The unintentional publisher
I’ve previously discussed the future of automated publishing, by that meaning an action that is automatically being published somewhere online, for whatever purpose it may have.
The threshold for publishing is continuously moving in the direction of zero, effort wise. The history of web publishing has for a long time moved in that direction starting with sites such as Geocities through Blogger over to Twitter and Jaiku ending up with Facebook, where there is almost no threshold left.
Innovation within the walled garden
Facebook is probably the service that has innovated the most in this genre, mainly because the power of its Newsfeed, where any social interaction with my friends also becomes content on the site. Publishing is based on an act that serves a complete separated purpose, which is to create value both for me and the service itself.
Facebook Beacon (which is a project with very interesting intentions) is probably the closest we’ve seen so far to what could be automated publishing and ad network in one, when purchasing an item somewhere you also publish that act to your friends on Facebook.
Since our buying pattern often is a significant part of the story we like to tell about ourselves, the act of consumption is not about the actual transaction but rather narrating our own story. Hence the power of also publishing that act.
Loads of people publish what they buy already, I’m definitely one of them, helping me and many others to publish without effort is not only a statement the store is willing to pay for but also a story that I’m happy to tell.
The elephant in the room
GPS development has made location based services the perfect tool for automating publishing of my location. The location wallet, promoted through services such as FireEagle and Brightkite are backend services that focus on supporting geopublishing and making it as automated as possible. Providing the backend of my geoposition is what all the hoopla is about currently. And that is also, as of now, the closest connection between automated publishing and the offline world.
Which brings us to, if the Newsfeed is the content of my actions on Facebook and services such as FriendFeed strives to be it of my online actions but where is the content of my offline actions? Automated publishing in both offline and online brings quite an interesting mix of content to the closest peers and increasing the chances of social serendipity.
(These are very roughly formulated thoughts and maybe not as elegant presented as they should be, sorry about that. But I will try to continue this discussion soon again regarding more aspects of this.)
Photos by Thomas Hawk (first) and mrido (second) under a CC-license
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