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Archives for March 2009

Should I Use My Real Name on Twitter?

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On Twitter, I use my usual username/nickname @jangelo, but at one point, I decided to change the “real name” assigned to the account as “Zorpox the Conqueror.” I really thought hard before deciding on this move, but my main reason was privacy.

Sure, “jangelo” is obviously me, or at least to those who know I use the handle. It’s not unique, but apparently, I’m the most searchable “jangelo” around–I get emails addressed to different folks whose names start with “J” and whose surnames are Angelo, after all.

On my blogs and other blogs and forums I contribute to, I don’t mind disclosing my full name. But I feel that a microblogging service like Twitter is something more personal. Or at least to me, that is. It’s more accessible, and it’s easier to just post haphazardly, without a second’s hesitation, and without the need to edit (unlike my blog posts, in which I spend quite some time editing and editing before hitting publish). So basically, this move is to protect myself from my own stupidity or carelessness.

I could, perhaps, just protect my updates, so that just my approved followers can read them, but in my opinion, that limits the reach of my Twitter account severely. So perhaps my method is an in-between solution.

Or am I just lulling myself with a false sense of privacy? And am I just defeating the purpose of making my profile publicly accessible after all?

Do you use your real name on Twitter? Or do you at least use an identifiable brand or nickname?

Baby steps into podcasting

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So you bought your $80 condenser mic, found a quiet room to record (or maybe built a makeshift sound box using egg cartons for walls) and you’ve got Garage Band or Audacity running in the background. You’re ready to podcast.

Now what? Those who’ve tried podcasting before may have realized how different it is from writing blog entries — and it should be, because podcasting, unlike blogging is a performance art. If you’re a bit lost in the art of intonation and enunciation, my suggestion is to go with baby steps.

1. Browse through your blog for one of your more interesting commentaries. Read it out loud. Read it out loud again. Repeat. Your podcast can be a weekly read of your column.

2. Doing this regularly — let’s look at once a week — instills a sense of confidence allowing you to venture into extemporaneous speaking later on.

3. If you stutter, clench your first. It helps.

The art of podcasting adds new dimension to your blog. But only if done well. Famous NYT columnist David Pogue reads his columns out loud for his shows so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. The trick is to do it regularly, just like like blogging, but never to appear gung-ho at the start by recording daily. It might turn off readers who still prefer your usual daily dose of posts.

Skribit Is Redesigned – More Features Added

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Skribit, the service which enables visitors to your blog to send you ideas on what to write about (I reviewed the service back in July of 2008) has received a face lift. Not only has there been a redesign of the site, but a slew of new features added as well.

The basic idea behind the service is to place the Skribit Widget onto your blog with a list of future post ideas. Each idea has a vote button next to it allowing your audience to decide what it is they would like to see you write about. Suggestions that are not on the widget can be added if you’re a member of the service.

Since July, I noticed things were going rather slowly over at Skribit.com but thanks to some funding from the Georgia Tech Edison Fund, Paul Stamatiou who is the founder of the service has become a full time employee in January and since then, progress on the site as really ramped up. By the way, Paul just happens to be a member of the Performancing Hive forums.

Other than the new design, the site has recently launched Skribit Pro Accounts. There are two different plans. Pro accounts which costs $5.00 per month or Enterprise accounts which you need to contact Skribit to figure out pricing. The pro account enables you to use the service on an unlimited amount of blogs as opposed to one, Suggestion Moderation, and Full Widget Customization. These are all features that I wish the service had back when I wrote my review but I’m glad to see them implemented, even if you have to pay for them.

Last but not least, a new feature rolled out last month called the Suggestions Tab has been designed to be more engaging while at the same time, take up less website space. The suggestions tab loads in a lightbox style window when clicked and allows users to submit suggestions and view other popular suggestions for your site.

Conclusion

As I mentioned in my previous review, if you’re having issues with writers block, this service may definitely help. The only issue is, getting your audience involved in the suggestion making process. Also, if you’re audience actively sends you topic suggestions, you’ll know that if you publish an article related to that topic that at least someone will be interested in reading it. It may not serve as a barometer for what the majority of your audience wants to read but it should certainly help. With the redesign and the added features which I requested back in July being added to the service, I’m really considering adding the suggestions widget to my WPTavern blog.

What do you think of the new Skribit redesign? Are you using it on your site?

Perfcast Episode 27 – Sick And Tired

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This Week, David is feeling a bit under the weather while I am suffering from sleep deprivation. Put us together and you have the unique combination of sick and tired! This week, we cover some of the stories that peeked our interests. We also start a new segment of the show this week in that David and I each provide a pick of the week. This could be a website, a service, a program or just about anything we PICK that we believe is worthy of sharing with the audience.

AD COPY: This episode of Perfcast is brought to you by, the Performancing Copyright Management Service. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. Prices start at $300 and for more information please visit services.performancing.com/blog

STORIES DISCUSSED:
Will StumbleUpons Share This Feature Get Abused?
Thoughts From Darren Rowse On Blogging Versus Twitter
A Fresh Ning.com
The Problem With Selling Blogs
The Guardian Opens Up
More Conversation Fragmentation

WEEKLY LISTENER POLL: Has The Economy Affected The Way You Blog?

Out of a total of 34 votes, 14 of you said YES, 16 of you said NO and 4 of you said you stopped blogging because of the economy.

NEXT WEEKS POLL QUESTION IS: Have You Ever Attended A Conference/Trade Show For Your Niche?

Results will be read in next weeks episode

PICKS OF THE WEEK
Jeff – VirtualNES.com is the largest website on the Internet that allows you to play your favorite classic Nintendo Entertainment System games online for free. VirtualNES.com is the official home of, and is powered by the vNES emulator by Jamie Sanders. If they don’t have the games in their possession, they can’t have them online. This protects them from threats of litigation, and protects the users from (wrongly) being hunted down for violating copyrights. If you can, please consider donating money, games, or server space to the VirtualNES.com team. – http://www.virtualnes.com

David – iPod Touch joins the Jailbreak Family – http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/85449850/ipod-touch-2g-hi-welcome-to-the-jailbreak-family

JOB OF THE WEEK Direct Marketing Blogger (Ghost Writer) – http://jobs.problogger.net/view/2097

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 4 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – March 19th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode27.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 27 OF PERFCAST:

ShareThis On StumbleUpon

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If you have not visited the StumbleUpon home page in awhile or your user page, chances are you had no idea of the site redesign but also the enhanced functionality of the ShareThis feature. Now when you hover over a story, a little ShareThis icon appears. When you click the ShareThis button, a list of your StumbleUpon friends loads in the sidebar.

Optionally, you can send your friends a personal message including with the share. As Chris Garret mentions on the BlogHerald, could this feature come back to haunt StumbleUpon by way of abuse? The last thing I want to see when I open my browser is tens of links that have been shared to me on StumbleUpon, most of which are articles those people created themselves looking for more traffic. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I think I’ll go back to the way things were before I learned about gaining traffic and that is, Stumbling things that I think are cool and worthy of sharing with others instead of Stumbling just because someone asked me to and it’s a friendly thing to do.

So what do you think of the new ShareThis functionality? Do you plan on using it as part of your traffic strategy?

Bloggers: Are you engaging with PR people?

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As someone who has worked for a number of blogs set up by traditional journalists with fairly large readerships and crossover into mainstream media (at least as far as companies’ public relations teams are concerned) I’ve been used to getting a lot of direct contact and interaction with PR people from the start.

However, something I’ve noticed recently is that I’m getting more interest from PR companies for coverage on some of my own personal projects – ones that are much smaller in terms of visitor reach and online influence.

I’m not sure how much of this has come because switched-on PRs have found a link between my higher profile work and the more low-key stuff I do, or whether PRs are generally more interested in appealing to smaller, more niche audiences now?

While my ego would probably like to think the former, as someone who cares about the reputation of bloggers and blogs, I’d prefer it to be the second.

Some bloggers (like journalists) get very irritated with the more traditional methods of public relations – phoning to see if you got an email, and then proceeding to explain the contents of the email even though you said that you’d received it – but for others, it’s great to be included because it gives a sense of recognition, even if sometimes you’re just another contact on a mailing list.

What do you think of public relations? (keep it clean). Have you engaged more with PRs in the last year? What could they do to better tailor their communications to your needs?

Google Interest-based ads sounds promising for feed advertising

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Just recently, Google announced a little beta tweak into their ad system, allowing for interest-based advertising to take place in their ad units. By interest, they mean data that’s based on our browsing history, much similar to how GMail shows ads based on keywords that appear in our inbox. Whether we’ve reached another argument on privacy issues is one thing. What I find more interesting is its application into “feedvertising.”

We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don’t want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store’s upcoming sale.

Google argues well with the “stickiness” of more relevant advertising, and who is to complain with all things taken into account? However I do think that this meddles with the logic of why bloggers, especially network bloggers do stick to niches of interest: to get relevant advertising alongside content.

There’s a huge difference though in the browsing philosophy in seeing ads pop up on feeds. As opposed to active browsing where a reader is engaged in looking for content, pulling feeds into feed readers is more of a passive endeavor. In fact, your readers may not even read the feeds up till several hours later. Ads that pull from your browsing history make more sense in this case, as it doesn’t take into account a “moment” of engagement as much as actively clicking on links on your browser.