Midblog Crisis
Forgive me, it's time for an introspective blog post. Lately I feel I've been in a bit of a blog slump with Read/WriteWeb. My numbers are still good, but I'm not happy with the quality of my recent posts here. I set very high standards for myself and I get disappointed when I don't meet them. Yesterday produced an example of what I consider a poor R/WW post: Gawker Strikes Deal With Yahoo. Admittedly it was a rushed post, because I had other things to do, but that's no excuse for not doing more groundwork and analysis before I posted it. By contrast, later that day I saw an excellent post by Mike Arrington from TechCrunch on the same topic: Is the Gawker-Yahoo Deal Important? Mike's post pointed out something that I would have known had I done more groundwork, that Yahoo is not actually linking through to Gawker sites. Mike also had new and useful analysis - and questions - about the Yahoo-Gawker deal.
I ended up emailing Mike and congratulating him on the post, which in my view is illustrative of the outstanding work he's doing with TechCrunch.com currently. TechCrunch is a valuable resource for people in our industry - and is being noted as such by people or sites I read and respect. My blog is hopefully a valuable resource too, but I need to return to doing the things that made it popular to begin with.
To find out what is really my niche, I decided to check what people have actually been reading from R/WW. Between 10 Oct 05 (when I first started using Measure Map) and 17 Nov 05, the following were my most visited posts:
1. Web 2.0 Office
(posted 2 Sep 05)
2. Microsoft Livens Up Web 2.0
(posted 1 Nov 05)
3. Web 2.0 Workgroup
(posted 10 Oct 05)
4. craigslists gets heavy with Oodle
(posted 14 Oct 05)
5. Web 2.0 Definition and Tagging
(posted 1 Feb 05)
6. Portals 2.0 flesh out their product lines
(posted 10 Nov 05)
7. Microsoft Announces The Live Era
(posted 1 Nov 05)
8. Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 31 Oct - 6 Nov 2005
(posted 6 Nov 05)
9. My Million Dollar Blog
(posted 8 Oct 05)
10. Web 2.0 Naysaying reaches an all-time high (or is it low)
(posted 21 Oct 05)
Interesting that none of the above posts are "scoops" and only a couple are announcements or news. I would classify 6 of the above top 10 posts as true analysis of which I'm proud of - and 5 of those are in the top 6. I think this shows that my place in the tech blogosphere is as an analyst and commentator on Web 2.0 trends. I think I've been trying to do too many newsy type posts lately and focusing too much on getting onto tech.memeorandum.
In fact, it turns out I did get to the top of tech.memeorandum a couple of times with analytical posts that I didn't expect to make it there. Microsoft Livens Up Web 2.0 and Portals 2.0 flesh out their product lines were both number 1 on the Top of the Meme Pops for a time. I think there's a lesson in that for me - just write well thought out and insightful posts and tech.meme will reward the best of them. I also have plans to start digging deeper with my analysis and use the products I'm talking about more thoroughly (hat tip Ben Barren for pushing me along in that respect).
Incidentally, my top 5 ZDNet posts at time of writing are:
Leaked Documents from Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie
Microsoft's Ray Ozzie on the Web Office
Is digg the new Slashdot?
The Web-based Office will have its day
Personalized Start Pages: Microsoft, Google, Netvibes
Ray Ozzie: The Internet Services Disruption
My ZDNet readers like the techie posts and ones about Microsoft!
Anyway... I hope you don't mind this excursion into blog navel-gazing, but I felt like I needed to re-focus and get back on the track that made Read/WriteWeb a joy to write (and hopefully to read) to begin with. I'd really appreciate any comments - positive or negative - that you have about R/WW. What kind of things do you want me to deliver to you and where do you see the value (if any) of my blog?
Comments
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Richard:
For what it's worth, I would go along with your analysis -- not because I am that familiar with Read/Write Web per se, but because I think that smart and thoughtful analysis is what we need more of, particularly when it comes to Web 2.0 and all that entails. We don't really need more sites that are rushing to be the first to post something -- that's what Digg is for :-)
Just my two cents.
Mathew
Subverting your own content to get on Memeorandum is a fool's game. Memeorandum doesn't value the intelligence of a post, or its longevity, just how many inbound links you score. Write articles you can look back on and be proud of for advancing the conversation, that's the only way to be satisfied.
Well I think "subverting" is too strong a word. My point was that I've been writing too many news-type posts lately, but my real strength and niche is the analysis. Which btw meme does reward, as evidenced by the two analysis posts I did that made it to number 1 there.
Yes, but those posts weren't rewarded for their inherent intelligence, they were rewarded for the inbound links they generated from other blogs. Plenty of worthy analysis pieces never show up on Memeorandum because no one knows about them, or their blogs aren't rated highly.
There isn't a better measure of 'collective intelligence' on the Web than inbound links. But actually I think tech.meme goes further than that, it takes into account the content of the pieces. I don't think either of those 2 number 1 meme posts I referenced had *the most* links for the topics they covered. But they were good pieces that covered all the main issues.
Of course there are better measures of intelligence than inbound links. Bloggers in the Memeorandum blogroll have learnt to game the system now, so blog entries that are just "me too" blockquotes of the lead story of the day get included because they spend 10 words saying nice things about the author, so the author links back to them in his follow-up. Meanwhile, otherwise worthy rebuttals of the main story get shunned. Do you ever see imnotdave.blogspot.com get clustered with a Scripting News post? No, even though some good points are made at the former site.
Analysis is all well and good, but it seems disagreeing with the A-list gets you marked down by link-centric algorithms.
Hey Rich. Meaningful post and I mean it :) No really, all of us try and figure out - qual and quant wise what matters. And the larger the audience, like yours, the more the pressure. I think you are right - Analysis is key, anyway, i know you'll keep it up.
At least Paul has pushed up number of comments.
Thanks Ben. And yes, thanks Paul for getting my comments back into the picture again ;-) I forgot to mention in my post that the lack of comments recently indicates my content hasn't been compelling enough. But I'll fix that...
Richard,
Yes, please keep up the excellent analysis. Don't try to be Scoop MacManus.
When a big story breaks, lots of people blog about it. Let's suppose X blogs it an hour before Y, and I subscribe to both X and Y, because I'm interested in web 2.0, or whatever the story's about. My feed reader may well show me Y's post first.
If X takes an extra hour or two and puts some context and commentary round the story, that's the post I'll get more out of, and be more likely to link to.
Keep up the good work! RWW is still one of my favorite blogs, and I welcome this opportunity to comment on its direction.
Anything to help. :D
Coming from someone who has just started to read/write (sorry, too easy) blogs, sites like yours are what help newcomers like me aim for. I agree with the previous comments - there's already far too many ways to keep up with news. And while you have the advantage of being "in the know" more than the average blogger, it's analysis and insight that set good blogging apart from news reporting and collective groupthink.
Frankly, it's the articles that take actual thought and insight that I wish I could find the time and thought to write. Please keep doing this.
I'll throw in a "me too" comment here, just so you get a sense on volume of opinion: I agree that focusing on scoop is less interesting than the analysis. I think you have had a number of insights that people still haven't caught up to yet, and expanding on those thoughts in relation to current events, etc. is a much more fun approach and it fosters conversation. Yes to analysis.
i completely agree with your self-analysis.in fact, that's what i felt like for the last weeks. i look here for 'deeper' comments, including the media-cultural side of things. so it's quality before quantity and novelty. (the best posts here will never make it to the top of any statistics.)
I want to echo some of your thoughts Richard on the more analytical and research based posts that you have made ... these have been my favorite because they are unique and represent time spent and thought that would otherwise be hard to replace. It is easy to read a blog post somewhere on a "scoop" or announcement but it is much harder to find an in-depth analysis of trends online or what a specific transaction/product/technology means for the landscape. These have been my favorite posts from your blog and in general, I enjoy the more thoughtful approach you take to your posts. This might mean that you can't post as frequently or have as many scoops, but I think overall, it makes your blog much more valuable and your readers will reward you for this. My two cents ...
Keep up the great work!
Thanks everyone for your excellent feedback. Much appreciated.
My own personal opinion about Memeorandum is it can be rather narrow sometimes and thus quite limiting. But probably the most annoying thing about it and the blogs attached to it's top stories is the amount of echo, handclapping and just general unimagination and lack of really different or alternative opinions. I personally like to see bloggers stepping out and saying "Actually no aI disagree because..." and i don't mean devils advocate I mean thinkling a little differently., shaking things about a little, new [perspectives or angles etc.. These blogs seem to be harder to locate, particularly on the meme where to many seem to be singing in harmony, like the Gilmour gang when everyone agrees..
So One type of good post is pure different angle, something to make me think, something to change the conversational path so to speak.. But it has to have merit not just devils advocate.
PS we are all guilty of falling into not doing this, me included ;)
Just my $0.02