Then in the last year something new has happened, which I see as the combined rise of mobile Internet technology and Facebook. While smartphones have made us more e-mail-enabled than ever, I think people are actually sending less total e-mail as a result, substituting SMS texting and mobile use of social networks.

Facebook has brought for non-professional writers in us the same e-mail effect I saw when I jumped to WordPress: every wall or chat posting makes unnecessary at least one e-mail, maybe several.

And don’t forget that our youngest networked generation — teenagers — doesn’t e-mail at all, preferring the immediacy and intimacy of texting to almost anything else.

All true sentiments, of course.  I think the bigger epiphany for me at this stage, however, isn’t how email is declining as a defining medium of the web, but how, for a short time, there was a movement that enabled people to create and participate in an exchange of ideas in the wild.  ”Blogging”, you might call it.  Now, so much activity happens behind closed walls, and even if it isn’t, so much of it is shortened to 140 characters or less, that it isn’t private discourse one should be worried about, its the public one, shouldn’t it?

Ugh, what a nightmare.

In fact, even “searching” on the site triggered this particular behaviour, which was annoying and embarassing at the same time.  I spent the greater part of two hours yesterday combing through WP code to try and find the culprit file / code / hex / curse, but to no avail.

You may, therefore, notice that DJI is looking a little different, as I have went DEFCON 1, and simply obliterated my old compromised WordPress install, keeping my database.  I re-installed WordPress using a clean install, and am going with a simpler theme for now.  I’ll be sticking with it while I try and implement a few more things to lock down the security on this blog (as, of course, there a great many things that you can do in addition to running the latest version), which I will be implementing, and blogging about, shortly.

Cheerio

Granted, I have not been blogging as long as some graybeards, so the earliest recollection I can recall was when Technorati revealed some data on blogging which suggested that it had plateaued off.  It was last year, as I recall.  Lots of handwringing around that time.  Twitter existed.  Facebook existed.

I think my position then is the same as it is now.  For those who like / love / accept blogging, the diversification of online voice is an inevitable non-threatening event.  There were a LOT of blogs pre-Twitter (and even pre-Facebook) that were false starts and abortive events in the making.  There were many people calling themselves “bloggers” who were not really — in the sense that they tried it, then gave it up.  Wasn’t really their cup of tea.

And I think that is, as they say, totally “ok”.

The explosion of the ways people can share their opinion, voice, and mind capital is a very good thing.  It allows folks to find a niche for the way they want to express themselves.  And that’s totally fine, because folks who find Twitter is more their bag shouldn’t be blogging anyway.

Of course you can do both.  Its no more mutually exclusive than peanut butter and jam (which is to say that it can be quite complementary) — but I was referring to people who really find their voice on microblogging services to the exclusion of blogging.

Bloggers, or those who formerly blog, leaving for other new media forms of expression … well, it shrinks the pond for whoever’s left.  That usually means, I find, concentrating talent.  Which, as I believe, is a very good thing.

Blogging lends itself to a longer form of expression.  Something that can be rambling, but something that has the potential for distilled and substantive thought.  Without transmogrifying into a “this is why blogging is great post”, it also offers people to really own their ideas, and express it in a way that is available to everyone.  Not merely yoru Twitter group.  Or your “friends” (wherever they may be, in whatever social network they might be).  And for the Google-conscious of you, it certainly means that the public at large will better be able to find *your* opinion more easily as well — Twitter, Friendfeed, and all of their ilk are poorly indexed.

There is some further handwringing over how blogs have not innovated, or renovated, or something to that effect, which, I think is on the hogwash-y side of things.  Blogs have their place in the new media ecosystem, and it is one that is maturing, as we see blogs take their place — and the bloggers who own them — as part of the mainstream media.  Smaller bloggers may not consider entities like the “HuffingtonPost” or the “Daily Kos” “blogs” anymore by their sheer size alone.

But to separate them based on their size would be a ludicrous butchering of what a definition means, as whatever a ‘blog’ is should encompass all forms of that Thing in spite of its size.

The fracturing of online conversations was inevitable.  It will continue to happen ad infinitum, with the happy tension of aggregators trying to rein in all conversations at the same time.  Blogs have their place in all of that.  It was at there at the beginning and it will be there at the end.  

And that is totally ok.

There are a lot of dimensions to this issue.  I sympathize with Allen because not every blogger is doing this for the hobby and the egotistical pat on the back that traffic and comments bring (myself included) — some are trying to make a go out of it.

Traffic DOES matter when you’re trying to sell ads to support yourself or business.

But let’s rephrase the question another way — do a lack of comments mean that there’s a gap in reaching the maximum traffic potential?

As part of a larger discussion about the utility — or futility — of socially driven traffic, I’m not so sure.  I love Allen (in a brotherly blogging kind of way), but when your bottom liine is governed by pageviews and uniques, I would argue that the level of user engagement is but a secondary metric. It is neither a necessary, nor sufficient, factor for success if your primary goal is traffic.

That is to say, I am of the opinion that in some (most?) industries, the percentage of active commenters are likely small with respect to the actual traffic coming in; and as a corollary, a lack thereof probably does NOT represent a giant gap with respect to maximizing traffic.

Furthermore,  I think its possible that traffic that is commenting is probably the exact opposite of the kind of traffic bottom-line bloggers want — they actively visit your site, and as a function of familiarity with your blog, they probably develop ad-blindness the fastest.

Factor in the first-adopter-ishness of Allen’s blog, and you can probably double, triple, or square, if you like, the likelihood of ad-blindness (and therefore, lack of clickage, and therefore, a lower CTR all things being equal) on all display ads.

Call me a [whatever you like], but for folks who are interested in the bottom line, the best kind of traffic is probably search-related traffic where people have absolutely NO allegiance are morely likely to read, and then move on — and possibly click on an ad in trying to find what they’re looking for.

Why?

Only because when you’re blogging for a corporate entity — like Newsweek, or Forbes — where reputation and relationships matter … specifically, those that aren’t your own, but those of your bosses and the company at large … you’re never going to have carte blanche to say whatever you like.  Even if the vaunted blogosphere is behind you all the way (decrying the sacred violation of Transparency).

Even if there are unsaid rules, there were probably written rules when it comes to professional blogging, in fancier terms, also called a “contract” that Mr. Lyons had to sign.  I doubt it will ever really come to light, but its also possible that the tenor, voice, and content of those posts also violated terms in the “problogger” contract Mr. Lyons had to sign.

When you’re blogging for someone else there are always going to be rules, even if your boss claims there aren’t, by virtue of the fact you’re going to be answering to someone bigger than yourself.  

If the “real” Dan Lyons wants to blog “for real”, he’s got only one solution, and that’s to do what “real” bloggers have always done (besides not hiding behind a pseudonym, that is):

Blog on their own and answer to no one.

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?