Blog World Expo Presentation: Technology and the Real-Time Web

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The Blog's Place In A World of Microblogging: Not Dead Yet!

Even as the microblogging space seems to be white hot these days, the world of longer-form blogging is still seeing impressive growth, with all major blogging platforms showing greater than 20 to 40 percent growth year over year, and record users, blogs and total readers, according to Compete.com data and a presentation from Google's Rick Klau, product manager for Blogger, who spoke at Blog World Expo this afternoon. Rick reported that his platform, Blogger, which I use, is now seeing nearly 300,000 words per minute, scaling to 417 million words per month, from more than 10 million content creators.

Yet, despite this high usage, many have challenged the platform, saying "blogging is dead". There are more than 360,000 results on Google saying that "blogging is dead", with many high profile articles saying that disparate social networks like Facebook, FriendFeed and Twitter should be where people's attention are. But Rick said that the rise of microblogging didn't necessarily come at the expense of traditional blogging. In fact, he said these third party sites actually served to drive even more attention and traffic to the core blog content.

"Microblogs are complementary, not competitive," Rick said. "It is a driver of attention and engagement back to the blog."

For Rick, who has run his own personal blog (at tins.rklau.com) and has been active since 2001, he reported that Twitter has become the highest traffic generator for his site outside of search, and in that list, so also are Facebook and FriendFeed. He suggested rather than trying to fight against the flow on microblogging, to embrace it, and make sure your content is available to these disparate networks, while remembering to engage where it lands.

"The blog tends to be visited by people interested in what you are saying, and the people on Twitter and Facebook are interested in you, and by proxy, what you are saying," he said. "I happen to believe that based on what I have seen with my blog for eight years, people are comfortable communicating in the environment they have chosen. If I force the conversation back to the blog, I will lose the audience who have the eagerness to engage, comfortable where they live."

Rick suggested that if you are a Facebook user, to pull your blog content into Facebook, making it available to this new audience, who may leave comments much different than those which are native to your site. He also recommended that you utilize tools like bit.ly to track statistics and click-throughs to your site from those links you send through Twitter, to help you understand how much the microblogs are impacting your own blog.

Given his background at Google, Rick made it clear that the company's data-driven nature forced decisions, and the company continues to see serious growth in traditional blogs.

"There are very few questions that get asked at Google when I don't have the data to back up an answer," Rick said. "You don't get many opportunities to say "I feel" or "it seems" at Google."

But in his experience, Rick suggested that bloggers not get locked into writing posts for specific statistics, including page views. He said that as you are a multi-faceted person, you should be confident writing about more than just one thing, so one should feel comfortable covering more than just the single topic.

"Don't become a slave to the focus of your blog at the expense of having fun.You can be passionate about a wide variety of subjects," he added.

Blogging and micro-blogging are not a zero-sum game, but can be complimentary. Sending blog content to downstream networks makes that content available to those connections who are more comfortable in their own environment. As I have mentioned many times, your blog is your brand - which Rick echoed by saying that on your blog, you control every pixel, and therefore, the end user experience.

Bloggers need to adapt to the new world, but aren't antiquated in this new world. It makes sense to participate wherever the content lands and wherever your readers are, without pushing to centralize the conversation on your site, but there is no substitute for long-form conversations and being passionate. Rick communicated a simple formula: "Content + Passion + Engagement". And that will make the blog go, even in a world of change.

Cheezburger Network Scales Company By Focusing On Happy

The Web simply can't get enough funny cat pictures. Or dog pictures. Or sleeping cat pictures. Or pictures of people failing. Or creative approaches to fix things. The Cheezburger Network has grown dramatically, racing to the point where they are seeing a billion page views every four months, after it took nearly two years to reach the first billion. Growing the company on rapid scale is no accident, as the network has focused its business objectives on its customers, aiming to remove distractions and obstacles that could hinder potential growth.

Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger, said the company focused not on how many features they could push into the network, but instead on simplicity - letting the users dictate how the business would grow. And the company is realistic about what it aims to do. They aren't out to make a billion dollars in profit, or to change the world.

"Our mission statement is to make people happy for five minutes a day," Ben said today at Blog World Expo. "We kept hearing from our audience members, 'You make us happy,'. When you allow your users to dictate how your business will operate, and can develop a thick skin, that is how you grow."

If you have spent any amount of time on social networks, or received any e-mail outside of your office, you probably have encountered work from Cheezburger Network. From I Can Haz Cheezburger and I Has a Hotdog to the FAIL Blog, GraphJam, There, I Fixed It, E-mails from Crazy People and It Made My Day, the company is trying to reach a broad audience through more sites and more content, based on user feedback. In fact, today they announced a new site featuring sleeping animals, called Daily Squee, which is reminiscent of the also popular and off network Cute Overload.

The sites' mantras are pretty simple. Post funny pictures with custom captions. Ben said that human nature has a tendency to admire complexity, but rewards simplicity, and that through introducing complexity, it has an inverse effect on your business' ability to scale. Instead of investing in expensive custom software and hardware, Cheezburger utilizes standard products including WordPress, JS-Kit, YouTube, Google Apps, cloud storage and open source applications, keeping costs low.

While some of the network's sites may seem fanciful, they are thoughtfully planned out and new proposals are theorized frequently, and target those who may not yet be avid fans of the network. Ben theorized that half the company's traffic was non-critical and transient, while 30 percent of traffic constituted the regulars, another 15 percent were fans, and an elite 5 percent were people who show up every day, multiple times a day. He suggested that businesses focus on the greatest population that could migrate to higher devoted level (in this case the 30 percent), as that will increase the total number of fans, and discourage targeting the site by scaling to the power users, who are typically edge cases.

Beyond keeping its audience happy for 5 minutes at a time, Ben said the company frequently thinks in small time allotments, saying, "If I had wanted to work four hours a week, what would I have to do?" and asking, "If my users had forty seconds on the site, what would they want to do?" Key to satisfying these short term visitors? Eliminating distractions and removing barriers.

The goal is to keep the company in touch with what the users wanted, and purging common mistakes that come from within, including ego, pride, assumptions, sacred cows, secrets, coverups, and individual reputation. The result is one big fat happy network.

How To Rally Your Community, Leveraging Social Media

Social media is a tool. Last month I said social media is infrastructure, and I have compared Twitter to the new e-mail or a parallel Internet. Because of this, enterprising folks are finding ways to leverage these new tools for practically every facet of business, not just for social media marketing, or daily minutiae, but for rallying the community to support charity. I've talked a lot about the #BlameDrewsCancer phenomenon, featuring my good friend Drew Olanoff, but as we learned today at the Blog World Expo this morning, he is not alone in his efforts to leverage social media communities to take on cancer and other causes. The panelists all agreed it takes effort, persistence and consistency, making an abstract illness personal, real and tangible.

Drew has been relatively lucky in his challenge with cancer. His battle with stage 3 Hodgkins Lymphoma is very possibly nearing its conclusion, with 10 chemo treatments out of 12 behind him, and positive feedback from his doctors. But not everybody has a happy ending. Jay Scott, father of Alex from "Alex's Lemonade Stand", told us about how his daughter passed away at the tender age of 8 1/2 after fighting with cancer her whole life, and devoting her efforts to raise money the only way she knew how - selling lemonade on the family's front lawn. Jay and his team have rallied to continue her cause and make it into a movement that has inspired hundreds of thousands.

The tools that Jay, Drew and others have used to punch cancer in the mouth are the same tools we all use. Drew said, "It's not rocket science, it's word of mouth. If you have a passion, be passionate about it and use the tools in front of you." But he added it takes a ton of effort. He said, "It's not Field of Dreams here. You have to go after people and be aggressive. Whatever got your attention, I don't care what it is, I got your attention. All these tools are is platforms for people."

Meaghan Edelstein, who battled cervical cancer and won, said the main push from social networks is in the name itself: social. She said, "You have to get people excited. People are on social networks because they want to do something, so give them something to do."

But as you can imagine, fighting a faceless killer and rallying people to a cause is not as simple as setting up a Twitter account and Facebook page and watching the activity roll in. It takes serious work that is genuine and personal.

Meaghan said to "be authentic" and be a real person with real messages, and recognize that the smallest blog or least-followed Twitter account is just as important to embrace as the household names. "You are not too good for anybody else, and you have to remember that," she said. "You have to thank them and participate. That's what makes things authentic and social. If you don't have these things, you have to get out of the arena."

But all the effort in the world won't make a difference if the story doesn't sell.

Jay said "you have to have a good message, and if it is powerful, people will tell their friends about it," adding, "I can't believe how powerful retweets are. It helps if people have a million followers, but it also helps from those people who have ten followers."

When cancer took on Alex Scott, and took her away from the world much too soon, it may have been a short-term win for cancer at huge expense to her family and us all, but it turned out to be a massive mistake on cancer's part, because the cause has lived on and Alex has become a symbol for rallying for a good cause. Each of the day's panelists made it clear that their battle with cancer had gotten personal and their community has come to their aid.

Find out more about the causes:

• alexslemonade.org or @alexslemonade
  
• blamedrewscancer.com or @drew
  
• spiritjump.org or @spiritjump

Hey Bloggers, Step Away from the Twitter for a Second... and Blog

There are a few shiny things here in Vegas that have bloggers' attention. No question about it. There are shows and clothes, lookers and hookers, drinks and winks. But it could be a shiny blue bird, and the light of mobile phones that has many bloggers' attention this year, even if they are in Vegas instead of wherever they may call home. Blog World Expo, a conference dedicated to blogging, about blogging, featuring bloggers and discussing all things blogging, should see a whole lot of blogging. Right? But there's a high possibility that many will forgo full-size blogging, in exchange for everyone's favorite microblogging application, favoring hashtags over Technorati tags.


Chris Pirillo, lifecasting maven and tech geek to the masses, asked what many of us have been observing ourselves, this evening, when he said, "How many bloggers does it take to blog about Blog World Expo? None. They're all tweeting about it, instead." Now I will give bloggers the benefit of the doubt a bit for tonight only, given the show hasn't really kicked off. But as I noted at South By Southwest in the Spring, and at Blog World Expo last fall, there has come a tendency for those attending events to "live tweet" the event, 140 characters at a time, and not do the wrap-up report of what sessions they attended, ideas they encountered and people they met. And I wish this were not the case.

I don't want to be putting down any quasi-moral ultimatums about how the event is about the sessions and not about the parties, even if that's how I feel most days. I don't think it's my place to tell people to stop having so much fun and focus. But I do hope that those of us who have the privilege of calling ourselves bloggers actually blog.

Over the next few days, I will be seeing many of my peers and respected tech leaders talking shop and I look forward to learning a lot. I will be blogging as much as I can where it makes sense, following the model I discussed in March of this year, when I showed how to blog live events and publish with lightning speed. While at South by Southwest this March, I was aggressive enough to add 14 separate posts in the four day period. I can't promise the same amount this week, but I will do my best to bring the event to you.

With great tools like Lazyfeed available to help you follow blogs on specific topics, it is now easier than ever to see your posts on the week's event. As much fun as it will be to check in on Foursquare at whatever pub you are drinking at, or to quote tech luminaries with the #bwe09 hashtag all over Twitter, I am hoping I will see some great posts - lots of them - from all the bloggers who are here. I did say It's Twitter's World... but there is a big role for blogs in an age of microblogging, and I want to see all of us try to do both.

BlogWorld Expo 2009: The State of Technology & the Real Time Web

For the third time this year, I am back in Las Vegas. And per usual, I'm not here for anything resembling a vacation, as it's conference time. But instead of attending an event on behalf of a specific company, as I have done many different times, I am going on behalf of the blog, and making many of the connections I have forged online since 2006 onward more concrete - through participating in Blog World Expo. This is my second year participating after going last year, and for 2009, I have the challenging, yet exciting, opportunity to talk about what has to be one of the biggest stories in technology this year - the real-time Web.

On Friday, the second day of the conference, at 11:30 a.m., I will be speaking solo - trying to discuss the impact the Web is seeing as real-time becomes further embedded in many of our daily online activities.

The subject of the real-time Web is near and dear to me. As an information consumer and producer, anything I can do to get my data out to more places faster than ever, or the easier I can get to more data, faster than ever, reducing latency is huge. That's part of why I made the real-time Web central to my #1 prediction for the world of tech in 2009 back on New Year's Eve.

Excerpting from my post back on December 31:

"Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-timeoffer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options."

I've been well known for getting my predictions wrong, but every once in a while, I feel like I am on to something, so this is gratifying.

If you are here for BlogWorld Expo, you can expect to hear a lot more about things like PubSubHubbub, Lazyfeed, Reader2Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter Search, and more at 11:30 on Friday. Just make sure you add the session to your own custom schedule. It will all go down in real time. Looking forward to seeing you there.