The other night I went to see Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson talk. At some point they started talking about Wikipedia and Jenkins said something that sparked a thought so obvious I can’t believe I’ve never had it.
There are a bunch of Wikipedians just going around cleaning up messes, Jenkins explained. He specifically told the story of Stephen Colbert telling his television audience to change the Wikipedia entry on elephants to say that the number in Africa had tripled over the last few years. The thing is, when the huge audience came onto the site looking to make some trouble, the Wikipedians were there, waiting to change it back. Jenkins explained that there are lots of people who just go to Wikipedia in their free time, check the latest changes and make sure that none of them are vandalism. They are keeping their community clean.
That’s when it struck me.
Why are we trying so hard to figure out what motivates people to keep their communities clean?
No one ever asks why you don’t leave old spaghetti in the middle of your floor. Have you ever heard someone wonder what your motivation was for throwing away empty cups sitting on the lunch tables at your office? No and no. These are just things we do because we care about the community. Of course we don’t want to live in a place with spaghetti on the floor and trash on the tables.
So maybe we’ve all been going about this all wrong. Maybe it’s not about fame, attention, money, power or any of the other things we’ve been talking about. Maybe it’s just about community and hygiene.
This is my personal site. I keep it tidy in the same way I try to keep my own body clean. I can’t imagine it any other way.
A lot of people devalue online communities, saying they’re not real. That is wrong. They are real. Obviously people can’t live without physical contact, but to say that the relationships I’ve formed through this site are somehow less real than the relationships that have started in the physical world is a silly argument. Anyone who lives part of their lives in online communities knows the truth.
And they know sometimes they just do things to keep their community a clean and happy place to be.
September 28, 2006
So privacy’s dead. What now?
Control. It’s time for us to take it back.
Everyone is spying on us, so why shouldn’t we start spying on ourselves? At least that way we can use that data to our own ends.
last.fm gives you recommendations based on your musical tastes. Google is recording your searches with the eventual goal of giving you your own search engine. By making your bookmarks public, del.icio.us makes them a lot more powerful. These are all attention based systems that give us value through exposure.
But you want to know the most powerful attention system out there?
Let me give you a hint: You’re looking at it. Nothing paints a better picture of my identity and the things I pay attention to than my blog.
While there are dangers in exposing myself to the world, I’ve made the decision that the benefits are even bigger:
- I control my identity. Search for Noah Brier on Google and I’m number one. That means when someone’s looking for me they find the me that I want them to see. That’s big.
- I connect with likeminds. I wouldn’t have met all the great people I’ve met in the last 6 months had it not been for my willingness to expose myself and my thoughts to the world. The possibilities of these relationships are endless.
- I create searchable thoughts. I know for a fact that I use the search box on this site more than the rest of you combined. Since I wrote everything, I’m able to go back and dig up something I was thinking about 6 months ago. Sure, Google’s search might be powerful for the masses, but it can’t shake a stick at my own search for me.
Bottom line is this: Instead of false privacy I’ve chosen controlled exposure. And you know what? I’m having a damn good time with it.
September 27, 2006
Hi all, just a quick head’s up that I will be in San Francisco next week from Wednesday to Saturday morning. If you’re around the area and would like to try to meet up for a bit, drop me a line or a comment.
In other news, if you want to subscribe to NoahBrier.com by email, you can now do that. Just drop your email in the little form on the homepage (below the Sidenotes) and you’ll get an email the morning after I post something. It’s pretty handy if I do say so myself.
September 27, 2006
Thought this was too cool not to share with everyone. One Wednesday night in NYC Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson are going to be having a conversation at the Museum of the Moving Image. Here’s the writeup from the site:
Henry Jenkins, author of the new book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press), and Steven Johnson (Everything Bad is Good for You), two of the nation’s most incisive cultural critics, will discuss the ground-shifting and often surprising ways in which audiences are participating in the creation, distribution, and consumption of media in the digital age, and the effects of these developments on entertainment and learning. The program will be followed by a reception and book signing. Tickets: $10 public/$7.50 for students with ID/Free for Museum members, call to RSVP. Buy Tickets Online
While I haven’t finished reading Convergence Culture yet, I have been reading Henry Jenkins’ blog and can attest to the fact that he’s a brilliant media theorist. Steven Johnson is probably my favorite author in the whole world and the person I most with my brain worked like.
In addition if you’re interested, PSFK has (or had) three sets of tickets to give away (can’t promise they’re still there, but it’s worth a shot).
Anyhow, if you’re going to be there drop me a line and if anyone has any other cool events going on around NYC (or anywhere else) in the coming weeks, please leave them in the comments.
Before I go, here’s the info in digest form:
Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson
Wednesday, September 27, 7:00 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image
35 Avenue at 36 Street
Astoria, NY 11106
DIRECTIONS
September 26, 2006
Yesterday morning I realized something that had been floating around in my mind for a while: Niche choices provide a whole lot more insight than mass ones.
I was playing with last.fm’s similar artist radio. The basic premise is you put in an artist name and it plays you comparable music based on the data they’ve collected from users. Thing is, the similar artist player spits back terrible results if you put in an artist like Coldplay. That’s because for a band that popular, similarities in people’s other tastes don’t necessarily mean similar sound. The pool is too diluted.
That makes perfect sense logically, but for whatever reason yesterday morning it struck me as incredibly important. When I put in the Guther, the system returned some very accurate similarities as well as some interesting, but good, deviations. That’s because for an artist like Guther, who very few people listen to, the other artists people listen to are more meaningful.
None of this is to take anything away from popular bands like Coldplay, I actually like them quite a bit. Instead, it’s just to make the point that when a person makes a conscious decision to consume something niche it says much more about their taste than a mass artist/movie/etc.
Let’s try it another way: Imagine going into a room and asking everyone who’s visited Yahoo! to raise their hand. Everyone in the room would have their arm in the air I assume. Now ask who’s visited NoahBrier.com. Pretend one other person raises their hand. (Come on . . . use your imagination here!) The odds that you have something to talk about with that one other person in the room is far higher than you having something to talk about with everyone in the room.
I think this explains two important pieces of this 2.0volution, specifically as it moves outwards towards the general, more diverse, public:
- The best recommendations come from niche choices.
- In order to compare niche choices effectively you must have scale.
What’s scary about that statement, is that it seems like as soon as these things go mass they will no longer be useful. That may be true for something like ‘similar artist radio’ for Coldplay. However, what a system like last.fm can do to get over that issue is look at your entire library and compare from there. Thus their other feature, ‘recommendation radio’, is even better. By looking at everything you listen to and comparing it to everything everyone else listens to, you get some pretty insightful picks.
None of this is new, Amazon’s been doing it for years with their ‘people who bought this bought that,’ but it’s still a really big deal.
September 25, 2006
It’s been awhile since I did one of these roundups, and since I don’t really have anything better to talk about at the moment . . .
- Gary Stein on lonelygirl15: “Online personality is a shifting, strange thing and we should not be surprised that any person we encounter is real, fake or somewhere in between.”
- Warner Brothers egineers filed for a patent on a triple-standard DVD. It will have Blu-ray and HD-DVD on one side and standard DVD on the other. Imagine that, a company working in the consumer’s favor. Revolutionary!
- USA Today on ‘friending’: “But Valerie, who has 1,327 friends, says she will sometimes ignore list length for the right reasons. If she encounters someone with ‘only 12 or 20 friends, but they seem like a cool person, I’ll start a conversation with them, and I will still treat them like someone who had a thousand friends or something. They could’ve just started their site, too.’” So kind . . .
- One of my favorite new blogs, Logic+Emotion on life 2.0: “Life 2.0 is about discovering our purpose through finding each otherâ€â€and ourselves.” It’s all about connectedness . . .
- Facebook is worth more than Antigua and Barbuda. But Facebook doesn’t have white-sand beaches.
- “Marketers know about consumers, consumers know about marketers, marketers know consumers know about marketers, and consumers know marketers know consumers know about marketers.”
- Chartreuse brilliantly breaks down Paris Hilton’s fame, gets Dugg in the process. The big takeaway: “What makes Paris brilliant is that she used the attention she had and gave it to others thereby garning more attention for herself. And it’s been profitable.”
- Ad agencies are being threatened by regular people’s creativity. I see this as an opportunity, but that’s another post . . .
- Get a new passport before it’s got an RFID embedded.
- I blog therefore I am?
- Another great Logic+Emotion post, this one’s about staying in the lines: “What if someone told Steve Jobs to ‘stay in the lines’, or what if Thomas Edison never tried coloring outside of a line, just to see what would happen? What about that person at Motorola who thought the world was ready for a unusually thin and stylish phone? What if that individual just ‘stayed in the lines’?”
- The male body image is under assault.
And last but not least, here’s a video for everyone’s enjoyment. My friend Max Kalehoff is doing a videoblog where he interviews lots of smart people on engagement. The name, appropriately enough is Engagement By Engagement. Despite the high standards for participants, Max thought it suitable to interview me. However I would suggest clicking over to the site and watching some people far more intelligent than I talking about the subject (including my friend David Berkowitz). Oh, and just one note, Max actually made me button up an extra shirt button before going on camera . . . just in case you were wondering.
With that said . . .
LINK TO VIDEO
That’s it. Hope to see people at likemind.ny on Friday morning . . . Have a good weekend!
September 22, 2006
[Editor's Note: This piece is a response to my entry on "The Dangers of Exposing Yourself. ]
By Rob Mitchell
No longer are the teenagers of today completely walled off in the same old same old lifestyles of even your youth (let alone mine). The possibilities of connecting with people who share your unusual or outre habits exist! And, with the ease of social networking destinations like myspace, the teenagers who game until dawn with headsets and mikes on, chattering away, its hard to imagine not finding people like you, wherever they are. Fetishists, freaks, weirdos, or just the misunderstood are able (increasingly) to find friendly voices, at least somewhere. This doesn’t explain away people like the Canadian junior college shooter, or Harris and Klebold, but if you can bear with me, I can explain even that.
All of these people, at the ultimate extreme of loneliness and misery, tend to find themselves going out in an alienated blaze of glory, taking as many people with them as possible — if the internet is bringing people together, then why? Well, the Canadian did (it seems I read) leave big clues on his myspace account. Harris and Klebold were a little too early for this level of networking. And just as important — mental health issues don’t vanish with an increase in possible community sentiment, and the most understanding you can find online can still not be enough to counteract a real life made up of nothing but (perceived, at least) oppression and isolation.
Online communities work better for people the more of themselves they invest in it, the more they care about being good citizens of their group, the more they share with others. In the same way that complexity arising from social networking can lead to interesting and positive outcomes the more people are involved (quantity), the more each individual invests him or herself into the community, the stronger and more valuable it is as a resource (for information, support, etc.).
So, when a 15-year old kid goes into extraordinary detail about the drug and sex fueled weekend they had recently, to that individual it is a lot of things to that individual — adolescent bragging, acting out, looking to be transgressive, testing and pushing boundaries. However, to each person reading it, it also serves a different (and to a certain extent, unique per user) experience. It is a statement that I might not be the only person acting out like this.
That this is a possible action, that these are the possible outcomes — it might be a cautionary tale, an amusing legend, whatever. And, its also (kind of) a statement of trust in the reader — whether misplaced or not. In the movie “House of Games” (David Mamet), a hustler played by Joe Mantegna explains that what a confident man really seems to do is to give his confidence to the person he’s about to scam, and if you think about it, there is truth in that statement. By opening yourself up to someone, you are telling them “I trust you with this knowledge”, and that all by itself can be a touching gesture.
Will some employers in the future use this knowledge poorly, prejudging potential job applicants, grant recipients, etc.? Doubtless they will. But then there’s a corollary to this, which is if the person with whom you are dealing is judging you based on a part of your life that they so virulently disagree with, then perhaps you shouldn’t be associating with this person anyway. If someone is barring you because of these youthful peccadilloes (or even current behavior), then are they going to just be making your life a misery anytime you deal with them? Really it comes down to another kind of trust in others, specifically, trust that what you do in outside arenas that have nothing to do with what you are doing at this time is really your business, so long as it truly doesn’t impact what you are doing.
If your private life is dressing up like cookie monster, taking a dozen bizarre designer drugs, dancing for 30 hours straight on a weekend, etc., and yet you are able to roll in on a Monday morning, on time and firing on all cylinders as a certified public accountant in a grey flannel suit, then bully for you!
Rob Mitchell is a friend, a programmer and one of those people who knows everything about everything.
September 21, 2006
You ever think about what’s going to happen in 5-10 years when the internet generation starts looking for jobs? All these kids who are posting the intimate parts of their lives on Myspace and the such will be left completely exposed. Every potential employer will have full access to the graphic details of their lives.
It scares me more than a little bit that kids growing up today don’t seem to understand the permanence of their online identities.
But lately I’ve been thinking maybe it’s not the end of the world. The way I see it, in 5-10 years employers are going to have two options: Either judge a candidate by their past and don’t hire them or don’t. Now if enough of the candidates have chronicled their lives in all its excess glory, then it seems to me there won’t be that many options. Employers are going to have to allow the past to be the past and hire some people who have documented some things that might not be entirely professional. I just don’t see how else it can work.
What’s more, I can’t help but wonder if I’m just being old-fashioned. A friend of mine reminded me the other day that many of the things we now accept at face value were not considered ‘normal’ in the not-so-distant past.
In fact, a lot of those things are still not widely accepted today. People are still being punished for choosing to have sex with those of the same gender and there still seem to be Americans who believe Black people don’t have the right to vote.
In the world I live in, neither being gay nor being Black means you should be treated any differently, but that is clearly not an absolute truth.
So I can’t help but think that maybe I’m just being old-fashioned thinking that kids exposing themselves online is dangerous. It’s possible that what’s actually going on is we’re actually approaching a transparent society where there are, “ubiquitous cameras, perched on every vantage point. Only here. . . These devices do not report to the secret police. Rather, each and every citizen of this metropolis can lift his or her wristwatch/TV and call up images from any camera in town.”
I’m just not sure.
September 20, 2006
It’s time for the third installment of likemind. Once again, the idea is that a bunch of people of like mind get together, drink some coffee and talk about things of mutual interest. You don’t have to have been at the any of the previous to come. The whole thing is very loose: no agenda, no moderators Piers and I are just part of the crowd.
As for who should come: If you want to come, you should.
We’ll be in the back this time, since apparently we were a fire hazard sitting up front in that big group.
when: friday, september 22 at 8am
where: sNice, 45 Eighth Avenue, at West 4th Street, NYC (GOOGLE MAPS)
Once again, if you’re interested all you’ve got to do is show up. You can get more info and sign up to stay informed at likemind.us. I hope to see some of you there.
September 18, 2006
[Editor's Note: I try not to get too personal around here. This is an exception to that rule. This is my website and my life. This is where I think out loud and I believe it's important everyone know who I am. But more than that, I just want to share with you all. I try to give as much as I can here and this is just one of those times I need a little back.]
I broke up with my girlfriend of almost two years this weekend. It was mutual. We both reached a point where we realized that we would probably never reach that place. I think it was a good decision: The right decision.
It was far from easy, but as they say, the hardest things never are.
Needless to say, I’m feeling fairly emotional. I think I’ve been trying to avoid myself for the last 24 hours, but it’s time to face up. I’ve got my favorite sad music going and it’s just me, my mind and an empty page.
The hardest part is trying to parse the thoughts about the comforts of the relationship from the relationship itself. At some point the two became so intertwined it seems impossible to untangle them.
It’s easy to miss the comforts of being together: The evening phone calls, the person to share exciting news with, the person to hold. What’s hardest at this very moment is imagine a world without all those things.
But of course I will survive, and so will she. We will cease to be linked in a way we once were, though hopefully the relationship can continue to grow in different ways. The thing is, I have no idea what those different ways will be and that’s scary.
It’s hard to look the future in the face without someone to hold your hand.
That especially difficult since I pride myself in my ability to look into future. Much of my life revolves around my ability to untangle complex puzzles and extract the deeper meaning that lays beneath. I’m hardly ever my own test subject, however. I don’t get paralyzed by indecision or fear and I probably have more self-confidence than I should. I converse on a level with people much older and more experienced than myself on a regular basis.
All of this means that I often forget how young I am.
This is relatively new to me. Obviously I realize that the emotions will dissipate over time no matter how much that may not seem true at this very moment. But it’s still hard to face myself: To be honest and realize I have no idea how to deal with this.
When I was a kid I turned to my mother and told her my take on the meaning of life. It didn’t seem like an overly complicated explanation at the time, but it struck a chord with her. I just said, “it’s what you make of it.”
I don’t believe in fate or free will, but rather a hybrid of the two. Something to the effect of we are all nodes in a giant sea of possible connections. With each decision a whole new set of paths opens up. Each path has an infinite number of endpoints depending on which sub-paths you choose. More and more I believe no path is right or wrong: It just is.
As with every other decision, my path has shifted.
When the shift seems so large, though, its hard to remember its a small decision in a giant sea. One of my greatest aggravations is when people lose track of the larger picture when small hiccups arise. Sometimes I have trouble being empathetic in those moments. In my work life, I am far better at flying high above the trees and seeing the forest.
I don’t want to disconnect myself here, though. I want to feel it. I want to understand it. I want to learn as much as I can from it.
I want to grow from it.
September 18, 2006
Much of my life is spent saying things and making decisions that I am not completely qualified to make. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. The way I see it, none of us are really ever completely qualified to make a decision, so we just need to use our best knowledge and judgement and hope for the best.
A lot of the times we try to justify the decision afterwards, but the bottom line is we went with our gut.
Just listen to Michael Beirut explains his real design process:
When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people  at least the ones I’ve told you about  have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know…trust me?
More and more lately I’ve been coming to the conclusion that the thing that separates the successful from the unsuccessful is the ability to make a decision, not necessarily a good decision. I’m hypothesizing here that much of the time the act of making a decision is more important than what’s actually decided.
I know that’s kind of crazy, but think about it this way: How many really important decisions do you make in a day? The vast majority are probably things that have no wrong answer? Should I take this route or that one? What should I eat for lunch? Should I move this logo a little to the right? Whatever you decide for any of those is what you decide. Chances are most of the decisions won’t even ever get noticed.
A lot of this thinking comes out of the simplicity of likemind and the relative success we’ve had. It’s completely self-selective: If you think you should come to one of our coffee mornings you should, if you don’t you shouldn’t. If you think you’re of likemind then you’re of likemind. It’s all pretty simple and yet it’s yielded fantastic results.
That idea eventually led me to the principles of open space (which is how unconferences like Barcamp) are organized. The four principles are:
1. Whoever comes is the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
3. Whenever it starts is the right time.
4. When it’s over it’s over.
There’s something wonderfully organic about it all and I can’t help but feel like its a direct result of the complexity of our new digital world. That’s not to say its a reaction, but rather an outgrowth of the networked nature.
Maybe it’s not technology versus nature, but rather technology reflecting nature.
September 15, 2006
For all of time people have had their own definitions. The meaning of a word like friend is not universal. A friend to me might be someone I call at least five times a week, while you might call that guy you met once in third grade a friend. Before the internet this wasn’t really a problem. However you defined friend was fine by me.
All of a sudden social networking sites came along and friend became a verb.The action part was much more important than the adjective. Everything was cool until Friendster decided to define the social meaning of friend as well. A friend could not be a made up person or object. That, along with incredibly slow service, sunk the site.
Now Facebook seems to be repeating the mistake. They have taken decided that they know what a friend is better than you do. Just read how Mark Zuckerberg told the Facebook community to calm down about the news feed feature: “Facebook is about real connections to actual friends, so the stories coming in are of interest to the people receiving them, since they are significant to the person creating them.”
I’d be willing to wager that the vast majority of Facebookers wouldn’t define their Facebook friends as “real connections to actual friends.” How many people do you know with 500 ‘real friends’? Danah Boyd boils it down quite nicely: “The term “friend” in the context of social network sites is not the same as in everyday vernacular. And people know this. This is why they used to say fun things like ‘Well, she’s my Friendster but not my friend.’ (The language doesn’t work out so cleanly on Facebook.) The term is terrible but it means something different on these sites; it’s not to anyone’s advantage to assume that the rules of friendship apply to Friendship.”
This is a case of a platform overstepping its boundaries. For better or for worse, as social networking sites become a larger part of our lives the site itself begins to slide into the background. I feel like a broken record, but people don’t go to Myspace for Myspace, they go for my space. Same with Facebook, this is where people congregate. It’s a virtual town square. Now wouldn’t it make you a little uncomfortable if when you visited your real town square everyone you were given a full readout of everyone else’s exploits?
There’s one more important point to make here, though. I’m probably about to contradict everything I said.
This is not a town square. This is a digital universe. Built into this universe are certain rules and possibilities that simply don’t exist in your grass and gazebo park. All of this information is already out there and there’s a certain feeling of inevitability to the whole thing. The mistake Facebook made was not making news feed available, it was releasing it and making it default. Facebook is a platform, the users are the value, don’t define their world for them.
I guess that wasn’t so contradictory, was it?
September 13, 2006
For all of time people have had their own definitions. The meaning of a word like friend is not universal. A friend to me might be someone I call at least five times a week, while you might call that guy you met once in third grade a friend. Before the internet this wasn’t really a problem. However you defined friend was fine by me.
All of a sudden social networking sites came along and friend became a verb.The action part was much more important than the adjective. Everything was cool until Friendster decided to define the social meaning of friend as well. A friend could not be a made up person or object. That, along with incredibly slow service, sunk the site.
Now Facebook seems to be repeating the mistake.
http://www.portigal.com/blog/the-nature-of-communities/
September 11, 2006
[Editor's Note: This is part two in a series of posts on how to make money off your blog. Part 1 was all about The Deck and Part 2 was all about Text Link Ads. Here's the description from the first post: Obviously there are a million different ways to try and make money off a website, the easiest of which is slapping a couple Google ads on there and calling it a day. These three ideas interest me because they're different. They're not your regular CP-whatever deal, instead they're tapping into what makes blogs unique/special and monetizing that.]
It’s time for the wrap up ladies and gentlemen . . .
3. Job Boards
I actually first thought about doing a job board a few months ago. People ask me all the time if I know someone to fill so-and-so position. Lots of them sound great and I try to pass them along. I thought maybe it would be good to have a place to aggregate all these jobs, based on the criteria that it would only get posted if I found it interesting. Since then job boards have been sprouting up everywhere.
The way I see it, these job boards are the perfect companion to a blog. Think about it: Blogs tend to be about niche topics (say the future of media and marketing) and have highly targeted audiences. That means if an employer can find a blog they like and relates to their work, chances are it’s a good place to find other like-minded people. What’s more, by posting a job on a blog job board, it lends a certain amount of cachet to the company. After all, they’ve got to be somewhat in the know to be posting at this niche site.
Basically, they’re the opposite of sites like Monster. As Jason Fried explained: “Big sites take a shotgun approach . . . You post a job. Anyone can see it. There’s no targeting, no like-mindedness. Our feeling is, if you want to hire the right people, you have to go where the right people hang out.”
My favorite part about these job boards, is that unlike more traditional advertising, job boards actually help all parties involved. The site gets some cash, the employer gets a good employee and the reader gets a job. Obviously problems could arise if the site really takes off and the board becomes a job destination rather than a blog with a job board. It’ll be interesting to see how these things turn out (I suspect it’ll work out just fine).
The Lessons
1. Once again, recommendations, even if they’re not explicit, are the most valuable resource a blog has (other than influence . . . which is really the same thing). In the case of jobs, just being listed on a site like 37signals can raise the coolness factor in the minds of candidates.
2. Advertising that serves a purpose is better than the noise of other forms of advertising.
3. Find a way to milk the niche nature of your site rather than trying to make it something it’s not. A blog with 300 readers isn’t going to do shit by way of CPM (cost-per-thousand), but if you’re covering a small topic selling job posts might be just what the doctor ordered (plus it somehow seems less sleezy as selling recommendations).
The bottom line here is embrace your inner niche. Don’t try to be something you’re not. Find creative ways to exploit your blogs most valuable asset: A small targeted audience.
That about wraps up this three part series. Hope you enjoyed it. If you’ve got any more ideas, please drop them in the comments. Also, I just wanted to add that I understand the vast majority of people don’t have any desire to make money off their blog. I’m actually (mostly) in that camp. However, I think whether you’re interested in engaging in some of these tactics or not, there are a lot of lessons to be learned.
September 11, 2006
All we hear is how small is the new big. Here’s the truth: It’s not.
Small is still the same old small. It’s just more scalable than ever. Data’s cheap and so is computing power. It’s easier than ever to deliver customization and personalization.
The tides have shifted, we are in control.
People are dreaming “of talking directly to a business and sharing my personal data; where I am valued for this and rewarded with tailored/cutsomized services that design out assumptions and waste. And they are rewarded with my attention.”
Scale used to dictate that everything must be equal, all products the same. It’s not the case any longer.
The internet is redefining things. People are not content to have their world defined for them.
Not all of us feel this way. 80% are content to consume. We know what they want.
1% are content to be superusers. They create for creation’s sake.
19% are stuck in the middle. They are passively active.
They are constantly passively creating content. They might not think of it that way, but the metadata footprint they leave is their blog. They have friends on Myspace and favorite videos on YouTube. They share pictures and post on forums.
Screw the ‘consumer generated content’ the advertising industry has declared. This one’s the real deal. Millions of people are leaving their number and waiting for a call.
It’s not about slapping ads on things, it’s about thinking small and letting go.
Give me what I want and you’ll be richly rewarded.
Update (9/8/06): Brad Feld on the other 19%.
Update (9/11/06): Organic on the ‘new influencer.’
September 8, 2006
[Editor's Note: This is part two in a series of posts on how to make money off your blog. Part 1 was all about The Deck. Here's the description from the first post: Obviously there are a million different ways to try and make money off a website, the easiest of which is slapping a couple Google ads on there and calling it a day. These three ideas interest me because they're different. They're not your regular CP-whatever deal, instead they're tapping into what makes blogs unique/special and monetizing that.]
As promised, here’s part deuce:
2. Text Link Ads
A few weeks ago a friend of mine mentioned their blog had just moved into the black. When I asked how, he responded that once you hit PageRank 6, life is easy.
It’s a funny Googlefied world we live in where such a statement hold so much truth. With the way Google works, once your site hits a level of popularity people are willing to pay you just to link to them. Sure there are moral implications with this, after all Google’s whole system is based on the idea that a link is equal to a vote of confidence. But who’s to say confidence can’t be bought?
Lots of companies are going around the web finding PageRank 4 and above sites and paying for links. As I mentioned, this is part of the appeal of The Deck: Rather than redirecting ads they are direct links.
Text Link Ads takes it a step further. As explained on the site, “We specialize in placing static html links on high quality, high traffic web properties.” Basically, they’re letting sites sell their PageRank. The interesting thing here is it doesn’t matter how many, if any, people click through on the ads. All that matters is Google picks them up and gives the appropriate bump to the linked site. Since something like PageRank is so easily quantified it’s fairly easy to quantify real value, as opposed to regular CPM buys where people may or may not pay attention to ads, less click on them. Realizing that Google is the center of the web universe, trying to raise your rank based on specific keywords can lead to real results for some businesses. Real results are worth real money.
The Lessons
1. Google is the center of the universe. Where you fall in the results is worth real traffic and thus, real dollars.
2. Better content leads to more incoming links. More incoming links leads to better PageRank. Better PageRank leads to the ability to charge higher rates for text links. Once again the lesson is to write good stuff.
3. Everything in this new media world is an influence game: PageRank is just another measure of it.
The bottom line is that everything comes down to your ability to create interesting content. Since the blogosphere is still such a small world, some of the most committed readers tend to also be linkers. It’s all about your audience. They make or break everything you do. Cultivate that audience, they’re your most valuable asset. It doesn’t need to be about getting new readers, just keep the ones you’ve got happy. If you’ve got a happy and committed reader base of smart individuals, there is always going to be someone willing to pay for access. (Hint hint!)
To be continued . . .
September 6, 2006
Obviously there are a million different ways to try and make money off a website, the easiest of which is slapping a couple Google ads on there and calling it a day. These three ideas interest me because they’re different. They’re not your regular CP-whatever deal, instead they’re tapping into what makes blogs unique/special and monetizing that.
So without any further ado . . .
1. The Deck
The DECK bills itself as “the premier advertising network for reaching creative, web and design professionals.” The network is made up of eight highly-regarded and highly-trafficed blogs/sites that rather than being specifically about design, cater to that audience.
Now the network part of it is not so revolutionary, what puts The DECK on this list is their standards for what advertisers they accept. As they explain, “We’re picky about the advertising we’ll accept. We won’t take an ad unless we have paid for and/or used the product or service. Sell us something relevant to our audience and we’ll sell you an ad.”
The DECK understands that what these sites all have is influence. If they shill a product that sucks, that very influence that they’ve built their site on goes down the drain. Maintaining a very high level of quality helps all sides: The advertisers get a sort-of stamp of approval and most likely more attention than they would otherwise, the sites get to make money while maintaining a high level of control and the readers, in theory, get recommendations for great products.
The Lessons:
1. Influence is the single most valuable feature of a blog. As the The DECK says, “it’s not about ‘cost-per-thousand,’ it’s about ‘cost-per-influence.’“
2. Recommendations are the new advertising.
3. Niche is the new mass.
A secondary benefit of advertising on The DECK is the fact that the ads are not redirected. While that means you can’t measure click-throughs, it also means advertisers get some serious Google juice from some seriously juiced sites (the average PageRank of the eight sites is 7.125 — just for reference NoahBrier.com is a 5 as of this writing). Instead of going into this too deeply now, though, I’ll save it for the next installment where I’ll talk about Text Link Ads (which also just happens to be an advertiser on The Deck).
To be continued . . .
Update (9/6/06): Part 2 of the series is out: Text Link Ads. Enjoy!
September 5, 2006
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