Entries Tagged 'Blogosphere' ↓

Scoble explains his size gains after
just a month of bloggingIf you’re worried about an untimely death due to your blogging habits you should know that scientists have recently discovered some previously unknown benefits to blogging. To put it delicately, it seems that blogging can make you more of a man.

Top “make money online” blogger John Chow apparently needs to have his pants custom tailored for comfort. Don’t worry though - the pants are corporate purchases that go into a holding company for tax purposes. Robert Scoble didn’t respond to requests for comment but according to a source who wished to remain unnamed “they don’t call him tripod because of his photography skills”.

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You’re right, it’s a bit late for an April fools joke. I was just thinking about the New York Times piece about blogging being deadly. John Chow seems to think that this is an example of shoddy journalism. Perhaps it’s a case of old line media lashing out at new media out of fear. But maybe, just maybe, the Old Gray Lady has figured out how to use that new-fangled-interweb-thing-a-ma-jig to it’s advantage and discovered the nifty little term that we bloggers call “linkbait”.

Sorry all - when I saw that pic of Scoble I just couldn’t resist. And besides I’m sure I can attract tons of splog trackbacks with this story.

The New York Times continues its tradition of groundbreaking journalism by pointing out that workaholics have stressful lives. Not content with that startling revelation they manage to tie the stress that workaholic bloggers face to deadly consequences.

All joking aside, NYT points out some indisputable facts about working at some of the big name blogs:

• a 24/7/365 news cycle
• intense competition where being first with a story is a huge advantage
• long hours and (relatively) low pay for many employees

But lets be clear about what kind of blogging they’re talking about here. This is stuff that applies to big boys like Mashable and TechCrunch with their focus on tech news and multiple writers. There are maybe a couple dozen “blogs” that fit this mold and even famous bloggers like Scoble and John Chow don’t really fit this mold.

Can you even call a site like TechCrunch or Engadget a blog at this point? I don’t really think so. They’re online news organizations that have a much closer resemblance to old fashioned news media than they do to what any of us would call a blog. Even bloggers who seek to make money with their blog don’t really fit this mold - their blogs tend to more personal stories that aren’t really affected by the need to “get it out first” or the demands of producing tons of content on a regular basis.

I don’t mean to diminish the fact that some “blog” employees are working under tough conditions and that stress can be harmful to their health. But I think the reality is that these people chose to do what they do because they’re passionate about the topics they cover and these go-getters would likely end up in a stressful job of another sort if blogging weren’t available to them.

Gyutae Park at Winning the Web has been running the Craziest Internet Marketing Contest You’ve Ever Seen for quite some time now. It’s been quite successful at generating buzz as it’s been blogged about extensively and even got multiple mentions in blogs like John Chow and Shoemoney. It even got me to sign up for the feed - I’d heard about the blog before but never read it.

Unfortunately so far the only content I’ve gotten from Winning the Web has been related to the contest. Which leads me to my criticism of contests as a promotional strategy. Contest draw people who like to enter contests. Many will do whatever it takes to win even if they have no interest in the content your trying to promote. Contests can drive traffic but since that traffic is often un-targeted it might not be very valuable traffic.

Now I think part of it has to do with where the contest is promoted. Certainly for Winning the Web all the readers of John Chow and Shoemoney would be targeted visitors. I did a contest once with my “big successful site” and promoted it a bit through contest forums and that traffic was darn near worthless.

Since winning the web’s contest is ending soon we’ll hopefully start to get some of the content we signed up for. I’m sure that the site has gotten subscribers and visitors who are only interested in the contest and will drop off but it’s certainly raised the profile of this new blog and it’ll be interesting to hear the results when it’s all settled down.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the Hummer H2 prize that was announced today is an April Fool’s joke.

Why is everybody jumping on Scoble just because he’s all giddy over some new Microsoft thing that he can’t talk about? Honestly it’s stuff like this that I love to read out of Scoble. The guy’s a geek but so are most of his readers. And quite honestly I rarely care a whole heck of a lot about any new thing that’s come along.

Odds are the “next big thing” won’t live up to Scoble’s hype but watching him get all giddy about it is about as much fun as watching kids on Christmas morning.

I find it absolutely hilarious that pundits will come up with amazingly complex theories behind an action when a simple explanation is far more likely to be correct.

I’m sure everyone has heard about Microsoft’s semi-hostile takeover bid of Yahoo!. Most of you have also likely heard that some Google lawyer posted a blog about how the merger would be a bad thing and Microsoft was a big nasty monopolistic bully. Old hat. And of course all the bloggers responding with how Google is their own big monopolistic bully (in the online search and advertising realm).

But along comes Scoble to explain to us why we’re all wrong and he knows better. According to Scoble Google doesn’t mind the merger and just want to tie up Microsoft and Yahoo for months of legal wrangling while Google develops the next-big-thing which is mobile.

Now maybe (probably) Scoble is right that MicroHoo! wouldn’t be a bad thing for Google. Maybe Scoble is right that Google want to dominate in mobile. But what I can’t believe is that anyone (even at Google) is smart enough to come up with this complex scenario that Scoble seems to think he’s uncovered.

My guess is that Google does at some level fear a combined MicroHoo! Google’s been eating Yahoo!’s lunch for years and with an injection of cash, talent and ruthless ambition Yahoo! can only become a more effective competitor for Google. And despite Google’s ambitions in mobile and other markets I’m absolutely certain that Google doesn’t want to lose the dominance that they have in the online search and ad game.