42 Quirks

The blogosphere is nothing but the online equivalent of a human society.Chris Garrett, over at Performancing notes:

Remember todays A-Lister could be tomorrows “remember him?”, and they all started out somewhere. The audience you are ignoring could be tomorrows A-List.

If you define your A-list according to Technorati Top 100 or equivalent, then yes, it could be so. Also, the A-listers have something we don’t.

Let me start with a tentative OD (Operative Definition) of an A-lister:

“A-lister: Any person owning or authoring a blog which commands statistical superiority in a particular category/subject/topic over other ‘fellow’ blogs (and bloggers) in certain matters of detail.”

The certain matters of detail being outlined below, along with tentative operative definitions, for a randomly chosen category:

• Traffic: Daily page views in thousands
• Reader-base: in thousands (RSS/Atom Feed Subscribers)
• TrackBacks: Anywhere between ten to twenty per day.
• Comments: Genuine:S**k-up ratio of 1:10 (may be)
• Flamers: Flames:Comments ratio of 1:10

And last, but definitely, positively, not the least:

• Private/Closed Beta Invites

Scoops. The A-listers get the scoops. And the public seems to hang on to every word. And you and I are equally to blame on that front.

Think about this. You visit a blog and read an excellent article. Then, you scroll down and see zero (0) comments and you think, “Hmmm, no comments? Looks like this guy gets no traffic at all. So why bother, he’s not gonna miss me any way, heck he doesn’t even know I came here!” The next guy comes along and does *exactly* the same thing. And the blog ends up wth a meagre 20-30 unique visitor traffic with no returning visitors.

On the other hand, an A-lister blogs about his vacation in Miami or his Blogosphere experiments and watch the traffic shoot!

Are we hypocrites or what?

I am not saying that we suck-up to them all the time, but if you draw up the stats you will see that 80% of the “A-list” bloggers’ posts have been reviews/reports of ‘the next big things’ or stupid PR experiments. Occasionally, there are a few flames too. When was the last time you saw an A-lister come out with something genuine and refreshing?

Bloogging may not be all about the traffic, but it is human tendency to seek some recognition especially if one believes he/she is worth it. I will not blog for the masses if they are not going to acknowledge me. What’s the point? Isn’t it a failure? It is like a startup which does great things but doesn’t sell.

Blogging for the market and Blogging for the masses are polar opposites. Blogging for the masses is when you provide value and generate conversations, even if it means discussing whether the weather is good for flying or not. Blogging for the market means that you HAVE to look at the traffic. Remember, your blog is no different than the advertising bill board off Freeway 66.

After all, you have to make every stopover count, right?

Disclaimer:
Intelligent readers will please note the following very important points:

1. I have not linked any of my subtle references back to Robert Scoble of Microsoft, PR guru Steve Rubel and Jeremy Zawodny, for fear of getting flamed.

2. The A-lister stats in the Operative definitions were simple guesswork. If anybody has conducted appropriate research and can give me the correct figures, I would be only too happy to post them on my blog.

3. Yeah I know, I am lazy.

Technorati Tags: blog, a-list, market, masses, peeves

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer…All humans are born equal. but we just have to admit the fact that some men are more equal than the others. The society was, is and always will be divided into classes based on the financial status. Money is the deciding factor. Some people will always have more money than the others. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from. What matters is whether you are able to sustain it.
There is always gonna be an invisible glass-ceiling stopping you from reaching there. If you are a novice and you want to break the glass ceiling, you have to either try VERY hard or circumvent it somehow. There is no short-cut of course. The only way to ‘circumvent’ it is to somehow grab the attention of any one of the elite class. If you have done that, you have done the hard work. The rest is simply smooth sailing.

So how do you grab their attention? There are two ways of doing it:
1. Flame them - Oppose them vehemently so that they rant against you. Like someone said, there’s no bad publicity, only publicity.
OR
2. Claim them - Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Give them good references and you will be rewarded someday.

Are you done reading it? Very well, now follow these instructions:

1. Replace every occurence of the words ‘humans’ or ‘people’ with the word ‘Blogs’
2. Replace every occurence of the word ’society’ with the word ‘Blogosphere’
3. Replace every occurence of the word ‘money’ with the word ‘traffic’
4. Replace every occurence of the phrase ‘elite class’ with ‘A-list’

Surprised, eh?

Yes, apparently, you can treat blogs the blogsphere on par with human evolution human society. Just as the human society is divided into classes, so are blogs. And, every blog is a part of some closed community.

The Flame approach worked for these guys who started off as a rant blog. Look where they are today - among the top 10 in WordPress Blogs.

Like society, there is no dearth of writing talent in the Blogosphere. It just takes some time to be discovered and some discoveries happen too late. Some happen too early.

Some don’t happen at all.

I think I know what hapens to mine.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, capitalism, A-list, society, comparison

A vulnerability was recently discovered in the Windows WMF format which could lead to your system being compromised. Security analyst Ilfak Guilfanov has reated a patch for the this vulnerability.

You can read more about the vulnerability on Ilfak’s site or download the patch. The patch provided by him is on an AS-IS basis and unofficial. Yet, SANS security center advises that the patch be downloaded and installed on every Windows machine.

Note: The Sans guys have reverse engineered the patch and found it to be effective. Yet, install the same at your own discretion. Me, I have installed it. You?

Read more at www.hexblog.com/2006/01…