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Personal Blog PrejudiceDecember 6 2008

I am so f—ing tired of the prejudice against personal bloggers. Leading the charge today, I quote the great Guy Kawasaki:

I may get more value out of Twitter than anyone else on the planet because I use Twitter as a tool—specifically as a marketing tool—for my website Alltop and my book, Reality Check. If the concept of using Twitter in a commercial manner interests you, keep reading. If it doesn’t, then you can continue to send and receive tweets about how cats are rolling over and the line at Starbucks.

Humanities biggest problem is entitlement. Entitlement is a bit of a double-edged sword, if you ask me. I hope it’s appropriate that I believe I am entitled to life, rights and (if I am fortunate) happiness. It gets a little dicey when I start to believe I am entitled to own a hummer (I don’t own a hummer), destroy communities and so on.

Rhett has road rage and blog rage

One of the easiest areas to see our sense of entitlement is when we drive and I am a perfect example. If you want to hear the most foul, evil and vindictive things, just spend an afternoon driving with me. Most of the time it just spews out of me. I can own that. Usually, I shock myself and tell myself I need to cool out. I am entitled to be

The Great Personal Blogger SearchNovember 26 2008

I noticed a great post by Seth Godin in my feedreader this morning entitled “Death of the personal blog?“. There are times when he nails it right.

The origin of what we call blogs started as personal diaries, but like everything they have changed, grown and been adapted by media, become larger and the personal part of blogs has been lost in the large blogs. The problem is that the big box blogs that we see on the top lists on sites like Technorati are no longer blogs. They might be run by blogging software but the personality and personal expression of blogs has been wrung out of them to the point where only the numbers of readers, dollars and page views matter.

We need a revolution in blogging; we need to be radical! Blogs need to return to their personal nature. Whether your blog is a personal blog, or a business blog can people see you in the blog or have you been wrung out and hung out to dry?

Seth Godin is right, we need a new list that is not just about the big box blogs. Time to create a list of the best blogs that have a personal touch. Let’s start it here. Leave a comment with your favourite blog th

List Building vs. Valuing ReadersNovember 18 2008

Something is rotten in the state of the blogosphere. Perhaps you have noticed that there has been a trend with some popular bloggers lately, you visit their blog and instead of being greeted by their well written, compelling content you are greeted by a pop-over pushing the bloggers newsletter list. Every blogger is different. Some offer you a free reward for joining, some promise unique content that can only be found in the their newsletter or a free podcast. While I have no problem with newsletter lists or people subscribing to an RSS feed by email the latest trend to push newsletter lists has two major problems.

First is a usability issue. They use an annoying pop-over that blocks your access to the website. They are hard to block and are the most annoying form of advertising since popups. Why have these bloggers decided to put a good user experience behind building their newsletter list? Simple, they have discovered that the annoying pop-overs work and signup rates go up. Daily Blog Tips recently did a poll asking if people would stop visiting a website th

Blowin’ hot airNovember 17 2008

A while back, we used to use the Thoughts category to give a couple random suggestions on what you could post about. It was derived from a writing class I used to take in University, where everyone would suggest a topic and then we would pick one and write on it for 10 minutes. Just something to get us all writing. I really like the idea of the Thoughts post, but it never really had any traction. So, I am going to tweak it a bit and be more direct.

What is the point of blogging? I was reading about #motrinmoms on Twitter this morning. It seems to me that we all blog to listen to ourselves blow hot air around, but the best of us do it creatively. Even if we are trying to be helpful it all seems like nonsense to me. Therefore, blogging should be creatively talking about nothing. Like one big episode of Seinfeld. Yes/no? Discuss?

Leave a comment/trackback or email me and let me know if you write about it. Would love to hear your thoughts.

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I am part of the problemNovember 16 2008

Epiblogger… it’s what’s for breakfast. That was a delicious breakfast. It’s a meal like that that let’s me know I am doing ok. But I can’t say the same for Epiblogger or for the genre.

Is it just me or does everyone notice that the world would be far better off without metablogs? I subscribe to a large portion of metablogs and I can skim through them and think—what is this bullshit?

I have two problems:

• I assume that everyone thinks like me.
• I shouldn’t be passionate about anything because I just get pissed off.

The first problem is probably most peoples problem. For all I know you love metablogs. You can’t get enough of them. You could—if faithful enough—live on metablogs alone. The second problem is probably familiar as well. I don’t watch hockey because I end up spending three hours yelling at my television and it becomes obvious that I am slowly becoming my father. While I love my father, that’s not a bridge I am ready to cross.

The solution

Here is the solution as I see it: stop metablogging. But on the other hand we have a PR3 and why should give that up? Plus I think at least 4 people read this blog on rare occassion. I mean, the reasons to keep going are overwhelming.