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)

A rather apropros piece, this about “email apnea”, courtesy of the Huffington Post, pimped by Robert Scoble, while in turn was of course reflexively promoted by Techmeme (and other news aggregators, possibly). “Apnea” referring to a period of time where one stops breathing, often heard or known as “The Apnea” (see Seinfeld), or the more medicalized term, “obstructive sleep apnea”.

The gist of things is that apparently people hold their breath while reading their email (and possibly twittering), thus, it is inferred that its part of their sympathetic system working in over time. The sympathetic system is responsible for driving up blood pressure, and is related to the “flight or fight” response, and is the cause of “stress”. Stress == “bad”, ergo, reading your email is bad.

So, why is all this “apropos”? Only because I’m studying for my Royal College Exams at the moment — and in fact, should not be blogging as much as I already have been over the past few days.

Anywhoo, as I’m clearly at my keyboard, I should take two seconds to point out a couple things, as I am in the unique position to straddle between two universes (the “medical” and internet geekery — both vaguely defined).

First of all, observing your friends and family holding their breath hardly constitutes anything remotely scientific. Hmmm. That’s harsher than I meant it to sound.

Rather, the observations of a few dozen people are hardly something to base a generalization upon. That is, just because you observe a few people holding their breath doesn’t mean that its something that many other people do.

Even *if* that supposition were true — and the only way to do it would be to do something boring, like a study, with enough people to make sure the differences were statistically important — you are *still* lumping another inference on top of that.

And that is that the supposed breath holding while reading email (or Twitter, or blogging) is in fact, a sympathetically-derived response, or, for that matter, a sympathetic-system *inducing* response.

Thirdly, even *IF* you were able to find an association of *that* you would then have to find another association: that the sympathetic-activating process of holding your breath while reading email, twittering, or blogging, is in fact significant in and of itself, when you compare it to *OTHER* sympathetically activating processes that you do during the day.

Running for a bus. Worrying about your kids. Playing computer games. Getting mad at your boss. Watching your favourite television show.

And that’s besides defining what “significant” really is. Is raising your blood pressure significant? Because that’s really just a surrogate for having an actual stroke or heart attack, or say, just plain ol’ dying.

Now, I’m being facetious, of course (mostly), but I’m doing it to prove a point (and not that I am sometimes a bit of a twat).

Ms. Stone makes several leaps in logic in her piece, although its clear she’s tried to do some legwork for it. It context, the purpose was logical, since it makes for a great piece: in a publication (Huffington Post) that targets mainly white collar folks who probably *do* do a lot of email reading (they’re reading a blog, aren’t they?), she’s identifying a seemingly obvious finding (breath holding) that seems benign, but shockingly, may have serious medical consequences, but that no one has identified yet.

What’s my point in all of this?

Just how important media — and perhaps, medical — literacy is in this great big world of New Media. That its important to really question the kinds of stories and propositions you come along, as more and more people are becoming self-publishers after a fact (blogging), or contributing to such publications.

In this particular piece, coming to the conclusion that reading email will kill you is tantalizing, in a kind of tabloidish kind of way, and even makes sense from a kitchen-sink kind of logic if you follow the piece.

Specifically with this post, and with all due respect to Ms. Stone, there are several *large* caveats with the leaps in logic she makes, and its important that in the discourse of things, its pointed out.
In “new media”, I find that the need to vet stories is obviously less strong, as the need to have content and be first becomes the first priority. We’ve often seen in the Tech side of the blogosphere that this kind of attitude is “ok” so long as the original post is updated.

Bottom line isn’t a ground breaking one, but its one that can’t be said enough:

Think for yourself, and if you’ve having a hard time doing that (I know I do, especially when I’m tired) *look* for other people who *are* thinking for themselves. People who are writing in the comments section. Or other opinions on other blogs.

Thoughtful analysis is what makes the blogosphere great — and is an absolute necessity, if you’re to get anything out of it, particularly if you’re not a blogger, and have no platform to officially contribute that thought process on.

[Medical Geekery Warning: as an aside, most kinds of apnea occur in a process that isn’t often controllable by you; sleep apnea, for example, occurs when you’re sleeping. The problem with sleep apnea, is that some people have as dozens, perhaps as many as 50, or 100 of these episodes per hour while they’re sleeping {the latter would be “severe”}. The reason *why* the body is doing this is to wake itself up temporarily to restore body tone, so that it can breath — in REM sleep, your body loses all muscle tone, and in obstructive sleep apnea, your upper airway passages collapse, so that you cannot, breath hence the apnea bit. What’s the effect of your body trying to wake itself up, possibly several hundred times a night over several hours? Studies have shown this has complicated effects, including raising the heart rate, blood pressure, and even cause thickening of the heart, even *after* you wake up, and that it can raise your chances for heart attack, fatal heart rhythms and stroke. So, is this like reading email? My humble opinion is probably not. And that’s because the kind of sympathetic drive you might get while you’re having apneic episodes is probably huge and maintained over several hours while you sleep as your body is fighting the urge to get oxygen, as low oxygen levels are the trigger to “wake up”. On an average day, reading emails of average importance, on the other hand, is probably several orders of magnitude lower than this.]

I haven’t held one yet, but if Robert Scoble could act as my proxy, then I’d have to say that Amazon’s Kindle is one fugly awkward looking piece of … jeez, well, “technology”.  I mean, its flashing screens between pages look like something you’d see in an LCD screen back in the 1980’s — you know, the ones where you had to use screen savers to prevent phosphor burn.

One other thought?  Why is the Kindle biased against lefties?  I mean from the looks of it, its oriented to righties, as the sharp edges protrude to the right, so that your right hand can hold it comfortably.  Furthermore, it also looks thicker on the left as it tapers to the right.

Besides these issues, as jkOnTheRun notices that you *must* hold it at the bottom with your thumbs and not on its sides as you would … well, a *book* — as holding it on its sides will invariable start scrolling the pages front or back.

Anyways a few initial thoughts about the Kindle based on some video reviews; I’m not sure if I’ll ever hold one of these myself as I don’t plan to pony up almost $400, and Amazon (unlike Apple) doesn’t have any retail stores to try it out.  Furthermore, I doubt I’ll run into any early adopters up here who will have any to actually try it out as well.

Oh well. :P

It must be hard for a professional blogger like Robert Scoble.  Working fairly flexible hours, getting to write about, shoot video about, and otherwise co-mingle and hob-nob in, a field you love, all the while getting paid for it.  Now, I’m trying not to sound as cranky, cantankerous, jaded and jaundiced, as I probably do, but I’m failing.  Robert Scoble is taking another break from blogging because he’s gotten disillusioned from the seeming triviality of it all.

Well, boo freakin’ hoo.

I think that its up to all of us to find meaning in whatever industry, field, or way of life we happen to participate in.  For some of us, its easy to do, and for others a little harder.  Professional blogging is no different.  You have to acknowledge there are going to be times when you’ll be dealing with the unimportant, the seemingly trivial, and its up to you (and all of us, really, in whatever we do), to remind ourselves of why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place.

And if you’ve forgotten or can’t remember why its important, maybe — *maybe* — you should stop and ask yourself why you’re doing it in the first place.

Now, perhaps Robert *is* doing this in favour of some other endeavor, but the cynic in me says that this “break” will probably be like a few others he’s taken over the past few years, in that it will last a few days, and where he’ll be back blogging before we all know it.

… is being propagated by Hugh McLeod, who, once again, has decided to raise the egalitarian “Es Gibt Keine Einliste Es gibt keine A-Liste” (Or, “There is no A-list”, for our non-German reading readers). This issue seems to raise its head every few months, and I am continually flabbergasted that people such as Mr. McLeod continue to deny its very existence.

In this case Mr. McLeod hails that the A-list is over thanks to social networks such as Facebook. He quotes perennial A-lister Robert Scoble,who, in fact, notes that his blogging buddies have noticed a fall in traffic, perhaps *because* of networks such as Facebook.Well, sorry to break it to you guys, but this analysis is pure, unvarnished, horse shit.

Facebook and blogging are related, but very different, mediums.

And in BOTH cases, just as in ALL situations where human beings interact with limited attention spans, there will ALWAYS be folks who command more of it. There will ALWAYS be people at the top of the attention food chain, some in part because they deserve it, and some others because they are undeniably pretty to look at, in others, its the train-wreck phenomenon in that you can’t look away, and in others, because they just got there first.

To deny this fact is to deny reality.

And to think that its any different because there is another sub-medium that is now available for our attention is again — pure, unvarnished, horseshit.

There are going to be people who have more eyeballs looking at them whether its Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or Pownce. And this inequity will continue to exist even amongst the SAME GROUP OF A-LISTERS, because ironically, many of them are first adopters of different technologies.

Robert Scoble says he’s got a bajillion new friends on Pownce?

Michael Arrington says he’s got a google’s amount of friends on Facebook?

The gross irony is that these are the *same* guys! Do I begrudge them of that? Of course not. But if you want a more facile explanation of A-list, B-list and so on, you can substitute another name for it.

Popularity.

And this is merely a function of them being popular.

Social Networks don’t change that. And in many cases, I suspect, its not a binary or mutually exclusive phenomenon either Just *because* you introduce mediums that ask for your continuous partial attention, such as Twitter or Pownce, OR, walled-in gardens such as Facebook doesn’t mean that you necessarily take away from blogging — which is one of the greatest one-to-many publishing mediums available.

A-lists will always exist because there will always be people who are Popular.

And to deny that it will change because there is a new way for people to share and give attention is pure, unvarnished, horseshit.