Instigator Blog

MyBlogLog has quickly become one of the most popular social networking sites around. It’s attracting bloggers by the thousands because it’s easy to use, fun, and a great way of connecting with others. Plus, the more you use it, the more it drives traffic to your site.

Ron McDaniel’s promotes social networking as one of his 57 buzz challenges.

There are tons of social networking sites out there, and niche ones popping up regularly. A friend of mine recently launched ilovetoplay.com (great name!) which helps sports participants connect. Looking for a goalie to play on your team? How about finding a few more teams to play basketball with? That’s what ilovetoplay.com is there to help you with — input your profile, find others and connect.

Others include LinkedIn and MySpace.

For entrepreneurs, Go Big Network looks quite interesting.

I strongly recommend that you use social networking sites to connect with others. A few pointers:

1. Pick which sites you want to use carefully. Don’t sign up for every single social networking site out there. Look at other members, who you’re trying to connect with, and find the best possible social networking sites for you.
2. Invest some time. Networking takes time. In-person and online. Invest the time to fill out your profile properly and hooking up with people. Ron recommends re-visiting a social networking site at minimum a few times per month and it will start to pay dividends.
3. Play by the rules. Don’t screw around on social networking sites and try and game them. Adding thousands of contacts for the sake of it goes against the spirit of most social networking sites and will hurt your reputation.
4. Give to receive. Like any form of networking, the more you give, the more you can get. If you’re not prepared to participate, help others, etc. don’t bother.

With that in mind (and another buzz challenge off my list), I also thought of an interesting way to do another of Ron’s buzz challenges. Specifically: E-mail a useful link to someone.

I do this all the time. It’s a great way of generating buzz, without a doubt. It keeps you top-of-mind with people and shows that you’re thinking about them. It shows that you know what people need which is one of the secrets to networking successfully.

Instead of emailing people links, I’m combining my use of MyBlogLog and blogtipping to share some helpful links with people. Blogtipping is the genius of Easton Ellsworth, and it’s insanely simple. On the first day of every month list 3 blogs that you like. Give 3 reasons why you like them. And, provide 1 tip to those bloggers as well.

Using MyBlogLog and my connections there, I scoured around for 3 worthwhile blogs that deserve your attention.

Blog #1: Andy Beard (feed)

1. Ultra-informative but also extremely practical. Andy tests out and demonstrates a lot of the ideas he talks about, which is very helpful.
2. The design is so clean and simple, it’s inspiring. And he adds some solid touches to make it unique (although I’m still not sure about the snowflakes!)
3. He lives in rural Poland, in a small, 100-year old renovated cottage. How cool is that?

Tip: Not as much a tip as a question — why don’t we see “most popular posts” in the sidebar? I’d be curious about that. And why aren’t the words right under your name at the top of the blog links to something? They feel like a list of services to me, I’d love to click there and get some details!

Blog #2: Stephen Cooper (feed)

1. Stephen is a personal trainer in Pasadena, California. It’s just cool to see people outside of the tech world blogging. But he’s clearly an entrepreneur too - just look at the sites he lists in the sidebar (Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, etc.
2. He keeps his posts short and to the point. And he’s got a relaxed writing style. For his target audience I think those are both great attributes (actually, short and to the point and relaxed are always good!)
3. He offers a good mixture of inspiration and perspiration. Stephen isn’t just talk, he’s providing tips and ideas for how to better your own health. It’s a good combination and I’m guessing a tough balance to achieve - he wants to motivate but also provide practical guidance.

Tip: Put the ABOUT link right under your picture. Make your picture clickable to the ABOUT page. Shrink the subscribe button just a bit to get those navigation links above the fold.

Blog #3: Redeye VC (feed) by Josh Kopelman

1. I don’t know Josh (yet!) but he sends bottles of champagne to people. He can’t be half bad! (He started Half.com (which is now part of eBay.)
2. He posts some great videos, which I hadn’t seen before, showing a level of creativity and value to the use of videos that goes beyond watching people do stupid stuff on YouTube.
3. He’s got some great insight into the technology space, and provides it openly.

Tip: Having just discovered Josh’s blog through clicking around on MyBlogLog, my main tip (or request!) would be to post more often. (Oh, and take out the ad, you don’t really need that!)

First, it was the email newsletter. We all signed up like wild beavers damming up our inboxes.

Then blogs and the nefarious RSS (or Real Simple Syndication.)

“Those people” keep making it easier and easier for us to sign-up and subscribe.

Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.
Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.
Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.

That was me in 2006. Truth be told, it rocked. I had well over 1,000 feeds in my RSS Reader and I kept up-to-date with many of them. Going out and checking out so many blogs (and subscribing) let me throw myself right into the blog world. I watched, read, learned and participated. Super fun.

And then I got distracted. I watched the number of unread posts in my RSS Reader skyrocket. It started to get stressful and a tad overwhelming. I couldn’t keep up.

My attention was spread too thin. The result was less involvement in the most important communities, less digesting of important information, and less opportunity to find new stuff that really mattered to me.

Click to continue →

Driving home today I was listening to a talk radio station and they were doing an interview with someone from Centraide, a charity (affiliated with The United Way) that collects money for dozens of organizations in the Montreal/Quebec area. Centraide does a lot of good around here.

The interview was about a very cool, new way to donate money: by text message.

Centraide just launched the program today. You can donate $1, $2 or $5 via text message. Text the word give to the number 191919. You get a quick text message back that asks you to input the dollar amount. Send that back and you’re done; your next phone bill will show the charge.

The Centraide representative said it was an experiment in getting younger people to donate money. The amounts are very small and young people are heavily into text messaging. If Centraide gets the word out enough, they hope it will result in a positive return.

To me this is a an awesome example of how technology helps.

I’m not really into text messaging (maybe I’m a generation too old to really get it), but every single charity should use this. It’s almost impossible to remember phone numbers or website addresses while listening to the radio (or watching TV). And even if you do remember, I bet most people think to themselves, “I should donate to that cause…” and then it slips their mind later.

Text messaging can make the process much faster. It removes a barrier to donating, a barrier to making a decision. Make it easy enough for people and they will participate.

In a couple of minutes I donated my $5. I may do it again just cause it’s so fun. There’s something gratifying for the person sending the donation; your cellphone dings and a message comes up immediately, “Thank you for the donation.” Instant gratification is very cool.

I’d love to know how much it cost Centraide to setup the program. They’re a big charity; so I wonder if smaller charities could afford to implement text messaging donations. If it’s too expensive, someone should make it less expensive for charities to benefit from.

Quick note: A bit of digging on Google brought up some interesting resources:

• Increasing Your SMS Donation Revenue? is a good article covering some details about setting up text messaging donation systems. It’s a good way to get informed on the subject.
• Mobile Accord offers a service to non-profits called mGive for taking donations via text message. (No indication of what it costs.)

Interestingly, it seems like a lot of the information / links I found quickly were from the U.K.

This is a subject I’m going to explore more. You have to love the idea that technology is not just there for fun and entertainment, but it can have a higher purpose. It can make a difference. It’s not just about watching whacky videos and downloading illegal music.

Good luck Centraide! I hope the campaign is a huge success!

I don’t talk about technology here as much as I’d like. I’m really not sure why…perhaps because so many others cover it well already. Nevertheless, on occasion I find something worth mentioning and linking to.

Today that’s Classic Disruption: Microsoft Dismisses New Google Apps as Inferior from Michael Urlocker who has one of the greatest titles of all time, “Disruption Consultant.”

Microsoft’s Antoine Leblond told Reuters recently:

“The simple argument that ‘this is good enough for 90 percent of what we do’ has fallen on its face over and over and over again…When it comes to mission critical things and key pieces of how people run their businesses, the threshold is higher.”

I love what Urlocker says next:

Microsoft is right.

But being right could take Microsoft Office to a point of future irrelevance.

Urlocker notes that disruptive technologies are typically inferior to the incumbents on mainstream features. And that disruptive technologies start by appealing to those on the edges of mainstream.

He goes on to tell Microsoft why they’re wrong for being right, and why they should be worried about Google and their various applications.

I have to believe Microsoft is worried - they’d be blind, stupid or drunk (or a combination of all three) not to be. Google has proven itself smart and innovative, and even with hiccups along the way with certain products, they still have a ton of mindshare. And they attract the uber-business executives of tomorrow; young people who will grow up on the Google mantra and Google applications.

Urlocker on Disruption is well worth reading. Check it out!

On October 2nd I wrote a post titled, 5 Things You Shouldn’t Spend Your Money On When Starting a Business.

It was my first post for Blog About 5 Things Week.

I thought it was a good post, with some useful information. No advice-related post is perfect for everyone though, or 100% complete with all the advice you’ll ever need. Still, I thought people would like it and I’d probably see a few hundred visitors…and hopefully some discussion.

Here’s what happened next:

1. I put the post on reddit, a social bookmarking site. I like reddit. I find interesting stuff there, and generally I’ve had some success generating sustainable traffic from it. I saw a few visitors coming from reddit and thought nothing more of it. Time to write the next post right? (Incidentally, I just checked, there were 18 votes on reddit that helped bolster the post there, but also some nasty comments…more on that later.)
2. Someone then dugg the post. I’ve had very little success with digg since it’s much more tech-oriented than the bulk of this blog. Still, I started to see a bit of traffic from digg, and when I checked a couple hours later approximately 20 people had dugg the story. I was very surprised. I didn’t think the post would generate that kind of interest. And then…
3. The roof fell off the house. The post continued to get dugg and showed up on the front page of the Technology section.

   Traffic exploded.
   The website crashed.

   I got on the phone with Bluehost and we started trying to work it out. Meanwhile, people continued to digg the story and post nasty comments at digg. (Last I checked there were 816 diggs on my post and 55 comments. Insane!)

4. Next, a few other social bookmarking type sites picked up on the post, including del.icio.us (where it appeared on the “popular” page) and techmeme (techmeme was on Oct. 3rd)
5. Aggregator sites weren’t far behind; sites that grab popular content and mash it together from various sources. Some of these included popurls, Diggdot.us, Fanpop, TheWebList.net and others.
6. People were linking to the post too. As soon as it hit the front page on Digg, links came in from a number of sources, including Valleywag, Bootstrapme, Lifehacker, etc.
7. Most importantly in my mind, people were commenting on the post. That was creating an interesting and worthwhile discussion. Last count there were 62 comments!

So let’s look at some numbers shall we?

I started Instigator Blog around September 1, 2006 - moving content from IGotNewsForYou’s blog over to here. I knew I’d take a hit on traffic from the old blog and RSS readers. Before October 2nd, the numbers looked like this:

Approximately 40 visitors/day. (The spike you see is because of Darren Rowse’s group writing project.)

Approximately 40 RSS/FeedBurner subscribers.

So what was the result of getting onto the front page of Digg’s tech section?

The peak was 13,638 visitors. Yesterday I received approximately 250.

The peak was 1,218. Yesterday I had approximately 130. Most of the people that show up as subscribers here are from Firefox Live Bookmarks. These don’t stick around as registered in the RSS feed from Feedburner.

As you can see, traffic went absolutely through the roof. Completely unexpected, completely nuts. Completely fun…well…maybe not completely…

Since people started connecting online, even with the very early days of bulletin boards, IRC, etc. people started feeling free to say whatever they wanted about anyone they wanted. You’re hidden behind a computer screen right?

There’s something empowering about that, and I believe in that. It helps shy people speak up. It helps struggling writers get their word out. It can help open doors and create communication. There’s a lot of value in the Internet as a medium. But, you also get people who feel it’s their job to flame, bitch and moan. I’m all for an argument or debate; but a good-quality one. Not pointless comments on digg like, “This guy’s an idiot. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Like any tool, the Internet can be used to do great things, but it can also be misused and used pointlessly. What value do people bring to the discussion and the community with stupid flames and insults? Zilch.

I believe in the power of the Internet. I believe in social media. I believe that a little guy can write something in the hopes that it helps a few and suddenly 20,000 people read it. I believe people care. I believe people want to connect. But there’s always going to be a few shmucks that try and ruin it for the rest of us. Ignore ‘em. Keep your thick skin. Develop thick skin if you don’t have it, and dive right in.

Thank you to everyone that enjoys Instigator Blog — the community growing around it and other similar blogs. Thank you to people who add value to the discussion, help others and generally contribute to the betterment of the community. I’m insanely pleased with what’s happening at Instigator Blog and I hope you’ll stick around for the long-haul…