Blogs and Feeds

NE 4's Rowing - Wet and Windy

Today the NE 4 rowing championships were to be held at Great Herring Pond here in MA. I have been looking forward to this regatta for months. After several years on the Merrimack at Lowell, this event was moving to a new venue which promised stake boat starts and other improvements.

Yesterday it was raining and ugly, and I kept hoping that the weather men would be wrong in their forecasts of continued wind and rain. When we left Boston at 5:00 a.m. this morning, it did not look promising. After posting a two-hour delay, the decision was made to not row -- there was lots of wind and whitecaps.

This event is always very special to us. The coaches who spearhead this regatta make it special. No I have not lost my mind -- referees and coaches all on the same page. Well, at this event the coaches and the referees work together to make sure that the athletes have safe and fair racing. Although saddened to lose the day of racing, getting to the decision was a study in how such decisions should be made.

The DMA Search Marketing Forum

The DMA Search Marketing Forum will be held April 20 in NYC at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. I am looking forward to attending this program and to presenting on my favorite topics -- blogs and feeds. This should be fun. It is great to be involved with a technology that is moving so fast that my slides are out of date almost as soon as I finish them. So, if you are going to this event and think you may have already seen my talk -- wrong again. Blogs and feeds keep feeding me new material.

NYTimes.com's RSS Feeds Drive Record 5.9 Million Pageviews In March

Paid Content.org pointed me to -- NYTimes.com:

"The New York Times Company reported today that for March, NYTimes.com achieved a traffic record of 555 million pageviews, a 17% increase from March 2004, according to internal data. The previous monthly record was set in January when NYTimes.com had 553 million pageviews, a 30% increase from January of last year. Unique visitors increased to 15 million in March, up 10% from the previous year. . . .

NYTimes.com's RSS feeds generated 5.9 million pageviews on the
site in March, which represents a 342% increase year over year and a 39% increase from February's 4.3 million pageviews. The sections that were most popular among RSS feeds included: Washington and Business. The feeds have been available since February 2002."

RSS feeds will continue to drive record-breaking traffic for those who adopt the technology.

Call to Action -- Get It Now

Spoke with Bryan Eisenberg today, and he advises that their new book A Call to Action is selling very briskly, and those who want to take advantage of the three for the price of one pre-release offer should do so immediately. It's a good read -- I've already read it -- in fact I edited it.

Podcasting Hardware -- Exploring the Options

Podcasting hardware setups range from full multi-channel sound input devices that offer flexibility similar to a professional sound studio to the lowly cellphone. My preferred modality for podcasting is the phone. If you have ever wondered what your podcasting equipment option are give this 5-minute video with Eric Rice a look. It gives a nice tour of 5-different sets of podcasting hardware.

If you already own a phone and a blog, you too can catch the podcasting fever.

Live on Webmaster Radio

On Monday, I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Webmaster Radio show of Jeff and Bryan Eisenberg, the Wizards of Web. Jeff and Bryan from Future Now, Inc., asked me to discuss some of the findings that are going to be published in the new book, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide that I've just completed with Bill Ives.

The book is in final production. The 70 interviews that we did for the book provide insights into how businesses and proffessionals are using blogs to promote themselves and their businesses.

Webmaster radio is an interactive experience with listeners using online chat able to ask questions and get immediate responses. Call in radio without the annoying phone calls/callers. It was a really cool experience.

Rosy Future for Digital Audio and Podcasting

Podcasting News reports that Forrester Research has released a new report, The Future Of Digital Audio, that focuses on podcasting and satellite radio. According to the report, 20.1 million U.S. households will listen to satellite radio and 12.3 million U.S. households will use their MP3 players to listen to audio podcasts by the end of the decade. Interest in podcasting is growing and as more eager users master this technology, we will sure see it blossom.

Polarized Politics and Blog Readership

According to a report in the WSJ, two-fifths of Americans who are online have read a political blog, and more than a quarter read them once a month or more. The results of a recent Harris Interactive poll also indicate that individuals who report themselves as Liberals are most likely to post comments on a political blog. To what can we attribute this, I have lots of thoughts. but no answers. But, there is one thing for sure, our polarized politics are clearly visible here.

Google's Blogger Hosts 8 Million Blogs

Market Watch reports that Google now hosts more than 8 million blogs on Blogger, according to data from Perseus Development Corp. Live Journal is the second heavyweight with 6.6 million accounts.

According to Jeffrey Henning, chief operating officer of Perseus, some 31.6 million Web logs have been created on hosting services, a number he expects to grow to 53.4 million by the end of the year. The survey on which these figures are based was a review of 10,000 blogs.

I want to know: who is writing all of these blogs? Is there still two-thirds of the population that stil does not know what a blog is? Blogging has grown so fast that as soon as a set of stats come out, they are out of date. Thanks to Dave Winer's Scripting News for pointing out this new stat.

Hackers and Painters Is a Must Read

Last week during the usual lively dinner discussion that follows a typical Berkman Thursday meeting I was urged by Mike Walsh and Shimon Rura to read the work of Paul Graham the author of Hackers and Painters.

This author has placed on his site some of the most entertaining and insightful essays that I have read in years. His insights into "Why Nerds are Unpopular" is uplifting. Anyone who was among the "gifted" or "talented" in high school should read this essay. You will find yourself here -- too busy with other things to think about than to do the work of being popular.

In high school, I was busy writing, observing the natural phenomena of the world (botany was my passion), learning dead languages and, of course, reading entire sections of the school library. The bad news for nerds is that we never lose our nerdiness -- it just manifests itself in other ways now.