10 Questions on Blogging

What has changed since you started to blog?

I’ve met a lot of people I would never have met otherwise, and I’ve learned a lot. It’s hard to imagine where I would be today without a blog. The medium is so great to start a conversation with many people, and it spins off new sites, projects, even new friends, and teamwork projects with those friends.

As for some practical examples, I would say my English has improved since I started, both my writing speed as well as my vocabulary (I’m a native German speaker, but I enjoy English a lot). I’ve also learned many things about Google on the way, as my first main blog is all about Google (blog.outer-court.com). And of course, the traffic to my server has changed, as well as the kind of server I’m paying for — I had to increase the package over time due to higher demand.

Why do you think blogging is so disruptive?

It makes everyone a producer of news, for one thing. Not everyone does create news, some just transport them also. Every blogger does a bit of both, I guess. And that adds up to a sort of global brain, which digests ideas or discovers facts and such. The speed and variety of this conversation might be something very new in world history — we’ll have to see where it takes us, and if it improves certain things.

Personally, the strongest effect blogging had on me was that I could finally talk to people through my website in a sort of standardized way that would just work. I had a certain other site which I just shut down because it didn’t find its audience… it was a “homepage” in the worst sense of the word. Every news bit I added to it was structured into some sort of navigational hierarchy, which is totally meaningless in terms of talking to someone. A blog is simple to explain technically, but the fact that it allows you to start a conversation is really what makes it so different from regular “homepages.” (With “homepage” I mean stuff like IBM.com and a multitude of other company sites, or personal sites. It’s just not the thing you’d wanna visit
daily.)

Where do you see blogging in 5 years?

There will be new ways to make money blogging, and probably, it will be easier to become a full-time blogger in 5 years because there will be more more concrete roads built. Right now, almost everybody’s is slashing their own way through the jungle, with the notable exception of a bunch of interesting blog networks like Weblogs Inc, FM Publishing, or Gakwer Media. But take Gawker Media… they have what, maybe a dozen blogs? In 5 years, maybe “blogger” will be a regular job title. You may be a personal blogger, a company blogger, an art blogger, a celebrity blogger, tools blogger, and so on. I’m hoping more networks will come along which will help bloggers to monetize their writing skills.

What is the most important aspect of a person blog?

Sticking to the truth, checking facts, checking sources, listing the sources, listen to feedback and incorporate corrections, and in general, be a trustworthy person. Also, the writing and the links should be interesting, of course. Many people say it’s important to get very personal and talk about personal every day life, but I guess my blog doesn’t fall into that category. Though I don’t hide my private life per se, in general I keep it out of the technical blog because frankly, people are less interested in me than in what I have to say about something else, like Google Inc or whatever I write about. Of course, I don’t really have the experience of blogging in very personal ways so I don’t know what kind of advantages that has.

Usually, I’m taking personal stuff to emails, but people can often read between the lines to find me actually blogging about, say, my job (like, one of my colleagues did notice when I did that). In a way, my blog is very personal because I’m exposing my interests and likes and dislikes, and usually those who read along I assume get a good feeling of who I am.

When you read a blog what gets you to add it to your RSS feed and what gets you to not visit the site again?

I don’t have an RSS feed reader, really. Mostly I “bookmark” the site by blogging about it, by pointing to it with a link from my blog. This way I can find it again anytime by using my blog search. So I just memorize the site or blog about it and visit it again after a while, like a few days. I’ve tried some experiments though where I’ve created RSS readers which I do check at times.

So what gets me to read a blog? Original content from someone who tells me his or her name, and also shows me their photo somewhere on the about page or the front-page. An original layout helps a blog to stick out from the large amount of blogs around. Or if I know the person, that might me make come back.

What blogs are you reading currently?

The blog of a few Ex-Google employees, Boing Boing, all official Google Blogs as well as Matt Cutts’ blog, Micro Persuasion, Jeremy Zawodny’s link blog, J-Walk, Joel on Software, Paul Graham (not a real blog), Jerz’s Literacy Blog, Kottke, The Generator Blog, PostSecret, and others. Often I find myself watching blogs in phases, like watching one blog for half a year, then taking a break, then potentially coming back after another half year.

As part of my Google research I’m usually reading Search Engine Watch, InsideGoogle, and SearchBlog. There are many more search blogs out there, including really good ones, but you just have so much time before you won’t be able to stop, sit back, and think about and digest what’s happening, so I draw a likely artificial line somewhere. When InsideGoogle came along, for example, I noticed Nathan had a high frequency of original content (and a nice sense of humor) that it made me come back more and more.

The single blog/link blog I’m probably checking most often is Andy Baio’s link blog. He’s got a wonderful set of link gems every day and the ratio of “interesting” to “non interesting”
links is just amazing to me.

These are just some of the ones I’m checking regularly, but of course I’m reading a whole lot of different blog posts everyday following different blogspace conversations. Of my daily reading of public news sites, I’d say about 70% is in blogs only. The rest is mainstream media. Thanks to many readers tips, I’m often alerted of important news, and more often than not that will be a blog post.

Blogging has become a powerhouse in the last 2 years why do you think that happened?

More and more people notice the phenomenon, I think it’s a continuous growth for many years, and it still continues to grow. In the end, it’s the people behind the blogs, and the technology that makes them communicate to others easily and effectively.

How long did it take you to build your base?

I’ve started my first blog in 2003 and the reader base has been growing continuously, and hopefully continues to grow. Before that I had a homepage since 1997. I’m blogging daily so that takes some energy, but you get a whole lot of energy in return from a community of readers, co-bloggers, friends and so on.

Community involvement in a blog is key to its success how did you get your community involved in your blog?

I’m listening to feedback and I’m incorporating good feedback. My blog is really split up into a blog page and a forum page, which are both independent to each other as well as inter-connected. For example, you can start a new thread in the forum independently of what I’m talking about on the front-page. But you can also comment on a post to then find you’ve actually created a thread which is connected to the blog post. And often, I’m emphasizing certain forum posts by linking to them from the front-page. It took me a while to get this right and working.

Probably, the community was arriving to my blog in the first place because it liked to read the content at the front-page. Now, it’s more of a split thing; everyone can read and post along in the forum, or read the front-page. So I’m very happy that so many smart people hang around. I’m getting high traffic in particular to the forum. Also, I’ve created a visual chat room a while ago which I hope adds to the fun (blog.outer-court.com/chat/).

Also, there’s the cleaning up part. I like to have non-aggressive, non-commercialized discussions. So everyday I’m deleting spam in the blog’s forum, and if there are personal attacks, I remove the attack parts (I allow people to attack ideas or arguments, but never persons). I believe in the broken windows theory in the sense that once people start writing aggressive stuff in your comments, or a kind of spam, and you allow that to happen more of those trolls or spammers will come along and finally, the good people leave. So it’s a lot of just plain care-taking work to see the community isn’t annoyed.

What advice would you give someone who is just starting out blogging?

To get their own domain and own that domain, too. To not email others telling them of their blog unless they point them to specific interesting blog posts. To have good original content along with a nice blog layout. Many other things will get their chance to develop slowly later on, so time should be spent trying to create cool content.

7 Questions on ChoiceBlogger

How did you come up with the name ChoiceBlogger?

It was one of the first names that came to mind, and it was a working title for quite a while. Later on I checked many different domain names for availability, but of course, so many names are taken. Names on the list I pondered were LogPick.com, BlogChoice.com, AnyBlog.com and more. I finally settled for ChoiceBlogger.

What would you like to get out of ChoiceBlogger?

It’s a fun experiment, both on a new type of blog, trying to find new readers, as well as an experiment on myself. Of course it would be very great in the longer term if I could live from writing this kind of blog.

What would you like others to get out of ChoiceBlogger?

I want others to be entertained by my blog posts, be excited by the blog’s monthly vote, and learn new stuff on topics they didn’t know much about. As the blog is in its early stages, many things remain to be seen and need to develop naturally.

How long has ChoiceBlogger been running?

ChoiceBlogger is running officially since Monday (yesterday), but privately and for a half dozen friends since last Saturday. I don’t like to announce a new blog without actual content yet, so the first days I could concentrate on writing a few posts and fixing a few bugs.

What have been some of the more interesting topics on ChoiceBlogger?

It just started out, so you gotta ask me that one in a few months…
I’ve chosen a single topic to start out with, which will be the first and last one to have been chosen exclusively by me (Napoleon Dynamite). Starting January, I will blog about what people voted for from a selection of my own suggestions as well as suggestions from readers. I like to keep a certain level of variety as well as topics I’m clueless about, so that I will have to research them.

Why did you start ChoiceBlogger?

To have fun writing and entertain others. Actually, once I had the idea, I probably couldn’t have stopped myself implementing it to save my life because I like to create new websites, and I love to blog, and I enjoy when people get something out of my work.

What would you like to others to know about ChoiceBlogger?

Well, the idea is novel yet easy to get I hope, and I tried to keep the blog layout extra simple so it allows new visitors to instantly focus on the most important ingredients and understand what this blog is about, and why it’s different. So I hope people who like the blog spread the word and help build a community of readers around the blog.

Usually that’s the best prerequisite for me to put more energy and time into writing the blog. ChoiceBlogger is a bit of a living thing and depends a lot on the people reading it.