MediaVidea

Why most tech blogs are useless: Many followers, Zero experience (and why Techmeme is dead)

Labels: blogging, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 9:04 PM 0 Comments

How to disrupt any industry, Version 2.0

Labels: list, startup, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 5:09 PM 0 Comments

Blogging lessons from Heather Armstrong: I am glad Facebook wasn't around when I started

Labels: blogging, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:53 PM 0 Comments

The best SEO/SMM tip ever

"Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again."
Nothing can be more simple (and demanding).

So, why pay for SEO when you can get it for free?

In an article titled 'Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists', Derek Powazek zips through the SEO industry and offers the aforementioned piece of priceless online marketing wisdom.

Why pay for common and obvious pieces of SEO advice?

Derek says,

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you'll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It's so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

Google is actually waiting for you to find loopholes in the search algorithm

Derek:

Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won't last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don't, it'll last for a couple weeks, tops.

Folks, isn't that also the best SMM tip ever?

Labels: SEO, SMM, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 10:46 PM 1 Comments

The Editor is dead, Long live the Editor

Jack Griffin, President of Publishing house Meredith says "We don’t hire editors anymore. We hire content strategists." Spoken like a founding member of the World Desperate Publishers Union. The Onslaught of the internet is doing strange things to people.

I look at these new-fangled posts at some publishing houses:
- Content Strategists - Community Conversation Ambasadors - Community Conversation Editor

The organizations that have these positions perhaps to convince themselves that "Yes, we understand what web 2.0 is".

In some measures, that is not a bad thing if you have your other bases covered.

By other bases, I mean content.
Content always first.

Engaging the reader community is a good thing.
Question is, how far will you go?

You did well by using web 2.0 tools.
The erstwhile 'cool' magazine Fastcompany.com now allows readers to publish blogs on the site.

For a while, you might convince the reader that you 'care'.

Nevertheless, putting more resources to cover issues that readers care about is far more important.
It is bad form (and a bad idea) to depend upon the reader to come up with the goods - to do free work for you.

Out here, in India, I see the other side of a service economy. On the plus side, it encourages you to see much more managerial talent, well versed in global MBA-speak, honed after years of work in our MBA factories.

However, the usage of Jargon is spreading like a contagion. You see someone calling the Project Manager as ‘PM’ and team members as 'Resources' and it spreads through the organization first and then outside.

A friend, working in an e-learning company complained about everyone using the same catchphrases:"At the end of the day,”, "As in", "Meaning", and virtually the same style of making Powerpoint presentations. More on this in some other post.

Some brilliant soul decided to call writers as content writers and it has spread like a virus, shitting out related terms - content developer, content editor, content lead, senior specialist lead...

When I joined as an editor at a Blog Network, the management told me that I was also responsible for bringing in the traffic. Having no mainstream media background, I took it as a challenge. I cannot say I succeeded in bringing in great traffic but I learnt New Media on the Job.

The Guardian newspaper has new posts - Tag Editor (helping reporters tag articles better) and Search Editor. These positions complement, not displace the editor's job.

The Guardian is one of the few newspapers who understand that the editor of the future needs to understand and then master New Media tools and techniques.

A short survey of the New Media toolset reveals the following: SEO, usability, design and layout best practices, public forum management, story and comment voting, ‘readersourcing’ (using readers to help in a story), reader engagement best practices, SMM (social Media Marketing), basics of video and audio content production (& promoting it using video sites like Youtube and Social media sites).

I do not know what a content strategist does. But I do know it does not take a two year New Media course to master all this. and the smart editors are already adapting to the new realities.

The movies and the recording industries face a bigger challenge from the internet.
However, I do not see the Film Director being renamed as Film Strategist, Film Co-ordinator, Film Marketer...

To sum it all up: out with the jargon and in with the New Media skill set.

Link thanks to Buzzmachine

Labels: angry journalist, journalism, news business, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:05 PM 1 Comments

The Wikileaks FAQ

I have tried to answer some important questions related to the Wikileaks shutdown order and what we can do if we are in a similar position or if we want to bring the truth out by publishing important documents.

1. What is Wikileaks?
A site that hosts leaked documents. Hosted on servers in Sweden so far.

2. Why did the court in California order it shut down?
While the conventional reasoning goes that Wikileaks hosted documents that were illegally sourced, people in the know say that the judge may have given his order because they could not find the person to whom they could serve a notice.

3. Can a US court order a web site hosted in Sweden shut?
No. But, the US government is supposed to have a great working relationship with the Swedish Authorities. In a previous case, the Pirate Bay was shut down (later, it relocated to Holland).

4. Can a site be shut down completely?
No. You can host your site anywhere in the world. You can also provide copies of your site (or, encourage people to do so) spread throughout the site.
In case of Wikileaks, only the DNS servers, which are in the United States, remove the site's name from their database. So, you can still access the site if you know their IP address.

5. What else can I do to make sure my site continues to have a life?
You can start with having regular backup files (e.g. .zip files) and distribute them, making them available as downloads via anyone who chooses to host the zip file.

6. What information did the leaked documents in question contain?
Reportedly leaked by a whistle blower at Julius Baer, the leaked documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.

7. Can I register a site without giving proof of my address?
The domain name system (DNS) is a service that converts web names into the IP addresses that the web servers use requires a real person to be registered as the owner of a site, irrespective of the site's location.

In case of Wikileaks, they are supposed to have registered their site in the United States having convinced an architect in New York to do the needful.

If you do not have such reach, you may try the following combination:
Find a registrar or any web site registration intermediary who accepts cash and will look the other way while you enter false addresses and names, including a disposable email address, where you will be receiving the receipt from the registrar in the U.S.

Useful links related to the Wikileaks Case
- Wikileaks.org IP address: 88.80.13.160
- The Julius Baer documents in question: http://cryptome.org/wikileaks-bjb.zip (3 MB file)
- List of Wikileaks mirror sites: http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names
- The complete Wikileaks site as a torrent: http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4034919/WikileakS.org_mirror_archive_(Feb_10th_2008)

Related MediaVidea Guide:
Bypassing Internet Censorship - A Roundup

Labels: censorship, controversey, faq, legal, tip, wikileaks

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:30 PM 0 Comments

7 things Small Bloggers wished Ego bloggers knew

1. Yes Virginia, there is a caste system in the Blogosphere.
We also know some bloggers have what we call in India as 'Setting'. At the recently held CES, some bloggers got a PRESS pass, entitling to certain privileges while others got a 'Blogger' pass. Some people who got the PRESS pass don't even cover tech issue on a day-to-day basis. One of them runs a Link Aggregator network masquerading as a Search engine.

2. The Lazysphere is another name for a band of desperate so-called Ego Bloggers who are frustrated that are not so IN as before.
One quality Ego Bloggers do actually possess : Shamelessness. We small bloggers can only marvel at the courage of all who call us names despite all our links that made them what they are today.

3. Small Bloggers are not lazy bastards, content to play in the Echo Chamber.
Don't confuse us with the SEO-savvy guy out to make a buck or two.

The Quality of blogging has gone up - the good ones among us are graduating to serious writing gigs.
We know our blogging can be our ticket to other good stuff in life.

It may surprise you but not every tech blogger aspires to be a rewriter of Techmeme and Engadget stories.

Looking at this Ego Blogger's ingratiating list of Bloggers worth a read, I can't but understand why he complains he wants us to do Deep blogging (another calling card of Ego bloggers: coining terms).

Tip for the Ego Blogger: Get out of the Ego Chamber and expand your reading list. If all else fails, read collegehumor.com.

4. Not every blogger writes to get onto Techmeme.
Where is the incentive? Take my example. When the automated agent from Techmeme deems my post worthy, I get no more than 5 additional pageviews. Others may be getting more. Blog writing doesn't pay for the coffee I had while writing the post.

I write my post because I like writing, not that I am great shakes at it but I sure hope to be a better writer, in say, 100 years.

5. The A-listers are not so funny any more.
The last time these guys were interesting was back in 2005. They no longer write posts about the ins and outs of new media startups.

They are all now slaves of very aggregators they helped promote - Digg, Techmeme, Technorati Top 100, Techmeme leader board.

Heavily addicted to the 'Number of posts a day' metric, these guys have moved on to running blogging empires, mediocre video/podcast shows, and assorted other career progressions. Where is the time to be funny when you can't have enough of spying on and dissing the owner of the rival blog network?

If it is funny and truth about web 2.0 that you want, Uncov.com is the place to go.

6. Don't get mad now that we won't take your bull shit anymore.
Us small bloggers can now easily identify the PR flack masquerading as pushers of Cool, the former Big Company blogger who will go to any lengths to promote his valley-constricted media ambitions, and the blogger who has run of genuine story ideas.

Besides, commenting on your blog posts is no more the fun-filled intellectual exercise it used to before.

7. We don't want to be Ego Bloggers like you.
We want to cover serious stories. We know few will read our take on the record industry's latest stance of CD-ripping, but we would like to write these stories anyway and see where it takes us.

At least, we weren't some distant Sun's Earth.

Related:
How to be an Ego Blogger

Labels: blogging, ego blogging, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:21 PM 0 Comments

How to be a blogging hero

The first week of 2008 has brought some bad news for bloggers of this world. It started with the arrest of Saudi Arabia's most popular blogger, Fouad al-Farhan who has long been calling for political reform in that country.

Farhan was arrested "for violating rules not related to state security" and it is the first known arrest of an online critic in Saudi Arabia.

Big Governments and Big Businesses alike fear and loathe Blogging. Why?
Because, blogging frees us. It provides channels and platforms to our voices.

India, where I live, is ruled by mostly lazy morons under the garb of elected officials. However, this country, best considered as an idea in progress, allows everyone to freely air one's opinions and rants.

We have not progressed to the levels of The Tonight Show but we sure stick it up to the man once in a while. In contrast, Saudi Arabia has all the money in the world. But, it is still a kingdom, not a democracy.

Fouad Al-Farhan once estimated that if only 10% of one of the richest countries in the world have access to the internet, less than 1% of Saudi Arabians have heard of blogs.

Sad News2: US Army Major Andrew Olmsted, who blogged under the name G'Kar, died in Iraq yesterday. Back in July 2007, Major Olmstead wrote a post which was to be published in the case he died in Iraq. His last post starts with a quote from Plato:

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

It is up to all of us, the living, to fight for our words, and pray and work for all wars to end.

Let a million more free voices bloom.


Related:
Read Major Andrew Olmstead's last post here.
His other writings

Farhan's blog, written in Arabic, is down. I don't know who took it down but hopefully Google has indexed all of it. (An older, inactive blog is here)

My post about Abdul Kareem, the Egyptian blogger

Labels: blogging, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 2:19 PM 1 Comments

How to be an Ego Blogger

There are three main ways, people make money with blogging. In brief, there are:

1. The Niche Blogger (problogger.net, digitalinspiration.com). In web 2.0 reportage field, Techcrunch has a big lead over many aspiring blogs, and is followed at some distance by readwriteweb.com, mashable.com, venturebeat.com, which are all readable blogs on web 2.0.

2. The Spam Blogger/network of blogs filled with rewritten material and optimized for maximum adsense earnings.
Too many to be named on one page.

3. The A-lister/Pundit Blogger, where you make money based on your accumulated reputation, through a variety of online/offline extensions.

Now, many people don’t have the relevant field expertise and general peer-respect that people like Jeff Jarvis and Dave Winer enjoy.

I have seen many people who are in the so-called A-list of bloggers because they were the first to blog.

Aided by geography, some bloggers live in certain places that are humming with other voices eager to connect and are helped further by ingratiating aggregators like Techmeme.

Some people among these A-listers got there by chance and have discovered, just like the SEO guys figured out Google, that making a noise around you is perhaps the easiest way to remain in the news, that is, the currency of links keeps on flowing for these smarty pants. These are the Ego Bloggers.

So, if joining the A-list of the blogosphere is your kind of thing, being an Ego Blogger is the way to go.

How do you become an Ego Blogger and join the ranks of self-obsessed/navel gazing, mutually back-scratching group of pundits?

Follow this simple 7-course path.
Follow again and again until you have done it.

1. Catch on the back of a rising star and use it to promote yourself.
Robert Scoble resurrected his flagging post-microsoft blogging career with his exploits on Facebook, which was the rising star of 2007. There were some others who rode on Twitter's back.

2. Do something outrageous.
Call people names and benefit from resulting useless linkfest on Techmeme.
Sadly, for this you have to be on the A-list. The question is: how low can you go?

3. Insert your name in as many things as possible.
For your consideration, the 'mememe(put your name here) awards/predictions/index'

4. Start with praising these great people on their blogs and in your posts.
Hopefully, they will award you with a link. Warning: chances of success with this are very. very low.

5. Do some coding and photoshop magic and start by announcing you have received 100,000 page views in the past two days (Don't forget to put this on Digg as well).

6. Follow Techmeme throughout the day.
Not only, you will be following a time-honored A-lister tradition, you might get some story pointers as well.

7. If all else fails, move to San Fransisco, if New York is too far.

Together, these two cities form the Twin Capitals of the Blogosphere.

Somebody should put all the blogs on Technorati Too 100 and the Techmeme Leaderboard on a map and then we will know more on this.

Labels: blogging, news aggregators, techmeme, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:19 PM 1 Comments

To succeed, does blogging really have to be dumb and stupid?

Successful blogs have much in common with successful mainstream media properties, covering a similar topic range from Paris to iPod. People magazine, E! News, Engadget, TMZ.com all are same.

Commenting on blogs on blogging, Lyndon Antcliff has to say this,

…they offer small lumps of candy floss like posts. Sweet, attractive but with zero nutrition.

We are what we read (& talk).
Lydon is right is saying that most of would rather read the Sun, eat food that that makes us fat and discuss highly biased politics.

The media caters to the tastes of the majority and I think that Lyndon is talking about blogging following the same path.

What is way out of this?
Again, Lyndon has a solution to this:

...there is that very, narrow path. The one where you can keep a little of your depth, whilst still being able to reach the mass market of the the idiots. That way is called the Story. You tell a story.

Useful.Something I might put that into action if I am to get myself some decent readership.

Labels: blogging, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:56 PM 0 Comments

Matt Haughey’s guidebook for Online Community Managers

Matt Haughey founded the popular community weblog Metafilter in 1999, much before Digg and Reddit happened.

Here is a summary of Matt's originally 7 tips on how to run an online community.
The first tip is actually a part of the preface where Matt says he hates the term User Generated Content.
How? Read on.

1. Don’ use the term User Generated Content: Makes members of your community feel like dutiful robots.

2. Rational not emotional: Avoid getting carried away while dealing with the day-to-day happenings at a typical community: trolls, copycats, useless emails, or someone claiming to own your site. Take your time and be rational about it.

3. Talk like a human: Be the best member of your site. Talk in common man’s language even when you are using your Terms of Service for reference.

4. Offer users an easy-to-modify profiles page where users can store their usage history (100 submitted stories, 120 commented, and so on), and make friends with others, sharing profiles.

5. A section/forum dedicated to discussing the community itself. Matt points out that if Digg had this feature, they would have avoided the ‘revolt’ over HD DVD code brouhaha. Kevin Rose might have put his quandary about legal issue in this section, users would have rated and commented upon it and then a decision might have reached at collectively.

6. Full-time moderator

7. 'Flag this post' and 'Favorites 'feature: This is much like Blogger’s 'Flag this blog' feature and helps you use members to moderate your community. The Flag This post must capture essential data such as who flagged it, when, who write it and so on. Having a Digg-Spy like dynamic list of recently flagged posts is a smart idea.

On the other hand, the Favorite feature is common on many social sites.

8. Nuanced, flexible guidelines instead of hard and fast rules: Matt’s approach is to come up with lists such as "ways to be a worthwhile member of this community" and "things you probably shouldn't do" and then explains the approach when needed.

Labels: Digg, social networking, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 1:42 PM 0 Comments

The hard path to online riches with Online videos

Ok, so you start by putting your show on Youtube, people like it, you start getting a share of ad revenue that Youtube has started to share.

Will that cover your costs and is this your future?
Making online videos is much, much different from blogging.

Ultimately, you will want to have your own video site where you don’t have to share ad revenue with others - earning through adsense, sponsorships and deals with select advertisers.

You started selling t-shirts, bags and other merchandise right from the start.

Your ultimate aim has to be one of these three things:
1. People pay and subscribe to your show.
2. People buy downloads or DVDs of your show
3. You are able to parlay your online hits into a lucrative mainstream career, something done by Amanda Congdon.

As with other things in life, it is a tough slog, often extending your will to breaking point.

It is now common knowledge that the aggregators like Youtube hold the real media power.
They act as destination sites where all the big advertisers and the audience converge.

On your own, you will find it hard to do deals with sponsorships and other advertisers if your traffic is in thousands.

The point: You need the recognition and traffic from the aggregators but you will have to do more to really make it big long term.

Businessweek has an article on the hard road to online profits for content creators.

Related useful links
Paying users of web 2.0 sites

19 ways to make social sites pay

Labels: online video, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:56 PM 0 Comments

18 tips to help you become an Online Video Star

Picking up from where Mashable went some days back, a WSJ article gives advice on how to be a start on online video sites such as Youtube. Much of the advice is based on the same themes that go in towards making a successful blogger.

Find out for yourself:

1. Getting in early helps build a better tentpole
2. Find a niche: For example, the Grammar Girl mixes a beautiful girl taking about grammar.
3. Word of mouth is important.
4. Work the virtual room: participate in discussion forums. The creators of the Lonelygirl show started planning comments on other videos under lonelygirl’s name before the show started.
5. Remix other people’s videos: the lonelygirl people do this often
6. Professional approach: For example, each 3 minute Lonelygirl video takes 10 hours to make. The Ask a Ninja guys spend upto 18 hours producing a 3-4 minute show.

Now, what makes a successful video?
Mashable did a story on it, listing at least 5 ways to be great online:

1. Learn to dance very, very well
2. Be pretty: Remember Amanda Congdon?
3. Act stupid in front of the camera
4. Learn to play the guitar really well
5. Create a meme: for example, people have made a hit out of taking a photo of self everyday and then aggregating it in a 60-second spot.

What kind of Video shows work online?
SimpleGuide has a nice roundup of successful video blogging, listing 7 proven video blogging styles:

1. Tutorials
2. Critiques on Popular TV shows, movies, music
3. Tour the Nation
4. Aggregate the best of other Video Blogs and add your commentary
5. The Daily show/Tonight show model: in 3-4 minutes
6. The Ask Prudence model: ask weird, outlandish questions
7. Cover live events.

Labels: online video, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:51 PM 0 Comments

Lesson from the Scientology debate: Let a million Counter Footages bloom

I hope that by now you know about the ongoing ‘Youtubed’ spat between Scientology believers including John Travolta and BBC reporter John Sweeney for the Panorama program on the Scientology cult .

The Cult has often been accused of brainwashing followers, making them undergo series of torturous experiments to wean them away from reliance on Psychiatrists.

As you know, Scientology claims that humans have descended from a race of aliens called thetans.

First to take the charge were the Scientologists who posted videos on Youtube showing John Sweeney loosing his cool when he was accused of being soft on Scientology critics.

Mr. Sweeney reportedly said,

"Now listen to me. You were not there at the beginning of the interview! You were not there! You did not hear or record all the interview!"

This is what we learn from smart Web 2.0 communication masters.
The Scientology people made sure they taped the interview as well to make sure both versions of the interview was available to the public.

There could even be more versions, if it comes to that.

Lesson #1: What if everyone started taping their own interviews?
For example, often in TV interviews, you say some thing else but later they edit it to mean something else.

Carrying a camera phone would be wise and later you can upload your video on Youtube.

Interestingly, BBC is going to broadcast the ‘angry’ part of the interview.

Going back to Scientology debate, I am not a big champion of organized anything other than sports and entertainment.

The other interesting thing about this episode is that while the Scientologists attacked the reporter’s impartiality,even going so far as to send the 100,000 decision makers, they had nothing to say about the content of the program itself.

That’s PR lesson #2 for you. Divert attention.

Labels: controversey, online video, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:04 PM 1 Comments

A short primer to building great news sites

Start with the obvious:

1. Build great news sites
Every year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism evaluates news sites for 5 criterion:
user customization, user participation, use of multimedia, site depth, and editorial branding.

Learn from the best sites:
PEJ gives high ratings to CBS News, the Washington Post, BBC News and Global Voices for ‘originality of their content…the extent to which they allowed users to customize the content…make(ing) the content mobile.

Users participation:
During these times of 2-way conversation, PEJ found that few sites let user participate, but this is going to change . For example, USA Today went about user participation in big way.

Blogs
Among other big news sites, The New York Times, Economist.com, Guardian.co.uk have great blogs. In fact, Economist.com has converted the ‘letters to the editor section into a blog’.

Few sites have user voting at the moment but this is not abd idea to promote your content.

Few news sites have Forums, which is a pity.
Forums are great for building communities – very important for local news sites.

Read the latest State of the Media Report here:

2. Journalists need to start using the exciting new Online tools:
Blogs, Digg, bookmarking, Video blogging, RSS, Social Media Marketing, Youtube, Podcasts, Flickr, etc.

Mindy McAdams has a great post, advising Journalists to go out and start trying these new tools – search Google and you will find tutorials on all the above tools.

Mindy is right – you may stop reading this article right now and start your own blog.

3. A reading list for beginners:
[ tip: spend a week reading all posts on these web sites. Reread to let more stuff sink in]
www.problogger.net – all about blogging and its potential.
www.seomoz.org – all aboit blogging and search engine optimization (creating pages that search engines pick and display prominentlt and quickly) topics like keyword research, link building, etc.
www.buzzmachine.com- the starting point to learn how media is changing.
www.poynter.org & www.cyberjournalist.net – tips for online journalists.
www.robcurley.com – Rob Curley, man responsible for injecting life into boring & stagnating news sites. Learn more about his work.

4. Some journalists that have already built online brand recognition
Here is a sampling:

www.gigaom.com – Om Malik, writer at Business2.com
www.buzzmachine.com
www.paidcontent.org – Rafat Ali
www.techcrunch.com – Michael Arrington
www.gawker.com – Nick Denton, was at Economist, runs the popular Gawker blog network
www.calcanis.com- Jason Calacanis, started the Weblogsinc blog network, sold to AOL, also a former journalist

5. Good online-only publications worth reading daily:
Read, learn, and emulate the best practices.

www.slate.com
www.salon.com

6. Time is on the your side.
Time is on the journalist’s side. Did you know that growth of the blogosphere is slowing down. Although people will continue launching new blogs, maintaining them with fresh news and thought will always be a challenge.

Same thing with Video blogs and Podcasts.

Here’s where the trained journalist may find herself comfortable – you know how to research and report;how to write for online medium; and so on. While most news is a commodity online, often regurgitated by other bloggers, you may it worthy to come with analysis, exclusive a opinion, breaking news in reader-leasing formats.

I think that despite the emergence of all these online tools, the story is still the foundation.

7. No Dorothy, there is no such things as too much Media.

You will also think that there are too many news outlets chasing too few news. You may be right but note that many mainstream outlets chase the big and often frivolous stories – for example, news items covered Anna Nicole Smith’s death in far more detail than the goings on at Walter Reed hospital.

Every itch of a celebrity is a story. You can change this.

8. Think brand. It will take time
If you can invest time on your online news site, it will be worthwhile. Write regularly. Cover great topics. Write well.

I hear they say building an offline media brand takes times and money – building an online news brand will take time and much less money. (and lots of enthusiasm)

Labels: Media, social news, tip

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:48 PM 0 Comments