Does (audience) size matter?? (or is it how we touch each other?)

For awhile, I'd been thinking of writing something on how influence can be more important to a blogger than huge audience numbers--today Scoble raised the issue of the importance of audience size for any of us who produces content. Scoble brings up a number of things beyond huge traffic numbers that might make advertisers want to advertise on a blog, pointing out things like causing conversations to happen or getting noticed in your niche. These are, unfortunately, what lots of folks consider "intangibles"--mostly because they don't generate immediately and in the first quarter huge tangible income returns...

Mark Rizzi at Mashable! makes an important point about Scoble: ". . .I don’t think he has ever been in a position where he’s had to build a significant mainstream audience from the ground up. Scoble, from the time he entered blogging, seems to have been fairly well connected within the industry, and had essentially a built-in audience of influencers."

And this is very true. But I think Mark and Robert may be talking an apples vs. oranges thing here. Mark's talking about blogging as a main part of a business. Robert, on the other hand, started blogging (if I recall correctly) not as a direct part of a business, so his perspective is going to be a bit different from Mark's. (Robert also brought his audience with him when he went to PodTech, which, I'm sure, helped him create his PodTech deal.)

However, if I'm looking at blogging as something that's not my primary business, but as a way of building personal brand, the idea of influence over audience--something Robert alludes to--becomes extremely important. Influence, as in who's linking to you and who's reading you, can help someone build a certain cachet or "personal brand."

The whole thing reminds me of something Susan Mernit said to me a couple of years ago when I was fretting over lack of high blog traffic: that it may not be how many people are reading you, but who is reading you.

If a blogger or blog-related business is looking for ad dollars, then yes, size (as in traffic as in audience) does matter. CMP rates and all that. But, if you--as a small business or as an individual blogger are looking to grow a reputation, and perhaps a certain audience from that reputation, then the traffic numbers don't count as much.

What does matter is who you meet and who calls you, and what kinds of projects you're offered. Who is it that makes deals with you. Who gives you a contract, who gives you a nice check at the end of said contract, and if whomever will hire you again for another contract.

Which relates to another aspect of the whole social media landscape: how we define our contacts--who we really "know" By "know" I don't necessarily mean who we "friend" on Facebook inasmuch as who we meet f2f, who we call and email. Scott Karp alluded to this yesterday in his post on email and cellphone contacts as the real "social graph." What I have found through real life tactile experience is that the people whom I know, who I resonate with on a personality level, and whom I converse with regularly even if I don't see them (as I live out in the equivalent of West Jabip) are the people that are likely to hire me to work with them. When being someone's Facebook "friend" is a click away (as Scott notes), those "old-fashioned" social networking paradigms like phone and email and *gasp* Face to face interaction become the stuff that ends up making the deal for us..

Don't get me wrong--social media is great fun. I love being able to keep track of people I've met at cons maybe only a couple of times--and I know from being online for over 10 years now that those relationships can be nurtured and grow. But it's the folks I talk to, the ones I've made huge bang-up impressions on at some point, who read my blogs on occasion and who I bother with comments now and then are the ones that make things *happen* for me.

So, if it's all about size--well, maybe it's more about what you're trying to get from your blogging, vlogging, podcasting, social network, etc. If it's ad revenue, then yes, size means everything. If it's influence and other kinds of work, quality and direct contact trump click-through, 1 second pageviews.

Think about what you want--and what you're trying to create. Is it quick money? or is it influence? Is it pageviews or personal impressions?

It's really up to you...

In Western Mass, Citizen Journalism Sprouts Wings

I am a firm believer that when the local media is held hostage by media conglomerates--whether public or privately owned-- that the people have to start using new media to be heard. Nowhere is this more evident in Western Massachusetts, where there is one paper for Springfield, one paper for Northampton (held hostage behind a pay wall), an "alternative" press that's owned by Tribune, and most of the radio's been parsed out to Clear Channel. Between the press and radio, we get a healthy dose of the most moderated and bland media mush you could possibly ask for. But I had no idea what my fellow citizens had been up to...


Little did I know that Bill Dusty--a guy who once called me a "weenie" on the Masslive boadrs ;-)--started something called The Springfield Intruder (gotta love that name!) I found the Intrude when Dusty linked to me in a blogger vs. journalist piece he wrote earlier this month.

And yes, that's a great way to get another blogger's attention!

The Intruder demonstrates how one guy with a big mouth can start a fairly decently looking citizen journalism site....I wish Bill great luck with this venture and hope he can keep growing it in '08.


Meanwhile, my friend Heather Brandon, moved out to Hartford and took her popular citizen journalism blog Urban Compass out from under the auspices of *any* mass media venture and into its own. Heather splits her writing between Springfield (where she still feels a connection) and Hartford now, but I think that being out from under the msm has given her much more freedom to create and maintain a site that explores the issues of Springfield and Hartford in a way that puts Them to shame.

There's also Michaelann Land, started by the founder of Arise for Social Justice, Michaelann Bewsee. Michaelann's blog entries are short and to the point, sometimes personal, usually with links to more info. Her blogging's important for keeping an eye on the homeless situation in Springfield--which got a bit bleaker with the close of the Food Pantry that was maintained in the Old First Church (which is also closing)

There's something of an irony in the close of Old First Church. It's the folks who founded churches like OFC that became the folks who, for the most part, head social justice initiatives. But, somewhere along the line, perhaps with the decline of mainline protestantism, the same institutions that nurtured social justice initiatives no longer have enough congregants to keep going...

but I digress...

Another person to throw his hat into the citizen journalism ring is Paolo Mastrangelo with the Northamptonist What impresses me the most about the Northamptonist is how Paolo wrote a very balanced post on the extrememly contentious issues of development in Northampton, which gave equal time to Adam Cohen, noted for NoPornNorthampton...Paolo also did not alter any comments to the post.

A couple of things about the Northamptonist: it would be nice to know more about Paolo, as in he *could* post a profile of himself somewhere. Not everyone is familiar with the "cast of characters" in Northampton, and since the blog is not anonymous anyway, why withhold that info? The archives could also be re-organized by date rather than topic, but that's an editorial decision...

Through the Northamptonist, I found Mary Serreze's Community Radio Hour blog,
where you'll also find mp3 files of past shows.

CRH is hosted on our area's answer to ClearChannel, Valley Free Radio WXOJ-LP 103.3FM. It's an interesting station, one much needed--although I the one show I heard one night coming back from Boston didn't impress me all that much, there's most definitley some fabulous alternatives to the John Tesch (??!?) and Leeza Gibbons hosted messes on ClearChannel...

Now, whether these citizen journalism sites are to the right (like Dusty's) or the left (like Mastrangelo's) doesn't matter to me--it's the fact that local citizens are raising issues and starting conversations outside of and independent of the auspices of local media. Local mainstream media should not in any way be the "support mechanism" or "foundation" for citizen journalism That just doesn't make sense--and, frankly, can easily make citizen journalism the low-paid toadie of a poorly-produced mainstream journalism. We need independent voices, and I'm glad to see that these folks are going the independent route.

All the best to them and their endeavors in '08!

Happy Holidays!

This was the scene at my place last night at around 12a.m. hope your holidays are as peaceful and plentiful :-)

Back to regular blogging in the next week or so...

SNOW! (in NEW ENGLAND!)

It's not even officially winter yet--and we had about a foot of snow today. Guess that's life in New England....here's a few pix of what it's like on Cottage St. in Easthampton tonight...

It's Not His First Time: Zuckerberg's mea culpa for violating your privacy

So, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg issued a contrite (trite??) apology about Beacon...

When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn't get in people's way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn't on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.

But we missed the right balance....

Missed the right balance? Boy, I'll say....and it's his second time for this "missed the right balance"...

Now, does anyone other than me remember that last September, Facebook had to apologize for placing RSS feeds where a critical mass of Facebook customers really didn't want them??? And that was well before Facebook was open to the general (aging) public...

So much for the contention that young people enjoy having less privacy and that we'll all have to just have to get used to having less privacy....

Although it seems to me that Zuckerberg keeps trying to foist upon Facebook users various ways to use our Facebook content for his benefit vs. to the benefit of Facebook users. Our Facebook content, if you think about it, *could* conceivably be seen as "user-generated content" and something that so many folks are trying to find ways to leverage or monetize for their benefit at the expense of our privacy.

Often, leveraging UGS is usually at the expense of either our privacy or our benefit--remember, there are MSM networks that are constantly bugging us for our "UGC" so that they can hold it and re-use it in perpetuity (see this post) with the meager benefit of maybe seeing it used somewhere. Don't even *think* of asking for money or asking to post it on your own blog once they have it...

Yet Facebook's still rummaging around in our metaphorical underwear drawers--and this time sending it to us with a little bow: Techcrunch reports that Facebook's now including the text, rather than a just a link, in our Facebook email alerts. Arrington thinks this is ok, as it's not making us click back to Facebook to see our Facebook email...

Jim Benson asks what this represents, "other than Mike Arrington's too lazy to click on a link?" (once again, Jim makes me giggle...) Aside from Jim's contention that email isn't dead (good point there) he also contends that:

"Facebook is getting the message that the information on Facebook is someone else's property that they are entrusted with, in exchange for a $15B US valuation. If Facebook continues to hoard our data, people will go elsewhere.

And that's the difference between doing something for us and giving them our personal information, be it through RSS feeds (like last year) or Beacon (like this year.)

Personally, I don't really care about the email...clicking thru to Facebook email is sometimes just a good excuse for me to go in and update my status. Ah, yes--in my corner of the world, the whole "social networking" thing is reaching its own level of equilibrium with the old tried-and-true "f2f socializing" thing. For some reason, I'm kind of liking the privacy that I have with f2f socializing. At least with f2f, you get to know me over time rather than me playing some kind of online fan dance with my online profile. Don't get me wrong: social networking sites are kind of cool. But they only reveal those things we want to reveal--without the benefit of seeing/hearing the other person. Social networking is a great way of keeping track of people we know, but it really shouldn't substitute for time shared in f2f environments--esp. if it means having to lose privacy and control over our "content."