|
Friday, August 18, 2006
Previous topic
|
Next topic
|
|
 Friday, August 18, 2006
started 8/18/2006; 9:17:19 AM - last post 8/19/2006; 5:20:56 PM
|
|
Doc Searls - Friday, August 18, 2006 
8/18/2006; 1:17:19 PM (reads: 8972, responses: 5)
|
|
Findings 
Re-educated guesswork
| | I should start keeping a running tally of how many minutes a week are lost to the many activities software security companies have a product to block. My guess is that the average American worker spends about 8,000 hours a week doing something he or she shouldn¹t, for a grand total of $98 gajillion in lost productivity. |
| | American tech journalists lose an average of 3 million minutes a week wading through this crap, but since we usually just sigh and write it up anyhow, even though it¹s lame, boneheaded and springs from the stupid assumption that if you can just seal off all forms of entertainment people will work ninety times harder, it¹s kind of a wash in terms of claiming lost productivity. |
Grow down, already
| | Being Five. "A kid who blogs using voice recognition software", it says. |
Flying lower
| | Clearly there isn't enough interest by enough airlines, or Boeing would stick with it. But I think there is something else: tightened security. There is a high risk that laptops will be forbidden on more flights. This will discourage more airlines from supporting laptops any more than they already do, which is very little. |
| | Still, it's a bummer and a shame. |
| | For what it's worth, I tried Connexion once, on a Lufthansa flight from Washington to Copenhagen. It only worked some of the time and cost me $29. I was ready to use it on the return flight, but it was broken completely and cost me nothing other than aggravation. |
Unchain your art
| | in the end, that¹s what the A-list is all about: directing traffic. They are the traffic cops of the blogosphere and they are not as easily replaced as some would like to make us believe. They are brand names and we tend to trust them, even if they let us down sometimes. |
| | As often happens, I'm listed among the 'listers. |
| | For what it's worth, I don't consider my readers "traffic". Nor do I consider my links to other blogs or sites a way of "directing" anything other than a reader's interest. |
| | If I thought of myself as a "traffic cop" of anything, much less the blogosphere, I'd hang it up. |
| | As for my status as an A-list router of anything, you can count my visitors here. The number has been between a few hundred and a few thousand since somewhere back around 2000. Growth in "traffic" over the years has been roughly zero, near as I can tell. |
| | You can find my referers here. |
| | Most of my referers are not other bloggers, much less A-listers. The top single referer currently is netvibes, which I'd never heard of before looking at my referers just now — something I almost never do, and haven't done in many months. As I look down the list, it appears most visitors arrive via searches on Google for stuff like this. |
| | The best way, by far, to get a link from an A List blogger is to provide a link to the A List blogger. |
| | Yeah, but the best way to get a link from any blogger is to link to them first. But geez, make the reason something other than a link exchange. |
| | Sure, sometimes I'll link to something somebody's said about something I've said, but it's always either because the other writer said something interesting or because what they said moves a conversation forward. I never link for the sake of reciprocity alone, or to perpetuate any "elite". |
| | That said, I just looked through my referer logs for evidence of current reciprocal linking. Or of elites. Couldn't find either. |
| | As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite. A blog-peasant, one of the Great Unread, comes to the wall of the castle to offer a tribute to a royal, and the royal drops a couple of coins of attention into the peasant's little purse. The peasant is happy, and the royal's hold over his position in the castle is a little bit stronger. |
| | Want to succeed in the blogosphere, or the Web in general? Easy. Do search engine optimization. Here's how: |
| | - Write quotable stuff about a lot of different subjects.
- Do it consistently, for months if not years.
- Link a lot, as a way of giving credit and of sending readers to other sources of whatever it is you write about.
|
| | I can't promise royalty, because there isn't any. But I can promise a rewarding relationship with the readers you'll get, regardless of how many there are. |
discuss
|
|
Michael Markman - Re: Friday, August 18, 2006
8/18/2006; 4:39:32 PM (reads: 781, responses: 1)
|
|
|
I'm kinda new here in blogville and I don't know all the rules. But I am fascinated that Nick Carr's piece has stirred up so much dust. Seems to have struck a nerve somehow. Even though he's completely wrong. How come?
Who first joined the terms "A-list" and "blogger." When? and Why? Was it an A-lister? Or a jeoulous clueless peasant? I'll take my answer off the phone.
discuss
|
|
Brian Benz - Re: Friday, August 18, 2006
8/18/2006; 10:04:17 PM (reads: 759, responses: 0)
|
|
|
Personally, I did find what Nick says has, sadly, some truth to it. I don't think it applies to you or a few other A-listers, but it does apply to many.
I've met several A-list bloggers on-line and in person, and find that while many, are approachable and interesting to talk to, many others act like, and consider themselves, elites. You can tell who they are - you can feel them scanning you when you meet in person, as they decide if you are ignorable or not (the two basic categories of the pretentious).
But categorizing and stereotyping is just playtime for the lazy mind, and, as you point out, backing up the categories with stats is just silly, as there are so many reasons why a blog gets the traffic it does.
Anyway, IMHO you shouldn't personally consider yourself a target of the A-list acrimony, and I have proof as to why. You've linked to my z-list blog the past, and it was much appreciated. Not because the links boosted my site traffic (they didn't, actually :)), but I was flattered to have someone whose opinions I respected including me in their conversation.
On my blog I just write for me. I don't and won't edit my posts with the intention of getting a link from you (or anyone), so you must have found what I had to say interesting.
Other A-list bloggers would probably not bother to read my blog, or if they did, they probably wouldn't link to me or leave comments because I'm a blog-nobody and not "worth their time".
Or, even worse, if I'm a blog-nobody who says something an a-lister disagrees with, then I'm dismissed as "link-bait", which has to be the ugliest category I've ever heard, and a portent of more ugliness to come in the current blogospere structure.
In the blog world, as in life, things are a lot more rewarding if you think a little harder and look at individuals as individuals, not as members of some category. That goes of the A-listers as well as the Z-listers. But, unfortunately, that's not human nature, and we're busy dragging the hierarchy into the blogosphere.....
discuss
|
|
JTH - Re: Friday, August 18, 2006
8/19/2006; 5:13:30 PM (reads: 762, responses: 0)
|
|
|
|
Mike Warot - What calling someone a gatekeeper really says
8/19/2006; 9:20:56 PM (reads: 811, responses: 0)
|
|
|
I thought about posting this on my blog... I'll copy it there later, lest I be called a peasant for feeding an "A-lister"... ;-)
All this brew-ha-ha about gatekeeping and the sematic arguments, finding "evidence" in logs, etc... is al bullshit.
What's really in question here is motive. The use of the A-list buzzword just obfuscates things
Do I think Doc is a "Gatekeeper" -- NO!
Do others? Could be... but it doesn't matter to me.
Calling someone a gatekeeper is a way of accusing them of having a hidden agenda when you get down to brass tacks.
I'm reminded of a metaphor... the story of Angulimala - whoops... Wikipedia seems to be in conflict with the story as I read elsewhere....
Buddha was once threatend with death by a bandit called Angulimal. "Then be good enough to fulfill my dying wish," said Buddha. "Cut off the branch of that tree."
One slash of the sword, and it was done! "What now?" asked the bandit.
"Put it back again," said Buddha.
The bandit laughed. "You must be crazy to think that anyone can do that."
"On the contrary, it is you who are crazy to think that you are mighty because you can wound and destroy. That is the task of children. The mighty know how to create and heal."
The battering ram can demolish a wall; it cannot heal the breach.
First someone has to get traffic, either by constructive or destructive means...
A woodsman uses constructive and destructive means to keep a forest... focusing only on the axe misses the rest of his role as a steward of the forest.
Focusing on the links, instead of the blogs misses the role of bloggers as stewards.
--Mike--
discuss
|
|
Doc Searls - Re: Friday, August 18, 2006
8/21/2006; 11:15:28 AM (reads: 916, responses: 0)
|
|
|
First, we're all new in blogville, and there are no rules.
Second, I don't know who came up with the "A-list" label in respect to the blogosphere; but Technorati's Top 100 made it sort-of official. I was in it for awhile, but am thankfully out of it now. Not that it makes much difference. The label continues to stick.
I think the controversy is framed wrong by those who insist that some of us must be victimizing others of us, somewhow. But that's my opinion. I think I'm right. Others think I'm wrong.
In retrospect, I should have let Nick's remarks rest. Maybe Dave Rogers' too. Every time I respond to stuff like that, I see no good result. So I should just let it go.
There are lots of interesting things to write and talk about. Who's an A-Lister and What They're Doing Wrong are, regardless of where you stand on those topics, among the least useful questions I've encountered in all my time writing this blog.
You can tell how useless they are by seeing how far anybody's position has moved, or how far general understanding of the blogosphere, or the Web, or of any larger topic, has advanced. The answer, to me at least, is: not much.
How People Can Be Better Heard, however, *is* a worthy topic. So is How People Can Make Progress Moving an Idea or a Cause Forward. I'm more optimistic about those.
But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about how popularity sucks. Also about who sucks and how.
Today I went on a geology walk where my kid and I found out a pile of things we didn't know. Just as importantly, we were corrected on some matters that I've misunderstood for years. It was rewarding and humbling as only a proper education in the field can be.
Later we sat out and looked at the stars with a laptop open to Starry Night and other sources that helped us understand the size and distance of every object we could see in the sky. In the course of a Q&A with myself and those sources, the kid understood for the first time how our local celestial neighborhood -- Arcturus, Sun, Alpha and Proxima Centuri, Sirius, Altair, Vega, Formalhaut -- may have formed in a nebula much like the Eagle and the Trifid.
All of this was far more interesting, and worthy of my time and attention, than staying engaged in public arguments that go nowhere.
Or so it seems at 11:09 on a Sunday evening.
discuss
|
|
|
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
