The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for September 2011

Blog Comments Are Not Currency

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My friend Marcus Sheridan wrote a good post about whether Livefyre is destroying the value of a blog comments.

You see, I don’t even know if ‘commenting’ platform is a proper description for Livefyre. It’smore of a conversation/awareness tool that happens to be used by many bloggers in their comment section. And when one looks at all it does, with its many notifications, real time ‘new comment’ alerts, ‘likes’, etc—it’s no wonder so many bloggers have embraced this new platform.

But that’s the thing about Livefyre- It’s too good with garnering comments.

You really should read the post and come back but I’ll try to sum it up for those who don’t.  Marcus goes on to discuss whether tools like LifeFyre and Triberr have artificially inflated tweets and comments to the point where they have been devalued. He also says that he expects that one day he will move from the native WP commenting platform but that for now he won’t because he thinks that people might be intimidated by it.

Marcus is a sharp guy and quite successful but I think that he is missing the boat on this one. The majority of most blog readers never or very rarely comment on posts. They don’t for a multitude of reasons that often have little to do with the system and more to do with other things. Some people are intimidated by posts that have large numbers of comments or appear to be populated by cliques. Some people don’t comment because they feel that they have nothing to add to the conversation or just because they don’t.

People like to think that they act based upon logic and reason but most of the time we do things for arbitrary reasons that are based on feeling. But that is a topic for a different day.

Blog Comments Are Not Currency

I do things here differently than some other bloggers. I believe in building my community around me. I want you to play an active role here. You are welcome to comment here, on my Facebook page and to follow me on Twitter. I respond to people who contact me through the blog and or email because that is the right thing to do and I appreciate your time.

But it is important to me to mention that I don’t measure the success or failure of a post based upon the number of comments it received. I see that as being soft and lacking substance. Some posts are 100 comments of people cracking jokes and or screwing around. That doesn’t bother me. Most of the time you’ll find me stirring the pot and mixing things up.

That is all fine and good but it doesn’t always advance the conversation. It doesn’t necessarily make that post more valuable than others. Sometimes a third or more of the banter comes from a very small group of commenters. The question I ask myself is does any of this really matter.

That answer varies and is contingent upon your goals.

For me I like the idea of building a community and I think that Livefyre does a good job of facilitating it. I liked what Danny Brown had to say in the comments.

I don’t see Livefyre as a “one-sentence commentary” option; far from it. Yes, it’s great for that type of comment, but it also fosters amazing discussion too. I’ve seen amazing, in-depth conversations take place via Livefyre, while the bloger can “take a backseat”, because it encourages more than just the initial readers to take part.

I’m biased, obviously, but I love the way my readers use Livefyre, and I’ve seen the same cool interaction elsewhere on other Livefyre-enabled blogs.

If the blogger hasn’t put in the effort to be welcoming and encouraging from the start (and helped with questions about changes to their blog), that’s their “fault” if they’re not enjoying the conversations they want.

My job is to make people feel comfortable here. My job is to provide content that makes people want to read and comment. My job is to make the comment section inviting.  The way that I do it is just like I said above- I build my community around me. I write about the things that fire me up. I share my thoughts and my life and along the way others who appreciate it and or feel similarly have shown up.

It is a slower path. It doesn’t build the comment section as fast as some other ways could but I suspect that it makes for more loyal readers and does a better job of developing relationships. I write for me first and then for you because that is what works for me and makes all this fun and interesting.

Stream of Consciousness

This post is all stream of consciousness. It is a 15 minute exercise in which I have tried to share some thoughts and ideas about this. They may not be as well formed as they should be or as I would like but I am ok with that.  Because with a little help from my community we’ll jump on this in the comment section and hash some of it out. I may even decide that I need to modify my stance, who knows.

What do you think about all this? Should bloggers view comments as currency? What do you hope to do at your own blog?

Bald Is Beautiful & Other Things You Need To Know

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I love that song for a million reasons but primarily because it reminds me of when my kids were really little and they rode daddy around the house. Speaking of little my mother is having a hard time with my hair or should I say that she doesn’t like that there is less of it than there once was.

I told her that bald men are beautiful and she told me that I am not bald. She is right, the hairline starts a little further back than it once did but I have  a long way before I have to worry about being bald. However, I have played around with shaving it all off long before it reaches that point. Mom doesn’t like this but I think that has more to do with her friends turning 70 and the knowledge that her own 70th birthday isn’t a dream anymore.

Mom tells me how she loved the long dark curls I had and refers to that picture of me from when I was three years-old. I laugh and tell her that I am going to write about how she is trying to turn me into a mama’s boy and she scowls. She wants to know why I must always be a pain in the ass and I say that it is because I can.

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It is a week since the move and we aren’t even close to being settled yet. Most of our stuff is in storage and the rest feels like it is scattered between two sets of houses and cars. Every day I spend time trying unpack and purge more stuff- organization will come…right? Actually I know the answer and am completely confident that it will indeed happen but it is going to take some time. Time feels like a frenemy to me. Sometimes when I want it to work with me it does but that precocious prevaricator has moments of mirth and he laughs hard at my expense.

I am not a fan of President Obama but I wouldn’t say that I am a detractor. I am sort of ambivalent but as I said earlier this week at Jayme’s place he should have kicked John Boehner’s ass six ways to Sunday. I don’t care if you don’t like the president, respect the damn office. When your president asks to speak to congress you say ok and STFU. But he didn’t and then Obama really disappointed me by not doing as I said. There are times to be quiet and there are times to be a leader and lay down the law. I am so tired of listening to both sides point fingers at each other.

Stop whining about it. Stop acting like children. In the real world if you said that you couldn’t work with someone you would be told once that it was too bad and then you would be fired. Part of the problem is that our government doesn’t feel the pain of the average person. My second largest monthly expense is healthcare. Thankfully we are healthy, but it wouldn’t take much to make life exceptionally difficult. One serious injury/illness/accident and the whole house of cards could tumble. So let me add a second STFU to the government and my size 12 boot in your ass.

Fix this. Just fix this. I am tired of paying taxes and doing the right thing to watch you act like a bunch of entitled, arrogant, clueless assholes.

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My children are playing soccer again this year. My son moved up to the U12 division and discovered to his chagrin that he is the second shortest child on the team. He is of average height for his age but puberty has begun to kick in for some of these boys and they are pretty big. After the second practice we have a long talk about this and he expressed his concerns.

I told him that my job as his father is to help him reach his potential and that I see things in him that he might not see. I said that he is much tougher, stronger and smarter than he realizes and that soccer would help him see that. He nodded his head and I wrapped him up in a giant bear hug. I wasn’t lying nor did I exaggerate. I believe all those things and think that his biggest problem is that he is tired. The move was a big deal and he didn’t want to do it. He has already asked me how much money he needs to save to buy our old house back.

With a bit of luck this soccer season will help him realize that everything I said is true. It is hard to watch his discomfort, but I can’t do this stuff for him. All I can do is try and set things up so that he can learn and grow from it. Time will tell.

Please Don’t Steal My Content

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an unwitting victim...bwahahhahahaa

One of the pitfalls of blogging is that sometimes people steal your content. They cut, paste, point and click their way from your blog to some other place online and pass off your work as their own. It is not right. It is not cool and there is no excuse for it.

Earlier today I discovered that someone has taken an entire post of mine and reproduced it on their blog. Since they provided a link back to my blog I’ll grant them the benefit of the doubt and say that it wasn’t malicious in nature. But that doesn’t make it right. I am not interested in hearing about how I might benefit by traffic that they could send me or any excuse that is remotely close to that.

If you want to reproduce my work you need to make prior arrangements with me. I get paid to write and I take my work seriously. You are not granted license to take my work without compensating me or working out some other arrangement. If you don’t do that than you are STEALING my work.

Please don’t steal my work. It is easy to reach me. This blog offers access to me in a half dozen different ways. Don’t STEAL my work. Do the right thing and take it down immediately.