Rating Burner's Alexander Fedorov Explains Site, Hidden Features

Yesterday, we uncovered Rating Burner, a new site that ranks popular blogs by their total subscribers, as calculated by FeedBurner. The site, previously unknown to the blogosphere, offered little behind its story, and little clue to its owner, though we did find Alexander Fedorov as the registrant of ratingburner.com. Today, Alexander emerged, and sent me a few e-mails, which further explained the site's origin and purpose, uncovering an interesting approach to discovering new sites and RSS feeds, as well as Web advertising opportunities.

First off, the site is more than an Internet egotist's dream. Rating Burner has its own Web crawler, aimed to discover new FeedBurner feeds and subscriber counts. As Fedorov wrote today, "The rating is growing all by itself. As soon as someone links to your blog, sooner or later it will be found by Rating Burner's bot."

And the bot had to start somewhere. Fedorov kicked off the Web crawling using John Battelle's Searchblog at http://battellemedia.com/. You can see this by using the same type of URL hacking popularized with ReadBurner just yesterday. Try the URL http://www.ratingburner.com/?order=1&dir=a and find the exact order of the robot's work. Hovering your mouse over the "1" in the "N" column shows the site was indexed by January 18th at 11:18 a.m. 4 minutes later, it was off to the Black Hat SEO Diary. 3 minutes later, the robot found TechCrunch, and it was off to the races. The robot eventually found louisgray.com on January 20th after noon, making me #216 in the list, which now has 368 individual sites.

Even more interesting, Rating Burner shows a detailed map of how each of these blogs link to one another. (Download the detailed graphic) The sites with the most links their way have the most arrows, and those sites with the most FeedBurner subscribers have the widest arrows to and from their site. As the below graphic shows, his robot correctly noted I link out to Mashable and WinExtra links to me. The map was generated by GraphViz, an open source tool.


My position in Rating Burner's map.
The robot spawned by Rating Burner has specialized intelligence to discover ad networks, and enables site owners to display going rates. As Alexander explains, the "crawler scans all blogs for signatures of some well known sponsors/advertisers and lists this information. It is possible to publicize prices for banner ads using special html comment . Crawler will find this info and publish price in the rating."

There are also a number of hidden tricks in the database.

To find out the total number of comments in the most-recent post on any included blog, you can sort with the below URL:
http://www.ratingburner.com/?order=17

To sort included sites by the most recent post, it's a different command:
http://www.ratingburner.com/?order=16

... and by PageRank:
http://www.ratingburner.com/?order=12

If you recall, Rating Burner also hinted at further categorization, including tags for SEO and gadgets. Alexander promises there are many more to come, automatically generated, again by the robot and the intelligent database:

He writes, "...categorization is completely automated. I have several samples of texts on special subjects like "gadgets" and then all blogs (5 last posts) are tested againts this texts using bayesian filter and shingles, and if the similarity is close enough, this blog will be listed under this category. I just need to add more categories and collect more sample texts."

Rating Burner is still in its infancy, even after yesterday's debut, without question. But there are some interesting tricks lurking in the database. Want to find recent posts with lots of comments that might be "hot"? Try this link: http://www.ratingburner.com/?order=4&filter=category%3ATOP.

And the blogosphere has noticed. In addition to my post, which hit TechMeme, and Mashable's coverage this morning, the site's debut was included in Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land wrap-up for the day, as well as Marketing Pilgrim.

Kudos to Mashable, and Three Links Their Way

Some companies will talk about change, and not follow through. Mashable is not one of them. After promising to offer an improved level of transparency and attribution, the popular social networking news site has done exactly that, revamping they way they report news, share linkage and introduce original sourcing. Over the last few weeks, Mashable has managed to seamlessly keep reporting the news while adapting to the new guidelines... and that's hard to do.

With that said, I wanted to draw your attention to three great stories Mashable is running right now.

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Podcast: A Conversation with MG Siegler
http://mashable.com/2008/01/31/l33t-reddit/

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins sat down with MG Siegler of ParisLemon to talk about our new joint venture of delivering an "elite" Reddit, aimed at offering the best in tech news, free of the usual nonsense.

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Readburner’s Unofficial API
http://mashable.com/2008/01/31/readburner-api/

Hardly a day goes by without Alexander Marktl's pet project, ReadBurner, making the news. Yesterday, as noted in my link blog, David Rothman posted a piece on Hacking ReadBurner URLs, which can deliver unique, and often unexpected, results. URL hacking is among my favorite past-times. Combine it with ReadBurner, and you've got some good fun ahead.

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RatingBurner Ranks Blogs According To RSS Numbers
http://mashable.com/2008/01/31/ratingburner-ranks-blogs-according-to-rss-numbers/

Mashable's Stan Schroeder also followed up on our piece on Rating Burner from last night, highlighting the new site's ability to rank blogs by RSS numbers. As he writes, "... it’s a ranking system with positive sides and flaws like any other, and I guess it can’t hurt to have another one."

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All are worth clicking through and reading. Make sure you do. And Mashable, nice job.

Rating Burner Debuts With RSS Feed Ranking, Growth Stats

There's precious little that bloggers like to do more than measure their own statistics, and gauge how they're doing, relative to the rest of the blogging community. And there's similarly precious little that smart Web developers like to do than harness publicly available data, point it at an intelligent database, and debut a new service.

When the two come together as one, you have the potential for a must-bookmark site that stataholics and egotists alike will visit time and again.

While earlier this month, we talked about two new sites focused on tabulating popular shared links from Google Reader, in ReadBurner and Shared Reader, today we've seen a new, unheralded site emerge, which displays the most popular blogs, by RSS feed subscribers, and shows their day to day momentum in terms of new subscribers or defectors. That site's name, appropriately enough, is Rating Burner.

(Note: There are no blog hits for Rating Burner as of 8 p.m., but the secret is now out!)

Though in its early stages, Rating Burner is accomplishing what many geeks set out to do by hand just a few short months ago. (See: Top Blogs On Google Reader, How Many Google Reader Subscribers Do You Have? and Find the Number of Google Subscribers for Any Feed)

The site, currently holding approximately 400 individual blogs and RSS feeds, at time of this posting, aims to summarize a blog's feed popularity, show its Google PageRank (a measurement often used to illustrate trust), its aggregate change in subscribers over the previous 24 hours, including percentage change, when they most recently posted, and what, if any, ad services they use.


The Most Popular Blogs, According to Rating Burner
While the list isn't yet 100 percent inclusive, Rating Burner unsurprisingly shows TechCrunch, the official Google Blog, Mashable and Guy Kawasaki among the top-subscribed feeds. Amazingly, Rating Burner shows more than 11,000 new adds to TechCrunch's 654k subscriber army in the last day alone, dwarfing the 709 Mashable picked up, and my measly 38, although I did manage to go up more than 8 percent between the two snapshots.

As with ReadBurner, Rating Burner should only get better with time, and with user submissions of new blogs. The site offers an entry form to post new blogs for inclusion, and looks like it will soon add categories, to further segment the data. So far, the site has SEO blogs and Gadget blogs listed as possible filters.

Also like ReadBurner, upon initial writeup, Rating Burner's UI is quite spartan, but the functionality is very interesting. I'm impressed to see the developer has grabbed the FeedBurner statistics for each blog and is hosting the results on their site, rather than externally pointing to FeedBurner graphics. I for one noted the statistics listed for louisgray.com were from Monday night, so it's likely the data trails by a full 24 hours. Thanks to my subscriber count dropping from 436 to 413 overnight, I would expect my own stats to drop tomorrow, reflecting Tuesday's data.


louisgray.com, 37th fastest-growing, according to Rating Burner
If you would like to be included in Rating Burner, post your blog feed at their URL, and they will likely index you for tomorrow's results. While I used the site's contact us form on their Web site to reach the developer, I haven't yet heard back, and we don't yet know for certain the individual behind the service. Domain name records show Rating Burner registered to Alex Fedorov in Massachusetts, so we hope to hear from him soon and see the service further develop.

iPings Ping Service Suffering Multi-Day Outage

Since early last year, when Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion introduced me to iPings, I've relied on the multi-service Ping engine to update sites including Technorati, Weblogs.com, FeedBurner and IceRocket, alerting the services that my blog had been updated. Using a simple form, I could enter my data in iPings and hit all the services at once, rather than updating them individually, or hoping their spiders were quick.

But for this entire week, iPings has gone missing, offering instead a stark notice, saying, "ipings.com is down for maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please check back soon."

But unlike Twitter, which goes down for maintenance seemingly a few times a day, iPings has never come back up, and it's tempting to think the service just might be gone - leading me to use my backup, Pingomatic, or trust the Web crawler gods.

While iPings never sported the most creative of Web layouts, and often annoyed with flashing banner ads or unreadable captchas, it simply got the job done. Now, I have to wonder if they're all done too.

My Apple TV Still Wants Rentals, But Apple is Holding Out

Remember how pleased we were to learn that Apple finally introduced movie rentals via iTunes? I was stoked. In the midst of the writers' strike, the fact we could potentially gain access to new entertainment via the Apple TV and playing on our big screen was a home run. But weeks after the MacWorld Expo hubbub has died down, we're still left waiting, and the situation isn't getting better any time soon. For as the calendar turns from January to February, we got news today that Apple still needs a few more weeks to get it right. (See Also: TUAW)

Rats.

Since the introduction of movie rentals, we've already enjoyed a few films we hadn't seen in the theaters, including "The Hoax" and "A Guy Thing". Both were in the perfect spot for this - not good enough to see for $10, but of high enough quality where I'd feel bad if I snuck off to some Peer to Peer solution and grabbed it, sans paying. As you would expect, the viewing experience from Apple was simple. After the films downloaded, they were in a special section of iTunes for rented movies, and played just like a DVD would on my laptop. When done, I deleted them, and got that 1 GB or so back of free space on my drive, just as I would expect.

But, despite this wonderful innovation, my Apple TV still doesn't have access to it. I've checked the settings, and each time I look, I'm told I'm "Up to Date". What a shame. Hopefully, Apple's newfound transparency in terms of notifying customers there are delays doesn't turn into a repeat pattern as the weeks turn to months and so on...

Custom Reddit for Elite Tech News Created

It wasn't all that long ago that RSS and blogging pioneer Dave Winer called for the ability to create a Digg clone. He envisioned a service not for a vast market, but instead, one for a specialized niche of readers. With a limited number of participants, an elite group of moderators could serve as editors, using their collective brainpower to push the best news to the top, unimpeded by random videos, images, politics and the latest Mac or Linux war to hit the blogosphere, as can be seen all too often on popular "wisdom of crowds" sites, from Digg to TechMeme.

Last Tuesday, Reddit was first to the scene, offering users the ability to create their own reddits. Now, instead of one massive catch-all site that absorbed all the news of the day, many parallel reddits have emerged, including some for Comics, lolcats, wikipedia and much more, from atheism to politics and the environment.

While the total number of subscribers to these custom reddits remains small, with the most popular typically sporting a few hundred users, one in particular has heeded Dave Winer's original call to deliver a site dedicated to the top tech news of the day, edited by a group of popular tech bloggers.

A sample of tonight's tech news.
The reddit, focused on "Elite Tech News" and featuring the "elite" address of http://reddit.com/r/l33t, is moderated, so far, by MG Siegler of ParisLemon, Steven Hodson of WinExtra, Frederic Lardinois of The Last Podcast and me.

While the site is just getting started, we are approaching 100 subscribers, and hope to include you among us. You can be sure that this reddit won't fall victim to pictures of kittens, promotions of fringe presidential candidates and off-topic nonsense. Find us at http://reddit.com/r/l33t.

First Round of Fifty AssetBar Invites Gone

Surprisingly, I managed to pass along all fifty of my first-day invites to AssetBar today, through this morning's blog post, and follow-up e-mails I had promised to those who contacted me in the last six weeks, looking to gain access to the new service. Amazingly, I even got a number of e-mails from close friends who tried to get in this evening, but were too late. So if you're still awaiting an invite, I won't forget you. Just send me an e-mail to louisgray@mac.com, and I'll reach out your way should I get more.

While the first few dozen folks find their way through the new service, and uncover a number of kinks, we did see some ineresting reactions in the blog about AssetBar's early debut:

CBS 5.com: Come On Now Social

"When Google Reader made "shared" feed selections truly shared items, people wigged. But a new RSS feed reader is out for public consumption, and the whole idea behind it is about showing off your stuff..."

Unique Frequency: Alerts On Readburner, Social Alternative To Google Reader

"Basically while you can share feeds in Google Reader, you don’t know what someone else might be thinking about it, other than the person liked it enough to share it. AssetBar changes that by allowing users to rate articles and comment on them as well."

I promise to post some more updates around AssetBar in the coming days and weeks. After all, this site is becoming well known as a go-to destination for information on next generation RSS feed readers, covering not just Google Reader, but FeedHeads, ReadBurner, Spokeo, Shared Reader and AssetBar. More to come.

AssetBar Launches, With Google Reader In Its Crosshairs

AssetBar, the next generation social RSS feed reader, has been in heavy development mode since we first got the opportunity to test the service back in December. (See: I Have Seen the Future of Social RSS Feed Readers) After significant infrastructure updates, error-checking and GUI tweaks, the service is ready to debut in pre-release.

Unlike every other RSS feed reader out there which I've tried, AssetBar catapults the user experience out of a journey of isolation, and instead to one of shared activity, commiseration, and comments. It's like taking the power of Google Reader, and spreading over a veneer of FriendFeed. Now, instead of wondering if a friend of mine has already read an article I found interesting, I can share it (like in Google Reader), I can rate it (thumbs down, informative or read now!) and I can post public or private messages to it.

Go to www.assetbar.com. Invite code is "louisgray". My ID is louismg. Bring OPML.


Additionally, as we've highlighted in recent weeks with Google Reader, I can add items directly to AssetBar that are not part of my subscriptions.

Essentially, AssetBar has created a foundation for what I expect to be the future of RSS feed readers - not aimed at individual news consumption, but instead, aimed at collaboration. AssetBar takes a leap forward, similar to the move away from Web portals and toward social networking.

In this pre-release phase, I expect to find issues, and AssetBar has been kind enough to make the site's admin a friend to all early access users, so you can make your suggestions known. In the six weeks I've had the opportunity to enjoy AssetBar myself, I know the team responds rapidly and continues to make updates.

Next up immediately for the service? Developing a river of news and keyboard shortcuts. This will give Google Reader's high-end users a real reason to make a move. As the site's co-creater, Israel LHeureux writes, "Our 100% focus will be on adding features to get high-end users to switch from GReader. You can bet we'll be sweating it."

Want an invite? Go to www.assetbar.com. The access code is "louisgray", without quotes. My friend ID is louismg.

See also:
AssetBar Early Access Delayed, Invites To Come Soon
AssetBar Set to Launch With Google Reader Inspiration

Forget the A-List? Not Quite Yet.

Well known A-list blogger and technology evangelist Guy Kawasaki says the time has come where prominent bloggers with brand names aren't any more likely to determine a product's success or failure. As he says it, referencing a recent article in Fast Company, "Lousy reviews by them cannot tank your product. Great reviews cannot make it successful."

But to summarily dismiss the most well-known bloggers as ineffective means to get word out around a new product or Web service is flawed. In my belief, there is no binary "right or wrong" answer here. You shouldn't make outreach to the A-list bloggers OR hope to reach users who can virally make your product a success. A good campaign should be more broad, and include elements of both reaching out to the most widely read, and to early adopters.

We can see Web services every day try to get launched through TechCrunch, GigaOM and Mashable, in hopes that the massive traffic spike will carry them through their next venture capital round and long-term success. People often refer to the ensuing deluge of visitors as "The TechCrunch Effect", as they once did about the "Slashdot Effect". And while we know that eventually traffic goes back down, being profiled by such well-read sites leads to smaller bloggers following on with their own take, trying out the product and writing reviews. In effect, rather than starting at the bottom to get a few links and working their way up, going after the big dogs means getting coverage both at the top and the bottom.

As I told Emanuel Rosen, author of "Anatomy of Buzz", following my first comments on his book, there are new ways to gain buzz and interest across the Web these days, from limited invites and private betas to working Twitter and the B-List. There's no question that each of these elements can deliver users. But to ignore a significant portion of a potential campaign on its face and declare it one to "Forget" is silly.

Some of us may wish the A-List concept were dead and gone, but it's not yet, and it won't be for some time, and if one name were to go down, there's no doubt another would rise to take its place. In every marketplace there are leaders who wield an inordinate share of power. Simply wishing them away won't make it so.

Google Honors Building Blocks of the Non-Web Kind

Google is well-known for modifying their logo to celebrate anniversaries or mark holidays. Today, with the 50th anniversary of the first Lego bricks, Google has edited their logo to be built out of Lego bricks, featuring a Lego figure atop the second "g". With so many engineers and techies on site in Mountain View, there's no question that many of them began their tinkering without computers, and many a youthful hour was spent in front of the popular children's toys.

Fifty years ago, few could have foreseen the way technology and the Web have transformed business, commerce and communication. And just five years ago, few would have guessed how critical a building block Google has become to just about every facet of our online lives - from finding information, posting information, sharing information, and saving information.

And five years from now, what we know of Google today might be a mere shadow of what the company is set to become. Today's Google might just be a building block, like the first lego in a structure, of something monumental.

After all, you can't spell Google without the L, E, G and O.

Also see:
Google's Earth Day Logo Makes a Splash
Google: Holiday logos

How Soon Until People Demand Link Blog Portability?

The issues of data portability and ownership reached a fever pitch when Robert Scoble famously got kicked off Facebook for 24 painful hours. Users debated forwards and backwards over whether he had wrongly tried to export data from his friends that he believed belonged to him, while the social network believed they had ownership. In the ensuing months, many of the largest Web firms have joined DataPortability.org, essentially promising you can import and export your data from one service or another, without being locked into a data silo.

Yet, while this is happening, some services are becoming increasingly important, and are completely immovable. Take Google Reader's shared link blogs for instance. Despite the great utility of the link blog, combining all your best-liked posts from the blogosphere in one place, the link blog lacks customization in look and feel, in URL, or in the ability, so far, to both input data from sources outside of Google Reader, or to export the data to a new format.

Recently, in part due to the Google Reader team's lack of attention, services dedicated to tabulating the popularity of shared link items have risen up, most notably the debut of ReadBurner and Shared Reader.

Additionally, there has been recent interest in adding individual posts to Google Reader link blogs, without requiring subscription. I touched on the idea last Wednesday, ReadBurner implemented it that afternoon, and Google Operating System debuted a work-around this Sunday.

What this tells me is that the value of the link blog is only going to increase over time. Yet, it only can be modified if you utilize Google Reader, and it can only be presented at a Google-selected URL. This is in contrast to the wide variety of options seen if you use the company's Blogger service, where you can either use their blogspot.com address, publish via FTP to a site you already own with your own domain name, or thirdly, buy your own domain name through Blogger.

I believe that as alternatives to Google Reader arise, and bloggers start to see the value in their own link blogs, there will be a desire to:

1. Use other blog services to publish RSS items to their link blog.
2. Add updates from other non-blog services (like Del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg) to their link blog, a la FriendFeed.
3. Move their link blogs to a custom domain.
4. Customize the link blogs to look like their own Web sites.

Today, Google's shared item link blogs offer non-intuitive URLs, a bare minimum of design, on a white background, with your Google profile, and are limited to RSS feeds via Google Reader.

While Google was one of the first to offer this service, and has the highest following, as attested by ReadBurner, I believe people will recognize the need to open up and offer flexibility between both competing and complementary services. As Google offered to be part of the data portability movement near the beginning of January, I sure hope this concept is on top of their list. If it's not, I wonder how long it will take until their users ask for it to be.

Mormon Leader Gordon B. Hinckley Passes Away

Breaking away a bit from our usual technology coverage, we heard the sad news tonight that LDS church prophet Gordon B. Hinckley passed away at age 97, after leading the church for more than twelve years. Hinckley presided over the church in a time of significant growth, missionary outreach, and temple building world-wide. He also was easily the most visible Mormon prophet to date, showing incredible media poise, appearing on CNN's Larry King Live several times during his presidency.

(See transcripts from: 1998 and 2001 or the 2004 video from YouTube)

For those unfamiliar with the Mormon faith in general, Hinckley held the highest position in the church, behind only the Godhead, of course, and could be considered the equivalent of the pope for the Catholic church. Hinckley was a member of the First Presidency, with both a first and second counselor, heading the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, paralleling the organization of the New Testament times.

In my time as a member of the church, since birth in 1977, I've seen four prophets, starting with Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W. Hunter, and Hinckley. While Hinckley was the oldest president in church history, he was well-known for his optimistic spirit and upbeat attitude, even as he was in his mid-90s. We will certainly miss him, even though we know the church remains in good hands.

For more information on Gordon B. Hinckley, see LDS.org or Wikipedia.

Oakland A's Fanfest 2008 Brings Baseball to January

As partial season ticket holders to the Oakland A's, each year my wife and I get a perk which includes passes to the team's annual FanFest, where as a small group, we got to tour the team's clubhouse and enjoy question and answer sessions with some of the team's favorite players. For the second year out of three (See our 2006 report), we got to go, and while weather was expected to be rainy and downright miserable, we were pleasantly surprised to get calm skies.

It's been a long, cold, dark off-season as an A's fan. Since the team missed the playoffs and finished with a losing record, just one game out of last place, we've seen the team's ace pitcher, Dan Haren, dispatched to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the team's best all-around player, Nick Swisher, traded to the Chicago White Sox, and one of the team's veterans, Mark Kotsay sent to the Atlanta Braves. The trades, all done in exchange for young prospects, have had some thinking the team's already given up on 2008. But even if we don't expect Oakland to run away with the division, I believe they'll surprise some people, and today, it was great to enjoy being a baseball fan again.

Arriving at the Coliseum around 11:00 this morning, with my wife and two friends from church, as well as their one-year-old, we made a beeline for the clubhouse tour, seeing the team's locker room and the coaches' offices, lined with memorabilia from yesteryear, seeing magazine covers and bobbleheads galore. Some of the lockers were still adorned with the names of players now elsewhere, as if frozen in time from the end of last season.

Then, the real fun started. We sat in on an 11:45 Q&A session featuring Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers, current A's pitchers Huston Street and Alan Embree, and pitching coach Curt Young. Between the jokes about Alan Embree being old and Street being young, fans got to ask Fingers about pitching in the World Series in 1972 against Johnny Bench and the Cincinnati Reds, and Young about the 1989 World Championship team that featured Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco.

At 1:00 p.m. there was another Q&A session, this time with A's hitters Daric Barton, Kurt Suzuki, Jack Cust and Mark Ellis. Of the four, only Ellis was starting with the team at the beginning of 2007. Cust was a journeyman minor leaguer, while Barton and Suzuki were working their way up the food chain to Oakland. This time, rather than sitting idly by, my wife asked Ellis about life away from the family (and his pug) and how he handled that, while I asked Cust how it felt to be in an organization who believed in him and whose fans were supportive of him, compared to others where he always seemed one strikeout away from the minors or one homer away from the majors, but never in a role where he belonged.

Cust seemed extremely pleased with his new surroundings, and while the sports world isn't giving much thought to the A's chances this year, we are excited about thinking about baseball again. We're excited about seeing Barton, Suzuki, Cust, Travis Buck and others for a full year. We're looking forward to spending a lot of time on I-880 going up and back to the A's games starting in April, and catching Spring Training in between. There's just something about baseball that makes the world right, even when not every game goes the right way. The 2007 season ended weakly for the A's last year, and Fanfest reminded us we start 2008 with a brand new schedule and brand new record, that of zero and zero.

The A's have already made full video of each of the Q&A sessions available on their Web site (including my cameo and that of my wife). You can find all that at OaklandAthletics.com. Additional commentary on this year's Fanfest can be found at Athletics Nation. (Fanfest: The Reports, The Gossip, The Aftermath)

NotchUp Sells You Out, but Nobody's Buying

I can see how a few overzealous marketeers dreamed up the concept of NotchUp, a new career site for casual job seekers who believe themselves to be so good that prospective employers would bid simply for the right to interview them. The thought... "What if we combine the utility of LinkedIn with viral marketing, using spam and a half-baked pyramid scheme? All we have to do is create a site and force companies to pay for interviews! We'll be rich!"

But the idea is ridiculous. After receiving way too many invites to NotchUp in my e-mail box, primarily from casual business acquaintances who I haven't worked with in years, I thought I'd sign in to see what the noise was about, while also pre-emptively blocking future invites. And what I found was absolutely silly.


Some of the NotchUp e-mail invites I hadn't deleted yet...
NotchUp essentially wants you to recreate your LinkedIn profile, even offering to import your LinkedIn contacts, and then set a price for how much you believe a company should pay for the privilege of meeting with your egotistical self. And, if you act fast, you can spam all of your buddies, thereby gaining 10% of their earnings from interviewing companies as a referral bonus for a full year.

But there are some major glaring holes here.

#1: No company that takes itself seriously will pay for your interview

If a company needs to pay you to interview, they probably aren't one you want to join, and if you're willing to interview for the sole purpose of being paid, with no intention of taking the job, they shouldn't want you.

#2: In order to make any money off the process, you'd have to interview a ton, and never take a job. And all that interviewing might cost you the job you already have.

Notchup encourages you to set a price for interviewing between $75 and $5,000. Assuming you set your price at $250, you would have to conduct 200 separate interviews to rake in a $50k salary. And if you interviewed twice a week at that rate, you would be making $2k a month. But.... you wouldn't ever see that kind of money anyway.

I'm special. Pay me big bucks to chat.

#3: The very best way for people to find new jobs these days is through networking.

LinkedIn is a success because of who you know, not how well you write your resume or how well you interview. LinkedIn shows the quickest route between individuals, and NotchUp doesn't even talk about that. Their entire selling point is about you getting rich, not off working, but pretending to be interested in work.

#4: Friends who spam me shouldn't make a red cent.

You think I'm really going to export my 360+ LinkedIn contacts, invite them all to NotchUp, and then sit back as the profits roll in? Hardly. I don't have stars in my eyes thinking all 360 of my contacts will interview once a month at $200 each, and make me a cool $7,200 a month. If you sent me a spam e-mail asking me to join this quasi-pyramid scheme of a program, I'd have to reconsider whether I'd ever hire you on my team in a future capacity.

#5: The economy isn't so red hot that companies are panicking in need for good employees.

With all the talk about market fluctuations and even a recession, it's not as if companies are dying to meet you. I don't know if they want to meet you for free. The best ones, like Google and Facebook, aren't hurting for talent. They get thousands of resumes a day, most of which won't even get a courtesy callback. Maybe this process would have some chance of success in a go-go time of market inefficiency where job applicants were in control, but not now, and not any time soon.

I'm all for checking out the latest and greatest Web services, but NotchUp is a joke looking for a punch line.

See Also:
Center Networks: There Are Great Ideas, There Are Poor Ideas, Then There's NotchUp
Danny Man: NotchUp? Not so much . . .
eWeek: What if Companies Paid to Interview You?

RSS Subscriber Count Doubles In 4 Weeks

December 28: Feedburner Milestone Reached: 200 Subscribers... and 4 weeks later... January 25: 400+ RSS Feed Subscribers. From that note, I said, "... it'd be nice to have 500 subscribers or so by this time next year." Sounds like I may have to change that goal to a higher number!

HTML Colors for mosaic from Web Developers Notes | Chicklets from FeedBurner

Technorati's Latest Change: Front Page Revamp

If there's anything constant about Technorati, it's change. The last few months have been extremely bumpy for the once world-leading blog search and tagging engine, with executive changes, the more than occasional outage, and reduced relevance in the face of Google Blog Search.

But they're not going away any time soon, and tonight, it looks like they've reorganized their front page, to make the site more of a destination, rather than a conduit for you to get to tag data and ego-inflating blog statistics. Of note, Technorati might have gone the opposite direction, moving the most popular sites off the front page altogether, and instead, to Blogger Central.


The new front page highlights posts from my selected "favorites" as it did before, but displays the content in a more text-rich fashion, as if you were reading RSS in a feed reader. The site also brought forward the "My blogs" section, showing current authority level and my number of fans. (Not all that high, mind you)

Also highlighted is the integration of top tags, with a 30-day graph showing the prominence of those tags over time. The rising blog posts and rising news stories, determined by external links and discussion, has been pushed to the bottom, below that of updates from my favorites.

Will this make me visit Technorati.com that much more? Probably not, unless I were to start using the site to more thoroughly walk the blogosphere and tag my favorites. After all, given I have 240+ RSS feeds, and I'm only a fan of a small handful of sites on Technorati, I haven't been keeping up. But at least it shows the company is trying something new in another attempt to make traffic stick.

See Also:
Technorati: Totally Toast In Tracking Real-Time Traction?
Technorati Fights Off Irrelevance With Return of Charts
Technorati Down Again, Google Sure to Benefit

The Downside to Raised Blog Expectations

Heading into the last week of January, this has been more than a record-breaking month for louisgray.com. Instead, it's been a tidal wave. Without giving away all the fun statistics, planned for a February 1 post, suffice it to say that we've already had traffic more than 1,500% greater than January 2007, also more than double that of December, which was the previous record.

Rather than resulting from a few Digg spikes or runs at StumbleUpon, this increased level of activity has been through increased presence on Google, significantly higher linkage from other blogs, and a number of highly-discussed posts, both here and elsewhere.

And with the higher page views, site visits, RSS feed subscribers and Technorati Authority, I'm feeling as if I'm going to fall victim to my own raised expectations. While I used to be content to make comments on the latest updates in Bay Area sports, or my favorite TV shows, the threshold has been heightened, and more is expected.

After all, take a look at what Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read/Write Web (and formerly of TechCrunch) was saying on Twitter last night...


Via http://twitter.com/marshallk
Whether he was being too kind or just trying to send me a few new visitors from Twitterland isn't 100% clear, but now that we're getting noticed by some high-profile folks, and achieving previously uncharted levels of traffic, as well as reaching the rarified air of the TechMeme leaderboard, I'm feeling the pressure if I'm staying too many hours at work, or if I'm putting the laptop down a few hours to catch up on TV. My new subscribers are going to expect big things from this blog, and they won't want to be let down.

While I can't expect to find new services like ReadBurner and Shared Reader every day, and I don't anticipate starting a verbal war with one of the most widely read blogs on the planet all that often, I do expect we'll try to find new insight into the world of technology, and hope to earn the kind of accolades I've seen from people like Marshall, or VentureBeat's Eric Eldon that we've received over the last few weeks.

I do expect there will be days when I don't post at all. There will be days when my posts just might not be interesting to people, and there might be days when my RSS feed count goes down as people unsubscribe. And just as we've seen our traffic jump in January, it may fall in February, making me feel we're not measuring up. Even if there were an official "Up and coming tech blogger of the month", and even if I won for January, somebody else would win the next month, and I'd be yesterday's news, potentially fighting to stay relevant.

Taking Technologies for Granted, and the Resulting Quiet

Yesterday, while browsing updates on Twitter, Frederic Lardinois of The Last Podcast asked an interesting question saying, "I noticed that the Facebook hype seems to have died down quickly. What's going to be the next big 'it' thing online?"

While I can't speak for everyone, I see the lowered discussion around Facebook as part of the cycle which occurs when a technology transitions from being new, and therefore exciting, to instead, being accepted and absorbed into daily use. Oddly enough, in this phase, you're more likely to see news about these accepted technologies when they surprisingly stop working, or go down (in the case of Web applications).

That's why it's not too uncommon to see bloggers, from A-Listers like Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel, all the way to B-Listers and below, like me, seemingly change their tune - gravitating like moths to one technology, and then buzzing on to the next and the next and the next. One day it will be Twitter. The next day it will be Facebook. Then TechMeme. Or Google Reader. Then Joost. Then Seesmic, Pownce and so on.

For me, I was doing some thinking about how you've seen that here - and there's no doubt it's happened. I used to talk a lot about how I use iTunes. During my off-work hours, there is very little time when on the laptop and iTunes isn't running. I also don't talk much about my TiVo, where I used to. I don't mention FriendFeed as much as I once did, nor LinkedIn, Facebook, or standard Mac apps. Why? Simply because they work, and they are part of my every day technology intake.

Does this mean these services are less valuable than today's flavor of the month?

No, of course not. But they are not as shiny as they once were. They don't have the newness factor and intrigue they did when they were first discovered, and by the time you've been using a product for months or even years, it can seem that everything that needs to be said has been said. Is Facebook still inhabited by zombies and are people SuperPoking too much? Yes. That didn't change. Do my iTunes updates still automatically populate Last.fm? Yes, of course. Am I still using Google Reader at a rapid pace? Yes. But I won't mention it unless I set some new record, they add a new feature, go down or lose all my feeds.

So while Scoble and others are occasionally lambasted for having something approaching attention deficit disorder, it's not necessarily a medical issue. And that doesn't mean those developers working hard on the next generation of iTunes, Google, and Facebook have the option to slow down. It just means they're entering a new, more mature, quieter phase. As bloggers, we're not necessarily always looking for the "next big 'it' thing" online, but if we find it, there's no doubt we'll tell you.

A Big Upgrade Day for Five Social Services

Sometimes, you can go weeks without news, and then seemingly, there's this spike of activity, when the industry snaps out of its temporary slumber and gets coding.

Today, in the space of a few hours, some of my favorite Web services all went into the shop for a tune-up and came out with some intriguing features. Of note, FriendFeed, ReadBurner, Spokeo, Shared Reader and LinkedIn have all made improvements worth highlighting.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn continues to add new features related to who is viewing your profile. I asked LinkedIn back in February to show how often your profile was visited, who did it, and who has similar profiles to yours, and the company is definitely moving in this direction, knocking off the first two in May, and today, interestingly letting you know what other profiles viewers of a specific individual also looked at. (The example on the right came when I viewed FriendFeed's Paul Buchheit.)

The company's official blog tonight hints at even more features of this sort coming, saying, "At LinkedIn, we believe in collective intelligence, and the team that brought you this feature ... is busy working on some even cooler stuff. Stay tuned."

We will, and we're looking forward to it. (My profile is here...)

FriendFeed

FriendFeed, also a good listener, added some great features that let you reduce some of the noise generated from verbose friends, through hiding specific services (like Twitter), muting comments on a specific entry, and, in a new twist, adding the ability to link to a specific item. While this feature was hinted at in a quick note from Paul Buchheit a few weeks ago, it's now been rolled out in style. (See: FriendFeed Options)

FriendFeed is doing a great job of upgrading through what's today still a spartan Google-like interface, managing to get a lot of data without a lot of clutter. The new features come up when you click the "Options" tag next to any item.

I had mentioned that one of my highest recommendations for FriendFeed in "10 Suggestions for FriendFeed" was to add the ability to block updates from specific services. As the blog post says, "does one of your friends Twitter way too often?" Well, the answer is yes. And rather than unsubscribe from that friend, I can just "untweet" them if I so choose.


The level of specificity in the "hiding options" is fantastic, determining that you can block specific services from specific users, and further delineate whether you want to block all such items, or just those without "Comments" or "Likes", which typically split the popular from the unpopular. (See above image)

Spokeo

Spokeo, the friend-focused feeds aggregator, well known for letting you find all the Web services your friends subscribe to and giving you a single point of access for their social network data, got some old media publicity, through Newsweek (See: Friends Under the Microscope), and in a blog post this evening, titled "What's Next?", Harrison hints and improved search features, and expanded privacy settings, which will honor private blog posts and photo albums.

ReadBurner

The day wouldn't be complete without a ReadBurner update. After my post this morning on how to share items to your Google Reader link blog without requiring subscriptions, Alexander Marktl was on the case immediately. As he posted in Share items directly through ReadBurner!, he saw the work-around as a great way to keep populating his fast-growing service.

Shared Reader

Meanwhile, in ReadBurner's wake, Shared Reader is back online and adding new features as well. Shared Reader is duplicating many of ReadBurner's efforts, aggregating the most-shared Google Reader items, but it's also added new pages for "Tags" (See the tag for "ReadBurner" or Twitter), and has added both Digg counts and Del.icio.us counts for every single shared feed item.

Of course, the most popular shared items are also from the same sources you commonly see dominating TechMeme or Digg, so what rises to the top... still rises to the top. Also, Shared Reader has been highlighting the most-active linkblogs, and sources for articles, on the site's front page. So far, Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins of Mashable is #1, and I'm trailing in the #2 position for active link blogging...

Add Items to Your Google Reader Link Blog Without Subscribing

Unlike newer services including FriendFeed and AssetBar, Google Reader doesn't enable you to share items to your shared items link blog without first having an RSS feed subscription to the said site. But there is a work-around for this limitation, which lets you share an item without committing to any kind of long-term, or even short-term, relationship with the blog it came from.

(See also: #4 in 10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader from March '07)

To do so, you need to be using a feature in Google Reader's "Goodies" page, under your Settings, which they call "Subscribe as you surf". Essentially, you are adding a bookmark that with one click, prompts you to add an RSS-enabled site to your Google Reader.


I've personally added this bookmark to my Safari toolbar as "+GR", standing for "add to Google Reader", and click it whenever I find a must-subscribe site. But if you're in a gray area, and find a site that has a great article, but is one you don't think you'll be subscribing to, there's still a way to get it on your link blog.

1. Click your new "Subscribe as you surf" bookmark.

Google Reader will show you what the feed will look like if you choose to subscribe, with the note "You are not subscribed to this feed yet" along with a "Subscribe" button.


2. Scroll to the item or items you want to share on your link blog.

3. Hit the share option.

Then you can exit out of the feed subscription window by clicking All Items, getting back to your feed reading, or get on with your life. Sure enough, even though you never did subscribe to that site, their item made its way to your link blog, to be shared with your Google friends, and services like ReadBurner.

Until Google finds a more direct way to share items from the Web directly to your link blog, this is a fairly simple work-around, one I've been using on occasion and will be trying to make more-frequent use of in the future.

FeedBurner Defaults to Google Over Other RSS Readers?

UPDATE: This might be how FeedBurner handles cookies. As I primarily use Google Reader, it's likely I see Google as my default, thus making it less of a corporate issue, and more of FeedBurner making the process easier for users to stick with what they prefer. Let me know what you see. I will leave the post intact below.

Sometime around the beginning of January, I noticed a simple tweak to Google's Feedburner RSS syndication service, which favored its feed readers over that of the competition. The change no longer featured an array of buttons for web-based news readers, ranging from My Yahoo! to NewsGator, Bloglines and Netvibes.

Instead, it says simply, "Subscribe With Google", forcing the visitor to click and select alternative options, should they want to.


FeedBurner's subscription options: Before and After

The "Subscribe with Google" button leads customers to adding the new feed to Google Reader or iGoogle, an unsurprising move, given Google's acquisiton of FeedBurner last year, and no doubt further accelerating Google's market share growth in this space.

January 2007 statistics from Hitwise showed Google Reader in fourth place, behind BlogLines, Rojo and NewsGator, with 1/13th the market share of the leading BlogLines.

By September of 2007, as Richard McManus of Read/Write Web reported, using HitWise's updated statistics, Google Reader had nearly caught up to overtake BlogLines.

Now, a year after the first report, it's commonly assumed that Google's FeedFetcher, which combines activity from Google Reader and iGoogle, is far and away the leader. In fact, in my own statistics, Google accounts for more than 50% of my subscribers, more than eight times the tally from the second-highest services - a tie between BlogLines and NewsGator.


My RSS subscribers breakdown from January 22nd, 2008.
As Google acquires more independent services, and begins to tie their technology to favor their own over that of the competition, it wouldn't surprise me to see alternative providers crying foul, the way they did when Microsoft integrated Internet Explorer with Windows. After all, if RSS feeds are the way we gain information and the feed reader is today's equivalent of the mid-90's Web browser, is this not an interesting move?

See Also: FeedBurner: From Fee to Free: Should We Flee?

Mashable Addresses Attribution in the Blogosphere

From Mashable contributing editor Adam Ostrow's personal site:
Thoughts on Attribution in the Blogosphere:

Some excerpts:

“Growing responsibilities” is something I think the whole blogosphere is still coming to grips with, and a reason we need people like Louis Gray, as much as it might suck to become the whipping boy for an industry-wide problem."

"... we’re already putting in place measures at Mashable to make it clearer where a story comes from when we’re not the source. For starters, we're going to phase out the “via” links that are commonly found on many, many blogs in tech space."

"In retrospect, I’m actually glad that Louis Gray called us out on the attribution issue, because it now allows us to take a leadership role in making changes for the good of the industry. Along those lines, being able to react, respond, and implement policy adjustments within 48 hours of what some people might view as a PR disaster is one of the many reasons I love being in this space. We can always do better, and hopefully this will help us do just that."

Background for the small handful of you who missed it:

The conversation starter: Mashable Uses A-List Power to Steal B-List Buzz

The update: Mashable Promises to Upgrade Linking Policies

Adam, Pete and the Mashable team, I wanted to publicly thank you for taking on a hard topic and being so transparent about working toward enhancing the way you work within the blogosphere. Your post and comments here and elsewhere were a real help to letting others know your intentions, and continually striving to improve. Greatly appreciated.

Using Del.icio.us to Track Blog Reactions

When it comes to tracking who is saying what about your blog, it's hard to beat Technorati and Google Blog Search. While the occasional site may link your way and escape both these search engines, requiring a walk through your referral logs, the two services do a fairly good job of tracking down the vast majority of reactions throughout the blogosphere.

But neither site has the full superset of referrals, so you can't simply post a link to one or the other to keep others informed to your Web presence. Also, as most companies in the real world only select a subset of total mentions as featured media coverage, you might want to highlight some of the more prominent or favorable pieces yourself, filtering out the spam links, or those less useful.

In the last week or so, I've started to build a library of posts linking my way, with the help of Del.icio.us, Yahoo!'s social bookmarking site. When I run across a site that links to louisgray.com, or mentions me by name in context, I've added the site to my Del.icio.us library, with the tag of "coverage". While it's not yet all-inclusive, and only spans the last month or so, it's a start, one I hope to keep building, and eventually, may feature in a static page on this site.

You can see this build out at: del.icio.us/louismg/coverage.

I typically tag a referring site with the "coverage" tag, and the post's main topic. Of late, much of the coverage has also had the tag of "Mashable", "Twitter", "FriendFeed" or "ReadBurner", given those topics' recent highlights here. This will help remind me when I look back at this site later just what the linked post was talking about. The date when I bookmarked it should help too.

I haven't done the best job of delivering an "About" page or other static pages, but as we find time to build the site out, one highlighting coverage will surely be coming, and Del.icio.us will share some of the credit.

ReadBurner Revamps Look, Adds Images Features

Seemingly every 24 hours, ReadBurner is going about reinventing itself, through the addition of new features, new filtering and new feeds which add more weight to the service. Now only two weeks old, since obtaining their domain name on January 7th, ReadBurner underwent a significant upgrade yesterday, tailoring the site's look and feel to be less like a Google Reader clone (simply look at the logo in the top left of this post for what I mean) and more like a service ready to leave the beta stages.


The new look, including ReadBurner's new logo
In addition to introducing a new logo and style to the site and each of its shared items, ReadBurner introduced three new ways to view each shared item, ranging from the bare bones "Nothing", which simply shows the source, headline and sharers, to "Text", "Text + Images" and a "Complete" version, which includes the full post, with images and layout. Essentially, Alexander Marktl discovered how to deliver full feeds instead of partial feeds right into ReadBurner.

(See the below image for one with "Text + Images" enabled.)


Watching the site develop has been fun, and nothing is more fun than seeing the enthusiasm with which Alexander is going about improving his craft. Before debuting the new look, he gleefully sent me an e-mail yesterday afternoon, saying:

"I'm currently working on a major design update and by accident I found something that just blew me away: I've forgotten to striptags and when I'm now previewing the first lines of every item it brings up unbelievable content. Videos, Images, Logos and all somehow fits into the new design... Now I'm really excited :-)"

ReadBurner's development isn't going unnoticed. The fantastic Google Operating System site profiled Alexander and ReadBurner today in a piece, Popular Shared Items in Google Reader.

Prior ReadBurner Coverage:

January 7th: ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items
January 7th: ReadBurner's Unplanned Big First Day Shows Real Promise
January 10th: ReadBurner Goes from 0 to 12,000+ In Four Days
January 20th: ReadBurner Keeps Improving With Stats and Upcoming Items

louisgray.com Debuts at #92 on TechMeme Leaderboard

I only mention this because it may not ever happen again. :-)


Source: http://www.techmeme.com/lb at 11:45 p.m. Pacific on January 20th.

You know the stat is screwy when I've managed to top well-respected folks like Jeremiah Owyang and Jason Calacanis.

Other good friends of note:

#18: Mathew Ingram
#25: Robert Scoble
#73: Paris Lemon

As you might recall, the TechMeme leaderboard launched in October of 2007. This is the first time I think I've been included.

Breaking News: I "Jump the Shark" on Twitter

After being labeled an "Anti-Twittite" and swearing I would not ever join the microblogging service, Twitter, after fully ditching instant messenger services, like AOL IM, GTalk, and iChat, I opened up the topic to discussion last week, and got some good feedback from Twitter fans saying the service can be just what you put into it - essentially meaning if I choose my friends wisely and update with a purpose, it can be beneficial, enabling rapid conversation and idea sharing, where e-mail just won't cut it.

So... without too much drama, I've signed up - ostensibly to make sure I keep the "louisgray" ID, but just maybe, to actually use Twitter.

Given my 9-5 job, I don't expect to be on Twitter all the time, and most of the minutiae of my day won't be interesting to you anyway, so I don't believe this will be a frequently updated Twitter feed.

You can find me at: http://twitter.com/louisgray

If you think I can somehow add value in 140 characters or less, be sure to follow me, and I just may follow you back.

Mashable Promises to Upgrade Linking Policies

For the original post launching this topic, click here.

Open discussion in the blogosphere is an important element, necessary to promote change where change is needed. Sometimes, the way this discussion can be initiated will hit people the wrong way, making some believe that if you come down on the unpopular side of the issue, that it's personal, when that's not intended. And there's no doubt that the way I addressed a few frustrations I had with Mashable's coverage and attribution had at least one person seeing red, labeling me "arrogant, insulting, immature and irresponsible" in an e-mail.

But aside from their viewpoint, the conversation started up by last night's post has many thinking about how the blogosphere can grow up and take on traditional media "best practices" for linkage, research and attribution. Coming from a media background myself, I certainly have ideas in my head as to what are the right ways to go about reporting, linking and attribution, and while there's no way I'm perfect, I do the best I can to follow them - as no doubt, most people do.

To make it clear, I don't dislike Mashable, period. I don't dislike their writers or their management at all. In fact, I greatly enjoyed talking with Pete Cashmore last night and seeing his comments, as well as those of Adam Ostrow, and am pleased to see the team is going to rally and review their editorial linking policies after this kerfuffle, as he posted in the comments, and via e-mail.

I don't take the viewpoint that some others took that it was high time to unsubscribe from their RSS feed or to boycott them. I have zero proof, as others claimed, that the site has broken embargoes, and I strongly believe each of the people involved are well-intended, but may sometimes be feeling the pressure to post quickly, and needed something like this to make best practices a company policy.

So while Kent Newsome called this "Louis Gray vs. Mashable" in his notes tonight, that's not what I was going for. I was going for "Louis Gray fights in favor of best practices" where Mashable gets a one-time black eye that quickly fades... or something.

So how did the overall blogosphere take the conversation, after it unexpectedly hit TechMeme, putting it in front of the eyes of thousands? Let's take a look.

---

Peter Black said, "Although Mashable is a site I read religiously and link to frequently, I think Louis Gray's point is fair and well made" in a post simply titled: "Mashable" .

---

Todd McKinney said in "MS bashing may be fashionable", "It’s just sleazy to see the proliferation of internal links and content thievery among the commercial a-list in the blogosphere. These guys should be setting the standard here."

---

Mathew Ingram devoted an entire post to the coversation, in "I’m glad Louis Gray called out Mashable", saying, "... something has always kind of bothered me about the site, and I’m glad that Louis Gray finally wrote about it: Mashable often isn’t that great at giving credit to the blogs and writers who found an item first."

---

Ian Betteridge of Technovia called my post a "well-deserved kicking", saying "While everyone messes up an attribution every now and then, Mashable seems to have shown too much of a pattern to doing this for it to be anything other than editorial policy."

---

Prosthetic Device, a new blog to me, wrote, saying "If you create original content, you need to be mindful of your online presence," calling Mashable a "bigger online gorilla", in her post "Disintermediation and Web 2.0".

---

Joe Duck saw the discussion as "Another shot in the blog revolution", extending the conversation by linking the volume of stories to cold hard cash, saying, "I certainly agree that blogs are now doing what mainstream media has done for decades - sacrificing good quality reporting in the interest of monetization."

---

Backing up Mathew Ingram in Canada was Tris Hussey of Maple Leaf 2.0, who, in a post called "Cross-linking and attribution are critical to conversation and social media", said that "small blogs can be “discovered” when they are given the acknowledgement and props they deserve."

---

Frederic of the Last Podcast backed us up in a post called "No Attribution", and said that beyond money, the issue may be that there are just too many tech blogs out there covering the same thing, making researched reporting too dang hard. He writes, "There seems to be a lot more emphasis on breaking news today than delivering any sort of critical reflection about the news."

All told, the comments throughout the blogosphere, combined with many of those on last night's post, have me believing there is a serious amount of distrust of the biggest sites out there - and Mashable's not alone in drawing suspicion. Other commenters volunteered TechCrunch and Engadget as being skimpy with external links and attributing original sources for news. Regardless of who is to blame for questionable practices, I'm glad the blogosphere presents us with a platform to talk about it, and to actually make change. I am pleased with Mashable's near-instant response to the issue, and have faith that Pete and his team will work harder to be part of the continued evolution of the blogosphere as it grows up. Hopefully, I haven't burned so many bridges as to be left out of the process.

For additional commentary on the Mashable attribution issue, in other languages, try:

Blog En Serio: También los grandes pecan… y más de lo que pensamos (Spanish)
Porto Alegre: E Continua a Discussao (Portuguese)

ReadBurner Keeps Improving With Stats and Upcoming Items

I always knew the first service to crack the code of showing the most popular shared items in Google Reader, along with who shared them would be a fun utility. The catch? I used to think it would be Google who would be the winner. But now, with ReadBurner almost two weeks old, I've already seen the site change the way I think about and interact with RSS feed aggregators and shared link blogs.

In the last two weeks, Alexander Marktl has made his experiment into a useable, enjoyable site, filtering it into no fewer than five different language families, adding RSS feeds, revealing the individual sharers, and adding profile pages for each individual user.


Meanwhile, he has added a new page dedicated to "Upcoming" items that haven't yet reached the popular stage, just as Digg does.

The sum of all these changes? Even more reasons to keep checking in on the site - and two major shifts have occurred in my thinking over the last few weeks because of ReadBurner.

1) Google's Shared Link Blogs are a Big Barrier for Competitors

When AssetBar launches for good, there are some tremendously interesting services the site will offer that nobody else does today. But assuming I leave Google Reader for AssetBar (or any other service), my shared link blog from Google Reader will go dark. That, in turn, will stop my updates from being included on ReadBurner, Shared Reader and other services.

Even if AssetBar shows the most popular shared items, it will likely be doing so in a way where its data will be parallel from Google Reader, and therefore, won't be counted in ReadBurner, Feedheads, Shared Reader and others. If my shared link blog is important enough to me, I wouldn't make the move.

Even though Google hasn't done much with these shared link blogs, they already post a barrier for new companies.

2) I Finally Know Who Reads My Blog and Shares, but Doesn't Comment

ReadBurner, by revealing who is sharing blog posts from louisgray.com, shows me the link blogs from people I've never known. Even as my RSS feed reader subscribers ticked upward, my subscribers are largely an enigma. A small fraction of them make comments here, or send me e-mail. Now, I can go to ReadBurner, click on the names of people who have shared my items, and find them for the first time.

This alone is a very powerful thing.

And Alexander's not done. ReadBurner just launched a "Stats" page highlighting the most active link bloggers, the most common sources for shared items, and most common authors - the very beginning of exactly what Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel and I have been asking for Google to do for the better part of a year. (See below screenshot)



Whether this addition was spurred forward by a similar feature debuted by "Shared Reader" I saw in the middle of last week or not isn't certain, but it's impossible to know. After all, "Shared Reader", after a very public debut, both here, and on Mashable, looks to be down at the moment. Good thing ReadBurner is still up and innovating.

Mashable Uses A-List Power to Steal B-List Buzz

In the tech blogosphere, there's a clear delineation between those who are actively creating the news (the developers, engineers, and business people), those who are reporting the news (those blogs who follow journalism standards and do actual reporting) and those who simply follow along - either by referencing other people's work, or simply duplicating it. Mashable, billing itself as the #1 social networking news site on the Web, falls almost exclusively in that third camp.

Over the last few weeks, I've been at times shaking my head as I've seen the site's reporters deliver an absolute minimum of original reporting, underdeliver on giving credit to those finding the news first, and in one blatant example, stealing quotes from a story I had written, without giving attribution, and not making edits when notified.

Mashable is one of the big names in the blogosphere, ranking #8 overall, according to Technorati. The site has achieved this ranking through an army of reporters who deliver a high number of stories around the clock. While the stories themselves don't often gain a high number of comments, and don't usually offer new information that couldn't be found elsewhere on the Web, the sheer volume has made them a must-subscribe tech news filter for many subscribed to their RSS feed. (Myself included)

Due to Mashable's popularity, the site very often gains credit for finding a story, when in fact it was almost always found first somewhere else. And the site's design and story templates favor giving the original source of the story as little credit as possible - often tucked away, so well-meaning repeaters of Mashable's news miss it altogether. This month, I've been burned by this a number of times, as you can see:

---

#1: The ReadBurner Discovery and Launch

On Monday, January 7th, I was the first to uncover ReadBurner's development, in a story, "ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items". I found the site, did as much research as I could about it, and summarized my findings. After I had traded multiple e-mails with the site's developer, Alexander Marktl, I posted a follow-on note, ReadBurner's Unplanned Big First Day Shows Real Promise.

Later that night, Mashable posted a story, "ReadBurner: Google Shared Items Memetracker", which noted my finding the story, and linked my way, but the reporter oddly acted as if they had been aware of the site's being developed, saying, "Readburner is a site that has been playing at the edges of my feeds for several weeks now. I think I vaguely remember submitting my linkblog to a developer a month or so ago.", making it look like they were part of the story. Wrong. The only person to do exactly this was Arvin Dang, back on December 17th, when he had asked for a list of Google Reader Shared items, in an attempt to consolidate them in one place. (See: TechTalk4U: Tips to help you consolidate and share your RSS)

This incident wasn't wildly egregious. But Mashable's size made other prominent sites simply list: "Source: Mashable" when they in turn wrote up ReadBurner.

SearchBlog: Readburner
VentureBeat: Readburner lets you see what is shared on Google Reader
WebWare: ReadBurner Turns Google Reader's Sharing Features Into Communal Bookmarking

None of the above sites linked back to the original story.

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#2: Robert Scoble Announces His Move to Fast Company.TV

On Monday, January 14th, I knew it had been Robert Scoble's last day at PodTech, and while I knew Michael Arrington of TechCrunch had said Scoble was moving on to Fast Company, I wanted to be sure. It'd have been a serious scoop if he was going somewhere else. So, I did what any first-year journalist would do. I called him!

In our quick call that evening, Scoble told me that he was indeed starting FastCompany.TV, that he didn't believe the move was a secret, and that the news was not under embargo, therefore, freeing me to write about it. I did that evening, in a post, "Robert Scoble to Kick Off Fast Company TV Wednesday."

As part of this post, I included the following quote from our phone call:

"The serious options were Fast Company, and us running our own thing," he said. "What brings me joy is interviewing people, hanging out with geeks and blogging. Doing my own thing would mean having to run my own business, and that's not as fun as interviewing Doug Engelbart, who invented the mouse."

The next day, Mashable wrote their own story, titled, "FastCompany Launches Online Video Network Under Scoble".

As part of their story, Mashable included my exact quote, not giving attribution in any way.

“The serious options were Fast Company, and us running our own thing,” he said. “What brings me joy is interviewing people, hanging out with geeks and blogging. Doing my own thing would mean having to run my own business, and that’s not as fun as interviewing Doug Engelbart, who invented the mouse.”

I called BS, in the comments saying, "How is it made clear that the quotes used for this story were lifted from a story I posted yesterday after actually doing "real journalism" and calling Scoble myself to get these answers?"

The author, Mark Hopkins, wrote that by posting a link to my story earlier, that he had given sufficient credit, even though the quotes were lifted. In an e-mail exchange I had with him that evening offline, I told him the appropriate thing to do would be to cite the quote came from somewhere else, by listing "he told louisgray.com" or "Louis Gray reports he said", for example. At the time, he agreed to make a change, and said, "The new version of the story has already hit the web, and the feeds tend to propagate about an hour or two out when it comes to edits, usually."

But almost a week afterwards, I don't think that's actually happened. The first, offending, unedited story is still there. (See: Mashable)

It wasn't any major outreach on my part to reach Robert that Monday. His cellphone number is widely available, and there's no reason Mashable couldn't have gotten their own quote if they wanted one. If time was an issue, giving the site credit would be the very least they could have done, and leaving it unfixed for days after promising a change is very frustrating to see.

In case Mashable wanted to learn how a professional blogger gives attribution, check Robert Scoble himself. In his announcement post, "Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv", he writes, "Louis Gray got the story first," and makes the whole line a link, in his lead paragraph. That's how you give attribution.

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#3: The Discovery and Launch of Shared Reader

On Wednesday, January 16th, not a week and a half after ReadBurner was forcefully debuted, we saw the emergence of a new Google Reader shared feeds aggregator, "Shared Reader". And, for the second time in ten days, I was the first person to find out about it and write about it, doing so early that morning in a post, "Shared Reader Latest to Take on Google Reader Shared Item Rankings", submitted only three hours after the developer had made it live.

Sure enough, it wasn't but a few hours later that Mashable followed on and took the news as their own, writing a near duplicate post, titled "SharedReader: Attack of the Google Shared Items Memetrackers.

And again, for the third time in two weeks, you would have had to be a detective to figure out that the exact same blog which found ReadBurner, which also was the first to confirm Scoble's moving to FastCompany.TV was the first to find Shared Reader. How did Mashable give credit? Not through giving louisgray.com credit for the double scoop, but instead, a throw-away line at the very end of the story that said, "[via louis gray]", with only the word "via" being a link.

If Mashable truly wanted to support the full blogosphere instead of promoting their own site, with vacuous reporting, they would have made the link prominent. They could have included the headline. They could have made the link higher, or even put two and two together to say, "Wait a minute, the same guy who found ReadBurner found Shared Reader. Boy that's interesting." But instead, they took a three letter word, made it a link, and put it after the story, where hardly anybody saw it, as my referrer logs can attest.

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So what should we do? I'm almost afraid to announce anything new on this site, without fear that Mashable is going to rip me off again, post the news as their own again, steal quotes again, and keep pushing traffic their way instead of back to the original source. I called out Mashable back in September in "Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control", and it looks like they still haven't gotten the message.

Think I'm alone or that Mashable is the only offender? Check out ParisLemon's call to arms: Ars Technica, You're a Member of the Internet, Start Linking Like It. There is a major problem in the tech blogosphere leadership where the basic tenets of journalism, sourcing and attribution are ignored.

Mashable is a good aggregator of news from other blogs. It has some great people behind it. But if they're to be taken seriously and respected as they grow up, change is needed. At the very least, make it a rule to never steal quotes from other blogs without delivering attribution. And find a way to actually watch trends to make an educated guess on what the news means or where it's originating. Are there patterns in message or source? That's real journalism and will help the blogosphere be taken just a little more seriously.

And yes, if this means Mashable never links my way again, or copies my stories outright, I think we'll live. We've got more scoops coming in the next few months, guaranteed, and we'll find more reputable people to help follow along.

In the Future, Everything Electronic Must Be Wireless

Last week, Apple made rumormongers a bit excited when word of MacBook Air prematurely leaked. With silence from Apple in advance of MacWorld, excited Mac fans speculated the new laptop would not only get rid of the optical drive (which it did), but also get rid of power cables, as well as adopting WiMax, delivering pervasive high-speed wireless Internet access from any location. (Rumors like this have been out for years...)

While Apple didn't deliver on these dreams, this time, I believe we stand on the cusp - where developers find new ways to eliminate wires - delivering wireless power, wireless Internet and wireless connectivity between devices, bringing us to an unconnected, truly mobile, future. And it can't come too soon.

In our home, we have ubiquitous wireless Internet. Our Airport Extreme provides wireless access to my laptop, my wife's laptop, our Nintendo Wii, and our TiVo HD (with optional wireless network adapter). We play our Nintendo Wii with wireless controllers. And we use remote controls to interact with many of these devices.

But everything else is wired. We need cables to deliver power to each device. We need cables to deliver television content to the TV. We need cables to transmit audio and video from the DVD player to the TV, from the TiVo to the TV. From the Wii to the TV. The tangled wire jungle once seen only in corporate datacenters is now commonplace in living rooms and bedrooms everywhere, as we add more and more digital devices - and this is entirely the wrong direction.

When you see commercials touting high-definition flat-screen televisions, you always see them flush on the wall, without a wire in sight. When Apple advertises their breathtakingly designed computers, they are shown, again, without wires. Wires are ugly. Wires get tangled and are cumbersome. The companies that make these devices know that, but they aren't solving the problem.

Soon, our living room will feature our 50-inch Samsung on the wall. Our bedroom will have a 42-inch plasma TV on the wall. But where do my wires go? What kind of design is achieved when the TVs are adorned with an array of spaghetti-like strands dangling awkwardly toward the power strips and components below? I can't exactly take an axe to the wall between the two rooms and build out an electronics closet.

In my mind, not only do we need wireless Internet, and wireless power, but we also need to enable our digital devices with BlueTooth or 802.11 capable addressing, so the TiVo can talk with the DVD player, the Apple TV, the Nintendo Wii and the TV itself, without dragging cables between each machine. I shouldn't have to battle for open ports and connectors, and untangle a veritable rat's nest of wires just to enjoy the entertainment or information I've brought into my home.

The issues of wireless power and wireless device connectivity are in my mind more important than higher bandwidth speeds, higher disk drive capacities or improved video and audio resolution. I want my data and my connectivity to be pervasive. I want high-speed Web access anywhere, without wires. I want my devices to be wire-free. Now.

See also:
It's Time to Make Power Wireless and Battery-Free
The Power to Set You Free (of Power Cords)

If You Like Twitter, I'm Not Bitter

We gained some great feedback on why many of you utilize Twitter's microblogging service to tell the world what you're doing, to solicit advice and feedback from your peers, and share resources. And despite my continuing to hold out on using the service, for now, I'm not of the mindset to bash the service.

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail following my note, saying:

"It may be a better play for you to remain as the guy who doesn't like it. Seems like you're somewhat known for your anti-twitter stance at this point. "

Ha. I don't know if I'm known for much, but I won't be holding this contrary position simply for the sake of being the devil's advocate. So, what did my readers recommend I do? Let's take a look!

Points in favor of Twitter:

1. Stories first break on Twitter.
2. It's a good networking tool.
3. You can dictate how you use it.
4. It's not noise if you follow the right people.
5. It offers a live pulse of friends' lives.
6. It's another way to exchange ideas and communicate.
7. It can be used as a journal or notepad.
8. You can follow local people.
9. You can directly interact with bigwigs.

Points against using Twitter:

1. At times it's completely useless.
2. Complete failures under peak load.
3. It looks like a tool for egomaniacs.
4. It's full of life's minutia.
5. It requires too much attention.
6. You can miss conversations.
7. People ego stroke.
8. People post like they have ADHD.
9. Micro-conversations about everything and nothing.

Looks fairly evenly split down the middle. Those who like Twitter say it acts as a backchannel for the blogosphere. Those who hate it see it is as useless nonsense for people already too full of themselves.

Beyond the wealth of comments on the article, many took the time to write their thoughts in detail, which impressed me. I don't know if that's a factor of Twitter's popularity, a good topic, or simply the fact that once it hit TechMeme, everybody wanted to be part of the conversation. Needless to say, below are some of the best reactions:

Tech Confidential: Why use Twitter? Because it's there
Oliver Thylmann: Why I Use Twitter
Clunky Flow: If blogosphere = conference main hall, then twittersphere = buzzing side halls
Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot: The Twitter Debate

Feedblitz Bug Sends My RSS Stats Through the Roof

Today has been a big day for louisgray.com. For the first time ever, I had two posts atop TechMeme at the same time (one | two), with my question around Twitter generating a ridiculous amount of buzz, garnering over 1,000 visits, more than a dozen comments, and several different articles through the blogosphere. All told, it was the second-highest traffic day ever.

But not even this good news can be credited for my huge spike in RSS feed subscribers reported by Feedburner. That... unfortunately, is a bug.


Did your RSS Subscribers Double Overnight?
Overnight, I saw my total RSS subscribers nearly double, from 287 yesterday, to a whopping 570 today, an increase of 283. The culprit? My blog to e-mail service, Feedblitz, which somehow reported to Feedburner that instead of 18 e-mail subscribers, I somehow had 305. Simple math tells me Feedblitz added my 287 number to the 18 to come to 305, but regardless of the reason... it's just wrong.

While I'd like to think I'm Mr. Popularity, I'm still Mr. Small Potatoes.

The Feedblitz blog says its "probably just a previously unknown defect (ok, a bug) somewhere in the code." It might be related to Blogger's feed redirection, and it might not. Who knows? I had hoped the double TechMeme hit plus organic momentum had made me an overnight sensation, but it was not to be. Dang.

At least I wasn't the only one with a temporarily oversized ego.

See also:
Franzone.com: Subscriber Count Madness
BizTechTalk: Feedburner - Analyze Feed Subscribers
Authority Blogger Forum: Feedburner Messes Up

Can We Talk About Twitter for a Second?

About a year ago, I wrote how I had completely sworn off instant messaging, and how, despite its fast-rising user base, I had no intention of using Twitter. And so far, I haven't given in to the siren song. While I hadn't expected to ever gain a Facebook account, and eventually succumbed, Twitter has remained on my personal "Do Not Call" list.

Meanwhile, as I remain a Twitter luddite, others swear by it. I find myself occasionally checking in on the Twitter streams of friends and others like Allen Stern, MG Siegler, Steven Hodson and Robert Scoble. I see quick conversations they have with Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins and Hugh MacLoed and Jason Calacanis, as they share ideas, comment on the news of the day, and spam each other with the latest blog URLs. I see them Twittering from my FriendFeed and on my Spokeo.

Yet as far as Twitter is concerned, I don't exist. I'm not part of the conversation. Do I need to be? Or can I remain, as MG Siegler called me, an "Anti-Twittite"?

Last night, I wanted to write to Mark Hopkins at Mashable in response to an article he'd posted. But, without his e-mail or cell phone, the only way I could get through to him was through a public comment on his blog. I could have used Twitter... in theory, but then, I'd have to sign up just for that one off, and I expect it'd be a slippery slope before I started adding everybody I knew to follow, and began measuring my self worth in the numbers of people I followed or followed me on Twitter. Not good.

So I was this close to finally giving in and signing up, just like I gave in on Facebook. Just like I gave in on getting a Nintendo Wii after listing it in my Ten Geeky Technologies Not Coming to Our House post back in March of 2007, along with Del.icio.us and Flickr. But I didn't give in. This time. For I believe, outside of the occasional focused conversation, Twitter remains a noisy, ineffective tool for typical communication.

So... for those of you who swear by it. Tell me why I'm wrong. Please. Tell me how you use Twitter, and why I should join you. I'm listening.

Shared Reader Latest to Take on Google Reader Shared Item Rankings

Just ten days after we saw the debut of ReadBurner, a site which tabulates the most popular shared feed items from Google Reader and displays who is sharing them, we see yet another entrant into this space, as yet untapped by Google, in "Shared Reader".

The site's slogan? "What shared mosts in Google Reader makes sense".

The site debuted today. See: "SharedReader *beta Launched", where the author, Dennes B. Abing, writes, "SharedReader just burst out of nowhere." He also announced the launch by Twitter at 6 a.m. Pacific this morning, but with no followers so far, it's a wonder if anyone was listening.

While ReadBurner is now in "Public Alpha", Shared Reader says its in beta. While that typically means the development is further along in the process, Shared Reader, so far, looks to be trailing ReadBurner in total overall features. Over the last week, Alexander Marktl has separated feed items by language (English, Persian and Asian for now), has posted RSS feeds for popular items in each category (today, this week and all time), and has continued to hone the interface. Meanwhile, Shared Reader simply shows both "Recent" and "Popular" items, with the correct sharer, along with an entry form to add your shared items feed.

Despite the two sites' differing approaches and appearances, the early returns are similar. Shared Reader currently shows a post by Mihai Parparita on the Official Google Reader Blog, "There's a feed for that?!" as the most popular shared item, with 11 shares. ReadBurner shows the same item as most popular, with 16 shares. The second item is also the same between both sites, by Boing Boing, titled, "Ford: Car owners are pirates if they distribute pictures of their own cars".

Both sites also share some overlapping shared items feeds, contributing to the parallels, while it looks like ReadBurner's headstart has the site out in the lead in terms of total shares and feeds.

While ReadBurner and Shared Reader are working to give us the long-awaited answer to a single site that shows most shared items from Google Reader, acting in effect as a substitute for TechMeme or Digg, I wouldn't anticipate that others are standing still. Mario Romero, creator of the wildly popular FeedHeads application on Facebook, recently wrote me to say. "I've also been working on some new stuff...", which we're looking forward to. And I still expect Google Reader to finally come out of their shell and become the authority on this soon.

Apple TV Movie Rentals Will Be Great During Writers' Strike

With pretty much all of prime-time TV on hiatus for the foreseeable future, we only have a few options as far as our TV watching goes. We could stop watching (not going to happen), we could lower our standards in regards to which shows we watch, pick up new shows, or start using our TiVo and Apple TV to pick up movies.

Luckily for us, Apple made that decision much more clear today - with the company finally announcing movie rentals on iTunes, months after we recognized the market opportunity for Apple to crush Netflix. Making the announcement even better yet, the update is free, even for us "Version 1.0" Apple TV owners.

Steve Jobs said Apple had failed in bringing Web video to the big screen. As we'd said many times before, he said customers wanted movie rentals. We didn't want to buy our films. We wanted to watch them once, and throw them away. Today's announcement offers exactly that - and we can make our selections via Apple TV, without ever needing to download directly onto our computers.

Now, we've gone from having no good new content on our TV to a seeming infinite, near-instant repository for quality films. While we haven't yet updated our Apple TV to get there, we already recognize the benefits. And while Apple made many other announcements today, covering the iPhone, the iPod and new laptops, it's the addition of movie rentals to iTunes that will have immediate impact on the way we take in media.

In one day, the Apple TV went from the endangered list to the must-watch list. Boom.

The Eight Types of MacWorld Watchers

It's MacWorld Expo time again. Though the Steve Jobs keynote is less than an hour long, we've already seen the debut of wireless network storage via Airport Extreme, the introduction of movie rentals from iTunes, and an SDK for the iPhone. Not bad. But while we're out here, there are hundreds in San Francisco sitting on every word. Here's how you can identify them...

1) The True Believers

These are the best-known people, those who revere all things Apple and Mac, and are ready to buy just about anything Steve Jobs announces, even if it's as lame as iPod Socks.

2) The Mac Rumors Psychos

This group is made of a subterranean group, who always expects announcements so ridiculous that its impossible to satisfy them. As they spin themselves into a froth shortly before any major press event, their wild predictions (a sub-zero gravity desktop, telepathic interfaces, etc.) are so nutty that even Apple's ground-breaking announcements frustrate them. Every keynote is the "worst keynote ever".

3) Ye Olde Macolytes

Believe it or not, this group will tell you they have been using the Mac since the mid-1980s, and they have yet to see a good reason to upgrade to Mac OS X. They like the features of Mac OS 9. They like their Apple LaserWriters. And they love Quark. Yet, for some reason, they go to the show. Go figure.

4) The Corporate Spies

As Steve Jobs speaks, technology leaders from Silicon Valley and beyond are looking to see where the industry is going, and how they can best copy Cupertino. While Microsoft is famous for this, more and more companies are watching Jobs' presentation style, and wishing they could command the same kind of respect and awe.

5) The Windows Bigots

While they'll be watching with the same intensity as The True Believers, this group is a grumpy lot. They know they made the right decision when they went with Redmond, and they know the Mac is just a toy anyway. Besides, whatever Apple comes out with, Microsoft will get close enough to in a few months.

6) The Secret Mac Wannabes

A quieter lot, this is the potential user base for Mac switchers. Watching each new application on the Mac and the iPhone fills them with frustration and jealousy. They look down at their Dell or HP, and start doing the math in their heads as to how quickly they can trade up to a real computer.

7) The Bloggers and Rumormongers

For more than a decade, there has been a cottage industry of Apple rumor sites, guessing Cupertino's every move. Now, with blogs being so simple to start, everybody thinks they have an Apple audience, and there are dozens and dozens of live keynote sites. (The best are still MacRumors and Engadget)

8) The Curious iPod/iPhone Owner

Millions of iPod and iPhone owners have likely never owned Macs. But they love their gadgets. Now addicted to the Apple look and feel, industrial design and simplified software, they want to see if the Mac is a good option for them as well.

They're out there. Maybe you're one of them. And surely, you know some of the people who fit this mold. Just watch TechMeme and TechCrunch and MacRumors and AppleInsider and Engadget and Digg and Gizmodo for the after-effects as each of these groups clash and try to have a civilized discussion. It usually doesn't work.

Robert Scoble to Kick Off Fast Company TV Wednesday

Lost in the din of CES last week and MacWorld this week was the conclusion of uber-blogger Robert Scoble's time at PodTech. As of Monday night, Robert Scoble reported he is "unemployed", at least for 24 hours, as he moves from one venture to another - starting Fast Company TV with friend Rocky Barbanica.

As announced by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington back in December, Scoble made the decision to leave PodTech, where he produced the ScobleShow, amid uncertainty surrounding the company.

Reached by phone Monday night, Scoble said he would be revealing more about the new Fast Company TV venture late Tuesday, risking going head-to-head for bloggers' attention with Steve Jobs' impending announcements at MacWorld.

Jokingly, Robert said, "Steve Jobs can have ten hours atop TechMeme and then we'll get it after that."

While some I had talked to in the Valley had speculated Robert and Rocky would go their own way, not joining Fast Company after all, Scoble said the prospect of running a business wasn't what he wanted to do. While he said there were six different companies fighting to land the duo, in the end it came down to two options.

"The serious options were Fast Company, and us running our own thing," he said. "What brings me joy is interviewing people, hanging out with geeks and blogging. Doing my own thing would mean having to run my own business, and that's not as fun as interviewing Doug Engelbart, who invented the mouse." (See: Join us at Doug Engelbart’s house)

On Tuesday, Robert, with son Patrick en tow, will be headed to the Moscone Center to see Jobs' keynote live. Near midnight, we should see a post on Scobleizer.com outlining the new venture, and Fast Company TV will become a reality shortly afterward.

RSS As a News Engine Eliminates Surprise

With the NFL playoffs in full swing today, and both games partially overlapping with our church schedule, I asked our TiVo HD to step in for us and capture both the Chargers/Colts contest, and that of the Cowboys/Giants. I avoided the radio, didn't look at any sports scores on television, avoided ESPN.com, and didn't look at My Yahoo! or Ballhype, who would each have given away the results.

But I did make a mistake. I checked my Google Reader feeds, and while I knew better than to check the RSS feeds from ESPN.com, excited bloggers who usually cover technology or media exulted in delight when their favorite teams won today.

(Meandering Passage blew it for me in both contests, so don't click either link if you haven't already seen the results...)

In minutes, as I hit the 'J' key, going through each of my items, the surprises were gone.

Now, while I haven't committed the final scores to memory, I am going through the TiVo recordings, knowing the eventual outcomes, and not enjoying the elements of surprise. I don't know just how each team won, or who the stars and goats were. That's left to be seen. But this time, RSS gave it away.

Is SiteHoppin Like StumbleUpon for Drunks?

How do you take on a company who has first-mover advantage, significant market share, and a positive customer experience? It's hard to do. If you want to beat an entrenched company like this, your service should either cost less (or be free), be easier to use, or have significant differentiation, with features that customers can't live without. Whether on the virtual or real world, taking on the big guys can be tough.

In recent weeks, I've seen the emergence of a service that takes users from site to site, like StumbleUpon does, called SiteHoppin'. SiteHoppin' describes itself as a "social networking/bookmarking wiki site that lets you find, bookmark or share interesting sites by hopping instead of typing."

SiteHoppin' doesn't mention StumbleUpon by name, but it performs essentially the same function as the wildly popular service, owned by eBay. What it lacks in visual design and market penetration, it makes up for in buzzwords and attitude. It not only claims "social networking", "bookmarking" and "wiki" in its title, but call itself Web 2.5. I've never even heard of Web 2.5, even while others are working over a definition of Web 3.0.

Stumblers er... SiteHoppers can rate sites by the number of beers (from one to five) they give a page, similar to StumbleUpon's thumbs up and thumbs down feature.

Where SiteHoppin' does come out ahead of StumbleUpon is the lacking need for a browser toolbar. As StumbleUpon has delivered toolbars for FireFox and Internet Explorer, they haven't yet gotten to us Safari users. SiteHoppin's user interface is so light, they claim to work well on iPhones, the Nokia E90 and other smartphones.

The site is just getting started, having reached 10,000 visitors on Friday, and features a most-popular sites listing, as well as a directory of users. So far, the most popular site is www.doodlage.com, which has 43 "Beers on the Wall" for an "Average Beers Rating" of 4.63. I don't know about you, but maybe there's something safer about browsing sober. We'll see how far SiteHoppin' gets against the StumbleUpon juggernaut.

Measuring One's Technology Addictions

After publicly saying I wasn't all that interested in the MacWorld Expo this year, Jason Kaneshiro of Webomatica stated I just might have to give up my Apple fanboy ID card. I had stated the unforgivable, and had lost the respect of Cupertino - only a few miles away.

To redeem myself, I set out to prove my lapse was momentary indeed. One survey online helped put me back on my feet, as after answering 15 short questions on "How Addicted to Apple Are You", I was told I had achieved an 88% score - not bad. I could likely have scored higher if I had waited in line overnight for the iPhone, but we're not perfect...


Along the same lines, out of curiosity, I took a similar 14-question test on "How Addicted to Blogging Are You". I scored even higher, achieving a 92% mark - an A in my book. I'd only have scored higher if I used Twitter or installed Wordpress. That'd have given me the 100% score.


I was tipped off to the Apple Addiction test by Earl Moore of Meandering Passage, who achieved a 54% mark. I think he undersold himself, and should try the test again..

ReadBurner Goes from 0 to 12,000+ In Four Days

Ever see a Web service go from zero to infinity in no time? If you were watching Monday morning, when I broke the story of ReadBurner, you could have seen this happen. Just three and a half days after the site was forcefully debuted, ReadBurner is in the Web 2.0 consciousness, racing to nearly 12,000 results in Google, up from a big zippo on Monday. The would-be hobby of Alexander Marktl, first anticipated to remain in secret, yet promoted on some incredibly prominent blog sites, has not cracked under the pressure, and is an amazing test case for a very raw service, as we can watch his work - live.

As mentioned Monday, I pretty much stumbled on ReadBurner by accident. I was stunned that this interesting service, filling a gap in Google Reader's offerings, had never been heard of before. It had no domain name. It had no owner. But it had promise. And the early adopters jumped on it.


A screen capture of Google from 8:30 this evening.
After 20 solid hours of coding Monday, which kept Alexander up well into the Austrian night (my last e-mail from him came around 5 a.m. local time Tuesday), ReadBurner had its own domain name. It had a new blog, a real "About" page, and multiple cosmetic updates. Now, the site has debuted much-requested RSS feeds for most popular items, and we're seeing an unexpected wrinkle - significant traction from sites in non-English speaking countries, which could be over-represented by these first adopters, or showing us a side of the blogosphere we hadn't considered.

And a quick search on Google, as of 8:30 p.m. Pacific time Thursday night, 3 1/2 days after my initial posting, shows 12,800 results for ReadBurner. Boom.

So how did that happen? Word of mouth, RSS, Del.icio.us, and some prominent posts by other bloggers.

Look who's talking about ReadBurner:

BlogTipz:
ReadBurner - Aggregating Google Reader's Shared Items

Download Squad:
ReadBurner: Meme tracker based on Google Reader shared items

KillerStartups.com:
ReadBurner.com - Tracking Google Reader Memes

Library Stuff:
ReadBurner and More on ReadBurner

Mashable:
ReadBurner: Google Shared Items Memetracker

SearchBlog:
Readburner

VentureBeat:
Readburnerlets you see what is shared on Google Reader

WhiteSoap:
Readburner

And beyond the feeds:

There's no doubt my hitting ReadBurner with StumbleUpon sent them some folks. My quick review got 8 fans of the Web site and 3 reviews. Each stumble can generate hundreds of unique visitors.

Others posted ReadBurner to Twitter. (See the Google Search of Twitter.com for ReadBurner here)

No less than Matt Cutts of Google logged on to give Alexander praise, saying, "Great stuff! This is a really fun project."

Want to get a product noticed online? It's no longer about advertising dollars. It's about making something cool, and getting buzz. Alexander got his for free. He definitely offered background detail to Mark Hopkins for to the Mashable story and to me, but aside from that, the ReadBurner phenomenon has been all due to word of mouth and passing it on. After the initial hype fades, it should be interesting to see if it can organically sustain the momentum.

I Can't Quit the Google Search Drug

If you had asked me if I was using Google search more frequently now or less frequently, compared with my past history, I would have guessed less, as I so heavily use my RSS feeds, bookmarks and news aggregators to navigate the Web. After all, for all my constant talk about Google Reader, I've been relatively silent about Google's core offering - search.

But, according to my Web history, Google shows me that my search activity has not only not decreased, but it is growing dramatically, more than doubling from the beginning of 2007 to the end of the year. By December, Google reports I was searching their index more than 50 times per day!


My Google search usage doubled in 2007

Despite my support of Google and their many products, I haven't seen much need for me to turn on full "Web History", for the company to follow my every page visit, click and download. It seems a bit much. But while that data's not tracked, as long as I'm logged in with my Google ID, Mountain View knows when I'm making calls to their database, what I'm looking for, and if my searches were successful - leading me to click on either a search result, or one of the company's ads.

All told, Google reports I used their search engine more than eleven thousand times last year. And my addiction to simply entering a term into the Google search box in Safari and return got more intense as the year went on. While in the first quarter of the year, I had only racked up 1,930 searches, by the fourth quarter, we tallied 4,116 over the same rough time period, more than doubling.

Why the increase? I'm honestly not sure. My guess is that I'm getting lazy in my URL typing, preferring to enter a keyword and hitting return, knowing Google will get it right. Often, I'll put a pair of words together, or a full story title, to be sure Google's #1 result is accurate, rather than guess at the URL and search the destination site itself.

But Google is, without a doubt, my gateway to the Web, at all hours of the day.


If awake, I'm likely searching Google...

While the above graph is quite small, you can see Google can pretty much tell you when I'm awake, and when I'm not. I made about 600 to 700 searches at every hour between 9 a.m. and midnight last year, with the exception of noon, which dips down, likely as I'm at lunch. Google also reports that I only search half as much during the one a.m. hour, sleep until 7, and search at half the rate from 7-8 a.m. I can't argue with those statistics. They're undoubtedly accurate. But the consistency from hour to hour through the year was astounding. I'm hooked to this Google drug, and constantly need a fix.

Praying at the Tech Geek Altar

So far, I haven't yet tried to convert louisgray.com to any kind of real brand, despite my previous comments that your blog is your brand.

Many of the sites I frequent on a daily basis have done a good job to separate the brand of their blog from the individual behind it. MG Siegler converts to ParisLemon. Jason Kaneshiro turns into Webomatica. And Steven Hodson wears a cape reading WinExtra. But I haven't done it. I've had the domain name forever, and keep plodding ahead.

This gap in my self-branding has opened up the opportunity for others to try and define who I am and what the blog stands for. I saw a few great attempts in the last few days, from some influential blogs.

Mashable was very kind to me Monday night, in their ReadBurner coverage, when Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins said the site "is currently seeded with the linkblogs of several thought leaders in the tech blogging community, such as Louis Gray..."

OK ... Thought leader. I like that.

Then, today, VentureBeat had an outstanding write-up covering FriendFeed, and its growing momentum. The author gave a lot of credit for FriendFeed's rise to its initial users, saying: "It’s used by early Googlers and their many friends. The company was founded (and funded) by former Gmail team members Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh together with Google Maps engineers Bret Taylor and Jim Norris. It’s also getting championed by early-adopter bloggers like Louis Gray."

OK... Early-adopter blogger. That's good too.

And later this evening, Chris Brogan, writing on the challenges of Social Media, reported he often hits a firewall at work, restricting his access to some sites, including mine.

He says, "I’m blocked 3-7 times a day, and almost always with an incorrect blocking message by the firewall company. For example, Louis Gray was blocked as religion. Only if tech geeks are now a religion, and then, I’m praying."

Line up at the altar, Chris. We're right behind you.

So, way back in February of 2007, I was called a friendly neighborhood geek. It looks like the geek label hasn't changed, but now, we're also being acknowledged as an early adopter with a unique approach to the tech blogosphere.

While I haven't worked on enhancing my personal brand, others are setting it for me. Right now, that's okay, and I just might start borrowing their words. Your friendly neighborhood early-adopter tech geek blogger, signing off.

Technorati: Totally Toast In Tracking Real-Time Traction?

Sorry, Technorati, but while I want to root for you and give you praise, it's just not going to happen tonight. Because tonight, Google Blog Search is giving your behind a serious bruising.

Google Blog Search is easily proving to be the best way to find out who is talking about a topic, and who is linking my way, much more than you are. While you were once my go-to for so many things, my every click through your site is now like strolling through a museum, hoping not to touch anything, for fear it may fall down and become damaged.

The Case Against Technorati:

Once the premiere site for tracking tags, topics, and blog popularity, Technorati could be counted on to see who was discussing a story, or linking to the blog, ahead of anyone in the world. Now, Google Blog Search not only is indexing stories more quickly than Technorati, and getting them into Google, but it's doing it more effectively, in more quantity, period.

Tonight's Example:

Source: Technorati

There's no question the hubbub around ReadBurner, and my unveiling of it, has been noisy in the last day and a half. But if you checked Technorati, the only way you would even know it had taken place is through a single note from the official Readburner blog, titled "ReadBurner Updates", where Alexander writes, "The unintended alpha leak of ReadBurner through louisgray.com gave my “hobby project” the boost it needed, development-wise."

Elsewhere, we also see positive comments from Oliver Thylmann, who discusses an older article in his summary, "A few interesting predictions for 2008". He kindly says, "(Louis's) 10 Predictions for 2008 rock, especially as they are really clear, and sometimes weird." Bob Stumpel of Everything 2.0 also liked the predictions in a list he titled 500+ Technology Predictions for 2008 and Beyond.

And that's all we've got from Technorati. Thanks, Technorati! Now... let's check Google.

Source: Google Blog Search

Google Blog Search also found Oliver Thylmann's post, but interestingly, not the ReadBurner blog or that from Bob Stumpel.

Meanwhile, Google did more accurately, and more fully, index other pages, including a piece from JeffIsAGeek called ReadBurner : Aggregating Google Shared Items, explaining ReadBurner's functionality, and the story of how it was "discovered and outed".

Google also found John Battelle's coverage of ReadBurner, where he says, "This looks really cool." He's right, of course.

Meanwhile, keeping with the Web services theme, Jason Kaneshiro of Webomatica finally discovered FriendFeed, and says simply, Interesting: FriendFeed, adding "It may actually prove to be useful." I can promise that it is.

Google isn't done. They also found comments from Bill Wishon on last week's argument of the month, Scoble's deletion from Facebook, and who owns whose data. He writes, in Scoble/Facebook Incident: It’s Not About Data Ownership, "Where did we get this idea that facts about the world must be owned by somebody?"

And lastly, in the Google trumping Technorati theme, we have Steven Hodson's excellent rant against the blindness of A-Listers who spend too much time admiring their stats and not enough time writing. As he notes in Stopping the Lazysphere? … Maybe when Pigs Fly, we're not really looking to the A-List for serious conversation. We're instead going elsewhere. He very flatteringly includes me as one of his "go to" guys for Technology and Apple specifically, and we're honored to be included.

Tonight, and for just about every night in the recent past, I think Technorati has lost. It's unfortunate, and drives me a little bit nuts when I see a smaller, would-be innovative company losing out to a bigger company with seemingly infinite resources. But it looks like this fight is coming to an end.

ReadBurner's Unplanned Big First Day Shows Real Promise

As I mentioned in this morning's post, "ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items", I was lucky enough to stumble upon a new service that seemingly had no named developer, and had no records of existing, as far as Google was concerned. It didn't even have a domain name! Yet, despite its relative obscurity, ReadBurner took its first 24 hours in the public eye and made the most of it. I'm excited to see where this could go, and now, we have more to the story.

The site's developer is Alexander Marktl, who hails from Vienna, Austria. (See his profile on Facebook, LinkedIn or FriendFeed)

While his day job is as a user experience designer for Qoove, an invoicing software service for small companies, Alexander had made ReadBurner his hobby, and it wasn't supposed to go live as quickly as it did, but as he writes in the site's new "About" page, "In the Internet you cannot hide anything that's leaked, so be it."

I can't help but feel partially responsible.


Today's most popular shared items, with sharers...

But while the morning's coverage was a surprise, he's taken the early launch as an opportunity to get serious. Today, ReadBurner got the domain name it truly deserves, at www.readburner.com. Alexander also quickly started a blog for the site at readburner.wordpress.com, and in the space of a few hours, did some amazing work, tidying up the Web site, removing feed item duplicates, and showing which people had shared specific items. Keep in mind Google Reader is just now figuring out how to do the last two, and this should be their sweet spot!

Make no mistake about it. The site is still in alpha. As it's just Alexander building the site, he admits he still has work to do to find a better way to present the content. But I think he's doing a pretty darn good job for one day's efforts. We're excited to see this, and are astounded that one guy, with one day's effort, from Vienna, Austria, can do what a few thousand engineers in Mountain View haven't done yet. It's got to be because Google doesn't want to do it.

Until Google gets their act together, we're delighted ReadBurner is here. With ReadBurner, AssetBar, FriendFeed and Spokeo out there, it's a real sign that innovation in this market is alive and well.

The 2008 Elections Are Not Over After One Measly Vote

It's amazing to me how many people are eager to call a winner after one small state, in some of the most unorthodox voting procedures known to man, made its selection of two candidates to receive delegates, representing a miniscule portion of the totals needed to declare a winner.

While Obama and Huckabee were not necessarily the front-runners three months ago or six months ago, and it was clear both the Clinton campaign and Romney campaign had hoped for more than they received, not to mention the campaigns for Edwards, Giuliani or Thompson, one loss does not indicate it's all over.

Yet, I can't seem to read a single story on the New Hampshire primary that doesn't have some side element of how Hillary might drop out if she loses to Obama here, or that Mitt Romney's campaign is teetering on the brink of disaster. It's completely asinine. And the ensuing tidal wave of "what day will Hillary give up?" stories, with everybody jumping on the Obama bandwagon, is driving me a little nuts.

Yes, tradition has it that Iowa and New Hampshire go first. Great. But if you think this political contest is over, when delegate-rich states like California, Texas and Florida haven't even entered the voting booth, then something is terribly wrong. A whole swath of states is set to make a real impact in early February on Super Tuesday. California specifically made this move so we would be part of the process. Heck, I remember we used to hold our primaries in June! And yet, it'd just be easier for the media and the TV gasbags to declare a winner after one vote. Ridiculous.

If you want to get it all over with in one swoop, then maybe the right thing to do is have a national primary for both parties on the same day to choose a nominee. If not, then let the people vote. Let the people who work behind desks have as much impact as those who work behind tractors and quiet down already. And Hillary? Romney? Please don't think of giving up. Yet. The political process needs continued discussion. We have hardly begun.

Kevin Fox Joins FriendFeed After Leaving Google

The story at FriendFeed is getting better and better. As of this morning, the head UI guru behind GMail, Google Calendar and Google Reader has joined up with FriendFeed, and will work with the team to make FriendFeed have the best user interface out there, further enhancing what's already an amazing product I'm using all day long.

Kevin's leaving Google raised a lot of interest in the blogosphere, and as they say, there's no rest for the wicked. Just days after saying he was leaving Google, he's started his new gig. I'm glad to see he's teamed up with some of the brightest people in the business to continue improving one of my favorite services.

See the announcement here: Another new FriendFeeder! and see Kevin's note here.

Now, I can finally send FriendFeed some suggestions I had for their look and feel. Believe me, I've considered it, but hadn't done so yet. I'll give Kevin a few weeks, and then look out!

ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items

While Google remains silent on highlighting most popular shared items within Google Reader, and still has not provided a directory for shared link blogs, other innovative developers are filling the gap. ReadBurner, a service just now entering private alpha, might be the next to challenge TechMeme or Google on their home turf, once they exit the development stages.

As Feedheads has successfully demonstrated with its Facebook app, there is a market for people looking for most popular shared items, and finding new people sharing what they read on Google Reader. Just a few months ago, Mario Romero's application reached 10,000 users. But to date, there's been no "Real Internet" solution outside of Facebook.

Enter ReadBurner. It's obvious where they got the name, combining Google Reader and FeedBurner. They even have Google's colors in the logo.

(Good luck to you legally on that unless this is a Google skunkworks project, which I doubt, given it's hosted on Amazon Web Services and using EC2...)

ReadBurner, starting with a few dozen link blogs from popular Web personalities, including Chris Brogan, Mihai Parparita, Chris Wetherell, Robert Scoble, Scott Beale, myself and others, esentially tabulates the shared items from each feed, creating areas for "Recent" shared items, those "Popular Today", "Popular This Week" and "Popular All Time".

There are not yet any details who is behind the service, although I've seen accesses here via the site from Vienna, Austria. Google finds no hits on "ReadBurner" related to the service. But it looks like it started indexing shared items in December of 2007. And the more shared link feeds you provide, the more complete the service will be.

You can see which shared reader feeds are included (as a tag cloud), and you can even submit your own to be included. While clearly in private alpha, and not likely expected to be blogged about yet, the service is doing exactly what we asked Google Reader to do almost a year ago. In the ten months since we laid out specific requests, Google Reader team has really lost its way in the court of public opinion. It's time to get that back, or services like ReadBurner are going to find a niche and grow.

As for the service's eventual domain name? Who knows? Internic and GoDaddy both told me ReadBurner.com is available. If they want it, they had better act fast.

10 Ways We're Trying to Make the Web a Better Place

Recently talking with a good friend and consistent reader of this blog, he told me one of the reasons he likes reading louisgray.com is that he believes I'm not trying to follow somebody else's lead, that I'm not an echo chamber, and instead, I'm actually trying to promote things I believe in. I hope he's right. For while I might occasionally make comments on the news of the day, we're, in this political climate, the blogging candidate for change.

Here are a few examples of how we've tried to push change on the Web and make it a better place to take in new information, find new sources for news, accurately report statistics and influence, as well as ways we're trying to help popular services improve and help people find new tools:

1) The Internal Links vs. External Links Debate

We tried to squash the practice of using Internal Links when External Links would be better ways to bring visitors to the companies making the news. In the ensuing discussions, some major blogs said they would make changes, while others said I had it all wrong. Even if most did nothing, the issue was certainly made more visible.

Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control
More Comments On Inwardly Linking
Backlink Backlash Could Bring Forth Change
Link In. Link Out. Shake it All About.

2) The Elimination of Spam-Like Viral Link Tags for Statistics Manipulation

As it's well recognized Google and Technorati will give your site more perceived value based on the amount of unique links to your Web site, many have made a move to artificially inflate their numbers, incorrectly leading to high PageRanks and Technorati Authority, despite the fact Google can punish those found cheating.

Technorati Needs to Stamp Out Viral Tag Spam Now
Kent Newsome Calls My Comments "Fear and Loathing"
Is There an Antidote to the Link Tags Virus?

3) Correctly Learning What Is Original Reporting, and Who's Just Following Along

News aggregators can be both a blessing and a curse. Sites like TechMeme are outstanding for seeing the day's blog activity, but as they also drive traffic, it can encourage bad behavior, without question. We're still looking to see if TechMeme will continue tweaking its algorithm to report those who break a story first and add original reporting, rather than those who have big brand names or the most external links.

What Should Drive TechMeme's Content?
Algorithms Cause Fight Between Linking and Original Reporting
Robot-Generated Sites Show Occasional Flaws

4) Asking Web Companies to Take Downtime Seriously, and Increase Reliability

If we're really going to move all our data to the Web, we have to trust it will always be there, easily and quickly. But far too many Web 2.0 companies have shown flaky uptime, and later, mocked us with humorous error messages, thinking their downtime is a joke. Guess what? It's not.

Web 2.0 Companies Play With Error Messages
Silly YouTube - Where's The Redundancy?
LinkedIn Provides Another Silly Web 2.0 "Error" Page
Ack! Google Reader Update Wipes Out History
Scoble's Right: Technorati Isn't Scaling to Beat Google

5) Looking to Eliminate Spam, Both on E-mail and in Blogs

There's nothing more annoying than finding a good communication medium foiled by those who want to misuse it for their own ill-begotten needs. That's why I refuse to ever join Plaxo, get annoyed by Facebook application spam, and the rapid growth of spam blogs or "Splogs".

Is Technorati Going After Spam Blogs?
Technorati Confirms Attack on Splogs, Provides Update
Sending Me Spam Makes Us Friends, Right?

6) Communicating With Companies and Offering Suggestions to Improve

One of the best things I've found with the blog is being able to talk to Web companies and help build their products to be more successful through testing, and offering specific comments. In almost every case, I've gained direct feedback from the developer, and in many cases, they've updated very quickly.

10 Suggestions for FriendFeed
10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader
10 More Suggestions for LinkedIn
Eight Reasons the Apple TV is Failing, and How It Can be Saved
Why Can't Del.icio.us Show Most Popular Bookmarks by URL?
What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?
Use Your Blog To Talk To Companies

7) Looking at Mega-Trends for Insight Into Momentum

We don't blog and live in a vacuum. Instead, as technology and business evolve, change naturally occurs. When I see something I think is taking place which impacts us, I want to talk about it and see if you're seeing what I am. Often you see it too, and sometimes, you tell me I'm wrong, which is okay too.

The Biggest Blogs Aren't Really Blogs Any More
The Web Advertising Bubble Has Got to Pop
Did Trackbacks Die, and Who Killed Them?
Alexa Web Statistics Show Old Media Influence Nosedive
10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech

8) Reinforcing the Idea that Blogging Can Be Personal, Yet Influential

I want to blog with passion about those things I cover and discover. I want to have communications with people I couldn't reach otherwise, and while I may enjoy seeing traffic spikes or external links, it's not what's driving me. I believe I should gain additional traffic if I offer good content, not because I am following the latest trend or using link schemes. So often, I talk about why I blog, and what I'm trying to do. After all, I am adamant that your blog can be your personal brand, and you should take care of it.

New Reality: Your Blog Is Your Brand
Why Do I Blog? An Introspective Look
A Big Part of Blogging is Writing to Your Readers
Blogging: Set Goals Or Let Fly?
If It's Not About Breaking News or Traffic...

9) Highlighting New Companies and Services I Enjoy

What's the fun in finding new Web tools if I can't tell you about them? You can believe that if I start begging you to try out a new service, it's because I really believe in what they stand for, and I see their potential. I have a tendency to root for the little guy and am all too eager to promote those that offer unique service differentiation. I don't always have to be first to report something, but I will be clear about why I think it's pretty darn cool.

I Have Seen the Future of Social RSS Feed Readers
Hype It Up: Ballhype Is Here to Change the Game
Friendfeed Follows Friends' Web Activity
PlugandPlay Expo Highlight: Spokeo
AideRSS Judges Feed Posts as Good, Great, Best

10) Thinking Philosophically, Out Loud, to Those Who Will Listen

If I'm not reacting to news, or letting you know about something I like, it's likely I'm thinking about where we're headed. Often, this will be impacted by work I've done over the last decade, or books I've read. Sometimes thinking out loud while writing is the best way to get my points across. After all, I can't exactly have a conference call with hundreds of people, but I can reach hundreds of people this way. Maybe my thoughts have value to a smaller subset.

I Still Get Excited About Silicon Valley
The Big Debate: Online vs. Offline, and Web Influence
Maintaining Integrity of Web Archives Is Essential
Is Timing an Important Element for Blog Posts?

While I don't expect every post I do to be absolutely high-minded, I do want to make a difference here on the Web. I want to help, from my small corner in the blogosphere, to help guide the next generation of blogging. I want to help companies understand their customers, and to help customers find great companies. I do this because I enjoy it and because it's for the betterment of our global community. If you think these are things you find useful, then be sure you are on our RSS feed, and keep following along. It's a never-ending journey.

Resisting Temptation at Fry's and the Apple Store

Yesterday, I pulled off a daring two-fer, as a friend and I went to the Palo Alto Fry's, and later to the Apple Store, and I managed not to buy a thing. Despite being surrounded by flat-screen televisions, DVDs, video games and widgets of every kind to support my iPod and Mac habit, we were thrifty, and didn't get our credit cards out once. Tough job.

But that didn't mean I resisted letting my geek flag fly.

At Fry's, I wore a tie-dyed Apple logoed t-shirt throughout the store. While everyone else was bundled up from the storm-like weather outside, I donned the t-shirt, sensing a marketing/advertising community, helping to push the unwashed, white box PC builders at Fry's to consider a healthier alternative.

When at the Apple Store, we outgeeked the sales reps themselves. As we messed around with a 30-inch Cinema Display, we ended up showing the employee some of our favorite Web tools, from Assetbar to FriendFeed. We showed off high-quality videos playing on our iPod Touch. We even introduced him to products we knew the company sold on the online Apple Store but not in their retail store. After a while, the guy was asking us if we were "visiting from corporate", i.e. from the mother ship in Cupertino.

Interestingly enough, the Apple Store in Palo Alto continues to be a major hub for Silicon Valley digerati. Years after seeing Apple CEO Steve Jobs there, in the store's early days, last night I recognized and talked with Michael Arrington from TechCrunch. He reported he's not going to CES, and said Om Malik is still in the ICU, but has been well-protected by his team, so updates have been slim. Arrington said it was good to meet fellow bloggers, and it's likely not too often he's recognized in the real world.

So, that was fun. Why didn't I buy anything? Because we're still recuperating from the holiday purchases. I didn't tell you we bought a 50-inch Samsung plasma screen from Fry's on Christmas Eve for our living room, and got a guy to take our old, bulky, entertainment center. So that means our overhaul is further along, but not complete. We still need to get both TVs on the wall, and get a smaller half-height entertainment center. Then, maybe... I can start buying again.

New FriendFeed Fans Group Started on Facebook

With FriendFeed rapidly gaining momentum, there's no question the service is accruing its share of fans, myself included. With that in mind, I created a new group on Facebook to provide a platform for FriendFeed Fans to get together, share links, suggestions and help promote this next generation distributed broadcast medium.

You can find the new group here: Facebook: FriendFeed Fans

In case you thought I was just about the only one enamored with FriendFeed, check out the following links:

Alex Gawley:
I Love FriendFeed
Charles Hudson:
FriendFeed and Plaxo Pulse - FriendFeed Is My Preference and it Reminds Me of Twitter
ParisLemon:
You Should Probably Be Using FriendFeed

If you're not on FriendFeed yet, you should be. See my feed and sign up.
If you're not on Facebook, more power to you. But if you are, then join FriendFeed Fans today.

Why Can't Del.icio.us Show Most Popular Bookmarks by URL?

I'm something of a late or reluctant adopter of del.icio.us, the social bookmarking tool absorbed into Yahoo! at the end of 2005. While I've had an account for years, I didn't really find any use for the service, keeping my bookmarks to myself.

But now, with the ability to post items into my FriendFeed by adding a bookmark to del.icio.us, combined with the ability to track the number of times my own posts have been bookmarked, thanks to FeedBurner, I've been using the service a bit more. By adding items to del.icio.us, I'm not just saving a bookmark for me, but for all those who follow me on FriendFeed.

Also, I occasionally add some of my more popular posts to del.icio.us, not out of narcissism, but out of curiosity, to learn who else has done the same. After all, for some reason, I can't do a search by URL within del.icio.us, but can only find this data by self-bookmarking, and clicking the "saved by 1 other person" link, revealing the fan and how they tagged the item.

And this... is broken.

Del.icio.us is very much a repository based on tagging. It's easy to search the entire site for specific tags, like friendfeed, facebook, or techcrunch, but it's evasively difficult to search on a specific URL and find out the most popular posts from a specific blog or Web site.


A screen capture of some bookmarked posts from louisgray.com
When I search for the phrase "louisgray.com" in del.icio.us, I get some clues, but that's only if the person who bookmarked included the URL in the title of the bookmark itself. For example, I can see 19 saved the story 10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader, while 12 saved Facebook Google Reader App Rebrands As Feedheads, and 16 bookmarked Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control. And five people have bookmarked louisgray.com itself. But if I referred to the posts by their headlines without louisgray.com, my search results would be useless.

I'm curious to see what Del.icio.us has planned for site improvements in 2008, as the service hasn't changed much of late. Back on September 6th, the company said:

"Fresh news from deep within Tag Mountain: we just launched an early, limited Preview of the Delicious redesign we’ve been working on for the past few months. We’ve refreshed the UI, built an entirely new (and faster) search engine, and added numerous improvements based on your feedback."

Since then, the silence has been deafening. The company's blog hasn't been updated in more than three months, and at the turn of the calendar year, one del.icio.us representative wrote in the comments, "Probably a couple months or so, give or take a few weeks…ish. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’re working hard."

So... who knows. Maybe it'll be Spring. Maybe not. And it's not clear if the updated search engine will solve this issue of finding bookmarks by URL, or offering the ability to rank by most popular, most recent, or finding out which users most often like your posts. All of these would be useful tools for bloggers out there who want to see where their content fits in the social scheme of things.

Friday Night Notes for January 4, 2008

* The Bay Area storms that have made headlines had very little impact here on the Peninsula. We had power all day, didn't see much wind, and the rain was not remarkable. As I write this, things outside are absolutely still.

* I added a quick static page on louisgray.com to highlight what I'm doing online, from the various services I use. Friendfeed.com does an excellent job of this, but I wanted to mirror the activity here as well. (See: louisgray.com: Friendfeed)

* Assetbar is quietly upgrading its services. I checked in on those guys this evening and was delighted to see they've gotten their new Participatory Media Platform (PMP) to work in Safari. There are a lot of "under the hood" items I've seen updated as well, as they prepare for public launch soon.

* I keep finding great new blogs and adding them to Google Reader. We're up to more than 250 individual feeds, even as I've trimmed down a number of search-related feeds that were mere filler. Some of the best recent adds include Charles Hudson, High Scalability and Andrew Chen.

* Site traffic continues to be well ahead of anything I've seen to date. To put things in perspective, just four days into January, I've already eclipsed my total visitors count from all of June 2007, and have posted three times the number from last January. Also, since posting last Friday that I'd reached the milestone of 200 RSS feed subscribers, we've already blown past 225. With any luck, we'll be showing 250 and 300 very soon.

* We also gained some prominent link-love from Mashable and Mathew Ingram overnight, with Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins calling us an Iowa caucus expert in his post Huckabama Wins, a Few Observations, and Ingram noting our comments on data ownership in his wrap-up piece, The Scoble mess and data portability.

Of course, it's on us to stay relevant and topical, so we'll try and keep focused. More thorough posts over the weekend, for sure.

The Data Ownership Wars Are Heating Up

You would have to have been in a cave or without Web access today to have missed Robert Scoble's one-day forced exit from Facebook, initiated after he utilized some pre-release software from Plaxo to pull down his friends' contact data. Without wanting to pile on that already fatigued story, it's an interesting salvo in what will be a heated, prolonged, battle between all the service providers, and their users, over who should gain access to what data, who owns it, and what they should be allowed to do with it.

Facebook's reasoning was that his efforts violated the company's terms of service. It's all well and good to bring your data into the site, but don't you dare try and get it out. FriendFeed's Paul Buchheit, doing some TOS sleuthing of his own, asks in response, Should Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail block Facebook? After all, Facebook users are all giving the site access to the same type of user information deemed so valuable, and just as in violation of the terms of services as Robert's stunt was.

And Facebook isn't alone in this yearning to import contacts from other services. LinkedIn does the same thing. So does Spokeo. You can synch up your Webmail contacts, or import a .vcf card from any application, like Microsoft Outlook or Apple's Address Book. But isn't this data yours? Shouldn't it be just as easy to get the data out as it was to get it in there in the first place?

This is bound to get even more intense in the coming year and beyond. Just look at what happened when the Google Reader team got a tad over-aggressive in deciding for you how you might want your shared link items distributed. There were calls from all corners of the Web for privacy and for Google to renounce the practice. With data being so easy to generate, and so portable, for different services and devices, and with so many companies' intellectual property effectively being from user generated content, they have a vested interest in keeping you and your data in, and the ability to export out.

With that being true, it's remarkable when some companies approach the issue in a much more transparent and beneficial way. Take Assetbar, for instance. In the company's product description, they write, "Don't worry, your data is yours. You can always delete everything and even export it as a .csv or XML file!" Assetbar knows that the data you brought in and you commented on, the data you shared and the private messages you created are yours.

I believe that users aren't going to stand for companies deciding just how they should be allowed to interact with their friends and their information. They are going to demand portability. They are going to demand transparency, and they are going to demand a rapid response when things go awry. That Facebook eventually got back to Robert today and restored his account is fine, but if he wasn't one of the highest-profile bloggers on the planet, there's no way it would have happened that quickly. This time, Facebook just may have done enough to save face. But there will be a next time, and a next, and a next, unless the policies change.

On the same wavelength, Scott Karp writes about:
The Coming War Over Data On The Web

My Political Focus Started 20 Years Ago

Though but a skinny weakling of a 5th grader in 1988, I remember the political horse race just about as clearly as I do that of the historic Oakland A's team who made headlines the same year. With tonight's results from the Iowa caucuses rolling in, I'm reminded of how I obsessed over the numbers back then as many are with those from today - and the 1988 race set the benchmark in my mind for how all presidential campaigns are measured.

To this day, I can tell you Alexander Haig dropped out of the Republican presidential race after getting 1% of the vote in the state. I can tell you how, on the Democratic side, Joseph Biden was forced to withdraw his candidacy following charges of plagiarism. (Trust me, not even Wikipedia has such obscure knowledge!)

As the 1988 campaign evolved, I pored over the results in the morning's newspaper, and stayed up late watching the news networks project the winners of each state, or in the case of Super Tuesday, several states at once. I openly mocked Michael Dukakis at my elementary school, and attended a rally in Redding, California for the eventual Republican nominee, George Bush Sr. While my political leanings have changed dramatically, and my focus on politics has been knocked down a few pegs, behind technology and sports, despite my Political Science degree, I still love the kickoff of primary season - and am rooting for some favorites, while finding disappointment in how well others are or aren't doing.

Tonight, it looks like Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are to be the projected winners for their prospective parties. And while that's good news for both campaigns, Iowa is hardly representative of the much-larger states whose turn will soon come to post delegates themselves. After all, in 1988, Bob Dole captured the state, and falsely looked like he was to gain momentum against the sitting vice president. It would be eight years before he captured the party's nomination, and he never made it to the White House.

In effect, despite going first, Iowa is the exception. The outlier. I don't believe Hillary Clinton will battle for 3rd in New Hampshire, and I don't believe Huckabee's folksy approach will work well very often, outside of Middle America. And while I wouldn't personally vote for Mitt Romney, I hope he eventually does better than he did tonight. But as one pundit said on the radio this evening, tonight was the first pitch in the first inning of what will be a long game. You better believe I'll be watching. Without a sitting president or vice president in the contest, it's going to be an extremely interesting few months.

I Don't Care About Macworld This Year

It's January, and for most good Mac geeks like me, the initial post-holiday doldrums are immediately followed by anticipation of Apple's annual religious revival and trade show. Rumors typically fly fast and thick about what Steve Jobs will unveil. Live chats on multiple Web sites can slow servers and set traffic records. Spy photos are graded on their level of blurriness and new rumor sites can spring up on the strength of one good ruse.

But this year, I don't care.

You see, the story's changed. Apple used to make game-changing announcements at Macworld. Apple used to shock and surprise everybody at Macworld. And very often, I was left refreshing the Apple store online with credit card in hand.

But this year, I don't think that's going to happen.

You see, the story's changed. Apple is now making major game-changing announcements all year long. And they are no longer the underdog they once were - the little guy I could root for. Now, their market cap is three times that of Dell, and is just above that of Cisco. The big announcements, as far as I know, have already happened.

What could possibly take place to get me giddy? An iPhone update? Don't care. What about the second generation Apple TV? Don't care. The introduction of a new desktop application that runs Exchange? Maybe that would be interesting. An update to iPhoto that makes it go 20% faster. Please...

So... this year, I don't care.

The early comments about a tablet or a sub notebook or iTunes acting as a music label to sell its own songs aren't interesting. I already have a MacBook Pro. I already have an iPod Touch. I already have the first-gen Apple TV. And I already use iTunes for all my music downloads.

If they're finally getting around to movie rentals, then great. But that's in both the "obvious" and "about frickin' time" category. I won't be at Macworld this year, missing it for the 7th straight year, and while we'll be paying attention, we won't be expecting it to alter our life any.

Also See:
Macworld Expo Eve 2006
MacWorld San Francisco 2007 Eve

My Empty Stock Drawer

At the end of the calendar year, we have a little tradition when it comes to the stock market. Sell everything, and go completely into cash as the calendar switches from December 31 and starts again with January 1st. This year was no exception.

The reason behind my annual sell-off isn't the result of some chart-reading that tells me the market usually takes early January off (though sometimes it does). It also isn't because I have an innate need for a challenge, and see the move as starting the new year from scratch. Instead, it's simply that I do my own taxes every year, and don't want the hassle of tracking down individual trades that bridge a calendar year.

By making sure all my stock trades both begin and end in the same year, Intuit's TurboTax service can easily tabulate the gains and losses for each trade, and doesn't force me to dig through my eTrade records to see when a particular stock was purchased. Also, as I often buy and sell a single stock symbol multiple times in a year, I'm not left scratching my head and guessing where I should appropriately report I paid commissions. After all, if I have confusion, it's likely someone in the IRS will have confusion too, and might later ask me to clarify... leading to pain.

Clearing out my stock drawer (so to speak) also helps clarify what went well and what didn't over the year. There's no ambiguity as to whether one trade hasn't panned out yet or not.

So how'd we do?

Index	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Me	+2%	+4%	+8%	+35%
NASDAQ	+<1%	+8%	+4%	-2%

That looks pretty good on its face. We were up more than 50% on the year. But if I dig deeper, it's clear I could have done significantly better if I completely ditched my quick trade strategy and had instead put all my money into Apple and slept on it.

Index	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Me	+2%	+4%	+8%	+35%
AAPL	+8%	+31%	+26%	+29%

Being such an Apple guy, you'd think I'd have done the right thing, the smart thing, and given all I had to Cupertino. But I didn't. And while others have no doubt made out like bandits, I've ended up looking pretty silly, as the Mac and iPod maker more than doubled its market cap on the year.

I think a lot of people are looking pretty silly when it comes to AAPL. Even the most aggressive, pro-Mac guys, like me, couldn't have anticipated the kind of success Steve Jobs and team have delivered. But now, with Macworld approaching, and having cash on hand, maybe, just maybe, I'll do my part, and get back in the game. If I do, I promise I'll let you know.

Also See:

2005 Taxes in the Bag
The Stock Market Is Bleeding Us Dry
I Bet Wrong On AAPL, Again
Apple Stock Pays for AppleTV, New Airport Extreme
Taxes Completed Online, As Always
Top Eight Worst Stock Moves I Ever Made
Two Hours Of Apple Stock Plenty Profitable

State of the Blog: December 2007 Recap

December 2007 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,129

Total stories published in December: 55
(About 1.8 per day, up from 1.1 in November)

Total stories in December with comments: 27
(49% of all stories, up from 16 and 47% in November)

Total comments on December posts: 85
(About 1.5 per post, 3 per commented post)

Technorati Authority Ranking: 126 (up 23)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 206 subscribers (up 25)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 15 subscribers (up 1)
MyBlogLog Members: 39 (up 4)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12: 1st overall, and a new record!

Blog Value Estimator: $71,132.04


December hit new highs, pushed by an end-of-month spike.
Top Five Most Visited December Stories (According to Analog)

1. I Have Seen the Future of Social RSS Feed Readers
2. Feedheads Approaching 10,000 Active Facebook Users
3. Google Reader Blinks, and the Mob Wins
4. The Web Advertising Bubble Has Got to Pop
5. AideRSS Judges Feed Posts as Good, Great, Best

Others receiving votes: What I'm Reading and Sharing on Google Reader, Doubling Down On Our TiVo Obsession, 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech, and Buy Your Favorite Bloggers a Gift this Holiday...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. Soft-Core Porn, Sex Themes Power Google Video
2. Eight Reasons the Apple TV is Failing, and How It Can be Saved
3. Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control
4. eBay Locks Me Out for My Own Good
5. 10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader

After November's ho-hum showing, December was a record-breaker of sorts for us, returning to the momentum we've been building up all year. Not only did we have the strongest numbers of total visitors and page views on record in December, but we had a high amount of interactivity, from good comments, to a good amount of posts being sent to StumbleUpon, or added to Del.icio.us. We've been relatively Digg-free since April, but won't be holding our breath to see that change. Also, the last five days were all extremely strong traffic-wise, with Monday being in the top five days for total traffic all-time. Not bad. Of course, with this under our belt, we're starting 2008 at zero again, and look forward to setting and achieving new goals.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed, or keep watch on our shared link blog!