Category Archive: Blogging
Subcategories: No categories
Flooding the Blogosphere
Seth Godin thinks that we are posting to much noise on the blogosphere. (via A VC)
Kent Newsome also weighs in and says:
Asking the citizenry of the blogosphere (far too many of whom are chasing the almighty dollar) to be reasoned in their use of the shared blogosphere is like asking people not to litter.
What Kent is saying is of course true, there is just no way we are going to turn around from the current curve, people will post more and more, and the topics will become more and more diverse. What we have here is the age old problem of eyeballs, yes, that is a marketing 1.0 term and it is still relevant. How do we expose the value of the increasingly long tail. Seth says that a focused and author filtered blog will end up with fewer, but more loyal and consequently valuable readers, but does that mean that it should end there?
The other side of the coin is the argument for memetrackers and tagging as well as custom filters helping us out, but to tell you the truth I find the signal to noise ratio on these things to be equally low, although they are not far off.
What do I think the solution is? Simple. Collaborative filtering. Many years ago there used to exist a movie rating site (I think it was called movielobby.com back then), they had a movie rating system where you could feed it with movies that you liked, then based on what other people have rated it would do some simple maths and suggest you a couple movies to watch. Simple, and it worked. What was more is that the more you used it, the more accurate it got.
This is what we need, I have been working on some sort of solution for this the last couple of weeks, when I have time. I have a technology base figured out, that’s the easy part, but how do I make this work in the real-world. I have been thinking of a browser plugin, it needs to be really simple to rate blog posts on a scale of “This grabbed my attention” to “This left me cold”, the system will then take your ratings and match your profile to these of thousands of like-minded people and suggest posts for you, via RSS (number and frequency configurable). Kind of like a personal memetracker.
What do you think, sound like it could work?
Nativetext, crossing the language barrier.
Now this is an idea I can really get in to. Nativetext is a new service soon to be opening that will attempt to cross the language barrier in the world of syndicated content.
It is true that the bulk of syndicated content (RSS feeds and podcasts) are mainly available in English and while English is widely accepted it is also true that a large number of people aren’t fluid in it, or prefer to consume content in their native languages.
Nativetext plan on using humans to translate content from feeds submitted to the service in the requested language, no fancy high tech techniques here, just plain old hard work, the advantages should be content that maintain a sensible language structure (have you ever tried to make sense of an automated translation?) and should translate the localized nuances of the native languages a lot better.
I am not sure how they plan on scaling the vast number of requests, especially considering the number of feeds they would inevitably need to translate and the fact that RSS feeds will be translated for free, but I have read elsewhere that they may offer a paid for document translation service for business based on a bidding system for the signed up translator. Sounds a lot like amazon’s mechanical turk?
This seems like an exciting opportunity to provide the richness of content so prevalent in the western countries to the vast numbers of internet and cellphone users coming online now in the non-english speaking countries worldwide.
As a non-english speaking African I can attest to the fact that language is still a problem to some, so it follows that this should get some fantastic traction.
Technorati Tags: Web2.0, Nativetext, RSS
Beware the hype monster
I’m worried, I really am, Origami is taking over and while it is now close to the eve of the unveiling at Cebit (a 30 second mention by the way, my bet is on channel 9 having the real scoop rather), the hype seems to have just REALLY spun out of control.
Everyone seems to know what it is, most people seem to swing to some sort of a PDA/Mini Tablet device and people claim REAL photos have leaked. There is just no way that this thing is going to live up to the hype.
What we are seeing is in fact an interesting phenomenon that I want to call “the Apple effect”, people are commenting that Microsoft has taken a page from Apple’s “one more thing” hype machine and that they may even have exceeded the hype generated but I would like to call nay on this. Putting a couple of teasers up on a website or on a press invitation is hardly anything to be excited about, rather the source of all that hype is inside each one of us and the blogosphere is swallowing it hook line and sinker.
Let’s look at the last Apple release, everyone was betting on a new video iPod , even though the release date was totally unreasonable considering how young the latest all-singing-all-dancing iPod is, instead they where given an expensive Intel Mac Mini and a crappy boombox that reminds me of a failed 1st year college design project.
So, do you see the problem here? We where all DISAPPOINTED. We where like children at christmas time getting all revved up about an imaginary Xbox under the tree even though we now our dad has just lost his job and it would be an impossible wish, so we have set ourselves for disappointment and then that crappy GI Joe which would rock under normal circumstances seems to suck so extra bad.
Bad blogosphere, bad! It sucks that we just believe everything we read, we don’t question, we don’t investigate, we don’t think for ourselves. Remember that iPod mockup from 2 weeks ago, the guy must have had a good ‘ol laugh when he posted the video explaining how he did it!
Please guys lets not do what we have been pinning on mainstream media for years, lets not overhype and perpetuate half truths.
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but to tell you the truth, I think there be a time when Apple and MS regret all this hype around the releases, I mean if GI Joe sucked, does that not mean we would see these “underdelivered” product releases in a poor light too?
By posting this, am I buying into the hype against my will?
Are we being lobotimized by memetrackers?
I’m pretty sure that most of us have started paying a lot of Attention to the current crop of memetrackers, we use memeorandum and tailrank to find the cream that has bubbled to the top, or so we thought.
Maybe we are spending to much time on them and we should start moving back to our RSS readers? Dave Winer reckons that:
“These days you could rename Memeorandum to Snarksforall, with one blogger trying to top another for the most vacuous post.”
Robert Scoble thinks:
“I’m just falling down a dark hole. It’s the same hole I was in in the 1990s when I posted about 100,000 items on various newsgroups: in a group the writer is in control, not the reader.”
Are we missing the plot with the memetrackers, are we to focused on the opinion of other people? Are we losing our individuality? RSS subscriptions will differ from me to you, unique, but if we follow memetrackers are we not just like the zombies from “Shawn of the dead”? Have we been digitally lobotomized?
Take a break from the memetrackers for a second, hey they do have there function as news aggregators. Go through your feeds, read those ones you have been neglecting, follow the links to the new boys on the block, add them to your aggregator, pay some link love.
Exhale, there now. Feeling better?
Technorati Tags: Memetrackers, Memeorandum, RSS, Blogging
Do tech bloggers GET blogging?
A while ago I was asking a good friend of mine whether he was reading my blog. He had a surprising response and it went something like this:
“Nah, I check it out occasionally, but you just always link to other people’s stuff that link to other people. I can find that sort of information on my own.”
I was kind of taken aback and had a quick retort along the lines of: “excuse me I don’t just link to other people, I comment!”. And I left it at that.
However I have slowly come to release that 80% of what I do IS that, linking to someone else’s ideas and just adding my spin on the subject. Very little original ideas ever really emanate from me and I think it is shame. The same is true with the bulk of the new crop of tech blogs out there. The downside of it is that people don’t really take us all that seriously, sure at our little “dinner table” as Kent Newsome explains the conversation is lively and engaging, but for everyone else it just sounds like a bunch of intellectuals having a tag figting match.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with wagon-training, I love the stimulation it provides and I love to test my own thoughts using this blog and others as a sounding-board, but how are we showing ourselves to the world outside of the blogosphere? Do we add value to the lives of others outside or little circle of tech geekness?
Sure a blog on knitting, or horse riding will generally contain tons of information, good original content and would appeal to a large scope of people including those that don’t get the whole blogging phenomenon. But do a test and do a cross section of the popular tech blogs out there, put on your user cap and you will realise that it seems like we are perpetuating the same ideas over and over again, SSDD.
Speaking to a South African web developer the other day I asked him what his takes is on Web 2.0, he replied:
“What’s that? I don’t have time to keep up with all that blogging crap, I work during the day.”
Scary? Yeah, and scary because its our fault. We need to educate, we need to SHARE! We need to stop bouncing around the intellectual beachball over the heads of the uninitiated.
Comments?
TomorrowConnecting
Keep an eye out for my writings on http://www.tomorrowconnecting.biz/, I will be posting there regularly now to help out the local cause.
Technorati Tags: TomorrowConnecting
Why can't we just …. get along?
I love this new fangled internet thing. I love what we call web 2.0, I love the interconnectedness, the sharing, the cross-pollination of ideas the “developers partying with users” (as per Dave Winer) and the trust.
I was shocked and sickened by the somewhat nasty post directed at Scoble, read his response here.
Sure I read the Scobleizer, and personally I don’t care if Scoble runs Firefox and uses Scobleizer products or Microsoft tools, however I don’t believe it does anybody any good to start flinging insults around the blogosphere: “Scoble cannot tell his ass from his face”, thats just not cool.
Kent Newsome says: “Because the little blogospats that are popping up all over the blogosphere sound more like my kids fighting over a Polly Pocket than anything resembling reasoned conversation.“. And he is right, and it is directly undermining our efforts at heaving a meaningful debate in what we have called the blogosphere.
I read a lot of blogs everyday, including Scobleizer, when I am done I have a number of choices:
- Ignore what I have just read
- Take note and add it to my understanding of the world
- Comment and add to the conversation
However to start insulting someone unprovoked on a personal level is just not acceptable and counter-productive.
Without commenting on Scoble’s technical skill, let me just pose this question: Does it even matter?
Zoli Erdos makes a good point:”Technology’s primary role is to advance the lives of all of us, and guess what, that means mostly for non-technologists. We need the ‘hardcore’ technologists who create it, the non-techie users (the rest of the world, which happens to be the majority), and the in-betweeners, who explain it, help us select and use it.”
Surely everyone gets to have a say, the blogosphere is a big place, if you don’t like it just don’t read it, I don’t like half the stuff on TV, so I change the channel, I don’t start a mudslinging fight with the producers of the shows.
Come on guys, can’t we just get along? It will be better for all of us, in the long run.
Oh and am I the only one to think that Microsoft has as much a place in this world as the Open Source community, is there really a good or a bad (and a ugly)? Is it not more about what adds value to you the user personally? C’mon guys we need to get along, the worlds needs to change, lets call it the Technological Revolution 2.0 , mkay? 
Limpeting the M-list
I found this interesting exploratory furthering of thoughts around the phenomenon of A-lists and gatekeeping by Adam Green.
I think there is also a more gradual phenomenon that I call the revenge of the M-list. When a new area of interest develops, such as what we are now seeing with OPML reading lists, a group of mutually linking bloggers emerges. If one of these bloggers is an A-lister, then the majority of the links point to his or her posts on the subject. If, on the other hand, the inter-linkers are all middle ranked bloggers, let’s call them M-listers, they tend to link to each other fairly liberally. As new people become interested in the subject, they find these clusters of posts (memetracking sites do a great job of revealing M-list clusters), and also link to many of the blogs in the cluster, since there is no one recognizable A-lister to link to exclusively. In time the M-lister who is most prolific on this subject, but not necessarily the best writer or scobler, acquires even more links. Eventually this blogger becomes the authority on the subject, and even A-listers take note and deliver links. The resulting accumulation of links are enough to reach A-list status. Thus we have a slow bubbling up from the middle, rather than the overnight success story so often told by analysts.
I must say I do think there is a lot of merit in this idea, but it got me thinking .. what if I am not in that middle list yet, can I somehow play it to my advantage?
A lot of the clustering phenomenon is built on trust networks, basically people that trust you tend to read your posts and link to those posts, thus as you enlarge these networks, clusters will start forming around you naturally. You get a sense of this if you start following specific bloggers, you see the same faces commenting and linking time and time again, thus a cluster has formed within your trust space.
Now what if I dont have my own trust cluster around me yet? Sure everybody has a loyal reader or two, maybe even one or two groupies , but can I use attach myself to someone else’s trust cluster? The answer needs to be a resounding yes.
Lets look at how you move through the Z-list to the M-list:
1) Write often, this will make you form your ideas better over time, i.e. people will like what you say eventually.
2) Build networks: Get blog rolled, email people with personal comments and feedback, chances are they will keep an eye on you.
3) Make yourself visible: trackbacks, comments tags all these things work. They burn you into the collective conscience of the
blogosphere
4) Attach yourself to a M-list cluster, to fasttrack a few letters.
Wow, number 4 is the kicker. If there is any merit on this cluster idea slowly moving to the top (my mate dave likes to say “the cream always rises to the top”), there has to be some sort of effect when attaching yourself to a cluster. Not as a parasite, but more like those single people that try to squeeze themselves into your ring at a school dance, or like hanging around the perimeter of the cool click in a hope that some coolness might rub off. Think about, when someone finds a meme and starts examining it they might find you in there somewhere, won’t they?
Just my 2 cents, do you think there is any merit in this technique? Shall we call it limpeting?
Technorati Favorites
I just spotted a great new feature on Technorati. Its called Favorites and it allows you to manage a list of 50 of your favorite blogs, with a view of the service compiling a focus page on the recent activity of these blogs in particular.
The list can be shared with your readers and friends and they provide some marketing tools for that.
Nothing earth-shattering here but I like the idea and I am certainly going to use it and share with you my loyal readers.
Work in progress, but go and have a look at mine so long.
Technorati Tags: technorati, favorites
Coding Horror
Normally when people recommend blogs its a pretty ho-hum affair for me, but Scoble was recommending this one that actually seems pretty good.
Right off the bat the first post that I saw rang true. In a post entitled, Fear of writing, Jeff encourages :
don’t let fear of writing keep you from doing it
So just to indulge in a bit of metooism, let me just chime in as well ..
I think people take themselves way to seriously, sure so maybe you are not the worlds greatest writer, but is it better to stay sitting quietly in the corner when you have something burning to say?
Each post, each thought milled over in your head gets easier, and easier to put down. Some people ask me, why put so much effort into something that nobody reads, but thats not true. Everybody has readers, friends, family, a couple of subscribers who dropped in by chance. And its a great feeling when someone pats you on the back to congratulate an enjoyable post.
So yeah, me personally, I’ll try and keep at it while it stays fun, and I have something to say.
Technorati Tags: scoble,blogging,coding horror