Broadcasting Brain

I’ve been thinking a lot about the topics of yesterday’s blog post, where I fretted about actions and reactions, and a whole bunch of other dichotemies. In the end, however, the thing that bothered me the most was from one of tech blogger Corvida’s recent posts:

Disappointments

To the people who agree with this bulls*** that [Loren Feldman's] doing, I feel sorry for you. However, I feel even worse for those that won’t take a stand against him. I’m disappointed with some parts of the tech community that have let him get this far [by publishing potentially offensive videos] let alone this popular without saying something intelligent to this moron to stop his progress thus far. It’s making me feel some sort of way about the tech community that sits in silence rather than speaking out because of fear. It’s saddening and disappointing on so many levels.

The thing I don’t like about this paragraph is that it creates a dichotomy (or trichotomy, I suppose):

1. The people who chose to speak out against things that they find offensive
2. The people who don’t find these things offensive, whether or not they chose to speak up
3. The people who find these things offensive but are afraid to speak up.

Are these the only scenarios? Or is there a fourth:

4. The people who find these things offensive, but are practical or pragmatic enough to realize that best way to quiet some people is to ignore them.

Is group 4 brave? Afraid? Insensitive? Pragmatic? Callous? Smart? Ignorant? I guess that’s open to interpretation. Maybe 3 and 4 can coexist.

But here’s another thought to consider: where does it end? Are we now obligated to call out every person who makes objectionable material? Do we just focus on those people who criticize our own religion, ethnic groups, orientation, economic class, gender, or nationality? Do we take on the battles for those groups who are disadvantaged but that we don’t belong to? Do we take on some or all?

Personally, I’m just not geared up for that. I would not know where to draw the lines.

I will settle for trying to be civil and respectful towards the people that I encounter. Even that can be a challenge on some days. But it’s something within my power and sphere of influence. Otherwise, I can only handle those situations of which I have a good, detailed knowledge of the facts on all sides. It’s just too easy to make a mistake.

Sorry, readers, but that’s the way I see it. I mean no offense to anyone, especially Corvida, who followed her heart and logic and did what she thought was right in a given situation. But, again, where do we draw the lines?

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In the face of all of the navel-gazing drama and headlines from the past few days, how’s a little guy to compete, even if he does have a green glowing brain?

Enter the following:

Jason Calacanis is giving up blogging (or so he says) Read the rest of this entry »

Blogging is a way to promote yourself and your ideas. By regularly publishing creative output, you put yourself out for ongoing scrutiny. But what if you aren’t the type of person who likes to do that? Is there an inherent contradiction between the practice of blogging, and social media in general, and introversion? Does it make sense to put yourself into the public eye? What’s the benefit? Read the rest of this entry »

If I’d been smart or otherwise had some insight I would have gotten into blogging at least five years earlier. Instead, I start with an unfocused personal blog in mid 2007 and don’t really go whole hog into somewhat serious blogging until early 2008.

I’m a relative latecomer to the blogging game. Shrug. So be it.

However, these do seem to be interesting times, again in relative terms, to be a blogger. Some would say that blogging is moving into a stage of maturity and slower growth. Meanwhile, microblogging and lifestreaming are offering new options for online communication that rival blogging for reach while making it easier to use mobile phones, digital pagers and PDAs for Web publishing. Blog comments and related conversations seem to be going anywhere the commentator wants to take them.

Steven Hodson predicts that we’ll see the great blog weeding of 2008 as content creators migrate to other platforms or else give up the ghost altogether. The growing set of social media tools (don’t forget Facebook and MySpace) make publishing easier, which may be encouraging some casual bloggers to pull up stake and move on. Meanwhile, conversation dispersion, scrapers, and current advertising models have been throwing uncertainty into the results of monetization for some time. At least, that’s what I assume Steven’s getting at and that’s what I’m going with.

In some ways it seems like I’ve gotten into this blogging game too late, like a kind of pyramid scheme where the spoils go to the earliest adopters. In this case, the spoils are attention, reputation, and income.

On the other hand, if a lot of people are going to drop out of the blogging game, it could also be a great opportunity for many newer bloggers to establish ourselves as authoritative, respected bloggers. So maybe some of the spoils will go back in play.

But, if some people do pull out, could it be an indication that the wells of riches are drying up? It depends on what riches you’re looking for, I think. I’d say traditional monetization through ads certainly isn’t a piece of cake and it’s probably getting harder as the total pool of advertising capital, while still growing overall, is atomized and dispersed into many, many buckets of various sizes.

Attention and reputation are still in play but they may be limited to tightly defined niches. Or not, who knows? Smart people who communicate well and network effectively usually find ways to get their voices heard. These kinds of people are usually worth hearing.

At any rate, none of these things are dissuading me. I’ll keep on writing here until I either run out of ideas or an audience. Is there a better way to talk to the world?

One thing that I think is worth discussing is how to continue to increase the size of the blogging and social media audience. I think that’s something I think would benefit everyone. That’s what I’ll discuss in my next post.

Photo by carbonnyc

Why is this man reacting in horror?

It’s because he’s learning that growing your blog subscribers can have a surprising effect!

And what is that effect?

Why does it happen?

What can you do about it?

Read the rest of this entry »

For all of the talk in the blogosphere about niches and focus, it’s almost undeniable that we all live in intersections. Don’t we all have more than one interest? (Yes, besides blogging or social media.) Aren’t we multi-dimensional beings?

I believe that we all live in intersections of interests, backgrounds, and knowledge. In fact, I think we are those intersections personified. And, for lack of a better term, that makes us interesting.

As an example, this is how I would visualize where I sit in the blogosphere.

First off, I don’t claim to be an expert in any one of these areas, but I do have an interest in all of them.

I started off as a personal blogger, although you could rightly argue that I didn’t get terribly personal in the original incarnation of my blog. Most of the people that I enjoyed interacting with in that segment of the blogosphere are in my Blogroll.

Before I dug deep into blogging, I spent a lot of time with social news, bookmarking, and so on. I was very active in Digg, StumbleUpon and other sites at different points in time. I met some interesting people in those communities and I learned a lot in the process.

Lately I’m more interested into the theory and applications of social media and I’ve been participating in more of those conversations. FriendFeed the comment nexus has been a real catalyst for this interest and I’ve been interacting with more cool people (and even more cool people).

I have continously been interested in geeky fun stuff, whether it’s technology or popular culture. This might be a future area of exploration for me. I’m actually hoping to have a guest post at an up and coming pop culture blog (geek culture? Movie/TV/comic books/gaming blog?) in the near future.

So this is the intersection where I lie, because somehow, over time, I manage to blend these interests into Broadcasting Brain.

If we are the sum of our experiences, then it’s inevitable that our interests will bleed into our main niche. Giving ourselves some wiggle room to explore multiple niches helps keep everything interesting, I think.

How about you? What roads meet at your intersection?

With passion, creativity, and hard work, no one can top your story.

You have to write it.  No one else can.

Everything else is process.

I’m very pleased to announce that I have a guest post at Problogger.net (the brainchild of blogger Darren Rowse) called Leaning Into The Blogging Dip.  This is definitely the highlight of my social media activities to date!

Please have a look and also check out Darren’s Problogger.net blog - it’s one of the best, most comprehensive blogging resources online today.

Many thanks to Darren for the opportunity and best wishes to him, his wife, and son as they prepare to enlarge their family!

Source: FTC Inside

Comment fragmentation is the term used to describe the process by which people comment on a blog post in multiple places where there is an associated link that you can use to reference the original post. Some people think that comment fragmentation penalizes the content creator.

This is particularly true on the FriendFeed website, where each blog post can be linked and relinked via social news and social bookmarking functions, which appear in FriendFeed whenever the author chooses to share their RSS feed from an application. The phenomenon multiplies, however, when the blog readers are also active in these social media services, which help spawn many instances or branches of the conversation.

You could compare this situation to an artist who puts a lot of work into a painting, but who doesn’t get to hear or see all of the reviews about his or her work. They may be frantic to get feedback about their work, but that feedback may be spread across dozens of conversations, including little groups of people that huddle together to talk about the artist’s painting. Read the rest of this entry »

My blog reading habits have changed a bit lately, so I thought I’d give you a glimpse into the places that I’m spending a lot of my time:

On Topic - Social Media/Technology

Colin Walker - thoughtful observations and speculations about current events and possible directions for social media; a thinking person’s blog equal parts sociology and technology. Colin’s a great guy and a welcome commenter/guest here at Broadcasting Brain.

WinExtra - Steven Hodson “calls ‘em as he sees ‘em” and his “no BS” approach to modern technology is always insightful and refreshing, even if you disagree with him. Steven points out things that I should be checking out.

ReadWriteWeb - I don’t read Engadget, Gizmodo, Techcrunch, Techmeme, or Ars Technica regularly, although I’ll check the latter three out on occasion. RWW is the industry blog, along with a bit of Mashable, that I use to keep track of what’s going on in social media. They’ve got a great range of writers (I do have a slight bias towards Alex Iskold, but they’re all good). This is the blog where I’d absolutely love to guest post if I ever get the chance.

Alexander van Elsas - sometimes crazy-awesome thinking about technology today; always interesting. Alexander clearly pursues common themes throughout all of his writing and has certain biases (I don’t think you’ll hear the phrase “walled garden” more often on any other blog), but he’s a good thinker and discussion initiator.

How To Split An Atom - my friend Steve writes with passion and style about business and technology with a focus on the hip, interesting, and groundbreaking. He gets it and he’s a gentleman to boot.

Mathew Ingram/Work - Mathew’s own blog, not directly associated with the Toronto Globe and Mail, provides an interesting (and slightly opinionated) perspective on today’s Web technologies and related businesses. He’s got years of journalism experience from both business and technology and his opinion is worth reading.

Men With Pens - two crafty wordsmiths/creators always have a lot to share on the art and science of writing. They have one of the most amazing comments sections of any blog like I’ve ever read, where the comments take on a life of their own. I think of them as the Potters (Harry and James… get it?) or occasionally as John (James) and Paul (Harry)… do I have to explain the John and Paul reference?

Remarkablogger - Michael Martine is a rising force in the blogging world and he’s worked his butt off to get there. His “wolf pack” concept may be mutating in ways that he never expected, but nonetheless he gets it. If your business is thinking about blogging, you really need to check out his stuff.

Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin) - Seth Godin is another craftsman, mainly of ideas related to sales, marketing, customer service, innovation, and product design. He has a consistent, distinctive voice and presence and I think he has some of the best ideas in business today. Some people complain about the fact that you can’t leave comments on his blog. My response: try sending him a question by E-mail sometime. You might be surprised.

Louis Gray - I’ve recently become a fan of Louis’s work and I’m astounded by the sheer amount of research, documentation, analysis and commentary that he does. As good as his blog is, however, he’s best experienced through FriendFeed, where you can really get a handle on all of the work he does. In fact, guys like Louis Gray are the people for whom FriendFeed was designed and that the rest of us can emulate.

Problogger.net and Skelliewag.org - I lump these two blogs together because of Skellie’s association with Darren Rowse and because they cover some similar territory, but most of the good things that I’ve learned from blogging has come from studying their blogs. It’s great, great stuff, especially if you’re trying to figure out what blogging is all about. I think they’re great people, too.

Dosh Dosh - Maki is a blogging/social media juggernaut. Sometimes he sounds like a wise old man, other times he sounds like an enthusiastic school boy. Regardless, once he starts into a topic, he owns it. Period.

Social Media Explorer - maybe it makes a difference that I’ve met Jason in person but I still think he’s doing some great work in both promoting social media and trying to bring PR and communications firms into Web 2.0 and social media thinking.

Search Engine People - another personal contact here (I’ve met Jeff Quipp) but I think his team puts out some really high quality material covering a lot of angles in search marketing and social media. Jeff, Jennifer, Ruud, Tom and the whole team write great stuff.

Off Topic - entertainment value only

Rokk’s Comic Book Revolution - some of the best comic book reviews that I’ve ever read - amazing detail
and care.

The Legion Abstract - another fan site, devoted to one of my favorite comic book concepts: the Legion of Super-Heroes. Another remarkable work of love.

Entertainment Weekly - I read the reviews and analysis of both Lost and Battlestar Galactica and I’m looking forward to the same when Heroes returns to the airwaves in the fall.

I’ve probably forgotten or missed a lot of other great blogs… but these are the ones that I hit most consistently.

(Edit:  I can’t believe that I forgot Chris Brogan…)

How about you? What blogs do you read regularly?