Category: Weblogs

Tuesday, 6 December 2005

Why Google Analytics Isn’t Useful

by Garrick van Buren 4 Comments on Why Google Analytics Isn’t Useful

After a couple months of being completely without site analytics, I thought I’d try out Google Analytics.

Things it doesn’t measure; RSS feeds, downloads, downloads from RSS feeds.

Considering 95% of what I’m tracking is accessible via an RSS feed (like podcasts). Google isn’t helping me. The previous iteration of their tool – Urchin, was a server log cruncher, not a pixel bug (little big of javascript on every page). As a server log cruncher – I could measure RSS subscriptions and related downloads. As a pixel bug – despite how sexy the map overlay view of traffic is – I’m helping Google more than the other way around.

I’m confident the people that I’m writing this for – i.e. you – are reading this via some type of RSS aggregator (yes, My Yahoo and the gFeed counts). So, ironically, the people I’m most interested in – i.e. you – aren’t counted via Google. Only the people viewing the HTML version of the site. Like those coming by via Google. Hmmmmm. This doesn’t feel right.

Related: Read/WriteWeb: “Page Views per user: RSS blows HTML away”

Update 5 Jan 2006: Google Analytics doesn’t give full referrer URLs. It’d be more useful if it did.

Wednesday, 2 November 2005

Who Listens If Everyones Podcasting?

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Who Listens If Everyones Podcasting?

Local NBC affiliate KARE11 came by this morning to talk podcasting and we continued the ‘who’s the audience when everyone publishes?’ conversation.

I don’t think this is a question about too much stuff to pay attention to, it’s a question about ownership of the publication process.

Traditionally, recording companies, television stations, newspaper publishers had an iron grip on the voices that were published. Their whims determined which perspectives received airtime and column inches. They kept the amount of information published down to what their capacity could support – an no more. They were gatekeepers not filters.

I’d much rather have the problem of too much to choose from than gatekeepers preventing things from being published.

Tuesday, 25 October 2005

On Weblogs, Product Placement Worth More Than Banner Ads

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on On Weblogs, Product Placement Worth More Than Banner Ads

Yesterday, A List Apart, Signal vs. Noise and Coudal announced a new ad network in the vein of John Grubers’ Daring Fireball sponsorhip model. Limited capacity, reasonable rates, blah, blah.

Yes, all 4 of these blogs are extremely popular, and I can’t say enough good things about Daring Fireball. John is frank, curt, and snide on Apple – and I think it’s fantastic. The point is, I don’t read them for the banner ads – I read them for the posts, the commentary, the stuff I don’t know yet.

I don’t remember the last time I clicked on a banner ad (I’m blind to them, and they don’t come through in feeds), I do remember the last time I used a new product or service because I read about it at SvN (The fantastic CampaignMonitor immediately comes to mind).

So, why are blogs selling banner ads when they should be selling product placement?
An artificial separation between editorial and advertising? Transparency solves that problem.

Watch this space throughout the day there’s more behind this that I don’t have time to write down yet.

If you’re on the Work Better RSS feed, expect this entry to flip back to ‘unread’ throughout the day. Until then, remember RSS is an ad.

UPDATE 29 Oct 2005:
Back in my college speech classes, I’d play an informal product-placement game. Just before my speech, I’d have another student pick an unrelated concept or product to work into the speech.

If non-banner-ad, paid advertising were to work in weblogs, this is how. Counting click-through – not impressions – on links using the NoFollow tag inside posts.

  • The advertiser and author agree on how frequently to link to a specific page.
  • The author retains the rights on link word selection and context.
  • The relationship is fully disclosed on the site.
  • The creative writing might even provide a little joy to the readers.

Thursday, 15 September 2005

How to Blog for Higher Search Engine Ranking

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on How to Blog for Higher Search Engine Ranking

Blogging, aside from being one of the easiest ways to publish online, is also one of the easiest ways to increase search engine rankings.

Search engine spiders like Google’s GoogleBot expect websites to change and be updated frequently. Blogs are (or should be), so the spiders come by more frequently. Once the spiders are at you’re weblog, they look for keywords in 4 places:

  1. Window title (in the window, above the address bar)
  2. URL (in the address bar)
  3. Article title
  4. In the article itself

WordPress, the weblog system I prefer, sets the window title and URL from the article title. Then, it’s just a matter of writing a title representative of the article and writing an article worth reading.

Listing your category archives and recent articles as links in the sidebar automatically increases the keyword count on the page – automatically increasing your google juice.

Monday, 5 September 2005

Until Audio Hijack Pro for Video, Videoblogging Won’t Take Off

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Until Audio Hijack Pro for Video, Videoblogging Won’t Take Off

Before I made my first videoblog, I assumed there were 2 challenges video-blogging had to overcome before it could be as be as hot as podcasting

  1. File size for video are a magnitude larger than audio, so bandwidth is that much more precious. Without something like BitTorrent, each additional download is money out of the producer’s pocket.
  2. Videoblogs aren’t portable. Unlike podcasts, I can’t catch up with my videoblogs while on the bike or in the car. For video, I’m tied to my laptop. Less fun for me.

Both of those are somewhat strawmen arguments, I was able to compress my 17 minute video down to something acceptable even by podcast standards. So the bandwidth is less of a concern. The second point will be mute as soon as more portable digital video players get on the market (any day now really…yes, really…holding breath).

The biggest challenge facing videoblogging is the production effort. In podcasting, if I don’t feel like doing any post-production, I have Audio Hijack Pro handle everything for me; recording, ID3 tags, mp3 conversion, and FTP uploading (via an Automator script).

When I’m done recording, the podcast is up.

Over on the video side it was 36 hours from when I shot the video to when I uploaded it. Much of that waiting for the laptop.

I’d love to see something like Audio Hijack Pro for video.

Wednesday, 17 August 2005

The Mass Market Mentality vs Individual Customer

by Garrick van Buren 2 Comments on The Mass Market Mentality vs Individual Customer

Doug Kaye states Mark Ramsey doesn’t get podcasting.

Mark Ramsey replies that Doug doesn’t get broadcasting.

Yes, podcasting is a great opportunity for broadcasters to experiment and create a farm team. Yes, podcasting is a no-brainer for a broadcasters to connect with their audience on their audience’s terms. Finally, Yes, podcasting is the easiest way to share audio on a very specific, niche topic with self-selected people.

Mark is right, podcasting and videoblogging can’t be shoehorned into traditional distribution channels:

“But ask your local movie theater how much they care to show a movie only a few people see, ask the local bookseller how much they want to stock a book only a few folks buy.”

No, it doesn’t make sense for a movie theater to show an extremely niche production. Though perhaps if they did, it would help solve their current attendance problems. Mark Cuban suggests focusing on the customer also. Though, perhaps even movie theaters are already catering to niche audience; those that don’t find DVDs from Netflix good enough.

On the Silicon Valley Gillmor Gang, Robert Scoble complains that while Adam Curry’s early Daily Source Codes were addictive (that’s why I started podcasting), Curry’s PodShow on Sirius Satellite Radio isn’t interesting in the least. Proving that podcasting is unique from radio, just as blogs are unique from newspapers, and videoblogs are unique from television.

Nothing in podcasting requires it to be a stepping stone to mass appeal. It could be, and this is a benefit – especially to broadcasters. But podcasting can in-fact be the end game. Independent and ignorant of broadcasting’s constraints a podcaster could build a small (less than 10,000), loyal, and passionate listener base by fulfilling an extremely specific niche. A successful podcast – though a failure by broadcast measures.

iTunes Top 100 Podcast list (counting the number of times in 24 hrs the ‘subscribe’ link was clicked), the Feedster Top 500 list, and every other Top X listing is an attempt at shoehorning. As Dave Slusher eludes, these rankings assume all blogs and podcasts are competing for the exact same audience. If you’re looking for a blog or podcast on gardening in the Upper Midwest or learning Japanese, these lists don’t help. More on the “Evils of Head-ism” at the Long Tail including the fantastic, “Nobody cares if bananas outsell soft drinks.”

Ultimately, I’m talking about 2 very different mentalities:

  1. The market is a mass of nameless, faceless consumers with the same basic needs and the goal is to make advertisers happy.
  2. The market is made of individual customers, each with very specific needs and the goal is to build a deep, unique relationship with them directly.

Considering customers now regularly blog about their market experiences, I recommend option number 2. As does Seth Godin in his recent ‘Clueless’ post

Friday, 15 July 2005

Notes from Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, RSS, and More Talk

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Notes from Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, RSS, and More Talk

Great turnout at my MN-ASIS Brain Food Sampler talk earlier this week. We covered quite a bit of ground in 30 minutes, thanks to everyone attending for the great questions. Here are Ann Treacy‘s notes, published as her latest Byte of the Week email newsletter (Thanks again Ann):

“Last night I went to a great presentation by Garrick Van Buren to the Minnesota chapter of the American Society of Information Science and Technology. He was terrific! I am killing two birds today by writing up my notes and sharing them with you and ASIST. So today’s Byte is an annotated bibliography of many of the resources Garrick mentioned on wikis, blogs, RSS, and podcasts.”

  • Garrick’s web site – includes links to various blogs, wikis, and podcasts, including Garrick’s podcast, First Crack.
  • WordPress – software to help you create/maintain a blog. As their site says, they’re “free, yet priceless.”
  • Audacity – open source audio recording for creating a podcast.
  • Audio Hijack Pro – upgraded software for creating a podcast.
  • Audioblogger – easy tool for creating podcasts, much like blogger.com for blogs.
  • WikkaWiki – software to create a wiki (a wiki is akin to a shared blog).
  • NetNewsWire – an RSS reader – for info consumers.
  • Feedburner – Helps you generate and track an RSS feed that you have created – for info creators
  • MNspeak part blog, part wiki, part old fashioned web conference.
  • Trackback – this is the Wikipedia definition of Trackback, a concept that allows and tracks posts among blogs with a reduced chance for spam.
  • Technorati – a search engines for blogs (aka the blogosphere).
  • Google Patent – we mentioned this last night, this is my [Ann’s] favorite article on the topic.

Tuesday, 28 June 2005

Garrick Speaking at MN-ASIS Brain Food Sampler July 12

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Garrick Speaking at MN-ASIS Brain Food Sampler July 12

On Tuesday, July 12th, I’ll be evangelizing podcasts, wikis, RSS, and weblogs as part of MN-ASIS’s “And Now for Something Completely Different” brain food sampler series.

Date & Time: 5:00 – 6:30 Tuesday July 12 (speaker starts at 5:30)
Place: Pad Thai 1659 Grand Ave just west of Macalester College
RSVP atreacy@ treacyinfo.com that you’ll be joining us
Cost: None

Friday, 24 June 2005

Thursday, 5 May 2005

Minneapolis Scobleized

by Garrick van Buren 10 Comments on Minneapolis Scobleized

Tim, Cody, Chuck and I grabbed a drink with Robert Scoble tonight. And I also met local open source CMS developer Tim Broeke from ElectricJet.

If you’re finger isn’t on the pulse of weblogs, Scoble is Microsoft’s überblogger. He was in town to start a conversation with Target. I applaud Target for this.

There are only a handful of companies people feel really passionate about. So passionate you don’t want them to get started (yeah, like me with weblogs and podcasts). These are companies that would have to do something really, really stupid for their impassioned customers to blink.

Target is one of those companies.

Jen is one of those customers. She knows Target’s different layouts. We get the Sunday Star Tribune for the Target flyer. There was a moment of silence in our house when T-1 was demo’d. I’ve talked to a number of others around the US, just as passionate.

To me, companies with a customer base this passionate are obligated to cultivate an intimate conversation. Whether this is weblogging, in its many forms, or some other community-building technique, I think that’s up for discussion and experimentation.

As always, I look forward to seeing the fruit of whatever seeds Scoble planted.