Everyone's been talking about weblogs, but why? Applying P2P concepts and philosophy to the way media and news are created and distributed, weblogs move beyond the traditional definition of web pages to created distributed conversations. Meg Hourihan, lead Blogger developer, discusses the next step in journalism, and what happens when the readers are also the writers.

This session covers:

• Introduction
  • why weblogs? and why now?
  • how are people using them?
  • distributing conversations
  • the realization of publishing to the web
  • microcontent and information "chunks"
• Peer-to-Peer Journalism
  • p2p more than architectural phenomena
  • rerouting information & news flows
  • moving away from "news servers" e.g. Reuters, AP
• When P2PJ Happens
  • the readers are the writers
  • less filter enables authentic response
  • news and writing is decentralized, "out of control"
  • subverting media hierarchy, redefining media
  • some political repercussions
• Problems
  • technological barriers to entry
  • credibility issues
  • control/anarchy/truth
  • fragmentation, data islands
  • people talking to themselves
  • who's reading?
• The Future
  • what will P2PJ do to traditional media?
  • where will this go?