Photo: Jar0d / Flickr

Blogging is a new way for people to express themselves. In fact, many blogs are no more than online journals. This tool has allowed people around the globe to share far more personal content than they ever have in the past. But while people think they choose what to reveal about themselves and what to keep secret, they may in fact be far more exposed than they know. Blogging has become a way for health workers to detect where their help is most needed.

Software with emotional intelligence

Researchers at Isreal’s Ben-Gurion University have developed computer software which is being used to scan blogs to detect underlying depression in the writers. Using ‘web intelligence’, the program spots combinations of words with depressive connections that describe the writers underlying mood. These are not necessarily obvious words like ‘depressed’ or ‘suicide’, but rather metaphoric words like ‘black’ and other descriptive phrases by which experts can tell a person is suffering from depression.

Helping the helpers

Photo: ~C4Chaos / Flickr

The programme was developed to address concerns that people may not always be aware they are depressed and that there is treatment available to them. Health professionals can only intervene when the patient comes forward with a complaint. By using this software to screen people’s blogs health workers can address the problematic rise of ‘undiagnosed depression’, which is particularly rife in the USA. This software allows health workers to detect depression and be more proactive, presumably by offering various services such as counselling or pharmaceutical intervention.

The tool was tested by comparing its results with the opinion of a panel of psychiatric experts. There was a 78 per cent correlation between the findings of the panel and the programme.

The new programme could potentially be used to detect suicide risks in the future, considering its positive results so far.

Photo: Apple

Speaking at All Things Digital, Steve Jobs touched on competitors ranging from Google to Adobe and product performance within his company, too. One area that has not gotten the kind of coverage it deserves, considering the forum, is his opinion on the future of the newspaper business.

Democracy depends on a healthy press

The conference, which ironically, was opened by Newscorp big wig Rupert Murdoch, saw Jobs premising his opinion on his belief that ‘democracy depends on a free, healthy press.’ As a result, Apple is prepared to assist traditional journalism in any way that it can to stabilise the financials of the newspaper business.

The iPad, which is partly envisioned as a platform for distributing digital content and news is one such example of Apple’s ‘assistance’ (at a profit, of course) of this industry. And Steve Jobs believes the rich platform can provide an opportunity to monetise better than a mere web page can saying, ‘I think people are willing to pay for content’ – a sentiment Rupert Murdoch shares with Steve, considering the pay wall going up for the Times Online.

The bloggers’ perspective

Photo: Matthew Yohe / Wikimedia Commons

Blogging – whether done professionally or casually – is partly responsible for the decline of the newspaper business. The ability to get information online for free – in the sense that users do not pay for it directly – has put pressure on the newspaper industries, raising fears about the future of the press business. This pressure has led to a radical rethink in how the press industry monetises content.

The nexus sits snuggly between demand and supply, as well as rethinking the business model – something Apple is keenly aware of. Insofar as the quality of reporting is of a level so high and exclusive, people will pay for it. This is the very reason publications like the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal can charge premium subscription prices. However, where we start getting to industries, like technology reporting, where blogs do a comparable (if not superior) job to traditional outlets, the ‘professional’ press will struggle to compete by charging for content.

Beyond ideas

It’s not so much that Steve Jobs is wrong in sentiment, it’s that the business, one steeped in heavy tradition, needs to rethink how it makes money. And perhaps old stalwarts of the newspaper business like Rupert Murdoch aren’t capable of pulling new tricks. Perhaps.

Photo: Tumblr

Tumblr, the blogging platform that has community built central into its focus has just closed a funding round for $5 million, bringing the total funding to $10 million. However, like many top-rate Internet services, the company still has to find out how to bring in revenue.

Investor says revenue is key focus

The venture round was received from Union Square Partners and Spark Capital, who were the original investors in the company. Fred Wilson of Union Square Partners has said Tumblr’s sole focus presently is on developing a revenue generation strategy.

The hiccup with revenue generation, however, is Tumblr’s CEO publicly stated aversion to advertising, which is often the defacto revenue model for large-scale Internet services. Instead the company is looking at charging for add-on services, as well as site-related work such as premium themes and so on.

1 billion page views

Photo: WordPress

In a follow up blog post, Fred Wilson mentioned that the service is serving 1 billion pageviews across the network each month. In his exposition of these stats, Wilson pointed out that only 57 companies worldwide serve that many page views, highlighting just how widespread the service is.

Even with these numbers, it still notably smaller than Wordpress, the publishing platform that powers Mobile Computing News, which has 202 million users worldwide, but Tumblr has managed all this growth in little over a year.

The Internet bubble relived

This blogging service is yet another example of what some commentators are calling the second dotcom bubble. Several Internet companies are raising money at high valuations with no revenue strategy in place whatsoever. Now insofar as these companies do eventually make revenue to justify the investment, that’s okay. If not, you have a situation where wealth is lost en masse due to revenues not being brought in. This, is exactly what happened with the dotcom bubble. This is not to say Tumblr will be victim to this, but it is worth noting no less.