blogs, attention and working in public 3

June 20, 2006 at 12:55 am | In technology |
back in March, I wrote of an intention to write a white paper about blogging to create an audience and then never followed up - today I wrote a post at omidyar.net that seems like a rough draft, so here it is, without polish (grammar/spelling comments not welcome at this time b/c it’s just stream of conciousness, but I very much welcome comments about content, big errors, things to amplify, etc)

 

o/net is a black hole - what we write is lost - sure, someone might stumble upon it, but there’s no good way to see what Kim has been thinking about all along - the old stuff is incredibly hard to find

a blog has a history - it shows you over time in a way that’s more or less permanent - sure you can always edit your stuff, but there’s a strong value in the blogosphere that we don’t edit stuff - we post again if things have changed

plus, we own our own space and it’ll never be sold - I blog at tedernst.com and you can be sure to find me there forever, even if I stop blogging, my old stuff will be there

blogs link to each other, if they’re thinking strategically - when you write something cool, Kim, I’ll link to it and write about it - my friends find you - can’t really do that with o/net b/c the tools suck - when I link to your blog, it’s easy for you to see that link and thus have a sense of how your post resonated wtih someone else

since I promote my own blog in my email sig, and so do my friends, we cross-polinate - friends read across links

google and other search engines also like links - and what we’re collectively talking about will be elevated in search results - doesn’t work with o/net since we’re all on the same domain

do a search for “wealth” and the another one for “bondage” - notice how high http://wealthbondage.com shows up on both - that’s because of links - blogs create their own audience

also, what happens when this place goes away or gets sold or I get banned? you’ll find me at my blog - how will I find you? I really, really, really don’t want to be dependent on this space

Check out Candidia’s post today

2006.06.21: fixed long link that was messing with formatting

3 Comments

  1. Isn’t o-net like a my space or zanga? It’s a place to GO. Instead of talking at your house, you can talk in a cafe. But, actually, I think you have a point in things getting lost. That’s what forums do. There are so many places threads can hide. I visited a forum a couple times, but by the time I found it and posted, the issue was 2 months old.
    I thought you had a sober judgment about how things change: disappear/sold/banned. Good you’re planning ahead for connectivity.

    Comment by Kristinwt — June 21, 2006 #

  2. I’ve never used my space or zanga so I really don’t know. The software (supposedly) was built for the Omidyar Network staff to collaborate as they do their work and at some point, they decided to open it up to the public. So the promise of collaboration is there, but the tools suck.

    It’s discussions aren’t as good as forums. It’s workspaces aren’t as good as wikis. It’s private messages aren’t as good as email. It’s feedback system just plain isn’t good. We’ll see what happens.

    Comment by ted — June 21, 2006 #

  3. good start

    Comment by Tropology — June 29, 2006 #

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