LiveBlog of Matt Mullenweg Keynote -- Northern Voice

LiveBlog of Matt Mullenweg's Keynote --

Streamed at http://ustream.tv/channel/nv08 (at least some of it)

Note: This liveblog is rough -- just notes, no editing

Beginning blog platforms --
Open Diary -- 1998
LiveJournal -- 1999

5 years ago -- based on B2

Over 7 million downloads

MM on what Bloggers want -- "Bloggers hierarchy of needs"

1. Expression
The most important tab on the WP blog is the Presentation tab -- allows people to change the theme

A lot of successful web 2.0 companies are successful because they protect users from spam communication

2. Public -- privacy is important, but publically available should be the default -- things that make it easier to connect/follow can have an exponential effect on growth/readership

3. Validation -- check stats to get a sense of readership

4. Form Dictates Writing wrt blogs

Exhortations:
1. Remove the Friction -- make the software 100% invisible
Prediction: volume of posting will blow away all predictions --

4 million pages created on WP.com every month

Wikipedia has 2.1 million pages

Not a shortage of information -- need to filter --

"Two Public Service Announcements"

Achilles Heel of Web 2.0 is spam

FaceBook spam

Content used to be most valuable thing -- attention now the most valuable thing

Exhortation #3 (I missed 2 -- whoops) -- Kill the megabrands

"Matt's Third Law of Social Media -- Unfiltered interaction is worthless at scale -- ie, it doesn't work

Used YouTube example of recommended content

1st generation social networks about creating connections

2nd generation (Web 2.0): people congregating around social objects: Youtube -- Videos; Flickr -- Photos; etc.

Data needs to be filtered to add value to the experience of social networking/social media

Transition to Open Source

Ask Not What Your Software Can Do For You

How to impact OS without coding:
Documentation
Taste of Freedom -- the tools we use in our lives are better than "enterprise" solutions --

Mentions 4 freedoms of social software: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

What matters is that we get the data architectures running systems running on open standards

A wiki for every bill: see who made what changes, and when

Create Open Source alternatives that are better