conversations

I’m Not A Good Journalist

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a good journalist. For the longest time, I’ve been some random guy that has a fascination and curiosity with WordPress and have used a website to document my journey. Somehow over the years, that’s lead me to become this thing called a journalist. A title given to me by my peers, not by me. Personally, I don’t like the title of journalist but I don’t have much of a say in the matter.

When it comes to writing stories, for whatever reason I don’t do common sense journalistic things which in many aspects, are just common courtesy. For example, asking for permission to use text in a conversation as a quote attributed to that person. Or, ask someone to answer a few questions for an article and instead of using a snippet, I use their answers in the form of an interview without consulting them first.

What sucks about these kinds of mistakes I’ve made and continue to make is that deleting a post doesn’t work. Once I hit the publish button, I must deal with the consequences if I screwed up. It’s depressing and gives me a sickening feeling in my stomach to receive an email from a person I quoted in an article asking me why I didn’t tell them their words would be used in the way that I presented them. In just about every instance, they’re in the right while I’m definitely in the wrong. The only thing I can do at that point is apologize, tell them I can take the post down and that I understand if my actions have burned the bridge of communication between us.

In an effort to try to prevent myself from continuously falling into this trap, I’m writing down a list of things to do (and print) or consider when I’m involving other people into articles I write.

  1. Understand it’s my responsibility and mine alone to make sure the other party knows specifically how their words will be used.
  2. If I tell the other party I’m going to use their words in one way and in mid-stream decide to use them in another, inform the other party of the change as it’s their right. It also gives them an opportunity to allow or deny the use.
  3. Always ask for permission and never assume. Assumptions are traps and almost always lead to trouble.
  4. Just because my email signature says everything is on the record unless told otherwise, it’s not enough for a lot of people or they don’t see it.
  5. Never ever take words from private conversations and make them public through a post without explicit permission.
  6. If the post is an interview, send the person you interviewed a private review copy of the post out of courtesy before it’s published for review. Or if you end up using a lot of quotes provided by them in a post. This is probably one of the most important things to keep in mind as a final OK from them drastically reduces the chance of getting a pissed off email from them.

Some of the things are repeated and for good measure. Many of the things I have in my list are common sense/common courtesy but damn if I ever think these things through before hitting the publish button. I feel like shit when I mess these things up and get an angry email. It also doesn’t help when the victims are people I know and interact with at WordCamps and other places. There are only so many bridges that can be burned before no one will talk to me. I need to take all this shit more seriously and treat the conversations people have with me with more respect.

If you’ve been a victim of my negligence, I sincerely apologize.

Unpopular As Bad As Too Popular

Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb published an intriguing article the other day that dove into the question, How Many Friends Are Too Many? In his article, Josh takes the example of Jason Calacanis who follows 26,672 people (now at 29,978) and suggests that there is no way in hell that Jason can actually participate in conversations in any meaningful way with those who follow him. I agree.

I’m on Twitter myself, and I am following 338 people while 460 people are following me. Not all of those who follow me are participating with me in conversations on a usual basis. So far, I’ve been able to engage in great conversations with those who follow me, but when the conversation involved more than one individual, one of the biggest pains of Twitter shows itself. Twitter’s structure does not bode well for multi-threaded conversations and it’s too easy to get lost in the noise. However, I’ve been able to show that I am indeed listening to those who shout out at me, something Jason can’t vouch for.

But Jason has mentioned before, he uses Twitter more as a marketing, broadcasting medium than a conversational tool. Looking at his Twitter profile, it seems as though he at times participates in the conversation. But with the way Jason is set up, once he replies to something, the conversation is blown off the map. Not entirely his fault.

But back to the matter at hand. According to research conducted by Robin Dunbar, 100-150 people are the approximate amount which would comprise a natural group size in which everyone can really know everyone else. I can vouch for that as I’ve kept the list of people I follow down to a minimum and I pretty much know every one of them by avatar alone.

How have you been able to manage relationships with a large number of people? Do you exchange emails or messages on Facebook or any other social platform where you have close to a 1,000 so called friends? Do any of the conversations you have with folks online contain any value to you, or is it a hopeless feeling of being lost in the noise?

A Big Heart Felt Thanks To YOU

Thanks To You

I’d like to say thank you to my sponsors. Just kidding. No sponsor has been dumb enough to give me money so instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my readers. This blog was started back at the end of May as a one year project to see where I could take it. So after four months into the project, let’s take a look at some statistics.

Subscribers:

This site now has a total of 103 Subscribers according to Feedburner. This number varies day to day but is steadily showing over 100 subscribers. Thanks to all of you who have subscribed either by email or by RSS. I truly do appreciate it as it tells me that what I’m writing is important or at the very least informative.

Conversations:

At the time of this writing, this site has a total of 348 comments on 227 posts contained within 13 categories and 1,147 tags. Some of the comments within this specific stat are actually trackbacks or pingbacks but for the most part, the comments were made by real people. One of the major goals that I am trying to achieve with this site is building a COMMUNITY. A social community at that. A community that contributes intelligently to the conversations that I start with each post.

Any time I publish a post on this site, I always look forward to checking my email to see if and who has contributed to the conversation. I realize that as a blogger, comments are hard to come by. That is why I try to thank everyone who leaves a comment as I’m appreciative of the time you took out of your day to stop by and say hello. So I’ll end this by saying THANK YOU to each and everyone of you who have left a comment on this blog since it’s inception. It’s nice to know that I’m not blogging within an empty room.

Akismet The Time Saver:

Every blogger seems to toot their own horn when they reach a milestone with spam such as Darren Rowse. I’ll be no different except to let you know that so far, Akismet has blocked 1,377 spam messages. Although a far cry from two million, Akismet has been one hell of a time saver for me. I will say however that, Akismet is not perfect and in recent weeks, Akismet has been missing spam but overall, it’s the best anti spam solution I’ve ever seen other than disconnecting from the net. So here is a big thank you to everyone involved with Akismet.

In Closing:

According to the logs, each month has shown a steady increase in traffic, an increase in subscribers and more importantly, an increase in user interaction. In the past four months, I’ve managed to develop virtual relationships with various people across various blogs. The next four months will be interesting as I continue to experiment with this blog and continue with my writing. I’ll write up another post like this when we hit the eight month mark to see where we have progressed. Rest assured that I appreciate every comment, trackback, pingback, linkback, bookmark, stumble, digg ect. that is given to me. It would be great if I could get paid to do this sort of work, but as it stands, this blog is advertisement and sponsor free. So in the mean time, what I mentioned above is what I consider blogging currency. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m no longer a blogging bum, thanks to you of course.

Readers First

Unlike most other sites or blogs, I don’t mind thanking those who have helped me reach this point. So in no particular order, I’d like to thank the following people. I apologize if you don’t see your name on this list.

Last but not least, thanks to all of you who have joined my MyBlogLog community, added me to Twitter and to everyone that I have associated with on TalkShoe.If you want to be removed from this list or if you would like for me to change the site your link is pointing to, let me know by leaving a comment.

Another Take On Web 2.0

As I was viewing my keyword results in FeedDemon, I happen to come across an article on TheTimes which offered their opinion as to what Web 2.0 actually is. The article is dated June 6, 2007 and goes on to describe Web 1.0 as being static web pages, with the promise of businesses revolutionizing the world using the Internet as a platform. This initial mindset helped to create what we now know as the Dot Com Bubble.

According to TheTimes, the dot com bubble exploded due to the lack of common sense that was applied to many businesses that launched onto the Web.

Startups were selling dog food on the Web without giving a moment’s thoughts to the costs involved in transporting heavy bags of dog food or selling nappies without considering the convenience of, well, convenience store. In short, Web 1.0 was big on promise and lacking when it came to the deliverables.

Fast forward to 2007 and we are now in the middle of what is commonly known as Web 2.0 This new version of the web has provided a new communal mentality with a new level of user friendliness. Using the Internet as a platform is only now, really starting to gain momentum. At this stage of the game, no idea is too stupid to try.

Near the end of the article, TheTimes sums up the general formalities of Web 2.0, all of which I truly agree with. In fact, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Web 2.0 (or the Social Web, as I prefer to think of it) is about three things: listening to the conversations people are having about you and topics you are interested in, participating meaningfully in those conversations and sharing your thoughts, ideas and knowledge with like-minded people. To put it another way, Web 2.0 is about connecting with people around you and on the other side of the globe in a very real, personal way.

What do you think Web 2.0 really is? Let me know by leaving a comment!