Ramblings of a new PM

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If you are anyways connected to the blogosphere, you must have heard about WL Writer - the new free blogging tool from MS stables. And it rocks. I tried using it with Spaces (this post), Wordpress and Blogger and it works great on all 3.

 

<confession> I am a huge Harry Potter fan and this post is heavily influenced by the HP universe</confession>

There is an interesting debate going on in the blogosphere in the last couple of weeks. It started with Jason "king of blogs' Calacanis offering to pay top Digg/Reddit/Flickr users to 'work' for Netscape portal that he runs for AOL

There was a huge stir in response to the article with Kevin Rose of Digg chipping in with his thoughts and several other blogging luminaries offering their 2 cents

This whole debate reminds me of S.P.E.W. or Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. You see in Harry Potter series, Hermione Granger starts a crusade (rather a failed crusade) to ensure that house elves get paid for the work they do for the wizards (which they currently do for free). Problem is, house elves do not want to be paid. They consider it an insult or act on the master's part that shows he does not care about them. When a wizard gives a piece of clothing to a house elf, it means he is releasing it from its care and asking it to fend for itself.

In the blogosphere universe, Jason Calacanis is Hermione (figuratively; also ignore the gender), albeit with an ulterior motive. He wants the 'house elves' (top users of Digg/Reddit/Flickr users - again this is for metaphorical purpose, no slander intended) to be paid. The elves (at least the top ones) consider it an insult and feel that someone is putting a price on their work, which they do to help the community (and also incidently helps increase the bank balance of Kevin Rose et al). Also the wizarding community (the founders and venture backers of startups who wish to profit from UGC - user generated content and the Long Tail) cry foul on this act of Calacanis.

So what is the climax - well at least in the HP universe, poor Hermione seems to have got busy helping Harry finish off Voldemort (oops, you-know-who) and this issue seems to have deflected to the sidelines. This may very well happen in the blogosphere as well. A few remarks here and there after which things will cool down. Calacanis will be back to the orginal problem of getting Netscape its crown of old days, Kevin Rose back to increasing his bank balance and the house elves back to their merry ways of blogging, video submitting, digging, tagging, sharing, stuff that they enjoy doing and don't mind someone else making money off.

Well, there are always surprises..........