After four years of blogging, blogging is...

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

Feed Cleanup... Need some inspiration

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.

Ok... recommend away!

Blogged with Flock

Piercing the Blog

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?

2000 Readers... W00t! Take my reader survey and I'll give you an oatmeal cookie

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!

This is going to be BIG! Reader Survey

Gender

	Male
	Female

Question 1 out of 6

Survey by Quibblo

Meet Ambition

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?

Bloggers can't write... Sphere flattening?

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.

Who are you people? Part 45

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. 

Typepad Mobile Posting Garbage

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.

Welcome... new bloggers, new readers...

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. 

I'm blogging...

Thanks Nicole...

Linking into the Wind... the Most Statistically Insignificant Blog Posts of 2006

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.

Let's not start sucking each other's blogs just yet: On Time's Person of the Year

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.

Breaking 1,000 readers

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!   

Blogging for others

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.

Group Blog Claiming on Technorati

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?

Girl power

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.

 

 

Technorati tags: women, gender, technology, politics, finance, wallstrip, bizdev.20, nextNY

The Oddcast Blog: Hello world.

 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.

And people think I'm obnoxious...

If I met you at a cocktail party and you turned to me and said, "How do I get someone more important than you to listen to me and to pass on what I'm saying," I think I'd prety much walk away right there.

So when Nick Carr rants about how difficult it is to get "A-listers" to link to him and calls its "open and democratic and egalitarian" nature "an innocent fraud", I'm sort of offended... on behalf of all the onesie and twosie readers of really small blogs and all the bloggers with little or no traffic who keep writing. 

When I teach blogging at Fordham's MBA program, I always stress that its not about getting traffic, but its about making sure you're available to be discovered.  Take this blog about custom labeling.  You think he really cares about links from "A-listers"?  He just wants to be known to the
custom labeling community...  his community.   What's great about blogs is that your community will define itself, because discovery is so easy.  Stake a claim on Technorati, tag your posts, and make sure you ping the right servers and the right people will find you.  So, if Peter only has 15 subscribers for his label blog, its probably the right 15 people and I'm sure engaging in a dialogue with them is worth it.

You don't have to influence everyone... and sometimes just influencing one or two people in a meaningful way can change your life, your business, your career, etc.  That, to me, is what blogging is all about.

I like MikeCrunch's take on this as well...  that its all about the power of the community.  Its not about your blog or my blog, but if word of mouth gets passed around that cocktail party, and we're all talking about it, that's very powerful.

I also think that blogging, if you really want it to have an effect, on you or others, needs to be a lifestyle.  I don't mean that you have to post everyday... but, for example... I'm very forthright about the fact that I blog.  Its on my outgoing e-mails as a footer link.  I know so many people who hide their blogs, but one of the most rewarding things is when someone who just happened to get an e-mail from me, six months later, sees me in person and says, "Hey, what you wrote the other day really made me think...   that you're completely wrong."

Can't win 'em all...   

I now have a real blogroll... yay!

I'm a big fan of Newsgator Online and Brad showed us the other day how to create a blogroll from it.  I still want it to be synced to the /contacts folder that I created where I actually read my blogs, but the creating a new location hack will do for now.

Is Equity Private Written by a Female?

I'm a big fan of Equity Private, a blog about the bottom rung of the investment banking ladder...  and yesterday, Yong the Analyst (my replacement at GM), suggested that perhaps the writer is female.

It reminds me of the time that I was looking at an unbelievably slick financial model one time--one that had some very powerful, but very simple..even elegant... VB code built into it.  We were so impressed, that we looked up the author.

P. Chung

Well, from that moment forward, anytime we were stuck on something in Excel, we thought to ourselves...  "P. Chung...  he'd be able to figure this one out."  "P.Chung" became a mythical figure between us.  Master of the Spreadsheet.  A man for all formulas.

Only later we found out that P. Chung was really Patricia Chung, Queen of the Spreadsheet.

Serves us cavemen right for assuming it was a guy. 

Enough of what I think, let me tell you what I think...

I was talking to someone in the elevator yesterday and someone else chimed in with a "That happened to me, too... that's so funny."

I turned to her and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't allow comments."

The March to 1000

So, after moving all of my stubborn Typepad feed consumers to Feedburner, I received a bump of 100 subs.  I'm now up to 750.

I'll be honest, its hard not to look and to get excited when it goes up.

But to be honest, what it should really be, at least for anyone who blogs about their industry and is looking to make professional connections, is a measure of your contribution to others, not their consumption of you.

So, as the theory goes, if I make an intentional effort to post more useful things here, take part in more conversations by linking to other blogs and commenting on other blogs, my subscriber numbers should go up--more so than if I was just trying to get more people to come here to read.

Its a subtle philosophical difference, but I think it means a lot in a culture of authenticity.

So, basically, I'm going to try, over the next month, to contribute a 1000 sub's worth of value.

Finally, A Buyout Blog!

Welcome Equity Private of SubRosa Capital to the blogosphere.

Blogiversary

I've been blogging for two years now. 

In that time, I've applied and failed to get into grad school, switched jobs, moved, shaved my head, my dog died, hurt myself many times, met Bono, started a meme, not to mention all sorts of emotionion personal life things. 

What a long strange trip its been.

Where will I be in two years?

Oops... Now you can get this by e-mail

ooops...   Somehow when I did the new format, I forgot to put my Feedblitz box back.  So, now, if you type in your e-mail address on the right, you can get this e-mailed to you.  This is good for people who aren't into RSS and my dad. 

How to add "Send this blog post" code to your blog

I just added a nifty piece of code to each of my blog posts.  It makes it easy for readers to send blog posts to their friends.

Here's what it looks like in Typepad or Moveable type:

| <a href="mailto:?subject=Check out this blog post from Charlie&body=<$MTEntryPermalink$>">E-mail this post to a friend</a>

I found the "mailto" commands here. 

Pardon our appearance

I'm finally upgrading my site template over the holiday weekend...

Bastards, all of you! :)

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.

I love feedback

I participate in a listserv for my high school's alumni.  Today, someone asked for some career advice and I replied with a note.

Not long after I got this e-mail.

Its so unbelievably obnoxious...   I love every word of it!

"hey, thanks for helping tim out, the dude needs it... i keep forgetting to mention that your blog layout is bizarrely out of sync with your apparent tech-savvy.  that thing looks like an aol member homepage circa 1997.  when i look at something like that i kind of expect the writer to be either barely computer-literate or barely
literate period, which makes for some weird cognitive dissonance given your breezy and confident blogspeak.  maybe you know this already but don't have the time/money to get it fixed.  it might be worth putting just a little time into.  one really important thing is making it more readable--the content just doesn't have enough space."

And you know what?  He's totally right.  My blog layout is for suck.

Here's my issue:    I need/want all this playspace on the side for blogrolls, tags, counters, etc.  Now, Pete gives about half of Mashable to playspace and his stuff is readable.

Is it the black?   Can there be no readability with these colors?  Am I destined to succumb to Ajaxian whitespace?

I think I can still get away with black and perhaps the fix is simpler than that.  I have a feeling that if someone could just play around with the actual posting column, break the grey up into rounded ajax looking boxes (one for each post), and fix my titles and footers, it would go a long way.

I don't have the time to do that at all.  If anyone wants to play with my template, I'll e-mail it to them and give them a shot at it, or they can just view the source.  I'm debating whether I care enough about it to pay someone to do it.  Maybe I'll take them out to lunch for their trouble.

Two New Blogs to the Blogroll

Pete Cashmore's Mashable and Chris Baum's User Experience Blog. 

I've been ranking all my blogs... well, most of them little by little, in FeedDemon by title, renaming the titles 0-5. 

My important front line reads are 1's.  This includes Fred's blog and Rob May's Businesspundit.

My 2's are solid.  They fill out the rotation with quality...   but I don't need to read them everyday.  That includes Alex Barnett and Charlene Li. 

3's are things I need to pay attention to, but aren't really part of regular content consumption, like the blogs of our companies, who we hear from anyway, and some MSM feeds.

4's are for something else...  4's are del.icio.us feeds of fun stuff to do and restaurants, and PubSub feeds.

5's are friends.

Then, there's the 0 category.  That's a test.  0's are short lived...   for like a week.  Its a watchlist of stuff I might want to read.  Pete and Chris have graduated from the zeros.

Reader Survey Results

I'm so fascinated by who reads this, especially because of the great people I've met through this blog so far.  That's why I did a demographic survey last week.  I got 95+ respondents, and given my estimate of 2000 readers (roughly 4x the people that show up on Feedburner), that's statistically significant.  Thanks to Pollhost.com for their cool survey service.  It was really easy to setup.

So here are the results:

Gender?

Selection   Votes Male 76% 74 Female 24% 23 97 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

Age?

Selection   Votes Under 25 17% 16 26-30 33% 32 31-35 21% 20 36-40 8% 8 41-45 10% 10 46-50 7% 7 Over 50 3% 3 96 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

Selection   Votes NYC Metro Area 20% 19 Boston/New England 13% 12 Southeast 8% 7 Midwest 10% 9 Silicon Valley area 2% 2 Other West Coast 15% 14 Europe 12% 11 Asia 1% 1 Somewhere else 19% 18 93 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

What do you do?

Selection   Votes Entreprenuer 32% 32 Investor 7% 7 Programmer 15% 15 Other IT 16% 16 Non-IT 29% 29 99 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

First, I was a bit surprised by the gender gap, not because it was so wide, but because I figured it was even higher.  Blogging, especially vc/tech blogging, is so male-dominated, that I was glad to see 24% female readership.  However, I have a feeling that most of that female readership is more of my friend base than anything else.  I don't know very many female entrepreneurs and technologists and I don't think I've had any of them comment on my blog or contact me through it. 

As for the age spread, this I wasn't surprised by.  I've had this theory that I get a good chunk of the younger end of Fred's more normally distributed age spectrum, mostly because people can more relate to me being a guy on the bottom end of the ladder.   

Location turned out to be really screwy.  I can't believe that only 2% of my readership is Silicon Valley based.   Perhaps it is, in fact, true that more of the Web 2.0/web services crowd is more diversified geographically because they're not as tied to hardcore tech centers.  Perhaps it is, in fact, true that more of the Web 2.0/web services crowd is more diversified geographically because they're not as tied to hardcore tech centers.   The other screwy thing is the 19% somewhere else crowd. Is that Canada?   South America? Where are those people?

No surprises in the job area...and in fact its what I want..  While I do like hearing from other investors, I'd much rather be chatting with the creators, operators, etc. than have this blog be a bunch of VCs chatting with themselves.

Sell Side Advertising Saving Lives

The Red Cross has put up a banner page that links back to places for you to give.  Its textbook sell side advertising.  They put up the ads and people just come and grab them.  Smart idea!  So, in addition to donating a few bucks, if you can donate some pixels to spread the word on where to give, that would greatly be appreciated.

Please Answer My Reader Demographic Survey (Left Column)

I'm just curious about who is reading.  If you wouldn't mind, please take 10 seconds to answer the polls on the left column on my blog.  You need to click vote after each selection, and don't forget to click "back" in the results page so you can answer the next question.  The poll will be up for a week.  Thanks for your time.  I'm curious about the results.

Best Blog Posts and Some New Pictures

Since a good chunk of you are new, I thought I would add some links to what I consider to be some of my better posts, so now I have a new linkroll down the left sidebar.

Also, I just posted a couple of new pictures to my photo section on the blog. 

Enjoy the weekend.  I'm off to take a ride on my new pre-owned bike from Craigslist.  I bought a Trek 7100 yesterday.

Comment of the Day

Hilarious!  Thanks Hunter!

Link: This is going to be BIG! - Jamba is a goldmine..

"Still amazed by the volume constriction that seems to occur during the blending process. I mean, you can suck down a smoothie with no problems, but try to eat four scoops of ice, half glass of OJ, two bananas, eight strawberries and half a frozen mango? No way."

This is going to be IMPROVED

So, you'll notice a few changes on the blog...  I finally got around to making all the menus work, which explains some of the weird posts you just saw.  Basically, I created a post that's going to act like a guestbook, so you can click the top menu and "Sign My Guestbook."  The second is that I have a Flickr badge now, so I'll have  a section/post for pictures.  I'll also be adding some to the Picture "Hall of Fame" or something like that.

More importantly, though, is that the Tag Team has linkrolls up and running.  The first one I've created is for my blogroll, which a lot of people have asked for.  If you'll notice, its in alpha order.  I don't think that's a feature yet, but Tim's working on it.  He coded that one for me on the fly when I realized that chronological order makes absolutely no sense when you're just creating a "Blogs I read" list.

Do you want a link roll?   Go here.

Then you can insert the little piece of javascript on your sidebar.

del.icio.us as a blogging tool??

Link: del.icio.us/toby/toby:blog.

I love when I get links and I'm like, "What the hell is this?  ooooooh.... I get it."

So Toby from MusicMobs has built himself a blog in del.icio.us... well... sort of.

He's tagged and grouped his posts so that the front page has a group of four links... a link to del.icio.us links about stuff he likes, a link to outgoing links of interest, his linkroll, and his "blog", which is essentially a link to other things with a short comment in the extended field.

hmm...  Is del.icio.us going to give Typepad a run for its money?   Doubtful, but this is cool nonetheless. 

Blog Clog

I have SO MANY things I want to blog about, take pictures of, etc. but I have no internet at home yet, and on top of that, my Treo is busted.  I get a new Treo on Friday and internet on Saturday, so you should see a lot of posts this weekend.  In the meantime, I'll be just letting all this stuff build up.  If I seem distracted or I'm sitting uncomfortably (depending on the quality of the blog post I'm thinking about), now you know why. 

Its amazing how disconnected I feel without e-mail on my phone and broadband in the apartment.  I might as well be living in Saskachawan.

I'm the #1 Charlie O'Donnell

I'm now the top ranked Charlie O'Donnell on Google, surpassing the Wheel of Fortune announcer.  That's gotta hurt.

40 years on nationally syndicated television and he gets outranked by some punk VC blogger. 

You know he's probably Googled himself and seen this, too.  It was a long run, Charlie, but it had to end sometime.  Sorry, buddy.

Bubblegeneration - Evil Corporations Only

Link: Bubblegeneration - Evil Corporations Only.

Good blog.  Great resources.  Check the sidebar for some really interesting presentations and articles on digital music and peer created content.

"You're Killing Independent Fred!!"

"A Fred divided against himself cannot stand!!"

So people are complaining about having to trudge through all of Fred's posts about his family, his travel, and his music to get to his posts about venture capital.  Its affecting how he posts and really has him troubled.  Frankly, I think some of his readers are being obnoxious, and I'd be offended if I were him.  Fred's a nicer guy than I am.

Didn't we all agree that blogs are a conversation?  Blogs are about people...  whole people.  Even if you only post about one particular subject, if its a post from the heart its about more than just politics, technology, marketing or law.  The smallest atomic element of blog isn't a post or a category.  Its me.  I am the smallest atomic element on my blog.  To really know me through this blog is to pay attention to all of it.  Sure, you can highlight a post or sort categories to find something in particular, but to break off part of it and disregard other parts to suit your liking or, even worse, suit an argument, is taking something out of what is a lot of surrounding context. 

This whole professional vs. personal conversation matter reminds me of our mixers for the SEMI mentoring program at NYSSA.  I remember this one hot-shot quant Stern student coming up to me and asking me if I knew/dealt with synthetic derivatives while I was at GM.  I told him that I knew what they were, but since this was an after work function, surely there could be more interesting things to talk about.  I mean, we were supposed to be assessing whether you wanted to get matched up for a whole summer with someone.  I didn't choose to mentor that student.

My blog has even less posts about VC and tech than Fred's does, mostly because I'm still learning and don't feel I have a lot to add to the already great conversations that are going on.  If someone asked me to cut down on my kayaking and softball posts, I'd tell them to take a hike. You wouldn't put up with that in person.  Why should you put up with that on a blog?  Imagine if an entrepreneur came to meet with Fred, and Fred opened the meeting by saying, "You caught me at a good time, because my daughter just won her basketball game."  What do you think his reaction would be if the entrepreneur responded by saying, "Yeah, I'm really not too interested in your family.  I'd like to talk about the video blogging space and hear your thoughts on that." 

I think that's just plain rude and it doesn't seem like that's the kind of person we'd like to do business with.  I say that because that's not the kind of person Brad and Fred seem to enjoy working with.  I'm pretty sure "investing in rude, self-centered people who aren't interested in others and can't empathize with the people they work with" isn't in our investment thesis.  It takes minimal effort to listen to someone's 2 minute family shpeel and almost no effort to skip through posts with titles like "Fordham loses another softball game" if you're reading on an RSS reader.  (At least its really easy on Feed Demon, anyway.)  Someone who can't listen isn't going to make a very good entrepreneur (and I'm not saying that b/c I know about venture capital... people who don't listen don't make very good anythings...) because they think they have all the answers and, well, no one does.  I don't.  My co-workers don't.  That's why listening and paying attention to the bigger picture is so important.

Not only that, if you have any networking skills whatsoever, you won't glaze over Brad's piloting story, but you'll listen intently and note it on the back of the business card you collect from him.  "Pilots plane."  Charlie:  "Kayaks on the Hudson."  Joshua:  "Doesn't like rollercoasters."  Inevitably, you're going to need something else to talk about sometime... a way to make a sincere connection.  Otherwise, you just have your business, and then what if we pass on it?  How will you keep up the connection?  Plus, what if some major life event gets blogged about and you're just subscribed to just the VC tag?  If I knew someone was reading my posts about technology and they totally skipped over the fact that I lost my family pet, I'd think they were pretty insensitive.  When I was at GM, every single placement agent and investor relations person worth their salaries knew about Larry Rusoff's three girls.  Did they really care about how the little ones were doing?  Maybe... maybe not, but it was worth mentioning, because it would bring the best out in him.

No, this is who we are.  Get to know the people of Union Square Ventures.  Fred's a family guy who loves music.  I'm into team sports and outdoor activities.  Brad's a pilot (the things you don't know about non-bloggers...) and a sailor... and he has twins.  We don't talk about business 100% of the time, and if you want to get to know us, you need to get to know us sincerely--meaning accepting the whole us. 

I will never separate my RSS feeds into categories.  Read all of me or read none of me.  Skim what you're not as interested in, that's fine, but don't expect me to cut my thoughts/persona into little chunks to be divided out by my audience segments. 

Trylon Doesn't Get It

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from the VP of Strategy and Planning of Trylon Communications.  It was a mass e-mail with the subject "BDI Blog Event - Continuing the Conversation".  Trylon co-sponsored this blogging conference that I went to a couple of weeks ago that I really didn't find particularly interesting.   Then, on top of that, they sent me another mass e-mail today.  Basically, they're touting their services, but if anything, they're making it blatently obvious that either a) they didn't actually attend the conference or b) they don't understand blogging at all.   Here's the jist of the exchange:

"Dear Charlie,                                                 

Thank you for attending the BDI blog event on May 3^rd.  I hope you found the presentation on “Blogs and the Impact on Media Companies” to be worthwhile.   On behalf of Trylon Communications which co-sponsored the event, and our President/CEO Lloyd Trufelman who spoke on the panel, we wanted to provide some follow-up since there was so little time to answer everyone’s questions on the topic."

I didn't go to the panel.  I signed up for it, but struck up an interesting conversation with a PR person from the American Foundation for the Blind and skipped out.  Now there's a productive group.  They just published quick tips on making blogs accessable to the visually impaired.

"Accordingly, I am forwarding links to some recent articles that might be of interest.  The first, by USA Today’s Kevin Maney, reports that blogs might not be new, but rather a continuation of a press trend that began in the 18^th century! "

You don't say?  Wow, that's really... um... interesting, I guess...  if I was into bar trivia.  The other links she sent?  One from New York magazine and the State of the Media report.  Nothing like passing links on blogging written by mainstream media to someone who not only blogs, but teaches an MBA course on blogging.  But that's not even the best part!  They link to a PDF press release (eek..  a press release!  How non-bloglike!) and cite that blogs are...

"a PR opportunity that our firm noted back when Web logs emerged in 2002 and has been practicing on behalf of our clients ever since."

Hmm... So you've been at this for 3 years and you tell me by linking to a press release in a mass e-mail that I never opted-in for?  Somewhere out there, Steve Rubel's "spidey-sense" is going off and he can't figure out where the trouble is.  Its right here, Steve... in my inbox.

"Considering our firm’s track record of delivering cost-effective, tangible editorial and corporate PR results exclusively for many top trade and consumer publishing and media clients nationwide since 1990 (all without strict billable hours or long-term contracts),  there may be a future match between our expertise and your company’s needs."

I highly doubt it.

So, I replied and gave them all the reasons why they should be blogging this, maybe politely informing me of their blog, and then never contacting me by e-mail again unless I ask for it, and simply letting me decide whether or not I want to subscribe to their blog.  I also asked where the opt-out link was on their e-mail.

The response?

I get this awful thing in my inbox...

 

  Now I'm on their "PR Ideas" HTML newsletter mailing list.  Unsubscribe?  I have to type in my name and my e-mail and then click a box and then click submit if I want out.  So, you send me mail, then I have to type in the e-mail address you just sent me this mail at in order to stop getting it?  I'm sketched out beyond words. 

Pubsub presented at the conference.  Let's see if they subscribe to their own Pubsub feed and find this.  I can't wait to hear their response.

Lesson for the day:   Don't spam a blogger.

 

 

 

apophenia: impression management: blogs as terrible representations

Link: apophenia: impression management: blogs as terrible representations. 

Last week, we got to meet some of my readers, which was very cool.  Now, I'm thinking about, after reading danah's article, what the impression is that I give off.  I don't think I've ever really met anyone through my blog after building up any kind of substantial online relationship anyway.  I wonder what kind of impression I give off here and how that compares to my offline persona.  I think part of the issue is that a lot of people only blog on one topic.  Fred and I are probably very much like we are in person as we are on our blogs.  In fact, Fred is pretty much his walking blog.  As for danah, I'm sure she's probably much more chill in person as she is on her blog, because she tends to get into some heady academic thinking on there.  In fact, as I get into some of the more well known bloggers I met through their blogs first and then in person, like Mena, Jarvis, and Steve Rubel, I think they're pretty much what I expected.  If you keep up with a blog, I think a lot of someone's personality comes out.  Its difficult to write everyday and hide major aspects of your persona... at least for me it is anyway.  So, I think I'm probably much like my blog.

Who are all you people?

So yesterday, I broke 1000 hits for the first time, and I'm on track to probably do close to that again today.  I have 80 subscribers via my Feedburner feed (I can maybe name 6 of them) and lord knows how many on my Typepad feeds.

However, most of you are pretty quiet.  Most of the people who comment aren't into RSS, so I've got this population of people that I don't know who like to read.  Now, my guess is that most of my traffic comes from Fred's blog, so you're reading b/c you want to hear what's going on with Union Square Ventures or our portfolio companies.  That's fine, of course.  But I'm just sort of curious who some of you are, so if you'd like to introduce yourself for the first time via comments, to me and the rest of the crowd, feel free.  I'm particularly curious who CBT the Mac User is and whether or not there are people who know me who check this out, but don't actually tell me that they read. 

Do you recognize this blogger?

Any friend of Judith Light is a friend of mine.  Come on, you know you watch Lifetime.  Admit it.  Plus, being able to trackback someone you just saw on VH1 makes the world seem just a bit smaller, no?

BTW...  VH1 really has the formula down pat no?   Its just the same show over and over again... celebrity clip, voiceover and aside from hilarious celebrity commentator.  Whether its "I love the 80's" or "Worst career moves ever" its gold, Jerry, GOLD!