adamyntium

Category: technology

  • Tips for corporate wannabe bloggers

    Jeremy Zawodny recently posted that he’s going to be speaking about blogging at the Direct Marketing Association’s annual conference, and asked his readers what he should tell those folks.

    Many people, understandably, responded that he should basically tell them to drop dead. Given the DMA’s, ahem, relationship-challenged practices in the past (e.g., supporting opt-out, rather than opt-in e-mail lists), that’s hardly surprising.

    With that said, though, I figured it’d be worth it to suggest a few more friendly guidelines for the DMA folks, at least those genuinely interested in communicating decently and effectively with others online. Specifically, here’s what I commented on Jeremy’s blog:

    * * *

    Tell them to ask themselves this before they ever post anything on a blog:
    “If you were out having a beer with someone you’ve recently become friends with, would you say this to their face?”

    For instance, when you’re (appropriately) talking a friend, you generally don’t:
    – shout
    – hype
    – badger
    – monopolize
    – ignore
    – use fear

    You do (or should), however:
    – Talk like a human
    – Listen
    – Listen some more
    – Respond appropriately
    – Be sincere. No, *really* sincere, not faux sincere.
    – Know your relationship-type. You don’t hug and kiss a new friend and say “You’re my best friend EVER!!!”

    And the hardest, but IMHO most important:
    Know yourself, know your limitations, and don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t. If you’re a 300 pound frumpy housewife, you don’t show up at a bar in a miniskirt and halter top to meet a friend. You’ll embarrass yourself, you’ll embarrass your friend, and no one will want to be seen with you, much less listen to you. For companies, this means that you shouldn’t sweep who you are and what your history is under a rug; if you’ve had problems with a product or customer relationships, enter into a conversation humbly or even with an appropriate apologetic introduction. “We realize we haven’t always worked with our customers in a way that would make our founder proud. Here’s what we’re doing to change that… and why we respectfully ask you to give us another chance.”

    Humility, thoughtfulness, subtlety, humanity. All attributes that the spam-defending DMA, sadly, seems to have in very short supply.

    * * *

    RELATED ENTRIES:
    – Blogger Don’ts [from the consumer-side of blogging]

  • Bloglines, Newzcrawler… and the new Google Reader

    A few weeks ago, I already started transitioning all of my feeds off of Bloglines. Why?
    – It’s slow.
    – It’s down too often.
    – Reorganizing feeds (moving them to different folders, etc.) is worse than being stuck in a closet with Vanna White. Night after night after night after night.
    – It’s similarly painful to mark just a few articles in a feed as read or unread.

    I’ve moved over to Newzcrawler, a stellar newsreader app for Windows. Beyond just tons of cool power features, it also lets me pretty easily sync my feeds between my desktop and laptop using an external FTP site (okay, geeky, I know).

    * * *

    With that said, I’ve still been hoping to see some vast improvements in the online-reader front. Rojo seems to be getting better. And I’ve heard rumblings over other cool services as well. When I learned today that Google had entered this space, I was extremely excited. Please, I thought, give us another Gmail. Or Maps! šŸ˜€ If not for me, at least for my less-geeky friends whom I’m dying to get into feed reading.

    So far, alas, I’m rather disappointed in the Google Reader. I know it’ll get better, but for now, Googlers…

    1) It’s too cluttered and overwhelming.
    Hide some stuff. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but blog text blends into all the other text and I find it just tiring to spend more than a few minutes in Reader.

    2) No mouseovers?!

    3) Ambiguities
    Is “Read items” a description or an action? Okay, admittedly this is rather a nitpick, but it is a top-line link ;-).

    4) Search what?!
    When I see a search box at the top of the page, I expect to be able to search the content-in-context. In other words, if I’m in my Gmail account, I expect to search my mail. If I’m in Reader, I expect to search for a string in my read and/or unread feed items. From an expected user-action standpoint, what’s likely to be more common: adding new feeds, or working with the feeds one already has?

    5) Save me from overload!
    There’s no way to mark an entire feed as read. Or group of feeds.

    6) Why the weird quasi-breadcrumbs in center focus?!
    Why do I want to see “New Subscription” “New Subscription” article article article… Just show me new articles. If I want to see what I’m subscribed to, I’ll go to the Your Subscriptions tab! šŸ™‚

    * * *

    Other quick suggestions/observations:
    – Add a space in “Subscriptions(#)” to make it “Subscriptions (#)”
    – Include a shortcut key to go to the pulldown menus. Actually, quit using HTML-style pulldown menus as action-triggers. It’s not good UI, IMHO, and it’s confusing when more than one says “More actions…” (plus with more than one on a page, that sort of makes it hard to use a keyboard shortcut)
    – Allow for the multi-selection (and from there, tagging) of feeds.
    – Include a feedback link directly on the Reader page.
    – Enable us to see ALL articles from a given feed in one fell swoop (ala Bloglines)
    – Let us easily sort, reposition, edit, and delete labels and sets of labels.
    – BUG: I unsubscribed from a feed, it’s outta my list, but I’m still seeing items for it.
    – Gimme feed icons, please! When I have 200+ feeds, it’s how I can most easily spot some of my favs šŸ™‚
    – Dim links if they’re not applicable (e.g., dim the Page Up link if I’m already at the top)
    – I tagged an entry. How do I search for it by tag now? (I only see how I can filter feed tags)

    * * *

    Okay, let me be a LITTLE less of a jerk here and note what I *DO* like about Reader:
    – Keyboard shortcuts! šŸ™‚
    – Ease of adding new feeds (by keyword, by title, by URL… very flexible!)
    – Nice how the filter narrows as I type! (but it’d be even nicer if ESC cleared it)
    – Pretty fast (excepting the short time earlier today when it was first released)

    * * *

    Anyway, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Google rapidly works on this beta, giving it top resources… rotating in seasoned PMs / APMs, providing needed equipment for scalability and so on. For now, though, I’ll happily stick with Newzcrawler, and — admittedly grudgingly — suggest that my newbie friends start off with Bloglines for now.

  • I want all of my data online… but it can’t happen yet šŸ™

    One of my computing dreams is for me to have all myĀ data online.Ā  No, not all myĀ applications (though, to Ā some extent,Ā that’s a neat idea, too)… but rather, all of my documents, photos, songs, chat logs,Ā etc.

    Here’s why I wouldĀ love to see all my data online:

    • Safe keeping and effective backups *others can generally store backup my data more effectively than I can).Ā 
    • Easier sharing and collaboration
    • Accessibility anywhere… home computer, laptop, friends’ homes, internet cafe, etc.
    • Efficient mashup / mix-n-match / integration potential; e.g., mailing a doc from Y! Briefcase via Y! Mail or collaborating on it via a hypothetical Y! Whiteboard.

    Of course, there areĀ certainly many concerns related to having data online instead of on one’s hard
    drive:

    • Access speed
    • Longevity of storage solution (it’d be a pain to have to download, then completely re-upload all of one’s docs)
    • Security (these services’ll be much more of a target for hackers than my stupid hard drive)
    • Flexibility (difficult to edit large audio or video files without fully downloading them, etc.)
    • Accessibility and search (easy to search across my hard drive, hard to search across disparate services like Writely, Gmail, JotSpot, etc.)

    So how far along am IĀ in getting my data online, and what are some services I’m considering?

    E-mail – part of the way there (discussion lists)

    • I’m already very comfortable with Gmail overall, and quite optimistic about the upcoming Yahoo! Mail (now in limited beta testing).
    • Gmail particularly rocks with discussion list e-mails… its conversation view, while not completely revolutionary, is refined to a point that is far beyond what anyone has ever offered before. Little touches… automatically collapsing items previously seen but making them available instantly via AJAX, and so on.
    • But what about lock-in? While you can POP your mail out of Gmail (and, presumably, from Y!), with tens of thousands of e-mails that’s bound to be a large undertaking.
    • At least with Gmail right now, applying any actions against a mass of e-mails is tedious at best, near impossible at worst; for example, you can’t reasonably and retroactively apply a label (tag) filter to a few thousand previously-received e-mails. You’ve gotta batch things 20 mails at a time. AAAAAAAGH! šŸ˜ Even with the much-maligned (and generally unspeedy) Outlook, deleting, moving, refiling large numbers of e-mails is pretty straightforward.

    Word documents – not yet, but very tempted!

    • I’ve already fallen in love with Writely, an online collaboration and WYSIWYG writing tool… and in fact, I’m AUTHORing this blog post in it right now.Ā  A fabulously intuitive user interface, rock-solid basic features (thank you unobtrusive auto-save!), and much more.Ā  Free!Ā  Try it out šŸ™‚ However, this service is run by a brand new, no-doubt-well-meaning but still small startup. And besides, I don’t think it’s designed to house *all* of one’s documents, but rather those you’re collaborating on others’ with.
    • I could instead use one of the many file storage services, like Streamload or box.net, each of which offer literally gigs of storage for less than $10 per month. Plus, as I’ll note later, these services also can stream music and video…

    Other MS Office documents

    • Unfortunately, there aren’t any writely-style online apps for Excel, nor any OneNote online apps — the two other Office apps I use most often.
    • But other than that… again, most Office docs (and other docs) are reasonably small (at least compared to multimedia!), and so could be quickly downloaded and uploaded to edit.

    Instant messaging logs and other documents

    • I tried keeping my Trillian data (lists, logs, etc.) on a remote server, but it made Trillian excrutiatingly slow :(.
    • On the other hand, it would likely be trivial to keep other documents on a remote server and access them easily via WebDAV.

    Digital music and video (multimedia)

    • As noted above, I could use an online storage service like Streamload; Streamability-anywhere is nice… but if I had my music exclusively online, it’d preclude easy mixing, converting, etc. šŸ˜ So, at least at this time, definitely not an option.

    Misc application data and metadata (preferences, votes/ranking, favorites/bookmarks, etc.)

    • In some cases, I’ve found it’s possible to maintain application data remotely (via WebDAV). So far, I’ve shown that this works well with MyLifeOrganized (a fabulous task management program!), but in other cases, it’s just too slow (Microsoft OneNote). I haven’t yet tried storing my Roboform, Newzcrawler, or other app data remotely yet.
    • With regards to bookmarks, I’m a big fan of the social bookmarking service Spurl, which works in tandem with del.icio.us and narrowly edges out Furl for me. This way, no matter what browser or even computer I’m using (home, laptop, work, etc.), I always have my favorite sites at my finger tips.
    • Unfortunately, lots of metadata isn’t yet seemingly possible to separate or share apart (in real time) from applications themselves; for instance, when I rank music (star it 1-5) on my home computer’s Windows Media Player app, those ratings aren’t visible to me when I’m on my laptop.

    * * *

    I’m curious…

    1. Do you share my wish of eventually having all your data stored remotely?
    2. Have you tried going along this path yet, and if so, how far?
    3. What advantages / pitfalls have you seen or do you seen in the future in this context?

    I look forward to seeing your comments below šŸ™‚

  • Wikis will hit big time with Y! Whiteboard (another AdamPrediction)

    My prediction:
    Wikis have not yet hit critical mass, but they will by 2006 Q3 when I predict Yahoo! will unveil a well-integrated wiki feature called “Y! Whiteboards.”

    So what’s a wiki?!
    First, those in the un-know may be wondering what the heck a wiki is. Yeah, yeah, it sounds just as goofy as “blog,” but it’s worth getting to know.

    A wiki is basically an application on the Web that lets practically anyone edit or even create pages and easily link them together. Think of it as an extendable set of whiteboards, with all interested folks having handy virtual dry-erase markers and erasers. It’s a fabulous albeit admittedly not flawless solution enabling groups of people to collaborate on a particular topic or defined scope of topics.

    Okay, gimme an example!
    One of the grandest wikis of them all is Wikipedia, a massive free encyclopedia. Although not without controversies and challenges of its own, Wikipedia has inarguably grown up to be a valuable and impressive resource. And of course, it does have an entry on Wikis šŸ™‚

    Or take my new humble wiki, “Lindy Hop Whiteboard Supreme.” A distinguishing factor of the (hosted) software I’m using is that folks using Firefox and IE can use rich-text controls to edit pages. Even so, though, I’ve found contributions to be few and far between so far. šŸ˜ [Want to try it out? Play in the playpen :-D]

    So what does all of this have to do with Y!, and what on earth is a Yahoo! Whiteboard?

    I’m glad you asked, but first, this C.M.A. disclaimer:
    Before I spill all (my wild conjectures), let me clearly state up front that I have no insider Y! knowledge. I don’t work there, I know few folks who do, and they don’t tell me anything Y!ish anyway. So all of this is pure guesswork / passionate hoping :-D.

    * * *

    There are two things that have been holding back mass understanding and adoption of wikis, IMHO:

    1) AWARENESS
    Name a popular site appealing to non-geeks (e.g., ESPN, Disney, Google) that features wikis. Can’t do it, eh? And go ahead, ask your neighbor if they like playing with wikis. You’ll likely either get a blank stare or a slap.

    2) USABILITY ISSUES
    Translation from geek-speak: Wikis are generally painful to actually use. With most wikis, you have to learn “wiki markup” before you can author any nicely structured documents. Sure, many geeks’ll argue that making something bold is really simple, yadda yadda… but ask those same geeks to create a multi-level bulleted list or drag-and-drop in some photos, and they’ll excuse themselves with a “Wikis are just fine in plain text anyway!” They’re lying. It’s like the Web circa 1995; sometimes fun to look at, but contributing content is like getting a root canal. Without anaesthesia or a spell-checker.

    Additionally, many wikis require you to register before you can contribute. People tend to be sick of giving out their e-mail address to yet another site and remembering yet another password.

    * * *

    Yahoo! can change all of that, and I think they will. Here’s why:

    1) Y! has experience with rich-text controls and increasingly is getting good at mass-consumer usability niceties.
    Their new mail Web client is apparently fabulous, and based upon my experience with its predecessor (Oddpost), I believe it. Drag and drop deliciousness. Painless formatting. All good stuff for a wiki. Geeks will undoubtedly be able to optionally author pages in HTML; the rest of us can icon-click and shortcut-key our way to content-contribution bliss.

    2) Wikis are sticky
    Wikis tend to revolve around a specific topic, appeal to a specific demographic, and often illicit strong loyalty within group members. What does this mean? Well, for advertisers and, by extension, Y!’s beancounters, it’s a cash cow that members milk themselves. šŸ™‚

    3) Y! gets integration… and oh, is there integration potential!
    Despite some glaring and frustrating resource allocation issues re: Y! Groups and related problems, I do think Y! has some good integration smarts. And imagine the coolness of a wiki, er, whiteboard (friendlier name) attached to each Y! Group, floated next to a Y! chat room, integrated into each Y!360 circle, included as part of one’s new Y! Mail account for access-anywhere notes, and more. Or, hmm… how about Flickr group integration? That could be fun!

    4) Y!’s large userbase will help facilitate attribution and accountability options.
    Want to start or edit a Y! whiteboard? If you already have a Y! ID, you’ll be good to go. And if not, well, that’s quite an incentive to get one, eh? I envision that Y! whiteboards will include a strong and flexible permissioning structure, including read, edit, create, and delete permissions based upon:
    – Y! ID (only these 8 Y! buddies can edit, but all can read…)
    – Y! group membership (only members of Foo group can read, and only Foo administrators can edit)
    – 360 affiliation (1st degree friend, 2nd degree, colleagues, best friends…)
    – Y! mail (only I can edit, anyone in my Y! address book can read)

    Plus the anti-spam possibilities are intriguing:
    – Reverse all edits by ID
    – Reverse all edits except for those from Foo group administrators
    …and so on.

    * * *

    With the acquisition of Flickr, I’m optimistic that Y! is seeing the
    ‘Online Community’ light, and I am hoping for great things to come from the big Y!.

    But why not Google? Or Amazon, Microsoft, AOL…
    I don’t think Google quite gets integration yet. And Google IDs aren’t nearly as ubiquitous as Yahoo! IDs. Lastly, I’ve been quite disappointed with Google Groups. In a nutshell (and to my surprise and disappointment), I just don’t think Google understands online communities or knows what to do with them. While the company’s community communications are steadily improving, it still seems to focus on and be good at tools that empower individuals, not groups.

    Amazon? That company isn’t brave enough to embrace open community communications yet. I heard rumblings about an Amazon Social Network a while back, but… well, I’ll believe it when I see it. Book reviews are pre-screened, Amazon.com badly botched its acquisition of PlanetAll (though admittedly that was 7+ years ago), and I just don’t perceive Online Communities and collaborative sharing in Amazon.com’s DNA at this time.

    Microsoft? Too much of a control freak. While they’ve been doing wikis as part of their developer section (Channel9), and quite admirably in many ways, I just don’t see them releasing such power to the general public. And if they did, it’d only work in IE… alienating about 50% of those folks who’d want to contribute to wikis in the first place. Robert Scoble, I encourage you to prove me wrong. šŸ™‚ (I love that guy AND I love baiting him :-P)

    AOL? They’re a close partner of a company I’m doing consulting for, so I’m going to plead the fifth.

    * * *

    Any possible wiki-introducers that I’ve missed?
    And do you think I’m on the mark, or will wikis be forever outside the mainstream… a pie-in-the-sky idea embraced primarily by geeks with too much time on their hands?

  • If someone isn’t in Google, do they exist?

    Perhaps I’m just used to having my name splattered all over the net. But it seems equally freaky when I come across someone that isn’t anywhere on the Web.

    I recently saw a fine performance and was very impressed by this one couple who sang a fabulous duet so I decided to Google ’em when I got home. Searches for each singer yielded exactly zero hits.

    Maybe they were both listed in the program under stage names, as my opera-singing roommate often is? But even my roommate appears online in articles about her church, past performances and so on.

    Perhaps I really *AM* living in a bubble here in Northern California, but I just find it unfathomable that someone has no record in the vast Interweb. To quote the great philosopher Keanu: Whoa!

    P.S. — My friend Poh Bee Ling commented that she’s sadly not anywhere on the ‘net either. Heh ;D

  • Google RSS ads: Either foiled by anti-ad bastards or…?

    I have run a single Google AdSense ad in each entry in my full-text RSS feed since May of this year. I’m apparently not allowed to discuss clickthru rates, so let me just say this:

    Despite getting a rather decent amount of traffic for a personal blog, I cannot buy a pack of bubblegum with the revenues I’ve earned from ads in my RSS feed. In fact, I’d be surprised if I could buy a single gumball.

    This comes as rather a surprise me, not to mention a disappointment.

    The ads were unobtrusive but still noticeable. And more importantly, I found them to be generally pretty relevant (nicely targeted) as well.

    Since I’ve now removed the ads from my feed, I am free to talk about them without worrying about incenting clicks and jeopardizing my account. So a few questions come to mind:

    1) If the ads had been less subtle, would more people have clicked?
    2) Is it a demographic thing (people reading RSS feed = geeks = non-ad-clickers)?
    3) Was the presence of these ads annoying enough to some to get them to unsubscribe? (Probably not, since I don’t show any drop in subscription or clickthru rates)

    I recall reading on the Web that many others were having similar bad luck with their AdSense feeds for RSS. I wonder if anyone has actually had GOOD luck with these ads.

  • Memory holes aren’t cool. Corporate bloggers, cut it out!

    UPDATE 9/23/05 2:34pm PST:
    Looks like I was a bit too quick on the CrankyTrigger this morning. Apparently, Streamload had shifted over to Blogspot, but hadn’t updated one of their primary links (1 step off of their home page). Certainly a frustrating but nonetheless innocent oversight. See Streamload’s acknowledgment of the issue here in their P.S.

    My apologies for jumping to conclusions. I’m keeping the rest of my blog entry intact so I’m not a hypocrite šŸ˜‰

    * * *

    I’m a paying member of Streamload — a multimedia remote storage service — and I regularly follow their blog in my aggregator.

    Recently, they’ve been heralding their upcoming major service overhaul in their blog… a huge new feature set, new pricing, and so on. Everything was supposed to go live, well, a few days ago.

    Well, a day or two ago, they blogged an apology for the delay, citing power outage issues stemming from a storm (no, not one of the hurricanes). I totally understood… these sort of things happen. But then imagine my amazement and annoyance today when, upon checking their blog, I notice that they’ve wiped out the last month’s worth of entries. Poof, gone. Here’s the Google cache of what they had written.

    A firm message to Streamload and any other companies that may be thinking about, ahem, rewriting history: Don’t do it.
    1) People like me will catch it and call you on it.
    2) This’ll create ill-will and suspicions regarding your firm’s integrity.

    And for goodness sake, if you’re nonetheless determined to cover your tracks, at least don’t do it half-assedly; roll-back your press releases, too. Sheesh.

  • GoogleTV – undoubtedly a boon for consumers, but…

    GoogleTV is coming.

    In this role, you will provide leadership on product vision and execution of projects that enable using Google’s search and advertising technologies to enhance users? Television viewing experience. […] You will identify key market trends that are shaping user behavior when watching Television. These include but not limited to the intersection of Internet and Television technologies, Video-On-Demand, Personal Video Recorders and emergence of next generation set-top-boxes with IP connectivity. You will then identify areas where use of Google’s search and advertising technology can enhance this user experience and define appropriate products to deliver these user benefits. […]

    – Job posting placed online by Google this morning

    UPDATE 9/23/05:
    Google has removed the job listing from their site.

    * * *

    Is Tivo quaking in their boots? And will Hollywood embrace or fear the upcoming empowerment of consumers?

    Historically, even when it’s been in the entertainment industry’s long-term best interests, they’ve staunchly protested many technological advancements. VCRs, Tivo… despite the reality of occasional ad-skipping, these tools have undoubtedly increased viewership (and with videocassettes / DVDs, sales) by an order of magnitude.

    * * *

    What will the Google tools offer consumers, advertisers and the entertainment folks? And what will be the response of privacy advocates to the advertisement targeting?

    Benefits of TV ad targeting
    I’m guessing that Google will ultimately succeed in matching (unnamed) user viewer behavior — individually or in the small-aggregate — to smart-targeted ads, and I think that’s great. I’m personally in favor of the new world entertainment order. If I’m watching a nature show, I’d rather be pitched an ad for eco-friendly detergent than an SUV. And more specifically, if I watch a lot of nature shows, then even when I’m watching non-green stuff, I should be shown ads that appeal to my environmental sensibilities.

    Targeting by show, not by person?
    In terms of privacy, I do hope (and expect) that Google won’t be attaching viewing profiles to personally identifying information (e.g., they won’t know that Adam Lasnik is a liberal environmental softie). That’s how their Gmail works, at least; I believe they actually target per e-mail not to a specific ongoing profile, much less a particular named person.

    * * *

    Ad targeting challenges and concerns
    So many fascinating issues! Even for those of us who aren’t big TV watchers, this heralds an era that’s worth watching. Particularly in the privacy (and perceived privacy) arena… worthy questions abound; should Google profile users long-term? How will it deal with multiple family members? And unlike with Web surfing that generally features one person typing/viewing at a time, TV can often be a family matter. If Dad loves golf and Mom loves gospel music and they’re watching a crime drama together, could viewer profiling work in this messy context? What about inappropriate juxtapositions (ads for funeral homes during coverage of Katrina)? Google takes care to avoid inappropriate and uncomfortable content/ad ties in its current properties, but the visual medium can be so much more powerful and searing…

    * * *

    Can Google play nice, even with dinosaurs?
    And then there are the questions about Google’s current and upcoming relationship with content providers and advertisers. We already know that Google’s relationship with at least some book associations is strained at best (unfairly so, IMHO). And I’ve read quotes from entertainment moguls as being a bit wary of Google in some contexts…

    Hopefully this time Google will more strongly endeavor to engage in proactive, open, and reassuring conversations with all affected parties… even those who are governed more by fear than by consumer interests.

    —

    RELATED LINKS:
    – An index of postings about Google in this blog.
    – An index of general Geekdom postings in this blog.
    – The full-text RSS feed for this entire blog.

    Want to get e-mailed whenever BLADAM is updated?
    Type your e-mail address into the box at top left. Full feed or summaries, but no spam! šŸ™‚

  • Web 2.0 is a bunch of crap

    No, not the stuff arguably associated with it, just the term.

    Look, people, the Internet is not some product evolving in big, whole-numbered discrete steps. The Web isn’t like the release of Microsoft Office 10, followed by version 11.

    No… technologies evolve and products improve bit by bit, formerly little-used tools get a new lease on life or are used in more creative ways, and so on. It’s not like one day we wake up and *vavoom* there’s a new Web online! And yes, I gather that the whole Web 2.0 thing is referring to “revolutionary” components, applications, but still I say, bah humbug. I love Gmail as much as the next guy, I think Meebo is pretty nifty… but sheesh… all this still doesn’t, IMHO, warrant the whole “2.0” gushing.

    I’m not surprised that e-business mags are trumpeting “Web 2.0.” But I’m embarrassed that my fellow geeks are bloggily embracing it, too.

    Please, for the love of 1’s and 0’s, can we go just one day without blabbing on about how some burgeoning transformation is going to create lasting peace, boost the world dotconomy, and help geeks get laid? I mean, maybe the first two, fine, but the third…? Only in Silicon Valley. Ah, only in Silicon Valley…

  • Google’s moving in the wrong direction: It’s the message, not the medium

    There’d been talk of it for a while… might do, could do, should do.

    But Google’s finally gone and done it with blogsearch. After being tipped off by John Batelle’s blog, I learned that Google has added a “blog search” feature that lets users search blogger blogs and other blogs as well in near-real-time.

    I’ve already spotted reviews of the service’s speed and completeness and related basics… but I’m concerned with something a bit deeper.

    At best, I think the new Google Blogsearch tool is moderately interesting and helpful. At worst, however, I think this seriously undermines the ideals of content over form.

    I don’t think I’ve come out and said it so bluntly before, but I’ve been meaning to:

    No one ever been fired for blogging. People admire Robert Scoble for his communications, not his blog. Washingtonniene got herself in hot water (or a hot book deal, depending on your perspective) due to repeatedly opening her legs in front of influential congresscritters and blabbing about it to lots of people.

    I am a writer, a dancer, a community evangelist, a geek, but I’m NOT A BLOGGER.

    I happen to use a tool (Movable Type) that structures my writing in reverse chronological order, ads some neato features and frills, and at the end of the day, the output is in the form of and called a blog.

    I also use the telephone. Does that make me a telephoner?

    I’ve spoken before large groups using a microphone before. Does that make me a microphoner?

    The tools doth not make the message… nor the worth of that message. They may enable it, amplify it… but the medium is not the message. I take responsibility and credit for what I communicate — in ANY form — as should others.

    * * *

    So what’s my point? Is it all semantics? No, no, and no.

    Why does the Googlebot and the Google index like blogs? Because they are often refreshed frequently and often have content that people are searching on.

    Why are blogs useful to many people? Because they are often refreshed frequently and they often have content that folks want to read.

    The distinguishing factor isn’t the structure, it’s the message, or at least the frequency of message output.

    But, I hear you arguing, if I’m looking for articles about the beauty of Foo, I’m more apt to find interesting / informative / entertaining stuff in blogs, as opposed to from a general Google search, where I’ll find “Buy Foo here!” and “foo foo more stuff that looks like foo but isn’t!” and “A directory of foos linking to foos that link to more foo directories.”

    Ah, spam, glorious spam. But to this I say… the problem is in the message (or lack of relevant message) and/or the funneling and discovery of the message, not the medium that message has been stamped with. And besides, as most folks have ruefully learned lately, there’s a lot of spam in “blogs” or things that are blogs in structure only.

    * * *

    So what does separating out blogs accomplish?

    Highlighting the little guy, the fella who blogs his heart out after he gets home from his day job? Not necessarily. Lots of the most popular blogs are part of blog ’empires’ nowadays, with people literally paid by the entry. Basically news sites. Mega-editorial sites.

    Does filtering in/out blogs accentuate opinions? News items? Photos? Likely no moreso than an intelligent, optimized search of the Web on the whole.

    Perhaps, some would retort, it provides an easy way for folks to find venues for community online interaction via blog comments. But this is an especially flawed argument; after all, a great many blogs have disabled their comments, and on the flip side, there are tons of forums on the Web that feature robust conversations.

    And at the end of the day, what exactly is a blog anyway? Is Slashdot a blog? Or a forum? How about CNet? Or Metafilter?

    If I add an RSS feed to a Web page or a wiki, does this make it a blog? How about comments?

    Or the reverse: what if a “blog” doesn’t have an RSS feed and doesn’t support comments or trackbacks; is it really a blog?

    What if it’s essentially a newsletter sponsored by a megacorp (e.g., a McDonald’s “Blog”)? Is that more bloggy than a Web site by Auntie Jo with FrontPage-pasted daily updates?

    * * *

    Given all this ambiguity and the questionable use of separating out blogs, I believe that Google and other search engines would be better off improving how they interpret searcher intent. So when folks search for “foo facts” or “foo reviews” or “foo opinions” or “buy foo” or “foo sex” they’d get search results relevant to the TYPE of or FOCUS on foo that they were hoping for. Increased personalization will (or at least should) do a ton to improve this as well.

    So, too, could Google simply add better tools to more finely filter messages or sites… regardless of whether they’re wikis, forums, blogs, or something else entirely. A “freshness” slider (written or edited recently vs. a long time ago), presence of comments, multiple authors, has RSS/Atom feed, etc.

    I fear that Google — and ultimately other search engines that follow in their lead — will have taken the easy way out. Maybe they’re hoping that this’ll at least be a useful stopgap measure until they improve their algorithms and tools enough to filter upon searcher intent… but I’m resigned to the reality that — once initiated — a (perceived)-blog-segregation is unlikely to be undone. And that’s a bummer for bloggers, pseudo-bloggers, and everyone else.