Posts

Showing posts from July, 2007

Rock, Paper, Web 2.0

Image
A s a Reston resident and sometime contributor (photos) to Backfence I am curious about the implosion of the company. When it launched I thought it would not succeed because it was dependent entirely on UGC and I couldn't fathom how they could monetize nothing but neighborhood chatter. It quickly became little more than a new delivery system for local politicians and "reviews" of local businesses and services too few in number to have any faith in. Is there a lesson here on how newspapers can fend off what many regard as the inevitability of online supremacy in hyperlocal? So Backfence just plain never caught on, and Scott Karp may have it entirely right that established web 1.0 sites were too much competition for this web 2.0 wannabe to disrupt. He notes that a Google search for "Reston" would not necessarily yield Backfence hits even on the first page, which effectively means that nobody would see them -- but an older, established hyperlocal site, RestonWeb ,

Never Steal Anything Small

Image
W hat makes the commutation of "Scooter" Libby's sentence so appalling is that it perpetuates the appearance at least of a conspiracy that now reaches the Oval Office. Even the mother of all presidential interventions, Ford's pardon of Nixon, bears up better: at least it helped to expedite a national healing process. A Bad Boy, But A Good Boy Yes, President Bush said in his statement that Libby had been a bad boy and had to be punished, and the fine and probation Is this proof that the Bush White House has devolved into a collection of dead- enders , slogging through their last throes? were left untouched. But Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff is family. He was a part of a what looks very much like a big effort to spread the administration's war propaganda by attacking critics with smears and dirty tricks. Political crimes are particularly heinous because they are about stealing power. They are ideological and self-justifying. By ensuring tha