What is a blog? (in 2 minutes 50 seconds)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI&rel=1]
Nice work.
Is the Long Tail wagging the dog?
I’m reading (ok, a year late I hear you scream) Chris Anderson’s ‘The Long Tail’. The kind of book you know will be important to you but don’t quite know why.
To summarise: the internet revolutionises content production, content distribution and the way searchers are connected with that content. The result is that the totality of ‘niche’ markets (previously commercially unviable) is now greater than the mainstream markets. In short, if you’re Amazon, you’ll soon be making more money selling fewer units of an infinitely larger range of things - driven by the following 3 forces:
• Democratise production • Democratise distribution • Connect supply and demand
The sensible internet entrepreneur will be writing software tools for bloggers, podcasters, designers and musicians to produce more content. Or he’ll be developing new and better aggregators (like iTunes or Amazon) to bring more content together. Or she’ll be developing search algorithms, systems for recommendation, social media platforms and viral systems to bring consumers to that content.
But what she won’t be doing is actually creating content - unless she can create a huge volume of it.
The ‘Long Tail’ needs content but for the individual producer, content production isn’t profitable. So where does most of the content that fuels software development, aggregator design and search engine profitability come from? Paradoxically, from people striving for the kind of media superstardom and success that characterised the old model.
And the best way to stimulate that production? By continuing to sell a myth of ‘consumer-as-producer’ to a generation striving for media superstardom - a myth so powerful and seductive that Anderson himself uses it without even noticing the inherent contradiction in the sentence.
The Ultimate Question:
“Would you refer us to your friends?” The simplest customer satisfaction survey in the world consists of that one, single question.
I’m in the middle of burning 200 sample audio CDs to take to a couple of conferences in the New Year. I started off running 5 machines. 4 PC laptops, 1 Mac iBook.
Score so far: iBook 5 CDs failed to burn. PC laptop none.
That’s the 2 year old Mac iBook - the one that crashes with a flashing red, green and blue screen every time its left unattended. Sister to the iMac G5 we bought at the same time with the failed power supply and now failing VRAM.
So.
Would you recommend Mac to your friends, Sam?
No.
Plans for 2008
The G2B@ podcast, Devon and Cornwall’s first business networking podcast is 9 episodes old and it’s time to think about changes for 2008.
Well, firstly, we’re going to migrate from a WordPress-hosted blog to a WordPress blog hosted at our own domain.
We’re also going to stop reading the ‘next 10 days’ networking events on the podcast because they’re already on screen (and nobody remembers those kinds of details when they hear them anyway).
We think the show’s worked best when we’ve scripted the least material and when we’ve remembered the first rule of podcasting - ‘be yourself’! That means having a view and taking the risk of putting it out there.
2008 is going to be a big year - and with the threat of recession in the air, exceptional customer service is going to be more important than ever before. The ability to give, take and act on feedback is going to be what differentiates the best from the rest - and we aim to be there to keep it real, simple and fresh.
So is the name ‘blog’ history, too?
We’re offering a simple site design / building consultancy and we have used the term ‘blog’ in describing the service. I’m wondering whether I shouldn’t lose the ‘blog’ term altogether. Who does the distinction matter to, anyway?
Up until recently, I saw blogs as ‘adjuncts’ to websites. You know, that quick-and-easy, more personal space where your clients / prospects could learn more about you through views, tastes and lifestyle. Now, I think that distinction is losing its value and today’s ‘20-somethings’, comfortable building online identities via a raft of different social media (Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and MSN) probably see the ‘formal’ website as the adjunct to their real live selves.
If it is the case, it’s certainly an interesting turnaround. The more corporate ‘websites’ I see, the more stuck they appear in a faceless, turn of the century motif: slick, shiny and relatively inhuman.
I think we’re a turning point where what once seemed reassuringly authoritarian - the typical GloboCorp web presence stuffed with corporate jargon - now looks frozen, stiff and creaking and uninvitingly inhuman.
I also think that WordPress, like Google, will emerge from a small pool of competitors to become synonymous with the moment ‘web design’ left the hands of the html technicians struggling to replicate printed matter on the web and was put into the hands of people like you and me.
In 10 years time I suspect few of us will remember what ‘html’ stood for since all new technologies and their protocols must eventually become ubiquitous and invisible. Even now, words like ‘blog’ and ‘podcast’ feel like millstones weighing down something that’s essentially fleeting, something that’s already moved on.
*Chuckle*
I went looking for information on how to put a ’subscribe to newsletter’ link in a simple WordPress blog - and found this on Steven Wong’s blog. As to the subscribe form, well it looks like there are plenty of options if you’re using a indenpendently-hosted WordPress blog but none if you’re using the ‘free hosted’ version that we are right now.
iMac g5 and podcasting
There was a time when I would have recommended Mac for anyone in the creative sound business. But I’ve just spent ages setting up a USB mic in order to do some direct-to-mac recording… only to discover I can’t. Why? Because the fan noise is too loud. Constantly. A quick Google search reveals (yet again) that this is another of the well-known iMac g5 faults (along with my faulty power supply and now faulty VRAM).
It renders this machine (just 2 years old) unusable as a recording machine. It’s already unusable as a graphics / video playback machine.
I’m still able to audio edit with it, though. Whoopee.
So remember, if you’re seduced by the Mac aesthetic, don’t forget to spend another £300 on extended cover. Alternatively, do like this guy.
Google loves this blog
Thanks to a clever cocktail of promotional activity. A press release in UK Business Forums (£35 to join) that hits the top of the natural search engine listings. A competition to create relevant inbound links to the MyVoucher.com site. And people like me talking about it. Can I have the £3000 holiday now please?
Google HATES blogs. It’s official - at least in my case
It’s great to find things out the hard way. This week, our G2B@ podcast blog disappeared off the Google radar. Not being an expert, I’m forced to go into ‘learn’ mode (no bad thing) to get an idea of why.
It may be have to do with how generously I was using links out to people we featured in the podcast. I’m sure that with more exploration, reading and advice, I’ll find out.
I’m not bitter, though, because I really like the whole Google paradigm and the way it’s founded on relevance. It’s like being stopped and searched at the airport. While it might be an inconvenience I have to admit there’s something reassuring about it too.
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