Archive: Posts about Blogosphere
June 12th, 2007, 2 Comments »
I was reminded that I’ve yet to announce the winners in the survey I ran way back before Northern Voice. I apologize for this–it’s no excuse, but it’s been a crazily busy four months. So, with no further ado, here are the winners (using my wife as a random number generator).
- Alison wins the iPod Shuffle.
- Nitesh was going to win two books I had from Lonely Planet. Unfortunately, they’re back in a box in Canada, so they’re going to get a $50 Lonely Planet gift certificate.
- John gets the $50 Amazon or iTunes gift certificate for being ranked 42nd (Julie’s choice again) in people linking to the survey.
In the case of Alison and Nitesh, I don’t want to be more specific about who they are until I contact them and get their permission. So, apologies to any other Alisons or Niteshes out there who I’ll later have to disappoint.
A couple of people have also asked about the results data. I do plan to release it–I’ve just been going through it to try to anonymize any delicate bits and remove any links. I indicated when I ran the survey that the results would be published, but I think better safe than sorry here. The cleaning up process has taken longer than expected (and often gets shunted down the work list by more pressing tasks), but I’m getting there.
2 Comments »
March 30th, 2007, 9 Comments »
Last week, somewhere, I read about Commentful, a service that enables you to monitor blog posts for new comments. This comes in handy because I probably leave five comments a day on other people’s blogs, and if I want to see follow-ups, I either have to leave the windows open, or remember to check back. With its lightweight Firefox plug-in, Commentful seems to be solving this problem:
Commentful is a service that watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts, Digg submissions, Flickr pictures, and many other types of content. When ever there is an update, such as a new follow-up or comment, Commentful notifies you instantly.
It’s not exactly feature-rich at the moment, but it does what it says on the box. On someone’s recommendation, I’d tried coComment about six months ago, but I had some technical issues with it (something about Flickr integration, if I recall correctly). coComment certainly does more than Commentful, but I’ll stick with the latter for the time being.
9 Comments »
March 28th, 2007, 1 Comment »
The Tyee recently started this project called Blog Roller. Each month they ask a BC blogger to write a short piece about five our their favourite blogs. This month, they kindly asked me. The piece got, uh, kind of an unfortunate headline:
I subscribe to the RSS feeds for about 175 blogs. I skim most of those, and ignore a few completely. However, I read every post from the following five blogs — they’ve earned my complete attention. While writing this piece, I observed a trend: in one way or another, I want to be all of these people. Is envy a good metre-stick for favourite blogs?
It was hard to pick just five. I would have liked to select some less popular ones, but I couldn’t think of any that I really loved. Either popular blogs get popular because they’re good, or I’m not trying hard enough to find new, unpopular stand-outs. I tend to add and subtract a few blogs each month on my reading list, but maybe that’s not enough. Good also tends to equal original and creative for me, so that can be a tall order.
On a related, self-promotional note, I’m apparently quoted in this month’s Wired magazine. I haven’t seen the physical edition yet, but it’s in a little sidebar to Clive Thompson’s (one of my favourite bloggers from The Tyee, coincidentally) story about transparency (scroll way down to the bottom of the page). As a long time reader of Wired (I have their second ever issue around here somewhere–it’s got Douglas Coupland on the cover), I’m pretty psyched about that one. Next stop: actually write a whole article for the magazine.
1 Comment »
March 27th, 2007, 3 Comments »
I’ve been doing lots of reading about the death threats that Kathy Sierra received. It’s hard to avoid in the blogosphere this week, and rightfully so. I wrote about it earlier in the week, but I’m afraid the events and culprits are no more clear in my head.
This whole despicable event has verified one of my (and lots of other people’s) pet theories: the social web has created a long tail of celebrity. I often use this example to explain the long tail idea, because it seems to both surprise and resonate with people.
I don’t write this post to, in any way, make light of Kathy’s situation. I write it to highlight a cultural trend that I think all bloggers need to be aware of.
In a pre-Internet world, here’s what fame looked like. A relatively few number of people were famous (click for larger version, long tail graphic borrowed from Alex Barnett):
However, the Internet came along, and made a bunch more people a little bit famous. There seems to be more fame to spread around, but I don’t want to get into a discussion of the attention economy. Even if you have, say, twenty readers who aren’t your friends and family, you’re a little bit of a celebrity. Here’s what that chart might look like now:
Sure, Robert Scoble’s more famous than a college professor, but I don’t want to quibble over the relative positions. The gist is in the broad strokes.
This new long tail of fame is a micro version of what A-list celebrities experience, and that comes with its relative blessings and curses. I’m sure that Angelina Jolie or Jodie Foster get a lot more death threats than Kathy Sierra has, but they’re a lot more famous.
What’s my point? If you’re a blogger, you’re more visible than the average person. Be sure to protect yourself as best you can.
3 Comments »
March 26th, 2007, 7 Comments »
I don’t have all the facts straight yet (somebody ought to write a WikiNews or Now Public story about this), but marketing genius Kathy Sierra has apparently been receiving death threats from other bloggers.
As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I’m not. I’m at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you’ve probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy).
There’s plenty of evidence in her blog post and the comments to suggest that this isn’t an isolated incident or just a little flame war gone awry. It’s really awful, and just shameful that so-called professionals apparently are involved (I’m hesitant to name the alleged perpetrators until fact is sorted out from speculation).
I first read about this on Lauren’s blog, but have since seen it on Robert’s, Tim’s and a dozen others. Once the culprits are clearly identified, I imagine they can expect a visit from the local constabulary.
Aside from the occasional, random flammage, the only threats of abuse I’ve ever received are from Harley Davidson enthusiasts. They apparently didn’t like being called ‘asshats’.
7 Comments »
March 21st, 2007, 2 Comments »
Mark points to an interesting CNet article which investigates the question “who wrote the first blog?”:
Barger, a programmer, futurist and James Joyce scholar, is not afraid to say, indeed, he’s the guy who invented the term “Web log.” In December 1997, he created RobotWisdom.com to feature entirely bloggy collections of links to articles about politics, culture, books and technology that he found interesting.
I’ve been reading RobotWisdom on and off for years, but I didn’t realize it was quite so venerable. The article goes on to describe .plan files, which I’d never heard of.
2 Comments »
March 14th, 2007, 2 Comments »
Today I stumbled upon (as opposed to StumbledUpon™) two blog designs that I quite liked.
Drivl is a humour blog that’s sometimes crassly funny (this Best of Drivl list looks promising), and sometimes just crass. Its design–subtle greens and reds with plenty of attention to detail–really doesn’t match its content. Regardless, it feels super contemporary and I dig it.
I don’t know if Blogged Out’s design is a WordPress template, but it’s simple and elegant. I know the main banner is a pretty basic PhotoShop filter, but I like the use of faint gradients and plenty of white space around the text. I’m not particularly interested in blogs about blogging, but there are plenty of other people who are (as Seth Godin recently suggested).
2 Comments »
March 8th, 2007, 6 Comments »
I’ve been a long time reader of Alex’s blog at AlexandraSamuel.com. She only blogs occasionally, but her posts are worth the wait. I do all my blog reading in Bloglines, so I rarely click through to actual websites. Tonight I clicked on an item (about an interesting-looking Web 2.0 babysitter finder) in her feed because I wanted it open in my browser to blog about later. When I visited the page just now, I found that the post lived not on her own site, but on Change Everything.
Messages, Mediums and RSS
I gather, at some point, that Alex rolled her ChangeEverything feed into her AS.com feed. It’s a non-issue in this case, because I want to read what Alex writes, regardless of where it’s posted. I did, however, experience a tiny bit of cognitive dissonance. How much is the medium the message when it comes to blogging? I expected the medium to be this site, but in fact it was that one. Does it make any difference at all?
In the past, I’ve cross-posted entries to both DarrenBarefoot.com and Capulet.com. I think, in some subtle, way, there’s a difference between your experience reading the same words on one site or the other. In this case, Alex’s decision to post her entry about finding caregivers on Change Everything suggests that she hopes CareSquare will help, well, change everything. Or at least a little something.
Mind you, when we read RSS feeds, we lose the original medium and it gets replaced with a new, generic one. Jeremy changed the design of his site today (suggestion: when you publish a new design, include a screenshot of the old one for comparison). I might not have noticed if he hadn’t pointed it out. But then, which medium is Jeremy (or me or any blogger) primarily writing for? The all-purpose RSS reader, or his specific site design?
Terms and Conditions
I also started thinking about trust relationships around RSS subscriptions. Alex certainly isn’t the first to change what I get in the feed to which I subscribed. In fact, her shift is tiny compared to others I’ve witnessed. Bloggers have suddently integrated, say, photos and links into what was a traditional blog feed. I’ve had to go and request a blog-only feed, because I didn’t want all that other stuff.
In other cases, the change has been less obvious but more profound. Like any long term creative projects, blogs evolve. And so, of course, do readers. The blog I subscribed to two years might be quite different today–it might have more content, less content, shorter posts, longer posts (guilty as charged, I think) or an entirely new focus.
What are the terms and conditions of the contract we sign when we subscribe to a blog feed? Are there any at all?
6 Comments »
February 22nd, 2007, 8 Comments »
I just got a note from a colleague:
A writer for a Calgary magazine is seeking information about Calgary bloggers. I know you’re not in Calgary, but you’re far closer to Calgary than I am. Do you have any blog contacts there who might be interested in speaking with her?
She’s looking for corporate or industry blogs, not blog-diary types.
Nobody springs to mind, but then I have a goldfish-sized memory. Any suggestions?
8 Comments »
February 14th, 2007, 3 Comments »
I wish I’d written this essay, found via Beth. Emily Nussbaum has a smart, insightful article in New York magazine entitled “Say Everything”. It’s essentially about the privacy gap between the bloggy, MySpace generation and their parents. It clearly articulates so many of the half-formed ideas I’ve had kicking around in my head:
But maybe it’s a cheap shot to talk about reality television and Paris Hilton. Because what we’re discussing is something more radical if only because it is more ordinary: the fact that we are in the sticky center of a vast psychological experiment, one that’s only just begun to show results. More young people are putting more personal information out in public than any older person ever would—and yet they seem mysteriously healthy and normal, save for an entirely different definition of privacy.
I regularly remind people that Paris Hilton’s rise to fame was because of a sex tape. We all seem to have forgiven and forgotten about that, which seems slightly baffling to me.
Regardless, this essay dovetails nicely into the survey I just ran about why we blog, and some creative writing that I’m doing as time permits. It’s recommended reading for anybody in the social media space, or anybody trying to figure out the current redivision of fame.
3 Comments »
