There’s comin’ down the street
They’re comin’ right down the middle
Look how they keep the beat
Why they’re as blue as the ocean
How the sun shines down
How their feet hardly touch the ground
Jolly [Bloggers] On Parade
-Randy Newman

Guy Kawasaki gives a video interview I saw over at Jeremiah Owyang’s blog.  I had read about this interview, but wasn’t that interested in watching it.  As I have said before, I’d rather interact with other lesser beings than to play the jester in the court of the geek kings, and all that.  But a couple of the quotes from Jeremiah’s post that showed up in my reader got my attention.  Particularly this one:

His goal is to be ranked in Technorati as the top 10, he’s 14 pegs away. Guy says he doesn’t read any other blogs other than his, well he only has about 40 feeds that he reads.

Being largely a math sort of guy, that tells me that Guy wants others to read his blog, but he isn’t interested in reading anyone else’s blog.  That’s just the sort of thing I like to point out and poke fun at, so I watched the video.

Yes, Guy comes off as a little self-centered (more on that below).  But he also makes some good points along the way.  Best of all, he bashed the (other) A-Listers around pretty good.  He says he wants to be the non-asshole A-Lister.  Great sound bite, but the proof is in the pudding.  Read on.

First, he says that blogs that are journals are boring.  He’s wrong about that.  Blogs written by bad writers are boring, whether they’re journals or not.  A good writer can make a journal a hundred times more interesting than yet another nerd writing a me too post about the latest web 2.0 application.

Guy admits he had an “enormous advantage” when he started blogging.  No kidding. I pointed that out after he’d been doing it for a month and a half.  But that’s not the advantage he talks about.  Apparently Guy spammed thousands of people whose email addresses he had collected over the years to announce his blog.  Can you imagine the nine kinds of hell some unknown blogger would suffer if he or she did that?  Guy was a known and respected person in the tech industry, so he can probably get away with it.  Advantage on top of advantage.  It irritates me that that I had neither advantage when I started blogging (and thus continue to push the boulder up blogger’s hill), but that’s largely jealousy talking.  I can’t blame the guy for using his advantages.  At least he’s honest about it.

He is also honest enough to admit that he does care about blog rankings and links.  That’s a breath of fresh air after A-Lister after A-Lister keeps telling the rest of us not to worry about gatekeeping and links and whatnot.  I know Guy will see this post, since he checks his Technorati page “about 50 times a day.”  Will he respond?  Probably not, though he has commented here before.  But that was before he was a made blogger.

Guy then takes the opportunity to smack around the (other) A-Listers who “have this attitude they they are intellectually superior” and who act like it is “an honor to get an email from them.”  He says that maybe the A in A-Lister stands for asshole.  That’s funny.  And it’s also easy to say after all those (other) A-Listers embraced him and made him their equal (or superior).

Interestingly, he says (and this is a Technorati top 25’er talking) that there is no economic payback to blogging.  If a top 25 blogger says this, what does that tell us about blogging as a way to make money?  It tells me that I and others are correct when we say that blogging is not a revenue source in and of itself- it’s merely a more efficient way to distribute information about your true revenue source.  Lots of people caught up in the blogging euphoria don’t get this.

He was asked about links (you know, those things that got him in the Technorati top 25).  He says he won’t trade links with people, which begs the question of giving legitimate links back to others, the way they were previously given to you.  He says if you blogroll someone, you have some moral obligation to ensure that the blog is worthy.  I say maybe, but, again, we’re not giving away MBE‘s here.  Just a link.  I also wonder how Guy felt about links the day he started blogging.  It’s easy not to crave what you have in abundance.

And then they got to the part I was waiting for.  The bit about reading other blogs.  Guy says he doesn’t read any blogs.  Literally.  He says he has some feeds for publications like Science Daily.  No mention of Newsome.Org (that’s the feed URL right there Guy, just to make it easy for you).

Of course he has an alert to notify him every time someone writes about him (as do I and most other bloggers, I’m sure).  He has a “virtual assistant”  (whatever that is) who will sometimes thank those who write about him.  Apparently, he doesn’t realize how much all of this sounds like the A-Listers he slammed earlier in the interview.

So I was right.  He wants us to read him, yet he doesn’t read any of us.  He says he has kids and likes hockey and just doesn’t have the time.  Hey Guy, some of us have kids, like sports, coach sports, write blogs and have full time non-tech related jobs.  Yet we manage to get through our feeds every few days.  I’m not buying the don’t have time thing.  Don’t want to is more like it.

Even though a lot of the interview sounds like narcissism run amok, Guy made some good points.  Somehow, I don’t think he is as self-centered as he comes across.  I hope that’s the case.

I have been a reader of Guy’s blog since the day he started it.  Part of me wants to unsubscribe after watching this interview.  I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know this: if folks like me stop linking to Guy, he’ll never make the Technorati top 10.

And wouldn’t that be a shame.

I read, via Steve Rubel, that ABC News has relaunched its web site, with new features that allow citizen journalism.  I think that’s a good thing, but it’s not what I want to talk about at the moment.

Steve notes that most of the comments on the relaunch concern the design of the page, as opposed to the citizen journalism features.  I think that’s because most readers are concerned about finding and being able to read the content they want, while too many web designers are focused on the 37 pieces of flair (many of them ads) that get in the way of that content.  Users don’t want scrolling news tickers and they don’t want fancy, slow loading pages.

Here are just a few of the negative comments users made to the ABC News redesign:

It stinks. Every page is slow-loading, even with cable internet. The look is cramped and cluttered. Browsing through headlines takes forever, due to the necessity to constantly switch pages.

***
Why can’t you just leave it the way it was. So simple, you just opened it up and picked the head line you wanted to read. Now it’s like everybody else, you have to search and decipher everything before you can find what you want.

***
I liked the simplicity of the old design and used it as my home page. Did the designers/developers of this new format get ANY input from users in the 35+ age demographic?

It’s pretty easy to tell what readers want.  It’s harder to explain why web designers refuse to give it to them.  One reason is because the more page views it takes to get to and through a story the more ads get served in the process.  People realize that ads are the price of admission, at least where old media web distribution goes, but there are limits.

Readers will ultimately refuse to click through 5 pages to read one article.  They’ll simply find someplace else where they can get the content with less hassle, or they’ll move to an RSS reader.

There are two other things users want.

One, for the page to display properly on their screen, regardless of monitor size or resolution.  It’s not an 800×600 world any longer.  Some pages that display fine at lower resolutions get jumbled up at higher resolutions, or when you increase the text size in order to read the type.  The ABC News page seem to handle increased text size pretty well.  Morningstar, one of my favorite destinations (DISCLAIMER: I have been a shareholder since the IPO), doesn’t.  Bump your text up several notches and things get jumbled, ads overlap content, things get cut off, etc.  I’m not sure how to address this problem, but it should be addressed, since many users cannot read the micro-text that results from a higher resolution and must increase the text size.

Morningstar is not the only offender here, many other major destinations have the same problem.  ESPN‘s navigation banner becomes virtually unusable if you bump the text size.  I completely quit reading the Houston Chronicle page after recent redesigns rendered the text on the front pages molecular (thank goodness for RSS feeds).  For an example of how to handle large text size the right way, see Wikipedia.

Two, for the pages to be designed in a way that allows you to find what you’re looking for.  I have always thought the CNN page was far too busy- and so I don’t visit it much.   At least the USA Today page looks something like a newspaper, which allows readers to navigate it something like a newspaper.  Google News has the most usable design precisely because it has the least amount of bling.  Techmeme rules the tech-related blogosphere for the same reason.  Tailrank, which for a while was on the verge of bling-overload, seems to be moving back the other way, which is a good thing.  Digg has a relatively simple and easy to navigate interface.

Compare those pages to Fox News, for example.  My head starts hurting before it’s finished loading.  I’m sure the bling imbalance has to do with the sort of media we’re talking about- TV being, sadly, almost entirely based on bling.

But web pages are not TV, and a cleaner, simpler interface is better for users.  And that should be the benchmark for a good web page.  37 pieces of flair was funny in Office Space.  It’s not funny on web pages.

I like SearchRank’s 10 Signs That You May Be a Blog Addict post.  Before I take a look at their 10 signs, I might add one more:

11. You hire a search engine marketing company to try to move your blog up in Google search results.

Now, my thoughts about the original 10.

1. I’m guilty here.  I use Bloglines for my feeds, and if I am at the computer at home, I generally have a Bloglines tab open in Firefox.  I don’t want to miss it when one of my internet pals hits a good lick.  I think it odd too that this deal isn’t getting any run in the blogosphere.  Where’s Techcrunch?  If one of Scoble’s finger nail clippings got sold for 10 cents on eBay, TechCrunch would have a full page story on it.

2. If I told my clients I had a blog, they wouldn’t know what I was talking about.  I have to use the dog ate my homework excuse.  At least a business person can visualize a dog eating homework.  None I know could visualize blogging.

3. I’ve never dreamed about blogging, simply because there aren’t many bloggers who would find their way into my deserted island scenarios.  I’ve dreamed I could fly.  I have dreamed twice, in great detail, that I was a member of the Grateful Dead.  But never about blogging.  Thankfully.

4. I get inspirations for blog posts at all kinds of odd times.  It’s the same way with songs.  Unfortunately, I generally forget both before I get home to write them down.  Maybe that greater than Twitter application Jott can help me with this.

5. There’s more traffic on the stairs when my kids head off to bed than there is in my comments, so I go to where the action is.

6. This is partially true.  I talk very little about this sort of stuff in the real world, so people can definitely get more of my thoughts here than over dinner.  If someone asks me what I’m thinking in the real world, I scream and run away.  That’s one of the reasons I wish I’d started this blog anonymously.  If I could talk about my real world life more freely without the fear of getting fired or slapped, I could tell some great stories.

7. I love our pets.  But people who are seriously pet-obsessed scare me.  People who aren’t little old ladies who are seriously pet-obsessed scare me big time.  Like the Exorcist.

8. I used to watch my Technorati rank.  But unless you’re willing to stay on the treadmill full time, the formula makes it impossible to move up or maintain your place.  It’s too hard.  I gave up.

9. Nope.  We have Twitter for all those things.

10. I enjoy active Twitterers, Eric Rice and Bagadonuts being among my favorites.  I update my Twitter feed maybe once a day, but that’s because my day to day activities are pretty routine.  If I had more fun and more free time, I’d update more.

I have largely stopped thinking and writing about the Gatekeeper thing, for a few reasons.  One, it’s a tired topic.  Two, the return on investment from trying to worm your way into the so-called conversation is too low to be worthwhile.  The return on simply writing good posts and waiting is not that much higher, but it’s higher.  It’s a little like fishing.  I am a good fisherman because I am patient- something most casual fishers are not.  And third, the conversations are often boring anyway.  I just don’t care all that much about what a lot of the so-called A-Listers have to say.  Many of them have turned their blogs and Twitter feeds into nothing more than a living billboard for self-promotion.

But I just can’t resist it when a couple of A-Listers start a conversation about link-baiting.

Jason Calacanis started things off with a partially tongue in cheek and partially straight up post, talking about ways to get a link from him.  I chastised him the other day for not reaching out to mainstream media, so let me give a little credit where due.  This is funny stuff, even if it’s true:

DON’T start the post off flaming me. Start the post off by praising me, talking about how great Engadget or Netscape are, that you love my podcast, or that you thought I was a riot at some panel (you don’t even need to have been at the panel…just technorati my name and “speaking at” and you can fake it).

And this:

DO slam someone I don’t like or have had a beef with. This is a long list, but getting on my side will keep me reading your post and increase my chances of taking your link bait.

Of course, scads of people immediately start linking wildly to Jason’s post, dancing in the fleeting glow of inclusion.

I just about fell off of my chair when Dave Winer posted his rules, including this one for why he might not link to you:

3. Lack of reciprocity. If I observe over time that the linking is one-way, i.e. I link to you but even when I’m on-topic for you, I don’t get a link from you, that will dampen my enthusiasm.

That’s either the best satire I have ever read, or the biggest violation of the Goose and Gander Rule ever.  It doesn’t really matter which, because Dave and Jason talking about getting links is like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett comparing their bank accounts.  It makes them feel good, but has zero relevance for the rest of us.

So what can the rest of us do?  We could fall in line, and fawn over these guys.  We might get a link every six months or so.  Or we could just sit back and watch.

Or we could leave that party and start our own.

I don’t want to spend any effort trying to figure what I need to write to be worthy of a link from some blogostar.  That promotes bad writing, and it doesn’t work.  Linking should not be viewed as currency, and the fact that it is viewed that way by many is the single most screwed up part of blogging.  We’re not handing out MBEs here.  We’re just placing a road sign to another place someone may want to go.

So I’d rather just give links to the people I read, without making them work for it.  Here’s some link-giving to some of the blogs in my reader.  Go check ’em out.

A Consuming Experience
Amy Gahran
Assaf Arkin
Be A Good Dad
Ben Metcalfe
Ben Werdmuller
Bill Liversidge
Blonde 2.0
Brad Kellett
Chip Camden
Christopher Carfi
Claus Valca
Corey Clayton
Craig Newmark
Dave Rogers
Dave Sifry
Dave Taylor
Dave Wallace
Dwight Silverman
Earl Moore
Eric Scalf
Ethan Johnson
Frank Gruber
Frank Paynter
Fraser Kelton
Haydn Shaughnessy
Ian Delaney
Ilker Yoldas
Jackson Miller
Jake Ludington
Jeremy Zawodny
John Watson
Jon Maddox
Karl Martino
Kate Trgovac
Kevin Briody
Kevin Maney
Larry Borsato
Marc Canter
Mark Evans
Martin Gordon
Mathew Ingram
Mike Miller
OmegaMom
Phil Sim
Randy Morin
Rahul Sood
Ric Hayman
Richard Querin
Rick Mahn
Rob Barron
Robert Gale
Ron Jeffries
Scott Karp
Seth Finkelstein
Stephen Hogg
Steve Gillmor
Steve Newson
Steven Streight
Stowe Boyd
Susan Getgood
TDavid
Tom Morris
Tom Reynolds
Warner Crocker
Zoli Erdos

That’s it.  No link or master baiting required.  Just links to people because I read their blogs.

See how easy that was?

In an exchange that mirrors the blogosphere at large, Guy Kawasaki asks Seth Godin 10 questions, while we get to read along.  I thought it would be fun to once again pretend that we’re all part of the blogosphere and give my own answers.  Try this at home- it’s fun.

I have to pretend, of course, that I wrote a book about dips.  I know some dips, so that should be easy.  Here we go.

1) Other than hindsight, how does someone know when it’s time to quit?

When the fun you’re having or reasonably likely to soon have no longer outweighs the effort it takes to do what you thought was going to be fun from the start.  Like golf.  I played golf for years.  I got better for a while, then stopped getting better, then started getting worse.  Eventually, it dawned on me that golf was an elitist sport that was unfit for a deep thinker like me, so I took up drinking.  It’s pretty much the same cycle, but the clubs are more fun.  Later I gave up drinking and started blogging.  There are clubs there too, but it takes more than a $5 cover to get in.

2) If I’m in the middle of a dip, how do I know if it’s worth gutting it out to get to the other side?

I generally try to avoid dips.  It’s relatively easy to avoid the blatant dips.  They generally move in slow packs and attack one at a time, like the bad guys in a movie.  It’s harder to avoid the unknowing dip, who is a dip but hasn’t figured it out yet.  Avoiding Starbucks is a good start.

3) Is there a place for the intrinsic value of learning a skill – for example, playing hockey or the violin – even though you know you won’t be the best in the world?

Absolutely not.  There should only be one hockey player, one restaurant, and one blogger.  We’re pretty close on the blogger part.

4)  What if the market is not established so there’s no way to know if it even exists and if it’s worth dedicating/rededicating to?

This one is easy.  Just put some ads up and give your company a goofy name that is vowel challenged.  Next thing you know, Google will buy you for millions.

5) How can a company quit a product and not give the incorrect signal that it’s quitting the market?

See my answer to question 4.  If you have ads, you don’t need a product.  Products are so old school.

6) What’s more powerful: a short-term pain or long-term gain?

It depends on whether you’re long or short.  But neither is a powerful as this.

7) Do most companies quit too early or try too long?

It could be worse.  They could quit too long or try too early, like a lot of Web 2.0 companies who put their web pages up the day after they registered their goofy vowel challenged name.

8) Should Microsoft quit the MP3 player market?

Who cares?

9) Should Apple quit the personal computer market?

See my answer to question 8.

10) Should America quit the Iraq War?

Shouldn’t we quit the Korean War first?  I don’t know if we should quit the Iraq war or not.  But I know that you can’t dump a war like you do a girlfriend or boyfriend.  The reject by neglect approach to breaking up with a war didn’t work in Vietnam, and I doubt it would work now.  What we need is a decision maker. 

Mike Miller over at the excellent Be a Good Dad blog tagged me in the Thinking Blogger Awards meme.  Thanks Mike.

Here are 5 blogs that make me think, with a little commentary on each.

1) Nick Carr.  Nick was like beer to me in the blogosphere.  At first I didn’t like him at all.  But because all my friends read him and I thought it made me cool, I kept reading him.  Then, all of the sudden, I really started digging him.  Nick can turn a phrase like Cormac McCarthy.  Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, no other blogger writes as well as Nick.

2) Seth Finkelstein.  I admire people who show you how smart they are, almost as much as I dislike people who tell you.  I concluded a long time ago that Seth is smarter than just about anyone else.  And he is spot on most of the time.  No one listens to him, because they don’t like his message.  But he stays the course.  I really enjoy his blog. 

3) Susan Getgood.  When something brilliant or stupid happens in the blogosphere, Susan’s blog is one of the first places I go for a reasoned, well considered reaction/discussion.  Take this post, for example.  Plus, she is a sci-fi fan.    

4) Wally Bangs.  If Nick Carr is the blogosphere’s Cormac McCarthy, Wally is our William Gay.  He is a great southern writer, and as a musician who lived in Nashville back in the 80s, his stories about that era’s Nashville music scene are of great interest to me.

5) Doc Searls.  This may come across as pandering to an A-Lister, but I can’t do this list and not include Doc.  He is the most insightful tech blogger to ever pound out a post.  And as good as his tech stuff is, his life stuff is better.  Doc has changed my opinion about something in a single post more times than I can count- and those who know me will tell you that my mind is not the easiest thing to change. 

For those of you I tagged above, here are the rules of participation, should you wish to do so:

• If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
• Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
• Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).