Internet Tech Boston

This past January, I started producing a weekly live video webcast at work called PTV Live. Even though it’s only a half hour once a week, my co-workers were pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to keep it going for more than a couple of months. Even though I had never done anything like this before, I was confident I’d be able to get it done. After all, all I really had to do was give our opinions on blog posts and news about online video marketing. As my father-in-law says, opinions are like . . . well, let’s just say- everyone has one.

In the past few months, I’ve also been spending a lot of time on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed. I’ve been able to meet a ton of new people and learn a lot because of my interactions on these social sites.  But, creating lots of short form content is a great deal different than the long form blog content I’d been used to. I have not been able to switch gears to keep all these content creation engines humming.

Well, it’s 5 months later. I”ve successfully produced 20 shows, and been followed by and have followed several hundred interesting people. Not bad! But, looking back on my efforts,  I can see it’s had a dramatic affect on this blog. My twitter digest, once just a single post in a week of other content, has taken over as primary content, like a virus that has eaten up every other decent idea for a conversation I’ve had in the past few months.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned about myself and blogging. I’m not sure if these are universal rules. I think they might be.

1. Short form content is not long form content. Don’t install a Twitter Digest widget on your blog platform. Having your Twitter stream in a sidebar is one thing, but having an automated bot post daily or weekly entries gives you yet another reason not to post to your blog. You’ll end up with 33 consecutive posts titled “Tweet Tweet, My Week.”
2. Cut your losses with old, half-dead posts. One of my ideas was to do a running column titled “Heads-Up Tech” – pitting 2 similar web technologies against in each other. I had been dragging my feet on finishing up a decent column about Last.fm vs. Pandora. But then Mashable released it’s Pandora vs. Last.fm post. Yeah, it’s professionally written, but I still couldn’t get over how much more better and more complete it was. I stared at my draft post, off and on, for the next 6 months until I finally just deleted it.
3. Share less, explain more. Last week, I tried Sessmic Desktop after being a happy TweetDeck user for 9 months or so. There were some key features missing, and it didn’t make sense to me to learn a whole new UI that offered basically the same feature set as the one I was used to. My 140 character mindset fired off a quick missive and moved on. Yeah, it was great to share my thought, but it would have made a better “Heads-Up Tech” post.
4. A blog is about content, not widgets. In the 6 months that I haven’t been writing content, I’ve installed dozens of themes and played around with bunches of widgets. I had fun playing with the technology when I should have been writing.
5. It’s just a blog. I’m not writing for Time or Newsweek. It’s ok to write a post that’s . . . Ok. No need to win the Pulitzer each and every week. When I have a thought, I’ll write about it quickly and get it out there.

One last thing – an apology. I’m sorry to those who had subscribed via email and to my RSS feed. You thought you were signing up for one thing, and got something else instead. Here’s looking forward to a different approach for the rest of ’09.

I recently had a chance to talk with Abby Kirigin, co-founder and CEO of TipJoy, a Y-Combinator startup that recently landed it’s Series A funding. I was first introduced to TipJoy when I met Ivan Kirigin, co-founder and CTO, at O’Reilly’s Ignite Boston 4. Since that meeting, I became intrigued in the idea of online micro-tipping and have since included TipJoy on my own blog. Thanks to both Abby and Ivan for taking the time to answer my questions.

Mamet: What need does TipJoy fill in the marketplace?
Kirigin: Web2.0 can be defined by two major trajectories:

1. The web is becoming more social. More often, you get to know the real person behind the content you consume. Now just like in the real world, consuming content online has become a social experience. People feel connected to those who provide the services they enjoy, and are looking for ways to connect with them and say ‘thanks.’
2. People are taking advantage of the fact that the web is essentially the greatest publishing platform in history. For most creators, the biggest problem they face is with obscurity. The solution to that is to post almost everything online for free. This is great for the consumer, because there is a flood of delightful things online. Content is increasingly published under a flexible and open license like Creative Commons, with direct fan contributions to support the continued creation of content. But up until now, there really hasn’t been a good way thank people or earn money for free content.

Tipjoy is a service which enables people to give money to the people who make the stuff they love online, and also earn money for making the great content that people want to tip. Tipjoy enables content creators to make money while providing their content for free. Up until now, the primary way to monetize free content has been through advertising. But ads can be distracting and annoy readers. There are also other donation buttons out there, but they require a multi-step checkout process, which most people don’t bother doing.

Now fans can connect on a personal level to the people who make the stuff they love. And the great stuff they support can be automatically shared with their friends.

Mamet: How does TipJoy make money, or plan to make money?
Kirigin: Tipjoy takes a 3% cut when users withdraw cash from our system.

Mamet: As a Web 2.0 software company, how have you been helped or hindered by being located in Massachusetts, as opposed to California?
Kirgin: We were in Silicon Valley from January – July 2008. It was a great experience and I would recommend that any startup spend at least some time out there. The startup environment is extremely vibrant, with nearly constant quality networking events to attend, and an seemingly unending list of angel and VC investors with whom to speak. SV is really the center of the startup world, and I think that it helps to at least experience that for a bit. That being said, we are very happy to have returned to the Cambridge area. Our lead investors are headquartered in NYC, so being here means we’re much closer to them. Boston and NYC are hubs of the banking & finance, and media & advertising industries, both of which are very relevant to Tipjoy. The colleagues you meet in Cambridge have interests much more varied than you’ll find in SV, which makes for a more complex and dynamic scene. Also since the startup scene is smaller, it can be much closer-knit and stronger. We’re excited to be back and to connect with other startups in the area.

Mamet: On August 28th, Seth Godin caused quite a stir when he stated that the best way to thank a blogger for good content was to click an ad. Many stated that this was tantamount to click fraud. What are your thoughts on that?
Kirigin: We wrote a blog post response. Below is the text from our post:

Seth Godin recently told us all to click ads on sites we like.

Of course, it’s our opinion at Tipjoy that instead of clicking ads, it would make much more sense to leave the content creator some money directly. Cut out the middle man, and do it without leaving the page, and certainly without being taken to an annoying ad page.

But now, let me talk a bit about why I think Seth wrote this, and what it means about the web today.

The sentiment of this article is spot-on: if you’re not paying for all the free stuff you love online, you’re “starving great content”.

This post is yet another great example of how the world is starting to change their mindset around digital content. At first, content creators tried to make people pay to get everything. That didn’t work; we all turned away. So content creators gave their content away for free, and we all came flocking. Now we are starting to feel a bit guilty about getting all of this great content without having to pay for it: great independent music, thoughtful articles, comics which make us laugh, videos which make us laugh until we cry.

And we’re not just feeling guilty because we’re ‘starving’ them. We’re feeling guilty because increasingly, we’re not just content consumers. We’re content producers ourselves. In this world of mashups, remixes and samples, the lines between producer and consumer are blurred.

As I read Seth’s article, I scanned the page for ads to click on, and what I found were links to his books. So perhaps Seth’s motives are not entirely altruistic. And that’s absolutely fine.

Let’s all continue to distribute the great stuff we make for free. And let’s make money from it.

Mamet: You’ve recently announced a TipJoy API Beta. Tell me about what you hope to accomplish with this feature.
Kirigin: Our Platform API enables content hosts to split tips with content creators. With a simple opt-in, an entire site’s contributors can start earning money with Tipjoy. The site earns a cut of the donations as an affiliate fee. This structure is great for everyone: Platforms can offer their contributors a way to earn money without resorting to ads, and contributors can quickly and easily start earning money without having to go through any sign up processes with a 3rd party.

Site owners can apply to be part of the beta by going here: http://tipjoy.com/platform

Mamet: If you had a 2 minute audience with all the millions of bloggers that don’t have a plan to monetize their content today, what would you say to them?
Kirigin: Ads bring in revenue for a site, but they don’t help make a connection between the author and the audience. More often, they take readers away from the content, or just annoy them. Tipjoy lets your audience engage directly with your site to help monetize. Since Tipjoy is social, your content will be shared among friends and broadcast on social networks like Twitter and FriendFeed.

I had my first bad experience with Blog it. After spending a good deal of time, doing some researching, creating links, and writing up an entry, the “Post” button returned error – invalid username/password. I hadn’t changed either my username or password since my last successful entry. Of course, my entry was gone, and I felt like I was 13 years old again – staring at a “Disk Read Error 0″ on my Packard Bell 8080 with 3 1/4 floppy drive, knowing I was going to get an F on my book report on Of Mice and Men.

I was really excited by Blog it when it first came out. Even though it burned me, I still used it to make this entry you’re reading now. However, after using it a couple of times, I’m starting to think a blog post is probably faster, easier, and safer, if done in good ‘ol WordPress. I can take the extra 2 seconds to update Twhirl myself.

This morning, I learned about BlogIt from a Michael Arrington post on Techcrunch, and had to try it out for myself first thing.

BlogIt is a Facebook app from Six Apart (i.e. Typepad) that allows a blog entry from directly within Facebook. This kind of feature is not necessarily new. YouTube and Digg, for example, both allow the ability for users to link their blog accounts directly to the service and post blog entries from within their own environment. I’ve used these features in the past and they’re OK at best. I find myself wondering what’s the benefit of creating a blog post inside Digg’s rinky-dink plain-text editor, when I could use my WordPress Rich Text Editor and just copy-n’-paste the link to the story I’ve recently Dugg.

BlogIt has a similar plain text editor. It allows HTML, if you’re so inclined. Other than dropping in my obligitory trackbacks to credit my sources, I don’t see myself getting too adventurous with HTML in the 15-row sized plain textarea box I’m provided here. I’m also interested to see what kind of self-promotion links or credits are appended to my post from Six Apart.

BlogIt’s differentiator is the ability to automatically alert other social media sites of posts created through BlogIt. It will update your Facebook status and your Twitter account. I already have my Twitter account updating my FriendFeed account. My Twitter account already updates my Facebook status. My FeedBurner account updates others when my blog is updated. Seems convoluted? Maybe. But now, quick blog posts I generate from BlogIt will be announced via Facebook Status, Facebook mini-feed, Twitter, FriendFeed, and opt-in emails from Feedburner. Not to mention anyone who’s subscribed directly to my blog’s RSS feed.

I’m looking forward to reviewing BlogIt’s potential impact on my readership, and will make sure to provide a follow-up comment after I’ve used it for some time.

BlogBurst.com is a blog-promotion service that promises to “increase your reach, visibility, and readership by making your blog visible to our network of leading publishers.” Sounds great, and on a whim, I put myself on the beta-site’s waiting list. Surely, my blog meets the “distinct, intelligent writing style” required to become part of the network. Wrong. Here’s the reply I got back:

Thank you for requesting an invitation to BlogBurst.

At this time your blog is not a good match for the BlogBurst network. A blog can be denied an invitation for many reasons, including quality as compared to other blogs in the network, needs of our current set of publishing partners, and topical focus.

Most often, a blog is not selected to join the network because the content does not meet the needs of our publishing partners, and is unlikely to be distributed by our current publishers.

Our network of publishing customers is quickly growing and we encourage you to check back with us occasionally. We expect for some blogs not invited at this time to be a part of the BlogBurst network in the future.

For more information on what we look for in blogs, we invite you to visit our blog guidelines at http://www.blogburst.com/blogger/guidelines.html.

Thank you for your interest in BlogBurst, and best wishes.

Best Regards,

The BlogBurst Team

If that isn’t a blow to my ego and online-cred, I’m not sure what is. I suppose I could take this defeat and pack it in, turn the whole site down and quietly drift off into online obscurity.

I don’t think so. My feedburner subscription tells me that there’s at least 2 people who regularly read this blog, not counting me or my mom. (Actually, my mom doesn’t read my blog). Take care, I would never abandon those 2 people to a life without my poignant thoughts on internet marketing!

On a more serious note, I think BlogBurst is doing something about the Cult of the Amateur that Andrew Keen discussed. They’re focusing on “real” bloggers and pairing them up with “real” publishers, in an attempt to increase the overall readability of the web. Rejecting my blog is probably a smart move on their part. As Groucho Marx once said, I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.