Joshua Porter points to an interview he did with Luke Wroblewski of Functioning Form about Visual Design.

It’s a great read, but one idea in particular came to me after I read the following,

To bring it back to the design process, even if you deliberately don’t consider  your site’s personality, it will end up with one anyway. The colors, content,  and visual elements—or lack thereof—all make an impression on your audience, intentional or not. Therefore, it is in your best interests to be aware of  the personality you are creating for your site and make certain it is sending  a message you want.

I, and many others, have wondered why MySpace is so popular despite having inferior design to many other sites.

Well, sex, drugs and rock n roll is one answer, but that’s not what I mean.

Could it be that the personalities expressed by these MySpace pages are the personalities of average citizens, not web developers, marketing professionals or media folks of any kind?

Some like Hotel lounges, others like Dance clubs, Pubs, or clean kitchens. Inferior design here takes the personality of “friend,” whereas professional design bespeaks Media company.

That’s a place to get news or blockbuster movies, but not a place to hang out.

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Frank Gruber points to Fred Wilson, who says that MySpace is the “AOL of Blogging.”

Frank, who recently joined AOL in the Product Development area for blogging and RSS, agrees a bit, but I think he neglects to point out the most important point that Fred brings up.

It’s something I’ve been saying about MySpace for a while and it’s very relevant to Tribune (where Frank and I met) and other newspaper and media sites trying to embrace social networking.

The point is, that if MySpace tries to create a walled-garden like AOL did, at some point their users will awaken and the MySpace service will either begin a slow decline, or they will recognize it and open up, like AOL did recently.

And so far, it’s looking like AOL did the right thing.

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Jarvis notes the changing role of journalists:

A change of the role of journalists — and their relationship with the public — from owner sof the story to moderators, editors, enablers, and educators.

Networked news is good, but “SharedNews” is better. Well, that’s just a term I coined some time back to talk about two-way RSS or what might be called RSS Groups.

This is where everyone has access to a feed, much like an email or usenet group. It’s a more sophisticated way to structure a group blog, and it can be completely distributed. Check out SkinnyFarm for an example.

I’ll remind Jeff about a post he wrote about SSE , and I commented on it.

If RSS is two-way, like it can be, then networked news collaboration can be taken to a much higher level.

I’m digressing somewhat, because the real issue here is that news organizations must realize they need to approach the conversation from a peer level.

It’s no longer a lecture, where audience members must raise their hand to contribute. It’s one big dinner party, and no-one likes the guy who tries to dominate the conversation.

That’s why Dave Winer is right about exclusivity. There is an implicit understanding that we are all equal on the web, and any attempts to create a class system will fail. Exclusive 2.0 conferences are making the same mistake that the Old Regimes made.

It’s also why the user-generated content strategies of news organizations are driving me nuts.

By it’s nature, it’s treating the site-user as a lesser voice.

It’s as if newspapers think users will feel priveliged to get their stuff on the organization’s website.

While that may be somewhat true for the New York Times, I don’t think the local newspaper in many towns holds that kind of reverence, especially with the younger follks.

Their friends are more impressed with their MySpace page, than with your poorly designed, million dollar content management system.

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Marc Canter predicts that five more roach motels will open their doors by Christmas, pressured by the clever Facebook move to offer APIs .

It certainly won’t happen by Christmas, but I’ve pleaded with others involved in product development that the Tribune family of newspaper sites offer APIs, especially as we ramp up aggregation and user-generated content.

If newspapers are serious about getting a piece of the social network pie, which includes photos, blogs and video produced and shared by its users, then they had better think about how they are going to share that content back with the network, or else they will also be one step behind, like MySpace is to Facebook.

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Two great examples of mistaking user-generated content for the empowered edge are MySpace clamping on Flash and YouTube claiming ownership.

Marc Canter elaborates

I usually don’t bicker about semantics, but “user-generated content” to me resonates with inability or unwillingness to cede control to the “edge”.

It reminds me of my pet peeve of clueless managers calling the site users “viewers”. It’s so “TV”. I used to say, “If that’s all they are doing, we are dropping the ball.”

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