Teblog

Because I can

Someone I know has posted a video of himself, very drunk and largely content-free. I was going to link to it here and ask him whether he might regret it. But I realised that I would regret doing this so I refrained.

He had bragged about it on Twitter, which suggests he didn't care. But then he was three sheets to the wind at the time, so perhaps his judgement was in question.

This brings to the fore one of the issues of social computing which is that people upload stuff (words, pictures, movies) just because they can rather than because it might be interesting, informative or entertaining.

This pollutes and dilutes the infosphere (Luciano Floridi beat me to that term by a wide margin). However, the good thing is that no-one has to look, tag or link. But this kind of thing can be permanent and cause damage when it's least expected.

Unless, of course, you're Paris Hilton. Which my acquaintance isn't. Despite filming himself topless.

Minimising my digital pollution

After my recent agonising about whether to continue with Teblog (this blog), I've decided to hang in there. Focus will be around what interests me. And, since I'm essentially a communicator (training, writing, etc) and productivity tool publisher (BrainStorm), I doubt the content will change hugely. Except I'm going to allow a bit more of me to show through.

But... I do not intend to pollute the digital atmosphere with a posting frequency or content designed to attract attention or popularity. Not that I ever did.

I confess to blogging elsewhere - three other places, in fact, shortly to be four (fingers crossed), but I will try to stick to what I think is usefully informative or amusing. The exception in Teblog is that I might indulge in the occasional bit of trumpet-blowing. (A new release of my software or a link to something I've written elsewhere, for example.) If the daily visits reaches zero or close to it, I'll stop.

What sparked this post was a) the afore-mentioned agonising (thanks for you feedback folks) and b) I woke up today to 115 overnight emails, 114 of which were spam. The one that wasn't was a Facebook connection from that nice Mr Al Tepper, ex green blogger and now head of marketing at ethical retailer, Natural Collection. I'm only in there because friends are raving about it, but I'm buggered if I want to hand over all my email addresses to FaceBook.

How long should a blog post be?

Not a new subject in the blogosphere, but it was triggered by two posts today: one was almost 3,000 words and the other 4,000. Each ended with 'to be continued' or similar. Did I read every word? No. After the first few hundred words, my interest in the topic turned into curiosity about why the posts were that long.

Neither was broken up with alleviating cross-heads, bullets, quotes or illustrations. Solid slabs of text - one paragraph alone was three hundred words - are very hard on the reader. This is even more true when being read in an aggregator where other items are clamouring for attention.

I wondered if anyone had produced any statistics which revealed a relationship between blog length and attention span. Clearly, one's interest in a topic would play a part, but there ought to be some general relationship. So off I went in search of some answers. Apart from the odd mention of average attention spans (meaningless really), all I could find was stuff on blog lengths. This is what I learned:

Problogger suggests 250 to 1000 words

Big Blue Wave sugggests 10 to 250, but not more than 500 words

BLOGGING::BUSINESS suggests 300-400 words usually, with the odd short or long one thrown in

ChristianBlog.com insists on a 150-word minimum and 20,000 characters maximum (that's nearly 4,000 words)

A number of bloggers say they "write until it's finished", which suggests a stream of consciousness approach. This also suggests a lack of respect for the reader's time.

Some say either post long and infrequently or short and frequently. (Maybe break long ones into short ones, thus increasing both frequency and readability?)

Others say, "you can always stop reading a long post" which is a bit sad for the author - being uplifted by the hits but not realising that no-one gets to the punchline.

May I be so bold as to suggest to those who insist on long posts that they review the structure and stick in some bold cross-heads which would act as sign-posting, break the monotony and give people encouragement to keep reading?

Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins explain social media

Trevor Cook (Australia-based PR man with common sense) has teamed up with online communications whizz, Lee Hopkins to write an eBook (free) on social media.

Since I trust Trevor, through his blogging, I recommend the book. I have scanned it and it runs through blogging, podcasting, RSS from the communications (not surprisingly) perspective. If you are in any doubt about what this is all about, then do read it. It explains everything clearly, provides masses of useful links, provides good advice and illustrates with case studies.

RSS feeds in Grazr via OPML

I have trouble keeping track of myself, let alone all the other things that interest me. We're talking here about web-based stuff: news feeds and blogs in particular, but it extends to forums, wikis and traditional websites too.

Amyloo is using OPML and Grazr to document the blogs that surround the BlogHer conference which is currently running in San José at the moment. (That's the Silicon Valley San José by the way.)

I have demonstrated Grazr in my left sidebar for a while to show a simple outline. Inspired by Amyloo, I decided to try and add some feeds. Using OPML Editor, I inserted some feeds into an 'outline' (joke, it's only four entries) and then dropped the file onto my web server. Then I used the Grazr Configuration utility to create this:

Just click on an entry and it will take you to the most recent posts in, respectively, this blog, a blog I co-write with my editors at Information World Review, a blog spun around thinking tools and a forum I manage for Brainstorm Software. Click on an entry with a newspaper icon to the left and you can read the original post. Marvellous! (Update: but only if the originator feeds the full post. IWR appears not to. You can click on the headline to go to the original post.)

See Amyloo's example for something much more profound.

How SME's can interest journalists: a podcast with moi

Alex Bellinger, who created the UK's first small/medium enterprise podcasts, caught me on the hop recently and asked a bunch of pointed questions about how SME's should handle the press. He's no slouch when it comes to PR but he thought he'd use me to get the journalist's perspective.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, or you want to treat yourself to my Estuary English, advance 7m45s into SmallBizPod number 30. Alternatively break yourself in gently and get to know Alex first. The Tebbutt/Bellinger exchange is about 25 minutes.

Who designs BT's web pages?

Just back from a few days away and both phone lines are playing up.

Get onto the BT website and am offered an immediate line check.

Am invited to explain the problem in detail. I saw the large edit box, but didn't notice the small print which said "up to 150 characters". So why not make the box approximately 150 characters'-worth? Who knows what 150 characters is anyway?

Who designs this stuff?

Here's my slap on the wrist:

MySpace conference and new(ish) insights to social media

Yesterday, I went to a conference organised by Jackie Danicki of the Engagement Alliance called "What MySpace Means:Lessons For Every Brand". Bear in mind I've been lurking around the social media scene for some time. So this isn't a conference report, just the (paraphrased) things I found interesting:

Heather Hopkins of Hitwise UK notes that MySpace and hot competitor BeBo are all about people congregating where their friends are. Bebo has an edge here because it it school- and college-related. She noted that once you're part of one network it's very hard to move.

Adriana Lukas of the Big Blog Company talked of humans being non-rational and 'oddly intimate' in their online communications. Minds meet before bodies. She referred to online people as 'digital immigrants'. Censorship or control are perceived as 'damage' and will be routed around. In this space, the demand side is supplying itself which has huge implications for traditional information providers.

Scott Norvell of Fox News talked about people coalescing around friends and peer groups. Coalescing is a word that popped up frequently during the afternoon. He talked of people having more power than broadcast media - citing Matt Drudge. Although media consumption has changed, mainstream media still has tremendous sway. On the dangers of online, he said "children are more likely to be abducted on a church picnic". Young people aren't doing and talking about anything they didn't do before, they're just doing it more publicly on the web.

The Guardian's Victor Keegan talked about the university whose students wouldn't go to union meetings because they were so busy communicating in MySpace. The Union discovered that a lot of potential members were fans of a particular film series. So the Union screened an episode. The MySpace folk turned up en masse but then didn't speak to each other.

He also talked of the shift in power from producers to consumers. And, for the vain (in a publishing sense) among us, he mentioned lulu.com where you could upload your own book and get it printed for a few pounds.

Apparently 2/3 of readers of Guardian properties (on-line and paper) are outside the UK. It has its own podcasting studio as well as various blogs and online pages. He talks of contributing to Guardian blogs for free because he knows he'll get far more readers than he ever would with a self-hosted blog.

Antoine Clarke of Pharma Marketletter (and fiancé of the organiser) stimulated an almighty row when he raised the question of drug companies advertising to the public. Responses ranged from Damian Counsell's "people can't evaluate claims" to Jackie Danicki's "well they can go to the doctor for an opinion".

Alex Bellinger of Audacious Communications wondered whether podcasting really qualified as social media. Without listener involvement and feedback it's just a more isolated form of radio. The conversation moved back to giving listeners control of what's covered.

Suw Charman from the audience pointed out that some corporates love podcasting because they can say "this is the message" whereas blogs are somewhat messier.

Alex agreed. "Corporations love it. It's signed, sealed and delivered. It gives them control." Adding, "but, with an ad at the beginning and a call to action at the end, who's going to listen?" Again the coalescence word came up. If you put podcasts  out for free, this is a good opportunity to coalesce around a show. He then plugged his own smallbizpod as an example of this.

Because of another engagement, I missed the last two presenters, Alistair Shrimpton of Skype and Hillary Johnson of Kerabu, Inc. But I believe Jackie will be uploading her own notes to the conference website.

Was it worth three hours for these few nuggets? Absolutely. And I'm sure the audience got much more out of it than me.

Was my Godin criticism unfair?

Drew Benvie at Lewis PR has indirectly taken me to task for my posts about Seth Godin, and others, switching off comments.

He makes reasonable points.

Consider this post a reflection of them.

Seth Godin, Information World Review and blog comments

Seth Godin tells the world why he doesn't allow comments on his blog:

1) I feel compelled to clarify or to answer every objection or to point out every flaw in reasoning
2) It takes way too much of my time to even think about them, never mind curate them
3) It permanently changes the way I write. Instead of writing for everyone, I find myself writing in anticipation of the commenters

So no conversations there then. But maybe inbound links and trackbacks. Which are better for rankings anyway.

His alternative is not to blog, he says.

Let's say I considered this approach somewhat arrogant.

But then, just a couple of days before, Mark Chillingworth over at Information World Review (IWR) had blogged some slighting remarks about Apple users. Had he thought about the possible commenters, he might have adopted Godin's point 3).

Aimed at the typical IWR reader, an information professional, Chillingworth thought they would understand where he was coming from. What he didn't count on was for the hordes of people with "Apple" on their Technorati watchlists (or whatever). He was well and truly flamed. Mostly by people who'd never heard of IWR until this blog post.

Taking these two posts together, I can understand why people like Seth Godin and, arguably, the world's first blogger, Dave Winer, have elected for the 'no comment' approach. It does make me feel uncomfortable though. It's a foghorn approach to blogging. A kind of 'I'm OK, You're Not OK' pre-judgement of their readers. (See footnote.)

Better, maybe, to scan the comments and respond occasionally, and in summary. Maybe through a second posting, as Chillingworth did.

Footnote: If my memory serves me correctly, "I'm Okay, You're Not Okay" is the criminal's position in Transactional Analysis.

Disclosure: I write for IWR.