Posts with tag "blogging"

Scoble asks some ethics questions of me

It's all about respect The discussion that has followed my earlier post about the A-List and PR favored links has been an interesting one. On top of that Robert Scoble in his last comments asked some pointed questions about what my ethics would be under the following conditions:

1. Will you go to a press conference or press dinner if invited?
2. Will you agree to hold any news until, say, next Monday at 10 a.m. in order to go to that press conference or press dinner?
3. Will you accept a free piece of hardware to write your review?
4. Will you accept a free dinner?
5. If you are told you’ll be given an exclusive that Mike Arrington isn’t going to get, will you accept any rules like “please keep this secret until 10 a.m. on Monday morning so we can make sure our servers are running when you blog it?”

I could have answered them in the comments and had them disappear into the long tail but I think they are valid enough that they deserve an answer in a post of their own – so here goes

1. Living in Ontario in a small town I doubt very much that I would be asked let alone afford the transportation (I don’t drive) to such a gig. However supposing that I could it would depend on if I was hungry; or not, and what was on the menu. Seriously I probably would.

2. This is a harder one to answer if my supposition of being able to go in the first place. My very first reaction would probably be no; but I don’t know if it would hold true after further thought … no I probably wouldn’t

3. This is very hard to answer and would probably depend a great deal on what the hardware is. If it was an iPod, XBox or some such thing I probably wouldn’t. If it was a hard drive or the such I would be really torn. As I said in a comment to ParisLemon on his post about all this:

if Apple contacted me as a Windows user for a review of Leopard which “oh by the way here is a MacBook for you to review it with and take your time getting it back to us” I would be hard pressed to turn it down

4. Depends on who’s offering the dinner :)

5. Chances are I probably would even at the risk of losing the edge if some-one broke the embargo.

Hopefully that answers your questions Robert; and anyone who might want to send me some PR or hardware to review :) .

As Karoli just pointed out in the same comment stream of the post – it is all about the disclosure. On top of that cranky old farts are notorious for getting irritated at trying to be paid off. After all it’s not just about respecting my readers it is also about self-respect and being able to look at oneself in the mirror afterwards.


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Are tech A-Listers being gamed?

Something to make you go hmmmm A post over at Odd Time Signatures by Karoli pointed to a Todd Cochrane post that was talking about a new SEO technique that was meant to game the tech A-list bloggers – either knowingly or otherwise.

Apparently the way it is meant to work is to release advance PR to a specific list of leading bloggers, get the bloggers to write reviews which is meant to build buzz, in these post the bloggers are paid to place specific links into the post and then when the A-List post hits Techmeme the linking pile on begins as does the the Google juice for the target of the post.

Like Karoli I have a really hard time believing that TechCrunch and other top tier blogs would stoop to dealing with this kind of practice – especially without disclosure. After all, the ad revenues alone wouldn’t be worth risking if people found out that TechCrunch or Mashable or Read/WriteWeb were playing such an underhanded game.

While there may not be such an overt practice of gaming the top tier the fact of releasing advance PR to top tier bloggers is in itself a method of gaming in that the moment these bloggers post anything they get linked to by every other blogger wanting to get some visibility; which also means increased page views and ad revenue as a result.

But then there is always the question of .. what if .. especially now that the very question has been raised.


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Content my ass – it’s the power links

It's all in the linkage It never fails that at some point when discussion on how to make your blog popular is held it is suggested that all you need is content, content and more content. Well, have you ever noticed that it’s usually the bloggers that have already reached that popular top tier that are saying this. At the same time they are telling you not to worry about linking so much. In fact according to Jeremiah Owyang you should be adding substance and not worry about linking to Techmeme headliners.

Well that might be easy for him to suggest since he already probably gets more readers in one day than any blogger – new or otherwise unknown – will see in months.

You could write War & Peace as a blog post but unless you have the traffic it won’t matter because no-one is going to see it; but should some-one like Robert Scoble, Jeremiah or any top tier blogger discover you, your readership will go through the roof – well comparatively anyway.

As Louis Gray points out in a post “it seems that those of us without the big brand names (yet) just might break a story or have original reporting, but proving that to a faceless algorithm is nearly impossible. As a result, to gain the real estate that’s felt to be deserved, a little link play is needed”

Now I am not suggesting that you become a link whore but there is nothing wrong with trying to raise your profile by using some smart linking to discussion leaders whether it be through Techmeme or their blog postings. It is that type of linking that I refer to as power links and as long as you are using it to raise your profile with good content or adding to the conversation then there is nothing wrong with the practice.

It you don’t find that working for you well there is always this list of top 10 things for new bloggers to understand over at Vaspers. In the meantime keep up the content and more power to the use of power links.


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Why WordPress 2.3 tags are wrong

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 2077 days ago

Links are meant to go outward not inward. As pointed out in a post today, Louis Gray makes note of the recurring angst over linking habits and the various rankings types now available for bloggers. In amongst his well written overview was the reference to Yuvi the StatBot coder who did an analysis of TechCrunch which pointed out that it is one of the biggest tech blogs for linking back to itself rather than to originating content.

While the very size and popularity of blogs like TechCrunch let it get away with this type of behavior the fact is that blogs depend on the inter-connectivity that comes from linking to other blogs in order to either begin a conversation or add to an existing one. The idea of linking back internally to one’s own posts rather than to outbound linking destroys this conversation building which is suppose to be the backbone of the blogosphere.

One of the primary methods that this outbound linking has been done especially with WordPress blogs was the ability with plugins was create tags that when the post was published were directed to the Technorati service which would then provide you with a list of other blogs using similar tags; and as a result enabling you; or your readers being able to partake in the larder conversation around those tags.

This was the simple beauty of being able to being in the larger conversation pool and a way albeit not always the best way to bring traffic to your blog.

With the newest release of the WordPress blogging platform though all this has changed with the tagging system now being a native part of the package. Unfortunately though the WP implementation of tagging goes totally against the whole original idea of tags as being a way to expand outward.

No longer if you use the native implementation of tagging in your WordPress blog are you pointing to outbound source but instead you are following what is being decried as a negative practice of deeplinking back to within your own blog – a case of mini-TechCrunching so to speak.

This practice as far as I am concerned is not right and totally goes against one of the basic tenets of blogging which is to expand the conversation where ever possible. As such this so-called new feature of WordPress’ tagging is a step backward and show be discouraged from being used.

Thank goodness there are still 3rd party plugins that let you use tags in the manner I believe they were meant to be used. Myself I use Simple Tags but there are also Ultimate Tag Warrior or TechnoTags. Any of these three would be my recommendations if you want to help; and promote, involvement in larger conversations rather than being a part of a closed conversation by using the new tagging feature in WordPress 2.3.

On top of this idea of being a part of a larger conversation there is also the fact that I have been reading many reports of problems folks are having trying to implement this new feature which should give you further reasons to tread cautiously.

BTW: don’t forget about the WinExtra contest to win a copy of Stardock’s newest version of WindowBlinds


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A 140 Characters doesn’t mean the death of blogging

Robert Scoble There are always a lot of stupid statements that get floated around the blogosphere but one of the stupidest has to be from Robert Scoble’s post yesterday where he equated the new Techmeme Leaderboard as the death knell for blogging. Along with that piece of wisdom he added another sign of dire times for blogging is the rise of Twitter as a medium to share your life with your followers.

Robert may be looked upon by many in the tech world as the leading voice of trends in the tech blogosphere but with his recent love affair with Twitter and Facebook and them being the end all be all for all our social needs I am beginning to wonder if Robert has discovered a way to marginalizes himself in the larger blogosphere.

His supposition that Twitter gives us better insights into what is going on all within the context of 140 characters is as about as lame as him saying that the idea of lists is lame. While such things as Technorati and Techmeme rankings might be lame for him, for  career bloggers these types of metrics are both a measure of popularity and valuation when it comes to calculating their worth for advertising dollars.

Just because he has never had to be in a position of needing to monetize his blog doesn’t prove that the lists; of which he has always been a fixture, aren’t an important gauge of who is worth reading along with providing an important valuation system.

We might live in a sound-bite world but to suggest that 140 characters is more than enough to share news and information is stupid. As Frank Shaw said in a post today:

The bigger point here is that the medium is maturing. After a long time of delayed response, the field of journalism has responded by being faster, more detailed, better resourced in order to compete. I see this as a good thing. Blogging remains a hugely powerful way for people to receive information, and the ability for an authoritive voice to quickly rise to prominence is as strong today as it was two years or three years ago.

Robert might want to live within the confines of 140 characters or behind the walled world of Facebook but to suggest that this medium is on its deathbed because of a 140 characters and a some new listing metric is ridiculous and only goes to show that Robert is losing touch.

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There’s nothing wrong with rankings – it’s natural

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 2093 days ago

Live and die by the top whatever Top 10, Top 100 etc etc etc … it doesn’t where you look in our society whether it be online or off – rankings of one sort or another are an integral part of our social interaction as well as how we place ourselves in the scheme of  things.

We love to rank things; whether it is the best restaurants in the world to the top 100 albums of all time and everything in between, because of our innate need to always have something better to shoot for. In raw terms it gives us something to live for.

Everything in our society is based on rankings from our place in the social class system to our place in the workforce. We get rewarded whenever we move up in the rankings. Sometimes those rewards are monetary and sometimes they are nothing more than public bragging rights.

In the tech blogosphere rankings is something that many like to deny even exists and if it does it isn’t important. Well they obviously haven’t yet heard of the newest type of ranking to hit all courtesy of startup Xobni and their plugin application for the Outlook email client. Apparently part of the Xobni application assigns a rank to each of your email contacts based on a ratio of incoming and outgoing email. It is the new hot game to be hitting tech related offices – who’s your number one.

This is one reason why I laugh my ass off every time someone in the tech blogosphere tries to deny or downgrade the value of the so-called Technorati Ranking system. Ya sure, the idea might offend the tender sensibility of some of the goodie two shoe bloggers but others will do it because they are doing everything to protect their ranking turf.

The problem right now in the tech blogosphere is that bloggers are getting gun shy of even having a ranking system because of this belittlement of it by those that are already at the top of the food chain. It hasn’t helped either that the basic human nature of gaming any ranking system in order to falsely increase one’s rank has also had a negative effect.

Both the protecting of top place turf and this gaming of the system has made it difficult to have an honest system for the rest of us to work with. Hell it has even scared of Technorati to the point they are destroying the company by trying to do everything they can to remove the idea of rankings.

It doesn’t matter if you change the name to something stupid like social graph or be up front and call it what it is – rankings the point is that this is a natural part of our makeup so let’s cut the crap and work towards a good honest ranking system with all the checks and balances needed to keep it honest. On top of that let’s quit lying to each other about how unimportant rankings are regardless of the bull being fed to us by those that don’t want their turf (money flow) threatened.


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Blogging must be mainstream now

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 2100 days ago

Gossip Girls There are a lot of indicators used to tell if a new technology or trend has gone mainstream. It can be everything from the chatter around the internet to being talked up in the old style media outlets. However nothing is more of an indicator than being used as part of the integral part of a television series.

Apparently one of the new series being premiered on the CW Network is a new show called Gossip Girl; which in itself doesn’t seem all that important – at least until you read the synopses:

Based on the book of the same title, Gossip Girl takes viewers inside the exclusive world of the privileged teenagers at an elite New York City private school. Each episode is told through the eyes of an anonymous blogger as the best gossip and deepest secrets are dished and revealed.

I chuckled a bit when I read it but even with blogging as part of a plot line it isn’t a show that will be on my list of new shows to watch.

graphic via tvrage.com

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The agony of blog and RSS feed housekeeping

Get off yer butts and get to work By nature I am one who has practiced procrastination up to the level of a fine art and nowhere is this more evident in my dealing with blog and RSS feeds. Not so much in picking up new ones to read, no those I’ll jump on like a well feed news and information junkie. My failing is in knowing when the interest and usefulness of a blog and it’s RSS feed has been reached and it is time to toss it to the recycle bin.

Another area that I think I’m; and possibly a lot more blogger than who would care to admit it, nervous about stepping off the well worn path is in getting up the guts to source lesser known bloggers in my writings. After all bloggers who have made this a career choice live and die by our traffic; and to shift from the almost guaranteed traffic producers as found in the popularity contest known as the A-List to those bloggers slogging away in the trenches will affect our bottom lines.

Knowing that though I have over the last little while been trying hard to link to those bloggers I respect for their thoughts and opinions; regardless of position in the blogosphere hierarchy, rather than to people like Robert Scoble, TechCrunch or Om Malik. As expected I have taken a visitor and page view hit which can be a little depressing from a strictly ego point of view and will have an affect of my hopes of growth to sustainability. However even with all that said I feel better for some reason, maybe a little more honest.

Along with that the other area that bloggers have a really hard time I think in realizing is when the time has come to cut the RSS umbilical cord to blogs that have more of a drain on their time than as providers of good information. It is almost like we have developed a relationship with those feeds and like any relationship breaking up is hard to do so we put it off as long as possible; always hoping that they will redeem themselves once more.

Chances are though that they won’t and in the process we guiltily keep them around clicking on the All Read button to assuage our feelings that maybe tomorrow you’ll unsubscribe in typical procrastinator fashion. Our reasons for needing to excise these broken RSS relationships may vary but in the end they must be removed and replaced with those that bring back the rush that comes from reading something that sparks those creative juices once more.

This is something that I have had to rise above my developed fine art of procrastination and do myself which is why I finally summoned up the courage and broke it off with the following feeds

  1. John Chow – John has always been a good source of ways to monetize a blog; some won’t like his methods while others will extol high praise. For me the breaking point has been his recent move to highly monetize his RSS feed. Now I can live with a graphic ad banner or even one or two text ads but when a feed becomes more ads than content then it’s time to say chow
  2. Robert Scoble – I’ll still keep his link blog feed around but with Robert’s increasing forays into making his blog more video content than text it is becoming less valuable for me.
  3. Jason Calacanis – I get Mahalo .. really I do and I understand that Jason is a self-promoter who has gotten rich that way but I’m not getting any value for my time anymore.

On the other hand I have added some new feeds to bloggers that I have stumbled up and reading them gave me more than enough reasons to add them to my feeds.

  1. Mathew K Tabor – for me education is incredibly important especially in our tech world and it is an area we are rapidly losing ground in. Mathew writes well on this subject and helps me get my thoughts about this area flowing.
  2. Rex Hammock – while I may not always agree with his opinions it can’t be denied that he doesn’t get you thinking.
  3. Alfred Thompson – his post just plain make me think.

Sure it’s hard to break off old relationships or tread new paths and while the rewards may be further down the road than you may like there will be rewards. So get off your procrastinating butts and get some housekeeping done .. it won’t really hurt as much as you might think.


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