The TrueTalk Blog

The Dying Art of Blogging?

Some of you (are you our there? sure you are!) may have noticed that Twitter and vlogging have taken a serious chunk out of blogging activity here. I have great plans to reinvigorate this blog, but until then, I drew some bittersweet solace from this article in yesterday's NYTimes claiming that 95% (!!) of all blogs are abandoned, which is defined as having no posts for 120 days. That's a sad but understandable number, as so many of us bloggers end up feeling like we're only writing for ourselves and (sometimes!) our families. It takes tenacity to keep writing in the face of low/no feedback. But, as a five-year veteran of this medium, I can say that I draw comfort from knowing that this blog is here whenever something noteworthy comes along. And, if you're reading this, I hope you'll be here then, too. Thanks.

Four

This blog is four years old today. Thanks to all who read, follow, subscribe and comment. You've all helped me maintain my commitment to this

Video + Blogs = Engagement

In case you haven't noticed, video has finally come to blogging.

Next week, The TrueTalk Blog will be celebrating its fourth anniversary. We're gonna have a nice party with a bunch of other kids.

In that time, I've created 1,125 posts. And received 1,167 comments.

Now, in the past two years, I've recorded 242 videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, there's no way to know how many comments those videos have received, but, I can assure you, it's a lot more than the 250 or so they'd have received if the ratio was the same as that on this blog. A lot more. Fifty or more comments per video is common; hundreds, occasional.

Well, the question I have to ask myself is, "why"?

I guess one answer is that my written blog posts don't interest readers enough to leave comments. While I do have a few loyal commenters out there (hi, Mike!) others are sporadic.

Another answer might be that I'm a better at expressing ideas using the spoken word than in writing. That's possible, too.

Still another might be that video, itself, is inherently more engaging than writing. I'm certainly not ready to settle for that as the answer, but it does strike me that the emotional connection between two people is immediate and compelling in video. At least that's been my experience.

Regardless, what we now see are blogs are using more and more video material to illustrate points. That video might be created by the blogger her/himself or it may be video produced by someone else on which the blogger wishes to comment.

A couple of recent announcements have made it much easier for bloggers to integrate video into our sites.

First, a couple of weeks ago, our friend Loic Le Meur at still-in-beta Seesmic announced a the release of a Wordpress plug-in that enables blog readers to leave video comments on blogs. Now, Seesmic has turned on the same functionality for blogs using the Disqus comment system. We switched over to Disqus a couple of weeks ago but technical problems have ensued. We hope to be able to get them ironed out and turn on video comments here soon.

Second, today, our friend Steve Rosenbaum at Magnify.net announced several new functional enhancements for blogs. Magnify's new Publisher will make it easy for bloggers to locate and embed videos from YouTube, Google Video, blip.tv and other major video platforms. For now, Publisher works on WordPress and Movable Type blogs, but Steve tells me that other blog platforms (including TypePad) are in the queue.

This is all great news for those of us who see video as a significant enabler of emotionally-engaging interaction between people. Congrats to Loic, Steve and their teams for making it easier for bloggers to connect with their readers and viewers.

And, watch this space for some big announcements about video and community in the coming months. This is a revolution that is just beginning to gather steam.

JHS 125

According to these folks, this blog should carry the following badge:

At first, I was slightly offended. "Hey," I thought, "I write smart stuff here." But, the more I thought about it, the happier I became.

I mean, anybody can obfuscate, right? The point is to make difficult things easy to understand.

I remember when I was in junior high school I  once saw an article that said that the New York Times was geared to the high school graduate reading level. I was impressed that people believed that the average high school grad could comprehend the average Times article.

Anyway...read on and if I write anything you don't get, remember, it's not me, it's you!

Hat tip: Bryony's most interesting Paperlilies blog.

Too Many Comments

Ever read a blog post that has too many comments?

As readers of this blog know, that is not our problem here.

But when I do come upon a blog post with scads of comments, I find it disconcerting. No matter what any single commenter has said, that bit of contribution is likely to be lost in sheer volume and clutter.

I do not, however, find this to be true with comments on YouTube videos. When I thought about why I feel this way it occurred to me that most blog comment threads aren't really conversations.

They're sequential monologues.

YouTube comments, however, often become conversations because they are easily broken into obvious threads. YouTube comments are visually organized like threads and the comments made by the video's poster are color-coded to show up distinctively. That makes it easy to follow the to-and-fro of conversations without too much hunting around. If you're interested in a single thread within a long series of comments it's easy to find, read and participate. If not, you can move along to the next thread. All in all, that experience makes the YouTube comment section feel much more interactive.

What's your experience of participating in long comment exchanges on blogs?

Civility and Common Sense: Kathy Sierra and Don Imus

If you follow the goings on in the blogosphere, you've probably heard about the despicable behavior Kathy Sierra was subjected to by commenters on her hip, intelligent, informative blog, Creating Passionate Users. Someone called Sierra, "a boring slut" and said, "I hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob."

The resultant firestorm reached the front page of the New York Times today in an article entitled, "A Call For Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs." The article addresses the supposed conflict between free speech and civility. The notion is that supporting free speech means allowing everyone the right to say anything, anytime.

Coincidentally, the strong reaction to Don Imus's comments on his radio/television show last Thursday is also featured in David Carr's column in today's Times. Imus called the members of the Rutgers women's basketball team, runners-up in this year's NCAA Women's Basketball Championship, "a bunch of nappy-headed ho's." Al Sharpton, among others, is calling for Imus to be fired.

So, what's the question here? Is Sierra "within her rights" to decide what kind of comments she permits on her blog? Should Imus be fired for his childish slur?

My answers are, "yes" and "no," respectively.

My notion of free speech does not include the right to make anonymous threats to someone, nor the right to engage in hateful conduct without consequences. If you want to call me a name or threaten me, leave your real name and identifying information and stand behind your words. Free speech demands accountability. My words are mine and whatever they bring upon me I deserve. In the absence of that transparency, people behave irresponsibly. (Go take a look at Phil Zimbardo's book, The Lucifer Effect if you have any doubts.)

And that's why I don't think Imus should be fired. While his idiotic attempts to have it both ways have irritated me greatly over my many years as a regular listener/viewer, I've always felt that, on balance, this is a person working for more good in the world than evil. That doesn't mean his words don't cause pain; they do. The contrition we heard from him this morning seems more than the wriggling of a perp caught in the act trying to save his neck. And I say that because of the actions he's taken over the years. But most of all I say it because he's not running for the cover of anonymity nor brushing off the criticism as the reaction of thin-skinned wussies. He's accepting the consequences of those actions while trying to put them into the context of his true identity; his whole life.

Anonymous haters do not do the same. Until they do, I think we all have the right to reject their words as the "unfree speech" they really are. Free speech comes with responsibilities. We shouldn't give unfree speech a free ride.