Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

Blogging has gone commercial - where are the individual voices?

The blogosphere has changed a lot in the two years that I have been posting here. Blogs used to be like online diaries for individual people to share their thoughts and observations. They still are, but the popularity and reach of blogging has not gone unnoticed. The big media guys and corporate PR machines are using blogs in a big way.

The StatBot blog, which is written by a smart high school kid, just published a list of the top 100 blogs on TechMeme. I was surprised to find my blog on the list at number 95.

Individuals in the top 100? - In reviewing the list of the All-Time Top 100 Blogs on Techmeme I found just 7 blogs written by individuals. They are; Robert Scoble, Mathew Ingram, Steve Rubel, Fred Wilson, Allen Stern, Jason Calacanis, and me, Don Dodge. That's it.

The other 93 blogs are all associated with big media firms or corporations. Of course even the 7 of us individuals have day jobs at technology companies. But, we don't get paid to blog, in fact it is hard to find time before or after work to get a blog post in. Nights and weekends are my best times for blogging.

I can't argue with the Top 100 Blogs. They are all good. But, it points out how hard it is for readers to find you in a world of 50 million blogs.

How to get your blog noticed? Read this post for tips.

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Three reasons to use IntenseDebate

Fred Wilson has a post today "Three reasons to use Disqus" which prompted this post "Three reasons to use IntenseDebate". For the uninitiated, Disqus and IntenseDebate are blog commenting widgets that manage comments in interesting ways.

This week my  friend Brad Feld asked me to try IntenseDebate. A while ago another friend, Paul Graham of YCombinator fame, asked me to try Disqus. Hmm...what to do?

Funny coincidence - Earlier this week I sent a note to Tom Keller, CEO of IntenseDebate, and asked him for reasons why I should use IntenseDebate. The three reasons he gave me were almost the same three reasons that Fred Wilson cites in his post; 1) Threading comments makes them easier to read, 2) Better user interaction and community, 2) More comments, maybe 5X more comments.

So, the best solution is to test both of them. Starting with this post IntenseDebate will be my commenting engine. Lets run the test for a few weeks, maybe a month and see how it goes.

What are the issues? - I am concerned about several issues.

1. SPAM - TypePad does an excellent job of filtering out spam. There are over 3,000 comments in my spam comment bucket that I never had to deal with. How will Disqus and IntenseDebate deal with spam?
2. Performance - Anything that slows down the performance or page rendering is bad. I checked out the comments on Brad Feld's blog and quite honestly it took too long for the comments to appear on the screen. I thought my Internet connection had failed. Hopefully that was just an anomaly.
3. Usability - Comments are the life blood of a blog. Anything that adversely affects usability is unacceptable. I tested both systems on Fred's blog and Brad's blog. They seemed OK, but the proof is in the test. Let's see what you all think.

So, three reasons to try them, and three reasons to be concerned. Let the comments begin.

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The Eagles shun labels, go direct with Wal-Mart

The Eagles join, Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and others in dropping the record labels and going direct to consumers. The Boston Globe has an excellent original story about The Eagles decision to ignore the record labels and instead make a deal with Wal-Mart to be the exclusive distributor of the CD. Don Henley, lead singer of The Eagles, told the Boston Globe;

"This just makes business sense," says Don Henley. "With the disappearance of large record store chains, Wal-Mart is now the largest CD retailer in the world. And if people don't want to buy from Wal-Mart, they can buy directly from us at the website."

Napster was ahead of its time - Back in my Napster days there were several big name artists interested in working with Napster to sell their music directly to customers. They were tired of giving up the vast majority of their CD sales revenue to the big record labels. Even the most successful music acts only got about $2 from every $20 CD sale.

Those artists who wanted to work with Napster were still under contract to the big labels. As soon as their contract expired they wanted to go direct with Napster and sell their music for $1 per song...a lot better that $1 to $2 per CD in royalties. Madonna, Green Day, Limp Bizkit, MC Hammer, Courtney Love, and several other artists talked to Napster about doing a distribution deal.

The record labels are failing to adapt to the new realities. They have had 7 years to figure it out and for the most part they haven't changed a thing. They are still suing their customers, charging high prices for CDs, and giving the artists meager royalties. With big names like Radiohead, The Eagles, Madonna, and Nine Inch Nails make announcements like this it signals a significant change in the music business.

Napster lives...7 years after its untimely death.

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Mark Cuban and Jane Seymour are class acts

Mark Cuban's run on Dancing With The Stars is over. He had a great time, is in the best shape of his life, and experienced many wins. He wrote a blog about his experiences and thanked everyone for their support.

Jane Seymour is my new favorite dancer on DWTS. I was talking with Mark this morning and suggested he add meeting Jane Seymour as another "win" to his list of positives from DWTS. I asked "Is Jane Seymour the classiest lady you have ever met? I don't know anything about her, but if her personality matches here elegence and beauty...she is quite a lady" Mark agreed. She really is a lovely person.

OK, that does it for me. I am voting for Jane Seymour the rest of the way, and invite all of you to join me. You can vote on Monday night at the DWTS web site or by calling 800-868-3406. I will post the number here when I find it.

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Bloggers unite! Vote for Mark Cuban tonight on Dancing With The Stars

  Mark Cuban is a friend, blogger, entrepreneur, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He is competing on Dancing With The Stars and tonight he needs our help. Bloggers and entrepreneurs don't watch much television so the other dancers are getting more votes. We need to band together and get out the vote for Mark Cuban and his dance partner Kym Johnson.

You can vote online at Dancing With The Stars, or by phone at 1-800-868-3411, or send a text message by typing VOTE and send to 3411. You can vote up to 6 times, so vote early and vote often.

Last week Mark and Kym did a great dance and scored well with the judges. There were four other teams with lower scores. However, the public vote was much smaller than the other contestants because Mark isn't well known in the celeb community. So, we need to get online and balance the vote.

This week Mark is doing the Mamba. He has been working really hard all week, and it should be a great performance. Dancing With The Stars airs tonight at 8:00PM. EST, 7:00 Central on ABC.

Bloggers that make me stop and THINK - My new favorites

I read lots of blogs and news sites, and am subscribed to many more that I read when I get a chance. I don't have the speed reading talent that Scoble has, so I have found myself focusing on fewer blogs and sites.

My new favorite bloggers

Scott Maxwell a Boston based VC writes Now What?  Scott is a deep thinker and only writes when he has something profound to say. Lately he has had a lot of really good stuff. I particularly liked this one about how to get things UNdone.

Robin Reports from In The Thick Of It is a blog about life after 30, dealing with teenagers, divorce, and all the stuff that happens. Robin is a new blogger with lots of experiences to share about things we all deal with along the way. I liked this one about New Driver In The House. My son got his drivers license the next day.

Paul Kedrosky writes Infectious Greed. He is a VC, media personality, and public speaker. I have been reading Paul's blog for a long time but it is now one of my favorite, must read first, blogs.

TechMeme is my number one must read site for technology news and blogs. TechMeme updates constantly throughout the day keeping the most discussed stories at the top, introducing new stories, and moving older stories down the page.

Mark Cuban writes Blog Maverick, an appropriate name for this maverick thinker. Mark sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo and now owns the Dallas Mavericks. Mark is another guy who only writes when he has something deep to say...which is about once a day.

Henry Blodget, the former Wall Street analyst writes Internet Outsider. Henry gives a finance/investment perspective to mostly technology related companies. Always a good read.

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah together they write OnStartups, a great blog for startup entrepreneurs.

My longtime VC favorites

• Brad Feld - Feld Thoughts
• Fred Wilson - A VC
• Rick Segal - The Post Money Value

My Favorites that write way too much to keep up with every day

• Mike Arrington - TechCrunch
• Robert Scoble - Scobleizer and his new ScobleShow are must reads and "views"
• Om Malik - GigaOM
• Richard MacManus - Read/Write Web

What are your favorites? How many blogs do you read? Do you listen to podcasts? How about webcast videos?

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Ning versus Live Spaces and Yahoo Groups

Ning, a social networking platform,  has relaunched today with new features. Ning was founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini. Marc was the founder of Netscape and LoudCloud so Ning warrants special attention. Mike Arrington at TechCrunch has come around to liking Ning after first panning it as a dead application. Robert Scoble has a video interview with Marc and Gina.  Om Malik says "

Ning 2.0 is also a challenge to current crop of blogging tools that are still not waking to the new reality, and continue to live like content management systems. The big challenge for Ning will be to get mass adoption, for upon that “adoption” hinges its business model.

The company plans to charge $19.95 a month if you want to run your own ads (or no ads at all). Your own domain will cost $4.95 a month, and a package of 5 GB storage/100 GB of bandwidth is going to cost $9.95 a month. At these prices, Ning will need thousands of social networks before it can join an elite network of start-ups of recent vintage that are profitable.

Haven't we seen this before? After reading some of the reviews and visiting the Ning site I stopped to think for a minute. Hmmm...haven't we seen this before? Yahoo Groups and Live Spaces, formerly MSN Spaces, have been around for a long time. Then I made a list of the Ning features and compared them to Yahoo and Live Spaces. They are virtually the same. Here is my incomplete list;

• Discussion forums
• Blogs
• Photos
• Video
• Polls
• Advertising
• Members
• Member pages
• Privacy settings
• Customization
• Management dashboard

Ning, like Yahoo Groups and Live Spaces is free. Ning will make its money by selling advertising, up-selling additional features like extra bandwidth, and using your own domain name.

The promise of Ning is customization. Ning is building out a platform that will support a variety of social applications that can be customized with your own code and scripts. The current version has feature parity with most of the big payers. I expect Ning will raise the bar with more sample applications and more customization options in the future.

There are lots of choices. Blogging platforms like TypePad, Blogtronix, and Community Server, are great platforms today, but will need to continue innovating to remain viable competitors. Yahoo Groups and Live Spaces have millions of users today, but will likewise need to stay current. Jeremiah Owyang has compiled a list of over 40 social networking application platforms, including the six listed above.

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Guidelines for comments and trackbacks

Danny Sullivan left SearchEngineWatch last year and has started his own company called SearchEngineLand. Danny also has a blog by the same name where he writes on search related topics. Today he wrote about his rules of engagement for comments on his blog. He does a good job of explaining what adds value to the conversation, what doesn't, and what he does to block spam.

Comments and Trackbacks - When I started blogging a little over a year ago I read lots of blogs to get an idea of what  style, formats, and topics work. I left Comments and Trackbacks on several blogs. A Trackback is basically a link on their blog that links back to your blog. A Trackback is different from a Comment in that a Trackback is simply a link with no commentary.

Mathew Ingram is a media and technology writer for The Globe and Mail in Toronto, so he is a professional writer and obviously a great blogger. In my early days of blogging I left a Trackback on Mathew's blog. He sent me an email where he politely said, paraphrasing, "Leave a comment that adds to the discussion, and include a link back to your blog if it is relevant. Trackbacks don't add value" Mathew was very polite, and I actually agreed with his point. So, I don't generally leave Trackbacks, but I do comment and include a link where appropriate. However, I do accept relevant Tracbacks on my blog...although I would prefer Comments.

Spam - Search engines give high ranking to sites that have lots of inbound links. Spammers have discovered that blogs are an easy way to generate links. Spammers have developed bots that automatically scan blogs and leave trackbacks to their sites. For popular blogs this has become a huge problem. For this reason I require everyone to validate their comment or trackback by typing in a random code. I also review every comment or trackback before it is published. I wish I didn't need to do this but the spam was overwhelming.

Anonymous commenters - I allow almost all comments, but anonymous comments raise a red flag. Anonymous commenters are usually bashers or "drive by shooters" that leave inflammatory opinions with no facts or examples to back them up...just bashing. Sometimes it can add a different perspective to the conversation, but in a few cases it is just plain venom. I usually don't allow those.

Disagreement and controversy is good - I love comments, read every one of them, and try to respond to as many as I can. Some of the best comments are those that challenge my assumptions or opinions, or even better, correct factual mistakes. I wrote a blog about the Apple iPhone and mentioned that Apple is able to price at a 20% to 30% premium because it all just works. Several readers commented that I was wrong about that and gave specific examples. They were right, and added value to the discussion.

Are blogs echo chambers? - No, they mimic real conversation. Someone starts it and others join in. Interesting discussions attract a lot of attention in the form of blog posts, less interesting topics don't. Blogs mimic real life in that there are a few A-Listers that are opinion leaders and usually lead the discussion. We need to join the blog conversation in the same way we join other public discussions. Ask questions, add opinions, give a different perspective. I am not an "A-List" blogger yet and may never be one. But all of us can influence the discussion by pro-actively participating.

Join the conversation! Leave a comment.

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TechMeme is my source for tech news

Robert Scoble introduced me to TechMeme over a year ago. Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand did an interview with Gabe Rivera, founder of TechMeme. Great interview, especially if you are interested in how TechMeme works. Danny Sullivan is THE search engine analyst who has been covering the search business from day one. Coming from Danny this quote is powerful indeed "

“Over the past decade, I’ve seen a lot of search tools that were supposed to transform my life. Few of them have. But Techmeme was one of those.”

TechMeme tracks tech blogs and presents the headlines in a rolling fashion similar to a newspaper, but it constantly updates with new stories. TechMeme is a must read site that I visit several times a day. It is is easiest way to find out what is hot in the tech world, and get insight from some of the top bloggers in the world.

I did an interview with Gabe about a year ago. He is a very unique and talented guy. Here is an excerpt from that interview;

How do you compare Memeorandum to Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, and others?

For readers of Digg (or Reddit, and to some extent, Slashdot), I'd say Memeorandum is:

- More focused (on either "Tech" or "Politics")

- More expert/authority-driven

- Better organized, visually

Of course for a certain type of reader, Digg's quirkiness, developer

orientation, and community are all pluses.  Many who aren't as interested in

these things prefer Memeorandum.  Many use both sites.  It's all good!

For the more ponderous set, I'd add that unlike all of those, Memeorandum

thrives on the web at large -- it doesn't keep its editors and content all

siloed and centralized.  Viva la edge, yadda, yadda.

How does Memeorandum decide what is important news? Some stories have no links, others have 10 or more links. How does content slide down the page over the course of a day?

Most-linked/most-discussed new stories are important.  Actually, all stories have been linked.  Items lack "Discussion" when people link without adding much commentary, since simple pointer posts usually aren't included on Memeorandum. Items fall down the page as they get older, or are displaced by bigger stories.

Since that interview TechMeme has branched out with separate "meme trackers" for politics, sports, and entertainment news.

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Scoble and John Edwards in New Hampshire

Robert Scoble was with presidential candidate John Edwards in Portsmouth, New Hampshire today. Robert is shooting lots of video for PodTech, his employer who is paying his expenses.

The Edwards campaign invited Scoble to travel with them around the country to formerly announce his run for the presidency. Political bloggers played a huge role in the 2004 presidential election. John Edwards has decided to reach out to tech bloggers like Robert who are perhaps less critical than hardened political writers. 

I met with Robert and fellow Microsoft blogger Alfred Thompson backstage in the press section at the "town meeting". There was an area set up for bloggers and press people. There were at least 30 TV cameras from national and local press, and probably 10 videobloggers with hand-held cameras. My guess is there were about 10 regular text bloggers there as well.

Politics and technology don't usually mix very well, although Robert tells me that the most popular political blogs attract about 10 times more readers that the top technology blogs.

Robert is experimenting with videoblogging to see if there is an audience within the tech community for political topics. Robert is also looking at how presidential candidates use blogs and the Internet to reach the masses.

The Edwards campaign did a live webcast of the "town meeting" and will have recorded podcasts on the John Edwards web site soon. There were more than 1,200 people waiting in line to get into the small elementary school where the event was held. Only about 250 got inside due to fire regulations. Edwards went outside to address the people who couldn't get in.    That is Robert in the blue shirt, back to camera, holding the video camera.

Edwards came back inside to make a speech and take questions. He also took questions from webcast viewers from around the country.

The political world has already adopted blogs as a political tool. It will be interesting to see if 2007 will be the year that political blogs cross over to the technology crowd. TechMeme already has a political version of its tracker service. In fact, it is probably more accurate to say that the political blogs took over the original Memeorandum, and a separate TechMeme was created for us technology people.

Here is a link to more photos on Flickr.

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