The Evolution of Blogging and Nokia Foray into Mobile Services : Articles to Read This Weekend

Om Malik in yesterday’s post, The Evolution of Blogging, concludes with the argument that those of us who are lifestreaming on our blogs rather than Facebook, because we want to be our own ‘digital repository’ or as I have called it the last few years “Own Your Own Stuff”, will need to have our blogging software evolve to handle more real-time streaming.

“Millions of Facebook users will have no reason to use any other service for the foreseeable future. And even when they decide to leave, they’ll realize they can’t, for they’ll have stored their photos and videos into the service, which has no visible way of exporting such data. It’s the ultimate lock-in: control consumers’ data and you control everything.
For others — whom I would loosely define as “power users” — today’s blogging software and services are the best option for becoming a repository of our digital creations, because they are more open, more extensible and at the end of the day, give us more control “

Malik mentions Posterous, Tumblr, and WordPress’s P2 theme as blogging platforms that are moving towards evolving blogging, but he does not mention Movable Type’s Motion. As someone who is serious about owning her own digital repository, I haven’t gotten on board with Posterous or Tumblr as they are both hosted and ultimately are yet another space on the web where my stuff gets atomized. I am planning on exploring the possibilities of Movable Type’s Motion soon, when I have some time. ;o)
On another note, Fast Company has a great magazine cover article on Nokia Rocks the World: The Phone King’s Plan to Redefine Its Business, of which they start with a great few paragraphs:

“The gathering in the courtyard dining room at the Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca has the feel of a meeting between the Mafia’s dwindling five families and an emerging Balkan gang looking to join forces. Instead of bookmakers, drug smugglers, and racketeers, the endangered species assembled are music executives from the industry’s remaining major labels, including Warner and Universal Music, and an agent from the Beatles’ Apple Corps.
Despite the general tension typical of an industry in free fall, there is a reunion vibe and everyone greets one another warmly over cocktails, throwing out a bit of cocksure swagger to project the notion that they can still deliver a hit. Still, nobody in attendance would deny that the days of record companies making a killing in the music industry are over.
The hosts for the evening are Nokia’s 43-year-old executive vice president of entertainment and communities, Tero Ojanperä, and Eurythmics founder and Nokia consultant, Dave Stewart. The two make for an odd pairing: Stewart with his quintessential British rock-‘n’-roll-ness and Ojanperä with his Finnish-savant electrical-engineer-ness. But tuning in closely to Ojanperä’s precise, inflected words, it’s hard to elude his magnetism, a cross between Andy Warhol mystic and James Bond villain.”

The article both gives a good overview of Nokia’s efforts to both woo the music industry and their recent forays into applications and services, as well as giving a few fun tweaks at the “Finnish-savant electrical-engineer-ness” meets “Baltic Mafia”. Blessings on the Finns, I <3 the lot of them!