Connecting the dots ...
Blogspot appears to have been down for most of the day – yet I’m not hearing cries all over the Blogosphere. This is in sharp contrast to the recent major Typepad outage , where the world seemed to have come to an end 
Is it the “you get what you pay for” effect, i.e. a free service can go down anytime, or is it the fact that Power-bloggers who can generate a lot of noise are all on Typepad?
(Updates at the bottom)
Stowe Boyd introduces the concept of the Conversational Index:
“…successful blogs — ones that were currently viable and vibrant, and those that were on a growth trajectory from their start — shared a common characteristic: The ratio between posts and comments+trackbacks (posts/comments+trackbacks) was less than one. Meaning that there was more conversation — as indicated by the number of comments and track backs offered by readers — than posting articles. I will call this the Conversation Index, just to put a handle on it.
Here’s the current picture for /Message, a CI of 80/102 = 0.784. “
I’m fully with him on this, the CI would be a really useful indicator of the interest level a blog enjoys – but we need to step further than just having another nice badge to be displayed on our blogs.
The underlying issue that myself and other, more esteemed bloggers pointed out numerous times (see links below) is that currently we really are losing track of half the conversation in the Blogosphere.
As Stowe points out, for truly vibrant blogs the CI will be <1, which means there are far more comments than blog posts (I am cheating a little, ignoring trackbacks). This will likely be the case for all the Technorati top 100 or even 500 bloggers – from their viewpoint most of the conversation happens on / around their own blog. However, for the the rest of us, the other 26 million (?) bloggers chances are the conversation really takes place outside our own blog, and I for one certainly can’t keep track of all comments I left on other blogs.
The current crop of tracking / linking services all have a top-down publisher-centric view, where everything revolves around a blog and its related posts, totally missing this other, “bottom-up” half of the conversation. So please, somebody give Stowe his badge 
, but we also badly need a way to show by subject matter an integrated view of all conversations where we are participating whether we started the thread or someone else.
References:
Update (1/3): TechCrunch just profiled another “conversation tracker”, Megite, which also got some praise at the Read/WriteWeb. OM is not too happy though…
Megite is Memeorandum-style, but covering more topics. Nice, but still top-down, blog-focused, i.e. “conversations” consist of linked blog-posts, excluding the world of comments.
Update to the Update (gee..) Megite apparently has special editions, there’ snow a Scobleized Megite … 
Update 2 (1/3): Wow, this article got Megite-d 
Update 3 (1/4): Wo-ho-ho, what a timing! Robert Scoble announced and TechCrunch just profiled CoComment, the first attempt at tracking blog comments. 
I’m looking forward to trying it … just need an invitation code.. ahhhh. Here’s CoComment’s blog.
Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Weblogs, Tags, Tagging, Tracking, Conversation, RSS, Feed, Technorati, Conversational Index
Somebody please buy Technorati, right NOW! I really don’t care if it’s Microsoft or Yahoo (see below), I’m just sick of seeing this all the time:
Like I’ve said before, kudos to Technorati for being the pioneers, for being a great “idea company” – they truly are Innovators of the Blogosphere, just can’t scale. Time for someone to take over. And, on second thought, I do care: Yahoo would be a much better fit
References:
Tags: Technorati, Yahoo, Microsoft, MSN, Blogosphere, Tags, Tagging, Technorati Buyout, Acquisition
Fred Wilson is fed up with comment spam. He would like to be protected, but still does not want to impose comment authentication on all his readers. I wonder why not?
There are only a handful major blogging platform, creating a profile on each is really not a big deal. On Blogharbor, the platform I use it’s called a Reader Account, Typepad’s equivalent is Typekey. I actually find it easier log into my Typekey account once, then filling out the name / email / website fields individually – it really is not a hassle. There is a healthy discussion on the subject at the Blog Herald. The comments are worth reading to get the full picture.
Anyway, Splog got wide acceptance as the term used for Spam Blogs, so why don’t we call comment spam Spomment from now on? That still leaves trackback spam, where we’re facing a dilemma: is it Spamback or Trackspam? You can vote here: (the dpolls thingie gets lost in the feed, so please click to come to my site where you can vote)
Tags: Blogs, blogging, Spam, Spam blog, splog, splogs, comment spam, spomment, trackback spam, spamback, trackspam
It only took 40 minutes for the 5th TechCrunch Party to “sell out” after Mike announced it on his blog. 200+ people registered on the wiki, and those left out left out are asking for unused slots or even offering Mike $$$ to get in … Wow, talk about popularity! (see my notes on a previous party).
On a hunch I checked eBay – nothing yet
Departing from the original formula, the 4th one became a launch party for Riya – this time it’s a celebration of the launch of Naked Conversations, the new book by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble.
Having just seen Chris Pirillo’s Naked Review, and knowing there will be a heated tent in the backyard makes me wonder .. hm.. will there be a format change? Just how naked will this party be? 
Tags: TechCrunch, Naked Conversations, blogs, blogging, book, Scoble, Naked, Humor
Stowe Boyd of Get Real / Corante fame is starting his own blog, /Message. He feels the pain of beeing at the bottom of Techorati.
Well, this won’t last very long .. considering his popularity at Corante, he will skip quite a few steps on that ladder 
.
Oh, yes, a little plug from Software Only and CrunchNotes does not hurt, either…
Tags: blogs, blogging, Corante, Get Real, Stowe Boyd, CrunchNotes, technorati
The Mystery Blog being put up for auction by Jeremy Wright is no longer a mystery; it is:
Wow! Congrat’s, Duncan! But I’ll be missing your posts 
Update (1/16): Stowe Boyd thinks it’s underpriced – my thoughts exactly. But for all I know, the bidding process is not over, and who knows… there may be a reason why Jeremy announced it before closing
Duncan chimes in before turning on the coffee machine 
Tags: blogs, blogging, blogherald
(Updated)
It has to be new, has to be weird, it will take off. I guess that’s the mantra of so many entrepreneurs, and it often works.
It certainly did for Alex Tew, creator of the Million Dollar Homepage – he just wanted to fund his college expenses, but I think he is funded for life. The last 1k pixels were listed on eBay, peaking at $140K, but after fake bids..etc it sold for a “mere” $38K. Rumor says his creativity yielded Alex a job offer, too, not that he needs one.
1000Tags is already being compared to the Million Dollar Homepage on TechCrunch. It may not be that original, but certainly is “cool”. At $25–$100 for shared tags and a lot more for exclusive ones, it could very well reach $1M.
I sense a new “land-grab” rush develop here: it’s easy to boost your traffic by buying a generic tag that describes your blog/site/product and be the only one listed in that category ( at least for a while). Just check out Software. 
We’ve seen something similar when Technorati introduced tagging entire blogs, not just posts.
One would think the initial rush will be for exclusive tags (?), of which only 50 will be sold. I’m not sure how that works though. For example “wiki” takes me to Socialtext directly. Based on the larger font (font size depends one either the number of subscribers or the price the exclusive owner paid) and the fact that it’s a direct link, while others go to a listing format, even if there’s only 1 entry, I would assume it’s an exclusive tag – very smart of Ross to have secured it:-) However, the system still allows me to buy it as a shared tag… go figure (?) (see update 2. below)
Let’s check back in a week.
Update (1/12): Not surprisingly, the first ones to spread the news are bloggers:
Update 2. (1/12): Wow, these guys are fast, less than an hour later they fixed the bug (see wiki example above). That means the tags that bring up a site directly bypassing the list are exclusive ones.
Update 3. (1/13): Steve Rubel is bullish about Tagvertising.
Update 4. (1/14): Milliondollarblogspots, a blog-specific copycat of the Million Dollar Homepage launched. Yawn. Real bloggers know better then this. (hat tip: Paul Kedrosky).
Tags: 1000tags, milliiondollarhomepage, tagging, tags, marketing, advertising, tagvertising, creativity, web 2.0, wiki, SocialText
“Posted by Niall Kennedy on January 04, 2006.
We introduced two new features in our search results yesterday to better help you interpret a blog’s link popularity at a glance.
The Technorati talk bubbleappears faded out for blogs with no inbound links. If a Top 100 blog appears in our search results you will notice a special
button next to the blog name.
We hope you enjoy these first new features of 2006!”I fail to see the improvement in these cute but fairly meaningless icons. With the Top 100 being only … well.. just 100 (is that a surprise to anyone?), and Tecnorati tracking some 26 million blogs, it’s probably fair to say that the blogs that really matter are “lost” between these two extremes.
Until recently Technorati had a far more meaningful indicator, the actual link-count listed in the search results. If they insist on switching from meaningful numbers to cute graphics, could they at least be more granular, and have a color-coded scheme for major brackets, like 50, 100, 500 ..ect links?
Tags: Technorati, Rank, Relevance, Link Count, Technorati Top 100
“Analyzing Safa’s $600 Google Target: “Ah, memories… So Safa Rashtchy of Piper Jaffray upped his Google price target from $445 to $600. Is he INSANE? No.” —Henry Blodgett
Safa Rashtchy is Henry Blodgett 2.0. You heard it here first. –says Charlie in Bubble 2.0
OK, how about Blodgett 1.0, The Original? In his aptly named blog, The Internet Outsider (it really should be The Internet Insider Forced Outside…) he first explains why he doesn’t own Google, and goes into detail on why he has to be very careful offering his opinion about stocks, since his regulatory settlement does not allow him to give investment advice. But then he goes on supporting Safa’s $600 call in a post that is as much about the subject matter as it is about himself and his famous $400 Amazon call.
Is there a split personality here? Well, it must be hard to walk the fine line between providing analysis and just posting his opinion … either way, it’s an interesting blog that I just subscribed to.
Update (1/04): Business Week Online: Google at $600? Welcome Back, Henry–Er, I Mean Safa
Tags: Google, Valuation, Stock Market, Analyst, Wall Street, Blodgett
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
I do most of my business blogging there, with occasional asides here. More...
Recent Comments