I have a challenge. It’s directed primarily to Technorati, but it’s an open challenge. I want a personalized Watch List - personalized feeds that filter out information I don’t want.

I write on 16 blogs, but subscribe to simply dozens of things to get my news and my tracking information. Most of my tracking has its home with Technorati, although I back that up with other feeds. Now, here’s the thing. It’s simply getting overwhelming to read my tracking information - to scan for phrases to gather news or watch for mentions of my name. More blogs equals more feeds. I write around 40 things a day, and tag most of them, so you see the problem.

So, here’s what I want…

I want Technorati to build my Watch List information with an option to parse out those items that I have tagged, or that are written by me. They have all that information. The blogs are in my account - they know who I am and what I write for.

If I could really be demanding here, I would have advanced filtering options such as an ability to block sites or domains from entering my feed, like blocking “livejournal” for my celebrity blogs, so I don’t get all the obsessive teen chit chat.

The resulting feed would be clear of anything I’ve written. If they can build me this feed, I would never get things with “author” arieanna or from blogs in My Account. I would only get the information I want.

Make sense? Technorati - possible?

Tags: technorati

Jakob Nielsen has listed the top 10 design mistakes for blogs:

1. No Author Biographies - it’s all about trust & credentials

2. No Author Photo - good for press, credibility, recall factor

3. Nondescript Posting Titles - you likely have less than a second in scan time to grab attention

4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go - tell people where they are going, what to expect, and don’t use nicknames.

5. Classic Hits are Buried - make best articles direct navigation links, and link in other articles (good one!)

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation - categories are key!

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency

8. Mixing Topics

“The more focused your content, the more focused your readers. That, again, makes you more influential within your niche. Specialized sites rule the Web, so aim tightly.”

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

Having a weblog address ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. will soon be the equivalent of having an @aol.com email address or a Geocities website: the mark of a naïve beginner who shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Letting somebody else own your name means that they own your destiny on the Internet. They can degrade the service quality as much as they want. They can increase the price as much as they want. They can add atop your content as many pop-ups, blinking banners, or other user-repelling advertising techniques as they want. They can promote your competitor’s offers on your pages. Yes, you can walk, but at the cost of your loyal readers, links you’ve attracted from other sites, and your search engine ranking.

A very well rounded tip base. I think #5 is far too often overlooked - and makes me want to add more navigation tips to my own blogs. #8 hits home - simply start more blogs! and

#10 - ah, a pet peeve of mine. Just imaging what you would put on your business card and how much better it would look if you could match your email to your domain - oh, but if you don’t own that domain, you’re outta luck. There’s just too many restrictions associated with that route - and, for a simple $15 a year for a URL, free services like WordPress, and easy hosting solutions, why would you even consider a site whose domain you don’t own?

BTW - for those of you pro writers out there who follow this domain route, let it be know that people like myself often think twice before subscribing after wondering why you don’t own your URL, why you would bother with some annoying platform, and how seriously you take your future blogging efforts. :)

Via Boing Boing

I was just writing up another post, and came across this paragraph that I just had to share about the nature of the blogosphere:

weblogs are part of an ecosystem (sometimes annoyingly referred to as the Blogosphere). This means that whatever good postings exist are promoted through links from other sites. More reader/writers see this good stuff, and the very best then get linked to even more. As a result, link frequency follows a Zipf distribution, with disproportionally more links to the best postings. - Jakob Nielsen

I think this is a really good way to explain the social nature of the blogosphere to a business person. I studied business for many years and I know from experience in classes and in reading case studies that explaining something statistically adds power, and sometimes understanding, to a statement.

What I see here is something with descriptive power. If you are trying to explain why trackbacks and permalinks have value, and how they relate to SEO and creating dialogues between bloggers, this is the most simplistic and powerful statement I’ve ever come across. To say that, simply, “good stuff” gets “promoted through links” and then follows a distribution where some things get relatively more interest than others… this has intuitive power.

Great observation Jakob!

I’ve been making observations for a couple of months about blog growth and the correlation with certain factors. For example, it’s quite obvious that more traffic means more feed subscribers - and this is a main measurement for me on blog growth.

Other factors in blog feed growth include being linked to by someone influential in the field, by certain large blogs, or even by more directories. Getting included in more search engines will definitely peak traffic, as will an increased PageRank with Google.

So, what accounts for those anomalies we see every now and again. This is what I want to know.

For a few days now, three of my blogs have been adding subscribers in the dozens… and I don’t know why. Traffic is on its same steady incline - no unusual peaks. No single article seams to be outweighing any others. No large links have spiked traffic. No new PageRank has come out. And yet I am picking up lots of new readers - which is great. I would just like to know why.

Any ideas? What else do you think could account for large growth figures in RSS subscribers?

I’ve uploaded the second part to the blog survey being conducted at Qumana.

This series looks at RSS - how many blogs people read and which aggregator they use. I was really floored by the data. It was seriously amazing how fragmented the RSS reader market is - apparently none of us do a good enough job of giving people their blogs in a way they want to see them.

Anyway, stop over, view the results, and let me know what you think.

This is something I have been thinking. I wanted to know how people interact on the web, how people interact with blogs, and what types of blogging types I could derive from that.

From what I can tell, there are people ‘blogging’ in the following ways:

1. Readers

This type of person likes to read blogs and follow what they are doing, but does not interact or have their own blog. This is more of a “newspaper” like reader, or a reader of Web 1.0.

2. Interaction Mavens

This type of person may or may not have a blog of their own, but spends significant amounts of time reading and commenting on other blog posts. They are the type of person who love to interact and create bonds.

3. Linkers

This type of blogger likes to interact, but does so on their own blog. Rather than leaving comments, this blogger will write a post, long or short, linking to the original piece and letting that be their “comment” field.

4. Individualists

This type of blogger likes to break news first, or write something in their own line. They write a majority of original content, and therefore do not send out many links to other bloggers.

5. All Round Bloggers

This type of blogger likes to read and write on what other people have talked about, sometimes putting out original stuff, and sometimes commenting instead of writing.

6. Social Circle Bloggers

These bloggers fall into a heavily social blogging category - they write to share with personal friends and family. These bloggers are heavy Live Journal and Blogger users, and tend to work within the inner blogosphere circle of friendship, rather than looking outside it. They tend to subscribe to blogs of friends and very few others.

7. Comment Attractor

This type of blogger writes in such a way that comments are encouraged, and interacted with openly. This is more of a writing style than a type of blogger, and may mix more or less with other blogger types.

—

So, I am sure people don’t neatly fit into these categories, but it’s been something I’ve been watching for some time. I think I fall into more of the Linker or All Round Blogger types. I don’t comment much and do tend to reblog info rather than use a comment box - with so many blogs, the stuff that interests me usually has some home to go to :)

One of the primary reasons I looked into this was because I was trying to figure out why I was not a social bookmarker or a huge user of social tagging. For me, I find no value in social bookmarking because I do tend to blog most of what interests me. I tag mostly to attract readers to my content, which is a more selfish use of social tagging. I do search tags, but usually to built up my stock of blogs in a niche topic. Anyway, it all boiled down to the same idea - I don’t social bookmark because I don’t comment, and I don’t comment because I blog at such a high volume.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blogging, what blogger type are you

Tris was one of the lucky ones to break the release of the new Blogrolling Hot 500. This comes as a result of all the buzz about lists lately. Heck, I’ve even been buzzing myself.

Jason Calacanis set out asking for the top 500 blogs out there, and this is one of the contenders to win his load of cash.

The Hot 500 is a doable challenge out there for any blogger. You can make it on. And it’s not too hard. Those at the bottom only have one link - we can all get that!

I am not going to say this is the solution to the list issue. It’s not. It still contains bias and it still isn’t topic specific or with descriptive information to help you navigate. After all, the list is there for others to benefit from. It’s not enough any more to just listen to the “cool” people - we want useful, valuable content in the area we want to know about.

Anyway, have a scan of the list. It’s more useful in some ways than the Technorati Top 100.

Technorati Tags: lists, top 100, top 500, hot 500, blogrolling, calacanis

Having a blog with a good PageRank, as explained in the previous post, has its benefits. But it also comes with somewhat of a curse.

Darren Rowse gives a good example:

You see when your blog ranks well it means that you can become highly ranked for many search terms that you may not necessarily wish to be highly ranked for.

For example I remember the day that I found I was one of the most highly ranked sites on Google for ‘Spanish Porn’ (I’d used the words separately on a post). Earlier this week a friend found my site in a search engine when he did a search for ‘bubble wrap’. Another time I wrote a post with a critique on one aspect Australian church and became the number 1 result for people searching for that church. Another time a friend asked me to link to his blog and I became more highly ranked for his name than he did. This is also how I came to be quoted in the New York Times for being an expert on Lord of the Rings and it’s spiritual themes and in an Aussie paper as an expert on Spam. All of these situations illustrate both the power of a highly ranked site but also the responsibility that one with such power to blog wisely.

I’ve had the same experiences. On blogaholics, I often write about things I think are funny or weird. Two examples: corset piercing and camel porn.

The latter was an intentional experiment a la Boing Boing to see if using words such as “porn” would spike our traffic. Well, it was successful in driving traffic, but apparently just for that specific phrase. And, yes, people search it. Often.

Anyway, the first one on corset piercing was just a picture and me asking why the heck anyone would want that. Well, they do. And, I expect that post to be popular now for many months, short as it is.

So, on the plus side my article on Canadian identity continues to be strong, and this profiles me well as a writer. On the negative side, I get associated now with camel porn and corset piercing. But, it’s all a part of the game and is interesting to watch.

Technorati Tags: serendipity, pagerank

Transparency is a key point in getting that all-important authenticity that I’ve talked about before.

If, as noted on gapingvoid, trust is the cornerstone of companies (for customers and investors alike) and transparency equals trust, how do you intend to achieve transparency?

It’s not easy. It relies on both the company policy and the example of its leaders, but also on the actions of individuals. Are you ok with being wrong? With openly talking to those who may say bad things about you? If you are, then you can achieve a transparency in your writing and your content that will shine through.

Whenever possible, if afraid of those two answers, ask yourself why. If you know that there is a problem with your product, fix it. Customers are no longer interested in ok products or even good ones. They expect you to give them a solution and a relationship - your package must deliver.

Despite talking over at Corante about the new bookmark tool de.lirio.us, I have decided to start using del.icio.us again. I have been using Furl for a while now, but as more a shared computer reminder thing. Not really a bookmark sharing tool.

However, I’ve been finding that sometimes I just don’t have the energy to post on everything I find interesting. So, hence my return to del.icio.us.

So, subscribe to my del.icio.us feed.

So, I just submitted Blogaholics to Feedmap, a site that has a blogmap service to geo-code blogs. Once you supply your blog feed and lcoation, you can get a BlogMap that will pinpoint you on the map - nothing more sophisticated than any other mapping service.

However, BlogMap has a social networking compontent. You can browse blogs by location. For example, there are currently 16 blogs around Blogaholics including Darren Barefoot and Susannah from Buzz Marketing with Blogs. Another cool feature is the ability to subscribe to a local blogroll.

It’s a fun little tool. Go find who’s in your neighblog (love that).

Does technology save us time or make things more complicated? It depends on who you ask. Some people will argue that, for sure, the more technology, the easier life gets. Others will point to the stress caused from always being “connected.” In particular, there is a lot of disagreement about whether or not blogs actually save people time. Some people see it as a new way to become addicted to the online world, drawing you away from the “real.” I can see the temptation of this argument. But I think it really applies to only a very few.

Contrary to popular belief, I really strongly believe that blogging is a time saver. For all of you out there who ask me how I have time to blog, I should really ask you why you don’t think you have the time to do it. Especially if you are a business. Think about all the time you can save by reading your news via RSS feeds, organized into logical folders of importance. Or how much time you can save trying to keep tabs on where your industry is going and what your competitors are doing. Or even the time saved writing a blog post versus a press release. I am all for making life easier.

Now, I know that there will be a lot of you reading this thinking I am crazy. But it’s really all about how you organize it – you can say this for just about anything you do in life. You can organize your online habits much easier than you can your offline ones. There is no way you can tell if the information in today’s newspaper will be about you or your competitor. But online, its as easy as subscribing to the right feeds. You can draw news from specialized blogs and sites, and even subscribe to Technorati and PubSub feeds on keywords such as your company name or your industry. Easy as that. The news comes to you, not the other way around. At the beginning of the learning curve, blogging may take some time. You need to know how to find your news, have it coming in, and get into the vibe of posting (if you so choose). After that, it’s just easier.

Noah Brier points to some great sites all about making online life more simple – in effect, making your life more simple. Period. Lifehacker has an interesting section that uses surveys to see how people use technology to “get stuff done.” 43 Folders talks about productivity hints such as how to be productive with email. You can even read how RSS can save you time over at the Shifted Librarian.

Overall – don’t let the excitement of new technology take control of you. We all know how to organize our email and we can definitely do the same for RSS and blogging. Know what you need to know and read/write the rest when you have free time. It will not hurt you to miss a day or even a week. If there’s something important out there, it won’t be there for just one day. I strongly believe blogs to be an essential business tool and a great personal enrichment tool – so long as you be organized.

I will be guest blogging for Corante at Get Real this month. I just put up my first post: Cameraphones as Social Software. Keep posted over there - I will be blogging most days!

The subscription list I have over at Bloglines is growing at an ever increasing rate. Last night at IIMA I showed everyone how I had my feeds organized, how Bloglines worked, and gave some brief advice on how to organize and prioritize your day to keep up with the pace of the news.

After some reflection, I thought it might be useful to share all my feeds with everyone. For those interested in blogging, take a look into the folders labelled “Blogging” and “Marketing” for some good resources to add to your own news aggregator. If you are a blogger and are not on my list and want to be, post your comment. I am always looking to add more feeds.

Here are my Bloglines feeds.
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One of my colleagues has just posted on our site about MAIDS - Mobile and Internet Dependency Syndrome.

The blog version of this dependency is part of what we are - blogaholics. I love our URL.