Blogging

Since I’m telling everyone I’m blogging now (and leaving ClickZ), I had darned well better actually post something on this here blog. In the absence of any more spare time than usual, let me post some linkage and commentary.

• Media Orchard interviwed Drew Curtis of Fark.com. Some great quoteage (besides the great online ad stuff): “There probably is an opportunity to make Fark into something much bigger, but I’m fortunate in that I have had previous bad business experience. I did the empire-building thing once, it sucks. Money is not the end-all be-all goal of life. It’s about improving your life experience. I don’t mean this in a spiritual or whacko sense or anything. For example, we could probably go out and get venture capital no problem. For what? You don’t get to pocket that money. Furthermore, I’d have to start taking orders from people….I really don’t like having to explain my decisions to morons just because they’re shareholders. So the solution is not to have any. While Fark isn’t making anywhere near as much money as it could be, my life is awesome.”

• Here I just wrote a column that praised widgetiness, and now Tech Crunch is reporting that new MySpace functionality will disable widgets. There seems to be some dispute in the post’s comments as to whether this is work-around-able or due to a beta Flash 9 release.

• The four biggest broadcast networks experienced the lowest ratings week in recorded history a couple of weeks ago, according to the AP. “CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox averaged 20.8 million viewers during the average prime-time minute last week, according to Nielsen Media Research,” the story says. Traditionally, the July 4 week is pretty awful, ratings-wise, and the fact that many got off Monday and Tuesday is probably a factor. Still, this Internet thing. It is catching on. [via BoingBoing]

Happy weekend, folks.

Thanks to Fred Wilson, I’ve been fooling around the the My BlogLogs site, which basically adds the community layer to blogs. It seems like the simplest thing, but it’s really a revelation to see who else reads the same blogs you do. And it’s great running across people you know. Of course, everyone who is anyone is working to do similar things these days, adding blogging with social networking to see what shakes out. But this is kind of cool because it makes already-existing blogs (many of them with longstanding huge audiences) the center of those communities, which makes a lot of sense. No point in starting over, says me.

Anyway, My BlogLogs also seeks to address one of my biggest complaints about the Typepad service, which is that you can only see very limited statistics about your readership (referrers, traffic), when we all know tons more is available from even the most basic Web-hosting service. (again, plenty of companies are trying to do this right now, so My Bloglogs is hardly alone).

So, in the interest of sharing, here are some of the hottest queries getting people to my site today. Obviously, it’s a VERY limited sample. It probably says volumes about my lack of participation in the blogosphere to note the Google search is by far my most prolific referrer (and it has been for eons). And posts about popular culture (Scott Richter on the Daily Show, Ricky Gervais, Comcast and TiVo) are usually up top. Not sure what’s driving the sudden interest in Courtney Pulitzer, but there you go…

Where Readers Came From
Time	Site                                                                                                               Click Count
01:38	Google Search: courtney pulitzer                                                                      2
04:22	http: / / www.mybloglog.com/ buzz/ community/ theriver                                   2
09:56	Google Search: "jonathan safran foer" extremely mobile text code solution          1
13:00	Google Search: river books                                                                              1
00:39	Google Search: comcast,tivo                                                                             1
17:34	Google Search: scott richter daily show                                                             1
00:59	MSN Search: hitchhikers guide to the galaxy clothes                                           1
17:17	http: / / blogs.forrester.com/ charleneli/ 2005/ 06/ looking_ for_ exa.html            1
17:24	Google Search: comcast tivo                                                                             1
03:27	Google Search: daily show scott richter                                                              1

Ok, it’s finally reached the point where I am going to burst if I don’t post about this. I keep hearing people saying (the most recent being the person I’m overhearing behind me at this conference) that they are writing “a blog” about something, when what they really mean is that they are writing “a blog post” or “a blog entry.” The site itself, or the sum total of blog posts/entries, is called a blog, while each discrete content element is called an “entry” or a “post.” *Whew* Glad I got that off my chest. A sign of the mainstreaming of blogging?

My journalism school buddy Trevor Butterworth weighs in on the blogging phenomenon (let’s just say it isn’t a puff piece) in the Financial Times. And the paper has set up a blog of sorts to round up comments. Leave it to a Brit to spend several paragraphs musing on whether George Orwell and Karl Marx would have been bloggers, had the form existed when they were alive. While the anecdotes won’t be new to anyone familiar with the “is blogging a revolution?” and “is blogging journalism?” arguments, Trevor is a great writer and it’s worth a read.

The MIT Advertising Lab blog has a fantastic round-up of blogosphere reaction to the anti-blog Forbes article.

Maybe I’m late to notice this, but ClickZ columnist and consumer-generated media guru Pete Blackshaw just turned me on to his blog. Pete always has fascinating insights and intelligent things to say, and his blog writing is no exception.