Skip links

Performancing

Main navigation

Archives for May 2006

Why Are Multi-Writer Weblogs More Popular?

by

In Seth Godin’s Fiddleheads post, he raises an excellent point about developing a market. In his analogy, he points out that in any marketplace, say a Farmers Market, each booth owner is thinking that they’d do better if they were the only booth of their kind in the market. This feeling is echoed, Seth says, pretty much anywhere, but “this reasoning is fallacious”.

No doubt, bloggers often feel the same way, but I think that if there are more than two blogs on a topic, that’s actually a good thing for everyone. In a similar but different situation, a blog with multiple writers is arguably going to do better than most blogs with just one writer.

There are many examples of this, including most of the Weblogs, Inc blogs. My own writing has recently started appearing on other people’s blogs by request, and on one website, I’m getting several hundred pageviews per post. In just a day or two. None of my blogs have individually received as many pageviews in a single day or two, despite writing my ass off for 11 months now – and even though I publish the same type of writing and topics on my own blogs.

Why is that? I think it’s pretty simple to answer. When there is more than one writer, there’s something for everyone. There is more fresh content daily, and variety. And when writers on one weblog inter-link to each other’s posts, it’s an invitation for their loyal readers to read the other writers. A synergy is built up. But if a weblog only has one writer, the success of it depends solely on the cult of personality that that writer can build up, regardless of what they are writing about and how often.

As much as it might sting, there aren’t many writers who can achieve this cult of personality. A FEW good examples of such types of writers – in no particular order – are Darren Rowse, Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, Brian Clark, Yaro Starak, Steve Pavlina, Debbie Weil, and Guy Kawasaki.

The moral, for most bloggers, is that synergy is a good thing, but it is possible to be a successful soloist. You’ll note that every one of the above writers have regularly have something of value to tell their regular readers.

Know of any other solo bloggers who you think are developing their own cult of personality with their insightful writing?

Blogging Not Allowed

by

This weekend I will be attending a developer conference. I happened to mention in an online forum that I will be there with a camera. It turns out cameras are not welcome without special permission. Of course now I want to know why. Hmmm, ok, I thought, perhaps they don’t want secrets revealing or official announcements beating to the punch. Nope, no news announcements or NDA material will be revealed looking at the agenda. Scratch that one off the list.

While I am acting all offended and surprised, truthfully this isn’t the first time. Another event with a camera ban specifically asked people not to blog. It seems in this day where “word of mouth” is king (and rightfully so), conference organisers are slow to learn the benefits of it. They rely instead on hoarding the information, using PR and traditional advertising to get the word out.

How much greater and more effective will the buzz be if Flickr was awash with happy, excited faces of attendees? If technorati, tech.meme, digg was crowded with links to conference-related topics and blog posts of satisfied customers?

Of course I will still attend, and more than likely I will still blog it. Heck if I don’t get permission to take pictures I shall probably just try some sneaky camera phone snaps. Just a shame that these things are discouraged rather than seen for the win-win benefit they really are.

powered by performancing firefox

5 Steps for Identifying Dodgy Blog Submissions

by

Recently I had to investigate a couple of article submissions here at Performancing. They smelt wrong, so I did the sensible thing and poked them with a stick to see if there really was something amiss. Im going to tell you why you need to check user contributed articles, and give you 5 easy steps to help you make the call.

Before we get into HOW, let’s just talk about WHY…

As a publisher, what goes out on your blog is your responsibility. Content does not necessarily have to be original, or even well written, (there is a lot of value in some aggregation and not everyone writes brilliantly) but you DO have a responsibility to your readers to not fill them full of shit. And it’s the kind of mind numbingly dreadful, regurgitated content that content spammers want to foist on you and your readers that you, as a responsible publisher have a duty to identify, and kill before it hits your RSS.

5 Steps For Checking User Submitted Posts

If you get that “somethings not right” feeling when reviewing a user submission, look for these tell-tale signs of content spamming.

1. Are the linebreaks out sync?
You can often see if an post has been cut and pasted rather than typed into your form by looking at the linebreaks. Most blog software automatically puts
tags on new lines for you, and if the article is breaking in the wrong places, its a good indication that further investigation is required.

There are a number of legitimate reasons why this might happen, so its by no means conclusive by itself.

2. Has it been submitted elsewhere?
Here’s a neat Search trick: take a 5 or 6 word fragment from the article (one without punctuation preferably) and enter it into Google like this: "this sentence was taken from the article" include the quotes.

Pick something as unique as possible. If the article has been submitted to a ton of places already, and Google has had chance to index them, it’ll showup in the results.

If it does, then also take a look at where it’s been submitted. Are those good sites? Or are they spammy article syndication schemes?

Tip: If you get results in your search, hit the ” repeat the search with the omitted results included” link at the bottom of the page — Google doesn’t like duplicate content much, so filters it out. If you find a ton of filtered stuff, it’s even worse than you thought.

3. Is there an obvious promotional angle?
With my recent investigation, there was a link and piece of promo text just screaming out at me. It stuck out like a sore thumb and looked to be the sole point of the article — to promote this service. Sometime’s that’s ok, but often it’s not, it’s a judgement call you need to make in combination with other factors.

You can check this with another Search trick. Enter this in Google: "Author Name" "linktext of service" — In my case I hit the jackpot.

4. Are there affiliate links embedded in the content?
One sure sign of undesirable content is having the authors affiliate id appended to urls in her links. If the links seem to contain codes/id’s where you wouldn’t really need them to reach the page linked to, then that could be the entire purpose of the submission. Motive doesn’t mean the article is bad quality necessarily, but 9 times out of 10, if you find affiliate links, you’ll find multiple submissions aswell.

5. Is it just wrong?
In some years of working with online communities, i’ve learnt to just trust my instincts sometimes. Occasionally something just feels all wrong, though you can’t put your finger on why. This isn’t usually the best reason to take action, but sometimes you just have to trust that your brain is processing stuff and reaching a conclusion without necessarily bothering you with the details….

Blogger Beware

I’ve been seeing more and more of this type of thing over the last few months, particularly from those touting promotional services. If you have any thoughts on this, or any other good means ot spot dodgy posts i’d love ot hear them.

It’s unfortunate that we have to even be aware of this stuff, but as publishers we do, because as i said earlier, if it’s your blog, it’s your responsibility.

powered by performancing firefox

Blog Hosting Recommendations

by

Over in the Performancing blog forums Jill Murray is asking if anyone LOVES their blog host? So far, the clear winner is Dreamhost.

If you have a recommendation, please check the aff links and coupon codes at the door and dive right in…

powered by performancing firefox

Tim O’Reilly Speaks, Oh Boy…..

by

You’d have to be living under a rock to have missed the kerfuffle over O’Reilly sending a C&D over the term web2.0, and the tech blogosphere has been waiting for a response from Tim with baited breath. Well, here it is: Tim O’Reilly speaks.

The post raises a ton of points, most of which im going to ignore as it’s past my bedtime and I could be here till next week trying to comment on them all…

A couple of things I’d like to say though: I can understand Tim being upset, but slamming bloggers for not being journalists is just naive. The ‘sphere is a mad, out of control mob at times, and it’s not going to change, it’s only going to get worse. That’s just the way it is.

Having said that, the cream does rise to the top, and those at the top, the thought leaders in tech blogging, should indeed show a little respect, and perhaps restraint when someone with such a stella reputation is under-fire and not their to defend themselves.

It almsot certainly wont happen though.

As for the whole “who owns web2.0” shinanigans, i’ll leave that for others to debate.

If I was really cynical, I’d say that there is a very good lesson in how to deflect attention in Tim’s post 🙂 Havefun reading that one, it’s long, but worth the time it takes as it brings up jsut sooo many questions…

powered by performancing firefox

Why NoFollow Was A Failure

by

A year and a half ago, i wrote a long post explaining why nofollow would not work, so it’s no great surprise to be proved right. This hasn’t just happened, it’s not suddenly stopped working: It never worked, and has only had the predicted detrimental effect on the web and the way we link.

Jeremy, a top bod in Yahoo! Search, who also supported this ludicrous idea, points to this post that lays the blame solidly at Google’s door. Im pretty sure I said so at the time, but if not, let me repeat my thoughts here: NoFollow was a “this will shut them up”, ill thought out, knee-jerk bandaid hurredly implemented to get bloggers and blog vendors off of Google/Yahoo’s back.

It could never work. As dylan points out, the economics of blog spam are that it is CHEAP to spam comments, and spammers don’t care if some of their efforts are in vain because it costs virtually nothing.

Since its enthusiastic adoption a year and a half ago, by Google, Six Apart, WordPress, and of course the eminent Dave Winer, I think we can all agree that nofollow has done … nothing. Comment spam? Thicker than ever. It’s had absolutely no effect on the volume of spam. That’s probably because comment spammers don’t give a crap, because the marginal cost of spamming is so low.

Spot on.

Jeremy actually has the best advice I’ve seen regarding linking, particularly in the context of nofollow from a Search rep:

Look. Linking is part of what makes the web work. If you’re actually concerned about every link you make being counted in some global database of site endorsements, you’re probably over-thinking just a bit. Life’s too short for that, ya know? Link and be linked to. Let the search engines sort it out.

Really, that’s a breath of fresh air.

Google, and Yahoo, Knew this Wouldn’t Work

Remember I called this a bandaid? More precisely it was a PR bandaid, hastily slapped on during a crisis when no real answers were forthcoming (not ones that would be popular anyway). I find it impossible to believe that Search reps like Google’s Matt Cutts, NoFollows most ardent supporter, and Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny really believed this would work.

When Search pundits like Danny Sullivan point out that it’s a non solution, aswell as a host of other Search bloggers (some of whom are linked from this thread), why is it that GOOG/YHOO were the only ones who couldn’t see it?

Note that the people saying this wouldn’t work are as enthusiastic, and as knowlegable about Search as most Search reps.

The only people that believed this was a solution other than the engines, (who as i’ve said, were only paying lip service) were a bunch of folks who didn’t understand Search or the economics of blog spam.

Can we have some real debate on solutions now? Is it time yet? Or do we need to hear a few more fairy tales first?

powered by performancing firefox

Announcing Performancing Launchpad

by

Today, we’re pleased to unveil a new service that allows people to post new gadgets, plugins, services, sites and blogs aimed at the blogging community. Performancing Launchpad will be a great place to get your service or product peer reviewed by the Performancing audience, and kickstart a launch aimed at bloggers.

How it Works

If you’re launching a new service or site aimed at bloggers, take a look at the Launchpad Guidelines then simply hit Create Content over on the right, and choose launchpad. Fill in the form, and away you go!

Who Is It For?

Launchpad is for anyone creating something cool for bloggers. It would suit the web2.0 crowd, aswell as new sites aimed at bloggers. It would be ideal for new plugins, and services that add value for bloggers in general.

If you’re unsure of whether your service fits the bill, you’re welcome to email me or Chris anytime (nick@, chris@).

Kicking It Off

Good friend of Performancing Chris Matthieu from Numly has been kind enough to kick the new service off prior to official launch, with a Launchpad for his new product Bookfob, so that should give you an idea of how it works.

All feedback gratefully received, and of course we’re all looking forward to seeing what you’re making out there!

powered by performancing firefox