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Staying Connected in Times of Weirdness

Filed Under Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

I've been thinking . . .
Trackbacks coming into and going out of Successful-Blog have been mystically enchanted. I am unable to know where they go, when they go, or get word when they’ve been sent to me as well. A famous blogger is helping me sort out this mystery . . . film at 11 on the SETI channel.

Until then, please know that issues at Technorati — links are disappearing for no reason — and WordPress –trackbacks aren’t coming in or going out– have made it hard for me to know about your generosity. If you haven’t heard a word about a connection or gesture you’ve made, please email me — lizsun2 at gmail [dot] com so that I can drop by and properly ay, “thanks.”

Liz's Signature

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Technorati Has a Birthday and We Get the Present!

Filed Under Business Life, Customer Think, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Technorati | 14 Comments

Customer-Centered Technorati!

In honor of their third anniversary as a company, Technorati has rolled out a major upgrade. The billboard that Technorati has changed their view to customer-centered is that when you sign in, you’ll find the home page is about you, your blogs, and what you might find interesting — not about Technorati.

I’m already liking these changes.

  • The Home Page brings what I need together. Everything I use daily is there. I love that the ping is right on top. I can click directly to my indexed posts.
  • The link counts are a lot more accurate. Thank you.
  • Favorites makes sense and is easier. I’m MUCH more likely to use Favorites Now.
  • Technorati Browser Buttons are one reason I’m more likely to use Favorites now.
  • The Search function is faster and has more filters. I very much like that I can filter by language.
  • The Search results have extended excerpts. (Show details.) I can take a closer look without having to click through.
  • The support text is written clearly. That’s a BIG deal to me. Thanks Technorati for getting a great writer to write these bits and pieces. No confusion or ambiguity whatsoever in anything I’ve read so far.
  • I also love the quieter new layout.

Check out this tool for business blogging, blog promotion, and branding. You can read about it and see a video of the features at Sifry’s Alerts by clicking on this title.

Technorati turns 3

Happy Birthday, Technorati! Thank you, David and Technorati, for the present!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Technorati — Hollywood and International
A Tale, Sister Marlene, Stephen Covey, Mike Sigers, & Power Linking

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SOB Business Cafe 07-14-2006

Filed Under Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 3 Comments

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Another Blogger offers a fresh look at 9 things we should all understand about who we are and who we write for.

9 Things Every Blogger Should Understand

Case Notes from the Artsy Asylum delves into and analyzes the latest press about David Sifry’s Interview and changes at Technorati.

Workout4Bloggers reminds us to take care of our own parts that can breakdown while we work.

Warning Signals for Bloggers

The New Flatness goes deep in considering the huge importance of web presence and it’s impact on our future.

Related ala carte selections include

Shards of Consciousness reminds us that people and stars are made of the same stuff.

Whos the Star of Your Story

Cuileann McKenzie offers a creative solution for keeping track of fleeting ideas.

Do I Need a Tin Foil Hat

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 6-29-2006

Filed Under Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Net Neutrality Matters by Scott Russell

Imagine a world where Internet performance is controlled by the company who owns the cables and where speed is sold to the highest bidder. Imagine a world where some Web sites load faster than others, where some sites aren’t even visible and where search engines pay a tax to make sure their services perform at an acceptable speed. That’s the world US Telecommunications companies (telcos) such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner are trying to create. . . .

To the lay person, it may seem like a laughable proposition. As Cory Doctorow (FreePress) put it, “It’s a dumb idea to put the plumbers who laid a pipe in charge of who gets to use it.” And yet the US congress is swaying towards the view of the telcos, so what’s going on?

Blogtopia “Under Grave and Immediate Threat”

Imagine trying to cope with today’s world without blogs.

On second thought, it’s too painful.

Yet, it may happen sooner rather than later:

Blogs have gained a growing cultural and political impact in the United States and worldwide. In the United States, they’ve been credited with playing a key role in the resignation of a U.S. Senate Majority Leader and the public repudiation of a longtime TV news anchor. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of the English language deemed “blog” its word of the year in 2004. The Technorati website boasts that it keeps track of some 28 million blogs worldwide.

Undeniably, blogs and their collective identity known as the “blogosphere” have become an extraordinary phenomenon. And no matter what topics they may discuss or what political leanings they may espouse, they are all under grave and immediate threat.

The Internet’s Oedipal Drama

Fundamental changes have already taken place in the Internet’s traffic load. In the good old days when the Internet was a private club for elite Universities and defense contractors, traffic was light even for the primitive pipes of the day. When congestion collapse appeared it was viable, just barely, to manage it with an end-to-end system that relied on good behavior on the part of the community, because there was a community. The overloaded Internet of the mid 80’s got new life from exponential backoff and slow start in TCP, because the most aggressive consumer of bandwidth was ftp, the files it transferred were short, and users were patient. They didn’t have spam, viruses, worms, or phishing either.

Now that the Internet has to contend with a billion users and multi-gigabyte file transfers with BitTorrent, the honor box model no longer works at all. When BitTorrent is slowed down by backoff, it simply propagates more paths, creating more and more congestion. In another year, the Internet is going to be just as unstable as it was in 1985.

This being the case, the carriers have to implement traffic limits inside the network, building on the mechanisms established as far back as the 1980s with RED and its progeny. This is the only way to control BitTorrent. There is no community and we’re not patient people.

And while they’re doing that, it makes perfect economic and technical sense to implement voice- and video-oriented QoS. Even Berners-Lee acknowledges this, he’s just on the neutrality bandwagon because he’s exercised about third-party billing for web content, a very obscure concern. So whether the phone company manages its links or not, whether they offer third-party billing for QoS or not, and whether the phone company competes with Akamai by offering content caching or not, the Internet will either change or collapse.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

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The TECHNORATI Business Model Revealed

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Customer Think, Outside the Box, Strategy, Successful Blog, Technorati | 45 Comments

Smoke and Mirrors

Don’t be fooled by smoke and mirrors. Five blogs on an AP website is nothing. Technorati on every one of them is a big deal. Technorati is joining the mainstream. That doesn’t mean bloggers are.

By virture of it’s index of OUR blog posts, and 3 deals in announced in the last 3 days, Technorati is one of the worlds largest content providers with it’s name on every Paramount Classic and AP website.

It sure looks like we provide their content for nothing. Technorati gains plenty of fame and who knows how many dollars?

I was wrong before. The strategy here is brilliant. It’s so far outside the box, I didn’t even see it.

Sorry David, this too clever by half for me to be quiet about. What is it that I misinterpret here? Please set me straight. I really want to believe I have something wrong, but all of the pieces fit as I look at it.

How did this happen? Why doesn’t anyone see this? [links via Bloggers Blog]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Technorati–Shopping Is NOT Strategy
Technorati — Hollywood and International
Technorati Blog Cards
It’s Not Your Blog, It’s Technorati
Put Your 2Cents In–What’s Technorati Worth–Without Janice?

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