Technorati's Revenge? The Site Is Beating Google for Blog Reactions

To laud Technorati is going against the flow, to say the very least. The once-omnipresent blog search engine has practically been reduced to a state of irrelevancy, thanks to inconsistent uptime, odd product launches and withdrawals, nonsensical redesigns, executive turnover and aggressive competition from others - primarily Google Blog Search. In previous posts on Technorati, I've referred to them as "totally toast" and "fighting off irrelevance". But surprisingly, especially in recent months, the moribund site has consistently beaten Google in terms of finding new and accurate links to my blog or mentions of the site, while Google's results have actually gotten less relevant over time, including false positives from blog rolls and the like. No doubt this had much to do with why Rob Diana, in January, said for the most part, that blog search sucks.

Google is set up to find all of the world's information, and it is doing a fantastic job at that, as we all know, and it is the gold standard for search in practically every regard. But it's maybe too good. The company's over-aggressive spiders are just as likely to trigger false positives in terms of knowing what is a blog and what is not, or what is a blog post or what is simply sidebar information. Last August, I highlighted one issue, when MyBlogLog activity was spawning false positives. On other occasions, I've seen updates from aggregation sites, like Socialmedian, do the same. At this point, my bookmarked blog search from Google to find reactions excludes no fewer than four sites, to try and filter down the accurate results.

And as I'm fighting off false positives with Google, Technorati is quietly finding me mentions that I can't get using Google, which relies on keywords instead of links. Not even the advanced blog search page on Google lets me find links to a site the way most bloggers want to find.

Technorati, for instance, found me links from LivingstonBuzz.com, BlackWeb20.com, and from Regular Geek in the last few days, which were pointing my way, but didn't mention my name or site domain - and I'm finding this to be the rule, rather than the exception. While at one point I'd stopped visiting Technorati, I've now returned to the site on a frequent basis to see responses, and participate in the conversation wherever it may be.

Technorati's benefits over Google Blog Search may no doubt be short lived. Maybe Google Blog Search will solve some of their issues soon, and develop new features, while Technorati has been relatively stagnant. And I'm still waiting for somebody to come up with the "inverse Technorati" idea I floated back in October of 2007. I'm not saying Technorati is perfect, or winning me over as a major force to be reckoned with in innovation, but if I want to know who is linking my way and extending the conversation, they're still doing a good job, and beating Google, which is a significant feat.

Trackbacks Are Still Dead. Could Tweetbacks Take Their Place?

By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter)


The Trackback Problem

Today, as I was visiting different blogs reading the news of the day, I made a special note on how many comments each post had and if trackbacks and pingbacks were listed.

Trackbacks and Pingbacks are two of three types of linkback, defined by Wikipedia as "... a method for Web authors to obtain notifications when other authors link to one of their documents."

What I'm coming to realize is that, in terms of showing buzz around a post, trackbacks and pingbacks are dead. Worse, they just show how many spam blogs (splogs) are out there, hanging off of an RSS feed and republishing part or entire posts in order to artificially inflate their Google rank numbers.

(See Also: Did Trackbacks Die, and Who Killed Them? from July 2007)
Take this Inquisitr post, for example. If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see 6 or more trackback links, most of them with the same block of quoted text. After quick inspection, it appears all but one of these links go to blogs that are either partially or completely ripping off the Inquisitr's content.

In essence, instead of showing relative popularity and linking to further discussion, this has become an avenue that is not only exploited by spambots but flaunted right under the noses of the content creators.

One Option: Tweetbacks

As news blogs increasingly extend into social networks, they are looking for a way to register their reach on those social networks. A good example of this is Digg. One of the reasons Digg got so popular so quickly was due to it allowing blogs to display how many times a Digg user had submitted (or Dugg) the article. This provided a fine synergy between the blog and Digg, and in theory both services benefited.

However, even solutions like Digg, Mixx and Sphinn seem to be losing clout, as people turn to using Twitter instead to highlight items of interest.

With that in mind, it seems only natural for blogs to want to show how their posts have legs on Twitter. To that end, several WordPress plugins have been created that attempt to serve this need, such as TweetSuite, TweetBacks, and to a lesser extent, TwitterTools.

From these three, I would say TweetSuite is the most stylish and functional. However, TweetBacks is a solid framework and with a little skill can be integrated much more cleanly into a blog theme.

FriendFeed..Backs? FriendBacks?

FriendFeed may not be as popular or as well-known as Twitter, nor have as much reach, yet, but because of its unique ability to aggregate RSS streams and simultaneously act as a community hub, with the addition of a powerful and flexible open API, there has been a significant amount of development around it as well.

Recently, there was news that Disqus turned on two-way integration with FriendFeed (after also enabling Track- and Pingback support and more recently, Facebook Connect). However, there are already at least two other good solutions, including FriendFeed Comments WordPress plugin and FriendFeed-to-Disqus Sync, a cloud-based synchronization utility that Disqus itself wrote about here.

What's Next?

Buzz and reach are always going to be things that blogs strive for, especially blogs that employ multiple bloggers and are ad-supported. Are tweetbacks and 'friendbacks' going to keep them going indefinitely into the future? Absolutely not. Something new will appear and, if it has an API, people are going to figure out how to tie their blog to it.

Read more by Phil Glockner at Scribkin.com.

10 Ways to Maximize Your Google Reader Link Blog

I've been sharing articles I've read in Google Reader for the better part of two years. I don't know exactly when I started, but I'm fairly sure I'm nowhere near finished. And while I admittedly started sharing to a link blog without having a clear goal in mind, I'm finding that this massive shared items repository is becoming an incredibly versatile information hub that benefits me, the authors of articles I've shared, and the consumers, be they friends in Google Reader, or in many other locations.

I believe that while Google Reader has grown in visibility, arguably becoming the most popular RSS reader on the Web, the utility of shared link blogs is less known. Here are ten ways you can maximize your Google Reader link blog - most of which I'm doing, and probably didn't anticipate when I first started sharing items into the ether.

1. Act as a trusted information filter.

Regardless of how fast a reader you are, there is no possible way you can read every single news source and blog on the Web. Neither can anybody you know. And regardless of how closely your feed match percentage is on Toluu, there are feeds you read that your friends don't. By sharing the best items of what you read every day from Google Reader, you are hand-selecting the best of the Web and "endorsing" those items to your link blog subscribers.

Do so with some regularity, and you might be surprised as to how people come to rely on your manual intervention and news discovery. I first became cognizant of this in February when "SeekGround" reported "I discovered that I had shared more of louisgray's shared items than anyone else's in the last 30 days". In May, Duff's Device similarly wrote: "I saw another article that I received from Louis Gray'sGoogle Reader Shared Items again. Thanks for keeping on top of the world for me Louis. :-)"

As of tonight, ReadBurner reports I have nearly 8,500 articles shared on my Google Reader link blog. While there are others who have shared more total items, I know that I have shared those items I believe are most interesting to me, and others I believe are following along.

2. Share your items with Google Friends.

Though Google hasn't nailed the "what is a friend" issue, you can add friends through GMail and Google Talk. If they are also Google Reader users, and share items, you can opt in to seeing their Google Reader shares, and they can see yours. If they subscribe to your shared items, your shares are mixed in with all the other feeds on their list. Of course, if you don't want to see their lists, click "Hide" next to their name, or "Show" to bring them back.



3. Embed your Google Reader link blog to your own blog or Web site.

When I first started sharing to my link blog, I had this odd feeling I was sharing posts and nobody knew about it. After all, the link blog URL isn't the most intuitive on the planet. But you can embed a widget on your blog to display a subset of your recently shared items, and visitors to your blog can click out to items you've shared.

4. Add your Google Reader link blog to your Google profile

Your Google profile is a fairly blank slate, for you to add or delete as you please. While it's very common for people to add links to their Twitter page, their blog or their LinkedIn profile, I'd suggest it's just as important to add your link blog to the page. Mine is here.

5. Share items to Facebook, FriendFeed or Socialmedian.

2008 was the year of personal news aggregators, which took updates on your services from around the Web and put them all in one place. While this trends was best exemplified by FriendFeed, Facebook also offers the option to feature your Google Reader shared items, and Socialmedian will pull them in as news, going so far as to check the shares by topic to place them in the right categories.

You can see my Google Reader shares on FriendFeed here. And to avoid duplication of items, if I share items from louisgray.com, I manually delete them from FriendFeed. Takes seconds, and reduces the noise. (My Socialmedian page is here...)

6. Add your share count to ReadBurner, RSSmeme or Feedheads.

Feedheads, the pioneer in tabulating popular Google Reader share counts, was joined by ReadBurner and later RSSmeme, in early 2008. As some people are turning to ReadBurner and RSSmeme as a democratically sorted Digg or Techmeme, sharing items you like will add your vote to the list.

Be sure to add your feed to ReadBurner here.

7. Replace your bookmarks with Google Reader shared items.

At the end of the year, I said that RSS Has Practically Eliminated My Need for Browser Bookmarks. As I thought about it more, it's my Google Reader Link blog that is essentially my rolling bookmark list, highlighting those items which are the best, and which I will want to return to. While Delicious is also a good Web-based bookmarking system, the link blog is a good way to find recent items of interest.

8. Expand the visibility of lesser-known sources.

Sometimes, I get in a routine of reading my RSS feeds and then sharing, without thinking about how the shares are effecting the downstream author. But I've gotten e-mails saying the shares have generated attention beyond what I expected. Last month, one blogger wrote, "When you pop an article on (the linkblog), I'll get 60-70 hits and get pumped to the first page, that is pretty averge for the support you give me." Earlier this week I got a similar e-mail from a second author, who wrote an e-mail titled "Thanks yet again", adding "Your Google Reader share really lit up that discussion."

In a tech blogging world where there are so many different sources of news, and so many people writing about the exact same thing, you can make a difference by choosing lesser-known sources of news, and highlighting the best content, not just the loudest. I've tried to share items from those who have done original reporting or are thinking differently than the echo chamber, and it in turn can deliver greater visibility.

9. Use your linkblog as your "to comment" list.

As part of my online new year's resolution, I said I would be making more time to comment on other blogs through the year. But as you know, my full-time job doesn't work all too well with browsing the Web and making comments throughout the day. Instead, I've found I'll go back to my own Google Reader linkblog, and open the items in a new tab, and go through to add comments one by one, left to right, so I've given the authors feedback and participated.

10. Create your own leaderboard of news sources.

Google Reader tracks statistics on what your most-shared news sources are over the last 30 days, which can report on who you've found most interesting in the last month. Given each person's individual tastes, the results can be very different than more public leaderboards which tend to feature those who are most popular and have a deeper subscription base. While my own link blog does tend to feature popular sites like TechCrunch, Scobleizer and ReadWriteWeb, I can see that I've also shared a high number from lesser-known sites, including TechWag, Regular Geek, The Future Buzz, Andy DeSoto and Chuqui 3.0. And if you're stat-oriented like I am, you can check in and see how this changes over time. (See my blog leaderboard from last July)

So... are you sharing your Google Reader items? I am. You can find mine here. For the betterment of the community, it'd be great to see your shared item links in the comments.

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DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner.

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Outbrain to Extend Blog Recommendations With Third Party Content

Outbrain is best known for its easy to install blog widget that allows readers to rate posts on a one to five star scale, from "Bad" to "Excellent". I've been running it myself the last few months, and have seen some consistent, if not overwhelming, activity on the widgets each day. Outbrain is looking to extend their service by adding stories they believe you may like in addition to the current post, both from the site you own and from third party sites who are fellow Outbrain users. The idea, in their mind, is to deliver a wider range of content to readers, no matter the source.


Outbrain recommends other posts you might like and lets you rate posts.
Today, those who install Outbrain's blog widget also see stories "You might like", but they are limited to the blog on which the widget is installed. The new extension will, in effect, act like the "Web rings" of old, by syndicating your content on similar sites and extending the potential audience. Outbrain also is a big fan of Scott Karp's recent article on Publishing 2.0, which showed that sites which have the highest reader loyalty also are heavy linkers outside their own blogs.

This change is expected to roll out in the next few weeks, Outbrain told publishers late Tuesday night.

While the most visible aspects of Outbrain are the stars on users' blogs, there is actually a good set of statistics being tracked on the back end today, including a record of all blog post ratings, including the score, the post and the rater's country, the ability to sort all posts by total number of ratings, average rating and total popularity score (tabulated by the number of votes and average rating), and how many page views you have gained from the Outbrain network at large.


The most recent ratings on Outbrain.

The most popular posts, by rating, on Outbrain.
Given I'm not a high-traffic destination site, I doubt I'm exactly lighting up the Outbrain leaderboard. Most of my posts get a couple votes, and the most popular posts have received from 12 to 15 votes apiece. This could be due to people's unfamiliarity with Outbrain, reluctance to use the widget, or my low visibility.


My most active post on Outbrain got 15 votes.
Tonight, I logged in to my Outbrain account, and turned on story recommendations, both from my own site, and from third party sites. Over time, we'll see if Outbrain can deliver customized, quality, suggested links, and if this will increase the reader experience. Keep me posted on your thoughts.

Statistics Are Your Friend, Even When They're Bad

By Robert Seidman of TVbytheNumbers (Twitter / FriendFeed)

It should be no surprise that being part of a site called TVbytheNumbers that I’m obsessed with statistics and this obsession extends to all the web site analytics and statistics that are available to us.

While I hear and read things often about how Feedburner’s stats stink and Google Analytics stats stink and none of them ever sync up well, that really hasn’t been my personal experience. Using either Feedburner or Google Analytics as an intraday tool is certainly problematic, and I have had a day or two here and there where Feedburner did lose data for an hour of five that it never recovered, but mostly both are just slow and do recover. Google Analytics typically tracks visits and visitors correctly intraday within reasonable timeframes, but lags behind in counting total pages for hours. Usually, by 8am Pacific time (but not often before then) all the page views for yesterday show up. And once they do, on a page view basis, Google Analytics, Feedburner and Quantcast all seem like they wind up syncing up within 2%-3%.

Given everything involved, I find the 2% difference very reasonable and it doesn’t bother us any. We wind up triangulating between Feedburner, Google Analytics and Quantcast and it’s less of a hassle than managing our Web logs.

Because of the problem cited above with Google Analytics being slow to capture all the page views, it does make intraday monitoring fairly worthless, aside from tracking visits and visitors. All the other stats – time on page, bounce rate, pages per visit, etc. – are all wrong until all the page views are captured. But there’s little we’re doing that requires great analytics on an intraday basis. There are certainly times when it would come in handy, but even as it is, it works well enough intraday where we can at least figure out if we add something or move something around whether the desired result was achieved.

As a tool used after the fact, I find Google Analytics to be an extremely valuable tool, though I often don’t like what I see!

One thing we’ve thrown in the towel on is that referral traffic is almost always bad, no matter the source. There are some rare exceptions where linking produces good traffic (high time on site, number of pages per visit, etc), but that’s indeed rare. In fact, in almost every instance where a specific post is linked, the traffic is bad, with bounce rates often in excess of 80%. That’s whether Louis is linking to it, whether someone throws a link on Twitter, or even if Matt Drudge links to one of our stories. StumbleUpon and Digg show similar results.

Such traffic is great for jacking up visits and visitors, but bad for bounce rates, pages per visit and time on site. We’ve pretty much thrown our hands up in the air on that score and attributed it to web surfing behavior via links. As an aside, the stable link we have from Drudge to “TV Ratings” produces much better results, but if he links to specific story on our site and gives it any prominence on his site, the traffic has a very high bounce rate.

That seems largely out of our control, however there was still one stat that really bothered me. That was that if someone landed on our site via our home page, the bounce rates were still pretty high, approaching 50%. Better if someone came directly instead of via a referral, but still bothersome either way. Here's the landing page results for our site for August 1-31:

Recently, with that and a couple of other factors in mind – mainly wanting the ability to showcase more content on the home page – we redesigned the site. The bounce rate for traffic landing on our home page was around 47% for August. In the last week, post- redesign, that is now around 25%. The bounce rate for referral traffic to specific posts is still lousy, but again, we don’t feel like we can do much about that. Here are the landing page stats from September 6-12.

All of this has me wishing I’d gotten around to redesigning the site sooner. Who knows how much repeat traffic we may have lost as a result of design? I also feel silly because once upon a time I actually had responsibility for the web design/UI group at Charles Schwab. I recently had lunch with the VP who ran that group in my org and when I told her about the results she shook her head and laughed at me. My mentality had been this: our blog is a blog, pretty much like every other blog and designed pretty much like every other blog so spending a lot of energy on design tweaking didn’t seem like a worthwhile priority.

I definitely should’ve known better. I’m still not very happy about the bounce rates on referral traffic, but am quite happy about the reduction in bounce rates for people landing on our home page and would ascribe that improvement completely to redesigning.

By the way, for anyone interested, we went with the Live Wire theme from Woo Themes that we modified a little. So far I’d consider it the best $70 we ever spent. It’s not a perfect world, so the theme isn’t perfect, but setting the navigation structure (which we’ll certainly still need to tweak) and other modifications didn’t take much time. For $70 and time spent, cutting the bounce rate to our home page just about in half seems like time and money well spent.

Read more by Robert Seidman at TVByTheNumbers.com.

The Importance Of Blog Linking Seems to Be Declining

I am a strong believer in the power of linking between blogs, and I still go out of my way to link, especially to peers, to smaller blogs, and to developers of services I write about. At one time, I thought being linked to by the most prominent bloggers could have a significant impact on my traffic. And for a short time, it did. But now, I've seen traffic from other blogs to be driving an ever-declining percentage of visits to my site, swamped by social media tools, aggregation sites, and of course, Google search.

Yesterday, out of curiosity, I downloaded all my visitor logs going back to January of 2006, when I started regularly posting on the blog. While there's no question traffic overall is significantly higher now than it was one year ago or two years ago, the impact that even the biggest of blogs can deliver is lessened. I believe that this is due to a few things:

1. People are relying on aggregators to find them new sources of information, including Techmeme, Hacker News, Reddit, Mixx, FriendFeed and others.
   
2. People, especially those who read this site, are relying more on RSS readers, and many have subscribed to so many feeds that they are reading through stories in an effort to clear out their unread items, not clicking the embedded links.
   
3. People who actually read blogs on the site (outside of RSS) are clicking through to respond to the author with comments, rather than viewing links.

This year, thanks to covering some of the hottest topics in the tech blogosphere, I've been lucky enough to have been linked to from some of the most-prominent blogs in the market, including TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Scobleizer, MicroPersuasion, Jeremiah Owyang, Mathew Ingram, The Inquisitr, Profy and others. I've also been actively engaged with those flying lower on the radar, including I'm Not Actually a Geek, SheGeeks, Regular Geek (see a theme?) and others.

But looking at my aggregate statistics from the last six months, not even the "big name" linkers drove a lot of traffic, relative to just about every other source. And in some cases, the top blogs that drove traffic were themselves relative unknowns who I've featured in my monthly obscure blog recommendations, themselves often being the beneficiaries of being on Digg or Techmeme.

Top Blog Referrals in First half of 2008:

1. I'm Not Actually a Geek: When Your Blog Is LouisGrayCrunched
   
2. Scobleizer: Loving my FriendFeed
   
3. Regular Geek: Required Reading in Social Media
   
4. ValleyWag: Most bloggers don't deserve any ad revenue, the seven-word version
   
5. TechCrunch: More Bloggers Raising Money. Here Come The Politics. And Here Comes My Rant.
   
6. Micro Persuasion: Become an Expert with the Power of Deliberate Practice
   
7. Mathew Ingram: Duncan Riley: Lessons in diplomacy
   
8. WebWare: A Proposal for Twitter: Shut It Down
   
9. ReadWriteweb: Content Is Becoming a Commodity
   
10. Mark Evans: Who's Louis Gray?

Definitely a lot of bigger names here, mixed in with some others. But the most interesting thing is that the highest among these "only" delivered just shy of 500 visitors over the first six months of the year, and the lowest passed less than 100. That doesn't even come close to a single day's worth of Google traffic, or a single day of having a post on Techmeme or Hacker News, let alone Digg.

Instead of blogs driving traffic, we have some more mainstream names, as shown in the below graphic from Google Analytics, highlighting sources for the last 30 days:


In fact, it isn't until the #10 position overall over the last 30 days that you get a total number of visitors that is less than the #1 blog referral over the last 180 days. And in most cases, I've not seen any kind of meaningful traffic from mentions on Mashable or ReadWriteWeb. Back in January, I was a little less than happy that Mashable wasn't giving linkage a lot of prominence, but even now that they are, the impact is extremely small. I got 77 referrals from Mashable on their story around Twitter brand management, and 53 more from a story on my being an early adopter, very insignificant in the large scheme of things.

Now, I'm not saying that this data proves linking is dead. I know links power Google juice, and they enhance Technorati rankings, and if done well, people can find new sources of data, but the ability for even a so-called A-List blogger to deliver a windfall of visits is much less than I had ever expected. It is now more important to be part of the social media sites that drive strong traffic - the Twitters and Techmemes and FriendFeeds and Stumbleupons and Reddits, if traffic is your goal. Those sites, combined with RSS activity in Google Reader and other programs are what will drive traffic. So don't wait around begging for Scoble or Mashable to write you up. It might not have the effect you thought.

TinyURL Adds Custom Alias Feature To Shortened URL Service

The URL shortening service TinyURL was first useful for sending longer URLs to friends over e-mail to avoid line breaks that would often disable links in many e-mail programs.

With the advent and massive growth of SMS and microblogging services, like Twitter, TinyURL and other services like it have become omnipresent, an integral part of sharing blog posts, news, and other items.

In fact, Steve Gillmor of TechCrunch recently wrote, "Who controls TinyURL... controls the high ground in the battle for the Internet platform."

But until Friday, the URL was always a string of gibberish, a simple link to tinyurl.com followed by an indecipherable string of letters and numbers. You typically had to trust the person or service sending the TinyURL, or preview it to be sure you weren't being sent to a Rick Astley music video or a malware site.


Now, TinyURL added a new wrinkle, the ability to make a custom alias for any shortened URL you make, making it just as easy for people to read as Web browsers. Now, instead of always showing links to my blog posts that read as http://tinyurl.com/55aml3 or http://tinyurl.com/6px3kc, I could in theory, make them read like: http://tinyurl.com/lg70508 or http://tinyurl.com/tweetdeck.


This might seem like a small update, and it is, but it could make the service more mainstream, especially in the enterprise where slower adopters are more comfortable sharing items that are branded, or in a consistent format. It could also be another step in helping TinyURL compete with smaller URL shortening sites, including Snurl. With the exception of automated TinyURLs generated from TwitterFeed, I'll be trying to make my own custom aliases to links I share via Twitter, E-mail, or FriendFeed.

Five Blogs For June on Your Summer Reading List

While some out there are looking to refresh their RSS feed subscriptions by starting from zero, I believe you can still get the benefit of new voices by selectively adding individual feeds, without getting overloaded.

In the vein of the last three months' offerings of new blogs you're likely not reading, (March | April | May), below are five more bloggers who I think are worth taking a chance on, whose writings have caught my eye of late, and who need a bigger stage.

1) Coding Experiments (http://codingexperiments.com/)

Focus: Technology, Development, Coding, Social Media
Recent Highlight:
How Many Features Can Be Cut from a Service without the Users Leaving?
RSS Feed: http://codingexperiments.com/feed

2) LiveCrunch (http://www.livecrunch.com/)

Focus: Social Networking, Plurk, Twitter
Recent Highlight: Things To Do Before WWDC 2008
RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/livecrunch/technology

3) Broadcasting Brain (http://broadcasting-brain.com/)

Focus: Social Media, Podcasting, FriendFeed
Recent Highlight: Punching above your weight with social media
RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BroadcastingBrain

4) Neoformix (http://www.neoformix.com/)

Focus: Statistics, Data, Twitter
Recent Highlight: Top Twitter Users StreamGraph
RSS Feed: http://www.neoformix.com/index.xml

5) Michael Fruchter (http://michaelfruchter.com)

Focus: RSS, FriendFeed, Social Media, Toluu
Recent Highlight:
Cleaning up my Google reader with the help of Toluu.
RSS Feed: http://michaelfruchter.com/blog/feed/

As mentioned last month, I'm always looking for more new bloggers and interesting voices to be added to my Google Reader feeds. You can get an early tip as to new bloggers I'm following and sharing by signing up for Toluu, following me on FriendFeed, or following my Google Reader shared links blog. If you think there are more I should check out, please leave them in the comments.

TweetSmart Offers Real-Time Twitter-Powered Group Link Blog

When Twitter users aren't sending 140-character updates for miniature conversations, or when they're not complaining about the service's lack of uptime, very often they're sharing links, be it items they've found interesting, or hyping their own blog posts.

A new service called TweetSmart is looking to harness these links, not in aggregate, in an attempt to rank popular items as ReadBurner, RSSMeme, AlphaTwitter, Feedheads and LinkRiver do, but instead, to act as a real-time link blog aimed to get an instant snapshot of the best content the Web has to offer.

TweetSmart is essentially an extension of Twitter's direct message service, or DMs, with some interesting wrinkles thrown in. TweetSmart users are encouraged to send links to the TweetSmart Twitter account, and to use one of 11 categories provided by the site, ranging from mortgage and real estate to Web, technology and social media. Depending on the category you choose, your link will be properly tagged, featuring the icon of the category you selected.

To use the service, all you need to do is follow the user "twsm" via Twitter, and alert the TweetSmart crew you want to participate. If they follow you back, you're given access to the site.


The TweetSmart Link Blog in Action
To send links to the shared TweetSmart feed, use the format:

"d twsm category type your message here"

If I were to share a link from ReadWriteWeb, I might type into my Twitter box:

"d twsm web Read Write Web asks: How Many Friends is Too Many?http://tinyurl.com/6e98dz"

So long as I stay in the 140-character window, and appropriately select one of the TweetSmart categories, my item will be included.

Unlike my Google Reader shared items link blog, which only displays those items I've personally liked, TweetSmart aggregates all links pushed through, in chronological order, from newest to oldest. Unsurprisingly, so far, the site has been overweighted with Social Media links, but that can change depending on the active users, of course.

There are three developers behind TweetSmart (See: About Us - TweetSmart), including Morgan Brown, Paulo and Steve. As with other social link sharing sites, I can see this being valuable for smaller communities, and less valuable as the service gets overcrowded. If TweetSmart wants to graduate from interesting novelty to actual service, it'd be best to create something of a friends feature, where you can follow specific users, or filters to only show specific categories. Without having their product roadmap in front of me, I can't tell you what they will or won't do, but it looks clear to me that those would be some first steps.

To check out TweetSmart, head to www.tweetsmart.com, and don't forget to add "twsm" on Twitter. The team's official blog can be found here.

I Am a Google Reader Shared Links Ninja

On March 3rd of 2007, I made a list of 10 suggestions to the Google Reader team on how they could make the world's most popular feed reader even better. The tenth option was a simple one, which I titled as "Customization Everywhere", where I said "there's zero options to customize a shared link blog." As of today, only 14 months later, we now have the first user customizable options to make the shared items page a little more fancy. And today, I can profess myself a ninja.

Alongside the so far much-criticized announcement that you can append notes to Google Reader shared items, you can also choose from four artistic styles on the shared items page, including the Default, as boring as it sounds, Ice Cream, Sea, and ... Ninjas.

Seeing how episode 7 of the Elite Tech News podcast was titled "Explanatory Ninjas", it makes sense that at least for today, I would use the theme of "Ninja".

(See my Ninja-Themed Shared Items Blog)

By selecting Ninja, all that's really added is a cute banner at the top of my shared items page, showing four ninjas and their various weapons. It's not necessarily a status symbol, showing my link sharing prowess or skills with the black arts. The theme is cute, but of course, non-functional. I still can't change the color of the background, or the fonts, or go "all MySpace" with the page, so I guess that's good. But it's a start.

Of note: I was lucky enough to meet and talk with Chris Wetherell of the Google Reader team last Thursday for lunch. We didn't talk about this feature, but I remain very positive on the direction and focus the Google Reader team has going forward. It's a small team, but very dedicated.

Five Social Media Bloggers to Watch This May

In March, we highlighted 5 Blog Candidates for Tomorrow's Techmeme Leaderboard. In April, I suggested Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren't. Since then, a number of these lesser-known bloggers have seen their posts gain higher visibility, including hitting the aforementioned Techmeme, and gaining both RSS subscribers and repeat visitors. (See: SheGeeks Reaches New Heights and When Your Blog Is LouisGrayCrunched... as good examples)

With the new month upon us, I'm thinking we could make posts of this sort a regular feature. Over the last 30 days, I continue to be impressed by the solid writings of many bloggers who, to date, have been below the radar. Here are five who cover the social media space who've I've enjoyed getting to see of late:

1) Colin Walker (colinwalker.me.uk)

Focus: Social Media, Blogging and the Internet
Recent Highlight: Why do we need social media role models?
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

2) Regular Geek (regulargeek.com)

Focus: Programming, Social Media and the Internet
Recent Highlight: Comment Where You Want, Just Let Me Know About It
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

3) Chris Miller / The Social Networker (thesocialnetworker.com)

Focus: Virtual Gratification Syndrome, Twitter, Data Portability
Recent Highlight: Tweeting In the Bathroom - the New Social Crime
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

4) Julian Baldwin / Notes, Thoughts, Ideas and Responses (julianbaldwin.com)

Focus: Social Media, Twitter
Recent Highlight:
Killing Many Birds With One Boulder, How and When Social Media Can Go Mainstream
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

5) Alexander van Elsas (vanelsas.wordpress.com)

Focus: New Media, Technology, Social Behavior
Recent Highlight: The Tech Elite Creates Its Own Web 2.0 Bubble
RSS Feed: Subscribe Now

I'm always looking for more new bloggers and interesting voices to be added to my Google Reader feeds. You can get an early tip as to new bloggers I'm following and sharing by signing up for Toluu, following me on FriendFeed, or following my Google Reader shared links blog. If you think there are more I should check out, please leave them in the comments.

State of the Blog: April 2008 Recap

April 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,304

Total stories published in April: 38
(About 1.3 per day, up from 1.2 in March)

Total stories in April with comments: 34
(89% of all stories, up from 29 and 76% in March)

Total comments on April posts: 364 (95 on Disqus)
(About 9.6 per post, 10.7 per commented post)


April statistics from SiteMeter, with that service's numbers.
(Why show real data? See blog post)
Technorati Authority Ranking: 571 (up 200)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 1,637 subscribers (up 810)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 42 subscribers (up 9)
MyBlogLog Members: 203 (up 110)

Twitter Followers: 801 (Up 488)
FriendFeed Followers: 990 (Up 472)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12 (via SiteMeter): 1st overall, by 25%.

Top Five Most Visited April Stories (According to Analog)

1. Should Fractured Feed Reader Comments Raise Blog Owners' Ire?
2. Most Bloggers Don't Deserve Any Ad Revenue
3. FriendFeedMachine Debuts New Approach to FriendFeed
4. What's Your Twitter Noise Ratio?
5. Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren't

Others receiving votes: TechMeme Leaderboard's Top Ten: Six Months In, My Social Media Consumption Workflow, Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy, Fav.or.it Beta Effort is Not My Favorite. Not Even Close., FriendFeed's Increased Filtering Clears Deck of Unwanted Junk, and Alpha Twitter Ranks Most Popular Shared Links from Twitter...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. Elite Bloggers Joining FriendFeed In Droves
2. Toluu Offers Gateway to Friends' RSS Feeds, Recommends New Ones
3. LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel
4. Our Unborn Kids Will Wear Your Web 2.0 Schwag
5. ReadBurner Lights Up In Simmer Mode

While April again saw personal records fall for blog traffic, it's clear the real growth and engagement is found in Web services, external commenting and linking. Overall traffic grew 25% from March, measured in unique visitors, and individual days saw spikes that rivaled a month's traffic for me less than a year ago. Yet it's activity at FriendFeed, Twitter and Disqus that is really growing. Technorati and MyBlogLog rankings also spiked dramatically in April.

One word of caution, lest it be believed I've started this series to highlight the higher awareness achieved in recent months, be assured that's not the case. I started doing monthly summaries after August of 2007, when I had 103 RSS subscribers, and 40 comments in the month. Hopefully you find these interesting or useful.

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

More Noise About Twitter Noise

My Friday post on trying to determine a way to measure Twitter users, by using available metrics, including total updates and total followers, turned out to be a more visible and conversational than I had anticipated. While some objected to the ratio, and others objected to the analysis, it has been interesting to watch the continued discussion in recent days, as additional metrics for measurement have debuted, with the same objective in mind, essentially trying to find if you're using Twitter in the way your audience wants you to.

Some highlights from around the Web, which I tracked on Del.icio.us:

BroadStuff: Aspects of Ratios - Noises, Signals and Friendliness

"...I'm not sure it measures signal to noise per se as it has no time basis inbuilt, and looks at relatives output rather than the relative input I experience..."

Sweet!: Talking loudly on Twitter

"...I guess I take offense (in a very lightly term) to the statement that there are more “noisy” people who have “… a lot more ‘updates’ than actual ‘followers."

Stowe Boyd: The Twitter Conversational Index And The Twitter Noise Ratio

"Boyd's Twitter Conversational Index = (number of tweets / number of replies made by followers)"

Dave Winer: Twitter Spewage among Dave Winer's contacts

"... these numbers give me new respect for Twitter. Each twit you post has to be delivered in some fashion to everyone who follows you. That's a lot of delivering!"

Stephanie Booth: Twitter Metrics: Let’s Remain Scientific, Please!

DCortesi: Twitter Reputation Statistics

"... people are trying to figure out how best to use Twitter given its recent surge in popularity and accompanying spaminess."

Commetrics: SocioTwitting - developing metrics for Twitter volume vs. Twitter influence

"... what is needed is a set of statistical indicators that give us a better approximation of reality."

Sarah In Tampa: Another Way to Classify Twitter Users

"... this represents a completely different way to categorize users - some of our megaphones become healthy and some of our listeners become twittercasters."

Interestingly enough, as casually as I put together the "Twitter Noise" ratio, many people on Twitter went out and measured their number, even if they felt the methodology was flawed. And amazingly to me, Twitter Portugal, a Twitter-related site for Portuguese users, even embedded both the "Twitter Noise" ratio and Dave Winer's "Spewage" ratio into user profiles, to give potential followers an expectation for what they were getting into. You can see some of those profiles here: BrunoFigueiredo, Publico, and Phantas. I don't know if that's a statistic I would want sitting on my profile, but the site's already jumped ahead and done it.

Also very interesting is a site called Twitter Quotient, which has multiple measurements, with even harsher descriptions than I had intended. Pretty wild. Who knew the landmine I was stepping on Friday?

And in case you were curious, my Twitter Noise ratio dropped from .49 on Friday to .45 today. Sounds like I need to Tweet more!

Alpha Twitter Ranks Most Popular Shared Links from Twitter

Much like ReadBurner, Feedheads and RSSMeme have set about tabulating the most popular shared items in Google Reader, and letting users know who shared what, a new service called Alpha Twitter is aiming to offer the same service to Twitter users, showing what the most popular "Tweeted" items are today, yesterday, this week, or even all time.

The developer, Luis Figueiredo, (LouMcAfee on Twitter), inspired by a number of other social link sharing services to gain the Web by storm this year, is aiming to fill a hole, helping us gain insight into the thoughts of Twitter Nation.


Today's top shared links on Twitter (Alpha Twitter)
As he wrote me in an e-mail today:

"Services like FriendFeed are indeed very useful and i've always would like to see a service that would display the popular links that are being shared by Twitter users. Such a service didn't exist and there was nothing like it out there, so I've decided to create my own."

The service, Alpha Twitter, is drop-dead simple to use, and to view. But what it lacks in style, it makes up for in simplicity. As with ReadBurner and other sites, it simply adds up how often URLs are shared, and aggregates the data over a 24-hour period. Those with the most shares go to the top. You can even click through the number of shares and see just who "tweeted" the item, and when they did it, which gives you an idea who has the fastest thumbs out there. And just a few days in, the service has already indexed more than a quarter-million Twitter links. It even got a quick mention from Michael Arrington on TechCrunch in a story about TwitLinks.

Figueiredo said Alpha Twitter simply parses all Twitter messages in the public time line, so pages are updated in real-time. The engine parses all Twitter messages in the timeline, searching for the string of "http://" and qualifying messages as containing links. And the service is even smart enough to decipher URL shortening services, including TinyURL. All the URLs and user names of who shared the links are then stored in a database.

The service, which is extremely new, is in the late alpha stage now, and is entering beta this week, Figueiredo says. But it already works now. And we can avoid any concerns about yet another service trying to make money off your content. Luis isn't in it for a buck, but instead says he is providing the site as a service to the community. You can check it out at www.alphatwitter.com or check out his blog at alphatwitter.com/blog.

Analyzing LouisGray.com's Links, Topics, Timing and Comments

This special feature comes courtesy of Yuvi Panda, a 17-year-old stats whiz, who has made a real name for himself by taking a look at some of the biggest sites around the Web, and seeing their patterns or statistics. He did me a great favor by seeing if I follow my own guidance as to linking externally, helped show what times of day I post, and which days, what are my most common topics, or which ones gain traction with readers of louisgray.com.

You should also check out his previous coverage of Engadget, Digg, and Scoble's Link Blog.

This summary was completed by Yuvi in late-March, and any edits here on my end are only grammatical in nature, or for layout. Enjoy!
-- Louis Gray

---

Size

LouisGray.com is not exactly small nor new, running for 802 days or approximately 2 years and 2 months (9 Jan 06 to 21 Mar 08), producing a total of 1,256 posts at an average of 1.5 posts a day. The posts too, were not exactly small, averaging 337 words per post (compared to Scoble’s 192 words a post). So Louis Gray is more words and less linkouts (i.e. posting just for the sake of linking).

Growth
Looking at the posting rate per day graph:


No post binges, no long breaks: Just consistent posting, with consistent short breaks between posts. The trendline is almost flat.

Now looking at the growth of the length of posts:

The only-slightly-sloping-upwards trend line shows that the average post’s length is slightly increasing, up from 200 words per post when the blog was started to 337 per post now. Also, the increase in the number of skyscrapers from October 2007 suggests increase in “binges”, i.e. Posts which are much longer than average.

Conclusion: Blog is neither growing too fast, nor slowing down: Just as steady as it was in the beginning, and perhaps just a tad longer.

Links
There were a total of 6,629 links in the 1,256 posts, at an average of 5.2 links per post. At face value, that is a lot of linking: Engadget averaged only 4 links per post. But, digging deeper, there is only one link per 63 words, so LouisGray.com is more content and less linkouts (i.e. More like Wikipedia (content) than Digg (links)).

Diversity
The 6,629 links are distributed among 892 different sites, at an average of 7.4 links per site (note that all of wordpress.com and blogspot.com is included as a single site). Here’s the list of the top ten most linked to domains:

Apple isn’t a surprise, since the Blog’s subtitle mentions that, among others, the Blog is for Mac Freaks :) Links to FeedBurner.com are almost exclusively from the “State of the Blog” type posts that seem to be posted every month(automated, I guess). Athleticsnation.com is natural, since Louis Gray also contributes some stories there. Scoble and TechCrunch seem to feature in almost every blogger’s top 10 list, for obvious reasons (A Listers, Newsmongers, widely popular, etc). Amazon.com’s 98 links contain mostly of book referrals :) Blogspot.com here is the aggregate of all links to all blogger blogs (mainly Google Blogs, and “Change Microsoft” Blogs like minimsft and msftextrememakeover). Louis’s interest in FriendFeed is extremely apparent here, as the comparatively newer service finds it’s way into the Top 10 (while the list of A Listers on FriendFeed might be a cause for this spike, it still does show that he’s extremely interested in FriendFeed). Google.com links are mostly to Google Reader (shared items dominate), along with some to Google Finance and Searches using the Market Symbols (That too, primarily for AAPL)

FriendFeed
FriendFeed is a peculiar case. Here’s the chart showing outgoing links to FriendFeed:


That large skyscraper there is the “List of Celebs on FriendFeed post”. Here’s another chart comparing FriendFeed vs Twitter:


You have more posts linking to Twitter, but that single, post skewed it towards FriendFeed.

Self-Linking:
I started the above list at Rank 1. I lied, because I wanted to point out the Amazon Book referrals :) In reality, the most linked to site is LouisGray.com itself, accounting for 1,053 of the 6,629 links, or 16% of all links!

Here’s a comparative chart:


One site has 16% of the links, 8 sites have 23% of the links, 81 sites have 39% of the links, and 792 sites have 22% of the links. Does this say anything at all? This says that there’s a focus to the blog. Can you think of Scobleizer.com’s focus? I certainly can’t. But, with LouisGray.com, I can say with some amount of confidence that the focus is on Apple, Google and of-late FriendFeed.

Conclusion: Focused Linking. More Content than Links.

Linking
Here’s the chart showing the number of links going out from your site per day:


Again, from the trendline, you are linking more now than you were previously.

Tags
Blogger calls Tags Labels. Here is a chart showing the top 20 labels used:


So, I’ll call LouisGray a Technology-Sports-Apple-Blogging-Google-ANticsComics-Baseball-Finance-TV freak :)

A total of 262 tags were used, at an average of almost 5 tags a post.

Here’s a chart showing number of Comments to the posts which carried that Tag. Note that this might be a bit skewed since Comments were on only after Feb 2007

You write the most about Technology, and that gets the largest amount of comments. But, Sports is the second most applied Tag, but it doesn’t even feature in the Top 20 here! Also, Apple and Google have kinda switched places between the two stats, with Google getting considerably more comments than Apple. FriendFeed does great here too :)

In short, one thing that you seem to like writing about but people don’t really pay too much attention to is sports.

Posting Habits
I have three graphs, and a conclusion here:





You don’t have any specific posting habits (besides the regularity pointed out earlier): You just post whenever you want to. The third chart has an interesting bit of information: All your posts have a very consistent size, regardless of the day on which they were posted. So, you are pretty consistent in your post size as well, and not just on your posting frequency. And, no out-of-the-ordinary, specific habits (Like Engadget’s less-posts-on-Friday thing).

Hourly

Posting by the Hour



From the first graph: You post more in the evenings, after 6, and in the morning, at 7. Also, the spikes in the second graph at the “even minutes” (i.e. 00, 15, 30, 45) show that most, if not all of your posts have a preset time at which you tell blogger to publish them. So, your workflow is more like write-save-set-time-for-publish than write-save-publish. Even the smaller spikes come at “even minutes”(i.e. 10, 20, 25, 35, 40, 50, 55).

Comments
Comments were on only from Feb 2007, so the usefulness of Comment data is a bit limited.

Here’s the Charts Showing Comments per day from Feb 07:



As you can see from the black trendline, yes, the number of comments is increasing, and you do get some days with way higher than normal comment counts (those few skyscrapers), but overall, you don’t really get a huge amount of comments (a la Scoble or TechCrunch).

Conclusion
Analysis of LouisGray is complete here. It’s not as complete as I would have liked it to be: The absence of comments early on was a major factor, since comments are a good indicator of attention paid to that post.

I appreciate Yuvi's taking the time to go through my blog and teach me a few things about how often I link out, where I'm linking, and what topics are gaining your interest. So... given the above, are we on the right track? What should we be talking more about or less about? Sounds like you don't like sports!
- Louis

Shyftr Puts Favorite Blog Posts "In Your Pocket"

Social RSS feed reader Shyftr added an interesting feature this week, which, like Google Reader's shared items, lets you choose your favorite posts from your subscribed feeds, and create a mini link blog of sorts.

Shyftr calls their version a "Pocket Blog", and like Google Reader, you can take the new RSS feed from your Pocket Blog and invite others to subscribe, making you a human blog filter, featuring not just the posts you put in your pocket, but taking steps beyond Google Reader, featuring other friends' Pocket Blogs, and customization of the look and feel, something Google's refused to do, even though I asked (politely) way back in March of 2007.


You can find my Shyftr Pocket Blog here


As mentioned in my initial coverage of Shyftr two weeks ago, the new service enables friends and peers to make comments on RSS feeds, highlighting both the most commented items, and the most popular subscribed feeds. As with other online feed readers, you can add new feeds and view stories within your Web browser.

Now, with this new addition, not only do you see how many comments are on a story, but there are buttons for "Quick Pocket", adding a story to your pocket, and also "Suggest to a Friend", which lets you forward a feed to another user or any e-mail address. You can see my Pocket Blog in the above screenshot. Interestingly, you aren't bound to an item's title as the author intended, but can title it as you wish.


By hitting "Quick Pocket", you are prompted to title the article, and then are notified, via an alert, that this has completed. It's not as quick as Google Reader's one-click option, but just as effective. You're also not bound by only the items in your own feeds. If you look at a friend's feed list, you can even "Pick Pocket" and add one of their items to your Pocket Blog. (See the Shyftr blog for more.)

The advent of Shyftr's Pocket Blog again brings up the issue of link blog portability I raised in January. While today, Google Reader's shared items are the most popular link blogs, no doubt spurred on by Feedheads, RSSMeme and ReadBurner, those who want to switch RSS readers may have to abandon their shared feeds. In a perfect world, I would be able to pick up from one service, move to another and share to a common space. Whether intentional or not, Google Reader's shared link blogs have become a key asset keeping users on board. Maybe Shyftr's Pocket Blog can do the same for them.

UPDATED: Elite Bloggers Joining FriendFeed In Droves

Update 2: Given how this is now seen as a reference point for the hot bloggers on FriendFeed, we're going to try and keep it updated. Added in this round includes folks like Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, Tris Hussey, Chris Pirillo and others...

Also See: Stephanie Booth of Climb to the Stars: FriendFeed Appeals to Women, Too!.

New adds are marked as *NEW*.

Update 1: Welcome visitors from TechMeme, Susan Mernit's Blog, Mark Evans, Scobleizer and The Last Podcast! I've added links for Jeremy Toeman, Susan Mernit, and Jeremiah Owyang.

---

Although it hasn't even been a month since FriendFeed opened up to the masses, and announced Series A financing of $5 million, momentum is definitely on the company's side. Garnering incredible media and blog coverage, FriendFeed has also been a magnet for a significant number of top tier "name brand" bloggers. And while not every one of these A-Listers is using the site to its fullest, their information is there for subscribing, letting you follow their daily Web activity.

I've taken the first step in capturing some of the most recognizable names out there in the blogosphere who have joined FriendFeed. Is it complete? By no means, and of course, making this "elite" list is subjective. So please, if you should be included here, or you know somebody on FriendFeed who should be here, please let me know, and I can update this list. Of course, while I'm not elite in any way, you can always find me on FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/louisgray.

Adam Ostrow / Mashable
http://friendfeed.com/adamostrow

Allen Stern / Center Networks *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/allenstern

Andrew Chen / Futuristic Play
http://friendfeed.com/andrewc

Andy Beard / Niche Marketing
http://friendfeed.com/andybeard

Ben MetCalfe / Dot Ben
http://friendfeed.com/dotben

Brian Solis / Bub.blicio.us
http://friendfeed.com/briansolis

Chris Brogan / ChrisBrogan.com
http://friendfeed.com/chrisbrogan

Chris Pirillo / Chris.Pirillo.com *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/l0ckergn0me

Corvida / SheGeeks
http://friendfeed.com/corvida

Dan Farber / ZDNet Between The Lines
http://friendfeed.com/dbfarber

Dave Winer / Scripting.com
http://friendfeed.com/davew

David Sifry / Sifry's Alerts
http://friendfeed.com/dsifry

Don MacAskill / SmugBlog *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/donmacaskill

Dosh Dosh (Maki) / DoshDosh.com *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/doshdosh

EngTech / Internet Duct Tape
http://friendfeed.com/engtech

Eric Eldon / VentureBeat
http://friendfeed.com/eldon

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch
http://friendfeed.com/erick

Fred Oliveira / WeBreakStuff *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/fredoliveira

Fred Wilson / A VC
http://friendfeed.com/fredwilson

Frederic Lardinois / The Last Podcast
http://friendfeed.com/frederic

Gabe Rivera / TechMeme
http://friendfeed.com/gaberivera

Ian Kennedy / MyBlogLog
http://friendfeed.com/iankennedy

Ionut / Google Operating System
http://friendfeed.com/onu

Jason Kaneshiro / Webomatica
http://friendfeed.com/webomatica

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/jeffjarvis

Jeremiah Owyang / Web Strategist
http://friendfeed.com/jowyang

Jeremy Toeman / Live Digitally
http://friendfeed.com/bigtoe

Jeremy Zawodny / JeremyZawodny.com
http://friendfeed.com/jzawodn

Josh Quittner / Fortune Magazine
http://friendfeed.com/jquit

Kent Newsome / Newsome.org
http://friendfeed.com/kent

Kevin Rose / Digg
http://friendfeed.com/kevinrose

Kristen Nicole / Mashable *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/kristennicole

Leo Laporte / Twit.TV *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/leolaporte

Liz Gannes / GigaOm
http://friendfeed.com/lizgannes

Loic LeMeur / LoicLemeur.com
http://friendfeed.com/loic

Mark Hopkins / Mashable
http://friendfeed.com/rizzn

Mark Krynsky / Lifestream Blog *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/krynsky

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb
http://friendfeed.com/marshallk

Mathew Ingram / Mathew Ingram.com
http://friendfeed.com/mathewingram

MG Siegler / ParisLemon
http://friendfeed.com/parislemon

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch
http://friendfeed.com/techcrunch

Muhammad Saleem / muhammadsaleem.com
http://friendfeed.com/msaleem

Nicole Simon / Cruel to be Kind *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/nicolesimon

Paul Kedrosky / Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/pkedrosky

Pete Cashmore / Mashable
http://friendfeed.com/petecashmore

Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped
http://friendfeed.com/philipp

Rafe Needleman / WebWare
http://friendfeed.com/rafe

Rex Hammock / RexBlog.com
http://friendfeed.com/rexhammock

Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb
http://friendfeed.com/ricmac

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer.com
http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer

Scott Beale / The Laughing Squid
http://friendfeed.com/laughingsquid

Stephanie Booth / Climb to the Stars *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/sbooth

Steve Rubel / MicroPersuasion
http://friendfeed.com/steverubel

Steven Hodson / WinExtra
http://friendfeed.com/stevenhodson

Susan Mernit / Susan Mernit's Blog
http://friendfeed.com/smernit

Tamar Weinberg / Techipedia *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/tamar

Thomas Hawk / Thomas Hawk's Digital Collection *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/thomashawk

Tom Foremski / Silicon Valley Watcher
http://friendfeed.com/tomforemski

Tony Hung / Deep Jive Interests
http://friendfeed.com/tonyhung

Tris Hussey / Maple Leaf 2.0 *NEW*
http://friendfeed.com/trishussey

I keep hearing how FriendFeed might be under attack from new services like SocialThing, or that there are too many lifestreaming options out there. But if the above list is any indication, FriendFeed doesn't just have the very best feature set out there, but it also has the very best people out there, as those bloggers who know good Web services when they see them come in droves. If you're not on FriendFeed yet, you should be. And if you're on FriendFeed, be sure you add a good number of these folks.

5 Blog Candidates for Tomorrow's TechMeme Leaderboard

We all know today's A-List by heart: TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, Scoble, blah blah blah... but there are many other bloggers I've found who are either delivering consistent strong stories with real focus, or have the occasional gem, who I believe with time, should be the leaders of tomorrow. Below are five who come to mind, who I think could be major players in future iterations of the TechMeme Leaderboard. If you have some you think I'm missing, and I know there's no way I have them all nailed, please let me know in the comments.

1. SheGeeks (shegeeks.net)

Corvida has until lately been a more prolific Twitterer than a blogger. But she's got a great writing style, enthusiasm and energy, not to mention a fantastic site name and look. In the last week alone, Corvida has touched on the debut of Socialthing!, reviewed FriendFeed, provided her view on Twitter projects and Google2Go. I hope she chooses to keep up the pace, and with some momentum behind her, I swear we'll be seeing a lot of Corvida in the future.

Subscribe to SheGeeks using RSS

2. Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen (andrewchen.typepad.com)

Andrew to date has been extremely focused on Facebook applications and trends, and the nuances of social network or social media. Having already attracted a few thousand RSS subscribers, largely on on the back of a major endorsement by Robert Scoble in January, which sent his subscription base from the 1,000 range to around 2,500. Sticking with development in this new age of application platforms will show Andrew's success to not be a fluke. Andrew can also be lauded for not spitting out a multitude of short posts. Nearly every item is well researched and full of detail.

Subscribe to Andrew Chen using RSS

3. Charles Hudson (www.charleshudson.net)

Blogging since 2003, Charles is no newcomer to the world of tech blogging. But Charles, like Corvida and Andrew, isn't in the race for quantity - instead focused on being clear direct, with comments on FriendFeed's similarities with the Facebook news feed, how Microsoft is missing the boat in competing with Google Apps, and adding his two cents on this weekend's meme around what it takes to be a technology workaholic trying to make headway at a startup.

Subscribe to Charles Hudson using RSS

4. Seek Ground (seeknock.blogs.com/seek)

Though relatively anonymous, "Seek" offers a strong signal to noise ratio, and the author is among the most intriguing in terms of how they opt to consume and report news. While today, Seek argues many folks are trying to make content to gain ad revenue, without thinking of consumers, it was just Saturday when Seek caught my attention for deleting all their Google Reader feeds and starting over - just like when they erased their blog and restarted about a year ago. Regardless of the change, SeekGround is an avid consumer of link blogs, and link aggregators, including Feedheads, LinkRiver and Twitter.

Subscribe to SeekGround using RSS

5. Unraveling Obfuscation (obfuscation.wordpress.com)

Todd McKinney, the author of Unraveling Obfuscation, doesn't post as often as some of us do, especially those on the TechMeme leaderboard, but when on a roll, Todd can write with the best of them. In January and February, you could see comments on the engagement of Google Reader RSS subscribers, whether or not Network Solutions and Microsoft could be trusted, or how popular services are approaching the issues that come with spiraling user counts utilizing technology.

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10 Suggestions for Google Reader, One Year Later

On March 3rd of last year, I posted one of the more active and popular posts in louisgray.com's history, offering my thoughts on where I hoped Google Reader would take the service. In a simple "10 suggestions" format, I listed some ideas that were small enhancements, and others, more broad. Now that we've had just over a year go by, I thought it'd be interesting to check back in with Google Reader and see what's changed. How many of the 10 did they hit, and if they didn't get it, who did?

In my opinion, you'll see that due to Google Reader's not filling all the gaps I laid out a year ago, a cottage industry of RSS readers and link aggregators has emerged - great for the Web, not always so great for Google.

1. "More Like This" Suggestions

I asked Google to recommend feeds based on those I subscribed to.

Google added a broad "Suggestions" feature, based on all my feeds in aggregate. They haven't implemented this feature on a feed by feed basis, as in my example: "Others who subscribed to Jeremy Zawodny also subscribed to Don Dodge or Robert Scoble.", but they do get partial credit here.

Who did implement something like this the way I asked? Nobody, really. AssetBar claimed to have solved this in their initial product description, but I haven't yet seen it. NewsGator, Shyftr, Fav.or.it, also don't do it, as far as I can tell. Neither does RSSMeme, although the service does try to find similar posts, and FriendFeed offers recommended user subscriptions.

(Of interest, I'm beta testing one solution that does exactly this. More on that soon.)

2. Eliminate Duplicate Feed Items

Nobody likes getting the same feed item over and over. Over the year, Google has done a lot of work here to have this fixed. There are still issues with seeing duplicate items if you have subscribed to a friend's shared items feed, or if you've subscribed to keywords via Google News, but largely, this is not as big an issue in 2008 as it was in 2007.

Who else fixed the duplicate items issue? Shyftr's implementation here is flawless. AssetBar also does a fantastic job showing just one item, though if I look at an item I've already viewed, through a friend's shared link list, it doesn't always know I've already seen it. The issue of duplicate items continues to be a major point of discussion on FriendFeed and elsewhere.

3. Add Negative Keywords

For some folks, I'd like the option to get almost all their posts, except when they talk about politics (Dave Winer), fatblogging (Jason Calacanis), or if they just post a series of del.icio.us links (Steve Rubel and Chris Brogan come to mind).

Google hasn't done anything here. But Ionut at Google Operating System highlighted a new Greasemonkey script that works in FireFox to approach this by highlighting posts with keywords you select and grays out those you would like to exclude (See the post: Filters for Google Reader).

Who does do this right? AssetBar again claimed to when introducing their product, but if it's integrated, I haven't seen it.

4. Share Items Without Subscriptions

I'd like to add items to my shared link items feed without subscribing.

While Google didn't do anything about this, I discussed a work-around back in January.

Who does this right? Just about all the link aggregators, including LinkRiver, AssetBar and FriendFeed let you share items without subscriptions. ReadBurner had implemented this as well before Alexander Marktl had to take the site down.

5. Aggregate Reader Statistics

I wanted to know the most frequently read blogs, and what were the most shared items that day.

Google Reader recently added a "Details" item, showing how many Google Reader users were subscribed to a specific blog, but they're nowhere on showing rankings or seeing the most popular shared items in a single day.

Who does this now? As discussed a ton here in 2008, the shared items space took off like a rocket. FeedHeads had done a fantastic job and pioneered this space, on FaceBook, while ReadBurner, RSSMeme, Shared Reader, and LinkRiver all offer details on most popular shared items. Amusingly, in an attempt to discover the most popular items by Google Reader, everybody from Scoble to TechCrunch was fighting to add the data they did have by hand.

6. Addition of Search

At the time, Google Reader was missing core Google functionality - search!

The Google Reader team solved this one in a big way back in September. Nice job.

Who else offers search through feeds? LinkRiver, AssetBar, RSSMeme, and Shyftr all do this very well. So far, Fav.or.it does not, and FriendFeed I'm sure will, but hasn't gotten there yet.

7. Create a Link Blogs Directory

I wanted to see a directory of Google Reader link blogs both ranked by name and by interest.

Google Reader, so far, has largely neglected the power and discovery of link blogs, so this is nowhere.

Who does do this? RSSMeme offers a directory of the most active link bloggers, based on total number of shared items, as did ReadBurner. AssetBar integrates shared link blogs and shows which ones are most read by individuals, but doesn't yet have aggregate data. Nobody has mastered a directory by name, by topic, or by subscriber count yet.

8. Further Integrate "Trends"

I wanted my trends data to be easily accessible from Google Reader.

Google Reader integrated Trends relatively quickly. It was an easy fix.

Who else does this? LinkRiver, as noted last night, features a page called "Attention" on who I share more often and what are the top keywords. FriendFeed offers a "Stats" page showing who I interact with the most, and who interacts with me. RSSMeme integrated global statistics, but not by user. And AssetBar shows all my stats on my profile, in aggregate.

9. Expand Individual Feed Statistics

I'd love to see stats by feed as to their schedule, and if things have changed.

Google Reader has shown basic statistics on how often a feed publishes. (i.e. loisgray.com publishes 10.7 stories per week) But beyond this, more data is missing.

Who else does this? RSSMeme offers the ability to see what the most popular shared items were, by source, which is very interesting, considering individual post popularity, but nobody that I'm aware of has tackled the expanded feed statistics set.

10. Customization Everywhere

Google Reader, unlike iGoogle or other portals, comes in one flavor. So does their link blog.

In the year since my initial post, Google added the ability to customize a small profile to include in my link blog, with links out to other sites, but with that exception, there remains no customization for my application interface or the shared items blog.

Who does do this? Not really anybody comes to mind. iGoogle, My Yahoo! and portal sites that have integrated RSS feeds enable a great deal of customization, but as far as the main application's interface is concerned, it's usually a take it or leave it strategy.

It can be seen that Google has made some strides toward my 10 suggestions. They integrated trends. They nailed Search. They added suggestions. They improved by reducing duplicates. But they dramatically fell short when it came to harnessing the power of link blogs, and this gap enabled more focused services to emerge to fill the hole - services which are now growing and becoming very interesting. The Reader team has also largely stayed quiet, making it uncertain as to whether we should look to them for innovation, or elsewhere. There's no question Google Reader is a fantastic application, one I use multiple times a day, and one I haven't yet seen eclipsed, even by the next generation readers, enough so to get me to switch. But if they get out-innovated, that time may eventually pass.

LinkRiver Enters Life Streaming Fray, Focused on Link Blogs

If 2007 was all about Facebook and Twitter, 2008 is shaping up to be all about link blogs, and sharing what you're consuming on the Web with friends. The newest service to enter the picture is an intriguing entry, LinkRiver, which harnesses your RSS streams from multiple services, including Google Reader shared items, Twitter, del.icio.us, Yahoo! Bookmarks and others, and posts them to a single "Stream". As your friends join the service, or you choose to subscribed to other LinkRiver users, these small streams become a "River" of shared links, hence the name.

Seeded with a number of high profile "who's who" members of the blogosphere, from Marc Andreessen, Mathew Ingram and Robert Scoble to Andrew Chen, Nick Bradbury and Jeremy Zawodny, the site's early beta stage gives an excellent window into a simplified river of links from you and your peers. And as the service is all about sharing what you're doing and what you're interested in, you can "share" any item that flows through your river, or even use a handy Javascript tool to share any page on the Web directly to your own stream.

The brains behind the new service is Adam Stiles, who first gained a following on the Web due to his work on NetCaptor from 1999 to 2004, where among many other innovations, he developed an alternative, tabbed, browser interface for Internet Explorer, well before Microsoft adopted them. Since then, Adam developed an anti-phishing solution, licensed to AOL, and sold to MarkMonitor in 2006, where he remains today.

The focus for LinkRiver, as he wrote me in an e-mail on Tuesday, is "to be laser-focused on links and link blogs, breaking down the many silos (del.icio.us, Google Reader, Ma.gnolia) to let anyone share anything with anyone regardless of which services they use."

LinkRiver users, after being granted beta access (sign up here), can add any number of services to their stream, so long as the services support RSS. In my trying out the service, I added my Google Reader shared items, my Del.icio.us bookmarks, the blog's RSS feed, StumbleUpon activity and Twitter. While LinkRiver so far doesn't offer the ease of adding differing services as FriendFeed does today, copying and pasting a URL from any feed you generate really isn't all that difficult.


Not only can you generate your own stream, but LinkRiver enables you to follow anybody you want to, like Twitter for link blogs. Your river will get more busy with the more active people you follow, just like it does if you add more friends to your FriendFeed. In my last few weeks of trying out LinkRiver, not only have I added on Silicon Valley notables like Steve Rubel, Jason Calacanis, and FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit, but fellow B-Listers MG Siegler and Frederic Lardinois. In fact, Adam was all too happy to show off the flexibility of his service by developing a "L33T Tech News River", highlighting all the shares from those authoring the "Elite Tech News" Reddit, which just crossed the 400 subscriber mark.

LinkRiver, at first glance, offers a clean, simple interface to sharing all relevant items in one place, and getting connected or following friends. The ability to "share" other shared items and calculate the total number of shares is unique to LinkRiver among life streaming sites, borrowing a page from other intriguing new services like ReadBurner. Also, with the ability to follow friends in this simple, river-like format, it trumps the folder-driven concept of Spokeo.


LinkRiver is launching without a vast array of interactive features, as FriendFeed has developed in its months of availability, but we can expect the service to continue to innovate. Comments to shared items are expected to be rolled out, dependent on user feedback, and you can already see the most popular items shared in the last day, week, month, or all-time.

If you would like to gain early access to LinkRiver, sign up to their beta program. If you were one of the link bloggers Adam first started with, you'll no doubt get near-instant access. If you would like to see my stream, you can start here: http://linkriver.com/louis.

Monday Mayhem and Linking Back

Real quick... it's likely posting will be erratic this week. Despite best intentions, sometimes real life gets in the way. But we'll be dropping in from time to time to catch up. In the event of low posting, the best way to follow what I'm doing, as always, is on FriendFeed.

Of interest, since I've been using Del.icio.us to track links back to louisgray.com, using the "coverage" tag, it's been fun to see the total number of individual links grow, sometimes from big sites, like TechCrunch and Mashable, to middle-sized sites, including Maple Leaf 2.0 and Internet Duct Tape and small ones, like MrOnTemp and Akkam’s Razor.

Some recent highlights with the tag of "coverage" in Del.icio.us:

MapleLeaf 2.0:
Twitter as the new email and killer app. Now is the time to grow it.
Akkam's Razor:
My Linkblog…
MrOnTemp:
Starling and AssetBar - comparative views on Twitter performance
Rojo Blog:
Free the Music; Demo 2008; Political Foreclosures
Madan's Blog:
Super Tuesday in Silicon Valley

We'll be back with more original content soon, but enjoy the links. I'm sure many of these sites have some great discussions on the world of tech you might find useful.

What If You Only Subscribed to Shared Item Feeds?

Last night, we discussed the importance of a well-kept shared link blog in Google Reader. Humans can still play an important role in filtering out the best of feeds from the rest, as smart folks can trump even the best written code in terms of determining humor, originality and insight.

The ease of creating and subscribing to link blogs in Google Reader has led to some actively searching out these link blogs, and instead of subscribing feed by feed, instead preferring to rely on the selections of others.

One blogger, with the nickname of "SeekGround", says he has subscribed to more than 300 individual shared item feeds, which he displays on his blog - an amazing number. I have to assume there are a number of commonly-subscribed feeds that would result in duplication, but SeekGround says he goes through them, primarily on his mobile phone, and shares those items he finds most useful.

Shockingly, despite having more than 300 individual feeds, it looks like his interests most overlap with me, of all people. In an insightful post, "Google Reader, Shared Items and Mobility", the blogger reveals that over the last 30 days, he's also shared 35 items from me, 19 from Frederic Lardinois of the Last Podcast, and 17 from Mike Reynolds, taking first, second and third, respectively.

Kindly, he writes, "I think that Louis Gray is making waves in the community lately and he may soon find himself considered part of the A-List rather than his self-stated position as a B-Lister."

I don't know about that... but it's fun to see SeekGround taking a new approach to consuming feeds, and finding so many shared items in common. While his blog is a relative unknown, with a Technorati Authority of "Zero", before tonight, I have to expect that would change. While some entrepreneurs are setting new bars in content creation, others are changing the world of content consumption.

Maybe, over time, there will be a big shift from those who are the content creators and filters, and those who are the consumers and readers. With Feedheads, Shared Reader, ReadBurner and RSSMeme out there now, Link Blogs are becoming a very big deal.

Also see:
Last Podcast: Shared Feeds, RSSmeme and Ecosystems
louisgray.com: How Soon Until People Demand Link Blog Portability?
louisgray.com: What I'm Reading and Sharing on Google Reader

My shared items link blog is here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/05763917848110205585

Scoble's Link Blog Slows to a Crawl

For the better part of 2007, Robert Scoble trumpeted his Google Reader shared items link blog as a potential alternative to TechMeme. As a subscriber to his link blog in my Google Reader, I could typically look forward to a dozen or more new stories each day from blogs I'd never heard of - leading me to a lot of great new sources, many of whom I added to my subscription list.

But then, almost coinciding with his leaving PodTech in mid-January, with sporadic interruptions just prior, the link blogging slowed to a mere crawl, in comparison to his previous activity. Scoble, a busy man, was not only working on starting up FastCompany TV, but was flying all over the world, to the World Economic Forum in Davos, back to the West Coast, and off again to Switzerland this week. And while he found time to stream video on Qik, post to Twitter, and occasionally blog, his link blog was comparatively a low priority.

On January 29th, via Twitter, I asked him about this:
He responded in kind:


My question to him had come after an 8-day gap in the link blog. On January 29th, he shared one item. On January 30, one more. On January 31st, he seemed to approach regular form, with eight links. February started off with a little rhythm as well, six on February 2nd, ten more on the 3rd, and four more on Monday. And again, a return to silence (just two days so far). You can also see Scoble's link blog is not among the leaders in shared items according to ReadBurner's rankings, where it no doubt once would have been.

How does that compare to previous months? Well, on January 15th, Scoble shared 21 items and 17 on the 14th. December 30th was 16 items. December 28th was 15 items. December 27th was 26 items.... and you get the idea. In fact, AideRSS reports Scoble shared 455 posts per month on average, with a total of 2,279 posts since Jul 24 of last year, when the service started counting. (You too can use AideRSS to count these up.)

Did the blogosphere all of a sudden get less interesting? Did Robert stop reading feeds altogether? Has Robert raised the standard for sharing items? Did subscribers complain about the frequency? Maybe it's a mixture of all these things. Maybe he's just reached a point where he's gotten too busy, or the new post-PodTech world keeps him further away from Google Reader than when he was at PodTech.

Regardless of the answer, I hope he soon finds the time to get back to his link blog. I know I've found it a very good resource, just as nearly 300 others have liked the Elite Reddit which some of us B-Listers are working on. There's something to be said about the world of tech news being filtered with real eyes instead of a machine.

Also see: Scoble's Link Blog Delivers An Influential 1 Percent

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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" .

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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."

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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."

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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."

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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".

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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."

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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."

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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)

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:

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#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.

---

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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!

Scoble's Link Blog Delivers An Influential 1 Percent

I covered most of my near year-end statistical data on Christmas Day, when I said a lot of my visitors in 2007 were not only coming from Google, but looking for information on Google. But there are still a few pebbles left to be uncovered. As I quickly looked at the year's statistics - through 5 p.m. today, a unique referral caught my eye.

Almost 1 percent of my visitors in 2007 came from Robert Scoble's link blog. In aggregate, after each of the Google properties, MySpace, BlogLines, and Feedburner, Scoble's link blog sent about 5,000 visitors in 2007, in little dribs and drabs, usually about one to two dozen visitors per item he chose to share in Google Reader. In all, there were 51 posts I made in 2007 that he shared, which delivered 10 or more unique visitors.


While the URL strings from Google Reader aren't pretty, they still work, as you can see in the quick screen grab above from my report from Analog.

It's always interesting to me to learn how we first find out about people, and find their blogs.

The way I first found Robert's blog? The infamous "Brrreeeport" experiment from early 2006.

As this blog was getting off the ground, I was peeking at Technorati, and this nonsensical word caught my eye as a common search term. After finding Robert's blog, it was off to the races for me. Clicking off to GigaOM and TechCrunch and eventually on to folks my own level was a serious rush, and I was dumbfounded I hadn't found it before. Somehow, I'd been so siloed as to not have the light bulb go on until early 2006.

You can see my first mentioning of this here in March 2006: Top Ten Sites for NextGen Tech Info

Others have told me they found my blog either through one of Scoble's posts, or from the link blog. I know it works. While I doubt I have the power to deliver people 1% of their yearly traffic from my link blog, that's one major reason I keep mine going. I want new people to learn what I'm reading, and find new sources for information. I read Scoble's Link Blog, and often open the links in a new window, and eventually find myself subscribing to their RSS feed in Google Reader. That's one of the major tenets of the new Web - sharing, following, and discovering.

So Robert, thanks for the 1%. And if you were one of the 1%, thanks for visiting. I hope you'll stay.

To subscribe to my link blog, start here.

Blogrunner Likes Me, TechMeme Hates Me

I've watched many a blogger follow the TechMeme feed, commenting on new, popular, stories as they happen, hoping to get captured as part of the ensuing "Discussion". There's not much mystery to it, and if you watch TechMeme for any amount of time, you can see who does it, versus who is actually adding new material.

I won't name names, as that's petty, but we have a good idea who they are, and so do they.

As I see this behavior, I have a natural tendency to actually avoid the more popular topics, so I'm not seen doing the same thing. In fact, had I not already talked ad nauseum about Google Reader and Apple TV, two of the most favored topics on this blog, I'd almost have skipped tonight's news on both. But, having written about both announcements, it's interesting to see that TechMeme's algorithm is keeping my comments out, and letting others in, while the New York Times' similar service, Blogrunner, found my post worth including.

Take a look at the below screen captures, taken around 11 p.m. Pacific tonight:

1. TechMeme's coverage of Google Reader's "Managing your shared items"


2. Blogrunner's coverage of Google Reader's "Managing your shared items"


In the first, I don't exist, whereas in the second, the post is prominent, though it will drop as new ones are added.

In June, we discussed, "What Should Drive TechMeme's Content?", as the powerful blog news aggregator is one of the very best of the Web, but often keeps people guessing and the non A-listers whining. Tonight's example, contrasting the two services, is quite interesting to see.

Google Dominates My 2007 Blog Statistics

In honor of Christmas, and wrapping up the end of the year, it's pretty easy to see that 2007 was a revolution for louisgray.com, as we worked to mature the blog from a self-focused journal to a resource for technology news, Web 2.0 insights and interaction with a focused community.

Using the Analog Web log analysis software, it's reported that more than 1.1 million Web pages were read, good for more than 3,000 per day, transferring more than 100 gigabytes of data.


We went from serving up nearly 25,000 pages in the month of January to more than 130,000 in the record-breaking month of October, which also served up 15 gigabytes of data.

But most interestingly, if we walk down the 12 most popular posts of the year, from January 1 through today, one name pops to the very top - Google. Take a look:

Rank	Blog Post	Page Views
1.	Soft-Core Porn, Sex Themes Power Google Video	10,400
2.	Google's Earth Day Logo Makes a Splash	6,700
3.	10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader	5,400
4.	Facebook Google Reader App Rebrands As Feedheads	3,200
5.	Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control	3,100
6.	The Biggest Blogs Aren't Really Blogs Any More	2,800
7.	The Apple TV Debate Is Upside Down	2,100
8.	Hype It Up: Ballhype Is Here to Change the Game	1,700
9.	Google Video Still Peddling Soft-Core Porn Smut	1,700
10.	Eight Reasons the Apple TV is Failing, and How It Can be Saved	1,700
11.	BitTorrent Bails Me Out on TiVo's Simpsons Miss	1,700
12.	I Have Seen the Future of Social RSS Feed Readers	1,600

And where did they all come from? Google, Google and Google, of course. Google Images, Google Reader and Google Search dominated referrals to the site this year, with BlogLines following behind. Additional bumps came from the occasional mention on Scobleizer.com, Digg.com and TechMeme.


I don't have "hard" expectations for this blog, but I would hope 2008 sees at least a doubling of total page views, and it'd be great to at least double RSS subscribers as well. As we're approaching 200 now on Feedburner, I think 500 would be a nice goal for Christmas next year. If you're not yet subscribed, get your e-mail on the list!

Also, for more end of year summaries, check out Pro Blogger's What was your most popular post in 2007? and Webomatica's 2007 summary.

What I'm Reading and Sharing on Google Reader

With 225 feeds filling my Google Reader every day, there have to be some good sources for news across the blogosphere. According to Google Reader trends, over the last 30 days I have read 16,711 items and shared 387 items. The total number of items and feeds is up only fractionally from my last update (in October), while I'm sharing about 30% more items on my link blog. Admittedly, I'm probably being more free with my sharing to get it noted on Friendfeed, which I'm now using voraciously.

But of these 225 feeds, which ones are getting on the Link Blog most frequently?

My Top 20 (and how many shares) for the last 30 days are as follows:

Silicon Alley Insider (27) * Scobleizer.com's Shared Items (27) * TechCrunch (24) * LouisGray.com (19) * WinExtra (17) * Mashable! (17) * Read/Write Web (13) * ParisLemon (11) * GigaOM (10) * Google Blogoscoped (10) * Scobleizer (10) * Google Operating System (8) * Engadget (8) * The Last Podcast (7) * Mathew Ingram (7) * Epicenter (7) * CenterNetworks (7) * Scripting News (6) * VentureBeat (6) * Fortune: Apple 2.0 (6)

Most of these you have seen me mention time and again, especially my fellow B-List Bloggers. But Silicon Alley Insider continues to put out good news, and most days you can see Henry Blodget and others delivering scoop after scoop or making comments on business and tech in a way some of us simply can't, whether we're too Silicon Valley focused or just not in the line of gossip. CenterNetworks and Read/Write Web are also very heavy in the signal vs. noise ratio. Also of note, as Robert's said a few times, his link blog is consistently delivering more relevant news than his own blog, as he's become an excellent filter for the many feeds he takes in on a daily basis. As for the rest, they're all worth visiting. I read every single story they publish every single day.

To get those I cherry pick, add my link blog to your Google Reader here.

State of the Blog: November 2007 Recap

November 2007 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,074

Total stories published in November: 34
(About 1.1 per day, down from 1.8 in October)

Total stories with comments: 16
(47% of all stories, down from 36 and 64% in October)

Total comments on November posts: 32
(About 1 per post, 2 per commented post)

Technorati Authority Ranking: 103 (up 2)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 181 subscribers (up 1)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 14 subscribers (No Change)
MyBlogLog Members: 35 (No Change)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12: 3rd (Behind October and April)

Blog Value Estimator: $58,147.62

Top Five Most Visited November Stories (According to Summary)

1. Being Mac. Being Mormon. It's Quite Similar.
2. Sending Me Spam Makes Us Friends, Right?
3. LinkedIn Adds Useless "News" Feature
4. Silicon Valley Media Notables Divide "Hot" from "Not"
5. eTrade's Losses Are Investors' Gain

Others receiving votes: Faithless Bombs Video: Amazing Music, Piercing Message, So... I Deleted Excel, The Run on eTrade Won't Have My Footsteps

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Summary)

1. Soft-Core Porn, Sex Themes Power Google Video
2. Eight Reasons the Apple TV is Failing, and How It Can be Saved
3. Watch Every Episode of The Simpsons Online - Free
4. eBay Locks Me Out for My Own Good
5. Tidbits from the Link Blog: February 16, 2007

After a strong October, activity, comments and total posts on louisgray.com slipped quite a bit in November. A lot of that had to do with my traveling or, for once, being away from the computer in the evenings, but I've also been trying not to follow on to the day's news as many other tech bloggers have done. Instead, we're looking to talk directly about what we're seeing and bringing a new angle. December, one day in, has already started strong, and we hope to have some good numbers to report come January 1. Just think, maybe we'll have a year in review by that point?

Sunday Evening News and Notes (11/04/2007)

It's been a while since we had one of these, but in the spirit of Jason Calacanis, there's been a number of things over the last few days that have caught my eye, worth noting.

First of all, the very best ways to watch what I'm viewing and liking online are first, to subscribe to my shared Google Reader link blog, and second, to add me as a friend on Friendfeed.com (E-mail me if you still need an invite). Getting linked on Facebook or LinkedIn doesn't hurt either.

If you noticed the cries of horror throughout the blogosphere, the sounds were due to Feedburner and Google's Feedfetcher missing each other again. Across the board, total subscriber counts were halved. I personally saw my readership plummet from 156 to 83. But, I didn't panic, as I knew it was a simple glitch. (Comments: Zoli's Blog, ProBlogger, and Mashable)

Ever stop to think about what our tech world will look like five years from now? Chris Brogan did. Just looking backwards, Blackberry, iPod, iPhone, Firefox, GMail, Facebook... you name it... weren't even around in 2001. In 2011 or 2012, what will that list be looking back to 2007?

More on LinkedIn... they continue to innovate. Fresh off announcing they would be part of Google's OpenSocial, it looks like they are on the verge of announcing a new platform for developers. In fact, earlier this week, Spokeo picked up a new post in their RSS feed called "Announcing the LinkedIn Platform", which doesn't go anywhere. Chris Webb noticed as well and Twittered about it. Mark that as a wait and see...

On another note... my Being Mac. Being Mormon. It's Quite Similar. post was more popular than I had anticipated. My good friends at MacSurfer added it to their list of links last night, and that's sent consistent traffic my way for the past 24 hours, getting hundreds of visits. As mentioned before, however, those readers are simple drive bys and don't often comment. They didn't today either.

State of the Blog: October 2007 Recap

October 2007 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,040

Total stories published in October: 56
(About 1.8 per day, up from 1.4 in September)

Total stories with comments: 36
(64% of all stories, up from 18 and 44% in September)

Total comments on October posts: 85
(About 1.5 per post, 2.4 per commented post)

Technorati Authority Ranking: 101 (up 4)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 180 subscribers (up 56)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 14 subscribers (up 1)
MyBlogLog Members: 35 (up 4)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12: 1st All-Time! (by a healthy margin)



Blog Value Estimator: $57,018.54

Top Five Most Visited October Stories (According to Summary)

1. Facebook Google Reader App Rebrands as Feedheads
2. Eight Reasons the Apple TV is Failing, and How It Can be Saved
3. Alexa Web Statistics Show Old Media Influence Nosedive
4. How to See an iPod Touch Your Web site
5. Google Reader Chokes On Scoble Shared Items

Others receiving votes: LDS Church Streaming Conference Live Via the Web, Our Intel Mac Is Back, Tech Blog Link Power: Spiky Visitors or Sticky Visitors? and In Absence of Google Innovation, A-List Ranks Feeds

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Summary)

1. Soft-Core Porn, Sex Themes Power Google Video
2. Watch Every Episode of The Simpsons Online - Free
3. Geeking Out With a New MacBook Pro
4. Slingbox Going Corporate Before I Get One!
5. Color Customized iPhones Look Delicious

While the top two results here are steady month after month, I was pleased to see follow-on posts re: Google Video to slip away, and more people coming here to read about geeky technology, rather than use me as a conduit for their other habits.

October was a tremendous month for the blog, in terms of traffic and exposure. Highlights from Robert Scoble linking in, to MacSurfer, the occasional TechMeme and numerous bloggers adding my posts to their shared feeds have led to continued growth and consistent traffic. In October, we saw total visitors 22% higher than the previous record set in April, and a gaudy 77% higher than September's statistics, the previous #2 record holder. While I've said before that I don't have major goals for this blog, I definitely want to start each month with a goal of beating last month's activity. Now, the threshold has been dramatically raised.

Friendfeed Follows Friends' Web Activity

I've long been a Google Reader and Google Reader shared items link blog advocate. The service lets me call out to you what I'm reading in the blogosphere, and what I find interesting. But for me, and for many other people using a wide variety of Web 2.0 applications, my link blog only covers one facet of my activity.

Where Google leaves off, Friendfeed steps in, combining my updates from around the Web, not only from Google Reader, but also noting when I update louisgray.com, when I add new items to del.icio.us, when I Digg new stories, find something via StumbleUpon or add photos to Flickr. Others also use it to display their activity on Twitter and Pownce. This creates a feed for not just one facet of my activity, but many.

That answers the "feed" portion of Friend feed. But the "Friend" portion takes the service up a notch. I can subscribe to friends and watch their activity one by one, or go to a combined "Friends Feed" and see all their combined activity. From this page, I can see if MG Siegler Dugg a story, if Fred Wilson added a new post to his blog, or if Jeremy Zawodny added a new bookmark to his del.icio.us items. It's a lot like reading Robert Scoble's shared link blog, but one written by multiple people, and with more sources.

The site is currently in beta, and ramping up, having been started by a few notable ex-Googlers, looking to gain traction as the service goes viral. Their blog shows their new office space, as they're just getting started.

My feed is here. If you need an invitation to the service, just say so in the comments, and I'll send it via e-mail.

TechCrunch Discontinues Internal Linking Practice

In what many readers here will no doubt see as a positive development, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch announced the popular blog will no longer link the names of companies they cover to the CrunchBase, the network's internal database on company information and resources.

As he wrote in a post today:

"We started linking to CrunchBase often in our posts. This tends to drive some readers absolutely nuts because they want to go to the company, not CrunchBase, when they click a link. As of today that policy is being discontinued."

I've been a vocal advocate for clarity in linking practices, and generally dislike unnecessary internal linking. Though I didn't call out TechCrunch for this practice, many here did in our previous discussions of common behavior from leading tech blogs.

Arrington and his blog network, despite the occasional criticism, have done excellently well at making a name for themselves, and becoming one of the leading resources for Web 2.0 information and news. I applaud this move, and hope that others will look to the leader and follow suit.

Algorithms Cause Fight Between Linking and Original Reporting

I stepped away from the computer for the better part of 12 hours today, and found the world hadn't changed all that much. Guess that's good.

Following Sunday's kerfuffle around Google Reader stat tabulations, both official and unofficial, there continues to be a lot of discussion throughout the blogosphere on what statistics are relevant or not, and whether they are valuable, or simply point to a bunch of ego-focused invalids aiming to give themselves greater visibility. Additionally, comments from Jeremiah Oywang question whether some of the clear gaming of public news aggregators, like TechMeme, can be snuffed out.

Yesterday, Pete Cashmore of Mashable called B.S. on the whole argument, saying Google Reader's stats were prefilled, and therefore tainted. Of course, Google Reader spokespeople disagreed. Scott of Blogcosm, in an effort to round up the discussion, correctly notes a lot of this back and forth could have been avoided if Google had just listened to my requests back in March, for more transparent data. His clearest comment on whether they would? "I'm not holding my breath."

Which leaves us with the TechMeme issue. Jeremiah Owyang correctly pleads with bloggers to stop following TechMeme around and to start adding real substance. But, as I noted in a comment to him, sometimes it seems that those of us without the big brand names (yet) just might break a story or have original reporting, but proving that to a faceless algorithm is nearly impossible. As a result, to gain the real estate that's felt to be deserved, a little link play is needed.

Frederic at The Last Podcast backs me up, saying, "Sometimes I know I had a story first, but nobody linked to me, so I will still tag on to the Techmeme headline." It's kind of like chasing for scraps, but somebody's got to do it...

Getting Hit By StumbleUpon Is Wild

The StumbleUpon phenomenon is often hard to figure out - but when something I've written catches the eye of a group on StumbleUpon, it's always good for a quick rush of visitors who disappear, seemingly as quickly as they had arrived. They aren't the type to leave comments, or even, in most cases, click around and read the rest of the site, but it's good for an hour or so's worth of entertainment - as I try to decipher what it was about that particular item that set them off.



Typically, the story I've written which gets nominated to StumbleUpon isn't even new. For example, today, just after 7:30 (Pacific), I got hit with the latest wave of Stumblers, looking at a series of Alexa charts I posted last Sunday, showing the declining level of influence from traditional media sites in relation to new media.

It's not the first time I'd hit StumbleUpon, having previously reached the site for my comments on Facebook, and one or two others, which I can't recall. But as I've noted before, I shouldn't count on them with any routine. They're one night stands at best.


Speaking of external linkage, Lance Wiggs wrote up a nice piece on why he believes "old media is not doomed" after all. In his mind, it comes down to brands, skills and lawyers.

Also, our good friend and curmudgeon Steven Hodson complains that the latest discussion of Google Reader statistics is just another way for the A-List bloggers to show how much better they are than the rest of us. See his note: I thought they said the A-List wasn’t important; or didn’t exist.

Truth be told, if I had tens of thousands of subscribers, I'd want to count them all the time and show everybody how far ahead I was too... Maybe if I can figure out the magic to getting on StumbleUpon more regularly, I'll get on that list...

Link In. Link Out. Shake it All About.

If you watched the A-List banter over the last week or so, it would be easy to believe many are more concerned about fighting for total visitors and determining where their links come from than they are about creating new content, breaking news, communicating and learning from those around them. We see debates over whether the TechMeme Leaderboard is accurate or valid, whether TechMeme itself can drive traffic, or if it has no juice. We see Robert Scoble open the proverbial kimono and reveal his own statistics, and in another direction, we have another excellent analysis by Yuvi Panda, dissecting the linking habits of TechCrunch.

When it comes to obsessing over blog statistics, sources and linking habits, I'm among the top stataholics. I love seeing the data, and looking for trends. We've talked about it a lot here. In fact, much of what's being discovered and debated in the last week should be old news to longtime louisgray.com visitors. Take a look...

1. Scoble writes, in The Truth About Traffic on the Internet, "Every time I get on TechMeme I get 500 to 3,000 visits..." and "...truth is not many sites out there do any better."

I agree 100%. In Tech Blog Link Power: Spiky Visitors or Sticky Visitors?, I placed TechMeme at the highest levels of driving visitors to the site. TechMeme delivers hundreds of visitors if a story is a lead story, and can be a few dozen if you are following someone else. Digg can deliver thousands, as I saw back in April.

For me, TechMeme has driven more traffic in the last six months than almost any other Web site, behind only Google, MacSurfer, Digg and Athletics Nation.

2. Yuvi writes, in his StatBot: TechCrunch Data Analysis, "TechCrunch links the most to itself. At least 14 times more than the nearest content contributor."

That's huge. As we noticed with Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control, "some of the most popular blogs... prefer to lead readers deep into their archives." Comments on the post quickly called out TechCrunch as an offender, citing the site's CrunchBase.

3. Steve Rubel of MicroPersuasion calls BS on the whole thing, saying in On the Devaluation of Traffic, that the whole idea of tracking total visits and external links is bunk. He writes, "Most of my traffic is from Google and they are largely passerbys. The same holds true for anyone who visits my site from Techmeme, Digg or even big blogs."

That is exactly right. I wrote in Google Is 95% Of My Search Traffic that Google owns the search game. We also noted in the above links that Google visitors aren't sticky. I even mentioned in September in Why My Technorati Ranking Is Slip-Sliding Away that "the rise of microblogging with Twitter, moves to Facebook, and reliance on bookmark harvesters like del.icio.us or Google Reader shared links will drive down the amount of external linkings from the general blogosphere," trends Rubel notes as well.

For me, it all comes down to Why Do I Blog? If it's for getting traffic, ads and links, then this is of utmost importance. If it's about talking and sharing ideas and learning about new things, then the move away from total page views and external links won't be all that important in the end. Technology moves. In the blogosphere, we should embrace being the fastest moving.

louisgray.com Hits 1,000 Posts

January 9th of last year, I finally took the plunge, and started the louisgray.com blog - starting, appropriately enough, with a post showing my anticipation of MacWorld San Francisco, to be held the very next day. While I'd been blogging on my mother's family-oriented site for the better part of two years, I felt I'd outgrown that role, and needed to find a home where I could talk tech and sports without boring everyone. Now, I can bore a different audience altogether here.

Though there's no perfect way to "celebrate" a 1,000th post milestone, I thought I'd highlight some of the major issues and links discussed over the last two years, and provide you some ways you can interact with louisgray.com as we move on to 2,000, 5,000 and beyond.

My Top Ten Obsessions, With Some Help from ZoomClouds:

1. Apple, iPod and iTunes

What is the True Value of an Entertainment Download? (January 27, 2007)
The Apple TV Debate Is Upside Down (March 22, 2007)
How Apple Could Crush Netflix Now (April 11, 2007)

2. Blogs, Links and RSS

Not All Links Are Created Equal (July 18, 2007)
Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control (September 12, 2007)
Tech Blog Link Power: Spiky Visitors or Sticky Visitors? (October 2, 2007)

3. Google

10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader (March 3, 2007)
Google News Search Removes Duplicates (April 30, 2007)
Google Is 95% Of My Search Traffic (July 23, 2007)

4. TiVo and Television

Dear Tivo, Please Track and Report My Data (February 28, 2007)
A Silicon Valley Adventure: Trip to TiVo (May 31, 2007)
Welcome Back, Network Television (September 27, 2007)

5. The Oakland A's and the ANtics

ANtics Giveaway to A's Players Today in Phoenix (March 12, 2006)
ANtics Episode 3.12: A Cust Above (May 13, 2007)
The 2007 A's Love Wednesdays! (August 7, 2007)

6. The Cal Bears

Cal Football Falls Apart In Arizona, Killing BCS Hopes (November 11, 2006)
Tomorrow, Stanford Goes Down Against the Cal Bears (December 1, 2006)
Cal's Huge Win Over Ducks Validates Us (September 29, 2007)

7. The Sacramento Kings

Kings Open 2006-07 Season Flat (November 1, 2006)
The NBA's Struggle With Mid-Market Franchises (November 19, 2006)
Saturday's Kings Game: One to Remember (and Forget) (January 15, 2007)

8. Nintendo Wii and Online Games

Addicting Games Sure to Reduce Productivity (July 2, 2007)
False Alarm: Wii Got Our Wii (July 26, 2007)
Wii Steals Show In Family Weekend Visit (September 9, 2007)

9. Statistics

1000+% Traffic Growth Year over Year? Summary Says So. (May 3, 2007)
Your Blog Statistics May Vary, Widely (August 13, 2007)
Alexa Web Statistics Show Old Media Influence Nosedive (October 7, 2007)

10. Technology Innovators and Startups

Is Technorati Going After Spam Blogs? (March 31, 2007)
What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog? (August 27, 2007)
PlugandPlay Expo Highlight: Spokeo (September 20, 2007)

Along with sharing my obsessions, I've had the pleasure over the last two years to have interacted and conversed with some very engaging people, from the A-list to the B-List and well beyond, from Robert Scoble, Don Dodge, Jeremiah Owyang, Mathew Ingram, Gabe Rivera and Steve Rubel to Steven Hodson, Kent Newsome, Yuvi Panda, David Sifry Jason Kaneshiro, Gal Josefsberg, and worked with great people like Tyler Bleszinksi, Nico Pemantle, Christy Hoffmann, Tom Ziller, Josh Pigford, Jason and Erin Gurney.

The above lists are by no means all inclusive, for sure, but with all the links, I've likely broken Blogger for good. If the service suffers downtime for the next few days, you'll know who to blame. Meanwhile, we'll be cooking up our next 1,000 posts.

Until then, be sure you:

Sign up to the RSS Feed
Read My Shared Link Blog
Get Linked on Facebook or LinkedIn
Subscribe by E-mail Using Feedblitz
Download the Mac OS X Widget
Add louisgray.com as a favorite in Technorati
Join MyBlogLog Community

Google Reader Chokes On Scoble Shared Items

Robert Scoble has been one of the most vocal advocates of both Google Reader, and the "Shared Items" feature within Google Reader, and I wholeheartedly share his enthusiasm. I'm currently subscribed to 216 RSS feeds. According to Google Reader trends, over the last 30 days I read 16,515 items and shared 280 items to my link blog.

But it seems, like Facebook's 5,000 friend limit, Google Reader can't handle the sheer mass of shared items Robert shares. I added Robert's shared items to my Google Reader some time ago, and while I've found his selections strong, it's not uncommon for Google Reader to tell me I have new items from that feed, but have them unable for me to see.

For example, in the below screenshot, all my items, with the exception of 8 shared items from Robert, are read.



Yet, clicking on his feed, I am told that, in fact, there are no new items in his feed.



Even going directly to his shared link blog URL doesn't display the new items, but instead marks a point frozen in time, likely the last time Google resynched his feed.

I've never seen the Google Reader team mention a limit as to the total number of feed items in a shared link blog, or any feed. But while I'm subscribed to other link blogs, I've only experienced this behavior with that of Scoble. Could he be running up against an unwritten rule?

Tech Blog Link Power: Spiky Visitors or Sticky Visitors?

Download the Full-Size Image

While many tech bloggers live for the instant, drug-like satisfaction of hitting the Digg front page, or getting picked up by StumbleUpon or Slashdot, that rush of one-time visitors doesn't last long, and they won't come back again. A Digg visitor is usually one that won't comment, won't bookmark, and won't remember your URL.

Repeat visitors to tech blogs usually aren't forged by traffic spikes from well-known news hubs. Nor are they from search engines. It's a rare blog or Web site that can drive both high levels of both one-time visitors and repeat visitors. In fact, in my experience over the last two years of technology blogging, the very best sources for repeat, engaged visitors are:

1. Robert Scoble / Scobleizer
2. TechMeme
3. My own comments on similarly-focused blogs
4. Links from other B-List Bloggers
5. Shared Link Blogs (such as those from Scoble, Webomatica and others)

In fact, while I don't want to give Robert all the credit here, I have seen his hand in some of my highest-traffic posts. Often, his addition of my posts to his shared link blog or his own blog later leads to other bloggers linking, which pushes my post to TechMeme, in turn, leading to more follow-on posts and residual traffic.

But I can't just sit around and "write for Scoble", hoping he'll throw pixie dust my way. In order to engage with the crowd and encourage return visits, I need to link to others, make comments on other similar blogs, and make tools for engagement, like my RSS feed and MyBlogLog, easily accessible.

Thus, I've broken the Link Power Index into four sections:

1. High spikiness, low stickiness (Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Megite, Slashdot)
2. Low spikiness, low stickiness (Google, Facebook, Technorati, Yahoo!)
3. Low spikiness, high stickiness (RSS, word of mouth, comments, LinkedIn, B-List linking)
4. High spikiness, high stickiness (Scobleizer, TechMeme, Shared Link Blogs, MacSurfer)

Last month, "BeachBum" asked, in regards to some of my less-desirable visitors from Google Images, "Do you find that the porn traffic converts or do they just come and go?". The answer is no. None of them convert. Unless I start writing about porn full-time, they're not coming back, and that's okay. While a one-time visitor may have found a keyword sequence on Google that had your blog listed #1 overall, it's unlikely they're your demographic.

In fact, surprisingly, links from B-List and A-List bloggers have been more useful to me than links from more mainstream media. While I was flattered to see coverage of one of September's posts on MSNBC.com and the Houston Chronicle, they didn't drive the traffic of a strong link aggregator, and their visitors, as far as I could tell, were one-offs.

If you want a one-time spike of traffic, go ahead and write to make the front page of Digg (Yuvi Panda's Round 2 analysis of Digg's front page shows how...) or get a group of friends to Stumble your content. But to cultivate readers and engage with the blogging community, you should comment often, share ideas with your peers, and hope somebody with real pull, like Scoble, or MacSurfer, notices your effort.

The above image is how I've interpreted sticky traffic vs. spiky traffic to louisgray.com in the last year-plus. Do you have any comments or insight? Am I off the mark, or have you seen similar behavior? Please let me know, and feel free to use the image yourself. Links back are always appreciated.

Also on this topic: Chris Brogan: Scoble Effect Better Than Digg and Search Engine Land: December 2006 Statistics Review

More Comments On Inwardly Linking

A dozen or so days ago, I kicked off a discussion in the blogopshere around the practice of relying heavily on internal links, even when external links to the source of news would likely serve a reader better. A few weeks into it, the debate is still raging, not just here, but elsewhere.

Two well-respected bloggers, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research, formerly of PodTech, and Muhammad Saleem, have added their own comments. As you can expect, given that there seems to be no "one right answer" to this discussion, their findings are quite different.

Jeremiah, in a post titled "Linking Strategy and why Back Linking is OK", says, "If your content (on your own website) can add more value linking elsewhere, than it’s certainly ok to do this."

Muhammad, in a post titled "Do you link in or link out?", says, "By linking to other sources you can either use them to back up your own argument or provide your readers with another viewpoint to consider and come to their own conclusions."

To resummarize my comments from before, I have zero problems with referring to old notes on a similar topic. I do it all the time (as in my first link above). But if an external hyperlink would add more value, or lead a reader to the source of the story, that makes more sense than the growing practice of dumping visitors into a random archive page or keyword search results.

Additional comments since my last update can be found from Michael Coates, The Last Podcast, The Net Takeaway, and Daily Grumble.

Backlink Backlash Could Bring Forth Change

My post-midnight ramblings on the questionable practice of overly relying on internal links certainly hit a nerve in the blogosphere, drawing attention from all corners, as we saw comments from Ryan Block at Engadget and Robert Scoble of Scobleizer, while representatives of TechCrunch and Gawker Media also weighed in on whether or not they found issues with the rapidly-growing model of preferring links to their own blog as opposed to the outside world.

Some reactions:

Surflizard: Sneaky Links

"The key to reading Engadget is to know that only the last link in a post is usually relevant to the post’s subject, and every other link is usually self-referencing spam."

Kent Newsome: Evening Reading: 9/12/07

"The problem, of course, comes down to the prospect of money. Rather than double linking, I'd call it double ad-serving. I'd love to know the average duration of those internal link page views."

The Last Podcast: Internal/Double Linking is a Bad Practice

"I am glad others are picking up on this, as it is annoying the heck out of me and keeps me from enjoying some of the best blogs out there."

Ryan Block of Engadget did a great job illustrating why Engadget favors self-referential links over external links. He notes that stories that reference other sources do contain an external link at the conclusion of the story, but he disagreed with my belief that tags should lead to referenced companies instead of prior coverage. In a post he titled On backlinking (or “internal linking”), he said:

"At Engadget, our MO is to offer a compressed, editorialized edition of technology news. Sometimes we can go as long (or longer) as any big-name newspaper on an important story, but because we do (and must!) have greater respect for our readers’ intelligence and attention, generally speaking we expect them to understand the jist of what we’re talking about when we start to geek out."

Essentially, he said Engadget readers already know the URLs for companies like Apple, Google, or Microsoft's XBox, so to link their way wouldn't add much value. Fair enough. But he did say the site will reevaluate their frequency for backlinking, adding, "I’m sure we could use additional fine tuning in what and how often we backlink, which I’ll be evaluating closer starting today."

His comments mirrored those from Mark Hendrickson of TechCrunch, who wrote in a comment on this blog, "We often link to CrunchBase pages rather than company websites because we think that our company profiles often give readers better corporate overviews than they would get by going straight to company websites," adding, "We do realize that many readers find this linking behavior undesirable, so we are actively looking into ways we can refer to both corporate websites and CrunchBase pages from the main blog."

Elsewhere, Nick Denton of Gawker Media wrote that the network has recently changed how they handle internal links versus external links, writing, "We have changed the style of internal tag links. They are no longer underlined. So the emphasis is on the external links, but regular readers know they can get background on a name or a product by clicking the text."

In 24 hours, we got an excellent cross-section of some of the tech blogosphere's most influential and most respected blogs. With the exception of Mashable, all sites I referenced, or commenters referenced, provided reason and updates as to why they operate the way they do.

(UPDATE: Mashable checked in this morning, saying "We have a verbal policy that the first link should go to the site in question, so that one is human error," and "I can guarantee that we'll try to avoid the LinkedIn type screnarios. As for linking to reference material...possibly we'll find a way to offer the user a choice.")

That's why, even when I see things that raise my eyebrows, I have faith in the direction blogs are going, and how we can continue to enable conversations. It should be interesting to watch and see how after the post ran through the Scoble/TechMeme gauntlet, if we see changes.

Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control

It seems the more major bloggers tend to ask for the same rights, privileges and respect given traditional journalists, the more frequently I'm seeing some of them violate best practices for information sharing and news gathering. One major issue I see is that some of the most popular blogs, including Engadget and Mashable, prefer to lead readers deep into their archives rather than linking out to the true sources of the story.

What do I mean by this exactly?

In real-world journalism, a reporter impartially offers up the news, as well as balanced commentary from individuals involved, whether they be the subject of a story, witness, or interested party. All efforts are taken to introduce the reader to the source of the information. On the Web, a story on Apple's iPod would link to the Apple Web site or directly to the iPod page. But if you look at Engadget, a hyperlink you would expect to take you to Apple would instead either take you to a previous story about Apple, or to search results within Engadget on the term Apple.

And now it seems Mashable, one leading Web log which follows the hot tech news of the day, is taking the same approach, much to the detriment of readers - many of whom likely find themselves clicking first, and asking questions later.

For example, from tonight's story: "Obama On LinkedIn"

The reporter writes:

"Sen. Barack Obama now has a LinkedIn account. We all knew that Obama is making the most of Internet culture, launching his own social network, gaining a larger-than-life presence on MySpace, YouTube, and even Twitter. He’s at the top of his game, according to a recent Nielsen study. The only surprise about Obama’s LinkedIn account is how seemingly late it is."

Being a typical reader, I would expect the three links in this paragraph, to LinkedIn, Twitter and Nielsen, to take me to those services' respective sites, as my links do. But they don't. Instead, the links go to related prior stories from Mashable, in an effort to keep the reader locked into the site as long as possible, either to increase ad revenue, or to possibly make the reader think the site more valuable due its deep archives and previous history.

In June of this year, Yuvi Panda analyzed Engadget and found that more than 40% of all links from Engadget were back to itself, "about 25 times the number of links of it’s closest competitor (which incidentally happens to be EngadgetMobile, an offshoot of Engadget)." Engadget, an unquestioned leader in gadget and tech news, should feel confident enough to send readers off site and expect them to come back.

When I link internally, I introduce the link as a previous post, and when I link to Engadget, you'll know the link goes to Engadget, not a previous story I wrote on Engadget. I believe the practice of hotlinking keywords instead to internal stories is sneaky and doesn't serve readers who are looking for the true sources of information. I hope we see the practice's growth stop cold.

Update: Robert Scoble calls the practice "double linking", while Joe of SurfLizard proposes a new term for this practice: "masterblinking".

Why My Technorati Ranking Is Slip-Sliding Away

It'd be great if Technorati took a daily snapshot of a blog's influence, and tracked that Authority over time. Rather than a single number to define influence, bloggers could have a six-month or greater graph of their influence as it waxed and waned, or see just how many new links each story gained, with considerable spikiness. Given Technorati's struggles to remain a leader in the face of the Google Blogsearch onslaught, further tweaks to the statistics and tracking models they do best could help gain stickiness and relevancy.

It's no secret that the Technorati Authority ranking system works by tabulating the number of links by unique blogs in the prior six months to your site. Elite blogs can rank in the thousands, while "B-List" bloggers tend to occupy a lower tier, commonly in the 100 to 500 space. But given the tendency of certain stories to get a cluster of links, and those clusters being irregular in timing, it's no surprise that sometimes, one's Technorati Authority can take a steep dive in a matter of days - as a watershed moment or popular post passes the six month point.

Just this Saturday, in my "State of the Blog", I noted my Technorati Authority was 117 - signifying that 117 unique blogs had linked my way in the prior 180 days. By the time I got home from the Cal game late that night, the number had dropped to 108, then 104, and it now sits at 103. While I have attributed previous drops in this ranking to the company's work to eliminate spam blogs that artificially inflated the number, this time it's clear the drop has a lot to do with me, and I can see future drops ahead.

Six months ago, the blog had a serious traffic event when my comments on Google Reader reached Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion, Robert Scoble's Scobleizer, and TechMeme. By the end of the rush, Technorati noted 30 unique "Blog Reactions" to the article. But the article's publication date was March 3rd, a full six months and one day ago now. So, unless each of those blogs linked again to me later, their contribution to the Technorati Authority ranking will be removed, and my count will go down.

This isn't to say that my Technorati Authority hasn't increased in the last six months - for it has, quite a bit. When I first passed 100, I was fairly pleased, but given the spikiness of external hyperlinking, there's no doubt that the count will vacillate upwards and downwards, and at this time, we're headed on the side of gravity.

As the six month window first erases early March links and moves onward to mid-March, and eventually April, I can expect additional bites out my ranking, as I lose the ten external links to my comments on Google's Earth Day logo, made on April 22nd, and the ten others I gained from the aforementioned Technorati Spam Blogs story from late March.

Not only will I be losing those spikes in linkage from the "six months ago" window, but even in that short time, the world of blogging has changed considerably. Even since this spring, the rise of microblogging with Twitter, moves to Facebook, and reliance on bookmark harvesters like del.icio.us or Google Reader shared links will drive down the amount of external linkings from the general blogosphere.

I also believe that we're seeing an incredible amount of clique-like behavior among similarly themed blogs (something I'm guilty of as well). Those who find similar blogs to theirs get comfortable and link to one another, or rely solely on RSS feeds for all news, not stepping out to see what others are saying. Yet, if I continue to simply link to known quantities like ParisLemon, Webomatica, WinExtra and Kent Newsome, I won't be helping their Technorati Authority or their mindshare any more than my own. Instead, I'll just be extending the cycle.

Who Me? Featured in a Podcast?

In a world where total page views don't amount for much, and spikes of unique visitors from Digg, StumbleUpon or Slashdot can be gone in an instant, there's something to be said for the more "squishy" metrics, like how many comments a post received, or whether bloggers found your work interesting enough to link to. Out of the ashes of Web 1.0's eyeball-oriented metrics came the rise of Google's PageRank, and Technorati Authority, as well as other, rarely useful sites, like Alexa.

If a comment to a post carries a certain amount of weight, it's safely assumed that a link carries more weight, as it potentially drives new visitors your way. With that said, how many links does a podcast count as? That's the amusing conundrum I've hit after hearing WinExtra's Steven Hodson's soliloquy on Web services Last.fm and MyBlogLog, in large part spurred by discussions here over the last week or so. It's odd enough finally putting a voice to a person whom I've traded comments and e-mails with over the last few months, and even odder still to hear my name mentioned as provoking thoughts on where these services are headed.

(Download the Podcast Here)

Steven wasn't the only one who sent links this way today. The MyBlogLog story was captured in Robert Scoble's Link Blog, which always leads to a short-term spurt in visitors from Twitter, and these days, Facebook. Later, the surprisingly popular blog "Grow a Brain" caught up to a post on how your blog is your brand, from earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Kent Newsome rounded up his ninth edition of the Swivel Feeds, in his one-man battle to test the limits of his RSS feed reader. This week's additions included names I had provided, from the aforementioned WinExtra, to ParisLemon, Ken Jennings, Yuvi Panda and Ben Rockwood.

We'll have our peaks and valleys in this whole blogging exercise, but it's nice to be noticed.

Blogging: Set Goals Or Let Fly?

Steven Hodson of WinExtra has an excellent post on his top 10 suggestions for new bloggers, including advice to set goals, narrow your focus, choose the right tools and pick a theme. If done well, he suggests you should have a target number of RSS feed readers, individual site visitors or even advertising dollars, whether for six months or twelve.

While good advice for those with specific goals, does that mean those without goals, and without limits, are inherently unsuccessful? I recently noticed I'd passed through both the Technorati Authority rank of more than 100, as well as a Feedburner subscription base of just over 100. Did I count that as achieving my goals? No, because I hadn't made them a target, but they are good benchmarks nonetheless.

I think there's something to be said for blogging for the sake of blogging, for not always narrowing your focus if you just don't feel like it. While I might get more readers if I stuck to just Apple Macintosh coverage, or Google watching, I enjoy talking about sports, or our dog, or the latest hits on our TiVo or Nintendo Wii. For me, while I've said my blog is my brand, it's not so narrow as to show me in a niche. Instead, while my interests are diverse, so will my blog be.

I don't have specific goals for my blog, except that I keep it up in a timely manner, that my posts maintain interest and quality, and that I keep conversations alive. For me, the blog is an outlet of discourse with people I may never meet, and a clean slate that captures those things I'm thinking about or want to call attention to. The WinExtra guide is fantastic if I were looking to start a blog with a target of being on the B-List or the A-List, and gaining notoriety, or simply covering the yearly hosting bills, but for me, I'd prefer to let fly, so I can communicate at my own pace and not feel as if I'm forever falling behind my own expectations.

Did Trackbacks Die, and Who Killed Them?

In early 2006, I was fairly keen on this shiny new toy called the trackback. Rather than simply add a comment to a story I found interesting, I could send a trackback via my blog to the original source, and in most cases, the trackback, with my story's data, would be placed on top of the comment thread. On other occasions, the trackback would be treated on equal with comments, and made part of the thread itself. Regardless, it was a sneaky way to push my links onto more popular sites. But now, I can't remember the last time I sent out a trackback, and I haven't seen them used all that much. Maybe it's time to roll out the gravestone and write up their epitaph.

On March 25, 2006, Guy Kawasaki wrote a great, insightful story on "nine questions to ask a startup" if you were a prospective employee. That day, I posted a trackback to the story, referenced in a post I had, called "Entering a Startup on the Ground Floor", which recalled my first experience entering the Silicon Valley as a potential employee in late 1998, and how unprepared I was.

Surprisingly, my trackback not only got me traffic, but sustained traffic. My Feedburner stats tell me that since I left that link behind, I've had almost 1,200 visits to my Web site as a result.




Visits from Guy Kawaski's Site via the Trackback

While not large, considering it's been 16 months, that number trumps any other RSS feed link I've had to date. In fact, March of 2006 was basically when my trackback usage hit its peak. I'd commonly posted trackbacks to sites like Silicon Valley Sleuth and Internet Outsider, to name a few.

And then... I stopped. Maybe it's because I felt like using trackbacks was a cheap form of link spam, and that I wasn't adding value to the original source's story. But while that was part of it, it seems that integrated tools on most blogging platforms, like Blogger, TypePad or WordPress, automatically track who is saying what about you. Instead of relying on trackbacks to show somebody referenced your material, Meanwhile, sites like Technorati show the number of blog reactions, or "Links to this Item", per se.

Essentially, the shininess of the trackback wore off for me, and I expect it has for many others. Rather than take the effort to determine a post's trackback URL, and send a ping to that URL, I just let Technorati and Google Blog search do the work for me. As with many technologies on the Web, something usually comes along better than the last toy, and we move forward. I just hope the 1,000+ visitors Guy Kawasaki sent my way found what they were looking for.

Not All Links Are Created Equal

There's all sorts of hubbub on the blogosphere in the last few days, over how one ranks authority of bloggers' influence. It is in the aggregate number of links, or the aggregate number of individual sites linking? Should all that be discarded due to the advent of microblogging? Given the current thinking is to throw out total page views in favor of total minutes on a site, as well, it seems the whole concept of how we measure authority is in flux. But while most argue tit for tat on whether a blurb on Twitter counts as much as a link from another blog, there should be no secret that not all links are created equal.

In fact, while one blog could dedicate its story to you, it may not result in 1% of the traffic you can expect from another highly trafficked source, whether it be Digg, or StumbleUpon, TechCrunch, TechMeme, Scoble, etc. Compounding this issue, there is a significant population of Web sites that don't even enter into the radar of statistics aggregators like Technorati, due to the fact they aren't classified as blogs or "the live Web".

A few self-focused examples:

1) Today, my site traffic spiked in the middle of the day to about 8-10x normal traffic. Instead of 100+ visitors per day, my norm, I saw 100+ just between 1 and 2 this afternoon, only to see the one-time spike go away, and traffic return to normal. Was there new content? No. Was there any reason the content got less relevant in the space of an hour? No. So what happened?

A StumbleUpon user found my story from last week on Facebook where I suggested the site would go the way of Friendster and GeoCities before it. Submitted to the popular service, I was seeing 25-40 concurrent visitors on the site, with new ones every minute. Then, as quickly as the spurt arrived, they vanished. Yet, the one link had given me a boost of 100 visitors, not exactly chump change.

2) On July 5th, we saw a similar spike in traffic, to about twice normal, thanks to 100+ visitors coming to the site to see my simple comments that I had gone a full week without filling my need for an iPhone. Again, without any promotion on my part, the visitors came. So what happened?

MacSurfer happened. MacSurfer posted a link to the story, sending all sorts of Apple afficionados my way. Like Digg and StumbleUpon users, those one-time visitors are a cheap date. They show up, don't comment, and move on. But there's no better place to drop a Mac link than MacSurfer, the granddaddy of all Mac link aggregation sites. Of course, MacSurfer doesn't even hit Technorati's radar, so they had no idea the link had occurred.

3) Just two days prior, on July 3rd, we had another spike, thanks to Robert Scoble's mentioning my post on addicting games that can reduce productivity in a story he had written on the Web-based game phenomenon. Interestingly enough, though the Scoble crowd dropped in to the site in strong numbers, not even his A-list credibility could send me as many unique visitors as MacSurfer and StumbleUpon in this round. His crowd was more in the 80-100 range.

It's hard to determine what posts will get traffic, and which ones won't, or which ones will draw comments, and which will be ignored. There's also always going to be interest from people to determine what the most successful, influential, or highly trafficked sites are. It's clear that a link from me to Scoble would drive maybe 1-3% the traffic his way as he could drive mine, so anybody in the business of counting links and assuming they are all equal is absolutely off their rocker. Not all links are equal, and someday, somebody will come up with a great algorithm to show just how much "more equal" one can be versus another.

Eight Things Previously Unknown. No Tagbacks.

On July 6th, Ilona of True Grit posted eight items she assumed we didn't know about her. Common to the meme, she listed five new bloggers to continue the faux chain, and apparently, I was one of those selected. Until last night, I had no idea. Amazing what an overlooked link will do.

So, in order to be a good blogging citizen, here we go.

Eight things you probably didn't know about me, likely in near chronological order, just because.

1) I was born two months early and weighed just over four pounds. The ambulance, on its way to Stanford from Salinas, had to stop mid-trip and I was delivered in San Jose. My poor father, meanwhile, made the trip to Stanford, and missed the birth. He has since made up for it. And lucky for me, modern medicine was just good enough to eventually kick me out of the hospital.

2) In order to display how disappointed my 3rd grade teacher was with my studies, he broke with school tradition and gave me letter grades, instead of the standard Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory marks given my peers. The first quarter, I got two C's. They may have been my first, but unfortunately, they were not even close to my last.

3) I graduated from junior high school twice. After attending a 7-8th grade school, we switched school districts, and attended a 7-9th grade junior high. I got to walk on the stage both years.

4) I was pulled over by the county sheriff during Drivers' Training, when I was 16, allegedly for having my rear right tire pass over an empty parking space as I turned right into an intersection. This greatly amused the other students in the car, and befuddled the instructor.

5) I was stood up on my first date after turning 16. My date's best friend had unbeknownst to her, brought a friend, which preempted me. Instead of enjoying the homecoming dance, I waited out the three-hour drama until my ride came. It later turned out to be a recurring motif through high school.

6) My senior year of high school, I was the station manager, and DJ, for the campus cable radio station, and logged hundreds of on-air hours playing Depeche Mode and Inforrmation Society to earn my A.

7) My original college of choice was UCLA, where I had hoped to be roommates with my best friend. Due to a bureaucratic snafu on the UC's part, and my typical lack of following instructions to a T, I didn't get in to UCLA, but did get into UC Berkeley, which made the seeming crisis a lot easier to handle.

8) I once took a 4-plus year self-imposed sabbatical from church, which overlapped with college, before deciding on my own it was time to go back and follow what I knew to be right. Had I remained stubborn, I never would have found my wife, among other things.

With all that said, the typical next step is to tag five more unexpecting victims.

Those targets:

* Ben Homer
* Jason Kaneshiro
* Earl Moore
* Jeff Narduzzi
* Farrah Walker

Time for a BlogRoll Revamp

A couple weeks ago, when Kent Newsome and I had a public disagreement over his gaming Technorati, Kent had some observations on my blog, which he saw as typical pandering to A-Listers. Just like I hadn't polled his intentions for engaging in viral link tagging, he didn't poll me on the origins of the BlogRoll I've run with for the better part of a year. He thinks I was off with my comments, and I know he was off on his, but it's got me thinking it's time for some changes.

Somewhere in late 2005 / early 2006 timeframe, I somehow stumbled on the wonders of Technorati and the A-list. It seemed like everywhere I turned, there were more and more blogs focused on Web 2.0 and capturing the live conversations that have redefined media, news dissemination and how we communicate. Robert Scoble's blog led to TechCrunch, which led to Om Malik, Steve Rubel and so on... Within a few days, I'd stumbled on everything from ValleyWag to TechMeme, and rediscovered both Dave Winer and Guy Kawasaki. I felt as if I'd opened up a vault of information previously hidden and it was all I could do to leave the laptop to function offline, rather than take in this new world like a sponge, 24/7.

As the blog is a personal blog, first and foremost, I linked to those I found most interesting, but in retrospect, it's a lot like how in Web 1.0, so many homepages would have links to Yahoo!, ESPN and CNN, as if the casual Web surfer wouldn't know how to get there. Now, as all these A-Listers are as commonly visited as the old media kingpins, my links there are just as useless and redundant. The same goes for the Politics links as well, especially as I've moved away from Politics here for the most part. Though Kent saw the A-List links as pandering, that wasn't the original intent, but now, it's easy to see how that could be implied.

As a result, thanks to Kent's promptings and my own consideration, I'm getting rid of the A-List blogs that don't belong, and in their place, I aim to add those blogs which most closely mirror my interests and those I consider my closest peers - not necessarily in size or popularity, per se, but in consistency, focus and approach. And of course, I'm willing to listen to any feedback you have on what I'm still lacking.

Therefore, some big names are going to get cut. Sorry, guys.

Business & Technology BlogRoll Items to Be Deleted: Dave Winer, Guy Kawasaki, Henry Blodget, Jason Calacanis, John Battelle, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Redeye VC, Steve Rubel, Valleywag and VentureBeat.

Politics BlogRoll Items to Be Deleted: America Blog, Daily Kos, Electoral-Vote.com, Eschaton, Talking Points Memo and This Modern World.

But not every one is getting the axe.

Business & Technology BlogRoll Items to Be Retained: Don Dodge, Mini-Microsoft, Robert Scoble and Tony Chung

And what you've been waiting for, of course...

Business & Technology BlogRoll Items to Be Added: Newsome.org, ParisLemon, Webomatica, and WinExtra

I have also opted to replace the Politics section with a more generic "Resources" box that includes sites like Mashable, Read/Write Web, TechMeme, and Robert Scoble's shared link blog. Though I was at first skeptical that Robert's surfing would be fun to watch, his shared link blog has introduced me to many a blogger who has a story to tell.

On the Web, nothing is in stone, so even this revamp may not be long-lasting. I will continue to add and cut, as I see fit, but I'm glad this change has been made. Comments always welcome.

5 Contributions to Kent Newsome's Swivel Feeds

Kent Newsome, full-time uber-blogger and part-time viral link tagger, has asked me to contribute to his ambitious project to rebuild his RSS feeds list. While there's no doubt he and I read a lot of the same feeds, especially from very prominent bloggers, I'll provide him five I think are rising stars in the blogosphere - the future A-listers, if you will.

1) ParisLemon (MG Seigler)

URL: http://www.parislemon.com/

Summary: Apple and Web geek with a healthy dose of sports fanaticism thrown in. Given my own focus on tech, Web and sports, I find many of his comments are in line with my own, but from a different angle.

2) WinExtra (Steven Hodson)

URL: http://winextra.com/

Summary: Thoughtful discussion of the blogosphere, technology and trends. We recently had a blog-led conversation on whether blogs were about conversations or are simply an extension of old media to new.

3) Cuddletech (Ben Rockwood)

URL:http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/

Summary: An unapologetic Solaris and storage geek who loves to show you his thoughts of what works, from the command line. Questioning authority and wearing his heart on his sleeve.

4) Ken Jennings (Ken Jennings)

URL: http://www.ken-jennings.com/blog/

Summary: You may have first met Ken on Jeopardy, but since his unceremonious bouncing from the show with more than $1 million in his pocket (after taxes), he leads a happy life on his blog, talking about trivia, religion and technology. Good guy, good blog.

5. YuviSense (Yuvi Panda)

URL: http://blog.yuvisense.net/

Summary: This 16-year-old Indian student loves Microsoft and blog analysis. Amazingly technology astute and analytical for his age. Wants to join Redmond as soon as possible, and barring late-teen rebellion, should make it.

Is There an Antidote to the Link Tags Virus?

After Thursday's comments on how a few misguided individuals have tried to finagle better Google PageRank showings and higher Technorati Authority through the promotion of viral link tag spam, there has been some discussion in the blogosphere on the practice, and whether it's as bad a move as I made it out to be. One of the biggest outstanding questions is if there is indeed a loophole in how popular search engines rate authority and influence, is the onus on the individual not to exploit it, or instead on the technology provider to make a change?

While Kent Newsome, a great blogger with strong observations on a near daily basis (See: From Creation to Abandonment: the 5 Stages of Blogging for a great example) seemed to take the brunt of my comments, the issue is more than one individual, as there are many people trying to scream loud enough to be heard in a blogosphere that may favor the strong over the weak. While Chip Camden amusingly said that Kent was playing "Robin Hood" to my "Sheriff of Technorati", I've seen others who considered getting in on the viral links scheme reconsider the practice when they realized it could have some long-lasting, impactful, negative results. Kent's Robin Hood may have been trying to rob the rich to feed the poor, but at least in that storied tale, Robin Hood distributes the loot to others, something Kent can't do while his own Technorati Authority skyrockets.

Earl Moore, who also participated in the viral links scheme, writes:

"If it’s a fraud, then it’s one I’ve participated in as well... I’ll admit for myself that I don’t feel one hundred percent positive about “Viral Tag” links. Going with my gut, I wouldn’t post another one and am even considering pulling the post I have (yes, after the horse has already left the barn)."

Another poster, on a blog called Planet Apex, who just this Friday had opted to join in on the viral tags exchange, quickly realized the error of his ways, writing:

"I have decided to pull out of the Viral-Tags link exchange scheme. I did not realise the risks involve when I joined it. I now understand that instead of increasing your PageRank it can actually decrease it or even get you banned on Google."

Google's power on referring traffic cannot be understated. As much fun as it is to gain the occasional reciprocal links from fellow bloggers, upstream, sidestream or downstream, Google drives anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of all traffic for most sites, making it true that It’s Google’s Way or The Highway, as Garry Conn wrote this week, when he said, "I have made a major mistake. And I don’t want you to do the same thing."

Basically, Google's guidelines specifically prohibit statistical cheating like viral link tags. Google's Webmaster Guidelines state:

"Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

So, it's not so much as Kent says when he wrote on Warner Crocker's site that "The blogosphere is like Deadwood and (Louis) is trying to paint it as Miletus." This isn't the Wild West, even though it's certainly no utopia either. There are guidelines written up by some powerful technology companies that have direct impact on how our content is indexed, searched and presented, and as bloggers who work under this scenario, we should have an eye on what are good links versus bad links, good practices and bad.

Some last notes on viral links and search engine optimization come in the comments of an excellent "Search Engine Optimization Do’s and Don’ts" post at Thought Sparks. I'll let them speak for themselves:

"Plain and simple, honesty and integrity always pays. Short-cuts will not have lasting value and many of these folks will someday soon have a rude awakening. They will also frustrate themselves with the volume of time they’ve spent on futility... And even if you are successful, does one achieve that end at the cost of personal integrity?"

It may be one thing to exchange links. It's quite another to exchange integrity for scheming. Rather than making this a personal issue between those who have sinned and those who have not, we should just eliminate the practice and ask Technorati and Google to clean up the mess.

Kent Newsome Calls My Comments "Fear and Loathing"

As anticipated, Kent Newsome didn't believe my concerns around viral link tagging were valid, saying he saw them as another way to help balance an uneven playing field. He writes, "For me, the (tags are) a small attempt to end run around the fact that, despite writing hard for years, I simply cannot get many of the popular bloggers to allow me into the conversation.", adding, "The blogosphere isn't a perfect place, but it's the only one we have."

For perfect transparency's sake, I had been thinking for quite some time around this issue of external hyperlink padding, and was absolutely concerned that by using Kent as the example, that he would see it as a personal attack. My thoughts around this post had been ruminating for weeks, as I saw the practice spread. But what I truly want to get across is that while I still believe the practice is bogus, that I think the onus now falls on the search engines, like Technorati and Google, to close the holes in the way they tabulate these results. Kent is a great guy and his blog has some outstanding content, which is why we've traded links and comments for months. That's not up for debate.

If there's a better example of a prominent blogger who I respect who uses this practice, I'm happy to add them to the discussion, but for now, that hasn't happened, and Kent is on whom the sword fell. Be sure to see Kent's response here: Fear and Loathing in the Blogosphere. As he and I discussed before, blogs are about conversations. So what do you think?

What Should Drive TechMeme's Content?

Robert Scoble ruffled a few feathers today, when he issued his latest missive against TechMeme's direction, as he sees the blog headlines site moving away from its roots and more toward general news coverage, like Google News. Robert says the site should give higher credence to those sites which are generating discussion, arguing in summary that he with the most links wins. But with TechMeme's proprietary algorithm being somewhat of a mystery, it's interesting to consider what I would see as the ideal blog news aggregation site, and how it would change what TechMeme is today.

For the large part, TechMeme automatically senses what are the hot blog conversations of the day. The more noise, the higher on the page, with those blogs with the highest readership and external links receiving the "lead" and referring or related sites being shoehorned in their shadow. Today's biggest discussions? The continued coverage of Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, and the latest developments on Apple's iPhone. Today's news was that the devices have reached the mainland.

To be sure, both stories have tongues wagging. But Robert, looking inwardly, noted that one media site's coverage of Plaxo's new platform was rated more highly than his own dedicated coverage. Looking at referrals from Technorati, he can't figure why The Register would trump The Scobleizer. And he's got a point. If TechMeme's tracking discussions, The Register would be a related item, not the lead.

But I have other issues. It seems to me that if TechMeme wants to treat A-list bloggers equally with others generating news, then those who provide original coverage, or break the news, should be given higher credence. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to a story before "the big guys" get it, only to be ignored. For example, last night, around 2, I posted that I thought Google Reader was down. A TechCrunch reporter, Duncan Riley, and I traded e-mail, we both visited and commented on a discussion board on the outage, and later, he wrote a story. That TechCrunch got the lead can make sense, as the site has tremendous credibility, and many external links, but not only was my note not the lead, but it didn't even get noted by TechMeme, who instead opted to carry follow-on notes from The Download Squad.

Total Technorati external links to The Download Squad? Eight. Total Technorati external links to my story? Eight. So all things being equal, I'd argue that the site which got the story first chronologically, with original reporting, should be given equal or greater value. But if, due to some mysterious rule, I'm being kicked to the curb for a lack of pre-existing popularity, that seems to conflict with what I would hope is the goal of TechMeme, to deliver the a real-time summary of what's happening now in the blogosphere, and to raise the profile of those bloggers who might not necessarily be household names. Otherwise, TechMeme isn't offering much real value.

Robert jokingly called himself an "arrogant bbbbaahhhhhsssssttttttaaaarrrrrdddddd" for calling for change, and wondering why his efforts didn't make it, and I might come off as a whiner as well, but with extra effort should come extra reward. Duncan Riley and I put in an equivalent amount of effort to find out the truth, analyze the situation and write it up. But as far as TechMeme is concerned, I'm a cipher. I can take the abuse, but I think the blogosphere as a whole would be better served to highlight original reporting from the corners of the Web that are driving value.

TrueGrit Chimes In on Blogging Evolution

Earlier this month, I wrote that the biggest blogs aren't really blogs any more, having crossed the line between personal platforms to full-fledged media powerhouses. A review on TechCrunch or GigaOM can be just as effective at getting the word out these days as a mention in more traditional business press. TrueGrit, who forecast this change in August of 2006, says that "real changes occur with popularity", and that the image of a blog "becomes an entity of its own, not always in sync with the desires and direction that the person who owns it has in mind."

That last line, for me, is especially insightful. It seems that the momentum of a blog can pull the author in a direction they hadn't anticipated. I've mentioned here that what I had intended to be a personal blog of sorts has evolved to be more technology-focused and observational on blog trends than I had guessed it would be. The evolving readership and community I've found in the year and a half of regular publishing has pushed me more toward noting insights in how I interact with technology and away from my talking about politics, for instance, or chronicling every A's game, as much fun as that can be.

In fact,