B-L-O-G-G-I-N-G

The proprietor of Lost and Gone Forever, one of the Ethan Johnson's recommendations in my swivel feeds experiment, has apparently just proposed to his girlfriend via a blog post.  He posted the proposal at 1:23 and she accepted (via a comment of course) at 8:01.  I imagine that was a nervous 6 1/2 hours for Brian.

Congrats to them both.

It seems Twitter, which granted is a neat little application, is out looking to turn that neatness into cash.  Download Squad reports that Twitter is trying to raise its first round of venture capital funding, and then wonders if the old standby, getting bought by Google, may not be the answer.  As Download Squad says in the article: "Twitter is extremely focused on growing their network of users before making money, and they really don't have an evident business model as of yet."  There is a universal assumption by those looking to make money on the internet that traffic can always be monetized.  I don't think that's always the case.

JPEG Enhancer is a free application that promises to help clean up old blotchy photos from your first digital camera.

Martin Gordon does a mini-review of Lifehacker's Top10 iPhone Applications.  He found some usability issues.

Mashable has a feature by feature comparison of 14 personalized homepages.  God, I hope social networking isn't really "the next evolution of the start page concept."  The more I see these start pages try to be average at everything instead of excellent at one thing, the more I think making your own start page is the way to go.

Dave Wallace has created a History of Disability in South Australia website that tells stories of Australians involved with disability issues.  Here's Mike Seyfang's review.

This guy's baby book showed up on eBay.  Being a second child, I never had much of a baby book.  Delaney (our second) has a sparse one.  Luke (our third) doesn't have one at all.  We promised ourselves we wouldn't do that.

@Seth: I agree that marketing by fear in a way that benefits only the marketer is bad.  I really don't like it.  But, as you mentioned, CNN and every other news organization do this all day, every day.  When all that matters is attention, what better way to get it than to shout danger at every opportunity.  It is a corruption of the preservation instinct in the name of a dollar.

Everyone may be gunning for YouTube, but the war is over.  All that remains in to see who gets the most scraps.

Techdirt, which has always been at the forefront of the music industry debate, has a must read post about the record stores doing their part to keep the industry screwed up.  I used to enjoy going to record stores...back in the 80's.  If I can browse music from my desk, hear clips without having to use waxy communal headphones, click a button and have the CD show up two days later, I don't need a music store.  Particularly if it's going to take a page from the RIAA's empty book of logic.

Thomas Hawk on iPhonestock.  I don't know how you can read Thomas and not pull for Zooomr.  I guess that means he's doing he job.  I just wish they'd make the sign-in process easier.  I signed up back when it first launched, lost my credentials and am caught in OpenID hell.

Donna Bogatin takes a look at iPhonestock too.  Justine has a post on the Summer of Phone.  Meanwhile Scoble has lost his buzz and noticed that he has a mild headache.  But at least he'll be able to tell his grandchildren he was there, and be telling the truth.

Jeff Balke on mixing his band's new CD and the loudness problem.  I'm not generally in the studio when my songs are recorded (being solely a songwriter at this point), but I have always felt that far too many records are mixed too hot.  The video Jeff found is spot on: when there is no quiet, there can be no loud.

All the people at this party
They've got a lot of style
They've got stamps of many countries
They've got passport smiles
Some are friendly
Some are cutting
Some are watching it from the wings
Some are standing in the center
Giving to get something
- Joni Mitchell

I've said numerous times that blogging has largely replaced songwriting as an outlet for my need to write, share and reach.  The more I think about it, blogging is very similar to songwriting.

Here are three reasons why.

1) They Both Need Good Hooks

Blog posts and songs both need good hooks to be successful.  In songwriting, the hook is the part of the song that sticks in the listener's mind.  The part that is the most memorable.  It's also often the first part of the song that is written.  Hooks can be, but are not necessarily, the title of the song.  In my song Your Turn to Fall, the hook is the line "Your face is familiar, but I can't recall your name girl," which was inspired by a button my sister gave me.  It was also the first part of the song I wrote.  Similarly, the rhyming couplets "sober" and "over" and "drank" and "thank" from the chorus of Bloodshot Eyes were the beginnings of that song.

Hooks in blog posts are even more important than in songs.  With hundreds of people writing about the same stuff, there needs to be something about the post to catch the attention of the prospective reader and linker.  In traditional journalism, the tag at the end of the article serves as the big send off.  But a good tag at the end of a boring blog post will never get read.  Thus, I believe that in almost every case the hook in a blog post needs to be the title.  When readers are skimming their feeds in a news reader, something has to grab their attention and cause them to slow down and read the post.  For me, and I suspect others, the second best way to get me to read a post is to have a catchy title (the best, of course, being to ping me with a link).

When I wrote my Fear and Loathing post the other night, I almost called it "All My Friends are Going to Be Strangers," after the Larry McMurtry book (a line I also used in Your Turn to Fall).  But as I thought about it (and counted to 10, given that I was seriously irritated at the time), I decided that more people would know of and relate to the Fear and Loathing title, which is obviously also a literary reference.  Plus, I thought the former title was too personal to me, and I wanted to make points that had application beyond me and my blog.  I wanted a title that was reasonably descriptive and likely to make people a little curious as to its content.

The post that really got things moving on this blog was my post from January 1, 2006 called Why It's Impossible to Build a New Blog in 2006.  The title put me squarely in the middle of the gatekeeper debate, and not everyone agreed with me, so a lot of good discussion ensued.

2) Every One of Them Can Be Improved Upon, But Should You?

One of the hardest things about songwriting is trying to figure out when a song is finished.  That's because, as every writer knows, every song in the world can be improved with a rewrite.  I have literally hundreds of songs lying around in boxes and on tapes that are not, in my mind, ready to be heard.  Heck, when I browse my Err Bear Music page I can't find one song that I couldn't make better with a tweak here or there.  I know writers whose songs are like the Winchester House- they keep writing them forever.  And never record or release them.  But at some point, if you want to get your material out there, you have to let it go.  Even if part of you believes it would become a number 1 hit with one more rewrite.

Blog posts are the same way.  When I read old posts of mine, I'm often amazed that I could write such drivel.  I see obvious and powerful points that I failed to make.  There's not one post on my blog or any other that the writer couldn't make better with an edit.  There are also posts made without all the facts and/or in the heat of the moment that you wish you could withdraw.  But there are no mulligans in the blogosphere- RSS and Google make sure of that.  So once it's out there, new versions are just that.

On the other hand, much of the stuff we write about has a relatively short half-life.  So if we want to be part of the conversation, we need to get it out there.  My neighbors could hear me pounding on the keyboard the other night after I saw Louis Gray's post.  All of this means that bloggers, like traditional journalists, are often under a deadline of sorts.  The beauty of blogging, however, is that it is sort of a hybrid between email and article writing.  It's conversational nature is more forgiving.  Like email, the standards for typos and grammar are relaxed a little in the interest of immediacy.

So just because a song or a blog post could be improved with a few more rewrites doesn't mean they aren't ready for publication.  It's a balance, but one that does not demand perfection.

3) Talent Does Not Ensure Success

I grew up listening to country music, but I haven't tuned into an over the air country radio station in years.  Because the music that's available there is not really country music- at least not the way I think of it.  It's regurgitated pop made by pretty little media creations designed to grease the wheels of commerce.  The cycle goes like this: find someone photogenic who can at least croak out a melody, get the talented, starving and desperate songwriters in Nashville to come up with some commercial sounding songs, hire some magician-cum-producer to make it sound good and get the CDs into Walmart and Best Buy.  Much of the rock genre is the same way.  Meanwhile amazing talents like the Star Room Boys, the Drive-By Truckers and others gig away in obscurity.

The blogosphere is the same way.  You can write the best posts ever written, but if you don't get the star making machinery behind you, few will ever read it.  On the other hand, if you can tap into the collective affection, all you need is cat pictures (I'm not dumping on the cats, as they have more readers than I have letters on my blog pages; but it's not exactly Pulitzer material).

The music industry and the blogosphere are very inefficient entities.  But they are also similar avenues for self expression and the pursuit of a common experience.

Getting a link from another blogger and hearing your song being played, you know it's the same release.

Between my earlier ScobleFeeds series and my current swivel feeds experiment, I have read a lot of blogs.  During this time, I have been looking for patterns and commonalities.  While it's hard to draw too many universal conclusions about the blogging experience without front-end data, there are a few patterns that emerge.

One of them is what I think of as the 5 Stages of Blogging.  The stages of a blog's life from the hopeful day of creation to the sad and sometimes seemingly inevitable day of abandonment.  It may not seem that way in the often competitive blogosphere, but the loss of every legitimate blog is a loss shared by all legitimate bloggers.

Which is a good reason to study the patterns and search for a way to reroute the process towards a better end.

All bloggers don't experience all 5 stages.  The low financial and technical barrier to entry results in many hastily created blogs that end up abandoned during one of the early stages due to boredom or the lack of a genuine interest in blogging.  Some bloggers aren't concerned with growing an audience and never reach the frustration stage when their blog's growth rate stalls or reverses.  And once in a very great while a new blogger actually gets accepted into the warm, chummy place I talked about last night, and happily avoids the pain of the later stages (more often than not, there is an ancillary relationship that triggers this acceptance, but it does happen).  But the pattern is pretty clear, particularly in cases where new bloggers joins the fray in search of conversation, inclusion and readers.  It's less clear in cases where the blogger is primarily concerned with making money or selling a product.  The psychological investment in blogging is less in those cases, and if the money isn't made or the product isn't selling, the blogger often just moves along to the next marketing angle.

If you believe, as I do, that the blogosphere ought to be about conversation and sharing information, as opposed to merely a new manner of media distribution and/or prospecting for gold, then you should be concerned about the high attrition rate in the blogosphere.  If you want to have conversation, then there must be others to converse with.  Encouraging new bloggers and promoting blogging as a means of communication is in the best interest of all legitimate bloggers, from the top of the A-List to the very bottom of blogger's hill.

People tend to forget this very important fact: without the long tail, there is no short tail.

So why is there so much blog attrition?

Here are my 5 stages of blogging, from creation to abandonment.

Stage 1: Excitement

This is the early stage of a blog, during which a platform is selected and a template evolves, widgets and other ancillary content are added, and the initial blog posts are written.  Like the band who has been gigging for years before making a record, new bloggers - at least the ones who have done a little planning - generally have an albums' worth of really good topics to toss out.  Those initial posts generate a little reaction, particularly if the blogger does his homework, identifies the established bloggers who are amenable to new voices and cultivates them.

Excitement is high during this stage and expectations are intact and rising.

Step 2: Expectation

After the blog is launched and the blogger has learned his way around the blogosphere, it's time to start building traffic and readers.  There are three related ways to measure this growth: blog visitors, subscriber numbers and links.  During this stage, a little traffic goes a long way.  I still remember how excited I was when I had 100 inbound links (not from 100 different blogs; I'm talking 100 total).  I called my wife into my study to show her the first time my blog was on Techmeme (then known as Tech Memeorandum).  It takes work to pass those initial milestones, but they generally come within a reasonable period or time.  At this point, the new blogger is certain that before long he and all those guys and gals he reads about will soon be yukking it up in cross-blog conversations like old college buddies.  But like college, this stage doesn't last forever.

One of two things will happen.  Once in a blue moon, the blogger will catch lightning in a bottle, get swept up by the blogging elite, and become a recognized name in the blogosphere.  Much more often, the blogger will hit a plateau and the growth of his still new blog will slow or flatline.  He's not the new guy any longer, his album's worth of posts are getting a little stale, and the lizard-like blogosphere has been distracted by all the other flies buzzing around.

At this point the once hopeful blogger finds himself writing away to what seems like a diminishing rate of return. 

Stage 3: Frustration

Once the honeymoon is over, the blogging work that seemed so new and interesting at first starts to feel hard and frustrating.  And very, very inefficient.  The blogger can't figure out how to generate enough traction to achieve the organic growth that is an absolute requirement to maintain a popular blog.  He writes thoughtful posts on hot topics, links like crazy to other bloggers and waits. And waits.  He gets a few links here and there, but the small return on the huge effort is profoundly discouraging.  The blogging elite doesn't notice him and many of the other new bloggers are too busy fighting for attention to engage in any meaningful conversation.  The blogging happiness trend is going down pretty quickly, but not in a straight line.  Small victories occasionally conceal the larger defeat and the blogger bounces between the rock of discouragement and the hard to maintain place of synthetic optimism.

At this point, the blogger begins looking for a new angle to kick-start and accelerate the growth process.  Perhaps he crafts alliances with other similarly situated bloggers, which, like any attempt to change the status quo, only works as long as it has critical mass.  Inevitably, some will become convinced that they can muscle their way into the club and take advantage of the very forces that once kept them down.  It's the same dynamic as the driver who slows down to rubberneck at a traffic accident, telling himself that he's already paid his dues by waiting in the long line of cars.

For the new blogger, the collapse of his wagon train is just one more setback in a journey that grows more frustrating with every step. 

It is during this stage that pandering, agitating and extreme positions in search of a reaction begin to occur.  Like the preschooler who acts out for attention, however, this approach is not sustainable over the long term.  Angry or effusive posts create a self-fulfilling prophesy, whereby the blog's growth is even more negatively affected as a result of posts, cynical or sycophantic, inspired by the blog's lack of growth.

This is probably the least happy time for most bloggers.  The former excitement is replaced by frustration and the growing belief that time spent blogging might better be applied elsewhere.  Many bloggers abandon ship at this stage.  Other trudge along wearily to the next stage.

Stage 4 Alienation

After the blogger's capacity for frustration is exceeded, he does an about face and, instead of seeking inclusion in the conversations, he rejects the entire process completely.  At this point, the tailspin towards abandonment has begun.  The blogger's mental image of the blogosphere as unicorns and butterflies in a field of wildflowers is replaced with an equally distorted image of a dark and wicked place, full of conspiracies and evil doers.  The benefit of the doubt is cast aside in favor of broad condemnation.

This alienation manifests itself in one or more ways.  Perhaps it takes the form of cynical posts about the unfairness of the system.  Or long periods without posting anything, followed by a week or so of active posting.  Rote behavior, in an effort to find the hidden key that will unlock the gate.

Some blogs exist in a near perpetual state of alienation.  Eventually, the alienation gives way to abandonment.

Stage 5: Abandonment

Next comes the unsatisfying end game for the discouraged blogger.  His once cherished blog is either cast into the abyss via the delete button or, more often, left to lie silent by the side of the road like a burned out jalopy.  A testament to the inefficiency of the process.

I am amazed at the number of abandoned or nearly abandoned blogs I come across.  All the information in all the posts that were never published lost- not just for now, but for all time.  The development of the collective consciousness interrupted.  Once here, twice there.  Before long the entire process is in jeopardy.

I don't have an easy solution to reduce the rate of blog attrition.  I do what I can by trying to find and highlight blogs from the blogosphere's mostly invisible middle earth.  I don't know if that will make a difference or not.  I hope so, but I am not immune to discouragement.

What I do know is that all legitimate bloggers, regardless of our motivation for blogging, have a vested interest in nurturing the blogosphere and encouraging the creation and continued existence of legitimate blogs by people we don't know yet who have a lot to say, a lot to share, and a lot to teach us.

I'm glad to see Bill Liversidge blogging again.  I really enjoy his writing.

C|Net has a photo gallery of tech's most hyped product launches.

Survival Topics has a good read on the 5 Basic Survival Skills.

I know a guy named Frank Smith, but HearYa has a write up on the band by the same name.  The clip sounds really good.  Love that steel.

Dave Taylor looks at whether the iPhone will be a business phone.  I love me some Dave, but if it won't synch with Outlook, it won't be a business phone.  Thousands of IT departments whose bosses already fear anything resembling online data storage are not going to risk their jobs by forcing the issue.  Not when there are so many Blackberries out there that accommodate the safe decision.

Stereogum is my Marc Andreessen.  I just have to link to it every day.  Here's its list of the 20 loudest albums of all time.

Dennis the Peasant is hilarious.  "It's only a short step from Cole Porter to Edith Piaf. But I'm not one to withhold credit when credit is due: You've got to be an authentic phoney to listen to Edith Piaf and then act like it was a treat. I mean, it isn't just that she's French - although that should be enough for most people - it's, it's that she sounds like someone is goosing her at a rate of about 30 times a minute."

First my old buddy Mathew Ingram links to me, and then goes back and removes the link.  Even though I challenge you to find anyone who took a more even-handed approach than I did to the Federated Media/Microsoft discussion.

Now, Louis Gray (who I have linked to at least six times in the past month)  calls me a cheater.  Says I and those like me are ruining Technorati's credibility by participating in viral tag link arounds.  He says my Technorati count is bogus.  Implies that I am a fraud who engages in a sultry practice.  He suggests that I lead by example and renounce my wicked ways.

Those are pretty strong words, particularly since Louis doesn't know the first thing about me, including how to spell my name.  Apparently he doesn't know much about the blogosphere either.

The blogsphere is not a level playing field.  Louis said as much the other day.  We've been talking about the gatekeeper thing for years.  There are a hundred theories about the cause, but there is only one effect: that there are those on the inside, where the blogosphere is all warm and chummy, and there are those on the outside looking in.  Personally, I think a lot of it boils down to three factors: (1) people blog for a lot of different reasons and blogs often have cross-purposes; (2) those who have proximity in career or geography can more easily create relationships that transcend the blogosphere, resulting in more shared attention; and (3) human nature.  It's the human nature part that creates the walls that are the hardest to scale.

In other words, the walls may be naturally formed without malice.  But there are walls.

Those on the outside looking in can either accept it and move on (thus the high rate of blog attrition), pander to the A-Listers (take a look at Louis's blog roll on the right side of his blog page for a great example of that) and hope you'll one day get invited to the club (with the chance of success being roughly equal to the chance a high school basketball player has of making the NBA), or take the blogosphere for what it is and play the game with everyone else.  I have tried the first two and found them lacking.  I have tried the latter exactly twice.  Once here, which generated virtually no links, and once here, which generated quite a few.

Do those posts add value for the reader?  Of course not.  Do the ads we suffer through in feeds and on blog pages add value for the reader, of course not.  The latter are designed to line the pockets of those who see the blogosphere as a way to make money.  For me, the former is a small attempt to end run around the fact that, despite writing hard for years, I simply cannot get many of the popular bloggers to allow me into the conversation.  If bloggers like Dave Winer, Fred Wilson, Guy Kawasaki, Om Malik, Steve Rubel and others won't let me join their conversations, what am I do to?  If waiting patiently doesn't work?  If giving blogging up isn't appealing?  If I am truly the hardest working man in the blogosphere and have so little to show for it, what is left?

I could write away in obscurity and support the machine for the benefit of the empowered.  I could establish some artificial moral standard that no one would know or care about- that would only apply to me, since almost everyone else is gaming the system in one way (ads, products or services to sell) or another (linking mostly to those in their circle of friends).  Or I could keep writing hard every day and try to find another way up blogger's hill.  Try, as in two posts out of 1,262 posts.  That's .002%.  I get far more "bogus" content than that every single day when I see all the ads my feeds.

The viral tag links are not nearly as meaningful as a link from a blogger engaging in cross-blog conversation with me.  But are they that different from the hordes of links Scoble and others get when they post about arm farting and whatnot?  Is a link from some other blogger via viral tags that much worse than all those upstream "I agree" or "look at me, please" links from some pandering wannabe?  I think not.  At most, they are equally worthless.  So don't condemn one unless you're willing to condemn both.  Those who live in glass houses, and all that.

If ads designed to separate readers from their cash are perfectly OK.  If partial feeds are OK.  If undisclosed conflicts of interest are conveniently ignored...how can sharing links be the great evil that needs to be exposed and eradicated?  And if sharing links for the sake of links is a sin, why didn't Louis call me a cheater and a fraud when I did this?  Or this? 

Dave Sifry, who knows a little about Technorati, says that "in this new world of conversation, the hyperlink is becoming a new form of social gesture between people.  It's something akin to a tap on the shoulder."  Maybe these viral tags are the blogosphere equivalent of the mosh pit where the disenfranchised jump around wildly to the horror of the ruling class.  Maybe they're the Boston Tea Party where terrorists-cum-revolutionaries toss the highly taxed authority count into the sea.  Whatever they are, those who engage in them do not deserve the condemnation that Louis espouses.

The blogosphere isn't a perfect place, but it's the only one we have.  Bloggers aren't perfect either.  As Louis will tell you over and over, I'm not either.

But if we're going change the nature of the blogosphere, then there are a lot better places to start than calling me out as the poster child for bad behavior.

Pageflakes has apparently left the semi-crowded portal space and jumped into the insanely crowded social network space.  Social network is the most over used and meaningless term in the history of the internet.  It's just links to people and information of interest, loosely wrapped around some commonality.  There have been social networks since the old BBS days.  All this stuff (I'm talking about the social network craze here, not Pageflakes) is just better technology aimed at capturing users to drive value for developers and venture capitalists.

I'm interested in Kevin Rose's new instant messaging service, Pownce.  There needs to be a more intuitive and efficient way to share information.  Hey Kevin, want to hook me up so I can review it?

I guess the girls do get prettier at closing time. (via Obscure)

When we got married, my wife couldn't name all four Beatles (she's not all that into music).  Neither can Larry King.  Stereogum has the hilarious transcript. 

Dwight was a good write-up on the latest iPhone hype and mania.

Jeff Pulver is doing an Everyday Heroes project.  It's a collaborative effort to feature amazing and inspiring stories of ordinary people.  I think it's a great idea, and plan to participate.  I can think of several people who have a profound positive effect on the lives of those around them.  Now I just have to talk one or more of them into telling their story on film.  In the meantime YesButNoButYes has an everyday hero clip to kick things off.

Robert Hruzek has a list of interesting quotes.  I like the way Neil Young says it better that the way John Kenneth Galbraith does.

Scott Hanselman on escalating the communication.  There are a couple of people in my office who use the "Reply to All" button as a medium for self-promotion.  It drives most people crazy, but it also seems to work on occasion.  Sort of like spam, I guess.

MySpace for dogs?  Are you kidding me? What's next DogPee, to help find the nearest fire hydrant?

I've been listening to Ryan Adams' newly released Easy Tiger.

I've been a mostly on and sometimes off fan of Ryan's since the first time I heard Faithless Street by his former band Whiskeytown.  I tend to really like his alternative country stuff and run hot and cold on his more pop/rock offerings.  I thought Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights were excellent.  This one, while more varied in its tone, is too.  If every song on it isn't a 10 (as was the case on Strangers Almanac), there are enough 10s to make it a worthy purchase.  And even the lesser songs sound better with each listen.

Ryan has long been one of the best songwriters in the business.  His voice takes wistful to a new level, and the arrangements on this record are superb in their detail.  Two is a perfect mid-tempo country-folk song, with a guest appearance by Sheryl Crow.  Everybody Knows has a fabulous piano track and some wonderful acoustic guitar.

Tears of Gold is a steel guitar country weeper.  Pearls on a String is a folky number with a bluegrass arrangement.  Rip Off has a great guitar track and a vibe that would have been right at home on the slightly more countyish Cold Roses.

These Girls sounds the most Whiskeytown-like to me.  Bare and powerful, but missing Caitlin Cary's wonderful violin.  I Taught Myself to Grow Old, the final track, is a moody slow number with some classic Ryan Adams lyrics.    

HearYa (a great music blog) has a video and some sound clips.  So does IHTFAF.

This is an update on my swivel feeds experiment, in which I ask bloggers I read to help me rebuild my reading list by adding 5 of their favorite blogs to the list.  I've had a generally positive response so far, and my new reading list is coming together nicely, with a diverse and interesting mix of bloggers.  When the list is complete, I will share it and upload an OPML file for those who are interested.

Here's how it works.  Every few days I ask a group of 8 of my favorite bloggers to each recommend 5 blogs to add to the list.  I'll post the recommended blogs in a subsequent update, and add them to my swivel feeds list.  Each update has a list of the recent blog recommendations, followed by the next 8 bloggers who I am asking to add blogs to the list. 

Here are the swivel feeds recommendations so far from the sixth group, plus any stragglers from prior groups.  Note that, when possible, I designate blogs by the name of the blogger, because I like to know who I'm talking to.

Adam Ostrow
Ah Soon
Alan Patrick
Andy Abramson
Blognation
Brian Balfour
Chris Marston
Crystal Jackson
Don Dodge
Ewan McIntosh
Funny Junk
Greg Sterling
Jeff Masters
JonnyB's Private Secret Diary
Joshua Porter
Just Elite
Kfir Pravda
Liz Stauss
Nick Carr
Official Google Blog
Rod Begbie
Seamus McCauley
Stereogum
T-Critic
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Tom Evslin
Tony Hung
Twangville
Yes But No But Yes

I have subscribed to all of the recommended blogs, and all but two of them are new to me.

These blogs join the following prior recommendations and participants in the fifth edition of my new reading list.

From Group 6, I haven't heard from JD Lasica, Jeneane Sessum, Jeremiah Owyang or Jeremy Zawodny.  Jimmy Huen has not yet made his picks.  From Group 5 I haven't heard from Guy Kawasaki, Henry Blodget, Hugh MacLeod or Jake Ludington.  My general policy is to assume non-participation after 2 weeks.

From Group 4, Eric Scalf, Frank Gruber and Fred Wilson did not respond.  All have been dropped from the swivel feeds list.

Now for the next 8 bloggers, who I am asking to add 5 blogs to the list:

John Dvorak:  I enjoy John's magazine articles greatly.  My Evening Reading segment was inspired by his column.

John Watson:  Father, blogger, software developer.  I love the way he captures universal truths - and sometime just humor - in his conversations with his kids.

Karl Martino:  Another long time read who blogs about new media, software and life in general.

Kate Trgovac:  Kate writes about social media, marketing, Web 2.0 and other interesting topics.

Kevin Briody:  Kevin is a Oregon Ducks fan living in Seattle.  Hopefully he'll participate even though my Deacons came to his hometown and owned his Ducks in the 2002 Seattle Bowl.

Kevin Hales:  This Kevin is an NC State fan (Wake owns them too), a champion Scrabble player and one of the best writers I know.  I wish he blogged more. 

Kevin Maney:  The former USA Today tech columnist has been a regular read of mine for a year or so.  He's a musician too.

Larry Borsato:  Another long time read who writes on tech, media and all sorts of interesting things.

That's the seventh group of bloggers I'm asking to help rebuild my reading list.  If you're willing, please recommend 5 of your favorite blogs to add to the list.  Use the comments, your blog or email, whichever you prefer.

I've noticed a trend I really don't like.  In my feeds, many of the links to the post page for the blog entry are being redirected through Feedburner.  I suppose this is because (a) people want to track every possible statistic about their traffic, and (b) Google wants to get as far into our data as possible.  The problem is that if you, like me, want to link to the post page directly, you now have to click on the link, wait for the redirected page to load and get the URL from your browser's address bar.  Previously, you could just right click and copy the link location.  This is a recipe for link discouragement.

AOL, who perfected the internet-like online experience, has launched a blog-like news service.

If the 6 people who watch your video cast make you nervous, EnjoyMyMedia will let you create a channel just for your mom.

The Dell XPS M1330 looks like a pretty sweet laptop.

I had 84 unread Gizmodo posts in my feed reader tonight.  I'll ask once more- am I the only one who thinks that is way too many?  Is there one person in the world with a real job who reads all of them?  I unsubscribed.

Netvibes added some new features.  But not the ability to set the text size.  This seems like a 10 minute job that would benefit millions of users and potential users.  So why isn't it happening?

Ethan Johnson has a good read on the credibility issue.  I like being compared to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.  I also like the fact that he linked to me and didn't later remove it.

I had no idea Greg Hughes is a pyrotechnician.  Very cool.  I was invited to the VIP suite of a huge fireworks show a couple of years ago.  The control room was next door, and we were allowed to watch the guys do their thing.  Watching the activity in the control room was even cooler than watching the fireworks themselves.

I've discovered a lot of great new blogs to read via my swivel feeds experiment, but none that I am enjoying more than Penelope Trunk.  Great stuff.  Highly recommended.

I've been predicting (read hoping for) a Led Zeppelin reunion for years.  Today Stereogum says I might finally be right.

Leo at Zen Habits is asking for donations.  Zen Habits is a must-read blog.  I've given, and I hope you will too.

Everybody's talking about Techmeme today...again.  Scoble says he has all the inbound links and ought to be the top story about whatever the top story is at the moment.  He's said basically the same thing before.  Here's the problem with that: Scoble could write a post about arm farting and 30 or 40 people would immediately link to it, hoping he might link back.  Scoble has more yes men than Michael Corleone and Michael Arrington combined.

In other words, all those people linking wildly to Scoble aren't doing so because they think he is the world's greatest authority on arm farting.  They are simply holding out their hands eagerly and hoping Scoble will shake it (via a link) as he walks by.  Getting a link from Scoble is almost as good as getting arrested with Paris Hilton.  It's not Scoble's fault he's the king of the blogosphere any more than it's Paris Hilton's fault she's in jail.

All of which means that, at least at the top of the blogosphere, links are less about authority and more about popularity and power.  Power to control admission to the in-crowd.  Just like in life, some go radical and reject the system that excluded them.  Others waive expectantly, hoping they'll get called over to play.  Most are somewhere in between.

But none of this is a sound basis for deciding what is top news and what isn't.  There needs to be more to it.  There needs to be a balance between popularity, authority, freshness and inclusion.  Most of the target audience for Techmeme already subscribe to Scoble's blog.  They are at Techmeme looking to see what others are saying about various topics.  And let's not kid ourselves, a ton of Techmeme readers are bloggers who want to be included in the conversation.  To remove the opportunity for inclusion would change Techmeme in a fundamental and adverse way.      

I have no idea how Techmeme works under the hood, but it seems to do a good job of picking out appropriate stories and discussion links.  Sure, I get the point that the Register and the New York Times are not blogs.  But be that as it may, I find Techmeme to be a lot less biased than most bloggers, A-List and otherwise, when it comes to picking up interesting and relevant links.

Meanwhile, Louis Gray has a case of the new blogger's blues: "I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to a story before 'the big guys' get it, only to be ignored."  We've all been there brother, but stay the course and you'll get some exposure via Techmeme.  No, you won't get to be the main topic link very much, because A-Listers and a lot of wannabes will always link "upstream" in an effort to protect or obtain a membership card.  But you'll get in the discussion links (where I live).  Is it perfect?  No.  Is it more productive than waiting for a link from one of the A-Listers or wannabes?  Absolutely.

The blogosphere is not a level playing field and there are as many motivations for blogging as there are bloggers.  This makes the trip up blogger's hill a steep one, but Techmeme has always struck me as a reasonably fair and informative place to start.

So a man saves his son by killing a bear with a log.

And gets ticket for failing to secure his campsite.

If camping with a guy who can kill a bear with a piece of firewood isn't secure, I don't know what is.

Mark Evans has an interesting read on 5 Things that Could Kill Facebook.  I can narrow my list down to three, but first let's examine his list.

1) The evolution of its business model.

Mark says Facebook has a clean and accessible look and feel.  I've read others say the same thing.  I think it has a clean look, but I don't find it particularly accessible.  In fact, I think it has a very non-intuitive interface.  I'm pretty computer and online literate and I can't figure out how to do anything on Facebook without a lot of trial and error.  And if I have these problems, how do you think the public at large will fare?  Contrary to our occasional assumptions, everyone under 30 is not an uber-geek.

I agree with Mark, however, that the more ads and features they cram into Facebook, the more chaotic and MySpace-like it will become.  And anyone who reads this blog knows I have no love for any of those butt-ugly MySpace pages.  Like the rest of the internet, Facebook is, or will become, ad-dependant- which means that there will be ads and lots of them.  There are those who believe the online ad dollar is consistent and infinite.  I believe it is cyclical and limited.  Granted, if the shake out comes and Facebook is the last network standing, good for it.  But there's a lot of ground to cover between now and then.

2) In-box Contamination.

Mark says over time there will be so many people clamoring to be your friend that the network will become unmanageable.  Perhaps, but there are a lot of people who do pretty well keeping their network of friends small out here in the big old blogosphere, and I suspect those who want to have a small network will be able to have one.  The risk, I suppose, is that your friend list starts looking (again) more MySpace-like and friend becomes just a marketing word for link.

3) Application Noise.

Brad Feld wondered the other day what's in it for the application developers who are creating all these great applications.  My hunch is that it's all about the buzz at the moment.  Developers are in a gold rush for users and, once they stake their claim, they'll let someone else figure out how to monetize it.  As the competition heats up, however, the clamor from applications looking for a spot on your Facebook page could become distracting.

4) The IPO.

I've written plenty about the problems money or the prospect of money cause online and off.  Once Facebook make a break for the IPO, priorities will change.  The goal of getting traffic will become secondary to the goal of making money from that traffic.  And as far as I know there's only one primary revenue source (see item 1 above).  Facebook has the same problem the rest of the social networks have.  It has nothing to sell but eyeballs and traffic.  Both of which are connected to other people.

5) Facebook Fatigue.

For me personally, this is the most compelling of Mark's 5 things.  I'm bored to tears with Second Life, and almost as bored with Twitter.  Facebook has broader traction that either of those applications, but I wonder what the average lifespan of an active Facebook page is?  I also wonder about the mean lifespan of Facebook pages of groups of users who sign up around the same time.  If your pals aren't there, there's nothing social about the network. 

Now for my 3 things that could kill Facebook.

A) Its heritage as a place for school kids.  Even now, when you create and manage a Facebook account, there are a lot of remnants of its genesis as a largely college hangout.  How you know someone.  The "personal ads" vibe of the sign-up process.  The navigation in general.  In sum, it just doesn't seem very businesslike.  It's not as bad as MySpace, but it still seems more like my kids' rooms than my office.

B) The blogosphere/Google combination. Open API or not, there's still a wall around Facebook.  It's hard to get data out of there and into the wild.  As AOL found out, what people look at initially as a safe place to hang out can begin to look like a cage over time.  I continue to believe that the blogosphere is the only network that matters, and that over time most people will elect to take control of their content and manage it via a wall-free platform.  Anything that gets between a content provider and its users is by definition bad for the content provider.  And there's no need for a central registry of contact information- we have Google.  Just do a search.

C) LinkedIn.  Granted, LinkedIn is a little behind in the race for the social networking crown, but with news that it plans to open its API, and the more business-like atmosphere to be found there, I can envision LinkedIn becoming the preferred network for grownups.

Impress your friends by solving the Rubik's Cube.  Here's part 2.

I'm not sure which surprises me more: that Apple passed Amazon in music sales or that Walmart and Best Buy are one and two.  I haven't bought a CD in a bricks and mortar store in many years.  Amazon really missed its opportunity to dominate the downloadable music market.

Richard Querin has launched a new site for his Inkscape screencasts.  The picture quality is really good.  Inkscape looks pretty cool too.  I wish someone would make a series like this for Photoshop.  I rank using Photoshop and flying the space shuttle as equivalent on the difficulty scale.

My kids would not dig living here.  Now if it was a skittles powered house... (via Zoli)

Earl is developing a system for managing his reading list.  I don't have them separated out, but I have a basic mental list that closely mirrors his groups.  Once my swivel feeds experiment is over, I'll start on the process of classifying and prioritizing.

Wow, Kevin Tofel found some actual applications that work on Blackberries.  I've had one for years, but I have never been anything but unimpressed by the available applications.  Of course when you go to the Mobio page, there's no way to tell what they are.  I don't need the gas price deal.  I already do that wirelessly- with my eyes.

One of the interesting by-products of feeds and Technorati is the ability to watch posts as they are revised.  I find it curious when links sometimes disappear in subsequent edits.  Maybe you have to be careful who you're seen hanging around with.  No more about this now.  Maybe later.

Nobody ever won an argument by simply saying "I'm mad at you" over and over.  If someone is already being critical of your words or actions, they probably don't care if you're mad at them.  They're probably mad at you too.  Jumping up and down might make you feel better, but it doesn't get you any closer to understanding and reconciliation.

Yet here comes Mike Arrington, once again, telling us that he's "pissed off at every single person involved" in the Federated Media/Microsoft cacophony.  I would use John Battelle's favorite word "conversation," but as Mathew Ingram points out, John's definition of conversation is a little different than most.

The fact of the matter is this:

1) Some people are claiming this is a disclosure issue.  It's not.  It's a credibility issue.  I can see why Mike and others would react strongly to implications that there was something truly covert going on.  Maybe it wasn't in flashing neon lights, but neither was it hidden.  Anyone who thought that Federated Media page was anything more than a collaborative billboard wasn't paying attention.  For some reason, Mike chooses to go straight to attack mode, rather than present his argument rationally.  I guess when you own TechCrunch, that's your prerogative, but it's not likely to sway many fence sitters to your side.

2) Other people, mostly those who feel like they might have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, are saying the ad campaign is a non-event.  That the whole business was dreamed up by Valleywag as a way to agitate in the name of traffic.  This mess wasn't dreamed up by Valleywag- it was dreamed up by Microsoft and Federated Media.  In the name of making money.  While there is a distinction between the journalists and the prospectors, to claim that the prospectors have a license to shill is ludicrous on its face.  Credibility transcends all motivations, and a blogger who sells his or her services for blogomercials should realize that without it being plastered all over Techmeme.  As Jeff Jarvis puts it, if the prospectors want to type away without regard for journalistic standards, then we need to read away with that in mind.

It's not an ethical transgression, it's simply a bad choice.  There's nothing evil about making a bad choice, and there's nothing wicked about holding people accountable for bad choices.

I thought John did a reasonably good job of responding to this mess, without sounding combative or defensive.  On one hand, I can see why Mike says John threw them under the bus.  On the other hand, can you imagine the uproar if John had taken Mike's "go pound sand" approach?  He had to walk a very fine line to minimize the lingering damage.  I don't agree with his "conversation" spin, but all in all, he took the first important step in addressing this issue.

It will be interesting to see how this debate plays out.  There are certainly two camps.  But the journalists and the prospectors are mining for the same gold.  Gold in the form of readers who get to decide who they trust, and who they don't.

I've had a few people suggest that, since my podcast career is on life support, I ought to do more music related posts.  I think that's a good idea, so we'll give it a try.

One of my favorite bands is the Amazing Rhythm Aces, led by one of my favorite songwriters, Russell Smith, who happens to be one of my sister's neighbors in Tennessee.  I first got turned on to the Aces in college, when I heard their amazing cover of Al Green's Love and Happiness from their self titled record.  I like all their records, but my favorite is the formerly hard to find, but now happily available, Full House, Aces High live record, which has a ton of great songs, including the best version of Dancing the Night Away.  Go buy some Aces music- you'll be glad you did.

Another underappreciated gem is the Allisons' 1989 self titled record.  You'll have to buy this one used, but it's worth it.  Their original Second Coming is fantastic, as is their cover of Homeward Bound.

Finally, for all you Bay area readers, there's my pal Ray's band The Buckets.  I don't know if they're still together, but their record Song of the True Divided Highway is one of my all time favorites.  Every song on the record is great, including I'm Drunk and Cowgirls.

I'm always looking for more good music to buy.  If you've got any music suggestions for me, I'm all eyes and ears.

Looks like Last.fm might not join the other activists and hold up a tiny sign beside the interstate on June 26.  Can't say I blame Last.fm.  Granted, it may be making a logical decision for a greedy reason, but so what.

I'm all about protesting this ridiculous royalty rate increase, but given the fact that a significant portion of the music industry would love for all third party controlled online music to disappear in the hopes that the cat would somehow run back into the bag, thereby preserving their distribution monopoly, is shutting down internet radio for a day really going to help?  What they ought to do is play only music that isn't captive to the music industry cartel.  There are millions of artists out there who control their own catalog and would happily allow their music to be played on these stations for a day- or longer- without payment.  It would show the cartel- and the public- what the future of music distribution looks like, and it might force the cartel to reason.  It would also give a ton of deserving artists some valuable and deserved exposure.

You've got to toss some tea in the ocean to make a difference.  Balsamic hyperion didn't work and neither will turning online radio off for a day.

If you can't change the game because someone else makes all the rules, it might be time to find a new game.  With better rules.