April 2, 2009

Web 2.0 Expo Gets Recessionified

Photo used with permission by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x180/3405640298/in/set-72157616147538993/">James Duncan Davidson</a>

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The theme of this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Silicon Valley’s annual geek family reunion qua idea show and tell, is “The Power of Less.” Here in the Texas-sized Moscone conference center (hike toward the panel just over the hallway horizon!), recession is definitely the new green.

Many of this year’s talks are grim soup lines doling out tips on how to hang on to a slippery website dollar among fickle, fickle users, or wring a few pennies out of Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media enterprise.

And forget the Wii-filled, bass-thumping blogger room and the eco-idealist exhibit swag of 2008. Nothing but coffee urns and industrious laptop-tappers here in the media room this year, people. Thank God.

One app I’m liking today: Gawkk, which bills itself as a ‘Twitter for videos,’ “where members discover, share, and discuss videos from around the web with their friends by answering the question: What are you watching?”

Coming Friday: etsy! Threadless! And more counter-intuitive hipster business models that seem to work better than AIG‘s.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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