What’s the Lifespan of a Big-Time Blogger?

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , ,

One of the more fascinating things about the high-tech blogosphere is the people working for big-time blogs such as TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, Engadget and Mashable who write multiple stories a day, all day. They write in the morning, they write in the afternoon and they write late at night. They are writing machines.

Having been a pretty prolific newspaper reporter for 15 years, I can tell you that my production was nowhere close to what these bloggers pump out each and every day. Frankly, it strikes me as exhausting given writing is mentally and creatively taxing, especially if you writing multiple posts a day.

Given the non-stop pace and pressure to produce and compete, I’m convinced the lifespan of a big-time blogger can’t be that long. It seems inconceivable someone could writing that many posts for years and year. So my take is two to three years is likely the most a blogger could stick it out before considering other less arduous endeavours.

This struck home when Chris Ziegler announced his departure from Engadget to pursue other interests. It appears Ziegler was not particularly pleased with working at Engadget after the blog’s sale to AOL, and it may have encouraged his decision to move on. At the same time, the AOL sale may have given Ziegler an “out” after pounding away at Engadget.

In an ideal world, bloggers would have more time to write posts and fewer posts to write a day. But the reality is blogs are built on an economic foundation of volume. The more stories created, the more pageviews generated and, in theory, the more advertising revenue. At the same time, blogs need to keep their costs in check so having a small team of highly-productive bloggers is another economic reality.

It may be a great way to run a business but it is probably not a great environment to keep your writers long-term.

Can Jack Dorsey Save Twitter?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

After being “exiled”, Jack Dorsey has officially returned to Twitter to head up product development – a move being widely hailed. The question is whether Dorsey can save Twitter, which appears to have lost its way despite having close to 200 million users.

Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter, returns to a company still searching for a viable business model. At the same time, Twitter doesn’t seem to be sure whether the army of developers using its API are friends or foes.

Recent changes in how developers should use the API struck many as a move of desperation because it seemed counter-intuitive given how the work done by third-parties have played such a key role in making Twitter more useful and interesting in contrast to the ho-hum, no-frills approach embraced by Twitter itself.

Maybe Dorsey’s return will help Twitter find its mojo. Perhaps it will bring Twitter back to a time when innovation was a key ingredient of Twitter’s corporate DNA as opposed to user growth and the search for a business model.

If Dorsey had a check-list, it should probably include the following:

1. Make nice again with developers. Then, create an API policy that is win-win as opposed to restrictive and controlling.

2. Reignite innovation within Twitter. To be blunt, Twitter is boring when it comes to features. This explains why enthusiastic and hard-core Twitter users migrate away from Twitter.com. It has been disappointing to see Twitter watch from the sidelines while developers do all kinds of creative things with the API.

3. Focus on strategic acquisitions to enhance the Twitter platform. While TweetDeck has already been snapped up by Bill Gross’ UberMedia, there are many interesting start-ups (e.g. TwitPic, HootSuite) that would be good strategic fits. Maybe even provide seed capital to startups that show a lot of potential.

4. Create an advertising model that will generate revenue but, at the same time, enhance and not tarnish the user experience. Once this has been established, Twitter should aggressively launched it. It would be a different approach than Promoted Tweets, which has been cautiously unveiled – a move that suggests Twitter is uncertain about its viability.

For more on Dorsey’s return, check out GigaOm.

Why I Bought Skates Rather than an iPad2

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod 6 Comments Tags: , , ,

Life is full of choices. You need to choose what to have for lunch. You need to choose how much of a retirement fund contribution to make. You need to choose whether that person you met at a party on the weekend is worth calling for a date. And for many of us in the digital sphere, you have to choose whether or not to buy an iPad2.

As anyone who reads this blog or my tweetsprobably knows, I’ve been deliberating about whether to iPad or not to iPad for several months. But when push came to shove, I decided to buy skates instead – Bauer Supreme to be exact. As much as I didn’t really need a new pair of skates, I needed them more than I needed an iPad.

At the end of the day, the decision was easy: I play hockey three or four times a week so the ROI on a new pair of skates is a no-brainer. I have a MacBook Pro so justifying the purchase of an iPad is more difficult. Getting an iPad isn’t going to make my digital experience or livelihood dramatically better or different. But buying new skates will make playing hockey more enjoyable, although it may not improve my game. :)

As much as I would like to have a new iPad, it’s not a must-have or even a nice-to-have. It’s an extravagance compared with other things. As important, an iPad would probably encourage me to spend more time online at a time when I’m actually trying to be more productive and spend less time online.

So for now, I am iPad-less. But the silver lining is I have a great pair of new skates.

Related links:
- Why iPad 2 Won’t Have Much Competition In 2011—Unless It’s From Amazon
- Media Content Drives Tablet Purchase Intent (eMarketer)

What’s the Color of a Bubble About to Burst?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

In late-2008, units within a proposed 80-story luxury condo in downtown Toronto went on sale. The real estate market was so frothy that people lined up for more than a week to purchase a unit. Some of these people had been hired by buyers or real estate agents for several thousand dollars. In other words, it was a crazy situation.

If I had been prescient enough, it would have been a blatant indication the decade-long economic boom was about to bust. It was deja vu all over again on the front page of the newspaper. But most people were far too bullish to pay any attention. Lo and behold, the global economy went in a wicked tailspin, fuelled by an overheated real estate market in the U.S. In the process, the condo project fell apart, leaving an embarrassing empty lot.

Fast forward less than three years and there is full-blown evidence of another bubble about to burst. In this case, it’s a $41-million financing done by Color, a mobile photo-sharing startup looking to establish a foothold amid a sea of photo-sharing startups.

But wait the blogosphere and media breathlessly proclaim, Color is different because it’s a “proximity-based social network” and – wait for it – Color is all about implicit rather than explicit relationships.

“This tweak may well resonate with people who feel their Facebook and Twitter friend lists are random, outdated and overwhelming,” gushed Liz Gannes, who is clearly drinking the Kool-Aid being served up in Silicon Valley these days.

Money talks, and $41-million is giving people a warped view of the world: the idea being that if a start-up can raise $41-million, it must be something special. Color may be special but not in the way that its founders and investors believe.

For one, there are already critics who believe Color is especially bad. Mike Rundle opines Color has already blown it, while Jason Fried declares Color botched the “blank slate user experience”. In many respects, Color reminds me of the inauspicious launch of Flock, which was supposed to be the social browser.

If I were a high-tech investor, Color paints a perfect picture of how we should be running for the hills. Color has bubble bursting written all over it. It’s an over-financed, over-hyped and underwhelming start-up trying to break into an overly-competitive marketplace. Somehow, it has managed to convince some pretty smart people it has come up with a better photo-sharing mousetrap.

And that is a dangerous sign that would be colored red.

Related Links:
Investing Like It’s 1999 (New York Times)

Why Do Blogs Die?

By Mark Evans in Blogs 3 Comments Tags: , ,

You know what makes me sad? Aside from the Toronto Maple Leafs missing the playoffs again, bandwidth caps and tear-inducing movies featuring animals, it’s dead blogs.

They’re not hard to miss. They feature posts that are months old with no sign of activity. What’s puzzling is there’s no farewell, goodbyes or “I’m coming back soon” messages. Instead, these blogs come to an abrupt stop one day, and then gather digital dust for months or years to come.

So, what happens? Do people suddenly lose interest in their blogs? Do they find themselves with no time to carry on? Or do they find other topics and other blogs that are more engaging? Maybe it’s just a matter that most blogs have a good-until date. Sometimes, they last a year or several years; sometimes it’s a matter of weeks or months.

One of the major reasons blogs are so easy to abandon is how easy they are to create. If you use WordPress.com or Blogger.com, blogs can be created in minutes. Even self-hosted blogs that use an auto-install system can be set up pretty quickly. If someone is inspired, they can start a blog right away.

At the same time, blogs can be dismissed just as quickly. In many ways, blogs are like candy; here today, forgotten tomorrow. Blogs are disposable, they’re “impulse purchases” and flings as opposed to long-term commitments.

Maybe there should be bigger barriers to entry to avoid the building up of digital dust. Perhaps people should take a “blog test” to weed out the un-serious. Maybe blogs should have a three-month trial period that would cause them to evaporate if there were long periods of inactivity. That way, the blogosphere wouldn’t have so much litter.

I’m not suggesting anyone who starts a blog has a duty to stick it out for the long-term but there should be an acknowledgement that blogs should be more than one-night/week/month stands.

At the very least, people who walk away from their blogs should bid farewell to them and its readers even if they intend to come back one day.

Pulling the Covers Off mesh ’11 (aka mesh 6.0)

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

After months of work and sushi-powered meetings, we’re finally ready to unveil mesh ’11.

To paraphrase Ed Sullivan, we’ve got a “really big show” with terrific keynotes and a line-up of excellent panels and workshops. Before getting into the details, there a few new wrinkles for mesh ’11. They include:

- More workshops. Given the popularity of workshops, we have decided to offer six per stream. Yup, there will be 24 workshops in total, which will provide lots of opportunities for hands-on, interactive learnings.

- Moving to the Allstream Centre at Exhibition Place. After getting a feet wet by moving meshMarketing to the AllStream Centre last November, we decided to take the plunge with mesh as well. With more room and lots of parking, we think it’s an excellent venue that will make it possible to let more people come.

- A “Sponsors Village” in which the companies that support mesh will be able to strut their stuff.

So what about the programming? For starters, here’s the line-up of keynote speakers.

Society: Ron Deibert of the Citizen Lab will provide insight about state control of the internet, efforts in the Arab world to shut down the internet, and efforts taken to circumvent that.

Marketing: After wowing the crowd at meshMarketing, we felt compelled to bring back Gabe Zichermann, who will talk the online psychology, behaviour and motivation of online users, including the growing role of gamification.

Business: With the Web having a major impact on the work landscape, Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation will get into how companies can be social and motivate and keep younger, Web-savvy employees, who are used to moving around and doing things that motivate them intrinsically instead of extrinsically.

Media: Jeff Jarvis, a popular blogger and former journalist, will talk about how the media is changing, the rise of WikiLeaks as a press entity, crowdsourcing, transparency and other factors and where the future of journalism is headed.

As a bonus, we also have a “Super Panel” featuring Mona Seif, an Egyptian activist who will give us some insight into how digital activism played a key role in the political uprising ended the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak.

You can get more information on the mesh Web site about the rest of the speakers who will be appearing on panels and workshops within the media, society, marketing and business streams.

You’re probably wondering about tickets. Until April 20, you can buy early-bird tickets for $539 + HST. (After that, tickets will be $639 + HST). There are also 50 student tickets available for $99 each. You can buy tickets here.

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