I Paid, Now What?
In the don’t-call-them-comments notes section on my post about Tumblr’s new Highlighted Posts feature, Jenna Wortham brings up a good point:
Def agree its smart of Tumblr to try new things - but the return here seems minimal. You aren’t broadening yr audience by highlighting content to people who already read you. Best case: Someone spends an extra 5 secs looking at your post. Then what?
On the surface, true. But I think there are several interesting things this feature opens up for Tumblr. A “Highlighted” area is the most obvious. Or maybe something like: pay $1 to highlight a post to your followers, pay $10 to highlight to all of Tumblr. That would probably get a bit spammy so maybe you see the option to highlight to all only if you got enough “hearts” from the $1 highlight to those following you.
That’s just a few quick ideas. There is a lot of potential here.
But even the most simple angle may be interesting. You pay to highlight and your post get more hearts and reblogs as a result, so perhaps that post is seen by many more people than they normally would be. Doesn’t seem like a bad bet for $1.
More importantly, if Tumblr can get more credit cards on file for one-click transactions… a whole new world opens up.
Paid highlighted posts is a great idea. I don’t know if it will ultimately work, but it’s a smart thing to try.
Some will complain that it will lead to spammy-like behavior, but it works because the rules are the same: only follow people on Tumblr you actually want to follow and seeing reading their content.
I do wonder what would happen if Twitter did this? Yes, they have Promoted Tweets, but it’s a brand thing right now. What if regular people you followed promoted Tweets? There would undoubtedly be an initial shitstorm, but it would be an interesting idea as well…
I also love that Tumblr easily allows you to donate $1 to the Red Cross with each Highlight sold. Well played.
And you’ll notice the font and container box of all Highlighted posts is slightly larger as well…
Update: I Paid, Now What?
Happiness Takes (A Little) Magic
Fantastic post by Brian Lam thinking deeply about technology addiction (and technology news addiction).
A New Hope
A few weeks ago, Jeremiah Owyang wrote the provocative ”The Golden Age of Tech Blogging is Over”. Naturally, the tech press jumped all over it. One of those was my former TechCrunch colleague Sarah Lacy. In her post, “Golden Age of Tech Blogging Done? I Couldn’t Disagree More”, she outlined why she felt we are poised to enter one of the most exciting periods yet in the space.
And for good reason. She was in the midst of working on something. Something meant to evolve the space. Today she’s launching it: PandoDaily.
I actually don’t think what Jeremiah and Sarah wrote is as far apart as their titles may seem. The tech blogging space, of course, isn’t over — but it is evolving rapidly. All the evidence you need of this is the sheer amount of turnover in the ecosystem in recent months. Nearly all of the people I know in the game have now worked for at least two sites (including myself) — many of them three or even more.
Trollem Ipsum
Hard to argue with this:
Dumbest thing that Google has ever done at the end RIM jokeshop, hardly douchebag, all in all Android is a total fucking mess, moreover fuckwittery on fuck.
People are stupid naturally fuck but also douchebag fuckwittery, in the main dickhead, consequently jackassery.
Fuck, what is more fuck, for this reason iPhone copy, why TouchWiz nonsense after fuck nevertheless dickhead for instance fingergate prior to TechCrunch.
Yadda, yadda, on the one hand fragmentation, finally TechCrunch.
Talk Amongst Yourselves
Josh Constine has a few ideas for how to fix commenting on the Internet.
None are bad, but all have been tried to varying degrees before. They don’t seem to fix the underlying problem of some people just being sketchball idiots.
I actually think number 3 — dedicated comment pages for each post — is the most interesting. Some sites, like MacRumors, seem to use this to good effect. It turns your comment section into a forum.
I’m reminded of Coffee Talk. “Talk amongst yourselves.”
Internet Comments Are Awesome
Exhibit A.
Q:In the past it was hard to measure traffic coming from Twitter, but now that all the Twitter links are t. co links, it must be easier to measure. What percentage of traffic comes Twitter?
Anonymous
It varies day-to-day and month-to-month, but right now, it’s about 10-15%. It’s the largest social driver of traffic here, just ahead of Facebook.
For comparison sake, Google+ is about half of Twitter right now — even though on Google+ I have 385,000 followers and on Twitter I have 67,000 followers.
Macstories Goes Nuclear On Comments
Wow. When I read this post by Cody Fink talking about comments and the future of Macstories I was not expecting this:
In consideration of the reader, how we want the site to look, and due to the amount of time we can spend keeping an eye of this stuff, we will be removing comments from the next iteration of MacStories. And yes, it’s the nuclear option for keeping the site clean. Removing comments also means that we’re doing an incredible disservice for the readers who’ve already left great comments, and we hate having to remove those from the discussion. Decisions like this are tough because we have to do what’s best for us while minding our reader’s thoughts.
Good for them. I love Macstories and the bottom line is that the removal of comments will do nothing to change that whatsoever. I’m sure I’m not alone there.
Still, this is an impressive stand. It’s one thing for a single person site (like this one) to make a call to remove comments. It’s another for a larger team blog to do so. In fact, I can’t think of any without comments.
Right or wrong, the mentality is that to build a next generation media publication on the web, you need comments. That’s why we never got rid of them on TechCrunch (believe me, plenty of us wanted to — Facebook comments were a compromise).
Even more interesting is the psychology behind “needing” comments on big sites. Let’s be honest: most of these sites defend comments because if they don’t, it will seem like they’re taking a shit on their readers. It’s along the lines of “the reader is always right” — even when only half a percent are commenting and the vast majority of those are trolls.
So good for Macstories taking a stand and doing what they think is right for their site. This is ballsy and I hope it works for them. If it does, it could be the first real step towards the reinvention of online feedback and discussion that the space desperately needs.
Sent (and received) my first bit of Fan Mail. Nice new feature/idea by Tumblr.
It’s subtle — this is one of those “delight” features that takes a real world concept (fan mail) and translates it into a more meaningful way online.
This is an action you could do previously via the Ask feature (for those that have it turned on) but that wasn’t the purpose of that feature — yet most of the “questions” I’ve gotten have been more along the lines of fan mail.
Of course, you could always send fan mail via email, but that requires knowing a person’s email address. Plus I hate email. This is my own little mailbag built right into Tumblr.
Have a comment for me? Feel free to send it there. If it’s a question, still use Ask please.
The feature is still in the process of being rolled out.
Exclusive: I Know Everything But I'm Not Telling You
What a strange post from Paul Thurrott. The information is interesting, but the set up and tone is bizarre. He has information, but he’s holding it back — until he sees false information, then he comes forward. But not with everything because, well, that would be mean to Microsoft.
Serious question: does Thurrott work for Microsoft or for himself? His site is obviously all about Microsoft, but it at least gives the illusion of independence. So why act as an extension of the Microsoft PR team if they’re not paying you for that?
Ben Brooks seems to have this right:
In other words: Thurrott does as Microsoft wishes, not what is best for his not-so-super site.
As does Matt Mullenweg:
Mr Thurrott, perhaps if you didn’t sit on stories for so long other people wouldn’t break them. Your responsibility is to your audience, not Microsoft’s CES launch plans.
Bile
@parislemon you are missing out on a rich experience by dissing comments, commenters, and the dialog that results. parislemon.com/post/152882106…
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) January 4, 2012
Last night I came home after watching Michigan’s most excellent Sugar Bowl win and read Matt Gemmell’s follow-up on why he turned commenting off on his blog a month ago. “It was definitely the right move,” he writes. And I agree with all of his points, so I linked to his post from here and followed up with a few brief words of my own on the topic.
This made some people mad.
Above, Fred Wilson says I’m missing out by “dissing” comments, commenters, etc. Not stated in that tweet is that Wilson is an investor in Disqus, a leading blog commenting system (though they view themselves as more — more on that in a bit). I don’t fault Wilson for not mentioning this very vested interest because a) 140 characters is 140 characters b) I know that he really believes in Internet comments or he wouldn’t have made the Disqus investment in the first place. Still, context is important.
Wilson’s blog, A VC, is a testament to the best of Internet commenting. It shows that on a case-by-case basis with some work, commenting can be productive and perhaps even useful. But I still disagree with Wilson that I’m missing out on anything by not allowing comments here. Because, as I wrote last night, the vast majority of the time, comments are bile. Or nonsense. Or useless. Or some combination of the three.
Comments Still Off
Here’s the thing: while some try to paint comments as a form of democracy, that’s bullshit. 99.9% of comments are bile. I’ve heard the counter arguments about how you need to curate and manage your comments — okay, I’m doing that by not allowing any.
I welcome feedback. Just do it on your own site or on Twitter, Facebook, etc. That small barrier alone removes most of the idiots.
Let’s be totally honest here: anyone worthwhile leaving a comment should do so on their own blog. Very few read blog comments anyway. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Commenting is a facade. It makes you think you have a voice. You don’t. Get your own blog and write how you really feel on your own site.
Earn your voice.
Update: Bile.
Out With A Bang
For the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about what I should write as my “goodbye 2011” post. I find myself doing this every year, with no clue what to write. Do I list my “top” posts (if so, do I do it by traffic or by more subjective means)? Do I list my achievements for 2011? Do I do predictions for 2012?
I’m gonna keep it simple and thank everyone for reading. It has been a good year for me both personally and professionally, and I’m really glad I have this site as an outlet to convey some of that to others.
Recently, some of you have noted that you’re liking the stuff I write here more than what I’ve written in the past elsewhere. I really appreciate that. To be honest, when I stepped away from fulltime duty at TechCrunch, I was a little concerned about losing my voice, as it were. Instead, I feel almost the opposite has happened. It took a little getting used to, but being able to write what I want, whenever I want without having to worry about anything else is really what it’s all about.
And the response has been amazing. Last December, this site got about 10K visits (not to be confused with pageviews — it’s nice not having to worry about that game) — this December, this site will end the month at right around 500K visits. When you combine that with the over 60K Tumblr followers, most of whom are presumably reading the content in their main Tumblr feed, I’m blown away.
I know this site has had some substantial downtime and access issues this year (alongside Tumblr), but things are being put in place now to hopefully fix that once and for all. I appreciate the patience.
2011 was great, 2012 will be better. Thanks again for reading and Happy New Year.
BGR Kills Comments Too
Continuing the trend, BGR has decided to shut down comments as well — at least temporarily until they can come up with a better option.
Ever notice how everyone is always in search of the “better option”? At some point we’re probably all going to have to recognize that the actual problem is a part of human nature.