The three studies were done by respected marketing research companies: Forrester, Edelman, and Pollara. They all agree on the same thing: that bloggers just don’t elicit much trust when compared to other sources of information.

I can’t help but think that these studies weighted the questions…oh just a little bit. I mean, who would trust someone based solely on the fact that they happen to write a blog? Does merely creating a blogger account and whipping out a few blog posts make one a trusted authority on…anything? Of course not.

It’s kind of like asking: “Who do you trust more: a family member or someone who can use wordpress?”. The question just doesn’t teach us anything new. So the reason why people don’t trust “bloggers” in the context of these studies is because they don’t know who those bloggers are.

Now, Jeremiah’s point was to push back on the unfortunate conventional wisdom that merely writing a blog means you’re having an authentic conversation with an audience. This focus on technology over interaction is the problem with social media marketing, and Jeremiah was right to push back on that. But I don’t believe that bloggers don’t have trust. Of course bloggers have some level of trust. The people who trust them are their audience. (I’m sure Jeremiah sure hopes that his audience trusts him)

So, if instead of asking a meaningless question these studies asked “Do you trust bloggers who you read regularly/subscribe to?” most people would answer that they do. But that’s not what the studies asked…they asked about a faceless, nameless, random blogger. Not only is this a poor question, but it puts the entire studies under a shadow of doubt. It’s almost as if the question were asked just so that the researchers could come to that conclusion.

What bloggers don’t have, and what the studies might show, is automatic trust. Joe Blogger doesn’t automatically have permission to talk to you simply because he knows how to use WordPress. Blogging is about relationships, like most of life, and you need to earn any respect and permission you get.

There are few shortcuts here. But let’s not swing the pendulum completely the other way and suggest that bloggers aren’t trusted at all. The reality is that you have to prove yourself with each action, over time, building up trust and experience slowly, steadily. If it were any other way, then the word trust wouldn’t mean anything.

Do you ever feel like your personal information is spread across the web in a whole bunch of separate places? An account here, a profile there? A friends list here and a friends list there? All your information, but in all different places all incomplete at the same time?

The Social Graph API helps solve this “silos of information” problem by allowing people to write software that understands who your friends are. It does this by reading your web site or blog and making connections between the social profiles you have across the web.

For example, imagine you have a blog, which is your home on the web. You also have an Amazon profile, a Twitter profile, and a Facebook profile. So you have four profiles spread across the web, seemingly unconnected. Amazon has no idea who your friends on Facebook or Twitter are, and vice-versa, and this is a good thing from a privacy standpoint. These sites shouldn’t be able to find out everything about you with you giving them permission.

But what if you wanted these sites to know a bit about each other? What if you want to combine your Amazon book history with your friends lists at Facebook so that you can see what your friends are reading and let Amazon give you recommendations based on your similarity with them? Or, perhaps you just joined Twitter and want to know which of your Facebook friends are already there so you don’t have to go hunting for them? (see video) Here we see real-world examples of how cross-pollinating your personal information between these sites can not only be efficient, but desirable. (Not everyone will want to do this, however)

This type of scenario is what the Google Social Graph API is going to help solve. It does this by reading information on your blog that describes your other online profiles. So you might declare that you have a Twitter profile at http://twitter.com/bokardo or you have a Facebook profile at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500576058. Now, given your permission, Amazon can go out and find your Twitter friends and perhaps make book recommendations to you. Or, when you join a new social network, you can simply add your friends from existing networks with the click of a button.

So that’s the big reason why I’m excited by the Social Graph API: it helps to solve a real tough problem brought on by the proliferation of social networks. But there are several more reasons, too:

No Dependence on Google (or anyone else)

While Google is providing the API, nobody is dependent on them for creating or storing our relationships. This is done by the individual (as well as the services we sign up for). This means that Google isn’t in control of our relationship content. This is very much like how Search works. We own the content that we write on our web site. Google simply indexes it and provides tools to find, filter, and sort it. Google is an aggregator, not a creator. Google will be in competition to have the best aggregator of the graph.

The best way to explain this might be to point out that others can do exactly what Google is doing here. Since the relationship information is embedded within web sites anybody can index this information. So competitors can come along and try to provide a better API or better tools than Google.

Not a Walled Garden like Facebook

As Jeff Jarvis says: “The internet is the social network“. Walled gardens are not. Facebook is a great place to socialize. But they don’t own the relationships that happen there. Unlike Facebook, Google isn’t trying to own our social graph. This is incredibly important for the openness of the web. (btw: Jeff doesn’t think XFN and FOAF will gain traction…but I think they will because they are easy to implement and because solving this problem is too important. RSS and trackbacks are two technologies that succeeded in the same way)

This is in contrast to how Facebook runs things, which is by their permission. They want to own the relationship data. That’s why this API by Google is, to me, still a far better alternative. They are simply providing the best tool and keeping competition open.

A good indicator of this is to take a look at the first words on the Social Graph API: “Build critical mass on your website”. Would these words ever show up on anything by FB? NO. Their words would be “Build critical mass on our website”.

Based on Open Standards

The social relationships that the API exposes are encoded in regular old HTML using the XFN and FOAF formats. These are open standards that anybody can use. These are very easy to write and understand. Web developers will be able to learn what they need to in about 5 minutes in order to write these formats. Go HTML!

It will take a bit longer for blog publishers to write plugins that publish these formats for us, so that non-developers can publish their relationships as well. But with the amazing number of developers already creating plugins and other extensions, this won’t be a problem.

An Ecosystem

The Social Graph API is an ecosystem that anybody can play in. Since the relationship data is available to anybody, the spoils will go to the best tools that take advantage of them. Thus we have an ecosystem of open competition that allows anybody to play. Anybody with some spare time on their hands can jump in and create some cool program that helps people stay in better touch with their friends or somehow leverages those relationships. This move by Google cements their belief in the web as platform and reinforces their corporate mission to “help organize the world’s information”.

APIs are Great

This move by Google underscores the importance of APIs. The best thing about APIs is that we simply don’t know (and can’t imagine) how useful they can be. Developers will undoubtedly dream up a myriad of ways to use the API, some of which will become killer applications. The power of APIs is not what we can see plainly, but what we can’t see quite yet.

The User is in Charge

This is the biggest part of why I’m excited. My personal relationship information isn’t behind some walled garden. I’m in control of my own social graph! If I want people to know I have a Twitter account, then I can. If I don’t want them to be sure then I won’t make that relationship explicit on my blog.

The Domain as Identity is Realized

I don’t write about it often, but you may remember some posts about domain as identity I’ve written in the past. The Google Social Graph API is now getting us there by recognizing when we define our own relationships in our own domain. As more and more services look to our domain for verification, that only puts us more in charge of our online identity. Combine this with OpenID, and the idea of domain as identity really takes shape.

In the same way that we are in control of our own bodies, we need to be in control of our own domains. This is how we’re going to get privacy, if we want it. If you feel that you’re not in control of your domain, then you need to take your business elsewhere. This is why I dislike services that require you to have a subdomain within some other domain…those services that let you use your own domain are far preferable because you can at any point move your domain elsewhere. Just like you move your residence IRL.

What do I need to do?

So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us with two very obvious next steps.

1. Get your own domain! – if you don’t have your own domain…go get one! (and not a subdomain)
2. Mark up your code – use the XFN and FOAF formats to markup your site, or use a service that does this for you. I seriously need to do this myself. (I have a FOAF file, that’s about it)

It won’t be long before developers take advantage of the Social Graph API to really leverage these relationships. There is already software taking advantage of the API. Google has provided some tools that allow you to discover your contacts. Play around with this and you can see the power of this API. We might actually have some coherence to personal information on the web after all.

Going forward

The truth is that Facebook, Amazon, or even Twitter never had a good glimpse of my true social network anyway. Therefore, they had an incomplete social graph. I never gave Facebook my email list, they don’t know anything about my blog, and I’m going to keep it that way. While Facebook and others can create a fun place to hang out, they don’t own the relationships I create there. I do.

Also, it should be pointed out that Google released the Social Graph API on the same day that Microsoft announced their intention to take over Yahoo. The irony of this can’t be more complete.

One is a sign of the past. One is a sign of the future.

Update: Discussion on privacy implications of the Social Graph API

“I’ve had it. I get more than 300 emails a day and my problem isn’t spam, it’s PR people. Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of Wired because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching.”

Being someone who gets a small amount of PR SPAM (~10 a day), I certainly sympathize with Anderson’s move here. It’s tiresome to spend valuable time weeding through emails that at first seem addressed to you, until you realize they’re simply sent to a huge list of bloggers. They’re not personal messages. They’re generic. Some PR folks even lie and say “I’ve been reading your blog and I love everything you write, your child is beautiful, and may your family receive honor forever…etc…etc”. But after that it quickly becomes clear that they never refer to my blog specifically and they never tell me anything related to the topics I write about. It’s not informing. It’s insulting.

Here’s an example of one I got the other day. It’s not nearly as bad as some, but just as useless. It starts out:

Joshua,

Hope you had a great weekend. I wanted to give you a heads up on this great partnership StreetAdvisor is announcing this week with Australia’s top real estate website realestate.com.au. REA has tapped StreetAdvisor to give homebuyers, owners, renters and real estate agents with a great tool to help find the right property, in the right neighborhood.

And my question is: “How is this in any way valuable to me or my audience?”. No doubt Anderson asks a similar question when he gets SPAM.

Anderson’s response is a good lesson in a common problem with Identity on the Web. When Identity is known, behavior becomes civilized very quickly. When identity is not known, or not public as the case may be, behavior turns ugly.

When PR people send these broadcast emails, their identity is known to the receiver, but only the receiver. They rely on that fact to try to encourage the receiver to publish something about them (be it in Wired or on Bokardo). They take the chance that you’ll be fooled into thinking their information is worth publishing, while also realizing that if not you’ll probably ignore it. This last bit is crucial…the spammers expect certain behavior from the receivers…most spammers know that a large majority of people will simply ignore what they send.

But Anderson took the matter into his own hands and made the identities of those PR spammers public, and thereby changed the normal rules of engagement.

Now, he’s opened up their behavior for public scrutiny. He’s allowing other people to offer their judgment. The effect that this will have is that those email addresses will probably be ignored or blacklisted even more often than they currently are. He’s hoping that by making an example of these people they’ll change their behavior in the future.

You’ll notice the commenters on Anderson’s piece are divided over this. There are people who are cheering him, saying “way to go!”. There are also people (presumably people who are on the list) who are saying “get over yourself”.

This is public ridicule at its best, and it’s one of the few ways to combat private solicitation. When Anderson makes a formerly private relationship (one he didn’t want anyway) public, he knows that the public will label this as bad behavior.

Most large-scale spammers aren’t trying to create a real relationship, so they don’t have to use real email addresses. But PR people usually have to use their real addresses because they do want a real relationship with the receiver. Little do they realize how annoying their solicitation is…perhaps Anderson’s move will wizen them up.

“Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.”

RSS in Plain English

Wikis in Plain English

Lee is doing some great work, focusing on the implications of social media for communities.

You hear the argument all the time: bloggers are poor writers who produce mountains of useless prose and very little quality work. The most recent case is Neil Henry’s The Decline of News, in which he makes the following insult to bloggers:

“Meantime, I can’t help but fear a future, increasingly barren of skilled journalists, in which Google “news” searches turn up not news, but the latest snarky rants from basement bloggers…”

Clay Shirky reiterates a similar sentiment, in a post defending Andrew Keen’s controversial book Cult of the Amateur, that there is too much poor content out there:

“talent is unevenly distributed, and everyone knows it. Indeed, one of the many great things about the net is that talent can now express itself outside traditional frameworks; this extends to blogging, of course, but also to music, as Clive Thompson described in his great NY Times piece, or to software, as with Linus’ talent as an OS developer, and so on. The price of this, however, is that the amount of poorly written or produced material has expanded a million-fold. Increased failure is an inevitable byproduct of increased experimentation, and finding new filtering methods for dealing with an astonishingly adverse signal-to-noise ratio is the great engineering challenge of our age”

But what about the increase in good writing as well? What about those blogs that are about that one topic that you find fascinating…the blog that couldn’t have existed 8 years ago, and now you can’t live without? Why aren’t we celebrating those more? Why so much focus on the negative aspects and not the positive ones?

I find the “cult of the amateur” argument tiresome. Sure, we have a huge increase in content, and, following the power law, most of it won’t be relevant to you or me. But that doesn’t mean its not relevant to somebody.

People read blogs for one of two reasons

You see, most people read blogs for one of two reasons: they know the person writing it or they’re interested in the topic the person is writing about, or both. That’s why, when you ask any person about the average value of content on the web, they say “it’s useless”, because most content isn’t by people we know and isn’t about the relatively few topics we’re interested in.

To that end, those millions of personal blogs where someone is writing about their daily routine that in no way could ever interest you probably have a family member or friend who is interested, and who doesn’t care if they spell everything right or could use a grammar refresher. In addition, a whole lot of writing is done for the sake of it, to get ideas down on paper, even if nobody ever reads it.

Cult of the Pundit

Most bloggers certainly don’t care what pundits think…they don’t even know that people are complaining…maybe we should call this the Cult of the Pundit. The cult of complaining about things that we fail to see the value in and so dismiss entirely.

This is the same problem with social networking sites…people ridiculed social sites to no end because they couldn’t see the value in all that socializing. Now, however, people’s tunes are changing because those sites are being valued in the billions. Most blogs don’t have that luxury, however, because most of their audiences will always be small.

I agree with Clay that a great engineering challenge is filtering. But I also think that we have other challenges that are as important…like learning to write and express ourselves in the world.

So if the alternative to all this blogging is not blogging, not writing on a daily basis, then I’m not sure but we’re creating an even bigger problem. I would rather have people writing poorly than not at all.

Yochai Benkler: What is quality?

Not everyone is willing to give up on humanity so fast as Keen and other critics. Yochai Benkler, when asked if he still thought that “the practice of producing culture makes us all more sophisticated readers, viewers, and listeners, as well as more engaged makers”, an argument he makes in his book, The Wealth of Networks, had this to say:

“I think there’s a lot of anxiety about where quality comes from in distributed environments. At the same time—and this is understandable, we value great art, we value quality everything, we don’t want it to disappear. The question is: what is quality? and how much are we getting from the mass media culture that pervaded the 20th century? High production doesn’t mean quality. The best music didn’t necessarily make it commercial. Mass media doesn’t necessarily give us quality; it does give us passivity, and I think that’s unattractive. The thing we see today are cultural practices of review and annotation and recursion that we see everywhere (f. ex. on YouTube) do require a different mode of participation. A lot of it will be crap, and a lot of what comes out of mainstream media will be crap, as will a lot of what comes out of supposedly authorized art. Really great stuff is rare. It’s rare in organized systems, it’s rare in decntralized systems. Unless you think the system you’re coming from is really perfect at identifying, eliciting, and distributing high quality, then you really have to examine the relative merit of these two systems. It’s not at all clear to me that the new system is suppressive of quality. The declaration of quality comes from a set of exchanges as opposed to authorization by somebody who is supposedly an expert who says, “this is art and that is not art.”

What was it like during the Renaissance?

Sometimes, in my most optimistic moments, I wonder what it was like at the beginning of the Renaissance. Were there thousands of people in Florence writing, painting and sculpting and doing it poorly? Were they constantly flying by the seat of their pants, creating new media without having an established foundation upon which to build? Were there people who constantly excoriated them for doing something new…badly?

While Clay is right to consider Keen’s argument with fresh eyes, he has to agree that Keen is little more than a shock jock. Even if Keen’s got good points hidden in his book (I haven’t read it), it is still plain what he’s trying to do. He’s painting the world in black and white when there are millions of folks experimenting with color.

What isn’t clear is how much better off we’ll be with so many people learning how to write. Maybe we will have citizen journalists that deliver news faster and more comprehensive than before. Maybe we’ll have better technology analysts who are specialists in their field and not just good generalists from the big newspapers.

Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll have one or two Michelangelos surface who make everyone forget how much kerfuffle was made about the Cult of the Amateur.

Because many times when someone does this, the link can actually be hurtful because it’s not a real link to quality content. The author, the flattered one, often pretends they’re really writing about the rest of the post and not the part about themselves. But they’re really writing to point out that someone likes them.

I’m not immune to this. I’ve done it too. But its completely obvious. In some cases, someone will actually point to someone else’s post and not mention that there is a part of the post about them…pretending to ignore it. That is so weird though, when you go read the post and wonder…does the person think I’m an idiot?

Instead, wait until that person writes something really cool, and then link to that. In this case, Mark Earls, whose blog is Herd, the hidden truth about who we are, has written an insightful post about how humans copy each other so much: Copying is Good.

He says:

“Whatever our culture (and of course our own minds) tell us, human beings are copying machines. We do it all the time from the moment we are born to the day we die. Copying is a much more important form of learning for humans than it is for other primates.

One of the plausible explanations for this is that human beings are born c.12months premature into much more sophisticated social lives than any other primate; this requires a lot of learning and it seems easiest to get the thing roughly down first of all and correct things (if necessary) later on. Copying is an ideal strategy for this kind of “stupid” infant; it’s just something that stays switched on through our adult lives, also.”

His resulting design suggestion? “Give people something to copy”.

Now this is social design! This is how to take advantage of what people already do socially and make tools to help support it.

If you link immediately and don’t wait, you’re actually diluting the value of your link because people unfamiliar with the blog will think that’s what they write about or the only reason you linked to them is because they write flattering stuff. Instead, you owe it to your readers to link to the cream of their crop.

And, by the way, this is how to keep a high pagerank. Always obsess over what you link to. Make sure its good and adds to the conversation! And, in terms of full disclosure, mention that they wrote something very flattering about you.

You need to show your readers why their blog is a good read…so save your links for a post that pushes the discussion forward.

This immediately brings several things to bear:

1. Your blog represents you.
   Represent! Your blog is speaking for you…to folks who might not know anything about you. Is it saying the right thing? is it saying the same thing you would say if you met someone for the first time?
2. Your blog is serious business.
   It has the power to completely sway someone’s opinion about you. It fulfills the needs of lurkers everywhere who Google you to see what kind of person you are. Show them your best. (if you’re looking for work this is extremely important)
3. You blog is an archive.
   Your blog is an archive of your life that has its effects over time. What you write today will be there a year from now and is it any good? Really? Is it worth reading again? Sometimes you should ask yourself this question before publishing…
4. Your blog isn’t the only mirror of your life.
   Folks are getting savvy to the places that people are building online. Your facebook account, MySpace account, LinkedIn profile, Flickr set…all of these represent you, too. Make sure not that they paint you in an unfailing light, but that they represent you accurately. The best defense is truthfulness…be sure to always be truthful about yourself and everything will fall into place.

5. Your blog is your unedited version of yourself.
   Your blog is what you say when there is nobody standing over your shoulder telling you what to do. It demonstrates how you think outside the rules. It is one of the very few places where you have complete editorial control. Don’t take that for granted.

What if I don’t have a blog?

It’s OK that you don’t have a blog. But realize that you’re competing with many folks who do…and that’s only going to get harder over time. So, if you can, start one. Give it a go.

If you’re unsure, well, here are a couple pieces to get you started:

• 9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers
• 9 More Lessons for Would-be Bloggers

Running down Tom’s list is an exercise in agreement. He’s uncovered many of the important daily activities of a blogger. There are only one or two that I don’t practice…not really out of disagreement but more out of laziness.

Tom has an interesting topic of his own: “I blog about how emerging technologies such as blogging, podcasting, wikis, open source, and Web 2.0 can be applied to technical writing.”.

Sometimes my referral logs lead to the best stuff. Thanks for the post, Tom!

Many folks are saying things like “this is the underbelly of the blogosphere”.

No, it isn’t. It’s the underbelly of humankind. This stuff has happened forever, to all kinds and sorts of people, in all walks of life, for thousands of years. It wasn’t right in prehistory. It wasn’t right in Greek and Roman times. It wasn’t right when the major religions blossomed. It wasn’t right in Medieval times, it wasn’t right during Enlightenment, and it’s not right now.

This is the Social Web. This is the point where the distinction between what’s going on offline and what’s going on online isn’t important anymore. Posting an anonymous comment is the same as yelling at someone across the street. The only difference is that its recorded for others to see.

And you know what? That might be a good thing. The silver lining is that this behavior is public, and the community is pushing back on itself. The right things are being said. “This is unacceptable.” “This is wrong.” “This is bullshit.” We won’t stand for this.

That’s what a strong community does. It condemns bad behavior publicly, loudly, and absolutely. Kudos to Kathy for saying what happened, and for having the courage to fight back.

Write Follow-up Posts

This post is an example of this lesson in action. Two weeks ago I wrote 9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers and it got a good amount of traffic: people seemed to enjoy it. Darren Rowse of Problogger, who I’ve read for some time, embraced it and added his own thoughts. I had some great comments left on my blog and I thought about them and considered other lessons that I’ve learned. I kept writing them down as I thought of them and eventually built up 9 more of them to write this here post.

So when something resonates with folks, keep paying attention to it. There might be openings for a follow-up post. When you do write up a follow-up post, link back to the original, assuming that some people will have never read it. And if the follow-up works, maybe start a series of posts on the topic. And then, a book. And after that…well you get the idea.

When you screw up, say so immediately

Admitting idiocy is one of the most important things a blogger can do. It completely diffuses a situation that could quickly turn ugly. For some reason we have an assumption that admitting a wrong is like kicking a puppy…some people would do almost anything to avoid it. But I remember listening to a podcast of Adam Bosworth, who is a damn smart guy (VP at Google), in which a point he made was quickly refuted…and instead of defending his position he said immediately: “Yes, you’re right. I stand corrected.” As a listener I was completely disarmed…when was the last time someone said they stand corrected? The result is that I’ve ended up having more respect for Adam than I did previously. So pay attention to people who admit when they’re wrong…they’re the type of people worth listening to because you know they’re not trying to spin anything. And the funny thing is, that if you admit you’re wrong, people might just start assuming that in the other cases you’re right.

Know when to take it offline

Several times I’ve had folks come to my site and try to embarrass or criticize me personally in the comments on a post. Whenever this happens, you have to immediately take it offline. Send them an email and explain your situation. More than likely, they’ll cool down after that.

I recently ran into this with my Death of IA posts…I had some IA folks come and really lay into me, trying to insult me in front of my audience. It’s fine to argue the points of a post, but its another thing to let someone criticize you outside the bounds of your writing on a personal level. In these cases I simply wrote them an email stating that I would be glad to consider their points as long as they stuck to the content of my post…sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you just have to stop the discussion and move on. So remember that its your blog and your audience…you’re the editor and you decide what is worth arguing and what isn’t.

Link back to your good stuff

Some folks don’t link back to their good stuff enough. Hopefully you have a greatest hits section on your site, but in addition to that refer to something you’ve previously written. If you wrote it well, it will be easy to do, because your post will act as a reference for the topic. Others will pick up on that and perhaps link as well.

One caveat…rarely quote yourself. For some reason it’s a big turnoff…maybe too much self-flattery or something. Instead, simply repeat the idea in a slightly different way, resetting the context for the idea that you want to talk about again. But please, don’t quote yourself…quoting is an activity we should reserve for people other than ourselves.

Reread to yourself

Blogs aren’t books, poems, or even journalism. They’re conversations, so they need to be conversational. Make them read like how you talk. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written something that wasn’t conversational that didn’t resonate…because I was trying to be too formal. Then, I’ll write a post very quickly and conversationally and it will lead to something. That’s a funny thing about blog posts…people do treat them as a conversation. And, except for being asynchronous, they are.

Treat every post as a possible later reference

This is something that I’ve only realized of late. Treat every post as a reference going forward. If you’re a programmer, think about the DRY principle: Don’t Repeat Yourself. Write something once, write it well (revise until necessary) and then feel free to refer back to it later. One of my frustrations is when I’ll have a couple posts on the same idea that don’t work very well…because I put them up too hastily. Better to write it once, take your time, and make it something that not just you, but others can reference later on.

A good example of this is my post The Dangers of Judging Web Design Superficially. I wrote this almost three years ago, and recently linked back to it. Someone picked it up just the other day, linked to it from a well-trafficked blog, and sent a whole bunch of readers my way. You never know when stuff like this will happen, so treat every post as a target.

Keep updating your best posts

This goes along with the previous one. If you take your posts seriously, and you treat them as an reference archive, then people will link to them and send traffic to them over time. So, if the post could use pruning, or additions, be sure to go back and add them. It’s OK…this isn’t paper we’re publishing on. Just go back and change it, and maybe add a note that you’ve done so.

Name things (e.g. The Del.icio.us Lesson, The Chanel No. 5 Lesson)

This one I learned with The Del.icio.us Lesson, which I had actually written about before I named it. After I named it, it became my most read post of all-time. The idea is also a relatively clear one, so people could easily understand it, but I think that naming really drove it home and associated the idea with the Del.icio.us name…which is a very popular and well-known site. Of course, don’t name things just because you can, and make sure that if you name something that there is a real importance to the idea you’re naming. I knew it was important because people kept repeating it to me over and over…I just happened to be the person who wrote it down.

Link to the quiet, unknown ones

I know because I am a quiet one (or used to be). Link to people who nobody has heard of, just to give them some exposure. They’re just as smart as anybody else, they’ve got just as much to say. They just don’t have the attention yet. I remember reading Noah Brier back before either of us had much of an audience and were working out our blogging kinks…linking back and forth every once in a while. Well, Noah’s now kicking some serious butt and he’s got a good audience…his Likeminds meetups are growing and growing.

It works like this: people expecting company clean the house. If a blogger is expecting company (readers), they’re much more likely to work on their blog and make it better. Conversely, if they are unknown, they’re not really expecting anybody, and this lowers their own expectations of what and how they write. My guess is that any blogger out there, if they were told they could have a spot in an upcoming edition of the New Yorker alongside Malcolm Gladwell and James Suroweiki, would rise to the occasion and write their very best. They would care more, pay much more attention to what they write, and really knock one out of the park.

Any editors of the New Yorker reading this…? I’m waiting.

Translations: Hungarian

I attended the Writing, Better panel here at SXSW. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, both because I wanted the conversation to go on for a few more hours and because so many people here are bloggers that blogging comes up every few minutes or so. Here are some lessons that I’ve learned about blogging…hopefully they can be of help to others.

It’s only an initial fear

The problem with blogging isn’t just the writing part. It’s also the putting-myself-on-public-display part. Many would-be bloggers that I’ve met don’t blog because they’re not comfortable with throwing themselves to the wolves…putting their ideas out into the world for all to see. Once you do that, of course, you open yourself up for criticism, and goodness knows that you’ll get some! But you’ll also get encouragement, and some people will really groove on what you say. Once you get a little practice under your belt, you’ll find that it’s only an initial fear…it gets easier as you go along to share your ideas.

You have something valuable to say

One of the biggest problems is that some people don’t think they have anything useful to say. They think: look at all the incredible amount of writing out there already…what can I add to it? Ironically, its those people who probably have the most to say, but they’re concerned that they won’t say it well or in the right way. Those are the people who care about what they say and know that words have tremendous power. They consider the act of writing as an act of conversation, as opposed to others who see it as a way to make money or a way to promote something. We need those people to recognize that they do have something valuable to say, and that the blogosphere would be better, not worse, with them contributing.

I remember meeting Paul Rademacher, creator of HousingMaps (before Google had an API!) and hearing this story from him. He didn’t think he had anything to add. I couldn’t believe it! Here’s a guy who created an amazingly-cool web application in his spare time while working as an animation engineer for Dreamworks!, and he didn’t think that anybody would want to hear what he had to say. Well, it’s that sort of different thinking that we need! After I met him, I kept wondering how many other folks are like him that are silent in the blogosphere.

When in doubt, post.

I keep telling the same story to would-be bloggers. A couple weeks ago I was working on a post for Bokardo and it wasn’t going well…I couldn’t get to what I wanted to say. So I looked around, realized that I hadn’t posted the 5 Principles to Design By from my about page, and just posted that. It has now become the post that many people recognize my blog from, because in some way one of the five principles touched a nerve with them. I did not predict this, and don’t think I could have. So when it doubt…post. You can always un-publish it if you need to.

Use the comments for refining your point

Lots of times I’ll post and my point won’t be crystal clear. Someone will read it and leave a comment saying so. When someone does this, when they take time out of their busy day to read what you’ve said and respond to it, TAKE IT AS A GIFT. Always remember that these people are right! They’re your readers, and so if something isn’t clear to them then it’s probably not clear to the others who who haven’t read it yet or don’t have the time to leave comments. So you have to take the time to go back and make your point clear. Whatever you do, don’t argue with them, don’t say that they didn’t understand the point. Let them know you’re hearing them and try to clarify what you mean. And, if its a relatively big change, make sure to go back and change your original post to reflect that, so readers coming in get your most up-to-date thinking.

Everything is beta

My theory for Bokardo is that everything is beta. That lets me stop worrying about publishing end-all, be-all pieces that set the world on fire. If my blog is my beta (the blog itself is not beta…it’s the thoughts that are beta), then it becomes a place for trying out ideas and refining them. After I do that, I’ll republish the best ideas somewhere else…in a talk I give or in a UIEtips article or an article in an online magazine. Some posts will rise to the top and have lasting power, like my piece on the Del.icio.us Lesson, but the vast majority don’t. So don’t worry if your writing is beta…that’s perfectly OK.

Have a schtick

I write about lots of things here on Bokardo, but my schtick is that I write about social design. I even have the words explained on every page on this site. Why is this? Well, it helps me keep a focus for the blog…to keep the posts moving in a general direction. This vastly improves my ability to figure out what to write about, because I’ve got a flag to fly. Before I had a clear focus I used to flounder when I couldn’t decide what to write about…I ended up with a much less focused blog and poorer posts because of it.

One caveat, though. You have to really believe in your schtick…you have to think that the topic is important and have to have passion for it. You can still deviate from the topic, as I’m doing with this post, and that’s OK. It’s a lot easier to write exceptions to the rule than it is to not have a rule in the first place. So plant your flag…have a schtick…it not only makes writing easier but you’ll also get other people thinking about your blog in terms of it. It’s kind of like a brand in this way.

Correct English be-damned

People don’t care very much whether you write in complete sentences, use correct grammar, or are copy-edited. It’s much more visceral and fast. They care about ideas…are you adding good ideas to the idea-pool? Are you telling them something they knew but haven’t articulated or haven’t thought about yet? If you spend a lot of time blogging, make sure that you spend it on clarity…that every word is understandable and your ideas are clear. Notice that in this post I’m being very-straightforward…it’s clear what I’m talking about. This isn’t always easy…and it takes practice and time. Don’t let the simple posts fool you…that’s the goal.

Show your greatest hits

A tactical lesson I learned from Brian Clark, who writes highly-recommended CopyBlogger. Create a greatest hits module for your blog and display it on all pages. This will be an instant target for new readers, who will be funneled into your best content. It will also help remind regular readers what you’ve said in the past, and help them think about your blog in those terms. And if you’re just starting out, put all of your posts in it. You can easily take them out as new greatest hits emerge.

People are listening

For every person who posts a comment on your blog, you have 10 (or 100) readers who won’t. Always remember that! Even if you don’t get the 100 comments that you were hoping for doesn’t mean that people didn’t like the post or that they didn’t consider it…it just means that they didn’t have anything to initially say or couldn’t at the time. This is a hard problem…because if you don’t travel a lot then you might never know that there are people who are reading and just not saying much. If you do travel, make sure you let people know who you are and what your blog is, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many readers you have.

Got lessons of your own? Share them in the comments or write your own post and let me know so that I can link to you.

Update: Also read 9 More Lessons for Would-be Bloggers

Translations: Español | Hungarian

“Gender is an important category of diversity because women experience radically different life patterns and external expectations than men and so by including a critical mass of women you are more likely to get some orthogonal perspectives than if you include more men. Now of course you can go after diverse men too–and you should if you are concerned about overcoming groupthink and echo chamber effects. But if you leave out women almost entirely, you are leaving out representatives of half your potential audience. Even given similar intelligence profiles, career paths, and temperaments, a woman and a man are likely to have very different views on technology… because they come at it from vastly different experiences of the world. We experience more conflicting messages and more ambivalence around working in technology and working with technology than men do. Society expects different things from us, so we in turn may focus on what seems unimportant or uninteresting to men.”

More here

Of course, we wouldn’t chat about blogging…probably more along the lines of Texas BBQ and beer.

Of the first five big stories at the moment, 3 come from the New York Times, 1 from Google, and 1 from Microsoft.

On the one hand, this is good for the New York Times…they’re obviously keeping up with the blogosphere, as well as they should…they’ve got some of the best writers in the world there.

If Google and Microsoft even sneeze they get noticed in the blogosphere. Today the “big” news is that Google Webmaster is coming out of beta and Microsoft’s response to the speculation about the next version of Windows…WOW.

(thankfully, my buddy Richard MacManus from Read/WriteWeb is sixth in line…with some novel analysis of online video technologies.

I don’t think this is a bad thing for Techmeme, either. It’s just tracking what the blogs are talking about…and what they’re talking about is what big media is talking about. If it is tracking the social streams of news, then that’s great, even if it feels like an echo chamber at times.

From a personal standpoint, I try to read people who shy away from recapitulating. On second thought, maybe I don’t subscribe to them simply because I know I can find the info out on Techmeme. That’s probably more likely.

Sometimes I struggle with choosing topics myself. Obviously, there is news that should be shared, like the recent Pew study on Tagging, for example. I want you folks to know about that, so I’ll blog about it even though I know there is a high probability that you’ll hear about it elsewhere.

I appreciate what Alex Barnett said. Something to the effect of: “If I see it on Techmeme, I won’t blog about it”. I probably wouldn’t go to that extreme, but I understand the sentiment.

I wonder if people who have been around for several paradigm-changing technologies watch this sort of thing happening and secretly repeat to themselves: “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.

(Update: Ironically, this post made Techmeme (under the Read/WriteWeb article)