moot!

I have mixed reactions to this article suggesting Amazon is going to destroy traditional publishing. I love to read, and I believe in paying for quality content, but I've always had a nagging feeling that books are over priced. Yet I have no rational basis to believe this is true as I have not once looked at the P&L for any publishing or related industry company.

So on one hand when I read "What they're actually targeting is the publishers' margin." I'm thinking "sweet, prices will come down". But on the other hand, a monopoly situation where Amazon is the sole remaining publisher is also undesirable. Without competition do we believe Amazon would continue to keep prices (i.e. it's own margins) low simply because it wants to? I like how Amazon has operated so far but it's naive to think they wouldn't raise prices if the (low risk) opportunity arose.

The article also made me ponder what the role of a publisher is. Do they need to exist? What functions do they perform? What value do those functions have?

One of the problems I observe across the Internet is the proliferation of garbage. Quantity over quality. I find it hard to read any newsy site with any regularity because the majority focus on regular updates to keep themselves "fresh" in order to drive page views since their business model relies on advertising revenue dependent on traffic. What I want is interesting, relevant news, not gobs and gobs of drivel.

I'm not sure that crowd sourcing works -- if you have millions of people voting on anything all you end up with is an impressive pile of mediocrity. So I thought maybe the opposite would work -- could I find individuals whose interests reflected mine, and pay them to send me interesting news.

About 2 years ago I started paying a guy I discovered in the US who compiles tech news. He intrigued me because he didn't run an advertising based business model and didn't have a website, preferring to send his updates exclusively via email. The service is $600-800/year which includes a daily tech news summary (no more than 4-5 articles) and a weekly column. It felt about right in terms of quality vs quantity but I ended up unsubscribing as he got too politically biased in his columns. But from that I learnt that I am happy to pay for quality, and there are others like me, as this particular service has run for over 15 years and from what I can gather is a very profitable business. The hard part is finding such services.

Coming back to the role of publishers there's at least three things I recognise as valuable. The first is the role of moderation -- in a world without any publishers all I can foresee is the literary equivalent of the app store: petabytes of crap from which it is hard to find things worth reading, i.e. subject quality. The second is someone to proof-read and edit to ensure production quality. zomg how painful would it be to like read gramattical errors and spelling mistakes everywear. And finally, publicity. Good authors aren't necessarily good marketers but that shouldn't result in them not being widely read.

So now I know what functions of a publisher are valuable to me, one question remains: how much are these services worth? That I don't know.

Something which most oldish Internet users may relate to is the observation that communities turn "bad" over time. There's regular discussion about it on almost every forum I've come across - be it HackerNews, reddit, or any number of public forums & mailing lists - that the signal to noise ratio is falling as new users come on board.

Absolute growth in user numbers is certainly part of the reason but I wonder whether there is an observational bias in the form of personal growth that is perhaps overlooked.

Presumably when you join a group its because you have some interest in its main topics - whether it be knitting, or rocket surgery. Initially you're new to whatever it is and every post is interesting when you know nothing. Over time you build your own knowledge and you start to see reposts, perhaps a few inane seeming questions (why didn't they do any research of their own?), and recognise FAQs.

Given that perspective, is the community's collective value falling due to the group growing in size, or could it be that you as an individual have grown beyond the group?

A simple example is the common complaint about reposts on link sharing sites. To those long tenure members who have seen every post since the beginning of time, reposts and rehashed discussion from new members are extremely frustrating (at least judging by the complaints). Is the issue though simply a mismatch in experience?

If you recognise that you've grown beyond the group what's the best response? Should you leave the group, perhaps even starting a new group of like minded old grumpy bastards? :) Is it even ok to leave the group? Is there an expectation that you should contribute towards other members' growth, given what you've gained?

I suspect reputation has a large role to play in the latter questions. In real world scenarios, say you're training with a regular martial arts group, or you've been learning from a handicrafts group, you may feel an expectation to give back to the group in some way lest they think you a selfish leech.

But in the online world where its so easy to lurk anonymously who would even notice you leaving?

Finally, if the members don't feel any obligation to other members in the group, is it really a community?

For some time I have wondered why Facebook isn't used for public sharing in the same way as Twitter. I view Twitter's generally public nature as its main strength. Most Twitter profiles are public. Following someone allows weak, one way relationships to be formed. I saw no reason why Facebook could not implement such functionality on top of their existing friend model and kill Twitter off.

Google+ has answered that question for me - its too complicated.

A quick rundown of how Google+ works is in order -- note I've only just started playing with it so I hope I'm not misunderstanding its sharing/relationship model.

Anyone on Google+ can add anyone else into any of their Circles. This forms a one way relationship akin to a Twitter follow. If the person followed also adds the follower to one of their Circles then the relationship becomes "mutual". This may seem similar to but it is not identical to friending someone on Facebook.

The difference appears when it comes time to share. Let's use a more concrete example.

Alice and Bob work together. Bob adds Alice to his "Friends" circle. Alice puts Bob in her "Colleagues" circle.

In the Facebook model they would be considered friends, and the default sharing permissions would mean that they both see all of each others posts. It is possible to set permissions on a per-post basis in Facebook but I'm dubious that many people actually do this.

The default in Google+ is to share to "Your circles" which is more or less equivalent to the Facebook default -- anyone in any or your circles can view the post. However the sharing interface on Google+ makes the permissioning more in your face so there's a higher likelihood that people may make use of their Circles to limit visibility of their posts.

Let's say Alice posts to her "Friends" Circle -- Bob won't see this because Alice has put Bob in her "Colleagues" Circle. Coming from the Facebook friend model this would seem a little weird since their relationship is mutual in the sense that each of them is in one of the other person's Circles.

However this model allows for Twitter style public sharing. Bob can put Alice in any of his circles and will see all of her Public posts regardless of whether Alice wants to recognise any relationship on her side. Note that Alice still has the option to block Bob but the important point here is that one way follows are allowed in Google+. They are actually sort of possible in Facebook but its a pretty weird edge case.

I think its pretty clear now why Facebook hasn't merged Twitter style public sharing. Its too damn complicated.

The Facebook mutual friend relationship is easy to understand. You are either friends or you are not. When you share you are sharing with all of your friends (most of the time).

Twitter's follow model is also easy to understand. You can follow people you like, they can choose if they want to follow you back or not. When you share you share publicly (most of the time).

Google+ sits in a weird in-between model that is fine grained but complicated.

I can see where they are coming from. In the physical world your social circles are separated by, well, physics. When you're with work people that's your work context and you share appropriately (some don't, hilarity ensues). When you're with friends or family you share other, probably more private, stuff. Whereas posting to Facebook is essentially sharing with ALL of those groups at once Google+ Circles attempts to help you keep them separate.

Sure, some people do struggle with over-sharing on Facebook and I've heard from a few that they don't post as much as they would like to because its tedious to segment their friend list. But a solution which involves conscious thought both in managing friend lists AND who should see what during posting is just too complicated. For this reason I suspect that Google+ will struggle with adoptance.

Sometimes, despite the accompanying limitations, simple is best.