• If it happens once, it’s an accident.
• If it happens twice, it’s a coincidence.
• If it happens three times, you have a “trend” story on your hands.

So 3 prominent bloggers quitting the scene within a period of 1-2 years = trend?

The one thing about the “golden rule” was that it generally applied to the brick-and-mortar context, not as much when you’re talking about 3 or more bloggers out of the hundreds of millions of blogs out there.

Statistically, even 100 top bloggers out of a universe of 100 million blogs would be 1 / 1,000,000. In decimal points that would be 0.000001% of the blogging population.

So wondering if “blogging is dead” is akin to wondering if fixed-line telephones are dead or if the fax machine is dead. Nice linkbait, but I don’t think there’s much substance or value to that argument.

Jason Lee Miller notes in his WebProNews piece that fame (or the price of it) might be the cause of the backlash against TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, Dan Lyons AKA Fake Steve Jobs et al.

Valleywag also notes that Dan scored a book deal out of his Fake Steve Jobs gig. I don’t know about you, but posting 10-20 posts a day on a blog can only be justified against the reward of a book deal or other financially rewarding gig.

In the case of Mike Arrington, TechCrunch has gained sufficient reader critical mass in recent years to merit him taking a step back from the death threats and gobs of spittle to the face. With the goal accomplished, there’s no necessity to take the next bullet (or wad of spit).

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My opinion is that each of the A-Listers had an outcome in mind, whether it was a book deal, a movie deal, being able to build up advertising rates to $32,500 per month.

If anything, it was more “mission accomplished” than “i give up”.

And for the other bloggers out there who are prone to engage in a bout of “should I continue blogging?” type navel-gazing, it might be a sign that you’re just not serious enough about this to have your effort questioned at every turn.

Back to work.

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For ideas and strategies about managing your blogging efforts as a business, check out Secret Blog Weapon.

• Seeing what friends and business contacts are up to.
• Communicating either publicity or privately (via direct messages)
• Tunneling through to someone on their iPhone or other device, set to receive tweets
• Concise and to-the-point communication because everyone is limited to 140 characters

As a “micro blogging” platform, Twitter has gained sufficient critical mass that enough people are on it (like MySpace was in 2006 and Facebook was in 2008) to make it a viable and useful platform. (Sadly, other platforms like LinkedIn and Plurk have not achieved sufficient critical mass to be considered ubiquitous at this point).

Despite the benefits of Twitter, inevitably some marketers are going to be flexing their e-peen by sending frequent tweets about how they’re hit 5,000 followers, 20,000 followers or are in the top 50 on the top Twitter groupies list.

In my opinion, talking about the size of your community in a bragging fashion is disrespectful to the people who are following you. In a very real sense, you ARE reducing them to a mere number – one of 50,000 nameless faces who have chosen to take their time to read your potentially useful content.

Instead, why not spend time getting to know your community/followers.

Instead of going on an ego trip, can you say you know most of your followers?

On another note, twitter is not your platform to send a string of product launch announcements or to send your affiliate links out to some hapless n00b who happened to follow you.

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Now that we’ve defined the “ego” type posts, what falls into the non-ego/useful content basket? For me they fall into 4 categories:

• Informational: Some useful stuff that your audience is interested in, whether it’s marketing their products more effectively, tips on losing weight, or improving their relationship with their partner.
• Entertainment: Something to break the monotony of working in real life or on the net. A link to a funny youtube video or clever banter (like between @Oilman and @MrsOilman – I met Oilman AKA Todd Friesen at the Affiliate Summit, at the same time, Mrs Oilman seems really cool)
• Community/Relationship building: What’s the point in having people follow you, if you’re not talking to them or getting to know them?
• A combination of two or more of the above

One of the reasons why I’ve done more communication with people who’re interested in reading my blog over social networks like Facebook and Twitter, compared to using email marketing, is that the conversation is more real-time and dynamic in nature. (It doesn’t hurt that conversion rates are several magnitudes higher too).

If you’re not already using twitter, whether it’s to get feedback or to start a conversation (having a goal or outcome helps…), then perhaps it’s time that you should.

And as for the follower benchmarks you’re hitting, please paste it in your excel spreadsheet and time/date stamp it if it makes you happy, that’s one bit of information the twitterverse can do without.

Also, check out this recent post on enhancing your twittering efforts from a guest TechCrunch post by Digg founder and Twitter investor Kevin Rose.

Like this post? Follow me on Twitter.

• Working
• Hosting/calling in to a conference call
• Playing games
• Watching a movie
• Going through our business balance sheets
• Coordinating with our remote operations team

Or some other activity of your own choosing, I have found that I spend about 1.5 to twice as much time in front of my computer as I spend sleeping on my bed every day.

So do the holidays represent a boon or bane to the internet marketing continually building their business (especially during the holiday shopping season).

Specifically, Do the holidays disrupt your business momentum and do either you and/or your business suffer as a result?

With the 24×7 nature of the internet, it’s inevitable that there’ll be a number of casualties (direct or indirect) are suffered along the rush to be the first and #1, especially in a high stakes game where “Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone elseâ€s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.”

In the words of TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington: “I havenâ€t died yet,” although he’s gained 30 pounds in the last year, developed a severe sleep disorder and has mentioned that “At some point, Iâ€ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable”

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Affiliate marketers and those of us who own our own products or services may not have the same breakneck “be first to publish” blogger mentality, but still the onset of Christmas shopping and New Year’s resolutions campaigns will force some to go to extreme measures as they’re fighting against the clock.

There’s a saying that there’s “No rest for the wicked”. If that is true, there will be quite a number of marketers going sleepless in Seattle or wherever else they might be.

So is it ultimately having to make a choice between work and taking a break?

Here’s what some marketers had to say:

“On the YES it breaks my business momentum” bandwagon

Michael S Copeland: “Yes it does… Launched a service right before the holidays.. may not do that one again”

David Temple: “Yep, but just have more to do when I get back. Enjoying it for the moment though!”

Miles Baker: “Holidays give me a time to refresh, reflect, and refocus. My momentum slows, but when I come back to work my momentum higher.”

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On the “No, Holidays do not disrupt my business momentum” bandwagon

Geno Prussakov: Not for me. It’s definitely hard to balance between the two: biz (especially the urgent needs) and family at this time though.

Deb Carney AKA Loxly: “Holidays revitalize me holidays are days when I can work on what I choose to (see tweets about my sites, lol)”

JGoode: “no, holidays force me to take a much needed break I’d otherwise rationalize as not necessary – family days do the same”

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From my own observation, I tend to take on a couple more projects than I should, so if anything the holidays are a wake up call to shed some of them and focus, focus and focus (as Kelly McCausey mentioned in the previous Friday Podcast).

One resolution I’ll be implementing in the new year is to automate my business more and delegate/outsource more tasks.

In my view, you’re still stuck at the “sole proprietorship” mode of operations, until you build a team. Only then the machine continue running when you’re not there and you’ve built the foundation for a solid business.

Sometimes even the wicked need to rest.

What do you think?

There’s still talk about Microsoft working with Yahoo! on a collaboration for its search services, but really to leapfrog search engine leader Google, requires a paradigm shift. One possible avenue? The social media game.

Witness the fact that Google hasn’t done much with Blogspot/blogger in the last couple of years.
Services like Google’s Blog Search seemed like a half-hearted implementation.

That’s not to say that Microsoft and Yahoo! are exactly leading the field either.
The Web 2.0 space is still littered with their dying or dead blog services and communities.
A search at Microsoft’s Social Computing Group shows a number of interesting projects, but none really earth shattering to shift the field.

A couple of years ago, Microsoft spun off its own social network Wallop, to fanfare from Mashable and TechCrunch.
So what happened?

For sure, “cloud computing” still seems a distant reality, hobbled by a lack of compelling applications (in contrast, the Japanese with NTT Docomo’s I-Mode service do just about everything with their 3G phones which fold origami-like into small objects of art. Elsewhere in the world, cell phone users rejoice when they get restaurant recommendations or proximity locaters on their phones…).

It could be a good couple of years till mobile devices like the Asus Eee PC go beyond just hobby plaything (remember the Sharp Zaurus?), to becoming task-specific computing devices (ie something useful). Flash memory densities and Sold State Drives have to go through another 2-3 generations to provide adequate computing capacity.

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Which leaves just enough time for services to evolve beyond merely just providing information via search or recommendations/referrals, to locking in the value chain from start to finish.

You don’t just want to have the name and address of an Italian restaurant…how cool would it be to isolate the location, have it interface with your car’s GPS system, have a pop-up screen showcasing the chef’s recommendations (based on your personal dining preferences) and locking it down to the top 3 recommendations.

If that mechanism is in place, web services could evolve beyond their “gee whiz” geeky sensibilities, to providing a commercial benefit to merchants and consumers.

It might take a futurist or a visionary to put the pieces together, but can’t one of the big guys at least get their social game together now?

Anyway, when TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington shows up on your MBL widget, something’s brewing:

I am making an educated guess that it’s got something to do with the MyBlogLog post I put up.

And I see that Mike has just put up an update that MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier’s new project, Gnip (or gnip central to be exact).

No official word on Eric’s personal blog.

The Gnip Central site which will focus on “Web 2.0 Infrastructure” is still in stealth mode.

You can however, check out Gnip’s entry in the CrunchBase.

I’m sure there’ll be more updates on TechCrunch in time to come.

The new tagging feature allows you, as well as other MyBlogLog members to issue tags to your personal and community profile.

For example, someone could tag you as “SEO Expert”, making you easier to find.

As a set of common tags proliferate, I can see tagging as the basis of creating another level of connection within the community.

Here’s what MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier’s tagging profile looks like:

I created a fictious “mamalemon” tag on my personal profile and entered that keyword into the MyBlogLog search engine. It didn’t find my profile (it reported zero results).

Would tags show up in the MBL search results?

I’d think it makes for a more intutive and engaging experience for users.

Perhaps the tags don’t update in real time. Maybe MBL’s Robyn Tippins or Eric Marcoullier could shed some insight on this.

MyBlogLog’s Tagging Anti-Spam Features

Along with the ability to better organize your friends (especially when you get above 200 contacts), is the ability to label people with the schmoe tag.

The schmoe (social media optimizer) tag may be deleted by the user, but will still show up in MBL’s logs. And Eric has mentioned they’d take appropriate action.

Are You Hot or Not?

Additionally, the inclusion of a “Hot Members” tag (sounds vaguely suggestive…maybe MBL might like to of a different term?) is the equivalent of a social community popularity contest.

Will the best bloggers win?

Maybe. Maybe not, but I’m fairly certain that an attractive avatar will give you a leg-up in the competition stakes.

MBL has certainly taken steps to bump up their service development efforts and it’s be interesting to see if they look into incorporating trust or reputation ratings into their system.

If they do, MBL could be a stepping stone towards a personal commerce platform, especially if there’re plans to link the service up to Yahoo! shopping or other Yahoo! transaction related sites in the near future.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington mentions:

“MyBlogLog continues to expand. Marcoullier says they are tracking 100 million monthly visitors to sites that have the MyBlogLog widget, and have 140,000 registered users. Just recently, he said, more people without blogs (readers only) started registering than users with blogs.”

That’s certainly a lot of unique visitors which could be converted into customers.

Will MBL take the next big step to go beyond just social interactions into financial ones?

It would make for an interesting development and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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More references:

• All About Tags (MyBlogLog blog)
• MyBlogLog Gets Into Tagging (TechCrunch)
• MyBlogLog Is Tagging (SleepyBlogger)