Category: Four pillars

Just had a delightful dinner at Drones with old colleagues, hosted by Sean. (Thanks, Sean). Sometime over dinner, Stu mentioned what the president of CBS “interactive”, Quincy Smith,  had said a few days ago; I’d seen the story but not the quote.

It’s worth repeating.

Television network CBS has seen increases in two of its late night shows, which they attribute to clips uploaded to YouTube. The late night talk shows have seen a 5% and 7% increase of viewers since CBS began posting clips on YouTube.

When asked about the partnership Quincy Smith, new president at CBS Interactive said, “We believe this inflection point is the precursor to many exciting developments as we continue to build bridges rather than construct walls.”

Attaboy, Quincy. Let’s all continue to build bridges rather than construct walls. You can read the rest of the story here.
After hearing similar stories from publishers who let their books be Looked Inside by Amazon or  Book Scanned by Google, the retarded hippie in me starts singing Seeger. When will they ever learn?

If you see me post less frequently here over the next ten days, there’s a reason for it. I’m trying out a number of things, and the net effect is that I’m rushed off my feet. This quarter, I hope to:

• Have changed jobs after a decade (done)
• Move house after a decade (doing)
• Pack in the nicotine after three decades (done)
• Pack in the caffeine after four decades (done)
• Sleep a little more (doing)

So it’s been quite a quarter already, as I wend my way towards 50. And somewhere in between, I was asked if I felt like guesting at Shane Richmond’s blog at the Telegraph, which I started doing yesterday. In the meantime, I’m still working on kicking off my BT internal blog; still figuring out why I need one (there are good reasons); still working on the ethos of the blog (nearly complete). When I’m done with that, I intend to share what I’ve learnt about internal versus external blogs. Comments welcome.
All this is as new to me as it is to most of you. We all learn as we go along, seeing what works, junking what doesn’t. Thanks for your patience.

Following up on my post yesterday, on lesser-known bloggers, I’ve had quite a few comments come my way, some via the blog, some via e-mail, some face-to-face. I liked Cornelius’s suggestion the most:

You could pick one day per week/month/year and review one or more new blogs that you find noteworthy and under-appreciated on that day. Get the bloggers mentioned to write similar posts and have everyone use the same technorati tag; something like “LongTailTuesdays” or a similar catchphrase.

Something about the suggestion made me feel it would have more “legs” than a chain-letter or “list of five” approach, that a tag-based ritual would somehow be more sustainable.

So what I thought we’d do is the following:

Every now and then, choose a blog that, in your opinion, doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Introduce it to your community. Keep the intro short. Tag it NewTailBlog.

How often should you do it? Up to you. No rules.

Which blogs should you pick? Up to you. No rules.

Let the tags do their work. Let the blogosphere do its work.

And see what happens.

newtailblog


James commented on something I’d written earlier today, where I’d quoted Robert Scoble as saying:

• Are you worried about the elitism of A-List jerks like me?
• Then freaking link to new bloggers that we haven’t heard about yet!

What James actually said was this:

• Linking to lesser known bloggers should be encouraged. You should turn this into a full fledged call to action for others to do the same…
  

Seems reasonable.

Now what I’m trying to figure out is the best way of making this happen. Needs a little thought, my hunch is a straight link-to-ten approach on each blog is unproductive. But what do I know?

Any offers out there?

Otherwise I will go with whatever occurs to me over the next 24 hours.

I’ve always believed in a variation of Linus’s Law: Given enough eyeballs, all information bugs are shallow.

Clarence Fisher commented on something appalling that’s going on, in his post here. You can read the original comment by Tom Hoffman here.

So I’m going to do my bit as well. Here goes:
Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.