What if a few hundred bloggers got together and we took a quick (very quick) tour through current copyright law?
What if we followed that up with a look at the fact that public perception isn’t necessarily in line with current law?
What if an entire generation generally holds a view on copyright that’s incompatible with current law?
What will copyright mean in five years? Ten years? Twenty? How do we balance the livelihood of creative artists vs. a growing desire for the ability to remix and create derivative woks?
If you’re at WordCamp Seattle this weekend, let’s get together and explore these things during my talk. If you can’t attend, I promise some copyright resources and thoughts will be shared here on my blog on Saturday, and I’ll pass along the video if my talk is recorded.
, order it now). One afternoon, I had coffee with 
A fair amount of loud people are up in arms over alleged badness in the Google Drive terms of service. I’ve 
I’ve been thinking a bit about the 
I’m excited to be returning to California next month; on May 5th I’ll be speaking at the 
Sorry, You Can’t Choose Where Conversation Happens About You
I’ve been thinking lately about reach vs. fragmentation when it comes to internet publishing such as blog articles and photo sharing. It seems that reach and fragmentation are at odds.
Single-Point Publishing
The apparently downside to this scenario is that by only publishing in one place, the audience is restricted to those who monitor that place.
Publishing Widely
The opposite scenario can enable great reach for a piece of writing or a photograph. In the case of a blog article, not only could I publish it on my website, but I could also write that article as a Google+ entry or (if it’s relatively short) a Facebook post. I could share it on LinkedIn and Twitter. I could attempt to reach the greatest number of people by spreading the content across as many platforms as possible.
This method would likely result in the greatest reach, but the feedback and conversation will be fragmented… you’ll have some blog comments, some Google+ replies, perhaps Facebook comments, some Twitter @mentions, and more…
Finding Your Mix
Here’s the kicker: even if you try to consolidate and keep things in a single place, the conversation will happen1. People will talk about and share your writing or photography even if you’re not participating. Even if you hope they leave blog comments, they’re going to tweet. If you prefer that the discussion all happens on Google+, that’s fine, but you need to know that someone’s going to share your thing on Facebook and someone else is going to comment or “Like” it.
If the conversation is going to happen, how do you decide where to invest your time and energy? My general strategy is to use my website as my home base for content that isn’t merely transient. You’ll find my writing and some interesting photography here. I use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks to link back to the content on my website. Google+ is a bit of an outlier in that I don’t simply link back to photos, I often publish photos on Google+ directly. Why? Because photos drive engagement there. There’s no magic formula.
Focus a majority of your energy on the platforms and networks that bring you the greatest results2, but also use monitoring tools to see what’s happening elsewhere so that you can respond appropriately.
If you’re publishing content and it’s being seen by others and nobody’s talking about it, you have an interestingness problem, not a social media problem. ↩
How you define “results” is up to you. More revenue? More eyeballs? More notoriety?. ↩