With a big red beacon, and a flag, and a man on the rail.

Last night I wrote in another post that people who think the blogosphere is their road to riches don’t want to engage those who raise issues that might make people think the oasis up ahead is a only a mirage.  I implied that the reason they don’t is often because they have not thought about some of the issues raised and prefer to try to ignore the skeptics into silence.

And then I fire up my feeds this morning, and find one of the most unbelievable posts I have ever read.  Strike that- one of the most unbelievable things I have ever read.

Mike Arrington, the head cheerleader for Web 2.0 and the blogosphere’s biggest star, bashing the guy who writes Dead 2.0.  Let’s examine some quotes.

Mike says “He’s taken some hard and sometimes unfair shots at startups and at individuals (yes even me), and a lot of people probably don’t like him very much for what can be considered unfair attacks on them or their companies.“

Where to start?

Well, for one, the “unfair shot” at Mike was a post, partly critical, partly complimentary and likely somewhat tongue in cheek, about the happening that is known to some as TechCrunch 7.  In fact, Mike himself responded to the post and, at least then, didn’t seem too upset by it.  Regardless, while the post did poke fun at the blogstar mentality, I didn’t find it to be all that mean spirited.  If you want to be a star, that sort of thing comes with the territory.

And it was certainly not as bad as calling someone as asshole in a post title, as Mike has been known to do.

And then this little nugget, from Mike’s post:

Should he be fired?

???

Later, Mike changed “Should” to “Will” and added a new final paragraph suggesting that this (whatever this is) will likely blow over.  And he even gave lip service to freedom of speech.  But even with the change, is Mike honestly suggesting that the Dead 2.0 guy should or might get fired for expressing his opinions in an anonymous blog?  What if his opinions had mirrored Mike’s exactly?  Should/would he be fired then?

Either there is a lot more to this story than meets the eye, or Mike is so far off base here that he can’t hear or see the game.

The so-called outing of the Dead 2.0 guy came via this post by Nic Cubrilovic.  His post also contains some good information about anonymity- or the lack thereof- in the blogosphere.  Nic did not give the name of the Dead 2.0 guy, a decision I applaud.  He just made it clear that he knows who he is.

Isn’t Nic the same guy who is rumored to be the editor of the new TechCrunch enterprise blog?

So a friend/employee of Mike Arrington outs (sort of) a guy who has been critical of both Mike and his beloved Web 2.0.

Hmmm.

I’ll leave you with one last quote, from Mike in a comment to his post:

“Startups have enough variables to contend with to reach success without loose cannons creating yet more hurdles to overcome.”

I have a question for Mike (which I bet he won’t answer).  What defines a loose cannon?  Is skepticism about the Web 2.0 business model a loose cannon?  Is it being critical of you?  Or is it something else?  Please clarify this for me.

And, by the way, I voted No.

Tags: blogs, blog building, web 2.0

I’ve continued to subtract and add to my blogroll as I put into action my conversational manifesto.  I’ve found some good new blogs, and I’ve dropped a lot of blogs that seem to talk at you and not with you.  It’s a work in progress, but I’m getting there.

TDavid has a very interesting post today on the conversational blogosphere.  He makes some good points that I’d like to respond to.

He gives a pretty accurate summary of the Web 2.0 movement, in which so-called companies try to get traffic by giving stuff away in the hopes that either Google or some clever VC will monetize that traffic for them.  The biggest mistake Web 2.0 made was the de facto requirement that everything be free.  It turns web sites into billboards and results in an upside down measuring stick by which the cost side of the balance sheet, traffic and use, is hailed as a worthy substitute for the revenue side and traffic matters much more than the prospects of the application that draws the traffic.

It would be hard to create a more upside down business plan.  It will work for some, the way the lottery works for some.  But it will fail for the vast majority.

TDavid’s not very excited about my archive search capabilities here at Newsome.Org- and I can’t argue with a thing he says about it.  I used to use a Perl script to do searches, but I dumped that in favor of Google.  I’d welcome any suggestions for a better search platform.  Once I find a better search approach, I’ll move the search box up.  Stuff like this is exactly why I enjoy blogging.  You never know how something you create works until people other than you try it out.

He also makes a very good point about blogs that are designed to make money- that some of them are very good, notwithstanding their purpose.  He cites Lifehacker and Download Squad as two such blogs.  I agree and would add TV Squad and Techdirt to that list.  I am a huge fan of Techdirt.  Having said that, while some are closer than others, I don’t really view those sites as blogs.  They use blogging platforms for content management, and they are interactive- but I see those sites as more of a new media news site or magazine than a blog.  For me a blog is, ultimately, a way to engage in distributed conversations with others.  Or maybe a way to exercise your writing skills- as TDavid suggests.  It might be splitting hairs- and by no means am I discounting the value of those sites.  They just aren’t traditional blogs in the way I think of blogs.

The problem with many money-oriented blogs is that, because they are selling something- be it an idea or an ad- they aren’t interested in entertaining the other side of the argument.  It you try to engage them on the issues that they hope or believe will make them money, they simply ignore you.  Which, at least in my mind, validates the other side of the argument.  It’s fine to use the blogosphere as a flea market to try and make a quick buck, but if you are going to claim to be a citizen of the blogosphere, you should at least be willing to engage other viewpoints.  If not to convince them, then at least to show that you’ve thought about some of the concerns they express.

TDavid affirms the argument made by Shelley Powers the other day- that we can get plenty of traffic without diving into the chaotic and ultimately unfulfilling echo chamber that is, too often, the A-List blogarena.  I enjoy talking with some high traffic bloggers, but when I do, it’s not because they have traffic.  It’s because some of them still value conversation and the exchange of ideas over self-importance.  The ones who start believing their own bullshit get booted from my blogroll in favor of those who view blogging as a mode of expression and not as a way to make up for real world inadequacies.

The more I think about it, the more I start to think that it’s only a few of the mega-bloggers who screw the whole system up for the rest of us.  Many mega-bloggers seem to be interested in the same sort of stuff that the rest of are seeking.  The problem is that a lot of the normal exchanges get drowned out by the bluster of the attention-mongering children that sometimes pose as the blogosphere’s resident intellectuals.  Plus, real world friendships bond some of the good guys to some of the not-so-good guys.  How else can you explain Doc Searls‘ continued involvement with Steve Gillmor.  No one, not even Doc, can convince me that Doc isn’t secretly dismayed by at least half the insanity that comes out of Steve’s mouth.  But Doc stands by someone who, I assume, is a long time real world friend.  You can’t blame him for that.

The trick is for those of us who share the same blogging philosophy to create a de facto discussion group, build some momentum, and welcome the new voices who wonder over to our campfire and take a seat.  If we can do that, all of these collateral issues will take care of themselves.

TDavid is a good and thoughtful writer.  I’ll take him up on his offer to look back at things on 9/6/11 and see how the blogosphere, and our roles in it, have changed.  Put it on your calendar.

In the meantime, take a seat by the campfire and tell a story or two.  Otherwise, this blogging thing starts to feel like work. Low paying, thankless and boring work.

It doesn’t have to be that way- if we work together.

Tags: blogging, blog building, conversation

Darren Rowse has started a new writing project, this time on “How to” posts.

I submitted my LP to MP3 post.

Among the many good entries so far are:

How to Survive Your Young Husband’s First (Unexpected) Heart Attack by Olivia
How to Overcome Fear by Scott
How to Be Bald by Dave
How to get promoted when you work from home by Home Office Blues
Quieting the Monsters… or how to feed your Children by Miscellaneous Mum
LJP – the Treo 600 Gameboy Emulator by Tam
Make a simple diagonal page background using photoshop and css by Ben
How to Be a Parent and Still Have Fun by Mama Duck
Manage Your Manager – How to cope with Ineffectual leadership by Katy
How to Dress Like a Desperate Housewife by Leora
How to Make a Rubbish Website by Tim
How To Participate in the Blogging Community by Ray
The Great Flood by Jude
How to Jam a Printer and Settle for Tie-Dye by Deb
How to build a GARDENING blog that’s bigger than Boing Boing by Stuart
How to Get Rich in Three Easy Steps by FMF
How do I get a job in the Car Industry by Gary
Become a Blogging Maniac by Tammy
How to Dangerously Inflate your Ego via Blogging by Wendy
How to Proofread Your Own Writing by Anne
How to Sell Your Home for Sale by Owner by Rob
The Inside Scoop on How to Get Published by Tasra
Don’t get caught misunderstanding the difference between APR and APY by Ricemutt
Set up your blog using Textpattern by Jaro
How to write a great blog post by Leroy
Integrating a Forum with WordPress by ZMAng
The Process of Making a Stock Trade by Blain
How to Keep Your Relationship Healthy With your Wife by Matt
Take Your Cell Phone to the Next Level by Eltan
How to Make Buyers Fall in Love With Your Home by Paul
6 Ways to Improve Navigation and Increase Page Views by Joe
How to Enhance Mac Security by fcodc
How to Have a Relationship with God for Eternity by Scott
How to Set Up Tor and Privoxy on Ubuntu Linux by Corvillus
How to Save Money at the Grocery Store by Shannon
How to Make Your Retirement Money Last by Arieanna
How to Help Find a Cure for Diseases with Your Computer’s Unused Processing Time by Brent
How to Play Video Games with a Baby by Lynn
Quit smoking (or not) one flaw at a time by Northern Girl
Harness the Power of Word Cross-References for Mammoth Documents by Andrew
How to Let Go and Move on by Milo
How to Make Time for the Important by Basil
Get Healthy in 30 days! by Rt @ Real Muscle Online
How to Week at Instigator Blog by Benjamin
How to load Garmin TOPO maps to your hard drive by Rich
One simple knot that keeps your shoes tied by Blaine
How to Tame the Caps Lock key by Jhay
How to Bring Art to the Unwashed Masses by Jennie
How to Make a Short Film for Tropfest by Jason
Channel Your Historical Mentors by David
How to Start Bird Watching so that you’ll keep Bird Watching by Mike
Position your Fish Tank for Prosperity and Growth by Renée
How to have a successful career in politics (Jamaican style) by Xaymaca
Hair for Sale by Billy
Showing Posts When there’s no Related Posts by Ken
Learning the basics about Sharpening by Steve
How to Make it Big in the NBA if You’re Small by Easterangel
How to Find Your Niche by Alsuran
Do Blackbirds Swoop? How to Deal with Aggressive Bird Behavior by Trevor
How to Make a Family Documentary by Ron

Tags: blogs, blog building, links

Shelley Powers has a post today about the Gatekeeper thing.  Sometimes I think Shelley sees herself on one side of the gate and sometimes I think she sees herself on the other.  As she points out today, the truth is probably both- there are multiple gates and, at least to some extent, everyone is a gatekeeper of sorts.

She gives a brief history of the word gatekeeper, and then says one thing I agree with and one I don’t.  Followed by a conclusory truth that I believe is undeniable

I agree with her that “the high ranked sites tend to give and withhold flow more as a matter of obtaining more for themselves than to enforce a specific viewpoint or behavior.”  It’s like anything else, those who have want to keep and those who don’t want to get.  Like democrats who were born wealthy, it’s easy to argue for the little guy- as long as the little guy stays little and the big guys stay big.

I think, however, that the desire to keep what you have- be it traffic or attention- is but one of several gatekeeping forces at play in the blogosphere.  Another is the smell of money and the desire to marginalize those who might lay stones along the road to riches.  And perhaps the most powerful force at play is the human need to belong, which carries with it its dark twin- the need to exclude others.  The same forces at work on the playground still apply in the boardroom and the blogosphere- the exclusionary tactics are just disguised a little better and cloaked in new jargon.

I don’t agree with Shelley’s river metaphor- at least the idea that too much water is bad for the river.  In the case of the blogosphere, the internet serves as a deep and boundless ocean just a few miles downstream.  As such, the danger is not that the river will overflow and become chaotic.  The danger is that the river will dry to a trickle- fed only by the pontification of the river kings and the chorus of sychophants.  A shallow river is bad for the river animals and, ultimately, for the ocean itself.

As evidenced by my conversational manifesto, I have largely turned a bored ear and a blind eye toward those whose primary motives are self-aggrandizement and/or making money.  No blowhards and no tupperware parties please- just good conversation.  It’s not about traffic- no one is a better conversationalist than Doc. It’s about sharing, at least in part, a basic assumption about why we blog.  I blog to talk, to have fun and to learn.  So do many others.

Shelley’s conclusory truth plays right into this point: “I have found over the years that elevation really comes from attention downstream rather than up…. We grow our audience from each other.”

Exactly.  That is the key to getting permanent, sustainable traction in the blogosphere.  I would add one additional point to this conclusion: we grow our audience from others who share our basic philosophy about blogging.  People who blog for the same purpose can form a more natural bond than a mix of bloggers, some of whom want to talk and learn and some who want only to make a buck off of the first group.

In the real world, it is a great offense to try to make money off of your friends.  So why is this tolerated, encouraged and even worshipped in parts of the blogosphere?  What do you want your blogsphere to be?  A flea circus full of gamblers and confidence men who promise, but will rarely deliver, the opportunity to join them in their greatest caper, or the functional equivalent of a comfortable living room where you can talk with friends about topics of mutual interest?

I know which one I prefer.  And it’s not the one I see so often when I pull up my feeds.

But the one I want is out there.  Waiting.  Full of people who want the same thing I do from blogging.  And who aren’t waiting to toss an ad in front of me or sell me a bill of goods.

I am putting together a plan to create a little pocket of conversation with other bloggers who share my beliefs.  Nothing formal.  Just a group of people who choose, at least for the time being, to float down the river together.

Stay tuned.

Tags: blogging, blog building, gatekeepers

The blogosphere is boring me lately, so I need to make some adjustments. I need to find a more conversational blogosphere.

My dilemma is the result of a couple of patterns. Stated simply, the first is a growing realization that I simply don’t care about a lot of the stuff that pops up in my RSS feeds lately. I don’t really care that Six Apart bought Rojo. I think pay per view movies on a cell phone is perhaps the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of. I can’t even muster enough interest to write a separate post about how silly it is.

I am tired of the same old same old. Dave Winer reminding us once again that he invented something people are talking about today a long time ago. I don’t really care that Dave invented everything we talk about. Good for him. I’m just bored with hearing about it.

Is there any place for modesty in the blogosphere- or has it become one giant billboard for self-promotion?

I’m weary of hearing people who have done everything they can do to raise their profile in the blogosphere proclaim that they don’t care about traffic. Let some of those folks talk to themselves for about a week and see how they feel. It’s perfectly OK to raise your image and try to become influential among the hundreds of people who care what a blogger thinks. But it is hypocritical on its face to then turn around and say traffic (the blogosphere’s attention equivalent) isn’t important to you.

If people won’t be intellectually honest about their intentions, is there a basis for conversation?

I’m bored with reading the latest cheerleader report on how Web 2.0 is big business poised to change the world. No one seems to see beyond the boundaries of the blogosphere. It’s cool if you really think the next social bookmarking service is going to change the world. I’m just tired of hearing it- particularly from people with skin in the game. We’ve talked about the easily identified conflicts of interest in the blogopshere, but the less obvious ones are a bigger, and growing, problem.

It just seems like the blogosphere is becoming an online series of tupperware parties where friends move money around amongst themselves while they wait for the mythical third party tupperware lover to show up. It’s Eugene O’Neill, Stanley Kubrick style.

The second troubling pattern is the echo chamber that we talk about from time to time. Some self or temporally appointed smart guy says something that is supposed to be clever or earth-shattering and then, like the anchovies at the Krusty Krab, tons of others pile out of the bus and say the same thing. With so many people saying the same thing, conversations are simply not possible. There’s just the drone of a hundred keyboards typing the same words.

And finally, I’m exhausted from trying to have conversations with people who don’t share my view of the blogosphere as conversational. Blogging is a lot of different stuff for a lot of different people. For me, it’s not about spouting off my latest philosophy and it’s certainly not about making money. It’s supposed to be about having fun. It’s supposed to be about learning stuff and sharing interests. The more I think about it, using blogging as a way to make money or become influential is, well, boring. Can’t we just be regular people and talk about interesting stuff? Sure we can. If we make an effort to seek out like-minded individuals.

It’s not wrong to think of the blogosphere differently than I do. Good luck to those who think blogging is going to make them rich or famous or get them a Wikipedia entry. It’s just more fun to find people who come at the blogging thing from a similar place.

So I have decided to seek out a more conversational blogosphere. Gone from my blogroll will be those whose primary purpose, be it disclosed or not, is wealth accumulation or self-aggrandizement. I would find those people boring in the real world. The fact that they found the little room at the end of the hall before me doesn’t make them any less boring.

In sum, I either have to fix my blogging outlook or stand by and watch my blogging interest go to zero the way so many of my stocks did back in Bubble 1.0

I want to find, link to and converse with the sort of people I’d enjoy talking to in the real world. I’m going to need some help finding them. But I’m pretty committed to this new manifesto.

I’m interested in tech, obviously. And I think much of the Web 2.0 stuff is cool- taken in the right context. I’m interested in music, movies, humor, photography and self-expression in general. I want to talk and learn about that stuff. I’m tired of talking at people who aren’t listening and I’m concerned that by doing that, I am missing out on better and more useful conversations that are happening somewhere else.

It’s going to be a bit of trial and error and it may completely fail. I may end up in an even smaller room all by myself. But I have to try.

Otherwise, my blog is going to wither and die out of sheer boredom.

I’m going to have some space on my blogroll. If you know of anyone interesting I should add, let me know.

Tags: blogging, blog building, conversation

It seems that Thomas Hawk has come around to my way of thinking.  I have wanted out of Blogger for as long as I can remember, but I’m not willing to sacrifice all of my URLs to do it.  It is nuts that there isn’t an easy way to move to WordPress while preserving your URLs.

I periodically have the irritating partial feed problem too.  I can’t believe Blogger hasn’t worked harder to fix this problem.  And, candidly, I can’t believe WordPress hasn’t come up with a way to import Blogger blogs while preserving the URLs.  All in all, it’s a total cluster&%$# for those of us who are stuck inside of Blogger with the WordPress blues- yet again.

At this point, I’m willing to pay someone to move my blog over to WordPress.  I have the server.  I even have a mostly complete WordPress template, thanks to Eric Scalf.  I just need to get it set up (which I could do) and preserve the URLs of my existing pages (which I don’t know how to do).  I’m not going to risk destroying my blog by trying to figure this out by myself, so the only hope I have is to find someone qualified who does this sort of thing for hire.

Maybe Thomas and I can hire someone to do both our blogs at the same time.

Tags: blogger, wordpress

Shel Israel posted 9 random thoughts about blogging the other day. It’s an interesting list. Here are some thoughts.

1. Law of Diminishing Share

I hadn’t thought of it like that, but at first blush, this makes sense. Maybe that explains why some of the big fish keep trying to recreate the blogosphere in a manner than protects their position. On the other hand, my guess is that if you break the blogosphere into major interest groups (tech being the one most of us reside it), the law of diminishing share is mitigated. Yes Scoble and Mike and all those guys will reach a smaller percentage of the entire blogosphere over time, but the people who end up in the tech corner will still eventually find those guys. The bigger question is whether Scoble and Mike and all those guys will be able to capture the same percentage of new arrivals as subscribers.

2. The Buck’s Not There

I gave AdSense a try for about a month, and what I found is that it takes a buttload of pageviews to get a handful of clicks. I have been consistent in saying that trying to make money blogging is like trying to play in the NBA. It looks like a sweet gig, but very few people make it. In the blogosphere, unless the bloggers who control the mega-blogs get behind you and toss you a rope, you’re going to be, at most, a quick detour on their way to the bank.

3. Size Isn’t Relevance

I agree that who your readers are is more important that how many you have. One Om Malik is worth a thousand MySpace users. The fact of the matter is that, just like MySpace, the blogosphere depends on connections. All the talk about who links to who sometimes overshadows the more important function of links- serving as evidence of a mutual interest and the shared blogging experience. It’s hard not to view links as valuable in and of themselves, but I’d rather have one link from a dedicated blogger or journalist than 1000 from splogs and other non-conversational sites.

4. Give to Get

I think Shel’s three sentences sum up the process of building a blog as well as any I have ever read. Having said that, I think some of us could work a little harder at recognizing the contributions of newish bloggers. It takes about 5 seconds to add a relevant link to a post. People can say what they want, but too many people are far too stingy with their links. When you think about it for a second, that is both self-defeating and silly.

5. It’s the Conversation

I agree with the first part- I became a devotee of the Amy Gahran school of thought a long time ago- blogging is all about the conversation. Having said that, the fact that I live in Texas and not on the west coast shouldn’t be a huge impediment to becoming friends with Shel and other bloggers. Of course I’d like to see some of these folks in person, but that’s not always feasible. On a related note, I’m going to be in San Francisco in early November. I’d love to meet some of the guys I blog around with while I’m there. It will be interesting to see who takes me up on it (more about the trip in a later post).

6. Blogging is Multi-Sensory

I didn’t believe this for a long time. Now I do. Podcasting and other audio-video blog content are big now- and I’m convinced the trend is just starting.

7. Blogging is Like an Elephant

There’s no doubt about this. Sometimes I feel like the blogosphere is a warm and embracing place and other times I feel like it’s a club that I wouldn’t want to join even if I did get an invitation. The one thing I have concluded about the blogosphere is that, just like in real life, there are a lot more good talkers than good listeners. A good listener is a rare and wonderful thing.

8. ROI is Priceless

Like we talked about in my Who Do You Write For series, bloggers write for different reasons. I still contend that acceptance is a common denominator for all measures of success, but I fully agree that you can get a good return from blogging that doesn’t appear in link counts.

9. Any Blogger Can Be Heard

I don’t completely agree with this. I think the return on content investment in blogging is pretty low. Sure, if you are determined and patient, you can get a seat at the table, but it still strikes me as harder than it ought to be. Seth Finkelstein is probably the smartest person blogging today (forget about whether you agree with him and just look at the way he writes), but he has a hard time getting involved in day to day conversations. I have been blogging hard (hard, I tell you) since June 2005 (before that, I was merely using a blogging platform to manage content on my web page) and while I have scratched and clawed my way to decent link and reader numbers, I still feel like an outsider in the tech space. Most people will respond if I put a worthwhile post right in front of them, but I’m still not really part of the club. And, candidly, if I haven’t completely earned my stripes after all this time, is is reasonable to think that a brand new blogger could waltz up blogger’s hill and take a seat at the table without a lot of help from established mega-bloggers? Sure, it’s possible and it may happen, but the odds are strongly against it.

Those are my thoughts. What do you think?

Tags: blogs, blog building