Using Dan Farber, however, would be a TERRIBLE example. ;)

Interesting study from Third Age / JWT Boom, which shows how people over the age of 40 (presumably in North America, although there’s no mention that I can find of where they’re from) are engaged with social media on the Internets: the bottom line is that they’ve embraced email (in spite of the cacophony of cries that “email is dead“), but only a minority, about 20% were actively using social networking sites to keep in touch.

While another 20% might be interested, it seems like the vast majority just aren’t interested; furthermore, amongst the 50% who were neither using, nor interested, they gave reasons around privacy, time, and lack of benefit to using such services.

It seems like there was only one more thing that boomers were even LESS interested in and that was actively blogging (i.e. “writing blogging”).

In an interesting finding, boomers were *more* likely than younger users to participate in viral marketing campaigns, and more likely to share information about products or services with friends and family.

The interesting thing to me, actually, is that all of the above behaviours *perfectly* describe older members of my family of my parents generation.  They *still* find value and worth in forwarding email jokes and lists; they pretty much *only* do email; and, they question the worth of something like Facebook, while cautioning me about its privacy issues.  The only thing they “get” even less, of course, is blogging (and *me* blogging).

Does this sound at all familiar to any of you?  Or is it merely ageist nonesense?

// via marketing charts

If you're going to send us something, make it worthwhile.

So, if you’ve been blogging for any stretch of time, you might get contacted from time to time by public relations firms on behalf of web entities looking for a mention.  I know I do.  Perhaps I’m not so important that I get included on some lists and not others (in fact, I think that’s precisely the reason), but I can’t help but wonder *why* I get pitched the way I do.

Let me explain.

I rarely, if ever, act on a message by a public relations firm — contrary to what some bloggers say about PR firms ruling the blogging roost, that is.

Most of the time its because of the combination of two things

1. I’m clearly part of a list they like to send unsolicited information to, as its addressed quite generally

2. there is no angle or hook that would otherwise make a news bit newsworthy to me

Now, the first thing, I admit, is pure ego.  I like it if people know who I am when they’re emailing to me.  And it kind of relates to the second. If you have no idea who I am, and what I write about, how can you possibly tailor a pitch to me?

Which is a bit irrelevant because it just doesn’t happen – or rather, it very rarely does.

I mean, its not exactly rocket science getting into the mind of a blogger.  We like free stuff.  We also like access to stuff that no one else does.  We like to get a chance to write about something and be first about it.  And we also like to get noticed and validated for the work (or, should I say “work”) that we do.

You want us to yak about your thing?  Its easy. Give us free stuff to try out.  The more the better.  It can literally be the crappiest swag you have lying around.  Send us that private alpha or beta invitation.  If you don’t have one, make one up (I’m kidding … sort of).  Or — in this case — tell us something interesting and fresh about that thing that we can write about, that’s worthwhile, interesting and uniquely tailored to our audiences.

But for pete’s sake, don’t let *US* figure that out.  Most of us are either a) too lazy b) too busy or c) an ironic combination of the two to connect the ersatz dots, particularly if there’s no *real* picture there anyway (shhh — I won’t tell anyone).

Yes, perhaps I, and a cadre of other bloggers, are not actually that important to spend the time to do any or all of the above.  But if that’s the case, why are you trying to pitch bloggers if you’re probably aware that its not going to work in the first place?

Because, if it is, then really, those kinds of communications are no better than spam, don’t you think?

In what is mostly likely to be the most *douchiest* thing that has ever been written by Jason Calacanis, he now declares blogging “dead”.

The funny thing is that this particular meme has some legs under other titles, such as “the evolution of conversation”, or “the further maturation of blogging”, or “the atomization of attention”.

But to declare blogging dead, and THEN spout off a list of reasons that are so myopic they border on cluelessness — its just plain narcissistic.

Here’s why.

His big claims as to why blogging dead revolves around a few ideas (I have parsed these heavily)

i) bloggers are dying to be heard via social “accelerants” like Digg or Techmeme

ii) they therefore spend more time promoting their posts than spending time *on* their posts, via Digg, Techmeme, or Twitter

iii) to excel in blogging means excelling in saying inflammatory things — i.e. link bait (yes, the irony is towering and overwhelming, I know)

iv) email lists avoid the promotion machine

v) email lists avoid the “problem” of an open conversation

I’m not going to debate each point, because, by now, I’m sure you’ve already seen the fallacy in each statement (but for a breakdown, see Steve Hodson).

But to suffice it to say that I found these ideas to be terribly narcissistic, only in so far that it seems narcissistic to condemn an entire way of communicating based on observations that really — by and large — involve experiences that are central to the way that a very narrow band of individuals have experienced them.

There are many, many, many other bloggers who don’t read Techmeme, and who don’t care.  In the niches they occupy there aren’t “social accelerants”, because they don’t yet exist for those niches.  And they may never yet.  Try submitting something to Reddit on the wonders of single parent hood / mommyhood, or Digg on some interesting, yet obscure, scientific factoid, for example.  You already know they’re not going anywhere.

And yet there are groups and ecosystems of bloggers out there, having a ball writing about these kinds of things.  They are just as valid and just as existential as tech bloggers, and other heavy weight, or wannabe heavy weight bloggers that Mr. Calacanis is basing his opinions on.

In fact, the kind of phenomenon Mr. Calacanis is describing really describes, I’d say, a tiny, tiny percentage of bloggers out there.  I mean, besides the tech blogging community, how many other bloggers are actively and as aggressively pursuing technologies like Twitter, Friendfeed, or Seesmic as a portion of their daily blogging “activities”?

You all know the round-about answer to that, and the answer of course is “nearly nil”.

So, to castigate and declare “dead” an entire medium like blogging based on some very narrow opinions is — well, yes, quite douchy indeed.  And I dare say its narcissistic as well, as you’re assuming “everyone” (i.e. the blogosphere at large) is experiencing the same malaise over blogging that one person (or a small group of people) are.

Blogging is maturing, that’s true enough.  There are tools now that didn’t exist years ago.  Its even easier.  And yet there are even more ways to broadcast your opinion and have other people interact back with you.  Its not that blogging is *DEAD* so much that blogging is changing, and its role is changing within the ecosystem of conversations and online communications.

And if you can’t see that?  Well, maybe you didn’t really get blogging in the first place.

Sarah Perez at Read/Write Web wonders whether or not content is finally / just now becoming a commodity, referencing the Shyftr saga over the weekend, and with particular reference to bloggers.  The funny thing (of course, not in a ‘ha ha’ way) is that this truth that she is stumbling upon, is one of the oldest and well known — and yet, hardly appreciated — by most bloggers.

Blogging, as an activity in and of itself, rarely pays.

More to the point: up until recently, it has never really paid for anyone.

And by “pay” I mean that it the most mercenary, and yet, the most metaphorical terms.  Compared to whatever day job you hold or once held, on a per hourly basis, it will not compete (perhaps even within an order of magnitude) with that level of compensation and never will.

Nor, for many individuals, will it ever pay out in the larger sense — from a sense of joined participation, of the validation of one’s thoughts and one’s words, and perhaps thought leadership in any one category.  Not that it doesn’t ever return any of that at *all*, but that compared to what many bloggers put *in* to this hobby, the return is infintismal.

No, unless you command the attention of hundreds of thousands, or perhaps, millions of eyeballs very few bloggers will have the indulgence of having their thoughts and opinions (i.e. their content) subsidized at a high advertising rate by anyone.

And that’s the problem, I suppose, that this weekend meme is getting to.

There are many *many* ways to answer the inevitable questions “… so now what?” and “what can I make of this?” and “should I just be happy with writing as a means in and of itself?”

The way that I will answer it is thusly.

The actual content in your blog may not be worth so much that anyone is going to pay for it; but blogging as a vehicle and not a means to an end is how many bloggers find success, however they want to define it.  I am going to presuppose that you have the will, the time, and the energy to keep plugging at it day after day, when no one is listening, no one is replying, and it seems like no one even knows you’re writing.

And furthermore, that you have no inclination to sell anything except yourself and your words.

But that base of content is something free that you will build upon.

And once you know — and accept — that its something in and of itself that you will probably never be paid outright for, certainly not in a way that can compensate you for the blood, sweat, and tears that have made your blog what it is, you can turn get over how little you’re getting out of your work, and leverage that blog into something else.

A lever for what you do and what you stand for; what some people recognize as your personal brand.

What you ultimately do after that is up to you.

Will you use it as a stepping stone to a new job?  Another occupation within the new media sphere?  Perhaps as a paid gun at part of a well known blog?  A means to meet more like-minded bloggers and personalities?  A a font of ideas where perhaps you *will* end up selling something?  Perhaps your unique services and opinions on your particular area of interest?  Or perhaps organizing a conference in that same area?

And that’s just one way to answer this broad question around what bloggers can do to leverage their time and energy.

If you’re comfortable with selling something now (products or services), and the circumstances fit, it can complement your writing nicely.  Or perhaps you’re going to make it your goal to achieve stratospheric numbers in terms of eyeballs, RSS subscribers and attention.

But at end of the day, one of the first things any blogger needs to know is that blogging as an activity unto itself doesn’t pay.  We live in a world where content is devalued.  And its up to every one of us to make the most of what blogging *can* do.

And for some people, given the right time, the right circumstances, and the right amount of work (hellishly hard amounts), it can work out like gangbusters.

Just ask Robert Scoble.

(Who doesn’t monetize his site at all; but rather, has used his blogging fame and brand to launch PodTech and now FastCompany TV.  Being a blogging rock star is nice, but it, by itself, doens’t pay your mortgage — unless it actually does, as I have no first hand knowledge of being one)

My life — as, perhaps your life — is complicated.  There are a lot of competing concerns, from personal issues, to work issues, to family issues and beyond.  And that’s not even counting the blogging.  One really interesting thing is that as I am ramping up towards a new DJI (one day soon, I hope), I discovered I needed a place to leave thoughts, reminders, and notes for myself and only myself, that would have no value to anyone *except* myself.

So, I started one, in private, behind a password-minded gate, and installed the latest version of Wordpress on a shared plan that I have with a URL that I already owned, and just started doing it.  Why Wordpress?  Only because I’m comfortable with it and the lead in time would be minimal.

And what have I been writing about you might ask?  Things like:

• my thoughts about random personal things at any moment
• a daily (well, perhaps not daily) record of things — unique, interesting or important — that happened to me in and around the day that it happened
• lists of things I want to accomplish
• lists of online resources that I want to keep track of
• video clips of things that have some particular meaning to me and what I’m doing
• personal notes about things that I don’t want to forget as I’m studying
• medical news that I need to remember: annotized, categorized, searchable, linkable, and available.

Now I realize that there are a *lot* of different services that allow you to do this kind of thing.  Backpack is pretty good, in particular, as it has a built in calendar and an easy means to upload files (neither of which are built in to Wordpress).

However, I find as I continue to leave stray mind-droppings in this “Daily Record”, I had a funny eiphany the other day.  It really was … well, a diary.

Which is funny, in a way, as bloggers have done their best to evolve *away* from the blog as a navel-gazing diary into a more established, validated, and meaningful medium for disseminating information, opinion and analysis.

But I have to confess:  blogging as a diary really works.

I am not writing lovely thought out posts (perhaps I never do, I leave that to you), and that’s not really its purpose.  Its a dumping ground.  An organizing ground.  A memory aide. All searchable, update-able, and available anywhere there’s internet access.

All in a place that *I* own and that *I* pay for (and that ultimately *I* am responsible for).

Its funny.  I’ve been blogging for a while, and yet, blogging in *this* personal way is like reconnecting what blogging is about.  And while I initially shied away from the label, I am fine with it now.

I have a blog.  Its a diary.  But its for me and it works.

And if you’re a blogger, maybe this kind of blogging will work for you too.  Even if you don’t know — try it out.  Start a private blog somewhere to keep track of Stuff.  Stuff in your life.  Notes about stuff you want to do.  Stuff you’ve not yet accomplished.

In an odd way, its like getting back to where blogging started and in some ways, to some people, a very important part of what its all about.

Maybe.

There’s an oldish (interesting what passes for “old” in blogging time) study that was released two weeks ago, which surveyed a whole bunch of American journalists over their attitudes on blogs, and more importantly, how they interact with them.

Have you ever wondered if mainstream journalists are reading blogs?  Ever wonder if they’re appropriating the fresh, new, and fast ideas amongst bloggers on various issues and incorporating them into their work?  … perhaps without crediting their sources?

It would be easy to do, after all.  Bloggers live in a 24/7 world where amongst certain niches, bloggers live to break stories.  There are no boundaries between when we “work” and when we “stop” working.  And if you’re publishing for a deadline the next morning, it would be easy to not only scan the meaty news, and then search blogs for the “angle”, or interesting opinion on the story.

Do journalists do this?

Well, data says they really might.

According to the study, more than half of them read blogs between every day and 2-3 x per week; furthermore, more than half of them rated blogs as being “very useful” to “somewhat” useful for getting good angles on stories and gaining insight into the tone of the discussion.  Just over 50% also admitted that blogs and social media had a significant impact in the potential editorial direction and tone of a piece.

Pretty interesting stuff, no?

I mean, the next time I read a piece where the blogosphere might have several opinions (perhaps breaking even breaking the news on said piece), I know that I’ll be wondering how many uncredited bloggers (A-list or no) that piece is sourcing.

In what must be the softest headlining story of the month, Mike Arrington’s story of how Digg users are having a look at a Digg clone called Mixx has made it to the top of Techmeme.

I have nothing to say about this story around Digg / Mixx, except that as a community grows in size, the number of assholes who populate it will, of course grow in number as well; what was tight knit and collegial gives way to anonymous ass-hat-ery, and that’s just the nature of the web.

Now, this isn’t really saying anything against the Techmeme algorithm, and why it should choose *this* story to headline itself, and not say, the seemingly more “important” story by the San Francisco Chronicle detailing how iTunes is launching the careers of some would-be-unlikely musicians.

Nor, for example, is about Mike Arrington wanting to write this piece.

Its about how at the beginning of the day, there were, maybe two bloggers who had wrote about it, like new media law dude Rob Hyndman and Bloggers Blog.

Now, at the end of the day, we have quadrupled that number.

Why? Well, if there was something intrinsically interesting or newsworthy about Mike’s piece I might say “its because its intrinsically interesting or newsworthy”. But because it really *isn’t*, I am led to believe the *only* a big reason they’re writing about it is because it *is* the headlining news story.

That is, they want to comment on the most “newsiest” story of the day, or there’s a desire (subconscious or no), to have your blog attached to the headlining story.

[I now speak from personal experience on both feelings which can be oddly profound at times]

Irrespective of the actual reason, I think it shows in a funny way, how powerful Techmeme is. Sure, we all read it, and yes, this is a weekend, but depending on what the headlining story is, it can really influence what bloggers write about.

I mean, let’s move this story down to the bottom and let’s see how many of them — “us”, really — write about this non-event. I would probably say “not a lot” and that’s being charitable.

As an aside, and I don’t know if there’s any way to prove this, but this also proves to be an interesting case example of how powerful Techmeme is relative to other aggregators. This fairly soft story is *also* headlining Megite, for example, *and* the Tech section of Blogrunner. Not having followed on the other aggregators, I do wonder if what happened was this story being fairly innocuous, hitting the Top of Techmeme, having other bloggers link to it, and then propelling the story to the top of other news aggregators.

Bottom line? Techmeme is our beloved aggregator, but for tech bloggers anyway, I think perhaps, that it has an inordinate amount of power. Or, rather, if its merely natural (as the most beloved of tech aggregators), then perhaps I never really appreciated how much power it had over us to begin with.