So Krisco and I are having a cosy chat about the state of blogosphere and then she asks would I want to be dooce? While I was crossing my legs at the mere thought of all the surgery that would involve, Krisco clarified the question as: would I want that level of popularity?
The upside: It would absolutely change my life. That level of popularity and, let's be honest, the level of income that it brings would enable me to approach the old hierarchy of needs in a different way. I'd get to be my own boss and stay home a lot more. Sidenote: I haven't the first clue as to what that income is, but by their own admission it is sufficient that neither dooce or her husband currently need to work what you might call a "normal" job.
The downside: It's a huge risk. It's alright if you have a handle on what it is that makes your blog successful and are able to sustain the formula, but what if you can't. How about a couple of months of writers block. Let's face it, no one would notice if I didn't post for a couple of months, but it would wipe dooce off the map. Whilst there are no consequences for me if I fall out of the Top 350,000 blogs on Technorati, the same cannot be true for dooce if she falls out of the Top 100. Tristan Louis recently posted a clinical analysis of the Technorati Top 100 which proves just how dynamic the list is, and by extension how tenuous anyone's grip is on a position within it (unless, it would seem, your blog is named Boing Boing) .
The other thing that comes with a successful blog appears to be the detractors. I've seen a little of that side of things from reading the comments on Scoble's blog and I've seen dooce refer several times to what I'd label as hate mail. I wouldn't underestimate how difficult it might be to handle that on a daily basis.
On balance, no I wouldn't want that level of popularity. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want my blog to have higher traffic levels than it does today. An interesting question is: where is the happy medium?
Tags: Crib Ceiling, Blogging, dooce, Technorati, Robert Scoble
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Blogging peaks?
The esteemed Washington Post appears to have bought into some of the recent twaddle that somehow blogging has peaked. Personally, I don't think we've even reached breakfast in the blogging timeline.
The article quotes a Gallup pole titled "Blog Readership Bogged Down" that reports that only 9 percent of those polled said they regularly read blogs. I wonder how many people have read a blog in it's online form and never realised. The poll goes on to claim that 66 percent never read them. I wonder how that will change when Vista and the next generation of Office with embedded RSS brings the technology front and centre.
Update: Kent makes a more reasoned argument as to why the blogosphere is still a growth area.
Tags: Washington Post, Gallup, Blogging, Kent Newsome
The article quotes a Gallup pole titled "Blog Readership Bogged Down" that reports that only 9 percent of those polled said they regularly read blogs. I wonder how many people have read a blog in it's online form and never realised. The poll goes on to claim that 66 percent never read them. I wonder how that will change when Vista and the next generation of Office with embedded RSS brings the technology front and centre.
Update: Kent makes a more reasoned argument as to why the blogosphere is still a growth area.
Tags: Washington Post, Gallup, Blogging, Kent Newsome
Blogging Psychology
Crib Ceiling pointed me today in the direction of an article titled "Blogs to Riches" from the New York Magazine. The article immediately brought to mind something Kent Newsome wrote at the start of the year on "Why It's Impossible to Build a New Blog in 2006" and my response to Kent which was "I choose to believe the glass is half full"
Kent's thesis was that successful blogs have one of three things going for them:
1) they got there first and filled an empty space
2) the blog represents a large company which has a ready made audience
3) they get help from established bloggers
Kent went on to make this statement:
So if all this is true what advice does the article have for the aspiring blogger:
Having spent a lot of time reading the blogosphere in the last few months I can see more clearly what Kent was saying back at the start of the year and the article backs up what Kent was saying with a splash of psychology.
So what does all this mean for me:
1) Would I like to write a popular blog? Hell, who wouldn't.
2) Do I think my blog will ever be A List? Not if I keep doing what I'm doing. I'm certainly not regular or relentless enough, and my stuff isn't generally what you'd call witty. I'm not about to crank out dozens of blogs, I have enough trouble keeping one blog going.
3) Does it matter if my blog never makes the A List? Nope. I'd like to think that more people are interested in what I have to say than the few visitors I do get, but I don't do this to join the A List. By the way visitors - thanks for stopping by and reading what I have to say!
4) Why do I do this? I do this to take part and because I think I have things to say. I do it because I've met some interesting people and because I've come across interesting insights and I'd like to keep meeting people and continue to be stimulated by what others think. I've discovered lots of software and ideas that I'd never have found otherwise. Some of the things I've found changed my life, some of it made me more productive, some things made me laugh, other things made me sad. Some of it has been uplifting, sometimes it makes me fume. The internet truly is an amazing place.
Tags: Crib Ceiling, Kent Newsome, Blogging, power law, A List
Kent's thesis was that successful blogs have one of three things going for them:
1) they got there first and filled an empty space
2) the blog represents a large company which has a ready made audience
3) they get help from established bloggers
Kent went on to make this statement:
I no longer believe you can have a successful blog without a ready made audience. Why? Because, unfortunately, the blogosphere is a closed system. There are too many people who believe they are going to get rich by writing a blog. Once you add the element of money into the equation, the element of competition soon follows. So you get the haves linking to one another (and largely only to one another) and ignoring (or at best tolerating) the have nots, in an effort to boost their status and, perhaps more importantly, protect their shares of the readership pie. Anyone who argues this isn't true hasn't spent much time surfing around the blogosphere.The article adds some weight to Kent's contention that there is disparity in the blogospere and suggests an explantion for it. The article relies heavily on research by Clay Shirky, an instructor at New York University, who looked at linking behaviour on a sample of blogs.
When Shirky sorted the blogs from most linked to least linked and lined them up on a chart, the curve began up high, with the lucky few. But then it quickly fell into a steep dive, flattening off into the distance, where the vast majority of ignored blogs reside. The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive.
Economists and network scientists have a name for Shirky’s curve: a “power-law distribution.” Power laws are not limited to the Web; in fact, they’re common to many social systems. If you chart the world’s wealth, it forms a power-law curve: A tiny number of rich people possess most of the world’s capital, while almost everyone else has little or none.
The power law is dominant because of a quirk of human behavior: When we are asked to decide among a dizzying array of options, we do not act like dispassionate decision-makers, weighing each option on its own merits. Popularity breeds popularity.
“It’s not about moral failings or any sort of psychological thing. People aren’t lazy—they just base their decisions on what other people are doing,” Shirky says. “It’s just social physics. It’s like gravity, one of those forces.”Kent and I agreed that there is an advantage to being an early adopter and the article supports this with the statement that first-movers get a crucial leg up in this kind of power-law system.
The article describes three business models for blogging success:
1) The accidental tourist: A lone writer who starts a blog as a mere hobby but then wakes up one day to realize his audience is now as big as a small city newspaper.
2) The record-label approach: Crank out dozens and dozens of sites and hope that one or two will become hits. [The Jason Calcanis model]
3) The boutique approach: a publisher who crafts individual blogs the way Condé Nast crafts magazines—each one carefully aimed at some ineffable, deluxe readership. [The Nick Denton model]
So if all this is true what advice does the article have for the aspiring blogger:
1)Regularity and relentlessness,” says Arianna Huffington. “That’s how you break through the static of the 5,000-channel universe.” What’s more, a blog is like a shark: If it stops moving, it dies. Without fresh postings every day—hell, every few minutes—even the most well-linked blog will quickly lose its audience. The A-listers cannot rest on their laurels.
2) “The good news is that it’s still possible to create a top-ranked blog,” says Shirky. “The bad news is, the way to get into the top ten now seems to be public relations.” Just posting witty entries and hoping for traffic won’t do it. You have to actively seek out attention from the press. “That’s how they’re jump-starting the links structure. It’s not organic.”
Having spent a lot of time reading the blogosphere in the last few months I can see more clearly what Kent was saying back at the start of the year and the article backs up what Kent was saying with a splash of psychology.
So what does all this mean for me:
1) Would I like to write a popular blog? Hell, who wouldn't.
2) Do I think my blog will ever be A List? Not if I keep doing what I'm doing. I'm certainly not regular or relentless enough, and my stuff isn't generally what you'd call witty. I'm not about to crank out dozens of blogs, I have enough trouble keeping one blog going.
3) Does it matter if my blog never makes the A List? Nope. I'd like to think that more people are interested in what I have to say than the few visitors I do get, but I don't do this to join the A List. By the way visitors - thanks for stopping by and reading what I have to say!
4) Why do I do this? I do this to take part and because I think I have things to say. I do it because I've met some interesting people and because I've come across interesting insights and I'd like to keep meeting people and continue to be stimulated by what others think. I've discovered lots of software and ideas that I'd never have found otherwise. Some of the things I've found changed my life, some of it made me more productive, some things made me laugh, other things made me sad. Some of it has been uplifting, sometimes it makes me fume. The internet truly is an amazing place.
Tags: Crib Ceiling, Kent Newsome, Blogging, power law, A List
Friday, February 24, 2006
Tilting at windmills
Dave Winer has written a contribution today entitled "Hate in the Blogosphere". In it he notes that the level of venom being directed at him on a personal level has crossed the line. I've watched this in my aggregator for days without really having a handle on what exactly is the issue, but understanding that their are some deep feelings on both sides. What I've mainly seen until today though has been passion.
Sidenote: Although Dave's post turned up in my aggregator and I've used the link within the post that arrived in my aggregator, the link isn't working. It will take you to today's Scripting News but the essay on Hate isn't there.
I noticed the other day Robert Scoble was being subjected to a level of personal attack in the comments on his blog that I found offensive. Over the past few days I've been pretty sick with a cold and chest infection and given that I had some time on my hands whilst being laid up in bed I tilted at windmills.
In other words I engaged with a few of the more unpleasant commenters and I engaged them on Scoble's blog in the comments. I was pleased to see a few people jump in and support my view but I was also mildly suprised by the level of apathy.
I fear that we will lose good and important conversationalists and contributors who will be drowned out by those who make it their mission to shout louder or whose aim is merely to be offensive. It's a form of mob rule. It's anarchy. I agree we shouldn't tolerate it, but I'm not sure what we do about it?
Technorati Tags: Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Blogging
Sidenote: Although Dave's post turned up in my aggregator and I've used the link within the post that arrived in my aggregator, the link isn't working. It will take you to today's Scripting News but the essay on Hate isn't there.
I noticed the other day Robert Scoble was being subjected to a level of personal attack in the comments on his blog that I found offensive. Over the past few days I've been pretty sick with a cold and chest infection and given that I had some time on my hands whilst being laid up in bed I tilted at windmills.
In other words I engaged with a few of the more unpleasant commenters and I engaged them on Scoble's blog in the comments. I was pleased to see a few people jump in and support my view but I was also mildly suprised by the level of apathy.
I fear that we will lose good and important conversationalists and contributors who will be drowned out by those who make it their mission to shout louder or whose aim is merely to be offensive. It's a form of mob rule. It's anarchy. I agree we shouldn't tolerate it, but I'm not sure what we do about it?
Technorati Tags: Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Blogging
Rex Hammock: Blog because....
Dave Winer points this morning at an interesting article by Rex Hammock:
Rex Hammock: "It's a mistake when anyone attempts to place mass-media business metrics to defining success or failure of a weblog."
The quote that rang bells for me though, was this one:
"If you run a business, blog because one day, I promise, you will be glad you have a place to respond when the conversation is about you."
Tags: Dave Winer, Rex Hammock, Blogging
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Are YouTube just another bunch of pirates?
I continue to enjoy Newsome.Org. Kent pointed me today in the direction of a contribution by Jason Calcanis on why YouTube is not a real business.
Jason makes his main point that the file sharing capabilities of YouTube makes it a business that relies on piracy to generate it's ranking. Unfortunately he extended the thought to call it a silly little business that anyone could start in a week and for that he's taken some heat. Counter arguments have pointed out that Flickr is similarly an FTP site with Tags, that technically what has been achieved by YouTube in terms of scalability isn't easy, and that the communities that sites like Flickr and YouTube have built are not easily replicated. Good points.
Let's back up a second to Jason's main point. People want facilities that allow them to share photos, videos, files and content. The problem is that if these facilities are delivered as free services then those companies are also delivering the capability to support piracy. Blogging is not immune, witness the rise of the piracy of blog entries being re-packaged by ad-supported delivery mechanisms.
Isn't one of the issues what YouTube are doing to deal with the issue of piracy? Are they doing nothing or even worse are they relying on the piracy and therefore encouraging it to an extent, without crossing the legal line, in order to build their community? And given their business model, scale = revenue. Flickr, by contrast, appear to be more interested in copyright infringement and self-policing. It's possible that if YouTube fail to police themselves adequately that eventually someone else (e.g. the courts) will do it for them.
Technorati Tags: Kent Newsome, Jason Calcanis, YouTube, Flickr
Jason makes his main point that the file sharing capabilities of YouTube makes it a business that relies on piracy to generate it's ranking. Unfortunately he extended the thought to call it a silly little business that anyone could start in a week and for that he's taken some heat. Counter arguments have pointed out that Flickr is similarly an FTP site with Tags, that technically what has been achieved by YouTube in terms of scalability isn't easy, and that the communities that sites like Flickr and YouTube have built are not easily replicated. Good points.
Let's back up a second to Jason's main point. People want facilities that allow them to share photos, videos, files and content. The problem is that if these facilities are delivered as free services then those companies are also delivering the capability to support piracy. Blogging is not immune, witness the rise of the piracy of blog entries being re-packaged by ad-supported delivery mechanisms.
Isn't one of the issues what YouTube are doing to deal with the issue of piracy? Are they doing nothing or even worse are they relying on the piracy and therefore encouraging it to an extent, without crossing the legal line, in order to build their community? And given their business model, scale = revenue. Flickr, by contrast, appear to be more interested in copyright infringement and self-policing. It's possible that if YouTube fail to police themselves adequately that eventually someone else (e.g. the courts) will do it for them.
Technorati Tags: Kent Newsome, Jason Calcanis, YouTube, Flickr
Saturday, February 18, 2006
In the end today's gatekeepers get trampled on too...
In the beginning DARPA created the internet. And the geeks saw that this was good.
And Tim Berners-Lee said, "Let there be HTML," and there was web pages. The geeks saw that html was good, but it separated the geeks from the masses.
And then Dave Winer said, "Let there be RSS," and there was blogs and aggregators. The geeks saw that RSS was good, and more of the masses got involved and the line between the geeks and the masses was blurred.
And then Bill Gates said, "Build RSS into Vista," and the great disruption began. The line between the geeks and the masses disappeared. The word of mouth network trampled on institutional communication tactics. The cluetrain ran over the institutions who didn't get it. And Hugh Macleod thought this was bloody funny and drew a cartoon.
Oh, and by the way Kent, I think "the gatekeepers" get run over too.
Technorati Tags: Kent Newsome, Dave Winer, Hugh Macleod, gatekeepers
And Tim Berners-Lee said, "Let there be HTML," and there was web pages. The geeks saw that html was good, but it separated the geeks from the masses.
And then Dave Winer said, "Let there be RSS," and there was blogs and aggregators. The geeks saw that RSS was good, and more of the masses got involved and the line between the geeks and the masses was blurred.
And then Bill Gates said, "Build RSS into Vista," and the great disruption began. The line between the geeks and the masses disappeared. The word of mouth network trampled on institutional communication tactics. The cluetrain ran over the institutions who didn't get it. And Hugh Macleod thought this was bloody funny and drew a cartoon.
Oh, and by the way Kent, I think "the gatekeepers" get run over too.
Technorati Tags: Kent Newsome, Dave Winer, Hugh Macleod, gatekeepers
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Why Pandora Rocks
Kent Newsome got me thinking that I ought to write a post about my own Pandora experience. I've been using Pandora for a couple of months now and given the spate of recent posts about the comparison between Pandora and Last.fm I guess now is as good a time as any to say why I think Pandora rocks.
Reason 1 - Through Pandora I discovered Howie Day. Both Pandora and Last.fm help you discover talented artists that you haven't heard before taking an artist you choose as the starting point of the discovery process. That's really where the similarity ends. Pandora is built on an approach in which music tracks are decomposed into over 400 attributes which include things like melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics and then plays songs with interesting musical similarities to your chosen artist. Last.fm is based on social recommendations. It works on the principle that the people who share an interest in one artist probably share an interest in other artists. Steve Krause has written a much more insightful article on the differences between the two approaches which is well worth a read.
I created a station on Pandora with a starting point of James Blunt. Within minutes the station played a track called "She Says" by Howie Day. I've been a little obsessed ever since. I've bought the album, I play the album in the car to and from work, I've ripped it to my laptop to play to myself at work, I've moved tracks onto my phone to use as my ringtone and my alarm. It's likely I would never have discovered Howie without Pandora, so in my world Pandora rocks.
Reason 2 - Pandora has a very clean and simple interface. Getting started is simple. For me Pandora wins hands down on usability.
Reason 3 - Last.fm wouldn't let me start from James Blunt as my favourite artist. It only says "Artist not streamable".
Technorati Tags: pandora, last.fm, Kent Newsome, Steve Krause, Howie Day, James Blunt
Reason 1 - Through Pandora I discovered Howie Day. Both Pandora and Last.fm help you discover talented artists that you haven't heard before taking an artist you choose as the starting point of the discovery process. That's really where the similarity ends. Pandora is built on an approach in which music tracks are decomposed into over 400 attributes which include things like melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics and then plays songs with interesting musical similarities to your chosen artist. Last.fm is based on social recommendations. It works on the principle that the people who share an interest in one artist probably share an interest in other artists. Steve Krause has written a much more insightful article on the differences between the two approaches which is well worth a read.
I created a station on Pandora with a starting point of James Blunt. Within minutes the station played a track called "She Says" by Howie Day. I've been a little obsessed ever since. I've bought the album, I play the album in the car to and from work, I've ripped it to my laptop to play to myself at work, I've moved tracks onto my phone to use as my ringtone and my alarm. It's likely I would never have discovered Howie without Pandora, so in my world Pandora rocks.
Reason 2 - Pandora has a very clean and simple interface. Getting started is simple. For me Pandora wins hands down on usability.
Reason 3 - Last.fm wouldn't let me start from James Blunt as my favourite artist. It only says "Artist not streamable".
Technorati Tags: pandora, last.fm, Kent Newsome, Steve Krause, Howie Day, James Blunt
Hugh, there's something wrong with this picture....
I notice that Hugh Macleod and Robert Scoble are at an interesting looking conference in Switzerland this week. Hugh is one of the most influential bloggers in the UK, Robert is referred to on the conference website as Microsoft's Uberblogger.
I did a quick search around the globe for blogging conferences. The list I've come up with isn't intended to be a complete or comprehensive. I didn't for example include Gnomedex, which I'd love to attend, but doesn't to the best of my knowledge, have a primary focus on the blogosphere. I'm sure I've missed a load of others but check this out:
USA
The RSS Summit
BlogHer
MeshForum
Blog Business Summit
BloggerCon
Syndicate Conference
BlogOn
Canada
Northern Voice
Paris, France
Les Blogs
Geneva, Switzerland
LIFT (Life, Ideas, Futures, Together)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Reboot
Vienna, Austria
BlogTalk Reloaded
Hugh, there's something wrong with this picture. I don't want to upset the folks who ran Global Voices which is a conference with a blogging theme but, correct me if I'm wrong, it has a very specific focus and isn't what you might call a general conference about blogging.
So I'm wondering what the problem is. Is it that we're not getting it? Is it that we're getting it slower than the rest of the world? Have we not reached the tipping point in the UK yet?
Most importantly are we, as a country, in serious danger of missing the cluetrain / hughtrain?
Technorati Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Robert Scoble, Hugh Macleod, cluetrain, hughtrain
I did a quick search around the globe for blogging conferences. The list I've come up with isn't intended to be a complete or comprehensive. I didn't for example include Gnomedex, which I'd love to attend, but doesn't to the best of my knowledge, have a primary focus on the blogosphere. I'm sure I've missed a load of others but check this out:
USA
The RSS Summit
BlogHer
MeshForum
Blog Business Summit
BloggerCon
Syndicate Conference
BlogOn
Canada
Northern Voice
Paris, France
Les Blogs
Geneva, Switzerland
LIFT (Life, Ideas, Futures, Together)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Reboot
Vienna, Austria
BlogTalk Reloaded
Hugh, there's something wrong with this picture. I don't want to upset the folks who ran Global Voices which is a conference with a blogging theme but, correct me if I'm wrong, it has a very specific focus and isn't what you might call a general conference about blogging.
So I'm wondering what the problem is. Is it that we're not getting it? Is it that we're getting it slower than the rest of the world? Have we not reached the tipping point in the UK yet?
Most importantly are we, as a country, in serious danger of missing the cluetrain / hughtrain?
Technorati Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Robert Scoble, Hugh Macleod, cluetrain, hughtrain
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
