NowPublic@SXSW2008: LiveBlogging (Sunday)

SXSW2008 Interactive  

Sunday is a big day here at SXSW. There are some great panels that I've attended and I squeezed my way into one of the many ballrooms set aside for this afternoon's keynote interview with 23 year old Facebook prodigy -- and, er, CEO -- Mark Zuckerberg. More on that story coming up, as the ravenous Twitterverse dives in to feed on the fresh meat of this trainwreck of a story.

Below is my liveblog at the highly entertaining, if unfocused, panel on Gossip -- read further down for some info on other panels, and a quick recap of the Zuckerberg keynote. 

06:12pm - Audience member: "I have a plea to those who are upset by gossip. Don't spread it, don't participate." And therewith ends the panel. What a ruckus this afternoon has been.

06:07pm - From audience, to Julia: "Climb to the heavens on the backs of your enemies' corpses." Audience laughter ensues. "If you put yourself out there expect to be gossiped about and taken down." 

06:04pm - Question from Deirdre Mally, Chinwag: With the democratization of gossip so that anyone can post gossip about anyone else. We don't have the handlers that celebrities do to manage our personalities online in a public forum, how we do protect ourselves from malevolent gossip?

Panel: Don't talk about yourself anymore. Stop blogging. Don't keep putting yourself out there.  

06:00pm - Audience question: is there a gender skew to gossip?

Heather Gold: Our social connection has been what we've traditionally called 'feminine'. But we don't have time to get into an entire discussion on this issue.

Owen Thomas: If you can gossip to everyone at once, technology and Twitter in particular has brought gossip to men..."thank you, Ev!"  

05:57pm - This is how fast the internet operates and gossip circulates in March 2008 -- a Valleywag contributor has already posted a story on Julia Allsion crashing the SXSW panel (as it happens): http://valleywag.com/365674/julia-allison-crashes-sxsw-explains-it-all  

05:55pm - Audience member: We do this. It's our fault. We need to take responsibility for being the ones who perpetuate the gossip we're trying to say that "they" do.

05:46pm - Audience member: We've always had gossip, but now that we don't live in local neighbourhoods, we love celebrity because it's the people we can all share. We like to talk about people that we can all know -- for instance, the micro-community that's established around SXSW -- and the huge discussion of Zuckerberg's keynote.

05:45pm - Heather: Are we only interested in negativity? What is the difference between gossip and news?

Julia: Gossip is a way of enforcing societal norms; it's how we tell each other how to act.

Evan: I don't think there is a clear line between them. We use tools to do things we've always done. Celebrity gossip wouldn't qualify as news when there were few outlets, but now there are thousands of channels and outlets to distribute information, so almost anything can become news.  

05:42pm - Robert Scoble, in a lime green shirt, says: "Everyone I've talked to since that interview has had something to say about it. It went badly. Sarah Lacy had a very bad day. It's tough, but I don't want to add onto it further."

05:41pm - Evan from Twitter: Why are we interested in the keynote? We wouldn't be talking about it without the controversy. I don't like to have such a pessimistic view, but if you look at celeb gossip.

05:39pm - Audience continues to respond to the Zuckerberg keynote. Everyone was incredibly frustrated with the line of questioning; huge criticism of Sarah Lacy for flirting with Zuckerberg and not asking any compelling questions.

05:37pm -  Audience member: Why aren't we talking about what happened today? The Zuckerberg keynote...which is the lead story on Valleywag. Read it here

05:35pm - Panel discussion digresses into further discussion about invited panelist Julia's life.

05:31pm - Alan Citron, TMZ: Look, the nature of gossip has changed. More and more people qualify as a celebrity -- and is that right? More and more of us are being sucked into this celebrity thing.

05:30pm - Audience member Julia takes over the whole room to complain about having been featured on Valleywag, and for making public her relationship with a founder from a web start-up. Room says collectively: "WTF?"

05:27pm - Owen Thomas: Everyone is interested in more than just the top level executives from a company, so anyone is fair game.

05:25pm - Audience question: What's the minimum level of fame required to be featured on a site like Valleywag? If you're a public representative of your company? 

05:22pm - News from people that you know is inherently more interesting and relevant.  Following Jason Calcanis, for example, is "incredible" given how often he updates his Twitter and blog. It's faster to get internet/web-related news than reading other sites.

05:21pm - All of this gossip is part of an ecosystem - an "egosystem" - and many of the major sites (TMZ/NYTimes) get news items from Twitter.      

05:20pm - Valleywag is 3 full-time people, 3 contributors. Last month we got 4.5 million pageviews. 

05:17pm - Star magazine columnist Julia is invited on stage. Panelist Alan Citron, who is General Manager of TMZ is introduced, he says that TMZ is "real-time reporting on all the antics that celebs get involved with".  TMZ gets 7 million pages views per day. This is not a niche market and it's worldwide. TMZ took only 11 months to get this big. Staff of 25 people as a website, now it's 150 staff since the introduction of the television show.

05:15pm - Panel: Do you all know each other?  Audience member Julia (the booer), has worked for Star! magazine as a television commentator. Talks about celebrities. "No one should care about this shit. But it pays my rent." Television is a repetition of sound bytes. You're never allowed to say you don't know.

05:13pm - Audience member interjects and boos Valleywag panelist! "I don't agree with what Valleywag does. I think they hurt people." 

05:12pm - Journalists are incredible gossips, not just about the news but about each other. 

05:10pm - Question to the panel: Why do you like to gossip?

A: Technology has made gossip more efficient than ever; I define gossip as 'what is happening right now', what people are talking about in the present.   

05:05pm - Twitter is a new news filter, friends bring their own unique perspectives on stories that are happening "now". It is a technology of the present. A platform for speaking about what is going on as it happens. Twitterati can tell users what's going on much faster than MSM, such as the New York Times. It can prompt users to seek out further information and reading.

05:00pm - Gossip // Heather Gold: introductions of the panelists

04:45pm - GOSSIP! // Ok, there's Zuckerberg keynote gossip to be had as I've eluded to below, but the real gossip is the panel that's about to start on the topic itself: "The distinction between Gossip and News has never been smaller. Or perhaps it never was, and Net-era culture is just revealing that. Do we have time for facts? Where does authority come from now? What prompts us to dish?" Liveblog coming up in five minutes (if Wi-Fi signal holds).

03:35pm - MOBLOGGING // Wi-fi signal strength has returned. I'm off to find a panel to check out -- my planned attendance at "Scoop the Story on Your Blog" has been morphed into a guided tour through the convention centre halls to learn about moblogging (mobile blogging techniques). As cool as that seems, to Twitter-types and allies of the Utterz gang, my non-smart (anti-intelligent?) mobile won't allow me to jump on the moblogging/microblogging bandwagon just yet. But soon. Ok, off to check the next.

03:25pm - ZUCKERBERG KEYNOTE // Today's keynote with Mark Zuckerberg just wrapped. There was no internet connectivity available in the main ballroom, despite me sitting right next to a G5 router. Chatter in the men's room immediately following the talk was disparaging and hilarious: "It was Homeric! There was so much repetition of connect/communicate, connect/communicate..."

I'll post a full account on this talk later, but suffice it to say interviewer Sarah Lacy was picked apart, interrupted, scoffed and laughed at for her utter inability to ask compelling questions or glean any meaningful answers from Zuckerberg who, aside from a few calls of "Zuckerface!" and "I hate you!" managed to come out of the interview looking far more eloquent and likeable than even I could have predicted.

Panels NowPublic will be covering:

Friend Me! Vote for Me! Donate Now!

Panel discussion on the use of social networks to engage citizens in political activism and fundraising. Post-panel recap to come just after 12:30pm.

Scoop the Story on Your Blog

Panel discussion examines new ways and technologies that people are using to reporting their news, experiences, thoughts and insights.  

Mobileactive: How Mobile Technology Impacts Politics and Vice-Versa

Panel will move beyond the "how to" concerns of mobile activism to look at the issues that have arisen in user/citizen engagement.

Gossip

Panel will look at the distinction between "gossip" and "news". Great panelists from TMZ, NY Times, Valleywag, Twitter, and Subvert.