Media Musings

A corporate exec sees a “viral video” on the Web, thinks it’s great, and then commands an underling to conjure some of that viral video stuff. Sounds about right, doesn’t it? This was a scenario brought up by David Weinberger, co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” during an online “MasterClass” presented by AuthorsGlobe and ThoseinMedia.com on Feb. 4.

Weinberger’s response? What is being asked is nothing short of: “Make something that is an act of genius.” “That’s not even a reasonable request,” he says. In other words, these are phenomena that happen rather than phenomena that are created. A little understanding of this would go a long way to stop the thinking that one can snap his or her fingers and make a viral message appear.

This was one of the points that struck me during Weinberger’s online presentation and Q&A. (Weinberger is a senior researcher at Harvard, and blogs at www.johotheblog.com; find out more about the book at www.cluetrain.com.) My impression of the forum was very favorable, and I’ll look forward to the next event in this series. Rather than give away the whole talk — hey, sign up next time! — here are a couple of other points Weinberger made:

• The “amazing thing” about Twitter is that it works at the scale of 1:2 and at the scale of 1:many.
• The linked environment (i.e., hypertext) is the “optimal way” to provide transparency.

The latter point probably caught my ear because it was in the context of the objectivity/authority aura around traditional newspaper publishing. Of course nobody can be 100 percent objective, but his point was a good one: With hypertext you can point out your sources rather than just hoping your readers believe you.

But regardless of the medium, somewhere an “act of genius” is happening.

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