My son Alex starts on the AidsCycle today. I wish him the best.
Each new account requires a new test. Vox was first. It is getting inundated.
Heard about it.
Read about it.
Had to try it.
Antidisestablishmenttarianism?
Antidelegateestablishmenthillaryism?
SuperDelegates are leaving Hillary to support Barack.
Doc Searls (look it up) is fond of saying that blogging is like sending an email to the world. You should just write to your blog, post it, and pretend you are sending an email to the world. We all spend time reading and writing email, but say we do not have enough time to blog.
If we change our attitude, there would be enough time to blog.
I understand all that, but I still have not posted for a good while - but now I have.
Vox is a good name. Broadcasting often uses the term vox populi, which means the voice of the people. It is generally used to describe "person on the street" interviews.
Blogs are a prime example of the trend of disintermediation, which just means getting rid of intermediaries - the middle man. It used to be that to be published, you needed a publisher. Now you can publish without the middle man.
So the voice of the people can be heard - Vox Populi.
I have blogs on various blog platforms. There are Google Adsense advertisements on the blogs.
If people click on the ads, someone makes a couple of cents.
- On Blogger and WordPress, I make the money.
- On this Vox blog, Vox makes the money. I create the content so Vox can make the money.
I am responding to the Vox Post: blogging-sites-as-a-communication-medium-and-whether-vox-counts-or-wants-to. I know it has been a couple of months, but better late.
I am making the deliberate choice not to leave a comment, but to respond with a blog post to illustrate a point. In other blogging systems (Including SixApart's Movable Type), this would be called a trackback. Trackbacks are either formal or informal linkbacks to the original blog post.
The writer of the original post makes a distinction between different blogging styles and the feedback mechanisms. She describes business blogging as a soapbox with little feedback. It is an interesting point, but I respectfully disagree.
I would suggest that business blogging tends to have a different sort of interaction and feedback than social media blogs like Vox.
One of the most popular business bloggers is Robert Scoble. He wrote a book about business blogging with Shel Israel called Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. The book explains and explores the ways that business blogs are conversations.
Social Media blogs tend to get more comments, but the comments are from within the social media community described very well in the post blogging-sites-as-a-communication-medium-and-whether-vox-counts-or-wants-to.
Business blogs interact within the Wild and Woolly Web in different ways.
Comments: Business blogs seek comments, but comment spam on popular business blogs is way out of control. Popular business blogs will get thousands of spam comments. One business blogger reported over 10,000 blog comments caught by the spam blocker, and another 1000 that had to be deleted manually. Why so many? Several reasons.
- One is that comments include a link back the one making comments, and that helps with Search Engine Optimization.
- Another reason is that comments can be automated to send out the standard spam invites to make money, shed pounds, or increase (blog) post size.
Trackbacks: Trackbacks include various formal and informal ways to link to another blog post. This is a trackback to the original blog post. Many business bloggers prefer to respond to blog posts by posting on their own blogs. It brings people to their blog and avoids the comment spam.
Meme Trackers: With many bloggers posting on the same subject, it is hard to find what everyone has written on a particular topic. Various services have sprung up to meet this need. TechMeme for example, spiders many blogs to determine what technical topics are hot and who is blogging about them. The blog conversation can take place using TechMeme with no comments or trackbacks at all. Memeorandum tracks political blogs.
Blogs replacing Interviews: Some Business Leaders in the Technical world, including Jason Calacanis and Dave Winer, are no longer doing interviews where they can be misquoted, but are insisting reporters email them topics and questions, and they will respond with a blog post. See the thoughtful post by Jeff Jarvis called The Obsolete Interview about a Wired reporter who wants to do interviews with Jason and Dave who insist on responding in their blogs. It is one more way that business blogs are turning into conversations.
Here is the problem however, if your business blog is not known, it is difficult to participate in the blog conversation that is called the blogosphere. I have had more comments on my Vox blog than some of my Business Blogs, because it is part of a community.
Business blogs are part of the internet conversation called the blogosphere.
Social media blogs are a conversation that is facilitated by being part of a community.
Both business blogs and social media blogs, however, strive to be conversations.
I have more than 20 blogs, and I know that is not unusual. I collect blogs in all the normal ways:
- I sign up for a Social Media site and automatically get a blog (2 or 3 including Vox).
- I sign up for a professional service and automatically get a blog (2).
- I check out a blogging service and create a blog with a Hello World post that then gets abandoned (Several).
- I maintain a good number of link blogs. They are blogs where I link to articles and other blog posts on specific topics. Each blog is a topic. In serves a similar function as del.icio.us in that I save links on specific topics, but it provides additional flexibility. I save articles on website planning, website design, website construction, website promotion, and website planning for example. My link blogs are all on Blogger, which provides a button to save to the blog as you are browsing. Again, one can save a blog post with the same effort as saving a link on del.icio.us. Some would question whether these are true blogs. (14)
- Then I have some blogs that are more traditional blogs that I write myself. (2 or 3).
It creates issues of course. No one wants to read multiple blogs from one person.
- I could write one entry and cut and paste to other blogs. I will do that with this entry to try it out.
- If one knew RSS, one could subscribe to all the feeds and send them to one group or folder.
- There are RSS tools available to merge RSS feeds, so one could create one RSS feed from many. See RSS Feed Mixers.
Some people create one blog and put everything into one blog.
- Jeremy Zawadny from Yahoo writes a blog with excellent technical perspective, but I also get his blog posts on his other passion which is learning to fly.
- Matt Cutts from Google writes a blog on SEO that is required reading for anyone promoting websites, but I also get his vacation pictures.
- Dave Winer pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software. He always has interesting perspectives on current technology. But I also get his posts on his lawsuits or travel plans.
Options include:
- Do one blog and accept that it is good to get information on the person behind the blog.
- Create different blogs on different topics.
- Treat blogs like Newspapers and only read the articles / posts of interests. A sports fan reads the sports section without a care about bridge columns, comics, or horoscopes.
I think one of the most interesting options is to add intelligence to RSS Readers to filter by tag. That way I could filter out Jeremy's flying posts, Matt's vacation posts, and Dave's naked Jen posts (I am not going to explain).
And for the one that asked - I will also post this on Vox so that I am posting there as well as on Les Bain's Blog.
