Shining a light on the best and their ideas

“More people would be in a better place if more people shared their ideas.”

This from Ev Williams (@Ev) discussing the future of his publishing platform, Medium, with Gregory Ferenstein ( @ferenstein) of Techcrunch.

Medium, self described as a better place to read and write things that matter, was founded by Williams and Biz Stone, co-founders of Twitter. Medium is intriguing in the way it blends the concepts of Twitter and blogging. No surprise in that Williams was a co-founder of Blogger, which he sold to Google.

The themes Williams spoke of are much the feelings we have about our LexBlog Network (LXBN) of over 8,000 blogging lawyers.

No question consumers of legal services (consumers or companies) would be in a better place if more lawyers shared their insight online. Not to speak of the benefits to lawyers and our legal system from an open publishing system enabling commenting, sharing, and collaboration.

What about the junk that’s published on law blogs? After all, we have lawyers and marketers who are not looking to share ideas, but are looking to game Google with content.

From Williams:

People are going to publish crap on Medium… and guess what? There’s crap on Twitter. There’s crap on blogs. There’s crap on the Internet. And if we try to keep crap off the Internet, the Internet wouldn’t be important. The system’s working if there’s great stuff that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day and/or gets more attention than it would otherwise,

The key for us at LexBlog is to build a system which shines a light on good lawyers and their insight. As Williams says:

It’s also an optimistic stance to say that we can build a system where good things can shine and get attention. And there’s an audience for ideas and stories that appeal to more than just the most base desires of human beings.

It’ll be do be done at Medium with editors and algorithms, per Mathew Ingram (@mathewi), in his discussion of Williams’ Techcrunch interview.

We’ll do it much the same, though without the billion dollars Williams will have with the Twitter IPO.

Right now, Colin O’Keefe, who runs LXBN on a daily basis, reviews each of about 200 law blog posts a day published by members of the LexBlog Network. We have an edge in not having junk in that our members, being lawyers from around the world, are blogging to share insight so as to build relationships and enhance their reputation.

Content is tagged by area of the law, by items such as case names, names of lawyers, and firms, all for display on pages within LXBN. Content can be subscribed to via RSS and email.

We further shine a light on the best by featuring the best on the front page of LXBN, a daily top 10 of law blog posts, and LXBN TV interviews with lawyers on breaking areas of the law.

We have a long way to go, but why not be optimistic like Ev. He’s from the Midwest too — where all the good stuff comes from — after all.