Relax, Bloggers: Nobody Is Keeping Score, and There's No Quota.

In May of last year, noticing how some bloggers I read often had slowed their publishing, or found alternative routes to express themselves, I asked if they were suffering from what I termed "Blog fatigue." With the dog days of summer upon us (in the Northern hemisphere), I'm seeing the issue crop up again, as peers are talking about taking time off from blogging or social media, explaining holes in their publishing schedule, or openly questioning their enthusiasm. And while I understand the occasional self-assessment, I believe many are feeling pressure to hit a certain number of posts in a given time period, or are feeling challenged to keep pace with much more visible, prolific, people for whom this is much more aligned with their career.

See:

• SheGeeks: The Repetition of The Blogosphere
  
• Colin Walker: Hiatus?
  
• New Comm Biz: Blogger burnout? Give up or dig in.

The truth is that unless you're being paid specifically to blog:

• You don't need to blog every day.
  
• You don't need to post more than once a day.
  
• You shouldn't feel guilty about "gaps".
  
• You don't have to explain yourself to anyone.

Unfortunately for many of us who participate in the tech blogging space, there are many examples of blogs or individuals who can crank out more than one post a day, every single day. There are examples of people who seemingly offer strong content with every article. And there are also the uber-connected, who are seemingly ever-present in a wide variety of social networks, always seem to get to things before you do, and are "ahead" in every statistic, be it number of contacts, comments, or posts. And this doesn't even begin to take into account the professional multi-author blogs, run like an assembly line.

The fact that these individuals are both visible and measurable can bring others to feel inadequate, or challenged to "keep up" when it's actually not necessary. It makes more sense to "be yourself" than to try and match up with somebody else who has different goals and set of circumstances.

I had lunch with a friend this afternoon who said he often won't post to his blog for upwards of a week if nothing strikes his fancy. For him, there's no inner push to meet a quota, to post every day, or provide a take on the last 24 hours' happenings. And I found his counsel wise - to not forget why you started blogging in the first place. For most of us, it wasn't to compete with the professional blogs or to get a scoop to a story, or to have the most followers on the favorite social network of the month. Instead, it was to communicate and share ideas, or just to act as a log of your thoughts and activity.

In the world of business, your revenue starts over at zero every fiscal quarter. If you just had a great quarter, well, good for you and get back to work, because you need to hit quota and make your number in 90 days, or you and the company might be in trouble. But in blogging, assuming you don't have a boss paying you for each entry, there is no quota to fill. If you don't post in three days, you're not going to be fired. Instead of adding stress to your life by setting artificial standards on what you need to do, and posting for the sake of posting, or not giving it your best effort, it makes more sense to let the content drive your effort, and not the other way around.

So don't stress out. The only person keeping score is you.

Techmeme and TechCrunch's Detractors Prove It's Hard to be On Top

One downside of being in a visible leadership position is that you often have a bulls-eye on your back. Sometimes it's from your competition. Sometimes it's from people who feel what you offer isn't benefitting themselves personally, and other times, it can arguably be your biggest fans, who want to change what it is you do to serve their whim of the day. In the tech blogosphere, there is no single blog more influential and visible than TechCrunch, and there is no single aggregator or news site more influential and visible than Techmeme. That the two's fortunes are at times seen as being closely linked only helps to fuel the flames of frustration by those eager to see change, be it through finding alternative sources for news, or, instead, asking for either site to change its tone, its breadth of coverage, or its methodology.

From a third party point of view, it seems the day in and day out potshots against both Techmeme and TechCrunch have taken their toll on the most visible representatives of each site. Techmeme's Gabe Rivera is well-known for his sarcastic, evasive, answers when his site's reputation is questioned, and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is often described as short-fused and sleep deprived. Recently rumors have circulated saying Arrington wants out of the blogging business, and is looking to sell, no doubt in part due to stress of the "always on" atmosphere and ruthless competition. Of course, rumors are simply rumors... but given most PR firms have gotten to the point where reaching out to TechCrunch is part of their standard shtick, it's likely not as fun fielding all the inquiries and sticking to others' schedules as openly writing once was. And TechCrunch has burned through its share of strong writers, with talents like Marshall Kirkpatrick and Duncan Riley leaving, one on good terms, and the other, not as well, as it turned out. (See: On Arrington, My Final Word)

The two sites' major detractors tend to rail on common topics. TechCrunch can be seen as egocentric, and Arrington is perceived to have a bee-line on exclusives. Techmeme similarly has been described as elitist by those who don't get included, navel-gazing by those who think it's too insular, biased by those who feel they have been overlooked, or a single person's playground, by those who feel Gabe's claims to automation are overblown. And some industry blog veterans who regularly appear on Techmeme have even taken to saying it's not as relevant and influential as it once was, replaced by other sources of news.

The complaints around either service became so commonplace that a new word, bitchmeme, was made, loosely defined as "bitching about Techmeme", usually on the weekend, when some tech bloggers had no news to write about. The phrase since took on a life of its own, meaning any silly conflict between blogs that took place on the weekend.

TechCrunch and Techmeme get as much grumpiness tossed their direction as they do because they each own a valuable niche in the blogosphere, and are expanding their lead, rather than relinquishing it. While you could say that TechCrunch competes with ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, GigaOM or others, they have cemented themselves as the go-to site for new services entering the market, and even their opinion pieces are widely read, with almost a million unique RSS subscribers taking note. Techmeme's best competition at this point is BlogRunner, with Hacker News, Dave Winer's TechJunk, Duncan Riley's QMeme and more organic sites like RSSmeme or ReadBurner coming up in conversation. But Techmeme's original perceived competition, like TailRank and Megite, are mere shadows of what they initially promised. Meanwhile, TechCrunch is bringing on new writers, and posting more stories than ever (See: The Statbot: TechCrunch Statistics A-W), and Techmeme is going more mainstream, with news sources like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times featuring more prominently than most individual bloggers.

And with this leadership position, the sites don't have the luxury of acting without criticism any longer. Gabe almost has a part-time position made for himself just to go from blog to blog and explaining that in fact, Techmeme is not evil, and that it is relevant, explaining that TechCrunch has built a reputation as a reputable source for tech news, and therefore, is adequately represented on his site and in the leaderboard. Seemingly every day, Gabe is having to answer questions on Twitter or FriendFeed from people like Robert Scoble (or me in one example, when I wondered why a hot topic wasn't getting airtime). Meanwhile, Arrington gets called nasty names, mocked by Valleywag, and yelled at on Twitter.

But if you take a step back, TechCrunch's goal is to be a technology blog focused on Web 2.0, and it's doing that. Techmeme's stated goal is to be like the front page of the memes that are happening in the tech blogosphere at any given time, and for the large part, it does do that. While there is some uncertainty as to all the criteria that makes up being part of Techmeme, or rising up and down the page, or when something makes the site, it typically takes discussion, not only on the original site, but through links from other blogs, on Twitter, and other sharing sites.

The argument could be made that you could possibly find your technology news faster in another way. Maybe you could find it on FriendFeed, and get a broader scope of sources. Maybe you prefer the democratic approach of ReadBurner and RSSmeme. Maybe you want to go through Google Reader yourself, or rely on others' shared link blogs. But there is no question in my mind that Techmeme is relevant, as is TechCrunch, and being mentioned on either site continues to drive traffic today.

I also believe that Techmeme does a very good job at being available to those bloggers who aren't elite household names. Just tonight, we saw a blog that was born only three days ago make the site, and Yuvi Panda's work on The Statbot shows one third of all Techmeme headlines come from the "Long Tail". Techmeme is accessible to bloggers who write quality content and spur discussion. While I'm absolutely active in places like FriendFeed and Twitter, I don't believe that discussions from FriendFeed belong on Techmeme any more than do popular Twitter posts or popular YouTube videos. Techmeme has specialized in bringing us top tech blogging news, and it's doing it.

The bottom line? If you don't like Techmeme and you don't like TechCrunch, stop reading, or go out and make your own. The best way to show they're no longer relevant is to take them down yourself through competition. But today, they are both standing strong whether you like it or not. I just hope Mike Arrington and Gabe Rivera are enjoying what they do as much as when they first started, and that the daily body blows haven't gotten them so jaded that they want out, for that would be a big loss.

Social Media Experts are the New Webmasters

In the mid to late 1990s, perception had it there was no more exciting a career title than that of Webmaster. It seemed everybody wanted to be one, and some called it the "Job of the Future". As a Webmaster, your code manipulation could change the look and flow of a Web site with each publish, and make Web pages spring up overnight, complete with hyperlinks, animated GIFs and comment forms with basic JavaScript. As seemingly every company needed a Web presence, the demand for somebody who could write HTML and handle Web operations filled them with incredible power. But as years passed, the title fell by the wayside, and you're now no more likely to find somebody with Webmaster on their business card as you are to find cars that come with cassette decks standard.

In the ensuing decade or so, the Internet has become part of the landscape, not the mystery it once was. The Webmaster position similarly faded to the background, and many companies tend to have portions of IT and Marketing share the load, outsourcing the Web design function to an outside agency. Larger companies keep the Web expertise in house, but don't call their employees by the dreaded "W" word.

As the Internet has changed, so too have the buzzwords. As one friend recently noted, simply having a blog isn't the differentiator it was a few years ago. Now, just about everybody has one (or more), so making you a blogger isn't anything special unto itself. But where the new frontier lies is where I see people positioning themselves - in social media.

Social media is a loose term that largely relies on user generated content, whether it be social networking, forums, web logs, social news or bookmarking sites. Those of us who have embraced the blogging boom have no doubt leveraged these tools: Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and the like, for starters. But I'm constantly seeing people giving me invites on LinkedIn saying their title is as a social media expert or social media consultant, or running into profiles online where social media is featured prominently, and their numbers are increasing.

I'm afraid that for the most part, their efforts to rebrand as social media experts will be short-lived and futile. Saying one is an expert in utilizing social media sites is akin to brand one's self as a "Web browsing expert", an "e-mail expert", or a "telephone specialist". While some will capitalize on the technophobes and newbies who don't know the difference between MySpace and NASA, or Hotmail and Hot Pockets, I believe it makes more sense that social media is spread thinly across all aspects of activity, be it a company's marketing activities, human resources, communications, and business development. Pretty soon, with any luck, social media won't be any scarier than opening a Web browser or writing a simple blog post.

So what should these so-called social media experts do to find real work? Some of them might get lucky. Every big analyst firm should have a social media expert on hand to help train the slow adopters, at least until they get the point the analysts have to change titles again. But to me, saying you're a social media specialist or a social media expert doesn't amount to a whole lot. What else do you do? What do you do really? There's no money to be made Digging up stories, hitting the StumbleUpon button or refreshing FriendFeed or Twitter, after all. Social Media is simply part of the landscape, in the background. Social media offers tools for communications and information sharing, but it's a means to an end, not the end itself.

Like the surge in Webmasters rose and fell, similar will be the rise and fall of people who flash you a business card with the term "social media" on it. It's the 2008 version of the Aeron chair and Foosball table so common in the days of the Web 1.0 startup. If you've got social media on your card, think about what else you do. Are you a trainer or a marketer? Are you a PR person, or an IT expert? Don't lose those talents, and be sure you make social media part of the landscape, not part of the headline, as it's not the tools you use, it's how you do it and what you're looking to get accomplished.

As I Get Older, Some Online "Friending" Gets Creepier

I don't know if my transition from being childless to being a father of two has contributed to my being more aware of my age, but as I get requests to be "friends" on a variety of social networks, from Facebook to Plurk, Identi.ca, Twitter and any other social site of the month, I'm finding myself a bit uneasy when it comes to "friending" young contacts.

On top of the occasional annoyance that youth anywhere from 10 to 15 years younger than me are engaging in the same networks I am, there's just something that has me hesitating every time I get an invitation from a 14 year old or a 20 year old who wants to follow my updates or be connected.

At my old age of 31, were I to be a "real world" friend of any 20 year old girl, people should be asking questions. If I were palling around with some 14 year-old boy geek, they would be asking other questions. Yet, the occasional eyebrow-raising invite hits my e-mail box, and makes me wonder if somebody just might get the wrong idea.

What if I were to take the next step and move beyond a simple friend acceptance on Facebook or Twitter and try to find out more about this person?

For example, take Mashable's Alana Taylor, age 20, or Read Write Web's Corvida Raven, age 20. I'm friends with both on Facebook, and I've had many conversations with Corvida on Google Talk, traded e-mail, and phone calls.

Alana I've never talked to, but going to her personal blog had me feeling like I was getting a bit too much information.

Similarly, a 14-year-old Josh Jenkins asked to follow my updates on Plurk, and I reciprocated. What do I have in common with Josh? And how I do I explain any interest I would have in his updates, or those from 18 year old Ivan B, 19 year old Eric Kerr and 19 year old Jared Eberle?

Thinking about it makes my head hurt a little bit. Alana's Facebook profile says she graduated from high school in 2006, eleven years after I did, and at a point where I'd been married for three years. Josh Jenkins wasn't even born until my junior year in high school. Assuming teenage dalliances, he could be my kid, for crying out loud.

Maybe I'm overthinking it a bit. I know online "friending" and "following" is growing like gangbusters for people in social networks everywhere across age groups. And I know that to many, maybe my age of 31 seems young. But isn't there something a bit creepy about all this?

Are Blog Comments Really Conversations, or Are They Just Replies?

The issue of comment fragmentation has been rearing up every other week or so since the initial discussion flared up in early April, but of late, I've been thinking about the purpose of comments in the first place. When you make a comment on a blog, is it to respond to the blog author and say they did a good job, especially if comments are currency, effectively making a longer version of a "thumbs up or thumbs down," are you looking to further the conversation with the blogger, or are you instead using it as a reply, without anticipating a response from the author?

This morning, I posted a question, using Google Talk, to FriendFeed, saying:

“Are blog comments a "conversation" with the author, or just answering and responding to the author? Do you expect the author to respond to your comment?"

For me personally, on those posts I do where there is a lot of conversation, I'm pulled in two opposing directions - the first, to reply to comments and engage with readers, and the second, to instead not reply and avoid dominating the comment thread. With Disqus tracking my every comment on the blog, I can make myself look like a fairly noisy egoist in no time. So, it is tempting to see the comments on posts as only replies, and fight the urge to respond. Typically, I end up replying to those comments that ask new questions, or spur the conversation forward, but of course, I read every single one.

When I post to other blogs, I don't usually expect a reply from the author. The bigger the blog, the less likely the response, and for small blogs, responses are almost a guarantee.

In response to my note on FriendFeed, the answers were strongly weighted toward conversations, rather than replies.

Brian Sullivan said, "The most successful bloggers it seems to me are conversational."

J.C. Hutchins said, "I always assume that author will read my comment, but rarely respond. Always feels validating when they do, though."

Susan Beebe said, "Blog Comments = Conversations with the world; AND yes, most importantly the author. I do not expect the author to respond to me; however, I am always really glad when they do!"

Of course, if every comment on every blog gained a reply from the original author, the most popular bloggers would spend just as much time responding to comments as they would creating new content. And if you take it one step further, if those replies also generated replies, in theory, the conversation would never end.

As Steven Hodson of WinExtra wrote in Comment Fragmentation isn’t the Blogger’s Fault earlier today, "In the end though we have absolutely no control over where the conversation; if there even is one, will take place." That works both in terms of the blog author not fully controlling where comments take place, and also from the commenter, who cannot force a conversation through leaving a reply. Now that comments are being bandied about like currency, both at the blog and through a myriad of RSS readers and social aggregators, maybe it's time to think about the whole structure of blogging and commenting in the first place.

Continuous Parallel Attention: My New Reality

When you really want to concentrate, do you need a quiet room with no distractions, or does playing loud music help you focus? Can you hold a conversation while typing? Can you read blogs and write e-mail while watching TV? I do. And I must. For with all the information available these days, and my personal unwillingness to miss out on conversations or media consumption, I've done more than embrace what many call "continuous partial attention". Instead, I believe I have a goal of achieving "continuous parallel attention", whereby no single task is given primary focus, but instead, multiple tasks gain the same focus.

The common definition of continuous partial attention can be simplified to a person being focused on a single primary task but monitoring background tasks. This can be driving with the radio on, reading a book with a baby sleeping in the next room, or writing a proposal with Twitter on in the background.

Some do this well. Others don't.

Nearly 100% of the time I'm watching TV, I've got my laptop in my lap, with the TV screen's lower half ending just above the top of MacBook Pro screen. In contrast, if I try and talk to my wife when she's writing an e-mail, she probably won't hear me, and once I interrupt, she stops typing.

Last month, I talked about my social media consumption workflow, explaining how I started off my day, working essentially left to right to be sure I processed the information flow in the right way. This issue came up again this morning, when Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester revealed his own morning habits. In the ensuing FriendFeed discussion, I said I too try to knock out much of the activity at the beginning and end of the day, but also keep up what I call "continuous parallel attention" in between.

With continuous parallel attention, essentially multi-tasking, no single activity is getting priority over the other. I am writing e-mails at the same time I am listening to music, at the same time I am getting RSS feeds and seeing Twitter updates or seeing the FriendFeed page reload. Ask me the lyrics of the song, and I can tell you. Ask me what was said on Twitter, and I can probably tell you. Through continuous parallel attention, you're not giving one activity the short shrift due to time or priority, but instead, making sure every activity gets the right focus.

If you drive into the office, but you are thinking about the next blog post, or the next meeting, or even where to go for lunch, that's not mind wandering or being distracted. That's parallel attention. Your radio might be on and you're singing along. If a squirrel darts out in front of your car, you'll still hit the brakes. If a commercial comes on the radio, you still change the station. All in parallel. Your driving doesn't get worse. I'd argue I even drive better with loud music I know, where I'm pounding the steering wheel with every bass drum beat. I work better when I've got multiple things at once, in parallel.

The same is true for engaging with social media. Have you seen Robert Scoble's video from Media Bistro earlier this week? (See: Center Networks: Video: Robert Scoble on the "Worldwide Talk Show")

Robert doesn't linearly go one by one to consume his social media. He is running his RSS feeds, his Twitter feeds, and his video, all in parallel. The human brain is an amazing sponge, ready to take in new information, and if you practice, practice, practice, you can train it, like a muscle, to be ready for exercise. Achieving continuous parallel attention in social media means you don't have to stop one task to pick up the next. You just keep going. Yes, I saw that RSS feed. Yes, I read that e-mail. Yes, I saw your tweet and your FriendFeed post. But I also got all my work done, caught up on our TiVo shows, and picked up the groceries. It's not because I go without sleep (though I need less than most)... it's because of this parallel focus. You should try it.

Does Negativity Deliver Credibility? If So, That's Nuts.

Over the last 18 months or so, I've gained something of a reputation for being an early adopter more likely to heap praise on early versions of software with clear bugs than to drag services through the mud, calling out their every hole and flaw. I've stated that I do champion the little guy, and when I've found a service I like, there's no question you'll know, because I'll be consistent in my comments on it, highlighting new tweaks and trying to help you understand why I like what I do, and, in the converse, why I might not like other options.

But does my tendency to be positive and shun negativity make me less believable? Should I maintain a ratio of cranky posts to positive ones for variety's sake or to prove I'm not a paid shill on the take? As far as I'm concerned, no. In most cases, rather than drag down services, or dance on the graves of failed startups, I see sites' potential, and recognize the very real people behind services who are working hard to make their products as good as they can.

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb jokingly commented on FriendFeed today: "You should write a really harsh review of something tho, just to maintain credibility!"

It's clear my quasi-utopian view isn't held in many corners of the blogosphere. Some revel in negative reviews or tearing people down. Others feel they have a calling to be "balanced", evening out an otherwise positive post by highlighting a service's deficiencies, or if the service happens to be amazing, to pick three random competitors for whom this new arrival will certainly mean curtains. But to be honest, even if I have more readers now than I did three, six or twelve months ago, this is still my personal blog, and should reflect how I feel. When I write up a service, I aim to deliver an accurate portrayal of the news, sites or individuals covered, but I would much rather highlight those companies and services I like than waste my time showing you the services that I didn't like. In essence, my silence in itself can be considered a negative review - and if you think about those topics I do write about, maybe there's a good reason I haven't covered every single service out there under the sun...

This isn't to say I haven't had a few negative posts here and there. I've at times been frustrated with TechCrunch (TechCrunch's Celebrating Failure Doesn't Help Anyone), ValleyWag (Valleywag Thinks My Old Posts are Breaking News) and even TechMeme (Blogrunner Likes Me, TechMeme Hates Me). I wasn't exactly overwhelming in my praise for NotchUp (NotchUp Sells You Out, but Nobody's Buying) and you likely remember my first comments on Fav.or.it. (Fav.or.it Beta Effort is Not My Favorite. Not Even Close.)

But these negative posts are are a rarity.

In fact, Mark Hopkins of Mashable said to one FriendFeed user in search for good PR that it's fairly obvious when I've found a favorite: "Talk to Louis Gray. Forget product evangelist. When he likes something, he's a one man crusade."

If you listened to this week's Elite Tech News podcast, you could probably tell that my positive viewpoints on the Web were frequently outnumbered by those who didn't favor companies, services, or individuals, who feared their content would be stolen, and that tech leaders and bloggers were too money-driven or ego-driven to be trusted. But I would rather accurately portray my intrigue and excitement around new services, even if they're not perfect. I don't think it does me a lot of good to sit down with a service I don't like or can't recommend and put 500 words into it.

You could probably also tell this from the interview Mark Evans posted this morning, Who’s Louis Gray?, which helps explain my background, and shows why I've ended up covering what I do. The tech world is moving faster than just about any market out there which I can think of. There are some amazing folks out there working ridiculous hours trying to make the next big thing. Only a few will make it. But if we tear them down too early, they might never actually reach their full potential, and I don't think it's really worth it, simply to engage in a race for page views.

Are You Having As Much Fun As I Am?

With all the talk out there about how if you blog too often, you could die, or so-called "bitchmemes" and the occasional cranky rant, you'd be perfectly acceptable in thinking the blogosphere is a dire, dark place. But, if we all could take a step back and look at what's happening through blogging, how we're helping each other find new ways to use technology, how we can hold conversations across geographic and demographic boundaries, and find commonalities with people we might never actually meet in person, it's actually a lot of fun - and I get a kick out of not just what's happened so far, but where blogging could be going.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, the posterboy for hard-working, aggressive reporting in the blogosphere, was quoted in the much passed-around New York Times article this weekend, saying, "At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable."

But while Arrington and his team may live in fear of getting scooped or somebody else finding the story, the breakneck journalism pace isn't for everyone. I doubt that many of the bloggers who are now trying to break news and report news originally thought that's what their blogs would be. After all, do you really think I have some unique dirt on the Yahoo! and Microsoft merger negotiations? Of course I don't. I also have zero insight into when Apple will come out with their 3G iPhone, or what company Google plans to acquire next. And guess what? Neither do 99% of the other bloggers talking about it.

Due to this understanding that I'm not bound to play by the old-school journalist fears, I'm really having fun doing what I'm doing. While I have had the opportunity to break the news on some promising young services, and have seen that number rapidly grow over time, I'm blogging for the sake of writing and sharing and communicating, on those things I really find interesting. If I'm keeping silly hours, it's because I choose to. If I choose to write about TiVo one day and Toluu or Technorati the next, I'll do it. And if I'm gaining weight, it's because I'm getting lazy and like eating, not because "my blog made me do it".

Finding new Web services = Fun.
Communicating with peers = Fun.
Engaging with today's blog leaders = Fun.
Becoming part of what people read every day = Fun.

So if you are blogging, and you're finding that you've strayed too far away from the core mission of your blog, and what it is you really wanted to do in the first place, and you've lost the "Fun" factor, think about what you're doing, and see if you can get back to it. I wouldn't be blogging any more if it stopped being fun, and I'm not writing about things that aren't interesting to me. We can't all go be the next TechCrunch. But we can be ourselves. Lose the stress and enjoy being a blogger for the reasons you started - whatever they were.

Air, Water, Food, RSS, Twitter, FriendFeed. Maybe Sleep.

Addictions are real. Whether it's the caffeine in your Starbucks or Diet Coke, the nicotine in your Marlboros or your recreational drug of choice, certain substances can be habit-forming. But it's becoming faddish to label those things we do every day, even multiple times a day, as addictions, rather than simply part of life's landscape. And with the Internet becoming more and more embedded into each facet of how we communicate, learn and do business, it's inevitable that the word "addiction" is being misused. You could say people are addicted to saying others are addicted.

There are some necessities in life that nobody can be without for too long - air, water, food, and sleep, for instance. Also, most would like to have something resembling shelter or companionship. But needing oxygen every minute of every day doesn't make me an addict to oxygen, does it? Thinking I need to eat at least once or twice a day doesn't make me sign up to "Eater's Anonymous". Using my car every day doesn't make me addicted to my car, and wearing pants doesn't make me a pants addict.

So why then the silliness around addictions in tech?

Over time, as I find new services and tools or gadgets, they become part of my life. I've been told I'm addicted to my BlackBerry or I'm addicted to reading RSS feeds, or addicted to FriendFeed. Others have said they're addicted to Twitter or Facebook.

But think about the difference between what happens when a true addict is separated from their drug of choice versus what happens when I'm away from what it is I find to be my best tools to learn and communicate. A drug addict can have a violent physical reaction. Vomiting. Headaches. Shakes. Fever. A nicotine addict might try to quit over and over again and never make it, even when they know they could get cancer.

While I'm certainly annoyed by outages, or curious what I'm missing when away from RSS, TechMeme or FriendFeed for a serious amount of time, I'll live, and I certainly won't get physically ill. I can go to a baseball game without a laptop. If Twitter or FriendFeed went down for days, I'd grumble, and then move on to something else. And if, God Forbid, we lost all Internet, eventually we could rediscover the Nintendo Wii, the television, the telephone or actual human contact.

There is no question that technology is part of our lives today. I often tell my wife to plan on having wireless Internet on trips just like you plan on eating on trips because the Web has become such an intertwined part of everything we do. That some services and sites have risen to the top for me doesn't mean I've acquired an addiction, but instead, a preference. Now, I'd prefer people stop calling their newfound digital lifestyle an addiction. It's silly.

See Also:
LouisGray.com: Measuring One's Technology Addictions
Deep Jive Interests: What “Techno Addiction” Really Means
YuviSense: Addicted to Twitter, and lovin it
ValleyWag: Drudge and Kos readers are addicted
ValleyWag: Now we're even more addicted to the Internet
Engadget: Compulsive e-mailing, texting could be classified as bona fide illness

In Blogging and RSS, Headlines Can be Make or Break

In mainstream print journalism, a good headline can be remembered for decades, whether for its unintentional incorrectness ("Dewey Defeats Truman" -- Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 1948), its unconventional approach ("BASTARDS!" -- San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 12, 2001), its editorial wit ("Headless Body In Topless Bar" -- New York Post, April 15, 1983), or its emotional angst. ("Ford to City: Drop Dead" -- New York Daily News, October 30, 1975)

With social aspects of blog consumption becoming increasingly important, as well as the meteoric rise of RSS feed readers to take in information, a good blog headline can mean your story will be read instead of others on the same topic.

A good headline can mean the difference between getting ignored and getting Dugg, and as seemingly everyone is adding new feeds by the day, the sheer overload of information virtually guarantees a high number of your readers may never get to the full body of your story, if the headline doesn't grab their interest, or even turns them away.

Today, it is well accepted that Google Reader is the most widely-utilized RSS feed reader out there. While some have said it's not capable of handling the most avid feed consumers, I've yet to see one built more robustly. Helpfully, the service also offers a full set of historical statistics.


My Google Reader data as of this evening.
On a typical weekday, my stats show I'm seeing 700 to 900 items in my Google Reader, and need to make a quick judgment call on whether I'll read the full story, click through if it's a partial feed, hit share, or move on.

Just how little time do I have to make that decision? Assume that I read every post for 1 minute apiece. This would mean I spend 12-15 hours a day just in Google Reader. Take that number down to only 10 seconds, and you're still looking at 2 hours a day. What about three measly seconds? Taking a mere three seconds per headline means I've carved out 45 minutes a day just for feed reading, assuming 900 items. On the low end, that would be 30 minutes a day for 600 items, including those you actually read, and don't just scan the headlines.

RSS feed reading at that volume only truly becomes trivial if you think you can read and determine an action for the average post in one second. One second per post could take you all the way down to a stressful speed reading demonstration of 15 minutes a day. (Don't even try and get me started on how folks like Robert Scoble, who read more than I do, manage to cope.)

Contributing factors to whether I share a post on my link blog include the newness and uniqueness of the information, the quality or brand of the source and conversely if it's a new and emerging blogger, the amount of interest I have in the topic, that I perceive my readers to have in that topic, and the quality or content of the post itself.

But also a factor? The headline. If I happen upon two stories on the same topic, of interest to me and my readers, where the source is equal, it can be the headline and first paragraph that make one item shared over another. And as it is only the headline that is displayed in my Google Reader shared items on my blog or on FriendFeed, that's sometimes all the consumers see as well.

The issue of headlines becomes especially important for sites like Digg, Reddit and the like. Reddit, in fact, shows only headlines, begging for an up or down arrow. Digg shows a headline, and a submitter's authored one paragraph description. When you see stories that have hundreds or thousands of Diggs, do you really think all of those folks clicked out to the story, read it, and returned to Digg it? I doubt it.

Outside of social news submission sites, you can also see the importance of the headline on places like TechMeme. Items in the TechMeme discussion links show only a headline, and the story's source. Often, there can be 5-20 different stories from different sources on the same topic, making the headline, or the brand of the source, be the deciding factor for which post to click.


An example TechMeme discussion from tonight.
In 1998-1999, while wrapping up my senior year at Berkeley, I worked at a Web site focused on Internet and Silicon Valley history, called Internet Valley. My boss was certain that Web site consumption would change, and that the era of long textual pieces without styling was dying, in favor of pieces highlighted by bold, italics and colors. His theory was that Web users would "skim" and no longer "read" articles.

While his design tendencies were abysmal, he was right about people changing the way they consume news in this firehose of information. Now, it's obvious that you can lose them from your headlines alone, so for as much work as you may put into your writing, and getting the data or sources right, give your headlines their due.

Yes, I'll Send a Member of My Team Immediately

It's SXSW week, and some PR folks are under the mistaken impression that I'm both going and/or a big deal. :-)

After I got an e-mail from one PR rep earlier in the week about a company looking to capitalize on social media, and I had no interest, this afternoon I got a follow-up. (With edits, naturally)

"Any interest in the (client name) social media story? They’re in Austin all weekend meeting with bloggers and media if you have anyone down there who’d like to talk with them."

Yes, of course. I'll send one of my staffers to go get this story immediately. All expenses paid. What... you're saying I don't have staff? Or I did, and they just quit? Dang. I'll have to get back to you then.

louisgray.com: A Brief History of the Site

Editor's note: I've been thinking a lot about how I first found Web services or made them part of online life. Some, I have perfect answers for, and others, not so much. I hope to talk more about some of these experiences in the coming weeks. But I thought it'd be interesting to play show and tell with just how louisgray.com got started, with all the missteps along the way.

And soon... we can talk about all the other cool services and how we got there.

1999 - 2001


I first bought the louisgray.com domain on December 30 of 1999. I didn't do much with it in the first round, building out a set of static pages that essentially acted as an "About Us" site, featuring comments on sports, tech and stocks. Amusingly, I'd patterned the look and feel of the site off one of Google's "About Us" pages, hence the coloring and clean look. I didn't expect Google to get as big as they are now, but I liked their design even back then. Of course, if I used that look/feel now, it'd have been obvious.

But I didn't give the site much attention. At one point, I even let it expire!

(See the Archive.org Backup from February 2001)

2004 - 2005

I bought louisgray.com back again in 2004, from a new registrar, but again, didn't do much. In fact, given I'd largely deleted the old files, I had to crawl through archive.org to find the old content and graphics, and rebuilt.

(See the Archive.org Backup from August 2004)

In 2005, I messed around with launching a blog with Six Apart's TypePad software, but I didn't get all that far. Eventually, I'm sure I broke it, and I abandoned the plan, but didn't give up on the idea. In fact, most of what I did with louisgray.com at this time was serve as a repository for my ANtics Oakland A's comics, featured on AthleticsNation.com.

2006


In 2006, I finally found a solution that let me blog to louisgray.com. A little fatigued by the non-tech content on my family's shared blog, in existence from 2004, I forged out on my own, very slowly, mostly offering an echo chamber that consisted of talking to myself about the A's and Silicon Valley news. I certainly wasn't breaking news, but instead, treating it as one person's commentary on the day's news.


(See Archive.org for Mach 2006 and October of 2006.)

First Half 2007 - The Scoble Effect

Writing for my seeming one-person audience was at times frustrating. But somewhere between mid-2006 and early 2007 I had this epiphany around Web 2.0 and leading bloggers. I started leaving comments on some sites, and engaging. At times, I felt like I was catching up in terms of the quality of the content, talking about the news of the day, but I wasn't getting any traction.

In January of 2007, I let my frustration spill over a bit. Robert Scoble wrote a memorable post called "Pissing off the blogosphere…, where he recapped complaining that large blogs like Engadget weren't linking his way. The first to comment on his story, I wrote, "... for what it’s worth, you are one of the A-listers who everybody who does link links to. As you know, all us Z-listers are pumping out content every day and it could be nobody notices…"

Robert, only minutes later, wrote, "Louis, just subscribed to you. I appreciate it is tough for a new blogger to get noticed. I wonder how we can solve that?"

Clearly, I got Robert thinking... as for a later post that day, he asked, "Do A-list bloggers have a responsibility to link to others?, where he offered to visit and subscribe to good tech blogs, mine included.

This made me excited, but nervous too. For if I didn't start writing about stuff that Scoble wanted, he would unsubscribe. He wouldn't share my items in his link reader, and that'd be the end of that little experiment. Luckily, I started to arc my coverage even more toward tech, and more toward those things he liked, including Google Reader and RSS.

January of 2007 was also a big move behind the scenes, as I moved off RapidWeaver, a Mac OS X software application, and onto Google's Blogger, where we remain today. It's not WordPress, but it does exactly what I need it to.

Second Half 2007

18 months into the new blogging experiment, I continued to fly under the radar for the most part, with the exception of the occasional surprise on TechMeme and rare Scoble link. But I also started to find friends with similar interests who covered similar things, people like Steven Hodson of WinExtra, Jason Kaneshiro of Webomatica, MG Siegler of ParisLemon, Kent Newsome of Newsome.org and Frederic Lardinois of The Last Podcast. This little sub-community served, in my opinion, to help push each of us further to do better and keep up the pace. Even if just a few dozen of us were trading ideas and sharing comments, it was something. In this time, I was also buoyed by seeing my subscriber base grow from less than 100 to about 200 by end of year.

Early 2008

Not much use recapping this. It's early yet. But I've talked openly about some of the momentum we've had, now that we have a better idea of what we want to talk about, and now that we have new services coming to market, wanting to be part of the discussion and engaged. I've been delighted to see services I talk about go from 5 users to 500 seemingly overnight, or to see others excited about finding new sites with my help. And while I once felt stress to remain relevant, I feel a lot more comfortable now, that we're engaged and actively part of a larger conversation. And now that we're here... you know, as Paul Harvey says... the rest of the story.

Dealing With Offline Companies Can be Such a Pain

Unless you're a brand-new visitor to louisgray.com, you might remember a post from a few weeks ago where I revealed my wife and I are expecting twins, our first children. While that announcement was sure exciting, there are a number of very real offline preparations which are going to take real physical labor and change - not the least of which being getting our home ready for two permanent visitors. But as easy as it is to plan things online, it's those offline who can throw snags into the whole operation.

With my wife having more than a decade's experience in teaching school, and the two of us having accumulated our fair share of material goods, we're going to need a place to put some of our own things and get a room in our condo ready for the kids. So, on Monday night, before my trip to Boston, I reserved a 10' by 15' unit at a local Public Storage, letting us start moving our items. I was able to register online, and gained a confirmation e-mail, saying, "This price and unit will be held for 7 days."

But during my time in Boston, Public Storage called my home phone number, which I had left on the site, on Tuesday and Wednesday to confirm we would be ready to move in by Saturday. By Thursday, the afternoon I came home, a final message was left by a woman who gruffly said as we hadn't returned her call, that we had lost our spot. Held for 7 days indeed. A short 7 days from the night of the 25th to the afternoon of the 28th!

Did I get a single e-mail asking me to confirm I would be ready to move in on Saturday? No. If I had gotten one, I definitely would have responded. And what am I supposed to do now? Sue them for breach of contract? It's not even worth it. So of course, I logged back on today and reserved a new unit at a different Public Storage somewhere else in town for about the same amount, and yes, its automated e-mail has the same "7 days" guarantee.

I recognize that I can't exactly compress my offline materials, attach them to an e-mail and send them to a new location, while that would be nice. But it's gotten to the point I expect customer service to be much better and for true online companies to be much more responsive and interactive than these offline clowns. That they wouldn't even think of sending an e-mail, after the initial confirmation made no sense. Why ask for it then?

February 29th's Leap Day Robs Us All

The idea of February 29th is a cute concept in some ways. It's quadrennial appearance has notoriety, and is a date often targeted by expectant mothers and fathers who think they can keep their children artificially young, by limiting the number of birthdays over their lifetime. But if you think about it, if you're a salaried employee, the very fact we have a February 29th this year means your employer gets this day for free. In fact, every single paycheck you get this year is less because of February 29th, and they never even asked your permission to dock your pay!

What do I mean by this? Well, in 2007, we had 365 days, in 2008, we have 366, and next year, we will have 365. Yet you're paid the same this year, if you're on salary, even though you put in the extra effort!

To make the math easy, let's pretend your salary is such that you take home exactly $73,000 a year. Under this scenario, in 2007, you would take home $200.00 even per day, but in 2008, for the same amount of work, you'd only be taking home $199.45. And those 55 cents can add up. Over the 366-day calendar, your employer has taken away a full day's pay from you. If instead you take home $109,500, that number jumps to $300 in lost pay for similar productivity! (See below chart)


Over time, a few cents a day starts to add up...
And you can see this in every single one of your paychecks. If you get paid over a 14-day pay period, at the $73,000 rate noted above, you would see only $2,792.30 coming home every two weeks, instead of the $2,800.00 you would have received in either 2007 or 2009. That's messed up, right? You think we want to be reminded 26 times this year that employers worldwide have asked us to come into the office and work for free?

I propose that from now on, all salaried employees should have the option of taking February 29th off. After all, if we aren't getting paid, why show up?

Updated Blog Design and New Features

While the changes aren't too dramatic, I am pleased to introduce a cleaner, more informative look to LouisGray.com, including the introduction of a new site logo and slogan, as well as newly introduced pages - one to serve as an "About" page, and the other, an ever-growing repository of "Coverage", highlighting select links from around the blogosphere and media discussing content here.

As the new slogan suggests, LouisGray.com is "Home for early adopters, technology geeks, RSS addicts and Mac freaks." With the site's gaining newfound attention from a greater number of sources, ranging from Mashable and Read/Write Web, to ReadBurner, Twitter, AssetBar and FriendFeed, I thought it made sense to have the site speak to new visitors as well as repeat visitors.

The new pages can be found here:

LouisGray.com: About: http://louisgray.com/live/about.html
LouisGray.com: Coverage: http://louisgray.com/live/coverage.html

If you find bugs, please do let me know. If you think I missed something major, or you hate the new updates, also please let me know.

Interacting Geekily With A Set of Septuagenarians

On Saturday night, my wife and I had the opportunity to put together a birthday party for my mother-in-law, who just marked her 80th birthday. As part of that celebration, I had prepared a slideshow, using Apple's Keynote software, showing more than 90 photos from her life. Lugging the laptop and connecting to projector, I set the slideshow on loop as background for the party, as we could see her start as a baby, gradually grow older, and then, start again.

Even this relatively simple use of technology drew awe from the group, who despite seeing the majority live in Silicon Valley, from Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto and the surrounding areas, were separated from the Internet generation by a good number of years. As many of them came to praise the slideshow, and asked me how I had done it... were the photos on CD?... I had to but grimace when I knew I hadn't started it until Saturday afternoon, and that the heavy lifting had in fact been done through Apple's software, and the application of an Antique-style theme, not instead, due to some wizardry on my part.

This real-life realization of the gap between how I grasp technology and gravitate toward new services, versus the slower road taken by those just a generation or further ahead, got me thinking. How aware were they of the latest in technology news, and what relevance did my cutting-edge dabblings have for them?

Taking place just a day after Microsoft's proposed take-over of Yahoo!, a pair talked to me about the possibility, and asked what I thought would happen. In that conversation, it was clear one knew what YouTube was, and they vaguely knew Google had purchased the company, but when I said it was for $1.65 billion, they were surprised to the level of detail. I didn't dare ask anybody if they used Twitter, or Facebook, or were familiar with RSS feeds. It's possible they might have TiVo, but more likely they had just moved to DVD, in addition to their VCR.

At one point, I was surprised when I mentioned storage, that one of them not only had a vague idea as to how big her hard drive was, but said that as a digital photographer, she wanted advice on the best external hard drives to get. I tried to help. But this incident was the exception. It's often hard enough to explain to people what I do for a living, or where I work, or what makes us different. It's quite another to explain how I've taken a interest in technology and extended to include blogging (which my guess is that some knew about), RSS feeds, startups, social networking and news aggregators.

The goal of getting my mother-in-law off AOL, and her ancient Dell besides, is now almost 5 years in the running. In that time, she's purchased two Mac laptops, including a MacBook Pro, yet that month-old machine is still in its box, unopened. And while we've given her wireless through Airport Express, she's not moving around the house on her laptop. Not yet. I've now been told the plan to move off Windows and to her Mac is after she gets her bedroom re-designed. Moving slowly and serially is the plan, and just maybe it'll happen this time.

But in a world when the days behind you far outnumber the days in front of you, the need to multi-task and remain cutting-edge just isn't there. While I'm more likely to share an RSS feed or e-mail you a link, I instead might get clips from this week's Mercury News. Even when the older generation is trying to keep up, they're falling further behind. And maybe that's okay. I just hope that as my decades increase, and I move from 30 to 40 to 50 and beyond, I don't also slow down and fall behind, but can remain relevant and aware of the world of tech. Otherwise, please tell my system to Shut Down.

Perpetually Rooting for the Underdog

By now, it's no secret, even to the least sports-affiliated of you, that the New York Giants beat the previously-undefeated New England Patriots to claim Super Bowl XLII. Just a week after many were arguing whether the Patriots team was among the best ever in the history of the NFL, it turned out they weren't even dominant enough to beat the Giants in the one game that would have truly made history. Now, instead, the Patriots were just on the downside of one of the bigger upsets in recent memory. And we loved it. As I watched, I loudly clapped my hands and shouted when Eli Manning made his touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with 35 seconds left, making the win a near-certainty.

While I'm not really a huge fan of any specific NFL team, having left the stable of the 49ers faithful more than a decade ago, there was no question I was rooting for the Giants tonight, as well as against the Patriots, as much as anything. As a Bay Area fan, I've grown tired of the antics of the Boston teams, and especially their fans, who see it as their God-given right to go out and gather championships. Since 2004 (and earlier), when the Red Sox finally garnered their first World Series trophy in nearly a century, their fans have been among the most vocal and most annoying, rivaling only Yankees fans in their ridiculousness. As their own team's salaries spiral ever higher, they can't be seen as fighting against a Goliath, being a Goliath themselves. And in a rare twist, tonight, I was rooting for a New York team who hadn't been given much chance by the national media to win it all.

Over my life, I've grown accustomed to rooting for the underdog, not only in sports, but in technology, business and even politics. I don't tend to gravitate toward that which is most popular or most purchased because I see others doing it. Instead, I tend to make my own choices, market share be darned. That's why even in the face of intense competition from other vendors, I've made my choices in Apple and TiVo, and am not a big fan of Microsoft. I continue to root hard for my small-market teams, the Oakland A's and the Sacramento Kings. I continue to find flaws in the big companies' offerings and laud the efforts of small start-ups, even when their own offerings have holes. I see the potential in the little guy as they work hard to become the big guy, and hope they remain humble.

And when the little guy I have always rooting for may become the big guy on the block, their newfound power has me sometimes questioning if they've lost that innovative focus, and just what made them great in the first place. Google is slowly making that transition, adding on new focuses, when the ink isn't yet dry on the last product announcement, and they aren't always going to receive the benefit of the doubt from me the way they once did. And Apple, a one-time blip in most markets, is now owning the leadership position in digital entertainment and devices, and should be expected to do the right thing in terms of product prioritization and pricing.

Unfortunately for me, and others like me, teams and companies and technologies are often the underdog for good reason. Sometimes the competition has bigger stars, a bigger cash hoard, and more resources. Sometimes, they have a few years' head-start, or a customer base so strong that its difficult to push for conversion. So, I often find myself disappointed when I see the little guys give up, stay small, or in the world of sports, lose and go home, only to re-open my hopes the following year. But tonight, at least for 24 hours, we're happy that the big beast from Boston was thwarted, and the underdogs went home victorious. If only that always happened.