Last week I received a distressing email from the powers-that-be at Netflix announcing that they would be terminating the "Profiles" feature of their DVD rental service. This feature allows customers to maintain independent rental queues under a single account (i.e. I keep one list of rentals, and my girlfriend keeps another; when I return one of my movies, I get the next title on my list and when she returns one of her movies she gets the next one on her list). I'm an avid and loyal Netflix user, and a fan of this useful bonus feature. Needless to say, I was more than disappointed that Netflix no longer felt that Profiles were worth keeping around.

Today, however, they've reversed course. They wrote on their blog:

We were persuaded by the well-reasoned, sincere responses of loyal members who very much value this feature...Because of an ongoing desire to make our website easier to use, we believed taking a feature away that is only used by a very small minority would help us improve the site for everyone. Listening to our members, we realized that users of this feature often describe it as an essential part of their Netflix experience.

Even though only a small minority of Netflix subscribers used the Profiles feature, they were able to make enough noise online to force Netflix to reverse their position.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is dealing with a similar - albeit much more serious - uprising on his campaign's own social network. On Friday, two supporters started a group on my.barackobama.com called "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right" to protest Obama's reluctance to oppose the passage of the flawed update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (background here). Four days later that group has already grown to 6,900 members and is the 4th most popular group in the network.

At a conservative estimate of an average donation of only $50 per member of this group, it represents $345,000 in campaign donations. At a more probable estimate of $150 per member, the group represents $1,035,000. And at a maximum contribution per member of $2,300, the group represents the potential of $15,870,000 in campaign contributions. They say in politics, money is power. Well, that's a lot of power, huh?

For all the talk of what mobilized majorities can accomplish, it's fascinating to see the emerging role that vocal minorities can play in bringing about change.

via NewTeeVee

"The wonderfully nerdy fruits of the writers guild strike are starting to ripen. Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon started writing a three-part musical Internet series during the strike with his brothers and the result, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, is coming to soon to a computer near you. The teaser trailer just “leaked” yesterday and is full of fanboy fodder."

Yesterday, in an announcement about new funding, Twitter wrote that they see themselves as a "communications utility." I'd like to follow up on the blogosphere discussion (Dave Winer and Michael Arrington) and add my two cents.

First of all, I always think of water-cooler chatter as an apt metaphor for Twitter. Everyone likes to chat about small things that happen to be on their mind. In the digital age, however, many of us aren't working in traditional office environments, and we often have more in common with internet pals on the other side of the world than we do with our neighbors on the other side of the cubicle. So, we are naturally inclined to take advantage of a place where we can simply chat about what's on our mind with people who are interested.

On a more fundamental level, Twitter offers radical changes to the time and space rules of conversation.

• It's water-cooler chatter without the physical place of the water-cooler.


• Conversations can be seamlessly local (with people you know and see in the real world) and global (with people you only know online).


• Synchronous conversations can happen in real time without requiring synchronous attention.


• Conversations can adapt fluidly from one-to-one to one-to-many to many-to-many.

What do you think? Is Twitter becoming a communications utility? Why's Twitter different than everything else we have?

Way back in March I started reading Clay Shirky's excellent new book Here Comes Everybody. I wrote this post on the first two chapters of the book and promised to continue to share my thoughts with you as I went along.

So, after finishing the book, here are my belated notes on Chapters 3 and 4. Later chapters will follow soon.

Chapter 3:

(pg. 79) For a generation that is growing up without the scarcity that made publishing such a serious-minded pursuit, the written word has no special value in and of itself.

For all the debate about how the internet is destroying the publishing industry (much of it overblown), I think that this bit gets right to the heart of things. 100 years ago it really cost something to publish someone's work - an investment in printing machines, materials, distribution, etc. Today publishing is free, and this doesn't make all online publishing worthless, but it does mean that choosing to publish someone's words does not necessarily imply an inherent worth.

Chapter 4:

(pg 81) ...break the older pattern of professional filtering of the good from the mediocre before publication; now such filtering is increasing social, and happens after the fact.

This is no surprise, but it dovetails perfectly with one of the main themes of David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous. Weinberger says, "Sort on the way out, not on the way in."

(pg 86) Prior to the internet, when we talked about media, we were talking about two different things: broadcast media and communications media. ...Broadcast media...are designed to put messages out for all to see. ...Communications media...are designed to facilitate two-way conversations. ...The pattern we didn't have until recently was many-to-many, where communications tools enabled group conversation.

What's so different about today's media landscape? Broadcast media enabled one way messages from one-to-many. Communications media enabled two way messages from one-to-one. The internet has enabled two way messages from many-to-many.

(pg 90) ...much of what gets posted [on the internet] on any given day is in public but not for the public.

This is something that most people have a hard time wrapping their heads around. I just like how succinctly Shirky puts it here.

(pg 104) We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Love motivates people to bake a cake and money motivates people to make an encyclopedia. Now, though, we can do big things for love.

Aside from being a beautiful sentiment, this is actually a profound observation. Because collaboration can be so easily enabled, individuals can contribute so easily, and the potential audience of people who appreciate the work can be so large, we can now harness personal motivations to accomplish grand tasks.

(pg 105) Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

This is another of those great sound bites. Shirky means that a technology has to be around long enough for it to be taken for granted before people really start doing amazing things with it. Imagine what's in store for us once the generation born after the internet is running the world?

George Carlin died of a heart attack at the age of 71.

In his video response to Ice-T, Soulja Boy gets to the heart of the generational divide between the Born Digitals and everyone who came before them.

(warning: language is NSFW)

Help support the Obama campaign by making a donation.

via PSFK

This guide is for everyone who enjoys the pleasure of a sublime cocktail.

This site is a long time in the making. Over the past year or so, my girlfriend and I have become cocktail connoisseurs. We've been all over NYC, and found The Best cocktail bars in Manhattan (tough research, right?). So, I created this little site, that will hopefully inspire you and your friends (or lovers) to seek out and enjoy the most well-made cocktails in all of Manhattan.

Please visit, and please pass the link around to people who might appreciate it.