Blogger Beta issues

I came across BloggerBot today and thought wow, this could be cool! It promises easy and fast posting of images into a Blogger Blog. No issues having to resize images etc. So, I download the software and register for an account (yet another web 2.0 account).

I assume that this works with Blogger (beta or otherwise) because there is NOTHING on the site that says it doesn’t work with beta.

With the software installed and account set up I go ahead and begin this easy, seamless and “integrated” service experience and guess what?! I’m asked to login, within the “Hello” account to my blogger blog (this is my Marketing Superhero sibling blog) and no dice.

So, being the earlier adopter that I am (means that we like to find answers and give beta providers some grace while they work out the “bugs”) I go an hunt to see if I can fix this issue. I “FOLLOW” Google’s self-help steps and arrive at Google Groups on the topic….voila I find a post that identifies this issue and asks for help. The post was made Sept 2, 2006…pretty recent…great. Unfortunately there was no response and to make things a more frustrating … the topic has been closed by “a manager” (see above).

Google you owe me $250 for wasting an hour of my time. Shame on you. When you integrate services, accounts, tools or whatever…even at the beta stage make sure you either tell us that they won’t work or better yet get them working ahead of time. Blogger is not Beta ready in my opinion.

150,000 Blogs to go!

 My goal is to get into the top 100,000 blogs. Why? Because this graphic on Technorati is bugging the crap out of me. I am very competitive and goal oriented and the fact that this graphic continually reminds me that I’m not “qualified” to be measured burns my butt.  Analytics and measurement is a key differentiator the internet has over traditional marketing in that it can be measured.

The problem with blog tools/services is that some provide analytics (out of the box – simple and automatically provided) such as WordPress and others that don’t. In order to businesses to adopt blogs analytics must be offered “out of the box” and “self service”.

Technorati would incent more bloggers (especially corporate) if they provided additional value regarding analytics and bring the traffic history measuring “requirement” down to 0! This is “anti” long tail thinking in my view.

Quantity vs Quality?

I’ve heard from various sources that bloggers need to post frequently in order to keep people interested and coming back to read and post comments. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted and my traffic dropped mid way during this lull but peaked the other day. As a bloggiest(TM!) (blog hoppiest) there will be times when my blogs are neglected due to family and professional obligations. This is just reality. This raises the question regarding quality vs. quantity and context based content too.

I’ve recently started unsubscribing to “popular” blogs because of the quantity AND quality of their posts. Some bloggers seem to think that people want to invest their time reading about social dinners, or worse yet re-reading someone elses post. It’s almost as if they feel compelled to post SOMETHING to keep their readers salvating for more….well STOP! =)

I want original thought, quality content and contextual relevance. So, at this point, I will post when and only when I’ve got something interesting I’m doing and thinking. I hope my 48 readers are cool with this. =)

Internet 2 or "just the Internet"?

Yesterday I posted an interview with Tim Berners-Lee the man some have called the Father of the Web, click here for more info on Tim. I disagree with his notion that web2.0 is “just the web” (see post below, warning its LONG).

Fundamental things are happening on the web that in my opinion is distinct and different from web1.0. During web1.0 (.com and .bomb) our business models existed in power point presentations. We were told by Venture Capitalists (not all of them) to show a “hockey stick” revenue growth slide and talk “eyeballs”. Well, the “hockey stick” ended up pointing downward while we wasted money on Super Bowl ads, mascots and start up parties. The term burn rate and headcount somehow was a “good thing”. 

So, where am I going with this? What was missing back in web1.0 day was OpenSource, Adsense, Ajax, today’s teenagers and web savvy kids…to name a few. Today, software is cheap (sometimes free), more people have high speed internet connectivity and consumers are generating content. People can start there businesses online for minimal investment and have immediate revenue opportunities using affiliation based incentives through Google Adsense and Search, Amazon, eBay and on and on.

We not only have sources of revenue to underwrite our costs (time, money and resources), we also have distribution/promotional channels for our wares (iTunes, Google, Technorati, Podcast Alley, RSS, Newsgator…..etc) and financial utility tools (Paypal, Googles eCommerce service) and platforms to communicate our offerings whether it be content, products or services (blogs, wiki’s, podcasts).

THIS IS HUGE AND VERY DIFFERENT. This is the “new web”. Web2.0.

So, where does Internet2 fit into this? Well, its an advanced high speed network being deployed which is REAL FAST. This network is a newer version of the Internet…hence the name Internet2.

Both the Internet and the Web are evolving into newer improved versions.

We’d Better “Get It” Soon!

Attensa is an RSS solution provider so some would view their blog posts as biased. While this could be the case a recent post on their blog regarding “Enterprise 2.0″ provides business leaders with some insights as to why web 2.0 tools are important.

Calling all Business and Technology Leaders. Give the Attensa post a read and if the mood strikes read the cited articles and listen to the podcast too.

Web 2.0? Social Media? Who really cares?!

Various “labels” are being bandied about regarding the new things that are happening on the web. Here’s the running count: web 2.0, social media, consumer generated content, consumer generated communications, the social consumer(I coined this one, feel free to lay claim if you were first), the “new” marketing ..yadda, yadda, yadda.

I care less about what we call this and more about what is causing this. I picked “web 2.0″ because it was the first label or category name I encountered. Plus, this blog is solely dedicated to new web based services, communities and applications that look, smell and feel like new age web based stuff. Things that have been developed based on the Open Source culture. Open source culture transcends beyond exchanging code and improving on it and then sharing it. It’s about sharing ideas, content, creative, code and communications (Too many c’s for my liking but I think it paints a pretty good picture).

So, who gives a rats ____ what it’s called and lets not worry about what we call it. Let’s empower those that use it to make it better and those that don’t to do so.