slamboard

Seven percent, that’s what a major study of blogging trends cites as the portion of internet users that read one or more blogs on at least a weekly basis.

To put it another way 93% of internet users ignore the blogosphere. Maybe blogosphere isn’t such an apt term.

Another depressing number is 379. That is how many US dollars it costs to get the study that Forrester did last year on blog design. I’m sure it is a very good study. I found a blogger who bought it and gave his take on some of the findings.

I just finished reading up on social bookmarking. I thought I would get some insight, but it seems that I had absorbed most of the details of how it works through some kind of osmosis.

Simply put, a user is bookmarking a page on the web as opposed to on their browser. The obvious consequence of this is that all users of a service can access all the bookmarks and that pages can be sorted according to various statistics, like most popular or most recent. I think the most social aspect of the practice is the way that users go to forums and other social places to ask their friends to digg their stuff. Increasing traffic is the most obvious goal of those participating in social bookmarking.

I have waited until now to start making blogroll decisions. My first decision is that I will set the bar fairly high in terms of the quality and content of blogs that I link to, but that I won’t only link to blogs that have huge pagerank or traffic.

When I was a young man learning to play the guitar, I found that I always learned the most when jamming with people who were better than me. I am going to try to become part of a blogging community that works like that.

I had already added Onlinebulletin.net, my next add is going to be Owen’s Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot:
Distracting the Mind with Information Overload , it has a good mix of content and it has a personal tone that I like.

blogroll

I just approved a comment from a reblogger. Is this a good practice? Will it help or hurt my page rank?

Here is one blogger’s views on reblogging, he thinks it is evil.

But he did not talk about whether incoming links from a reblog are good or evil.

I really am a dummy. I don’t even fully understand the concept of bad neighborhoods. Are they deemed bad via some well thought out algorithm, or is it an arbitrary, case by case decision from Google? In my own estimation the whole internet is a bad neighborhood, with a selection of good neighbors who talk to each other on the phone and are very careful when they leave their house to go get a couple of loaves of bread and a container of milk.

I am by no means an expert on YouTube. I get excited when my uploads surpass the 100 views mark. The creator of YouTube made some exciting/concerning implications during a presentation recently and I am watching things closely to see what transpires. One shocking hint was about pre-roll ads 2-3 seconds long. One thing this might do is make it difficult for people to predetermine what the display still will be for their upload. This will enrage thousands of 12 year-old boys. Also some people may have ethical issues with the placement of ads on their films.

*Photo Credit:US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The title of this post is actually a bit misleading, for, you see, I am the DUMMY.

But I want to change. I am thinking of documenting my efforts with this blog…on this blog.

As of today, the second day of February, 2007, the PR of this site is…well first off, there is already some confusion…do I use the url with or without the www?

With the www. the page is a 2/10.

Without, it is a big, fat Zero.

I am going to have to do some research to find out if my best strategy should be to always have the www in all incoming links.

I have another site that is the opposite way, 3/10 without the www and 1/10 with it. Anyway, I can’t call the PR thing an experiment, because I won’t be trying one variable and then observing, I will be piling on the effort, one thing each day. Today was a evaluation and research day. Tomorrow is another day.

Happy Groundhog Day Bill Murray, Pay attention to the UV Index.