June 30, 2005
(Updated) Five Local Blog Sites Might Be Getting Interesting New Traffic
Mentioned In 'Commerce' Magazine
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
Over at the back end of the July edition of Commerce (the monthly magazine from the same people who publish The Daily Journal of Commerce) editor and publisher Brian Hunt has a column on blogs.
Now, most of you won't be able to access that link, since the site is restricted to subscribers. But we mention it mainly to give a heads-up to four local blogs, and one blog-related site, which appear in an inset in the print edition of the article:
For what it's worth, here's a pull quote from Hunt's column: "In the free market of ideas, like other free markets, demand is met with supply. That the supply - in this case blogs - is so vast and varied really only points to an equally vast and varied demand."
So, as we said, this is the heads-up that if the above authors aren't already being read by the readers of The Daily Journal of Commerce or Commerce the magazine, that audience might be coming your way in the days ahead.
And we say "interesting" new traffic in the headline here not because the readership of these print publications is any more interesting than anyone else, but because it might be an audience that has not previously been exposed to the local blogosphere.
June 30th, 2005 Update
Courtesy of Brian Hunt himself, here's his column (pdf), so those of you without access to the website can read it for yourselves.
Comments (7)
Kari Chisholm on 30 Jun 2005
Interesting. Of course, in the blog world, supply of particular kinds of content is NOT related to to the demand for that content.
After all, many blogs are pure vanity projects - written by their author solely for their own pleasure. Like a virtual diary.
The better question relates to wide array of blogs with meaningful audiences...
Interesting that the DJC didn't cover the array of local small-business blogs that are starting to crop up in Oregon, like the Portland Real Estate Blog, and Landfair Furniture, Fine Earth, and Kerry O'Neal
The One True b!X on 30 Jun 2005
I think the vastness of the supply of blogs of related to the demand in this sense: In a realm of free and easy publishing, it's nearly inevitable that any given supply actually has a demand out there, once they find each other.
I just don't think it's causal, in that the demand for certain blogs doesn't necessarily generate the supply. They just happen to come together at some point, once they locate each other.
tomhiggins on 30 Jun 2005
I have had this argument with several folks over the last umpteate years, what drives and what is worth in the embarsement of riches we call the internet.
I think what scares many people off of blogs, podcasts and the new ways to offer content is the raw nature of the vast scope of choices. Many folks are driven by a pre selected menu, they can pick from a couple of options but dread making choices from a menu with hundreds of options. Are they making the "right" choice, are they wasting a choice, what if the choice they make is horrible and makes them seem not of the particular body they are joined with.
Freedom is not always about freedom of choice, often its freedom from choice.
Of course we are seeing the fear, uncertianity and doubt of those who are looking for a freedom from choice. The market is fast answering thier needs with predigested podcast lists, indexes of known blogs, top sites that would mesh with thier body of being.
For those looking for freedom of choice, this is an amazing time to be cognizant.
-tomhiggins
Tenskwatawa on 30 Jun 2005
Blog insiders could see 'interesting' (I'd kinda say 'weird') new traffic, but there is scant trace that outsiders can see if the newbies do not leave comments. And most newbies, window shoppers, tire kickers, whatever, do not compose comments.
The 'supply' contra 'demand' line of thought invokes terms of commerce, and transactions, however I can't find something to hold -- a purchase -- in them. The blog, (to blog, blogging -- is 'blog' noun or verb?), is not conventional commercial trade although substantive material is exchanged between scribblemonger, (however vain, impassioned, quizzical, poetic, analytic, observant, wordy), and scribblereaders. Blog is like stage and audience, but it's different. Blog is like newspaper and reader, but it's different.
Blog is most like a phone call, and business people doing business know all about phone calls. The essential distinction in blog is interaction. It is two-way. Stage and audience, or daily paper and subscribers, are not especially two-way experiences. Blog is like a voice mail -- you come back after lunch and there's a new message on the machine. Well, for those in the blog thick-of-it, after lunch (or anytime) there may be new messages on twenty machines, or fifty or a hundred, (newbies wouldn't imagine so much 'web browsing,' offhand), and for each of the two-way blogs the message reader has to decide whether to 'return the call' or not.
But as noted at the top, if dozens or hundreds of 'new traffic' blog readers stop by long enough to read a post-and-comment thread, (in analogy: rewind the tape and listen to the messages), all that traffic does not necessarily leave trace evidence. Or what evidence there is, is subtle. My favorite is the subtle- and sublime-most, and I describe it below.
First, one last facet to mention of blog, (to blog, blogging). (If the telephone call analogy doesn't really describe this realm vivid to your mind, maybe think of chess-by-mail ... with multiple players over each game board, sending in 'moves' asynchronously ... and 20, 50, 100 games going simultanesously ... except there is no 'king' to capture and no winner / loser ... maybe there is an aesthetic in the pattern that evolves among the 'pieces' on a 'board,' or in the variations of thoughts and 'moves' and creative stimulus. Whatever; singularly business-minded persons don't tend to visualize chess-by-mail too readily, either, I suppose. Let it go. Simply read. Who gets it, gets it; who doesn't, gets it somewhere somehow else.) Anyway, this one facet. I can see "interesting new traffic" but I could call it 'weird' because of what I call the 'zoo effect.' At the zoo, which side of the cage has the seer and which side has the seen? Who hasn't wondered if the tigers are not looking at us as much or more than we are looking at them? 'Appraising' is possibly a better word for the transaction than 'looking.' So the point, if I can call it that, is 'here' in blogville we see coming some unaccustomed traffic; out 'there' in traffic they see unaccustomed exhibits. That's weird, in my book. I just thought 'we' might warn 'them.'
Tips for newbies: When at a blog, notice any listing of 'favorite blogs' that could be present. References to other blogs. Watch for frequently reappearing references. Go to these referenced blogs. And from them to their references. And on and on ... and when some chain of links comes back around to where you started, then you are in the blogosphere.. (Should be 'blog-o-circle.')
Okay, as promised, one of my favorite subtleties. This is when there is one voice saying one thing, and let's say it is seen saying it repeatedly either in same content or same format. Then a second voice comes along from somewhere. (It is all sort of like a vast conference call, with every human on earth on the line.) A second voice enters and says something, and thereafter the first voice, without announcing that he or she has been affected stops what had been their repetition and starts saying their thing differently, either changing content or changing form. That's it, that's the subtlety I love. I recognize that this description is so vague as to sound nonsensical. And maybe it is nonsense. ('Maybe' this and 'maybe' that -- another tip could be to advise newcomers against making assumptions about the gender, age, experience, circumstances, or purpose behind any words of any voice that appears; and at the same time but advising exactly the opposite -- often you can be concretely certain you know who is speaking and what they are saying. It is sort of like what I think it was Count Basie advised newcomers in listening to jazz music: "If it sounds good, it IS good.") Bottom line: What my vague description is about is expressing the moment of learning, when some mind, in a blog, learns something. It's ephemeral, as they say. Transitory. Sublime. You had t'be there.
For a closing, allow me to demonstrate. A moment of learning. Perhaps. In the following sentence, position your cursor on the text 'LINK' and click the mouse and you will be transferred to a photo album showing a frame of reference you never knew existed but is all around you. The bottom photo is the one to see, of several taken on nine eleven where something flew into the Pentagon and left a hole in the wall, (which collapsed :30 minutes later), and the hole is not big enough for a Boeing 757 to fit into, and there are no mangled chunks of debris outside the hole, as you can see, at this LINK .
Nine eleven events were all staged. I don't know what went in the hole. (There were photos taken of it flying in low but they have all been confiscated and classified top secret.) I don't know where the plane went that was said to have gone in the hole but obviously didn't. Maybe the photo and several hundred others by multiple photographers at a panorama of angles is all faked. Look and see what you think. What I think is that what TV said happened is not what actually happened. Sometimes there is subtle learning at this moment, which can be sensed in voices. And then a lot of other things around us that came as a consequence and just don't seem right and don't add up and were never this way and don't make sense -- suddenly make sense.
The One True b!X on 30 Jun 2005
I don't think I've ever seen a more surreal implementation of threadjacking than that.
Gen. A. Burnside on 01 Jul 2005
Nor a more boring one.
Tenskwatawa on 01 Jul 2005
b!X, How can we tell if any new traffic came along?