Lessons of TechCrunch's First Year:
I think TechCrunch signals a whole lot more
than what's interesting in the world of web startups.
It's a case study in so many things,
and an important omen of what's to come in media.
TechCrunch demonstrates the huge opportunities available
whenever topics of intense interest are covered inadequately.
And it gives lie to the claim that only
the highly-connected insider attains success in blogging.
I would continue, except that
Steve Rubel wrote most of what I planned to say
here.
Though I do disagree with Steve about the "replicated by anyone else" part.
It takes a lot of intelligence
to get all the details right,
and just as critically, extreme dedication.
Congrats Mike on TechCrunch's phenomenal first year.#
Jun 10
Random Observations from the Hyperlinked Society Conference
Jeff Jarvis
would win Most Like His Blog In Person, were such an award granted.
I suspected as much from TV segments and podcasts he's done,
but observed at UPenn that
he talks and walks and questions and retorts and smells exactly as he blogs.
Seth Finkelstein is a consummate schmoozer,
deftly milking his enpanelled status to expand his personal network
for certain future professional advancement.
Ok, that's not entirely true, but not entirely false!
Jay Rosen and
Dave Weinberger
(both noted thinkers and writers, rightfully)
are great communicators in the conference setting,
nudging sessions into rewarding directions,
and positing pithy propositions aplenty.
I suppose both learned alot from teaching.
Lada Adamic hates kittens.
Hitwise is wise to where your visitors stream down,
and you might surprised what they've found.
Blog posts as placeholders for walled-off articles:
Too often new and important news surfaces behind pay walls, limiting its diffusion across the web.
This appeared to happen again this week
when WSJ reported on Google Spreadsheet,
until detailed reports soon popped up at NYTimes.com and CNET News.com as well,
spreading the news far and wide.
Fortunately, the problem of walled-off news presents an opportunity
for fast-reacting bloggers who create placeholder posts
summarizing main points, offering key quotes,
and possibly offering a little instant analysis.
Something like what Niall Kennedy or
John Battelle
posted in the wake of the WSJ article, but more fleshed out.
Placeholder posts can serve as substitutes for the original article
in the larger blogosphere,
attracting comments and links, and perhaps placement on Techmeme, etc.
Since we all benefit (even WSJ, arguably), I hope this idea catches on.#
In Philadelphia for Hyperlinked Society Conference:
The conference will focus on … well, I'm not sure,
but it's explained here.
I'm looking forward to meeting everyone,
Techmeme haters included!#
June travels: DC, Philly, in between:
I hope to do a few blog/media/tech meetups
during the first three weeks of June
as I visit family and friends along the Washington DC—Philadelphia corridor.
In particular I'd like to propose a smallish lunch or dinner
in the DC metro area sometime between 6/4 and 6/11,
perhaps at the Urban BBQ in Rockville.
More details later. Please send me any suggestions!#
Big bloggers who don't read blogs: Based on anecdotal evidence,
I'd agree that many of the most read bloggers
don't themselves read blogs like, uh, you and I.
Danah asks all sorts of good questions stemming from this observation
(via).
I'm personally interested in this question: does big news spread efficiently
when big bloggers don't read blogs? I believe so.
The reason they quit reading blogs is that their tip-based network
grew more efficient than the network formed from reading blogs.
Often news reaches them even before it appears on any blog.#
May 29
Tips for media sites adding blogs and RSS: A terrific post by Suw Charman details how media sites can make RSS feeds easier on their subscribers (via). A key point: ensure stories pop up only once in aggregators.
As many established media sites add blogs, I've noticed a bunch of problems as well that make subscribing difficult. Foremost, many omit the <link rel="alternate" … > tags that enable autodiscovery, or instead point them to the news home feed rather than the blog feed. Some even require clicking through to another page to obtain the feed link, or only offer feeds that combine posts from all their blogs.
My two pieces of advice for these organizations: 1. Find good advisors familiar with the technologies (duh), and 2. If you can't use modern blogging tools, at least treat Wordpress, etc. as exemplars of generally good practices, and at any point where you diverge from these models, consider whether that choice is justified.#
May 28
Forget engineering omniscience: "There isn't a computational technique that will get the right answer to a search query the first time", advises Paul Kedrosky. I agree, but I doubt paid search or vertical search, Dr. K's recommendations, offer enough of a general remedy. I think big opportunities may lie in leveraging hierarchical, explicit ranking schemes. Yeah, that last sentence was fuzzy, but I have something concrete in mind. If you agree, and have experience in database internals, please send me an email.#
WeSmirch: now more than ever: Flanked by People.com and The Hindustan Times, WeSmirch treads boldly into a new epoch.#
May 27
Blogging from the vi editor:
I'm using a home-brewed CMS to post this, the third blogging platform I've written to date.
That may seem surprising, considering that I'm not much of a blogger,
yet there's a causual link between these two facts.
Because for me existing tools impose too much mental friction on the process of posting,
I keeping building tools to eliminate this block.
Unsuccessfully, so far.
Inspiration for this latest tool came when Dave Winer once noted the ease of blogging via outliner.
I don't believe existing outliners will do it for me, for various reasons,
but the idea of absolute minimal effort stuck.
My current system works like so:
I continuously edit a text file containing all posts I have written and will ever write.
Simple text delineations and a custom shorthand define the translation to html.
Whenever I write the file, a polling process posts any updates it finds to the web.
Perhaps no other earthling would want to use such a system,
but it's the last best hope for me.#
efuddle.com, take two: I've now relaunched this site on a new blogging platform designed to make posting as effortless as possible. Why here instead of blog.memeorandum.com? The later is reserved for notices important enough to interest the majority of the readers of my sites. Still, some people are interested in the thinking behind Techmeme, etc., or just curious about me. I'd like to use this site to connect with that crowd. Nothing much beyond that. Hope I can keep it up.#
May 25
Techmeme ushered into Google via SEOMoz: Two weeks after redirecting tech.memeorandum.com to techmeme.com, I found Techmeme still completely absent from Google, even for "Techmeme" searches! Happily, SEOMoz noticed too, correctly suggesting that lurking Googlers would rectify. A mere two days later, Techmeme searchers could finally feel lucky. Much thanks to randfish of SEOMoz and any Googlers who may have intervened (possibly Adam Lasnik).#
May 24
The Wikipedian non-hierarchical ideal is dead, snarks Nick Carr. Hierarchies will remain integral to most useful information sources, I believe, given all I've seen so far. They're very handy, and not particularly tyrannous so long as there are competing, alternative hierarchies.#
May 22
What motivates diggers and other so-called content-generating users? Good question. Seems to me: for submitters, front-page fame. For queue diggers (a rather rare species), the thrill of making a quantifiable difference, and favors.#