SOME RANDOM DUDE

So it is general election time and if you have not voted yet, make sure to do so before the polls close. My local public radio station mentioned that San Francisco’s election expected a very low turnout which, frankly, is disappointing. With Americans overwhelmingly pessimistic about the state of the country, we should be pounding on the poll locations to let us in.

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A while back, I read a very interesting article debating the validity of social news sites. There is no denying that the old media machine is beginning to sputter - most notably newspapers. New media has begun to pull visitors away from traditional news outlets with free access to news, less advertising (sometimes) and features unique to the internet such as voting, discussing and recommending. Getting news on the internet is not, well, news at all, however social news is starting to catch on. By catching on, I do not mean our generation, we have been well aware of it for some time - I mean that the larger mainstream is slowly starting to hear whispers of such an idea. The interesting thing is that many people are trying to pit traditional news against social news - as if “there can be only one”. Rather, social news is a great addition to the genre of news which will only improve the public’s access to information.
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I thought this would be a perfect topic for discussion as it is extremely pertinent due to recent events. Over the past couple weeks, I have been approached multiple times about putting advertising on Some Random Dude. I have been very clear about my thoughts on the subject, but I thought it would be even more interesting to hear your thoughts.

I was telling a colleague of mine about the present offers I have been getting and how I would most likely be holding off on them. He suggested that the opportunity for ad revenue could open up an interesting possibility for this community in the form of a community fund. If the community agrees on advertising, then ads will go up. All the money brought in from advertising (after taxes of course) will go back to the community in the way the community desires. This whole method is quite intriguing to me as it is adding a very large democratic element to the regularly closed-door environment of advertising. In addition, the advertising will be directly benefiting all the right people - the folks who bring in the revenue to begin with.

So, I leave this all up to you. Please leave your comments and/or email me directly if you feel it is more appropriate. I think giving the community a say on this topic makes sense in so many different ways. At the very least, I am pretty sure it will open up a lively discussion.ads, advertising, blog, community, discussion, money, online advertising, revenue, site, some random dude voting

It was another tough week personally - I apologize for the late post. My hope is things will be better from now, but there’s a chance that it is going to get significantly worse. Unfortunately I had to hold off on a lot of new pieces of design for the site - there simply is just not enough time and it is extremely low on the priority list right now.

Once again, my apologies, life is not exactly peachy right now.

Enjoy the links.

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Microformats are becoming hotter topic with each passing day. With Firefox 3 supporting microformats, web designers/developers are suddenly going to have many more tools hanging from their belt. I understood the gist of microformats, but it was not until I read a great brief on microformats that I understood the depth and power of what they make possible.

Semantic code now has a whole new layer of meaning and functionality with microformats that we currently have only scratched the surface of. In addition, those features will theoretically be easier to implement. The elemental microformats are where things get very interesting for me. Social features such as voting, personal connection and tags can be published and parsed through simple semantics. These features give the potential for any site to participate and contribute to socialized information. The next-generation social bookmarking/aggregator sites could be merely a centralized hub of otherwise decentralized information. This theoretically lessens the the need for behemoth all-in-one social sites such as Digg. This gives web publishers another tool to both contribute and tap into a stream of information to make data more rich and connected. Very exciting.

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