RedWine
09-13-2007, 07:03 AM
I had a really interesting conversation today with the team at bebin.tv, whose home base isn't too far from mine here in the San Fernando Valley. I'll post an article about bebin.tv on Pars Arts soon, but in the meantime, I've been thinking a lot lately about the Iranian Internet.
My Persian reading sucks (it takes me ten minutes to read a decent-length Persian blog post), so the Iranian Internet I'm talking about is the one that exists in English, including sites like this one.
And I'm not really talking about blogs as much as I am about websites.
(Incidentally, a few days ago was the 6th anniversary of Persian blogging, according to Kamangir).
I don't know a ton about Persian-language sites but here's what I think really needs to happen for the Iranian
Internet to collectively yank itself out of 1999 and catch up with the
rest of the web. This is by no means an exhaustive list, by the way.
RSS
I think it's great that Iranian.com opened up the site to encompass a
blog platform, and I'm really counting the minutes until RSS is
activated here. My job requires that I read dozens of websites multiple times a day and to visit them all would be a nightmare. Instead, I add sites I like to my feed reader, and check that out a few times a day. It conveniently collects all the content I want,right in a handy list.
Check out Google Reader
to set one up for yourself, and if you have a website, please, for the
love of all that is holy, make sure you give your readers feeds. (Don't worry, you can monetize them.)
Distribution and Copyright
There's not a great tradition of giving credit where credit is due in traditional Iranian media, and in contrast, English-language media has been obsessed with copyright, distribution, licensing, etc.
Now what's been happening in American media is the rise of Creative Commons, which offers flexible copyrighting and encourages sharing of content. And huge publishers are relying more and more on user-generated content and mashups. Obviously these discussions all revolve around monetizing your content but if your model is so inflexible that you're discouraging viral means of distribution (i.e., embeddable video, snippets of text reprinted elsewhere), you're in big trouble.
Simple rules of thumb should be: If you're on the "borrowing" end, give credit where credit is due in the form of links, and if you're a content producer, pry your icy fingers from your content and let it roam free. If it's good stuff, you'll get eyeballs back on your site, I promise. (But you better have more good content so you don't bore those eyeballs once they get to you.)
Design
I'm not going to point any fingers but ask yourself this: Does the color palette on your site resemble vomit? Are you having a hard time navigating your site? Is the text tiny and impossible to read? Is your logo ugly? Chances are, your users hate your guts.
Development
Does a version of your site already exist in a non-Iranian iteration? Either add some additional value to yours beyond making it "Iranian-themed," or just get more engaged in the English version so at least Iranian news and events are more widely disseminated. Imagine, for instance, if every Iranian who reads Iranian.com joined the social recommendation site Digg and posted/dugg Iranian-related stories there. Either way, think long and hard about whether your application or site adds value to or simply clutters an already crowded space.
Links, Links, and More Links
When you find a story on someone else's blog, give them credit for it. It's the polite thing to do: an Internet hat-tip, if you will. It's pretty obvious when people don't do this and almost a form of lying or plagiarism. If you write a story full of facts, make everyone's life easier and link out to your sources. If you leave a comment on a blog post, don't be a creep. Being an incendiary jerk is okay as long as you have sources (again, link them) backing up your points. This may be the Internet, but you're still a human being, right? Right?
Editing
This is my biggest peeve. Check your spelling. And your grammar. And your facts. And your motivation. And your advertisers. Be transparent about any stake you may have in what you're writing or publishing or otherwise producing. For instance, if your dad owns a car dealership and you're writing an article promoting that car dealership, you owe it to your readers to disclose that your dad owns the car dealership. Don't pretend something is editorial when it's really promotional copy.
That's all for now. If anyone has other thoughts on this stuff, I'd love to hear them!
My Persian reading sucks (it takes me ten minutes to read a decent-length Persian blog post), so the Iranian Internet I'm talking about is the one that exists in English, including sites like this one.
And I'm not really talking about blogs as much as I am about websites.
(Incidentally, a few days ago was the 6th anniversary of Persian blogging, according to Kamangir).
I don't know a ton about Persian-language sites but here's what I think really needs to happen for the Iranian
Internet to collectively yank itself out of 1999 and catch up with the
rest of the web. This is by no means an exhaustive list, by the way.
RSS
I think it's great that Iranian.com opened up the site to encompass a
blog platform, and I'm really counting the minutes until RSS is
activated here. My job requires that I read dozens of websites multiple times a day and to visit them all would be a nightmare. Instead, I add sites I like to my feed reader, and check that out a few times a day. It conveniently collects all the content I want,right in a handy list.
Check out Google Reader
to set one up for yourself, and if you have a website, please, for the
love of all that is holy, make sure you give your readers feeds. (Don't worry, you can monetize them.)
Distribution and Copyright
There's not a great tradition of giving credit where credit is due in traditional Iranian media, and in contrast, English-language media has been obsessed with copyright, distribution, licensing, etc.
Now what's been happening in American media is the rise of Creative Commons, which offers flexible copyrighting and encourages sharing of content. And huge publishers are relying more and more on user-generated content and mashups. Obviously these discussions all revolve around monetizing your content but if your model is so inflexible that you're discouraging viral means of distribution (i.e., embeddable video, snippets of text reprinted elsewhere), you're in big trouble.
Simple rules of thumb should be: If you're on the "borrowing" end, give credit where credit is due in the form of links, and if you're a content producer, pry your icy fingers from your content and let it roam free. If it's good stuff, you'll get eyeballs back on your site, I promise. (But you better have more good content so you don't bore those eyeballs once they get to you.)
Design
I'm not going to point any fingers but ask yourself this: Does the color palette on your site resemble vomit? Are you having a hard time navigating your site? Is the text tiny and impossible to read? Is your logo ugly? Chances are, your users hate your guts.
Development
Does a version of your site already exist in a non-Iranian iteration? Either add some additional value to yours beyond making it "Iranian-themed," or just get more engaged in the English version so at least Iranian news and events are more widely disseminated. Imagine, for instance, if every Iranian who reads Iranian.com joined the social recommendation site Digg and posted/dugg Iranian-related stories there. Either way, think long and hard about whether your application or site adds value to or simply clutters an already crowded space.
Links, Links, and More Links
When you find a story on someone else's blog, give them credit for it. It's the polite thing to do: an Internet hat-tip, if you will. It's pretty obvious when people don't do this and almost a form of lying or plagiarism. If you write a story full of facts, make everyone's life easier and link out to your sources. If you leave a comment on a blog post, don't be a creep. Being an incendiary jerk is okay as long as you have sources (again, link them) backing up your points. This may be the Internet, but you're still a human being, right? Right?
Editing
This is my biggest peeve. Check your spelling. And your grammar. And your facts. And your motivation. And your advertisers. Be transparent about any stake you may have in what you're writing or publishing or otherwise producing. For instance, if your dad owns a car dealership and you're writing an article promoting that car dealership, you owe it to your readers to disclose that your dad owns the car dealership. Don't pretend something is editorial when it's really promotional copy.
That's all for now. If anyone has other thoughts on this stuff, I'd love to hear them!