Among all the current trends that are presently shaping the future of the Internet – the copyright revolution, the redefinition of cybercriminality, the dilemma of privacy on social networks, to name a few- there is one that has been underestimated and should be thoroughly reconsidered: the revolution of content. The ongoing euphoria towards social networks (Mark Zuckerberg has just become Time Magazine’s 2010 Man Of The Year) and the recent global trauma caused by Cablegate have played against the exposure of other major trends of New Media that really deserves equal attention.

The revolution of content is clearly one of those.

There is much to say about it but the case of Google speaks volume about the discomfort and concern characterizing the debate about how mass info is and will be apprehended by the system.

The One Trillionth Page Syndrom: When Quantity Prevails Over Quality

In 2008, Google announced it had indexed its one-trillionth page, and that was not going to stop. The new record indexation was presented as a positive evolution, the rationale behind it being that each new page indexed was a new step towards progress . However, though they presented the indexation of their trillionth page as a success, Google engineers themselves realized how monstrous the web had become.

In fact, in its blog, the web search giant claimed its engineers “stopped in awe” when they realized how big the web had become, after the index hit the trillion mark, with the web growing by several billion every day.

« This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States,” Google software engineers Jesse Alpert and Nissan Hajaj wrote in the blog.

Going a step further, the same engineers also recognized that the number of pages they had indexed and keep indexing is probably not the best yardstick by which the progress of the Internet should be measured. The idea is quite simple: indexing new pages does not reflect any improvement since that is an intrinsic characteristic of the system where pages- with no regard to the quality of their content- add up mechanically.

« So how many unique pages does the web really contain? We don’t know; we don’t have time to look at them all. Strictly speaking, the number of pages out there is infinite — for example, web calendars may have a “next day” link, and we could follow that link forever, each time finding a new page. »

So, why has Google boasted about that indexation if among the best engineers working for the company, some overtly expressed their concern about it claiming the link between quality and quantity was not proven at all? As Vinton Gray Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet and the inventor of the  TCP/IP Protocal put it once in a famous metaphore, the good news about the Internet is that “the kid is growing” and the bad news about the Internet is that the “kid is growing”.

At the same time that the Internet grows, it Achilles’ Heel gets more exposed too. Therefore, the fact that the Internet is growing is neither good news, nor bad news. That’s purely factual. But what is inauspicious is to realize that the creator has lost control over its creature and that is threatening quality on the web.

“Ninety-five percent of the universe is stuff we don’t understand,” Cerf told WebProNews anchor Abby Prince Johnson.

Is the dice cast? Has the breakpoint been reached already or is it still possible to regain control on content?

To answer this question, the study of how access to music (songs and tunes being the content) has evolved since the far-west style of the democratization of the access shed some light and should certainly be set as an example of what should be done in the future to perpetuate good content and avoid poor ones in other fields.

How Music Content Has Survived The Napster Era:  learning from our mistakes.

I remember the 1998-2002 period when, at that time, the big thing for teenangers and more generally Internet users was the possibility through peer-to-peer opportunities and pirate interfaces to download tons  of music for free. I was impressed.

That was a revolution. It seemed like a new era of freedom had started. Music choices would never be burdenned by economic constraints anymore. I fully took advantage of it, and so did everyone around me.

However, what first seemed to be an incredible step further for the democratization of arts & cultures soon became a nightmare for the music lover I had always been. People would see music quantitatively.  A sentence I still remember hearing over and over again was: “how many tunes do you have?” or “how many weeks of music do you have?” That was the idea, the more music you had the cooler you were.

It didn’t  matter if you could realistically think of  hearing all that music in your lifetime. It didn’t matter if you could list all the music you had. All that mattered was “how many”. And what had to happen just happened.

After a few months,  people around me started to have wild music libraries with hundreds of thousands of untamed playlists . A non-negligible portion of those tunes had not been properly downloaded and became amputated songs. Another significant number of those were untitled or just labeled “song 1”, “title 7”.

Not to mention the poor-quality of almost all the songs, due to the alteration caused by peer-to-peer liaisons. What is more, it was not surprising to find in one’s own library unknown songs that had nonetheless been downloaded.

This era of disillusioned freedom should have given the alert to a system where quantity and easy access started to prevail over quality and selectivity. Artists were not powerful enough to have the tide reversed but collectively, with the help of their majors, they started the change.  Governments followed suit.

Through huge media campaigns and legal packages, it indeed started to change. People realized how detrimental to music incommensurate and illegal downloading could be, and eventually came to the idea that having all the music one wants in a legal framework provided the payment of a small fee had, at least, three major positive consequences: first, it would protect the music industry which, in turn would keep producing talents; second, the downloaded music would be of high-quality and third, it would force them to really select what they really want.

First-In First-Out, The music industry was definitely the very first place where content were threatened and then rescued.

Offering someone free water at home for one’s lifetime should not be an incentive to leave the tap open 24/7. Free water doesn’t mean drinking water and people should underdstand that it is always better to pay a small charge for clean and drinking water rathen than have it for free at any quality.

According to a report on BBC, Openleaks is planning to allow newspapers and other organizations to have more editorial decisions.

“Unlike Wikileaks, Openleaks will not publish or verify material; leaving that role to newspapers, ‘NGOs, labour unions and other interested entities.’

‘We are trying to build a community of various organisations that need or have use for anonymously submitted information,’ former Wikileaks member Herbert Snorrason told the BBC.

Mr. Domscheit-Berg, said the decision to be a “conduit” rather than publisher was made because of the team’s experience at Wikileaks.”

Specifically, Domscheit-Berg states that the technology can be embedded on any site, allowing for anonymous data leaks to go to the whomever the whistle-blowers choose. This addresses many of the problems with Wikileaks, including “too much concentration of power…in one organisation,” said Domscheit-Berg.

Additionally, Openleaks plans to give legal advice on dealing with and publishing such sensitive material.

The new founder emphasizes that Openleaks is not to be about faces or egos, and that he feels that Wikileaks became more about the project than the mission. “We’re not aiming for any front pages. If anything at all, this organisation is to enable others to do that,” Domscheit-Berg says in the BBC report. Though he claims that the two sites will be different because of the opposing approaches, it will undoubtedly be a rivalry that will be interesting to watch as it develops.

More importantly, Columbia SIPA students now have something new to write about.

That night, the owner, David G. Bradley, proposed a toast. “For the magazine new bet on the online content”, he said. The company was close to break even for the first time in decades, he assured. Everyone clapped, nobody believed in Bradley’s words.

But this week, The Atlantic has announced that the red numbers are gone: it expects a $1.8 million profitability by the end of this year.

The news is important because it brings to the table another successful business model, different from those followed by other magazines such as The New Yorker, The Economist or Foreign Policy, that hide their content under a paywall and, therefore, are able to charge for subscriptions.

In contrast, The Atlantic business model seems to rely on web traffic and thus, on online advertising. By hiring bloggers, redesigning its website to make an almost independent product from the print issue, and launching The Atlantic Wire, the company has managed to attract almost 5 million unique visitors, boosting the digital advertising up to $6.1 million, a figure that represtents almost 40 percent of the company’s overall advertising take, according to The New York Times.

It’s interesting how the magazine has been able to improve its revenues in investing in original content, by joining the online conversation with other media outlets, and without necessarily adding high-quality video packages to the website. This should be refreshing for every “print” journalist, because that means that advertisers are still willing to put their money in sites where concentrating readership. And what will eventually attract readership, well, eventually good content. Good journalism is still profitable, even in the web!

Within minutes, @Gizmodo, and probably the other two sites, managed to gain control and delete the messages sent out. But according to the now-deleted tweets from Gizmodo, as acquired from my Tweetdeck:

Can’t be good news.

You can follow real-time updates on Twitter (via search: @Gizmodo, for example) or on Google real-time updates.

EDIT: Most recently…

Chris Hughes, one of the original Facebook founders, has just launched his much-buzzed about new startup, Jumo, which connects people and organizations dedicated to changing the world.

Inspired by the enormous online response to the Haiti earthquake last January, Hughes developed Jumo in order to get people involved with their causes of choice year-round—not just when disaster strikes.

He told the New York Times, “The more connected [an] individual is to an issue they care about, the higher probability there is they will stay involved over a longer period of time.”

And that’s a good thing, since Jumo aims to do for charities what Yelp—the famous online urban living guide developed by communities of locals in-the-know—did for restaurants.

But he has his work cut out for him. In 2009, only 6% of the $300 billion that was donated to charities and nonprofits was submitted online. Still, Hughes believes he can increase this percentage.

Currently, almost anyone with a social mission can create a page on Jumo, and some suggest the site could become a simple way for smaller charities to establish a social media presence. With more than 3,000 organizations already listed, Jumo is designed to let users find, follow and support the causes important to them. Though sign-up requires a Facebook account, users can then find their friends and follow their adopted causes too.

Hughes insists Jumo is not intended to compete with the Facebook Causes application, which currently has more than 17 million active users. He says that by focusing on relationships instead of soliciting donations, Jumo hopes to distinguish itself from Facebook Causes and the ever-popular Global Giving site, which also encourages online giving.

Experts believe that since fundraising and volunteer recruitment is primarily about relationships, Jumo may actually become a more effective tool for nonprofits. Though it’s hard to tell whether following a charity will translate into donating for that charity—or even spending time volunteering—this site could at least jump-start the trend.

And that’s a crucial first step.

The latest ad representing the nation’s biggest magazine publishers begins: “This is not the Internet. Feel free to curl up and settle in.”

Featuring a woman swinging in a hammock between two sun-drenched palm trees, the ad continues: “Magazines don’t blink on and off. They don’t show video or deliver ads that pop up out of nowhere. You can’t DVR magazines and you can’t play games on them. But you can take one to the beach.”

Curiously, the woman in the hammock does not actually appear to be reading a magazine, jokes the New York Times.

But that’s not the only piece of irony in this story.

The ad campaign, which launched in May 2010, is the brainchild of publishing powerhouses Hearst, Condé Nast, Time Inc., Meredith, and Wenner Media.

That’s right. The same leaders who spent the past few years poured tens of millions of dollars into creating iPad versions and other digital formats of their publications are now trying to counter perceptions that print is a dying medium.

Funny, there’s a digital component to the campaign, too.

Since spring, the ads have appeared as two-page color spreads in nearly 100 publications, reaching a combined 112 million readers per month. The campaign is the first-ever of its kind, and publishers are convinced it’s a worthwhile investment.

In fact, they say magazine readership has actually grown over the past five years. Even since Facebook was founded, magazines have gained more than one million readers.

So why the need for the ads?

Michael A. Clinton, president of marketing and publishing director for Hearst Magazines, explains, “We have to be delivering our content in different ways, but in a continually digitized world, the interesting thing is the passion people still have for the print product.”

Want to see more? Check out another ad that’s part of “The Power of Print” campaign.

Especially Google’s Street View has attracted criticism and caused headlines such as “Google’s also Watching when You’re Skinny Dipping” and “Google Knows More about Us than the KGB, Stasi or Gestapo.”

But what is it about Europe’s biggest economy that makes it particularly skeptical about online privacy?

“In Germany, the individual right for privacy has always been valued greatly because of the experiences with the Third Reich and the former DDR,” explains Christoph Schepers who is external lecturer in German culture and communications at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark.

According to Schepers, the political system in Germany is largely structured to secure the rights of the citizens, “If citizens believe that their civil rights are being violated they can easily complain to the constitutional court,” he says.

“Likewise, if citizens’ privacy appears threatened, NGOs or the political opposition will likely take the matter to court,” he says.

Although Google agreed to blur faces, house numbers and license plates before taking pictures, Street View is largely considered an invasion of privacy, as many Germans oppose having their homes photographed without permission.

After accusations of being too passive the German government is now pushing for a higher level of data protection, which could mean stricter rules for collection of user data and forcing companies to delete individual information upon request from citizens.

However, critics question whether the proposal is going far enough. The question remains just how far “enough” is and how the government will meet the demands of citizens while avoiding a reputation of limiting online businesses.

I was so surprised to read that the Obama administration (and Obama himself !) called Wikileaks a criminal organization. Logically speaking, if Wikileaks is a criminal organization, then the New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and The Guardian are too (they have been working with criminals) and should be blamed for complicity. Is this relevant or just ludicrous ? The problem here is not WikiLeaks, it is about the “politics of naming” that should force those who lead those policies to be consistent from the beginning to the end. Amateurism…

I was surprised to hear that the US State Department has required all its staff and employees not to read the disclosed documents. Not only does this information sound like a revival of old forms of conscience censorship, but it is also so ridiculous given that the State Department still call those documents “confidential” and “Top Secret”.

I was surprised by French Minister of Telecommunications Eric Besson saying this week-end that he wants to take action to try and block Wikileaks from being hosted by French Server/Host Owni on the Internet. The Internet is so liquid and volatile that any attempt to block a website’s content from being hosted by another website could only be  a waste of time: if Besson succeeds, no wonder then that Wikileaks would always manage to  be hosted by another guy.

Why are our officials so incompetently appointed? The problem here is not WikiLeaks but the lack of though and judgment of some people applying “real life” measures to what should be once and for all understood as a complex new digital age.

I was very surprised to receive an e-mail email from OSA (Office of Students Affairs) sent to SIPA’s entire body warning students not to discuss the wikileaks fiasco in any online forum, lest students interested in pursuing careers within the State Department would put their future in jeopardy. This directive seems odd considering that last year, the head of the State Department’s new e-Diplomacy was talking at SIPA. It was about need-to-share and transparency policies…

My only consolation last week came from T.Friedman’s new Op-Ed in the New York Times. The author wrote a fiction piece called « From Wiki China » where he imagines : « What if China had a WikiLeaker and we could see what its embassy in Washington was reporting about America? ».

A Must Read. Enjoy !

Founded on August 24^th, 2009, M.A.L.I[i] is a group of thirteen Moroccan citizens who present themselves as staunch advocates of individual and civil liberties aiming at fostering the debate on Individual liberties and civil rights in Morocco.

“We all love our country and that’s why we want it to improve in the field of individual liberties”, explains M.A.L.I Co-Founder Betty Lachgar.

The ambitions of M.A.L.Is go beyond words. In fact, M.A.L.I members are rather seeking to organize coup-de-poing happenings to destabilize the country’s most sacred conservatisms and then start the debate.

“ In this respect, we have decided to start a struggle against intolerance, power abuse, socio-religious inquisition and abusive laws” adds Psychoterapist Betty Lachgar.

And that is exactly what they did.

Aware that Islam is the most volcanic taboo in Morocco’s society, M.A.L.Is did not choose provocation deliberately.  What they were bent on doing was to act as the mirror of “the provocative contradictions of Morocco’s social, religious and institutional fabric.”

“We wanted to perform a symbolic act to point out the very contradictions of Morocco’s institutional backdrop. In fact, while Morocco’s constitution guarantees freedom of Worship, article 222 of Morocco’s criminal code still condemns anybody presumably of Muslim belief to a six-month sentence to jail” argues Co-Founder Zineb El Rhazoui, 27.

The Butterfly Effect

At first glance, M.A.L.I appears as one of the million movements locally struggling for the advancement and improvement of individual liberties. So far, so good. Nothing new under the sun.

However, absent social networks, what happened in Morocco on September 13^th, 2009 could have gone totally unnoticed. And that’s what makes M.A.L.I so revolutionary.

The idea is quite simple to understand. Aware that their low weight and high powerlessness as a 13-member group is a disheartening liability, M.A.L.Is have mostly relied on Facebook as a stepping stone to spread over their ideas.

How Could a 13-people picnic in the small city of Mohammedia, Morocco set off a tornado in the highest ranks of Morocco’s authorities, hit the headlines of  Le Monde and El Mundo, and arouse the ire of Human Rights Watch?

At The Beginning Was Facebook.

The conception, description and pubilicity of the un-fasting happening all started on M.A.L.I’s Facebook page.

What first started as a mild and cordial discussion about religion and society evolved to a more and more tensed, aggressive and sometimes violent exchange between those who supported the initiative and those who condemned it with the utmost vehemence.

Choosing to compare the insignificance of the incident itself with the huge consequences it had and still has as the yardstick by which the success of the operation should be assessed, one would doubtlessly call it a success. Let’s have a look.

The Media

On the local level, the story hit the headlines of all daily and weekly news magazines such as Tel Quel: “They Did It!”

On the international level, Spanish Newspaper EL Mundo’s headline best encapsulated the discrepancy between the incident and its irrational consequences: “In Morocco, 100 Policemen against 10 Sandwiches”.

NGOs

“We should not, in the name of our Muslim heritage, accept that people be condemned only because they express a different opinion” argues Khadija Rouissi, President of Bayt Al Hikma, one of the local NGOs which supported M.A.L.I’s intiative.

“They started the debate, and that’s very positive” adds AMDH President Khadija Ryadi.

On the international level, on September 19^th, Human Rights Watch called on the Moroccan authorities to cancel any charge against M.A.L.I members. A camouflet for a country that has always been boasting about being one of the most advanced democratic Muslim country in the world.

The Internet: Facebook as a facade and forums as ramifications

Facebook has been essential for M.A.L.I.  They were three important phases.

First, the creation of a Facebook group of 13 admins, a couple of clicks, some pictures, a description of the group, and the weapon was ready.

The second phase was impulsed by the creation of an event, the “symbolic picnic”, which made the group grow from 13 people to 200 ones, a sufficient critical mass to spark a small buzz prior to the event.

The third phase is still going on and it is about how the Facebook page beneficiated from the incident post-euphoria. The two groups now have more than 2,500 members. Though this number is incomparable to what we generally witness with NGOs in Western countries, it is still a lot for a country where Internet accessibility, literacy and fear of retaliation are still serious issues.

As for forums[ii], they have been playing a satellite and shelter role. Among them, Bladi has been the most active one.

Recently, In July 2010, the famous American blog Freethought devoted a 2,000-word piece on the story and its consequences.

Speaking in absolute terms, the fact that 13 people stubbornly decided to eat publicly during Ramadan 2009 in Morocco should have remained an insignificant and marginal incident. Yet, owing to the very special modus operandi chosen by the “dissident” movement to make their act go viral and start an unprecedented media buzz going beyong the borders of Morocco, what happened that day should be given the utmost attention and be construed as a major and fundamental change in the way religion and society dynamics are and will be apprehended in Morocco.

Now the Pandora box is open and there’s nothing to do to reverse the tide.

[ii] Forums perfectly illustrate Professors Keck and Sikkink’ arguments (Activist Beyond Borders, 1998)about the power of transnational networks metaphorized by the « boomerang effect »: the idea that a local group can « send » a boomerang (ask for help through the internet for example) to a group acting abroad and have the later inform and put pressure on its own local environment which, the authors believe, will in turn help the foreign group that asked for help in the first place (they « send back » the boomerang).

In early 2010, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization in the United States, released a free iPhone app for its “Buying for Equality” guide, and will be closely monitoring its use as we enter the shopping frenzy that has become December.  The app will enable shoppers to find out how hundreds of popular American brands have measured up against their competitors in terms of their treatment of LGBT employees, and will empower consumers to translate social views, particularly as they relate to LGBT issues, into concrete purchasing decisions.

Not only can shoppers peruse thousands of businesses and detailed assessments of their LGBT policies to decide what businesses to support (those coded in green) and what businesses to avoid (those coded in red), but they can learn about LGBT-inclusive workplace policies.  As HRC President Joe Solomnese comments, “… the new Buying for Equality iPhone application is a revolutionary tool that will help inform purchases and support those businesses who believe in our equality.”

So will people choose to buy General Mills products that received a 100% Corporate Equality Index (CEI) ranking over Kellogg’s products that received a 65% CEI ranking?  The HRC thinks Yes.   As LGBT supporters take to the stores with their $712 billion buying power this December and the “Buying for Equality” app at their fingertips,  there just may be a bit more joy to this world.