Category Archives: Blogging

An Addendum to the Kandinsky Zone Effect

31 Monday Mar 2008

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So I tested the Kandinsky Zone Effect a few weeks ago which tested how quickly Google indexes blog posts (it took less than 10 minutes to get into the general index!).

Now the question is to see if tags matter.  And to do that, I need another term that no one has ever written (and is just one word this time, so it makes the tag simple).  And I’ll use it in the tag alone (not in the body of the post).  Check back soon!

Update 1: So it took less than 10 minutes again for Google to add this latest post to their index, but the tag I used (“miroified”, to follow the theme of modern artists) still does not register any hits.  Now that I’m using the term in the body of the post itself, we’ll see if Google picks it up.

Testing the Kandinsky Zone Effect

26 Wednesday Sep 2007

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What is the Kandinsky Zone Effect?

I ask myself that question all the time.

Actually, it’s really just a test.  I’m testing to see how long it takes blogsearch.google.com, technorati, etc. to pick up my a posting with a phrase that I really doubt anyone has ever written about before.

I’m also testing to see how long it takes to get into the regular Google search index after it gets into their blog index.

Stay tuned for results…

Update: Wow.  In less than 10 minutes, this post is viewable in the regular Google search index (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Kandinsky+Zone). That’s amazing spidering and indexing speed by Google.  On top of that, that’s a truly unfair advantage blogs have over regular webpages.

Next, I’m going to try it with a new blog that is not yet in the index…

Web 2.0 Expo: Measuring the Participatory Web

18 Wednesday Apr 2007

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I love data.  Data rocks and solves a lot of problems.  It removes (mostly) foundationless opinion, emotion, and spin from arguments.  And that’s why Tuesday’s keynote about measuring the participatory web has been the best thing of the conference so far.  It was chock full of fantastic data from Bill Tancer at Hitwise  and Dave Sifry from Technorati.

Some highlights (with my comments):

  • In the last year, visits to participatory web properties (like YouTube, MySpace, etc) went from 2% to 12% of all web visits.
  • Visits to Wikipedia outnumber visits to the leading “normal” online encyclopedia Encarta 3400 to 1.
  • Participatory photo sites (like flickr, photobucket) make up 56% of all photo site traffic; photobucket makes up 40% (but I assume that’s before MySpace cut them off)
  • Obviously, not all visits to participatory websites are actually participating, but the numbers are smaller than and varies more than you would think.
    • YouTube: 0.16% of visits upload a video (much lower than I would have guessed).
    • Flickr: 0.2% of visits upload an image.
    • Wikipedia: 4.59% of visits are edits (much higher than I would have guessed).
    • What is the percentage of commenters on YouTube?  Much higher, I would think, but still…
  • Editors at Wikipedia skew disproportionately with age, and propensity to edit grows strictly with age. I.e., 55+ year olds are much more likely to edit than 18-24 year olds.
  • YouTube is slightly different: middle age users have the highest tendency to post (35-54 year olds).
  • Editing/posting also skews toward males: Wikipedia 60%, YouTube 76%. Visits are split very close to 50/50 on gender lines.

Now here’s the most interesting part of the presentation. Some company (Claritas, as it turns out) has separate the people on the web into a bunch of different demographic categories.  Hitwise has tracked people in these categories and there are three that are predictors of the next big thing; i.e., the big properties of the new web (like YouTube) were visited by these three groups before they made it big.   The groups are called:

  • Money and Brains
  • Young Digerati
  • Bohemian Mix

And who are they visiting now; who are the “next big thing”s?  In order:

  • Yelp
  • StumbleUpon (just bought by eBay and targeted by Google)
  • Veoh
  • WeeWorld (disproportionately “Money and Brains” because they tend to have kids)
  • Imeem
  • Piczo

Fascinating stuff.

Dave Sifry of Technorati also showed some interesting stats on the state of blogs out there.  Most of the stuff was in this blog post.

The most interesting thing is that Japanese is now the most popular language for new blog posts, accounting for 37% of blog posts that Technorati tracks.  That is amazing in my English-centric world view, especially when you consider the number of people in the world who speak English vs. the number of people who speak Japanese.

He also gave hope to us “long tail” bloggers who get no traffic. 88% of the top 100 blogs as tracked by Technorati are different than they were last year, so the top blogs are changing all the time.  Just keep at it…

TechMeme’s sponsorship model makes sense

25 Monday Sep 2006

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TechMeme’s new ad model is all the buzz (and of course, is at the top of TechMeme itself) today. And almost all of the opinions are glowing.

Actually, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t like it. That’s a rarity: an idea on the web that has a positive consensus.

And then there’s John Tokash. I really wouldn’t want to jump on the man (he’s one of the greatest people I’ve ever met), but he posted his disapproval of the new system, then sent me an email taunting me to take him down.

Bring it on!

First, yes, I agree with him that of course, sponsored posts on TechMeme will get more attention than non-sponsored posts (that’s why they’re paying for them). And yes, that means that more bloggers may write about them and so they’ll climb up TechMeme’s ladder.  Is it the death of TechMeme? Hardly.

John argues that Google’s sponsored listings are separated from their organic listings in a way that prevents them from being tainted. But the parallels between TechMeme’s and Google’s systems are everywhere. If a sponsored link on Google will get some people to click on it, look at the site, and then later link to the site from their own website.  Voila! Bump in Pagerank.  That’s exactly analogous to the “artificial bump” in TechMeme.

The reason that both systems aren’t artificial is that a human has to consider the site (or blog post) that they’re looking at and then decide if they’re going to link to it (or blog about it).  In both cases, Google and TechMeme are trying to approximate global interest in a site or post, and if sponsorship boosts that global interest, then both systems should reflect that.

The flaws in the systems are exposed when the global interest if faked (link farms, blog comment spam, etc.).  Those are real, troublesome issues, but are independent of whether or not Google & TechMeme offer sponsored space on their websites.

Ball’s in your court, John.

Digg 3.0 launches, but where’s the controversy?

26 Monday Jun 2006

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As TechCrunch reports, Digg 3.0 launches on Monday, but amid all this hype (and the hype from the Netscape launch), I'm left to wonder what happened to all the controversy around the forevergeek story?

Let me say first that the the Digg changes do look fantastic and should make Digg that much cooler. Great job!

The attention span of the American people is already unbelievably short, but the attention span of the blogging community has got to be record-breakingly short. Both Digg and TechMeme demonstrate this everyday, with stories that sit at the top of the queue for a mere hours, before being completely ignored forever. It's always hard to tell what's real and what's worthless with all the hype that the community pushes around.

Never ending, these flame wars are…

21 Tuesday Mar 2006

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So Microsoft is getting into the classifieds space to do battle with Craigslist.  The guys at TechDirt think that there’s nothing that MS can do that Craigslist can’t just replicate, so MS will have a hard time taking them on. I’m sure I’m not alone in believing that that is a naive opinion. MS has the money, the reach, and the intelligence to do destroy Craigslist if they thought it was important enough and focused even a small percentage of their company on it.

That’s not that interesting, and I wasn’t going to write about it. The thing actually got me upset was the waste of electrons that passed as “discussion” on TechDirt. MS bashing by MS bashers, followed by MS-basher bashing by MS-basher bashers, followed by the spelling and grammar police, followed by just pure chalkboard-scratching.

Sometime, when you’re feeling good about things, head on over to Cnet News and read pretty much any of their comment threads on MS, Apple, Firefox, or Linux. I have more intelligent conversation with my 4-month old.

To get any decent conversation about anything, you have to dig through tons of silly flame wars and stupid insults. I’d love a community where people have to pass a test to join the conversation. For instance:

  1. Do you admit that the company you hate (e.g., MS, Apple, Oracle, Google, etc.) is often right?
  2. Do you admit that the company you love (e.g., MS, Apple, Oracle, Google, etc.) is often wrong?
  3. Do you admit that the technology you hate (e.g., Windows) has merit?
  4. Do you admit that the technology you love (e.g., Mac OS) has flaws?
  5. Do you admit that whatever it is you do, there is probably someone who does it better than you?
  6. Do you admit that just because someone doesn’t agree with you, they’re not necessarily an idiot?
  7. Do you admit that sometimes, just sometimes, you’re wrong?

Now, was that so difficult? Group hug…

Into the valley of death, walks the 20 million blogs

23 Thursday Feb 2006

Posted by in Blogging, Technology, Web 2.0

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Really interesting article from the Chicago Tribune about the stagnation of blog readership.  And tons of interesting discussion about it.  It seems like whenever anyone suggests that the blogging phenomenon is waning, the whole community comes out and bashes something with a collective large blunt object. Only human nature, I guess.

I’ve actually had many issues with the hype around the blogging phenomenon.  I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal, and the posts from Scott Karp and Rex Hammock both suggest to me that blogging wasn’t worth the hype (though I’m sure both of those guys would disagree with my interpretation).

Scott Karp writes that blogging is not a business but just a tool that helps people publish. I totally agree with that. I think he’s totally right. But a lot of the hype around blogging early on was that it was a business.  There were and still are a lot of start ups that are trying to make money on it.  There are a ton of bloggers today that are trying to make money from their on ramblings.

Rex writes that we shouldn’t compare blogging to traditional media. He lists reasons why people should blog, including “because there are two or three people who actually matter in your life or work, or who share your passion for a particular topic”.  (But if there are only 2-3 people who care, shouldn’t that be email?)  The blogging hype came with the fantasy that anyone could be a publisher, a journalist, a reknowned scholar on things that they know.  Rex and Scott know that that’s not true. And the blogging community is now saying that they never thought that in the past.  Yeah, right.

Blogging doesn’t create an audience. Streaking to the 50-yard line during the Super Bowl and setting yourself on fire creates an audience.  Blogging helps people who have an audience (whether you’re a journalist for CNN speaking to thousands/millions of people, or you’re sock-darning expert speaking to two people) speak to that audience more efficiently.  (OK, and yes, it does help grow an audience a little bit.)

So if very few people are making money on blogs, and very few people are reading blogs, and a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?