...the sidebar and most content is missing. It's not letting me delete the frigging Google ads (which I loathe). I've been contemplating switching over to WordPress for a while now, so I guess this is a sign... in future, my new home will be http://marketingmystic.wordpress.com/
It's usually the blog posts that get my attention but this weekend, it was the fracas in the comment section on Guy Kawasaki's blog post that got me thinking. Guy posted on how Houston has the "funniest Web 2.0 babes" and he went on to share this hilarious introduction by Jenny Lawson of Good Mom/Bad Mom.
... What does matter though is that Guy Kawasaki kicks ass. That Guy Kawasaki is totally famous. That Guy Kawasaki is a genius who looks a little like Jackie Chan and could probably take you out with a roundhouse kick if he wanted to. And, most importantly, that Guy Kawasaki is here with us tonight.
So without further ado, I give you…Guy Kawasaki.
You can read the full introduction on Guy's blog. For sure, it's very funny stuff and and I am glad he shared it. But I think the verbal free-for-all that ensued in the audience ie. the comments section is worth a mention. Here's what I am talking about:
...This post had nothing to do with changing the world and everything to do with Guy telling us how great his is. No feed reader in the world can sniff that out. You read a para or two to see what's up. Nobody was trying to be rude. Nobody died. You dn't have to defend Guy. Read the blog and appreciate the fact that it's free. We're just asking for some consistency.
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Wow - if you hate Guy's blog - why stick around and complain? Move on! ...I like this blog and regularly read it. I am thankful for the free gift. I pay no money to read this blog. If I don't find a particular post useful, I can move on. That's why they invented feed readers - or come to think of it - Alltop!
--------------------------....Self-serving and off-topic posts are Ok once I a while, in the same way occasional contextual advertising is acceptabl. However a balance must be maintained.
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Denis says - "when one posts to a blog he should largely post for the benefit of the readers."
I say BS to that! The question begging to be asked and answered is - what if anything, do bloggers owe their audience? When an author writes anything it's going to be self-serving. That's the point of self expression. Do you think that every great writer in history wrote to please everyone? No, one writes about what one wants to write about. Period. End of story. Get over it.
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Wow, that's some debate! The question at the heart of this fracas is - what if anything do bloggers owe their audience? Wikipedia's definition of blog(ging) is,
A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
In other words, a blog is supposed to be personal. But as blogging has evolved, there has been an emergence of 'blogberties' and professional mega-blog sites like the Technorati, GigaOM, Mashable, Huffington Post who have turned these 'personal musings' into a lucrative business. These professional blogs have an uncanny resemblance to the traditional news media networks. The emphasis is on constantly spewing content or being the first one with breaking news. But aside from the behemoth blogs and small select group of professional/B-List bloggers, blogging still largely remains an individual endeavor.
Bendy3008 blogged about the relative unimportance of blogging and social networks based on Edelman's Trust Barometer survey, which shows that consumers still find traditional news media, business magazine and newspaper articles to be the most credible sources of information on a company and/or product while blogging and social networks rank very low.
While individually, some blogs and bloggers have tremendous influence and credibility, it hasn't translated to the blogosphere in general. Technorati claims to be tracking over 100million blogs and there are 175K new blogs coming up everyday. That's heck-of-a-lot of content out there and it's challenging to separate the good ones from the bad. Not only is the volume of content staggering, blogging still remains a highly unstructured media. Bloggers control the format, content, frequency of their blog posts but there is no standard format or consistency.
On the other hand, traditional media has a very structured format, you typically don't hear the news anchors or talk show hosts veering off-topic or devoting an entire episode to a discussion of their personal life. If that happens, how long do you think you'll stick around before you flick the channel? So, while you get a very narrow view of things, traditional media still continues to be a much more credible source than most of the blogs out there and for a good reason.
I truly believe that the essence of blogging is keeping it human and keeping it conversational. Rankings do matter, but there's a fine line between being 'customer-oriented' and pandering. As an avid consumer of blogs and a newbie blogger myself, I am acutely aware of the time, effort, and dedication it takes to churn out quality content. The advantage of blogs vs. traditional media is that there's a great deal of value in getting unadulterated content from someone's who's not trying to pander to the masses or obsessed with ratings.
I don't think we've heard the last of this debate. As blogs evolve, so will the audience and the expectations will go higher rather than lower. The blog audience has many choices, if they find that a blog doesn't meet their expectations, they will vote with their feet or in this case... their mouse.
There's yet another Top (insert some blogging metric here) list out this week and this time it's Techcrunch with its Top 100 tech bloggers list based on headlines in Techmeme, which Mathew Ingram has described as 'trolling for links' on a slow weekend. There are plenty of other top blogs lists out there and everyone has their own metrics on how to measure a blog and/or blogger's popularity.
Some like Alexa use the same metrics to measure social media like page views and traffic rankings, which are used to measure the popularity of static websites. Rating Burner relies on number of RSS subscribers to compile its list of popular blogs, which isn't all that different from traditional media, which uses viewership or circulation numbers to measure a network's or print media popularity.
Technorati has its own set of metrics - 'authority' and 'ranking'. Technorati Authority refers to the number of blogs linking to your website in the last six months, while Ranking is based on how far your blog is from the top. I think Technorati's methodology stays true to the spirit of 'fractured conversations', which in essence is what blogging is all about.
The recent discussion on the loss of control (and revenue) to content creators, highlights the critical often-overlooked question which is - how can bloggers monetize their content across the gazillion new social aggegators that are cropping up everyday, especially ones like Friendfeed? If blogging is all about 'conversations' and engaging the audience, how can a blogger track (and monetize) those 'conversations' when they are happening unbeknown to the blogger on a different platform?
This where I think the popularity metrics propogated by social media tools are sorely lacking. It's still unclear how valuable are Stumbles or Diggs to a blogger's revenue-generating potential. I mean, what impact do 'Like' or comments through Friendfeed have on a professional blogger's ability to attract advertisers? There's no easy aggregation of social 'popularity' metrics and that's a huge gaping hole that the social sites and feed aggregators need to fix.
Blogging and social media in general, needs its own set of metrics and new social media tools should provide analytic support to capture those metrics within and across various platforms. I don't think mega-blog sites like Techcrunch or GigaOM (which are eerily similar to traditional news media) have any cause to worry but the smaller professional bloggers could benefit from some much-needed changes. Especially, if the conversations they spark around the Internet are a true measure of their influence in the blogosphere.
There's an interesting debate going on in the blogosphere and at the center is Shyftr, yet another content aggregator. (I think my next post should be on 'How many content aggregators do we really need?')
Tony Hung's railing against 'content scrapers' and Robert Scoble's proclaiming that "Era of blogger's control is over'. There are two issues here, one is about content plagiarism that Tony is most concerned about ,
However, in my mind, when a service cannot exist *without* republishing others content in its entirety, and directly profits from that republishing without the original consent of the author, there’s something that isn’t right.
I see Tony's point, but bloggers can limit or block their feeds from being published in their entirety, thereby forcing folks to come to their blogs for the whole content. However, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I don't condone plagiarism, but isn't this is the same argument that traditional news media used when blogging was in its infancy? As I recall, there was a huge hue and cry about how bloggers were taking content from the news media and reposting with some comments on their own blogs, thereby driving traffic away from the traditional news media sites and to their own blog. Ironic, that bloggers have now started complaining about others 'stealing' their content.
The second and much bigger issue is around 'fractured conversations' that have proliferated due to feed readers like Friendfeed that allow comments. Louis Gray says,
The Web as a whole has clamored for full RSS feeds, not partial, so we don't have to return to the originating site. Some of us have just as loudly asked for comments and conversations to enter the world of the RSS feed reader. Now that we're starting to see what it's like, maybe it's not what we had fully anticipated.
That's a great point, Louis. I can't help but wonder if bloggers ever had control over the conversations in the first place?! Blogging has always been about distributed content (and conversation). The reason blogging took off the way it did, was because discussions were no longer monopolized by a few individuals/media networks. Some Joe Schmoe in Idaho could start a conversation around organic potatoes and get a gazillion people participating in that conversation. That's true democratization of content and communication, thanks to the Internet and social media, blogging included.
I really liked Alexander van Elsa's thoughts on this,
Conversation takes place everywhere. On the web, at home, in a restaurant, with family, friends, work, you name it. There is no controlling that, but we shouldn’t want to either.
To be honest. If a blog post of mine leads to discussion anywhere on the web I would be very satisfied with it. I’m not in it for the traffic, the amount of readers, the number of pageviews. I blog because I believe that I might be able to give something to the people that want to take the time to read my stuff. ...It tells me that the things I have written could perhaps inspire others to do something with it, completing and starting new circles.
Say, you're at a cocktail party and you start a conversation with one person. If it's an interesting conversation, more folks will join in and the conversation will happen around you, with you. But if you (your conversation) aren't engaging, folks may very well take that discussion elsewhere. I think the same theory applies to blogs, if you aren't engaging the reader, they will move on and take their conversation with them. It doesn't matter if you were the 'original' initiator of that conversation or just a passerby.
Here's the thing, if someone picks up my feed through Friendfeed, and starts a conversation around it, I am okay with it. But you can't force conversation and you can't control where conversations happen, that's true offline and that's even more true online, where it is becoming easier to 'move' conversations.
That being said, would I love to have some type of 'comment aggregator' to help me track my 'popularity'? You betcha. For folks who blog for a living, the lack of trackability (and measurement) is a real issue and needs to be resolved. I think that the social media tools like feed readers have evolved so fast that the players/bloggers haven't been able to keep up. Now we are scrambling to control the conversation, instead of enhancing the tools that caused this 'fracturization' of conversation in the first place.
Last year, Washington Post reported on how RIAA was suing music fans. I saw many commonalities between that debate and this current one. Here's an interesting insight,
As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don't usually kill off old media: That's the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.
I think blogging is slowly turning into the 'old media' and the same advice holds true. I don't think the question is about 'picking sides' as Scoble would have us do, it's more about the fact that the Internet is constantly evolving and blogging, bloggers, and blogging metrics also need to evolve. It's Darwinism, pure and simple, you can't stop change, the only choice we have is to adapt.
Wowza, what a day!
I got up this morning and out of sheer habit, the first thing I did was to look at my feedstats (yes, I know it's a disease). I noticed byteloads of traffic coming to my blog, so I was surprised..pleasantly :-)
That's when I realized that Louis Gray, one of my fav bloggers, whom I've been following on Friendfeed, added my name to 5 blogs that he recommends. Holy Guacamole!! How neat is that?! Here are the other 4 blogs on his list.
Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily (anzman.blogspot.com)
Focus: SEO, Analytics, Web 2.0
Recent Highlight: The A-list just changed and you're on it
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now
Hutch Carpenter / I'm Not Actually a Geek (bhc3.wordpress.com)
Focus: RSS, Facebook, Social Networking
Recent Highlight: The Best Blogs You're Not Reading? Toluu Knows
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now
Eric Berlin / Online Media Cultist ( onlinemediacultist.com)
Focus: Twitter, TechMeme, Online Media
Recent Highlight: What I Learned Friday Night on Twitter
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now
Carlo Maglinao / TechBays (techbays.com)
Focus: Google, RSS, LinkedIn
Recent Highlight: Ten Power Tips on Facebook Usage
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now
The blogosphere is chockfull of amazing folks that I probably will never meet, but it's great to have your work noticed by someone you actually admire. So, thanks for making my day, Louis!
Here's one neat way to drive more traffic to your blog, become a guest blogger on another blog that already has the traffic. One of my favorite bloggers, Tony of Deepjiveinterests is planning a brief hiatus and is looking for guest bloggers.
This morning, I noticed a post on Patrick Curl's blog inviting guest bloggers ie. aspiring bloggers looking to drive traffic to their blogs. I've never read this blog before but it offers interesting content for aspiring bloggers including "7 ways to be best buds with an A-list blogger".
Here's his offer in a brief, write a (guest) blog post for him and he might publish it with a link to your blog and also give you an "Intense Blog Review" (apparently worth $40). If your post doesn't make the cut, he'll still give you some coverage through a 1-paragraph review of your post. Why should you write for him? Here's what he has to say,
This blog is about to break the 100 subscribers mark. I have 1400 followers on twitter, and 600 friends on friendfeed who will see each post. This blog gets 1000 hits per day(at least it has been for the past 2 weeks.) My alexa ranking hasn’t caught up since the traffic is new, but it will catch up, very quick.
For the curious and the aspiring, check out rest of his offer on his blog. Good luck! :-)
I think 'nothing' is waaaaaay underrated. Think about it, Seinfeld made it big despite being a show about..well..nothing. Twitter is yet another tribute to our obsession with feckless entertainment. The techno-crowd is going ga-ga over the Color Wars, where you pick your 'color team' and join them in an online 'war'. Their first challenge? Take a picture of yourself throwing either rock, paper, or scissor. Yeah, I know..words fail me.
The frentic pace of the net is energizing but it's also creating an era of paranoia - blink and you might just miss the next big nothing. In the spirit of not getting left behind on meaningless-phenomenon-that-might-snowball-into-something-big, Mashable has finally endorsed verygreenteam for the Twitter Color Wars, which they lovingly describe as,
"..the shortest-lived web fad since the Star Wars Kid team"
It's simply fascinating that a site/utility like Twitter (which still hasn't figured out a way to monetize) has emerged as a force to be reckoned with. The Twitteratis flexed some serious muscle during Sarah Lacy's trainwreck of an interview with Facebook's Zuckerberg at SXSW, when they rallied to take control of an interview gone bad. Twitter has tremendous potential for creating big-time buzz (and organizing) over political candidate, new product, war protest, or over just plain old-fashioned nothing like... Color Wars.
So, while you peruse the latest happenings on this non-event at Mashable's Twitter page, I am off to burn some serious threadmill rubber before I go all soft and mushy fighting virtual wars on my laptop ;)
If you thought the blogosphere was dull and appealed only to those affiliated with GeekCentral, think again. I am finding that the blog-universe has all the elements of a good soap opera - death threats, deadly competition, scandals, romance, sideshows, sleaze, and best of all, good ol' fashioned slug-fest going on since early March at Deep Jive Interests.
The question that's causing this free-for-all mania is this: Does an "A-list" of bloggers exist? Jason Calcanis says No, it's all hard work and heart.
Spend 3-4 years blogging every day for 3-8 hours a day and then tell me you didn't make it to the A-list and people held you back... I *might* believe it after that.
What a bunch of cry babies you "B-lister" and "C listers" are.... no one is holding you back but yourselves! I never considered myself A, B, or C list.
I've spent my life creating my own frackin' list... and you losers should too!
Tony of Deep Jive Interests says yes, there is a A-list and it's not easy to break into.
I’ve come a long way in blogging, but I’m not blind to the fact that the vast majority of bloggers — even those who bring something new, refreshing, and regular to the table — may find barriers to blogging success in spite of hard work or their talent. I’d like to believe in the democracy of blogging, but the fact is that there are certain advantages that some bloggers have that others don’t. Not having them doesn’t mean you can’t be an A-lister, but I have yet to find one that didn’t have any.
The “A-list” exists, and it exists naturally. Do I think some of them “call it in”? Sure. But some of them also continue to blog just as hard as they do when they first started. But to think that a natural stratification doesn’t exist — or if it does, is easy to penetrate if you “are good and work hard” — is quite frankly, blind and a little arrogant.
He further clarifies,
I don’t begrudge a-listers for being a-listers, because its not an issue of blogging success. Many bloggers took that to be the substance of my beef. Its not. And that’s because being part of the a-list isn’t a function of how “good” you are at a blogger, how “well” you market your blog, or even how “interested” you are at creating blog rolls and interacting with your community.
Rather, all of those things are necessary but insufficient to be “a-list” as part of the way I was using the term. Folks, its about their ability to be so close to The News, that they’re either creating it, reporting it, or delivering it. These guys, through their connections, their businesses, or their activities are real influences in the real industry of choice.
You cannot BUT help but pay attention to them because they are a genuine source of News in any way that you want to define it.
Wow! Now, that's an interesting debate even if you have been blogging for a while. It is especially interesting if you are a newbie blogger struggling with the same question, which is at the heart of this debate - how do I make my blog more successful, what does it really take?
My takeaway from this discussion is that as Tony defines it, you can be an A-lister if you have the connections, clout, notoriety or some natural advantage that others don't have. That being said, you don't need to be an A-lister to get noticed and drive massive amounts of traffic to your blog. Tony has written a brilliant article on how to market your blog, which has some real gems to help new bloggers and he also includes ways to make social media work for you.
The "natural stratification" that Tony refers to in his post is about how some folks have natural advantages that they can use to their advantage, while others have to work smart to get to the same place. The reason, I say smarter and not harder is because no one here is knocking the value of hard work and blogging consistently. Hard work is a given, even if you have all the advantages.
I'll leave you with Jason's words of wisdom,
Blogging is the most open medium ever created. Anyone can join the discussion, post comments, and get in the link pool. All you have to do is:
a) show up
b) have something intelligent to say
c) join the discussion and contribute something meaningful.
Now, if you have nothing to contribute, you suck as a writer, and you don't want to show up every day for a couple of years to establish yourself, well, I can't help you.
Blunt but true. If you don't want to do the work, don't whine when you don't see results.This is the best discussion I've read in ages, two sharp people with two very interesting povs. I am loving it!
If you are tearing your hair out, wondering where in the blazing blog-universe, can I find the truly great blogs? Fret no more, Jaffe Juice has a MVB (Most Valuable Blog) contest going, where you can look at voter's picks for good to great blogs. You will recognize some of the well-known names but there are some hidden gems as well.
Here are some of the top picks:
John Moore of Brand Autopsy, who's also on this list has his own March-madness style contest for the top Marketing Blogs. John has narrowed down 64 marketing blogs that he chose to a final four that include,
.... Seth Godin’s blog (#1 seed) takes on The Church of the Customer (#1 seed) in one match-up. The “winner” of that contest will face the winner between Creating Passionate Users (#1 seed) versus Marketing Profs Daily Fix (#3 seed).
Don't you just love it, when someone else does all the work for you ;)
Enjoy!
The blogosphere may have started off as a small close-knit community of bloggers, but recent death threats received by Kathy Sierra, the prominent blogger shows that the doors of the blogosphere have been blown wide open. The social media/Web 2.0 revolution has brought about many amazing changes, but there's a flip side to everything. This is an era blessed with democratization of media, where everyone has a voice and can be heard. Unfortunately, 'everyone' also includes crazies of the world.
The situation with Kathy has gotten so bad that she is terrified to leave her home and has cancelled her speaking engagements. She is not sure if she will ever blog again.
As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I'm not. I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog.
Blogging has made communication and collaboration so easy that a rookie (like myself) can "rub shoulders" online with the Goliaths of the offline world. But, this also means that every Joe Schmoe can do the same. Technology can be used for good or for evil. It makes it easier to connect with people, but that also means mentally unhinged folks can get to you easily as well.
I don't know what's more disturbing, the vicious nature of these threats or the folks who condone this kind of behavior. Although, we would like to believe that these are just random rantings from some mentally unstable individual/s, but according to Kathy, these threats have been posted on a blog co-authored/owned by a group of well-known bloggers.
But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs... blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you've probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy).
With bloggers like these, who needs trolls?! It is unconscionable that someone would go to this extent to bring a popular blogger down. Competition can be vicious and this should serve as a reminder to those of us, who are naive enough to believe that the Internet is a safe haven from the loonies of the world and deathly competition.
Steve Rubel, a popular PR/technology blogger says,
Although startling and thoroughly condemnable, this situation - or God forbid worse - is bound to occur and it does all the time. Nobody should have to deal with such threats. However, the blogosphere is a community made up of human beings. Therefore, it's going to bring out all of the good in society and also the bad. Sometimes they converge and that's what is happening here. The bad are unjustly targeting someone good.
I agree! In the blogosphere, Kathy Sierra is a celebrity and the online world is no different from the offline world, when it comes to the public's pathological attraction to well-known personas. The online world is probably more dangerous, because of the cover of anonymity that online media provides.
Kathy is one of the few credible women in the blogosphere and I hope she continues to blog. She's an inspiration to all of us, especially women and we need her.
kathy sierra
blogosphere
blogging
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