Sexy: Links. Unsexy: Schadenfreude
August 23, 2006
- "Two of the most financially successful Web 2.0 personalities ... are rooting for the financial failure of their competitors." Hmm. I tend to root for the success of our company's competitiors, because I want the entire industry to be healthy, I think the competition is good for all of us, and because I actually give a damn about the web. I'm not sure if I believe the sentiment that's quoted above, but I do know there are lots of people who take digs at their competitors or wish them ill. In the long term, this is a self-correcting problem. Be careful what you wish for, etc.
- On a not-entirely-unrelated note, congratulations, Jason. A break is well-deserved, and a lot of what Mena said about Ev applies here as well.
- What's it look like after people have rooted for your failure but you make it work anyway? It looks like a WSJ profile of marca. I remember being in high school and my Morrissey-listening friends would tell me they would hate it if I became successful.
What was that about successful friends? Dear Flickr team: Did you know the official Justin Timberlake SexyBack Tour Photo Contest happens to run as a Flickr photo group? I'm also pretty entertained by the cover of the new album, FutureSex / LoveSounds, which is pictured here. (See also: my earlier review of SexyBack, the lead single.)
- The other kids aren't listening to Justin Timberlake, they're listening to Kelly Clarkson! So says the wildly erratic Google Music Trends, which relies on the apparently completely unreliable "Now Playing" status of Google Talk to determine song popularity.
- Want to talk to Google Talk users without using Google's system at all? For free? Using open source software? Hmm, that sounds interesting... Act now and we'll throw in a free Jabber server.
- If you're not sick of me yet, pick up this month's Wired. The story's not online yet, but I talk a bit about spam blogs (as mentioned by Steve Rubel) but come off sounding a little half-witted at points. That's okay.
- And finally, some outstanding conversations have started based on my talk at MeshForum a few months ago. Slouching Toward the Era of Quality of Life, What blogspace needs now and Audience and purpose in blogging all delighted me with the great ideas that seemed to come from these bloggers thinking out loud on their sites. I like it when my ideas' competitors succeed.
1:10 AM
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Nope. Nada.
I read your biography and read the part about MSNBC calling your blog one of the most popular, and I wondered to myself, "really??? ... what's so special?"
Who am I kidding? I, a perfect stranger, come to your blog and almost always like what you write. Your writing style is conversational and friendly and you blog good stuff.
Spooky but true - it's almost like picking up a favorite newspaper ... you don't always like what's in it ... but it's grown on you for some reason ...
If that's not popularity, I don't know what is!
Now this puts in perspective all the brazillions of hits you get every week.
Err, umm ... nope. Not sick. Keep writing.
(And no, I do not need a job at Six Apart).
Agreed, all very interesting...
And, there's one lesson we all learnt a long time ago. Don't trust a word that Google says especially when it comes to music. they are hardly the experts on Music no matter what technology they use.
Keep on blogging - Someone has got to publish some interesting content. Let's face it you rarely see anything in a newspaper that you don't already know nowadays. OK, maybe now all the detail but it's far from being "news" most of the time.