Buzz? Sounds More Like Fizzle to Me

I just took a peek at Yahoo! Buzz.

Wow. What a steaming pile.

Front page articles as of the moment:

• Britney Spears Gets Some New Jeans
• Pamela Anderson seeks annulment
• American Idol Rundown: The Top 10 Guys
• Angelina and Brad Want to Have Jolie-Pitt No. 7 In France

If I wanted to consume brainless pablum like that I could watch E! or read People magazine. Other articles are run-of-the-mill CNN or MSNBC fare. If that’s what I wanted, I could just as easily be reading those websites.

What’s the value add with Buzz? I don’t see it.

This is the type of crappy site you get when you have a bunch of media executives who use a committee to design a product that “has broad consumer appeal, has reach, has a mass market traction.”

You get a product that has bland, dull and mundane written all over it.

Yahoo Buzz is serving up the same old shallow, mass market crap that hate and the reason I turned to sites like Digg!, Slashdot and Boing! Boing! was to get away from just the crap Yahoo! is dishing out.

I think I am pretty representative of the new breed of web newshounds; I read Digg! because I am looking for off-beat news, humor and opinions with a strong tech flavor. Sure, Digg! can sometimes shoot for the lowest common denominator, but when it comes to humor that’s not always a bad thing. I read blogs on niche topics because thy have in-depth articles on topics I am interested in.

I will not be Buzzing anything… not my cup o’ tea, thank you very much.

Yahoo is looking more like a stuffy old media company that just does get it, struggling get by in a new media world.

Coworking in Bangkok; Jelly in Bangkok

Coworking is an extension of the social network into the the real world.

You have a pool of people, ideally somewhat like minded (or at least creative spirits that are inspiring in some way) and you share a casual workspace.

I think coworking would be very energizing.

Working from home, well it’s easy to get into a rut staring at the same four walls all day long, every day, week after week.

I venture out to a coffee house every now and then to work–but not as frequently as I did back in the US. Bangkok just does not have that many casual public spaces where you can sit with a laptop all day long.

Ever since I ran across the concept of coworking spaces I have been thinking “man, it would be great to have a coworking space in Bangkok!” Something like a coffee house–but with more of a regular crowd of people that are working and on the same wavelength.

But alas, I have yet to find a coworking space. I have thought about creating one, but I still have not found the critical mass of people to make it viable.

I just ran across a concept that might be the next best thing–or even a stepping stone to starting a co-working space: A Jelly.

What is a Jelly? It’s “casual coworking” (Which is “awesome,” according the the website tagline.)

It’s a floating co-working space set up in some space (public or private). In my minds eye, I see getting a bunch of other geeks together to meet at different coffee houses on a regular basis. If this gets to be popular enough, we might reach the critical mass we need to open up a coworking space.

Let’s see if I can make this happen. If anybody runs across this post and is interested, drop me a line at jberns-at-johnberns-dot-com.