A quote from Mike Arrington:

Yesterday as I was leaving the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany someone walked up to me and quite deliberately spat in my face. Before I even understood what was happening, they veered off into the crowd, just another dark head in a dark suit. People around me stared, then looked away and continued their conversation.

What I found particularly disturbing: “People around me stared, then looked away and continued their conversation.”

That’s a cold thing for people to do and it clearly sends a message: In the technology/start up niche, Arrington is “needed”. He is a necessity to get publicity. He is not liked and one could question if he is respected. To put this into perspective, how many people go to their jobs because they need the job, but detest the work or detest the people they work with? It’s the same thing.

Consequences

In everything we do, there are consequences to our actions. Arrington has done some questionable things (not like we all haven’t at some point in our lives) and some seemed very vindictive. Of course there are things that happen in the background the public knows nothing about. It has been said many times by people behind start ups that they felt they “had” to get on TechCrunch or they would not thrive. Not to knock TechCrunch but the site should have healthy competition, there should not be “one” site that dominates because it isn’t good for the niche. It gives one entity too much control and that is never a good thing.

Unfortunately, the resentment seems to have built up without doing anything to mitigate the damage it was creating. The person who did it knew Arrington wasn’t going to fight back because he rarely does. He admitted in the article that he didn’t respond to negative comments/articles (understandable considering the volume) and I can understand the position he was/is in but it’s like being on the playground and letting someone kick your butt. I have no doubt it would have been tough to respond to all of those things but saying nothing sent out the message that there are no consequences for malicious behavior (there is a difference between negative criticism and attacking someone verbally).

About Those Consequences….

You reap what you sew. Do I agree with someone spitting on Arrington? Absolutely not. It’s cowardly, despicable behavior. Do I agree with the people who stood there and said nothing? Absolutely not. If I knew who they were I’d make sure I’d never buy their product, visit their blog, or aid in their success at all. However, whether one wants to admit it or not, the actions Arrington made over the years led up to the spitting incident. People continuing their conversations when he was spat on shows the animosity that has been brewing for years. It’s great to take some time off but the problems will still be there.

Dave Winer recently realized he is one of the most hated people on the internet. He’s right, he is…right up there with Arrington. Hated. Resented. Ridiculed. I don’t agree with those adjectives and I don’t agree with everything Winer (nor Arrington) says but I respect his accomplishments just as I respect Arrington’s.

The difference between the two is that Winer is actively attempting to do something to change his reputation. Arrington is taking a vacation. Eventually, if Arrington wants things to change, he will have to make an effort to undo the animosity and dislike people in his niche feel towards him.

Or it will happen again. Or worse.

When I feel like it. I’m serious, I don’t have a set number.

When I was growing up, when someone retired they quit their job and never worked again. Today things are very different. The retirement age is higher, people are able to work longer and more important (being realistic) people have to work longer to survive.

But those things have nothing to do with why I don’t have a set age for retirement.

I’m not the kind to retire, sit on my ass and do nothing. I’m not a workaholic like Oprah…I guess I’m more like Dave Winer in this regard. He has the wealth (it seems) to not have to work but still dabbles in different projects. I think most people have an unrealistic view of retirement. The common image that comes to mind is relaxing, enjoying the world, life with little problems or worries. That is not what most people experience when they retire and I intend to enjoy life right now.

Have you noticed wealthy people don’t retire? I noticed this when I worked in the accounting field. Unless born into money the wealthy don’t have a problem working and actually enjoy it. I learned through experience that with increased wealth comes increased responsibilities, obligations and expenses. Fortunately for the wealthy, they usually don’t mind dabbling in new projects. It’s how they created their wealth in the first place – with a strong desire for success.

I guess a better question for me is when do I hope to be in a position where financially, I no longer have to worry about expenses? I’m getting close to the number…I better get cracking, huh?

Yes, it serves me right, and I, of all people, know better, than to build a network on a single point of failure, depending on one company, that is known for producing unreliable systems in an industry with incredibly thin skin (how can they get better if they won’t listen). In other words, this is hardly Murphy’s Law, it was easily predictable. It was likely.

From TechCrunch:

So while Robert Scoble speculates that FriendFeed is the big winner when Twitter goes down, and Dave Winer hacks together contingency plans for the next outage that remind me of stockpiling candles and bottled water for the next big storm, I just shake my head at how wonderfully we’ve all be had.

For others the Twitter habit started long ago. And for most people, it is yet to start. But the trend is clear: Twitter is becoming an Internet utility. And their monopoly power via the network effect they’ve earned means they don’t have to worry much about downtime. We’ll all still be sitting here patiently, waiting for it to return.

Haha, no, Tyme won’t be waiting patiently because Tyme was smart enough not to become dependent on a third party application like Twitter.

Let me be clear: I’m not right all the time, don’t want to be right all the time and hell, I even suck at some things but wow, the writing on the wall was blatant on this one and it’s further proof that, for some reason, we (as a whole) do not learn from past mistakes. From knowledge we’ve gained in the past.

When have monopolies EVER been a good thing? Monopolies are wonderful for the companies that own them but suck for the end-users dependent on them because the end-user is completely at their mercy…and they know it. But you want to know what the funniest part is? People have been laughing at Shel Israel’s videos but he nailed an interview with the Twitter guys (I’m talking about the content revealed in the video):

• They said that the average Twitter user should Twitter approximately 3 times a day. That’s right – 3 times a day. If you’re Twittering more than that, and became dependent on Twitter, you aren’t using it the way it was built to be used in the first place (you know, answering the question “what are you doing right now?”).
• The average Twitter user has about 10 followers and follow 10 people – like real life! Approximately 5% of their user base has a high number of followers.
• Twitter is being used more and more in business (helping companies extend their brand).
• They are focused on reliability because without reliable service they will not be able to expand. They are focused on making Twitter a global utility people rely on every day and once that happens, they will be monetize their services.

What does this mean? Their core audience probably didn’t notice their outage issues this weekend. Not to ignore the geeks but honestly, do you build a company for 5% of your users or the other 95%?

It’s Time to Find Another Solution

Twitter is a great application to use for conferences, if you’re traveling, etc. Some of the business applications would work as well. For the average person, there shouldn’t be a daily dependency on Twitter. There are more efficient ways to interact with people. Jumping to other third-party apps isn’t a solution either.

I’m not a programmer but it seems that the solution would be, instead of finding centralized solutions, to find a way to better aggregate information. And no, I don’t mean by being dependent on FriendFeed – another 3rd party application. As technology evolves I think the opportunity is there to create better applications (that we control) to aggregate information. We already have RSS, Atom, IM, etc. – are there ways to use them more efficiently? Why can’t my blog accept a text message from a cell phone (or IM client) if I authorized them to do so? Why aren’t there more sites like Technorati (which would be Tweetscan and Summarize for Twitter) to better aggregate data? Can hash tags be monitored on blogs/sites?

This is the problem I see with Dave’s solution of piping into FriendFeed. When Twitter goes down people flock over to FriendFeed – what is FriendFeed supposed to do, maintain extra hardware in the event Twitter goes down? Are we, as users, supposed to keep attempting to maintain profiles all over the internet, creating a ridiculous amount of duplicate information. Think about it, how many times have you encountered being subscribed to the blog, see a notification on their Twitter about the blog post, log into FriendFeed and see that same blog entry there, log into Facebook and see the imported note about the blog post there…it’s ridiculous. People cross-post because they want people to see their content. Bring the people back to the blog/site and they will. People using these services want followers and how many of them have more followers on a third-party site than their own blog/site? A high percentage unfortunately.

The root solution is to not be so spread out we rely on third party services to accumulate our own data in the first place. I could understand it better if FriendFeed only aggregated information but they allow commenting within FriendFeed, meaning content is being created in another area one has to monitor. Realistically for people using FriendFeed with their blog, their site is competing with FriendFeed with comments. If someone doesn’t use FriendFeed they are missing a portion of the conversation about your content. Does that make sense?

Instead of aggregating “me” from five different sites into one area, how about how about finding a solution to better aggregate blog/site content, where more than one company provides this service, giving users options and control over the content we are creating? I’m not a programmer but there seems like there should be a better, more efficient, way of creating different types of content in one area and aggregating it efficiently.

Going through my feeds I noticed Dave Winer has a solution to this problem. RSS has a comments element built in. If a feed reader supports the comments element it will show an icon that, when clicked on, will take you to the blog owner’s page to make a comment. I like that. Correction, I love that. I hope all feed readers begin to support the comments element, especially online aggregators. I really think FriendFeed should refer the reader to the writer’s site, not allow comments within their site, especially if the RSS feed has the comments element in it.

I realized there is another layer of recognition needed. My RSS reader supports the comments element. I have no idea how long it has been supporting it. Unfortunately, I’ve never used it. I never even paid attention to the icon. While looking to see if my RSS reader supported the comments element (and feeling like a dumb ass when I realized it did) I noticed other icons I never paid attention to, like the ability to see who else linked to an article. I think the reason why I never paid attention to them: the icons are gray so they blend in with the text. Fortunately the RSS reader I use makes it easy to switch up the icons and I just might to that to enhance my user experience. Ironically newer icons added to the program have color.

Familiarize yourself with the interface of the applications you use. You may realize the program has ways built in to make you more efficient. Now that I know I can click to comments easily I will comment more. I don’t think some site owners realize how inconvenient it is to comment on their site. Two extra clicks can be the breaking point for someone commenting.

Check and see if your feed has the comments element. It seems WordPress has it by default. I looked at the ExpressionEngine blog and theirs have the comment element in it so it might be in ExpressionEngine by default as well. I have no idea about the other blogging tools. Check if your feed reader supports the comment element. Online readers might have to get with the program and add the element.

I just noticed some of our feeds on 9rules/Chawlk do not support the comment element. I’m going to be a brave soul and suggest we add it. Pray for me ya’ll.

The bubble really began in earnest on October 9, 2006 when Google bought YouTube. That’s when every person with an entrepreneurial itch woke up and smelled the hype and money. Prior to then, startups were more focused on the entrance, not the exit. But the Google YouTube deal and many others that followed (including big time investments) really opened up the floodgates to money and it changed the attitude of the web.

The problem: The people behind these companies are so wrapped up in the unrealistic expectation of becoming rich (the exit) the entrance (making a quality product or service that users will appreciate and has longevity) is ignored. One of the reasons the guys and I started 3by9 was due to the lack of honesty about anything internet related anymore. We talked about that in the podcast (not work safe…there’s cursing in that podcast).

This weekend I ventured out (in a night social setting) for the first time in months because I’ve been recuperating. My friends and I were invited to a party in an area we normally do not socialize in. There was a wide age range at the party – between 21 and 50+. I think I had one alcoholic drink the entire evening because I wanted to soak in my new surroundings. The trend was to get drunk and act like kids. An example, fake tongue kisses. Drunk, the female sticks her tongue out, the guy leans in for the “kiss” (that never happens) and they take a picture. My daughter and her friends outgrew that last year. Now I understand when people say they (the people there that night) don’t feel comfortable around people who don’t drink. They claim it’s to understand the “jokes”. No. It’s to excuse the fact they are about to revert to childhood. The 20 year olds in my party were just as stunned as I was at the behavior these kids who call themselves adults were displaying so it wasn’t an age thing. The general assessment was it was “okay” (but pathetic) if the person was under 25 but over 25 was ridiculous. These people honestly didn’t know how to act in a social setting and once sober, makes the excuse “I had too much to drink, whoops!” – acknowledging their behavior was messed up.

The people acting like kids are the ones that want to start a businesses and cash out quick. They put as much thought into their startup as they do when they socialize. There is a huge difference between having a good time and reverting to child-like behavior just like there is a huge difference between focusing on the exit instead of the entrance. They take their immature behavior (meaning: emotionally undeveloped; juvenile; childish), start a company that is so focused on making a quick buck it sucks, fill it with their immature friends, find some other immature people to support their lack luster effort, then they pray. Or never excels in the first place.

“You never learn anything hanging with the same people.” – Dave Winer

I wonder how long it will take these people to realize they first have to grow up and to do that they have to shed their immature behavior? The immature, unrealistic behavior doesn’t stay parked in the club…it’s littered in everything they do. Which is why they think a half-ass effort will really work. Which is why those half-ass efforts are supported for a hot minute by immature people who don’t see the half-ass effort. Which is why most, even if they receive that venture capital, never get that unrealistic exit they were expecting. Instead of drinking vodka and gin they should have been drinking Kool-Aid – that’s the kiddie drink.

Here’s an example: Tom, the MySpace founder, is lying about his age and has been lying from the beginning. If you read the comments on Tech Crunch you’ll immediately be able to tell the kid from the adult. This comment sums it up pretty good:

I’d agree that this isn’t earth-shattering news, but it *is* interesting (at least to me). It raises the question of why this dude felt the need to lie about his age. Is there some sort of real or perceived age bias out west? If so, then I’ll make a point not to move there! I’m 39, I live in the midwest USA, and no-one seems to care about age here. You can either get the job done or you can’t. To be honest, my age means that I’ve been able to acquire more experience and develop more skills than most people younger than me. Why would I want to hide that?

It’s not the age, it’s the behavior, the frame of mind…the maturity. That is what is the basis on how well a job gets done. The internet is filled with crap because the people behind those startups lack the right frame of mind, the maturity to successfully launch and maintain a business.

Sorry kiddies, only grown-ups can sit at the grown-up table.

I’m really excited about the “TechCrunch Sponsors” area of the site in the top right. This is an area where people can purchase a permanent presence on TechCrunch and gain access to our audience. We’re going to be very selective about the brands we allow there – we’re not just putting their logos up, we’re saying that we believe in the product as well.

I bet you are Mike. Let’s check out why you’re so excited, since you’re pimping it:

Pricing for each of the four ad units is currently $7,500 per month, which translated to a very low CPM. There is a minimum term of two months, followed by a month-to-month plan where either party may terminate the relationship on 30 days notice.

4×7500=30,000×12=$360,000 a year

Let’s quote Mike:

Revenue generation from advertising isn’t and won’t be the primary goal of this site because the value of TechCrunch isn’t in page views, but in networking (I agree with Dave Winer almost entirely on this).

Yeah, right. What a difference six months makes. To find that entry I had to dig around a bit, and I noticed another pageview inflating change. The archives (if you can find them) only has 5 entries per page. To find the entry I was looking for I impatiently had to click several pages back. In total I probably created 20 impression just trying to find what I knew was there. Makes me take a much closer look at those impression figures.

Quoting Mike…again:

And if you’re wondering about the green theme, there’s a reason for it (hint – it keeps me focused on my goals).

Yes, I get it…laughing all the way to the bank. Thanks for bashing your readers over the head with the concept. Much appreciated…and I appreciate it so much…I unsubscribed. That much focus on money + that much money + change in policy = bias (to me).

Wouldn’t it be interesting if every certified A-lister, by convention, didn’t blog during the third week of every month. What if that idea caught on?

Yes Dave, that would be interesting…in an amusing but disastrous type of way.

1. Memeorandum wouldn’t update for a week (and sites like them).
2. Many non-bloggers would have nothing to read. Imagine no Boing Boing (they are all A-list bloggers), Scripting, Tech Crunch, Robert Scoble, Om Malik…;the list goes on.
3. Bloggers wouldn’t have anything to write about and would *gasp* have to create some original content. Not that many don’t but the vast majority point to…;you guessed it, A-listers. Hell, if Dave hadn’t written his entry, I wouldn’t be writing this one.

That’s the way it works.

The above scenario doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be quality content to read. Good luck finding it though. Technorati’s top searches would be filled with “how the internet went dead”. Think about it…;if they “really” stopped blogging for a week – there goes a big chunk of content for sites like ZDNET, CNET, Slashdot. And it would only get worse with services like BlogBurst, taking blog content and pushing it to traditional publishers.

This caused me to look at my entries a bit to see how this would affect me. I have a good balance of linking to A-listers, small blogs and creating original content. Keeping it real, that was not always the case. Looking back there are many entries where I looked in FeedDemon, something an A-lister wrote sparked my interest and I wrote about it…;like the A-List Shuffle entry. Almost a year to the day people were complaining that Dave is stingy with links.

Hello! Black woman, non-A-Lister was linked to by Dave. Again. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

I’d like to see the A-listers stop blogging just to see the impact it would have on the net, but it’s highly unlikely that would happen. Too much money would be lost that week.

Dave Winer writes that he is going to stop blogging. Why? Here’s one reason:

Blogging doesn’t need me anymore. It’ll go on just as well, maybe even better, with some new space opened up for some new things. But more important to me, there will be new space for me. Blogging not only takes a lot of time (which I don’t begrudge it, I love writing) but it also limits what I can do, because it’s made me a public figure. I want some privacy, I want to matter less, so I can retool, and matter more, in different ways. What those ways are, however, are things I won’t be talking about here. That’s the point. That’s the big reason why.

Let’s keep is real shall we? Blogging doesn’t “need” anyone.

Every A-Lister could stop blogging at once and the “blogosphere” will continue on. Heck, there are large numbers of people who pray for that because the opinions of many of the A-Lister’s differ from the new younger bloggers. No one is indispensable. I agree with Dave that blogging made him a public figure. I sympathize with him wanting some privacy and I definitely understand where he might feel that we could do more if he wasn’t so focused on. The minute he writes about something it’s ripped apart, not necessarily by individuals with an open mind.

Scott Karp has his thoughts:

The counter-theory to blogs as media institutions is that blogs are “cults of personality,” i.e. Scripting News is Dave Winer, and thus has no value without him.

I read Scripting News because it’s Dave’s blog. The minute he stops writing or someone else starts writing there, they’ve lost my attention. Scripting News is not an impartial news source. The site is filled with Dave’s thoughts and opinions.

What I find interesting is that so many people would want Dave to continue writing when he no longer feels comfortable doing it. Let’s be honest. If Dave took a hiatus the minute he started blogging again the word would spread so fast…his traffic would be almost as he left it.

Bloggers should blog when and how they feel comfortable; nothing more, nothing less. Would I hate to see Dave stop blogging? Yes, but I would never be so selfish to put my desire to read his words over his desire to write and publish them.

It’s probably much worse than that. My guess is that if you swapped the people on stage with an equal number chosen at random from the audience, the new panelists would effectively be smarter, because they didn’t have the time to get nervous, to prepare PowerPoint slides, to make lists of things they must remember to say, or have overly grandiose ideas about how much recognition they are getting. In other words, putting someone on stage and telling them they’re boss probably makes them dumber. In any case it surely makes them more boring.

I attended an unconference and as Dave says in his entry, once you attend an unconference, it’s hard to attend a traditional conference. At traditional conferences, I feel like I am in school, taking notes. I also found I learned less from the traditional conference than I did the unconference. The thought of attending a traditional conference bores me. I’m not going to pull out my wallet to be bored…and learn less. For example, I got some flack from readers for not attending this (for obvious reasons). But tell me, what can I learn in an hour that I don’t already know? Why wait for a conference to express yourself? If it’s that much of an issue why isn’t the situation addressed and actively discussed in an arena where change can take place…um…like on our blogs? I’m more interested in hanging out with these people and getting to know them than re-hashing the issues I bump into blogging. I’m not saying the panel is not worth while. I am saying the discussion should last more than an hour. Imagine a black person attending the Blogging While Black panel then attending the We Got Naked, Now What? panel. They pose the question: “Are men and women held to different standards as the personal and professional meld together?” Do I really need to attend a conference to find out the answer to that question? No, I have the answer. Question: do people of different races and gender encounter different problems? Yes, that could an all day discussion or deserves a conference of its own, like BlogHer. Speaking of naked….

SXSW brought up an interesting dilemma. Attending the conference was never an issue (yawn). Hanging out with people going to the conference (ie. bloggers) was appealing. Hanging out with readers is much more appealing. This is the first year where my not “appearing” drew serious flack. I don’t like pressure but the feedback brought up a good point (and I always listen)…if it’s this bad this year, it will be worse next year. I need a plan.

Thank goodness for me I’ve got one.

1) Exporting – yes I could create a template but the template would exclude items, important items, like comments.

2) Price increase – it went up from $99.95 to $149.95. Ouch

The price I could deal with but the exporting, something needs to be done about that. Well, I found the answer today. The Wiki is wrong….

Expression Engine does not have a Movable Type export function but there is a way to export using a template. You’re not going to find the right way to do it in the Knowledge Base nor the Wiki, because the Wiki is inaccurate. If I want comments I need to set the template to “input” not “output”. That simple change made it work for the most part. Smilies have the direct link to the image so if the blogger decides to use another application and delete EE, the smilies will break. Deleting all the paragraph tags is pretty simple using search/replace.

Making an RSS template is another way to do it and might be more reliable since the MT method doesn’t always import well (depending on the application you are importing to).

This is a commercial product and in my opinion the company has a responsibility to have this information on the website with easy to follow instructions. Props on the Wiki because I realize a lot of work went into it, but users paid $99.95-$249.95 for the software, there is no real excuse for the information not to be on the website…where it belongs.

Better yet, make the template available for download, just like the other templates.

You know what this means, right? Yes, another switch back to Expression Engine. I miss the power, I miss being able to throw up a new site by uploading two files – seriously, that’s it because EE allows multiple blogs. For the plans I have in my mind, EE does the job more efficiently.

Now that there is a free core version try it out. 

Update 12/19/05: Dave Winer has an excellent post on how exporting must be a standard. Unfortunately unless pMachine changes something they will not be able to participate, which means it is time for me to fire off an email….