Interesting, just dropped by my old stomping ground The Blog Herald, the site has dropped down from it’s PR 7 to a PR 6. I wonder why?
Blog
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Do it now!
Today’s inspirational post bought to you by Quadszilla. Of course he’s right, which is why I’m busy building stuff myself, but when you’ve got a big ticket idea you need money to fund that…that as they say, is a story for later in the year, all things being equal 🙂
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No blog is an island unto itself.
Over the weekend Robert Scoble started a big bushfire, claiming that big blogs don’t link to other blogs. He’s right, but unfortunately for Scoble he aimed his gun in the wrong direction at wounded some friendly combatants, in particular Engadget and Gizmodo, who in return are really, really pissed. But I digress somewhat, because Scoble is right, there’s a whole pile of blogs out there who *don’t* link to the competition.
Easy reference: the whole 901am/ Duncan Riley/ Blog Herald article at The Inquirer. The new owners of The Blog Herald “accidently” deleted links to 901am. Poor form, but it’s not my intention to drag up the story again, but to note that petty linking policies are increasing. Why? Mature blogosphere = lots of competition = cut throat competition. Bloggers, particularly newer bloggers (say who weren’t around 4-5 years ago) who never really got to experience the wonderful community that was dominant when the blogosphere was small no longer see a need to follow the once established norms.
This is what I told the Inquirer:
“John Donne wrote that no man is an island unto himself, and likewise no blog is an island unto itself. Blogs are built around linking; it’s the ecology that has driven the phenomenal growth in blogging over the past five years. Absolutely blogs should link to competitors, even small ones and new ones. When I owned The Blog Herald, I even went out of my way to highlight the competition because to write a blog about blogging you need to embrace the diversity that the blogosphere provides?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ if you’re not a believer then you’re not going to go very far. It’s also good karma,”
And yet more and more people don’t follow this ethos. Linking to your competition is seen as giving them a leg up, instead of how it should be seen: sharing the love, and sharing your audience. Karma is real in the blogosphere: share links and most times you’ll get links back, share viewers and you’ll get new viewers back.
One last note, and it’s an old gripe with Engadget, and that’s the process of lazy linking. I can’t say for sure that it’s still the case (I’m talking 2 years ago), but what Engadget use to do is only link to a story on blog A when blog A had actually taken the story from blog B. Blog A would get all the traffic, and yet the blog who broke the story (or created it..you get the idea) got no link love and no traffic, despite having done the hard work. The concept of a via: link use to be foreign most of the time at Engadget, and indeed other big blogs often acted in the same way (at the time I saw Boing Boing amongst many partake in lazy blogging). As a then content owner and creator there was nothing really that got me more angry then seeing a story on Engadget which we broke with links to someone else. I’d think it’s potentially worse still again today, because a lot of B grade blogs just rip stories now without crediting….sure, that means that it’s not all Engadget’s fault, but it does encourage content theft and plagiarism.
Food for thought.
Tags: Robert Scoble, Engadget, blogs
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OMG! IT’S OFFICIAL: CROWDED HOUSE TO REFORM!
I read in the weekend papers that there was a strong chance of this happening, but it’s confirmed: Crowded House is reforming after a break of 10 years, minus of course Paul Hester who very sadly took his own life in 2005. The great new for fans who were never particularly fond of Tim Finn is that Neil doesn’t seem to be dragging his brother along this time (Woodface being the worst Crowded House record released, and the only one featuring Tim Finn). Neil has also announced that along with touring, he’s been working on a new album for the last twelve months with Nick Seymour: “Time on Earth” that will be released later this year. Personally, I couldn’t be happier, and I can’t wait to they hit Perth, Gold/ A class, what ever the best ticket is and costs, I’ll be there 🙂
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Second Life a pyramid scheme?
Valleywag claims that Second Life is a pyramid scheme. They’re in part right. When I was a lot more active in SL (I’m down to maybe once a month these days and I’ve long since cancelled my paid account) pyramid style banking schemes were common and I probably lost $10-$20 investing some of my money in them. But before you say sucker, I was willing to lose the money, and the schemes always presented in a legitimate way, usually as banks or land investment schemes promising reasonable returns. I’d acquired a far few Lindens and was looking to park some of them somewhere, and hence I did…and subsequently lost them. The ability to cash them out is also a problem, as Valleywag notes, SLby no means has a properly constituted liquid market. Having said all of that I don’t share the general dislike Valleywag has towards SL, but really so much of it is based around porn and gambling I’m not sure that it’s fair to hold it up as being the wonderful thing so many people hold it to be.
Tags: Second Life
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Want to come to Australia? you’ll need DIC
Australians are fond of shortening names of Government Departments (in part because the web address for each is usually shortened as well), the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is known as DFAT, the Australian Tax Office is commonly known at the ATO, and here in Western Australian the former Department of Fair Trading was renamed to the Department of Consumer and Employment Protection when Labor took office, becoming DOCEP… so what exactly was the Prime Minister thinking when he renamed the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (known commonly as DIMIA) to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIC). Certainly I support the dropping of the Multicultural Affairs name from the Department, it’s divisive and should never have been there in the first place, but DIC? Is this part of the Howard Governments attempts to win over the Pink vote in Inner City Sydney. Coming to Australia, you’ll need to deal with DIC!
(hat tip to Trevor Cook)
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Performancing Implodes
I’ve not said anything about the stuff going on previously at Performancing mostly out of respect for Nick Wilson, the previous CEO, but it just keeps getting worse with news that Performanicng Partners, the advertising arm of Performancing is being closed down, this a month after Performancing Metrics was shut and Nick Wilson resigned from the company (possibly pushed). It’s got to be said: What the F*ck?!?! Soooooo much promise, such bizarre decisions, if someone behind the scenes is keeping a diary I’m sure it would make for a good read. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch has even put the site on Deadpool watch. We’ll probably never get to know the truth behind what’s going on, but all in all it’s kind of sad as well. Vale Performancing.Tags: Performancing
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My 5 minutes of being Dave Winer
Yep, I’ve suffered a bout of grumpy old blogger syndrome. No, I’m not claiming my blog was the first one, but this thread at 901am got me started. The new owners of The Blog Herald (no link love anymore) took it upon themselves to remove my name from the author column at the bottom of the site (note they’ve since removed it all together). Yes: they can do as they please, it’s there site now, but personally I found it a slight against me, 3500 posts, many of which I’d think would still drive large amounts of traffic to the site…indeed I still find old things I’ve written at the site when I’m looking for things on Google, on a regular basis.
I’ve done nothing wrong to the new owners, indeed I covered the buy positively and even participated in some of the conversation about how the buy is representative of an ascendant Pinoy blogosphere…and yet I get removed. Matt Craven, the previous owner *ALWAYS* showed respect (BTW Matt, if you’re reading this, what are you doing now?) and I was happy to return it in droves, the new mob however seem to be about as reliable as a pack of galahs. Indeed, do they want a fight? Pissing off my mates like Krug doesn’t help. Maybe I might consider doing something in the blogging space again. It won’t be another Blog Herald, but something newer, something unique, and something that will whip some ass! 🙂
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Why I wont be upgrading to WP 2.1 yet
Aaron has a good guide as to what to expect in WordPress 2.1. I won’t be rushing to upgrade due to this line:
many plugins will no longer work in 2.1 due to deprecation of database table variables
Too much hassle at this stage, and I’m still struggling to upgrade to 2.0.7 on all my sites, let alone 2.1 🙂
Tags: WordPress
