And I don't say that lightly. I'm the kind of Internet user who finds Outlook too complex to manage; who can't spell flicker correctly; and who spent years wondering why Philip Seymour Hoffman would write a blog called Scobleizer. When Simon Grice asked me to join etribes in 2001, my role was to be Our Man-in-The-Street in the office, if you get my drift.

Formally Launching etribes Life

Although it sometimes feels like etribes Life has been around longer than I have, its actually only three months since we launched the Beta version at Les Blogs in Paris. So, it's probably about time we formally launched it for real! We were going to wait until the next mashup* - but that's now happning in May - so we jumped the gun and issued our Press Release today (see below). We'll be announcing new developments every week from here on - so I'll make sure I keep my site posted, so to speak.

Kicking off the etribes Partner Programme

We are formally kicking off our Partner Programme for etribes Life. This is a win/win setup that aims to give companies, publications and member organisations the opportunity to offer their customers a free personal website (or blog) using etribes Life. We're also throwing in a healthy revenue share and a reduction on subscription fees for customers who sign up to one of our paid-for service levels. Current etribes Partners include 118118.com, TakeSport and ABCTales.com.

If you're interested in joining our Partner Programme - contact me.

 

mashup* hits a high note today

Our discussion event on converging technologies - mashup* - proved a great success last night. The numbers swelled from an initial 100 to nearly double that and we were treated to a terrific discussion about the future of digital identity and reputation and the control (or not) of these by the GYM club (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft). 

We are already receiving registrations for the next one... which is in the planning pipeline. To sign up - visit the mashup website linked above. 

mashup*

For anyone interested in converging Internet technologies (or "mashups"), there's an essential event happening in London on 8th Feb.

Simon Grice is hosting mashup* - an informal gathering of high level Internet folk with the aim of discussing the phenomena of converging systems and services - from blogs to personal digital identity, via wikis and map-mashups.

etribes is sponsoring the event - so if you're in this space... do come along.

20,000 blogs a day

Apparently 20,000 people a day are creating blogs... (according to Lastminute.com) as reported in the Evening Standard and that's just in the UK. This pretty much reflects the experience we're having with sign ups to etribes Life - but I'm still quite surprised at the figure. At Les Blogs in December, the feeling was that the UK was behind the rest of Western Europe. Perhaps, but not far, on this evidence.

Tim Berners Lee finally gets a blog!

Tim Berner's Lee, creator of the Internet has started a blog using Drupal - the software behind etribes Life. Nice to see that he approves of our choice!

etribes Life launches into Paris orbit

Thanks to everyone who came to the etribes Life launch last night in Paris. It was great to have you all there and great that you all enjoyed it so much! 

We ended up with over 120 of the Les Blogs attendees coming along - which was something of a miracle, given that we didn't put the date on the invitation.

I hope we gave a reasonable insight into what etribes is and what we're planning... if not, feel free to contact me on luke at etribes.com.

For all of you press-minded folks - I enclose a press release about the launch... enjoy!

Its ok - found it!

Don't panic - thankfully Marc Canter has saved the day by mentioning 'structured blogging' - which (though I'm yet to discuss it with him) is what I think opens up blogging to the wider market... He also forecast the death of 'RSS' as a term - which is right because it means jack diddley to humans (as opposed to geeks). So three cheers for Marc.

Les Blogs - there is something missing...

Les Blogs is fascinating in many ways... but it's very internally focussed. Nobody's talking about the 90%+ of people who don't blog OR the 75%+ who don't know what a blog is.

I can feel the buzzing of something in my bonnet...

Blogging remains the domain of writers and journalists - i.e it's a media/campaigning thing. It's not about making personal publishing to the web free and easy - which is what I what I think most people really want - i.e the ability to post news, ideas, pictures, events, adverts up for other people to see.

Maybe this'll enter the conversation tomorrow... but I have a niggly feeling it's off the radar...