northern voice 3 - sifry and bray
Hmmm, the coffee might be here. I will check.
Wow, that was a long coffee break. It's now Saturday Feb 25. I'm at work, I just filed my taxes. It's all good. Anyway, back to posting the notes I have on this talk.
Second on the list for Northern Voice was Dave Sifry prompted on occasion by Tim Bray.
One thing Dave Sifry did was ask the audience how many people in the audience understood how search engines worked. Most of the audience raised their hands. Not just raised, like "oh, I've heard of that once" but raised Hermione Granger high, as in "Pick me, pick me, I'd like 2 hours to explain." Despite that information, it doesn't seem like he customized his speech much, but given that it was mostly intelligent improv based on audience questions I don't see how he could have done that. (Customized his speech much, I mean.) It was an interesting demographical study, though. One of the organizers later told me this conference is much more techie than last year. Later at dinner Robert disagreed, so I suppose it depends on if you are already a kettle.
At another point in Sifry's talk, he was thinking about categories of blogs not in politics or technology. Knitting came up alot, as the poster edge case. Then in the second demographical study of the morning, he noticed visually that it was mostly men in the room. Then he gave an aside opportunity to recognize Maryam and mentioned fashion blogs. Well. Maryam has more of a poetry/lifestyles blog, but the woman herself has many interests including fashion. So interesting that Dave knew this about here even though as voyeurs we could only trace this if properly briefed (like me). Perhaps he has been to dinner.
Why do I bring up these two demographical blink studies. One is to point out that they happen, and are mostly accurate, and should perhaps be done more deliberately so we can follow-up and spot trends. Another reason I bring this up is to point out that you can't really talk about blogging and the taxonomy of tagging and categories without bringing up edge cases. I thought I was a walking edge case until I saw the audience at Northern Voice's reaction to Julie's speech, which was recieved visibly warmer than seemed possible. I am sure all the male geek doting embarassed her. In a way, this warmth proves maybe there are no edge cases here. The dubyah haters that number in the zillions have the same services and frameworks as the knitting or the shoeblogs. This makes most demographical studies moot and flattens things out nicely. But the studies are cute devices, and we still think in those terms for now.
Now onto some fun content from Dave's talk.
There was some interest in figuring out how to share a master list of domains / IPs that are content spammers or link sites. This goes beyond just bloggers, by the way. The application for this list being public - and by public I mean in the taxpayer sense - is incredible and can support all the right industries and take down the wrong ones. This is my commentary, by the way. Dave just brought up that he shares this information with Google etc as he discovers it by running Technorati. Interesting. I know Jay Allen has gone through that bridge and out the other side by saying any blacklist plan is inherently flawed. It still kicks around, though.
There is a spam squashing summitt sometime this year, the third one (I have down in my notes). Would be great to get a link to that.
Quote I didn't understand:
"If the blogosphere turns into usenet, that's really bad."
Hmmm. I still use message boards like you used to be able to find on deja.com. Sometimes they are the most relevant thing out there. However, Dave might have had a more specific complaint. I think there are a lot of similarites.
Here is a paraphrased comment about link sites that republish blogger's posts elsewhere. 'The adsense and affiliate guys are on our side because they are violating the terms of service by republishing material that they don't own. It is part of the adsense deal that this needs to be content they have rights to. The ad companies can pull that adsense ID, and they can also know the name etc of the person doing this.' (single quotes due to paraphrase)
One very useful technical problem to solve in the blogosphere right now is how to get statistics on readership. Not just subscribers, but actual readers. Feedburner puts graphics in the RSS feed that ping the server in terms of readers. Even then could just be scrolling down. Newsgator marked as read phenomenon. Everyone codes for a different case in the "was it read" situation.
This made me think of the idea of doing a Nielsen aggregator. This would work to get ratings on your blog like the ratings are done for TV. The space has to get a lot larger for that project, though.
Next in the talk, Robert brings up an interesting point about the financial benefit of writing about something bankable like mortgages. "As a blogger, do you write about world peace, or do you write about mortages?" He asks. My comment is that one can write well and rather altruistically about mortgages, if that happens to be your gift. Hey, maybe this is my gift. Big bucks here I come.
Dave brings up another topic. He thinks advertising is completely broken. Then he goes on to rephrase my superbowl advertising greatness theory which I have subscribed to since 1999 or so. I have to find the link to when I wrote about it, I am sure it was only once. The way the theory works is, all advertising should be like super bowl ads. Entertaining and relevant, as well as destinations in and of themselves. Advertising shouldn't be the cruft you tack on to the side of your web page. Advertising should be something your audience will thank you for. He brings up Lucky magazine as a great marketing vehicle. The catalog business is another good example.
What if there was a blog that just produced ads as art forms with no clients. How quicky would they be thanked versus sued.
Note that I have been singing the "Feelin 7-up" song in my head while changing diapers all week. Including the falsetto part (feelin like a seven). Of course it occasionally morphs into the big red song with approximately the same tune. This is also an example, in my own way I am grateful for knowing the words to something upbeat and happy that grooves. That the jingle composer even bothered to craft it well, back in 1977 or so.
Another aside from Robert (paraphrased) 'What happens when SEO pages go underground, asking bloggers to link to them. We tell bloggers to be interesting, but Google juice does not need interesting it just needs links.' My comment. I would want to understand this more. At first glance it sounds like the music business. We tell musicians to be good, to work at their craft. But the music business does not need good, it needs marketable. There is a long trail of high quality musicians with day jobs. Time will tell if blogging will leave a similar trail of interesting but link-free blogs, or if we can dynamically self-tag or crawl for "interesting." That could really flip my funnel.
Dave: "Those types of networks (SEO underground links) are fairly easy to spot" - this is the part I want to understand better, how to spot this. Then, what is the role of the spotter once they have this information to benefit the public. How can we tell teacher?
Googlebowling is a term. You heard it here, um, maybe not first but bear with me. Gotta be in the SEO space in order for this term to make sense to you. If you have a bunch of sites on page 3, you create a spam site that points to the 20 sites on page 3, and get them kicked out. Ooohhh forces of evil big time. Then the sites you had on page 3 get promoted up by process of elimination.
That's it for my notes on this talk, comments will be open for a few days if you have something to add...