Doc Searls has an interesting post today about The Sourceocracy– the new breed of “gatekeepers” represented by the A-List Bloggers. His post was inspired by Tristan Lewis’s The New Gatekeepers post.

These posts touch on some topics I’ve been thinking and writing about a lot lately, beginning with my first post on the closed blogosphere on January 1 of this year, through last month’s Meet the New Gatekeepers post. I suspect the deafening silence in response to this post will help prove not only those points but also my point earlier today about cross-blog conversations being a poor substitute for comments. In other words, what you’re reading here is probably the sound of one hand clapping.

Anyway, one of the points of Doc’s post is that it’s more about good writing than the name of the writer. And I think to an extent that’s true. I also think that if you write hard and long and (perhaps) good enough, you can at least get onto the grounds of the Big Bloggers Club, if perhaps not in the door. Mathew Ingram is one example of a future A-Lister I didn’t know three months ago, but read every day now.

But while Doc is probably one of the best at my Rule Number 4 (equal opportunity linking), I still see examples every day of A-Listers and near A-Listers passing right over better content from lesser knowns to link to a one-off comment by another A-Lister. It is not a universal problem, but it happens. Every day.

That’s not a crime. People can link to whoever they want to. Or not. But it does create somewhat of a closed system guarded by a new breed of gatekeeper.

Doc mentions in his post that the best way to get links from him is to send him an email or write about him in a post. I agree with that, to an extent. I too monitor links and mentions and, as I noted earlier today, try to respond in kind. But I feel uncomfortable writing someone and asking, even indirectly, for a link. To my knowledge, I’ve never written anyone to ask for a link, even though I desperately crave them. I wrote Jason Calcanis once to ask for his thoughts on something, but he ignored me, which was about what I expected.

I’d rather just try to write good stuff and wait for people to notice. It’s a harder path for sure. My thought (or at least my hope) is that if I take that route I’ll be able to stay longer once I get there.

As a brief aside, I have no problem at all when people email me a link to a post they think I would be interested in. It helps me find new people to read and, if I have anything to add, I’ll often make a comment or a linked response. So please don’t take any of this as a reason not to email me. I welcome emails.

The other problem, and one that I think is even more of a hindrance to inclusiveness, is that too many bloggers are so busy tossing up posts that they don’t even read what others are saying on the topic. If everyone is talking as fast as they can, no one is listening. We talk with posts, but we listen with links. This problem is by no means limited to A-Listers and near A-Listers. But like any room, people just keep talking louder and louder in a futile effort to be heard.

I think Doc is correct that the blogosphere is a wide open space. It’s just that most of us want to live in a little community as opposed to all by ourselves out here on the prairie. The A-Listers sometimes act like the passing wagon train. You can admire the way they move across the landscape, but if someone they don’t recognize comes over the hill, they circle the wagons.

Tristan makes some good points about the evolution of the new gatekeeper. I particularly agree with this:

Membership on [the blogging A-List] is limited and many have said that the way to disprove the power of the A-list is by showing that new members have appeared on it: what few are willing to admit is that the new members are really only allowed as one of these groups if they are vetted by enough existing members. This creates a self-fulfilling cycle where members of the small club of “blogs that matter” get to shape the agenda.

I have changed my thinking a little since my first post on the topic. You can get a place at the table if you work hard enough. But the fact that a few people slip in doesn’t mean there’s not a barrier to entry. There is a gate and people are keeping it. Perhaps not intentionally, but the effect is substantially the same.

And while I agree much of what Tristan says, I can’t help but notice that he linked to no other blogs, A-List or otherwise, in his post. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that, but for some reason I find it interesting.

There’s no easy fix for these problems. The best we can do is try to be inclusive and reward others who are inclusive with our eyeballs, our links and our appreciation.

And write hard. Every day.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, gatekeepers

Scoble has a post today on comment spam. He concludes that maybe Russ Beattie did the smart thing by turning off comments.

Here’s why I think Scoble is missing the boat on this one.

First, because comments and the interactivity they create are critical for the conversations that blogs are supposed to engender. Otherwise, you’re talking at someone not too them. It’s that simple. No detailed analysis needed.

A blog without some on-site interaction is the functional equivalent of a neighborhood newspaper. It’s solely about reading what the blogger thinks as opposed to discussing the topic. Candidly, I think it’s arrogant to say I’ll tell you what I think, but I don’t care what you think.

Yes, you can have cross-blog conversations in theory, but that just makes it a panel discussion. The people who don’t get linked back to can’t participate. And there are a million reasons why someone might not include another blogger in a cross-blog conversation: you don’t see the post, you get distracted on something else until the topic is stale, you only want to link to other rock stars, etc.

Not to mention all the people who don’t have blogs, who are the people we are supposed to be writing for to begin with.

One of my informal blogging policies is that if someone engages me in a cross-blog conversation, I try to always link back. I do this for two reasons: one, it promotes cross-blog discussion, which I really enjoy; and two, now that Newsome.Org actually gets some traffic, I want to be inclusive. But almost every day I notice a link to something I said earlier that I missed when the topic was fresh. So cross-blog conversations are great, but they are not a substitute for comments. Trying to substitute cross-blog conversation for comments is merely an opportunity for further exclusion, whether intentional or not.

The comment spam problem is legitimate, but let’s don’t get carried away and make the blogosphere less inclusive any more than we’ve stopped using email because we get spam in our inbox.

After all, isn’t stopping almost all comment spam merely a matter of adding a captcha and/or approving comments before they are posted? I do neither at this point (I don’t yet get enough comment spam to make it necessary), but it seems to me that adding those protections is a far better approach than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I want the blogosphere to be more conversational and more inclusive. Getting rid of comments would have the opposite effect.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, comments

[T]his is a safe place. A place where we can feel free sharing our feelings. Think of my [blog] as a nest in a tree of trust and understanding. We can say anything here.

–Old School

Mathew Ingram has a compelling post today about the value of and need for Comments and the conversations they engender. This conversation arises out of Russ Beattie’s decision to remove Comment functionality from his blog.

First about Russ’s decision. While I agree that he sounds defensive if not petulant in his response to the brouhaha over his election to discontinue Commenting on his blog, I can’t help but believe that part of all this is a circling of the wagons after the absurd cease and desist letter he got with respect the that SMS.ac post. If I got attacked like that for merely stating my opinion, I’d probably circle the wagons a little bit too. That’s not being a jerk; it’s human nature. Maybe he made the decision about Comments before he got that letter- I don’t know. But, again, if I were in his shoes I might very well do the same thing, at least for a while.

Now about Commenting in general. I think it’s a huge mistake to remove Comment functionality from a blog. And while I think Russ is reacting too strongly to the rational parts of the debate about Comments, even Comments on his blog (we should all ignore the fringe cases who just want to scream), I don’t think he’s wrecking the blogosphere or trying to offend anyone.

Mathew mentions Dave Winer, who for whatever reason doesn’t allow comments on one of his blogs. I don’t know Dave, but he seems like an alright guy- I like people who speak their minds and don’t mind challenging something I or others want or believe. I don’t know why he doesn’t allow Comments, but I suppose if your Wikipedia entry reads like this, you don’t have to allow people to Comment on your blog. I would ask him about his Commenting policy in a Comment, except, well, you get the picture.

My bottom line on this is that I agree with Mathew about the value of Comments and the conversations they promote. But I recognize that others may or may not share my criteria for a good blog. If someone, be they Russ or Dave or anyone else, doesn’t want to read what I think about something, no worries. I’m sure I can find someone who wants to talk to me.

All those people who want to comment at Russ’s or Dave’s blog are free to comment away here and over at Mathew’s blog.

P.S. Mathew also has a very nice implementation of his coComment feed on the right side of his page. That looks really good.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, comments, web 2.0

As I continue to sift through Scoble’s blogroll and call for good blogs to read, I read a lot of blogs. In fact, I have read hundreds of blogs in the past few months. I have found a lot of interesting blogs, and I have seen a lot of blogs fall into the death spiral of neglect. I have seen some great designs and some not so great designs. I have added quite a few blogs to my blogroll. Many have stayed on there, some have fallen off.

I’ve made it a point to note what it is about a blog that makes me start reading it regularly and ultimately add it to my blogroll. Here are five steps to good blogging. There are other things that help make a good blog, but to keep it simple, I have settled on the big five.

1) Know Your Topics and Add Original Content

By the time I find a blog, I’ve already seen links to the hot topics of the day. I want to read an original perspective from someone who has thought about the topic for more than the 30 seconds it takes to add a link to somebody else’s post. I want to know why conventional wisdom on a subject is right or why it’s wrong. Make me think about something in a new or different way.

There’s nothing wrong with a quick link to a particularly interesting post or a regular posting of interesting links- in fact equal opportunity linking is a requirement (see Step 4 below). Link posts are appreciated, but original thought is what gets a blog on my blogroll.

2) Don’t Be too Narrow or too Broad

I like blogs that contain posts on a fairly broad range of topics. My dream blog is some combination of tech, music, humor, movies, family life and current events. But any good mix that includes some stuff I care about will work. A broad selection of topics provides more opportunity for me to find something on a regular basis that really interests me, plus I get to learn about new things.

On the other hand, Step 1 requires that you know something about your primary areas of focus, so you can’t try to cover everything. If your coverage area is too broad, your blog looks like a mini-USA Today (which is fine, but there’s already a USA Today). If your coverage is too narrow, there’s not enough variety to keep my full attention. Stated another way, I will scan the headlines of a blog that’s very narrowly focused to see if there’s a post I want to read, but I am less likely to read or even skim every post.

Try to find the sweetspot, but if you have to err, err on the side of being broad.

3) Don’t Act Like a Rock Star, Because You Aren’t

Nobody likes people who are abundantly self-important in the real world, and the same rule applies in the blogosphere. Look, blogs are great- I am writing on one this very second. But at the end of the day, blogs are merely turbo-charged, online, public versions of the diary my daughter writes in and then goes to great lengths to hide from her siblings (if you are irritated at me after reading that, you may be a rock star in training).

So even if you’re the greatest blogger who ever lived, you’re still someone who writes a cyber-diary to share primarily with other cyber-diary writers. Most people I know (and most people you know) either have no idea what a blog is or think blogging is for nerds. If you start thinking you’re a big star just because a lot of other nerds read your online diary, you need to aim higher. Go outside.

There are lots of popular bloggers who fully get this. But there are also some who think they are celebrities and consider returning an email an autograph and acknowledging another blogger a great blessing.

4) Lead Me to Other Good Places; Be an Equal Opportunity Linker

I love blogs that do my work for me. Review a new product, or a book or movie. Tell me about new software I don’t know about. Be my online newspaper and lead me to good content. Memeorandum is the best at this. Tom Morris is great at it.

But don’t link exclusively to the sites I already know about. I read Om (509 days now without a link to Newsome.Org). I read Scoble. I read Steve Rubel (I am getting close to getting a link from Steve by earning my way up the hill). I’ve already read those blogs by the time I get to yours. So show me something I haven’t already seen.

Give me a link to someone I don’t read every day who has something interesting to say. Be an equal opportunity linker. There are a lot of other smart and funny people out there- help me find them.

5) Be a Person, Not a Website

While I read most of my content via Bloglines, I still think there is a place for web site content. Through sidebar photo feeds, music lists and other content, the blogger becomes a person to me, not just a website. Write sometimes about the movie you took your kids to see. Tell me about you- your background, your family, your triumphs and your challenges. Become real to me. That’s the essence of community building and it makes people feel connected by more than the occasional cross-link.

Those are the things that make a blog interesting to me.

What do you look for in a blog?

Blogspotting asks today if the lack of a community mindset might make it hard for the citizen media movement to take hold in the sprawling metropolitan areas many of us live in.

The question originated from Amy Gahran’s conversation about whether the lack of a broad community mindset with respect to the Bay Area might have contributed to Bayosphere’s demise.

Amy makes some good points. One of them, via a conversation she had with a friend from the Bay Area:

My colleague, who lives in the Bay Area, observed that in that region there’s virtually no awareness of the Bay Area as a community. People there, he said, tend to be more aware of and engaged with their towns or neighborhoods, not the “Bay Area.”

I expect that sort of thing is true for a lot of people. I live in Houston, but not really. Although I live barely 8 miles from downtown, I live in a town called Bellaire. My kids go to school there. They play sports there. The places we eat and the places we shop are there. Most of our friends live there.

I care about Houston, but I care a lot about Bellaire.

But I think the internet and the citizen media that’s a part thereof should be looked at from a different angle.

When I read and talk about tech, music or current events, it is the opportunity to converse with people from all over the world that drives me to the internet. I think the internet in general and the blogosphere in particular have to develop community awareness around topics, as opposed to geography.

I read Dwight Silverman‘s blog every day. Not because he lives in Houston, but because he writes well on topics that interest me. Similarly, I read Ed Bott every day for the same reason, and I don’t even know where he lives. Many of the folks I converse with on a regular basis are from Canada or the UK.

So for me the question becomes can we build cross-blog communities (not to be confused with clubs where you have to be invited to join) based on shared interests? I hope so, but candidly I’m not sure.

I talked about message boards the other day and explained why I think they are still relevant. The main reason is because there is more immediate give and take on active message boards. There are actual conversations you can follow as they meander around the topic.

It’s harder to do that with blogs. A lot of times it seems like bloggers are just talking over or at each other. To converse you have to listen. I don’t know how we do it, but we have to figure out how to stop talking at each other and start talking to (and listening to) each other.

Otherwise we’re just noise.

Today’s topic about the new gatekeepers is a close cousin to the guards at the clubhouse door I’ve been talking about for a while. I’m happy to see others thinking about this, even if they approach the issue in a slightly different manner.

Scott Karp has a very interesting post today about one of his posts that got legs yesterday and his efforts to sneak past the guards and into the blogging clubhouse. Like him, I and many others are standing in line waiting for the bouncer to either let us in or get distracted so we can dart past him.

Scott talks about the glut of good bloggers and the transition of the old media onto the web and ultimately wonders if there will be new gatekeepers standing between the non-blogging readership and the content we all keep plugging away writing. He says that in many ways the guard at the clubhouse door plays the gatekeeper role formerly held by the old media that stood between readers and the content. I think that’s right, but I don’t think all of the guards are doing it on purpose. Clearly some are (see my prior rants for more on that). But for many, I think the gatekeeper role is just a function of their early arrival, hard work and resulting popularity. To understand the gatekeeper, you have to know how and why the gate was erected. Sometimes to keep you out. Sometimes it’s just the nature of things.

So how will our readers find us, other than by the grace of the almighty link?

Sites like Technorati (which I love almost as much as Flickr) help, but Scott suspects (as do I) that Technorati is used mainly by, well, the technorati. The challenge for us is to be found by the non-geek readers who vastly out-number the geek ones. As old media becomes new media this question will have to be answered. We need to make sure the answer isn’t another version of the old system.

Scott’s take is that the A-Listers guarding the door may, if we aren’t careful, largely determine what the typical reader sees- via links and whispered cross-blog conversations.

Mathew Ingram has a different take on it, viewing the popular web destinations more as turnstiles than gatekeepers.

I think there’s an element of both gatekeeper and turnstile to it. Gabe Rivera had a stroke of brilliance when he created Memeorandum and let the algorithm determine what appears there. It may indirectly play to the strengths of the A-Listers, who get way more inbound links than the rest of us, but there’s no subjective decision to keep us out. Like Mathew, my posts generally appear there pretty regularly, except for those odd and frustrating 3-4 day periods where my posts seem to disappear from the radar completely, only (so far at least) to return a few days later.

But there is definitely a very real pecking order in the linking activities of the A-List bloggers. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, and I have been fortunate enough to get links from some of them (thank you). This pecking order, as it may and will change over time, however, is what may create a new breed of gatekeepers.

Perhaps gatekeeping is just the inefficient blogosphere market’s way of determining the best blogs. But it is an inefficient market and there is always a very real chance that you can get stuck on the wrong side of the gate.

As you can tell, I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about all of this. On the one hand, I feel sort of good about things, having had some conversations with a lot of really interesting people (including some of those elusive A-Listers). So part of me feels really humbled that I have been allowed to participate. But in other ways, I feel like an outsider looking in- that I could write the most thoughtful and innovative post in the world and it would get passed over in favor of some off-hand comment made by an A-Lister.

That’s why I hope we can minimize the role of any newfangled gatekeepers. Because if the playing field is fairly level and we can’t get where we want to be in the blogosphere, there’s no one to blame but us. We can handle that. But if the playing field is not fairly level, then all we’ve done is knocked down one wall and built another.

No more walls.

TAN made a very interesting point in the comments to one of my earlier posts. I was talking about the sysphian task of growing a new blog, and he noted that he thought I was mixing two conversations: blogs as a business and blogs as a trend/cultural phenomenon. That got me thinking, and here’s what I’ve concluded.

It’s the blogging as a business part that causes the difficulties I’ve been talking about. Not so much business blogs or the cultural phenomenon of blogging.

What’s the Difference

First, let’s define what I’m talking about:

Business Blog- a blog operated by someone as a part of a larger business involving the sale of goods or services other than the blog itself.

Blogging as a Business- a blog that is operated by someone whose primary business is the operation of the blog itself (i.e., where the sole or primary revenue stream is ad revenue from that blog and/or the prospect of selling that blog).

When I talk about the complicating effect that the prospect of a dollar has on the blogosphere, I’m really talking about blogging as a business. Business blogs have other revenue streams and, for them, the blog is largely a marketing, communication, information distribution thing.

Take Steve Rubel, for example. He is without a doubt as well known as any blogger anywhere. And he has a great blog. But that blog (I imagine- Steve please correct me if I am wrong) was conceived as a part of Steve’s pre-existing public relations business. It wasn’t like Steve threw a blog up there, started writing posts and called it a business. So while Steve has one of the most popular blogs in the world, it is a part of his business- not his business.

And while Steve is very well known in the blogosphere, we must remember that only a fraction of the people in the world read blogs and follow the blogosphere. I bet more people know Steve from any number of his past and other activities than they do from his blog. And, again, we’re talking about one of the most popular blogs in the world. If I’m right and Micro Persuasion is only an ancillary part of Steve’s larger business, how in the wide world of sports can a new blogger hope to turn his or her blog into a business.

Business blogs use the blogosphere as an extension of the sort of conversations that take place in the real world. For them it’s the conversation that matters, not where or how that conversation takes place. Amy Gahran talks a lot about this over at The Right Conversation.

Compare that to blogging as a business- where someone starts a blog and begins writing with the plan to make a living or a meaningful part of a living. Unlike Steve, who sells his PR and consulting services, what is this blog selling? Nothing other than via the occasional Amazon affiliate referral. This blog is only selling ads for AdSense or whatever other ad program it uses. Stated another way, this blog is completely dependent on generating traffic and maintaining readers to view and click on its ads. Once someone has clawed their way up the Technorati 100 list, human nature (not to mention the need to eat and live indoors) dictates that the now successful blogger guard his or her asset carefully. For sure, there’s a marginal utility to other bloggers. Someone has to engage in conversations with you and link to you. But too many bloggers talking about similar stuff is sometimes viewed the same as too many beers- it turns a good time into a bad time.

Steve makes money either way because he is selling something other than eyeballs. The blogging as a business blog only makes money if it can attract and keep readers. Hence, the competition factor that serves as a disincentive to welcome new voices to the table.

To say that I’m whining about this is one thing (I don’t think I’m whining, but I can see how some might interpret it that way). But to pretend these issues don’t exist is to keep your head planted firmly in the sand.

So What About All Those Ads

I used to do a lot of ad selling when ACCBoards.Com was independent. We got millions (and I mean millions) of page views a month. In the halcyon days of the dot.com bubble, we were making 5 figures of revenue a month. We signed a purchase agreement for 7 figures and a ton of stock. Then it ended. Almost immediately. I still get weepy when I flip through that dusty old file.

Is another bust on the horizon? I believe so. Steve thinks so. Even if it isn’t as drastic or painful as the last one, we learned (or should have learned) that these things are cyclical. What goes up, and all that.

So, at best, the new blog as a business blogger is trying to do the blog equivalent of playing in the NBA. There are Kobes and there are Jasons (I’m going to keep calling him the Kobe of the blogosphere until he responds). But there are many more good players who never make it to the top. And if you’re doing it to make real money, you have to get to the top. There’s very little money in the minor leagues- blogging or basketball wise.

Putting it All Together

So, yes, you can have a blog that is neither a business blog nor blogging as a business. Yes, yes, a million times yes. That’s what I’ve been saying a blog is and should be.

My point is that other people who also have blogs but have somehow decided that their blogs are going to make them rich make the blogosphere a more complicated, less welcoming place. It’s not a conspiracy, and it’s not sour grapes. It’s human nature and the way business (and blogging as a business) works.

I just don’t think blogs, in and of themselves, should be first and foremost about trying to make money. That is my point distilled into one sentence.

All of this doesn’t necessarily preclude having a popular blog. Or even a successful blogging as a business blog (there are always a few who make it to the NBA). It just makes it harder. A lot harder.