I’ll leave it to Phil:

On the weekend, I posted a little tiny post about the new theme I just adopted. I was absolutely blown away when I logged in on Sunday to find that it was about #6 in the top WordPress.com posts at that time.

I sat there scratching my head trying to work out why? It didn?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢t have a sensationalized headline. It didn?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢t have any insightful commentary. It didn?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢t get linked by anyone. Then as I read the comments it struck me that the only thing it did do was convert my RSS audience into web traffic. As it was about something that you had to actually see on the site, rather than just being able to glean from your RSS reader, a whole bunch of people actually bothered to click on the link to visit the actual blog, rather than the virtual version.

Since I went through blog burn-out a little while ago, I?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢ve taken the advice of people like Matthew Ingram and Paul Montgomery and I?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢ve been paying far less attention to traffic. If I needed a reminder that blog traffic is relatively meaningless than this was it. Fact is, as much as Feedburner and so forth can tell you how many RSS subscribers you?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢ve got, the reality is if you?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢ve got full feeds you?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢re never going to know how many people read each post.

It also made me realise just how much traffic RSS feeds steal from websites!

Now, I don?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢t care. I blog because I?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢m trying to get my ideas out there so its of little concern to me if people read in RSS or on the blog (my dislike of RSS for that reason is purely philosophical not functional). But try telling a publisher that they can publish full feeds and not only cannibalise their web traffic but also lose control of knowing which of their readers are reading what.

They?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢re just gonna love that.

Latest Spaces figure from the NY Times: 40 million users. That’s 40 million blogs folks, because MSN Spaces is a blogging platform. Shame on those who still quote Technorati as tracking the entire blogosphere. Try 200 million blogs. At least.

Dave Winer points to the effort to save the Mecury News. My problem. I went to the site that aims to save it as part of the employee buyout. No way to invest. The Mercury News is a daily read for me, be it via Google. These guys write good stuff. And yet they’ve got the potential of getting thousands of ppl to invest in the idea, and they aren’t facilitating it. Take notes from Firefox. They got thousands to invest in the NY Times ad at $20 a pop. I was one of them. It was easy to do. If they make it easy ppl will come. I’ll quite happily put a little money towards a share in the Mecury News, as I know others will. But if its too hard, it will be lost for ever.

Shaun Carney, pay attention!: Yaro Starak vs Tim Blair. It’s not even Darren you need to consider.

Charles Wright, who I think no longer blogs for the Sydney Morning Herald, put this list up back in February claiming to be the A-List of Aussie bloggers, basically based on people he’d met at a conference in Queensland. I didn’t say anything about it at the time, because, well…it’s very easy to knock a list when you’re not on it. But I’d thought I’d give it a shot, based on what people are doing, traffic, and what not. His list is flawed…basically, my list isn’t perfect, but….

The Australian A-List (roughly).

Darren Rowse
Australia’s most read blogger. The ONLY Australian blogger in the Technorati Top 100. It’s a disgrace that Blogebrity don’t have him on the A-List because he’s more read and higher ranked than half the people on their list.
Yaro Starak
One of the few Australian bloggers I’ve not had a conversation with. Yaro, drop me an email! But looking at his links and Alexa stats he’s the quiet achiever of the Australian blogosphere. The Age thinks Tim Blair is top gun? Yaro kicks his ass.
Cameron Reilly
Cameron makes the list not only because of his excellent personal blog, but also due to the influence of The Podcasting Network, one of only 4 (then active and owned) Australian blogs in the Feedster 500. TPN is in the top 3 podcasting networks worldwide and Cameron is the leader.
Ben Barren
A man who I’ve got a lot of time to spend podcasting with, with a blog that’s to be seen to be believed. He’s set to become the Dave Sifry of the Australian Blogosphere, and Gnoos is now taking suggestions. Watch this space, but A-Listing is deserved.
Nik Cubrilovic
Just don’t ask me to pronounce Nik’s last name, but he resides in the Gong so he must be a good bloke. The founder of 2web.com.au and going on to bigger and better things with Omnidrive.
Tim Blair
Despite being known by Fairfax as Australia’s greatest blogger, there is little doubt that Blair is the Kos of the Australian blogosphere. Looking at his stats though he only just makes the list 🙂
Caz from The Spin Starts Here
I still claim that The Spin Starts Here is Australia’s greatest blog. And Caz runs TSSH. Isn’t it sad that I don’t know her last name, maybe so, but no A-List of the Australian Blogosphere is complete without Caz on it.
Trevor Cook
Trevor was once quoted in the press as claiming to be amongst the top 30 blogs in the world, and as much as we all wish for this position, there is little doubt that Trevor is a serious voice in the Australian blogosphere. A man who’s politics are pretty close to mine, although he’s much more linked in with the old Liberal Party elite than I ever was as a member of the Liberal Party (since resigned). A good right wing economist.
Me.
Ok, I’m being a little vain now, but when I edited The Blog Herald I was ranked in the Top 100 blogs world wide according to CNet and in the Top 200 everywhere else. 1 week after I sold the site it was listed in a new list at Technorati at 100. My main blog isn’t doing records, but it isn’t far off beating Tim Blair.
and to round off the list (I could ramble for hours!)
Martin Wells
Richard Giles
Alan Jones
Phil Sim
Charles Wright
Des Walsh

There are probably others I could add, but I’m looking at influence and traffic.

Update: silly me. I forgot Phillip Molly. Worthy of any Australian A-List. C-List my rear end Molly.

Mark Cuban, god to many in Web 2.0, makes a good point. TV isn’t going to be replaced by the internet any time soon because of bandwidth constraints. If he thinks it’s bad in the States he should try Australia. There are still large parts of Australia (admittedly low population centres) that don’t even have basic ADSL. I’m moving house Friday week, and I still don’t know whether I’ll get ADSL. The saving grace is that the new estate has 2mbps cable so if Telstra can’t provide a private operator can. They say it’s possible but can’t confirm…get this…until I have the phone connected at the new house. It’s like pot luck, and there is every possibility I’ll be without broadband for weeks. Last time I physically moved house it took 3 weeks to transfer the broadband across. It’s what you get when you live in “the country”, or as our beloved leaders would put it: “regional and rural Australia”.

Now I can’t understand why people are against the Government selling their remaining 51 or 52% stake in Telstra. I mean, what business does Government have in telecommunications? Competing against the private sector unfairly?. What I do have concerns with however is that they aren’t going to split Telstra up and we’ll have our own version of AT&T. I can’t help that think that we’d be better splitting Telstra into wholesale and retail, and then selling the retail arm. Any profit from the wholesale arm could then be reinvested in better infrastructure for all Australians, should it be retained by the Federal Government. Allowing Telstra to retail and own the last mile into the home means that a privatised Telstra will always have an unfair advantage in the market.

But again, to all those hippies who think the Government is the best owners of Telstra, does anyone remember Telecom Australia? When we’d pay $2 a minute for an STD call or $4 a minute overseas? Governments can’t run this shit, they’ve never been able to. We will be better off with a privatised Telstra, but only if it competes on a level playing field.

Maybe I’m just tired, but we’ve just gone through an outage at b5media, our first big outage with our current webhosts, and it was within a week of duncanriley.com joining the server. It seems every time this site joins a server I kill the web host. I’ve nearly lost count at how many web hosts I’ve gone through now 🙂 (insert mysterious music here).

You know, you’d think after talking to Darren the other week The Fairfax Media would get it right, but here we go again with Shaun Carney

The emergence of Crikey and Australia’s most popular ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ¬ù or, to be accurate, most frequently visited ?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Ǩ¬ù blogger, Tim Blair, who reportedly makes a small sum from his efforts, conforms to the “long tail” theory advanced by champions of the new digital media.

On what planet I may well ask. Sure, now I don’t own The Blog Herald I’m no longer really in the mix any more in terms of numbers, but lets take a look shall we:

Bzzzzzz. Try Problogger.net Shaun.

This is mean.

I suppose the sites title says it all, doesn’t it.

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble have been rallying against what they see as a rise of snarkiness amongst bloggers lately. Scoble’s most recent post here takes the argument he’s been making lately and calls it a lynch mob. Now as much as he makes a valid point in relation to the way Dave Winer has been treated over the Winer v Conehead legal stoush, I can’t help that feel that Scoble is being a little bit disingenuous over the whole matter.

Although Scoble is now a corporate mouthpiece for Microsoft these days who still pretends to be the free, unfiltered voice of blogging tech (and he’ll argue that he isn’t, but a bit like Calacanis and AOL, there has to be some restraint in such a position, and even if its not vocal or written it’s something that will naturally occur) take a dig through the Scoble archives and take a look at some of the criticism Scoble has dished out in the past. Indeed it could be argued that although he’s trying to take the high moral ground in the Winer/ Lynch mob case, he’s still being critical of others. Indeed, if a similar rant had come from someone else, say about his criticism of someone else, he would most likely label it as snark, and this is where Scoble becomes disingenuous, because one mans snark is another mans valid criticism. Of course, we’re maybe not quite at the level of Mena Trott abusing an audience member during a speech on civility here in the Irony stakes, but if Scoble is really serious about snark being a problem then he’ll need to tone it down himself.

As for the other concurrent argument, that we are seeing snark for the sake of snark, and snark to boost traffic, I’d argue that whilst there is little doubt that some people are pursuing this strategy, it’s not a strategy in blogging that will deliver long term benefits, because contrived snark will eventually be seen for what it is. I’ve been accused of being a snarky blogger in the past, indeed many people thought that The Blog Herald was nothing more than my personal outlet for snark. It of course wasn’t but when I was snarky it did get noticed. But I’d note when I was snarky, or critical, or even scathing, I was doing so because I believed what I was writing. I was never snarky for the sake of it, I was always honest in my views of things. Sometimes I got it right, other times I got it totally wrong. Either way though, it was honest. Dishonesty and blogging never mix. What we are seeing now, to some extent, is people becoming bolder in their blogging. Once upon a time, when bloggers were fired from their jobs, people were very weary of what they wrote online. Now, with more and more people blogging as a full time job, and well written blogs being seen as an asset for any would-be employer, people are being themselves more and more. And guess what Robert Scoble, real people can be snarky. As long as it’s honest snark, I see no problem with it at all.

And as much as I can’t help than feel sorry for Dave Winer in the current blogstorm, Im sure many of the people writing what they are writing feel that way. Dave’s that sort of guy, you either love him or hate him. I’ve been in both camps over the years, but I suppose there comes a time when you come to respect your elders, those that have come before you, and despite being an Alpha grumpy old man, Winer now holds this position for me.