Yesterday, my blog turned five.

I'm not really inclined to write much about that...  I've got too much work to do today.

And, I suppose that's somewhat fitting.  This is me working.  You want to look back on it?  Knock yourself out.  It's all here.  Me?  I'm looking forward.  I have stuff to do. 

I'm not going to write about how much my blog has given me or who I've met because of it.  If you're blogging with any kind of consistancy and effort, you know what I'm talking about.  If you're not blogging, then the rest of us are inclined to think that either a) you do not want feedback on your thoughts, b) you do not think your thinking needs practice or c) you do not think you have any thoughts worth sharing.  In any case, we're not inclined to chase you down to force you into it. 

It's 2009 and if you don't get it by now, the world is passing you by.

I will, however, leave you with three lessons that I hope, in my five years of blogging, that you've learned from me by now:

1) You do not know everything and neither do I, so open communication makes us all smarter.

2) There are a lot of people out there who are working hard on awesome things.  There are a lot of other people out there talking about other people who are working hard on awesome things, talking about awesome things in general, and tagging themselves on the 8,000 pictures they took of themselves during social media drinkups and tweetups.  These latter people are to be avoided.  Strive to seek out those are are actually changing the world--leave no stone unturned.

3) You can't please everyone... so the best you can do is be a lightning rod for those likeminded people that you do see eye to eye with, and poke bears and rattle cages around the rest of them. 

Ok, back to work...

Dispair:

"...How precisely Mike Arrington continues to have a readership is a mystery, and trust me, I’ve studied the topic..."

and hope:

...the core idea that everything finds an audience should be held up and remembered. Clung to fastidiously; A life raft for the ignored, for the invisible."

- from Big Contrarian

On Friday, I hit four years of blogging.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to say about it. 

For the first time, I sort of feel like marking blogging anniversaries is like marking the day you first started talking to people.

Sure, it's a transformative and pivotal event in your life that changes the way you relate to other people--but imagine the alternative.

I used to say that blogging isn't for everyone.  Now, I think that blogging like I do isn't for everyone.  You don't have to talk about yourself, or blog everyday, or post pictures. 

But, to me, there are a few things about blogging that I just can't see people going without, because blogging is... 

...writing practice, and since most people can't write particularly well or just can always get better, is worth it to build that skill.

...a way for people who share interests to find you.

...a way for you to find others who share interests with you.

...a way to get feedback on your half-baked ideas.

...a way to differentiate yourself in a competitive job environment, because a resume sucks as a means of describing your depth of character, experience, and thoughtfulness.

...a way to sharpen your thinking by forcing yourself to make sense of streams of disconnected thoughts.

...a way to remember where you were and what you were thinking at any given time.

...a low maintenance way for acquaintances to keep up with what you're doing.

...an open, inviting way to communicate that says, "I want people to interact with and engage me."

...a way to contribute your best thinking at the time to the world, instead of keeping it all to yourself, or even worse, behind the locked doors of subscriptions, members only, or just hidden away in library stacks.

So, write about whatever's on your mind.  You shouldn't care about now many people read or how often you post, or even what your is called. 

Just whatever you do, don't stop communicating.  Here's to another four years of all this...

Blogged with Flock

Over the last week or so, I've unsubscribed from a number of feeds that just weren't doing it for me.  Interestingly enough, what I've been left with is a feedreader full of my friends.  More than half the blogs I subscribe to are friends of mine. 

I could use some suggestions on new blogs to be reading.  Here's some key criteria:

• People who are thoughtful about career and life decisions.
• Anyone who takes Web 2.0 with a nice heaping grain of salt and doesn't get too caught up in the hype.
• People with outside interests.
• New Yorkers especially welcome.
• People with a good sense of humor.

Blogged with Flock

When you get up to a critical mass of blog readership, you start getting a different kind of conversation from the crowd.  Most of it is fantastic and I'm lucky to have it, but some of it, not so much.  You get form letters from people marketing their new services to bloggers, LinkedIn and Facebook friend requests from people you've never heard from before, solicitations for link exchanges, blog network invitations and a whole host of Starbucks invites.  These aren't necessarily bad things, but a lot of them are just, well, out of the blue.  It's the blog equivalent of asking for sex on the first date...  or even before the first date.  Call me old fashioned. 

Since most of these people have never read my past blog posts about these types of things, I'm going to summarize my stance on all of them here.

First off, this is my personal blog.  I do not, as a matter of intention, "review" products the way Techcrunch does, so please don't ask me to review anything.  I'm happy to check something out and give quick feedback, but I'm lot actively looking for review submissions.

I am always, however, searching for products that will answer my own selfish needs, and so I'll sometimes write about a product's ability or inability to provide a useful service.  This does not occur as the result of a review request.  It does happen as the result of notes that begin, "Hey, remember when you were looking for "x", well I found (or "we have", if you're a marketer) a product that solves your problem."  This shows you're showing me something because you think your service applies to me specifically, not just because I have a lot of blog readers.

If you still insist on pitching me something with an actual pitch letter, then please please do not blow smoke in my face and tell me that you read my blog all the time.  Its ok if you don't.  A lot of people don't.  Most people don't.  (My mom does, though...)  I know who many of my blog readers are because they show up in MyBlogLog or they comment or I read theirs and see my link on their blogrolls.  People who emerge from the abyss to pitch something are not easily believed to be
"long time, first times."

As for all of these social networks, I basically use two... Facebook and LinkedIn.  Facebook is a place for my friends.  By friends, I mean people who I've met, hung out with, or would actually hang out with if they were in the same city.  Just because we met professionally does not mean we're besties, but rest assured, I value you immensely either way--as a reader, as a professional, as a colleague, etc.  If we are professional and reciprocal contacts in real life, please do feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.  Reciprocal is key here, though.  Reading my blog or just being in nextNY but never having met or spoken to me is one way, not reciprocal.  Just because I have a lot of LinkedIn contacts doesn't mean I just add everyone.  I need to be able to at least know you enough to recommend you on some basis, even if we just had a few side words over a specific blog post.  The first time I hear from you should not be without an introduction on LinkedIn.  That's like showing up to my office out of the blue and saying "Do you want to have a meeting?"

And then there's this odd little Plugoo box that gives you a direct means of IMing me.  It connects straight to AIM, which I'm usually on, and, I hate to admit it, I generally answer even when I'm working.  So, if you're ok with continuous partial attention, because you probably caught be doing something else, I'm usually up for a little Plugoo chat write through that little box.  Try it.. .it works!  It is quickly becoming my favorite widget.

As for in person meetings, you should know that I do not drink alcohol or coffee (I will go for a SBUX skim chat, though...).  The alcohol thing is just a personal preference...there are no problems with me that you need to worry about in that area, but it does provide an interesting social dilemma when people ask to meet up for a drink.  I do frequent lots of bars (you can't play on as many sports teams as I do without doing so), and don't mind them at all...it's just that when I do go, Sprite is my drink of choice, as my friends know.  If you're cool with that, then sure, by all means, ask me out for a drink.  I'm all for it. 

Lunches work great for me, although I try to spend them with contacts I already have and friends, too.  I try not to take blind lunches too often, but they're not so bad, because at worst I get fed. 

That's always a good thing.

If you really want to meet up, connect, network, etc...just hangout where I hangout...simple as that.  You can usually find me on weekends at the Downtown Boathouse Pier 40 location where I kayak and volunteer for our public kayaking program on the Hudson.  That season goes from mid-May to mid-October.   Other than that, I try to make as many nextNY and NY Tech Meetup events as I can.  It's always easier to catch up in person when I'm already planning to be out somewhere with other tech folks, as opposed to finding other times and taking time away from other things, which I'm happy to do, but we have to start somewhere.

Ok, is that fair?

Ok, so I'm lying about the oatmeal cookie.  However, oatmeal cookies are good, aren't they?  I think I like them more now than I ever have.

You know what else has grown on me?  Icky Thump by the White Stripes.

Still, 2000 readers, that's a lot.  Who are all you people?

Ok, here's my reader survey.... RSS readers, please click through and contribute 3 minutes of your time in the name of data mining.  Thank you!

Meet Ethan.

Ethan has a blog.   He does some graphic design work.

I found him because he's attending the Future of Online Advertising Conference and registered for their little social networking app.

Did I mention that he's a 17 year old high school student?

If you teach or work in the career services world, this is exactly what you need to be teaching... how students can create a professional digital presence for themselves and be ambitious enough to go to conferences, connect with people, network, etc.

Or are you too busy running job fairs?   

Soon, the best jobs will be gotten through digital backchannel conversations by people who maintain their professional thoughts in a searchable and consumable manner.

If you're working in career services are you spending more time with students on their resumes or teaching them ways to get jobs without them?

I was talking to Shri the other day about blogs and we both agreed that some of the most widely read blogs out there aren't actually particularly good writing and are getting less and less informative.  Nate echoed similar sentiment and said that few of the blogs that he reads have a lot of traffic.  He figured that, if something was important enough, it would filter through to the small niche blogs that he reads.

More and more, I'm hearing anecdotally of people unsubscribing from "A-list" blogs and meanwhile, I've noticed the RSS subscriber numbers of the rest of us trending up.   Is the blog world becoming more flat?

I agree with the whole bad writing thing, though...   and if anyone has any really well written blogs they read that they'd like to share in the comments, feel free.

One question I ask every now and then on this blog is, "Who are all you people?"

Through a combination of reporting improvements and overall growth, my subscriber count now stands at 1679...   and, I probably know about 100 people that I think subscribe...  Other than that, the other 1500 or so of you are anyone's guess.

I find myself asking this question even more with Twitter and MyBlogLog.  Little heads pop up on my blog and people twitterfriend me and I have no clue who they are, how they got here, or why they read.

So, as I've done in the past, if you are a new reader and you're pretty sure I don't know you, feel free to introduce yourself to me and everyone else in the comments. 

The garbage you've seen posted here (...to be more specific, the unreadable garbage... erm... I mean.. the garbage in computer gobbledygook....   well...  you know what I mean...) is courtesy of Typepad Mobile, which seems to be on the fritz.

In the last week, I went from about 950 readers to 1100.  Feedburner glitch or real human subscribers?   We'll see if it lasts.

In the meantime, I'm proud to say that my Fordham undergrad class got marching orders last night to start up their blogger blogs.   Last week, they e-mailed some bloggers to get tips and they're building that last as they get responses here.   One student jumped all over it and had his blog up about 40 minutes after class ended.  Should be a lot of fun as, in a couple of weeks, we'll be moving from a discussion on tools to a talk about how specific industries are being affected by technology.  They'll be blogging their responses and thoughts on the subject.  Should be fun.

Plus, I'm going to open up those pages on how industries are being affected to the public...  so you'll have a chance to have some input into the content of my class.

It's snowing here, by the way.  I'm sort of unimpressed. 

Thanks Nicole...

If you still think that everyone who blogs is a member of the same community, check out Buzzmetrics Top 10 Most Linked To Blog Posts of 2006.

The top post has 800 or so links in, and it is a petition in the LiveJournal community not to change the interface.

800...and then they really drop off from there.

So basically, in a community of 60+ million blogs, according to Technorati, no more than 0.00126% of people linked to the same post at once.

Of course, that doesn't count del.icio.us tags, where sometimes posts get a thousand links or two, but even that's just a drop in the bucket.

Even the most popular blogs overall don't have significant mind or market share when you think about the overall blogging audience, let alone the readership.  Engadget and Boing Boing have about 20,000 blogs linking in... or about 0.033% of all blogs.

So, before you think that pitching to the most popular blogs overall is going to make or break your product, get a little perspective.  What is the right audience for what you're trying to do?  Maybe you're better off pitching to a recipe blog that has 200 really active readers versus a tech blog with a hundred thousand readers who mostly just browse and comment to be seen.

So Time picked you and me... the users, as its Person of the Year, holding out YouTube as its shining example of a community driven media revolution.

I have two reactions to this.

First, I don't need old media telling me I'm special.   Like Jarvis wrote, it has always been us.  Only now, it seems to be fashionable and profitable to say so.  Old media giving us a pat on the back reminds me of that line in Pink Floyd's Animals:

"You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in."

So, to Time, I give a big fat thanks but no thanks... the same reaction I have to blogging "A-lists".  We're just people, living out our lives and talking.  That's not special, that's just real.  Unfortunately, it took the web a long time to get this close to reflecting real life.

That being said, my bigger issue is that it really doesn't reflect real life for most people.  Most people aren't blogging or posting on YouTube.

And, in the year where it became obvious that we weren't going to "win" in Iraq, I have to admit, that I feel a little sickened that we're being so self-congratulatory about taking over the web.  We're nearling 3,000 US military deaths in Iraq, now more than the number of civilians killed in 9/11... and we're talking about...  YouTube?  Are you serious?  PS... Newt Gingrich pointed out something interesting today...  60% of young Iraqi males are out of work.  He suggested fixing things over there by instituting an FDR-sized civil works program.  Instead of paying soldiers to shoot people who have nothing better to do than to shoot at us, how about paying citizens to fix their own country and go to work.

Look, I'm impressed and awed by user generated media as much as the next guy.  I mean, hey, I work for an avatar company. 

But, let's reserve this award for the year that bloggers and YouTubers end the War in Iraq, Save Darfur, rebuild New Orleans, address global warming (I'm going to bike into the city today, December 17th and it's going to be 62 degrees in NYC), push voter turnout over 80%, fix our education system, ban Paris Hilton from all media, start getting states to fall like dominos on gay marriage, or all of the above.  Right now, I think we're still doing a little too much talking to ourselves to deserve the proverbial reach around.  We still have a lot of work to do.

Hopefully, enough of you stick around so that this sticks, but for now, my Feedburner RSS feed count is showing four digits for the first time.  Yup...  1,012 readers. 

Now each of you just need to recommend this blog to 150 other people and we'll catch TechCrunch in no time.  :)

Actually, the thing that always gets me is that I have no idea who most of you are.  So, like I've done once before...   Here's your opportunity to introduce yourself, particularly if you've been lurking this whole time.

Please feel free to announce your presence in the comments...  Tell us who you are, how you got here, what you do... feel free to link to your own company, blog, flickr photos, last.fm page, LinkedIn, whatever...     I'm always happy to meet more readers.

And thanks for reading!   

If blogging really is a cocktail party, then I should really be listening and contributing to other people's conversations just as much as I'm expecting people to listen to mine.   I mean, who would really want to engage in a conversation with someone who just talks about their own stuff all the time?   

So, starting today, I'm going to make a valient attempt to comment as much as I post (not including my daily link posts).   

You can track how well I'm doing with my new coComment widget on the sidebar.  I took the Incircles chat thing off, b/c I didn't have a way to see if anyone was using it and the couple of times I popped in there, no one was.  I guess I should finally give up on the idea of embedded chat.  I've used coComment before, but never the widget...  this is take two.

There's even an RSS feed for it.  If and when I figure out how to get that feed spliced into my Feedburner feed, I'll do that.

So, from now on, I'll be trying to write as much on other people's blogs as much as I write here.

We want to claim the nextNY blog, but we have numerous authors.  There doesn't appear to be a way to do this on the site...   what's the right protocall for this?  I don't want to claim it by myself and hog it... because others will certainly contribute more.   Ideas?

Ok, so the worlds of finance, tech and probably to a lesser extent politics are still boys clubs, but I like to point out when my favorite gender makes some noise.

Found two cool new female bloggers...

A video blog on finance called Wallstrip hosted by Lindsay Campbell.  She's still looking for a "booyah"-like catchphrase, but Jim Cramer should still be watching his back.

Ashley Cecil paints politics and other newsworthy items... literally.  I'm really tempted to buy the Bubba painting...  Gotta love that little stubby thumbs up he gives...she's captured it perfectly. 

Also, BizDev2.0 is going to feature some very successful women in technology...  Catherine Levene, formally of the NYT Digital and now working with TheFind.com, Tina Sharkey, SVP of AIM and Social Media at AOL, and now a late addition, Zia Daniell Wigder from Jupiter Media.

Now if we could only skew the 90/10 boy/girl ration in the audience.

Some people think this stuff doesn't much matter, but for me, getting perspectives from a wide variety of people is one of the reasons why I blog and participate in these communities.  I hope we can see more of this in the future.

 As if you couldn't have predicted this when I joined...   Oddcast is now blogging!  Check out CEO Adi Sideman's first post.  I'll be adding posts from time to time as well.

When I shaved off my facial hair, TONS of people came out and told me how much better they thought I looked without it and how they never really liked it in the first place.

Why the hell didn't they say anything before?

I had facial hair in some form of another for like four years!!

Maybe I wasn't listening? 

Oh well, what's done is done.  Its obvious.  My layout is for suck.  Message received loud and clear.

I will change it.  Black background: gone.

So, now I need more ideas, more feedback.

I REALLY don't want to have the generic Typepad page look.  I want something different.  It doesn't even have to be that good, frankly, just different.

How about this:

I have been beaten.  Suggestions welcome.  This took me like three minutes to do in paint.  If anyone takes the time to do a little rendering, I'll post it.