Scott Rosenberg’s Say
Everything How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, And
Why It Matters is a homecoming book for me.
In a history of blogging, he explains
why blog time is faster than print time, has great quotes from my
forty favorite bloggers, friends, and heroes, and provides a context
for some of the knotty questions I’ve read or thought about.
On journalists versus bloggers, he
thinks it was unfortunate that blogs exploded as print media
imploded, doesn’t think one has much to do with the other, and
observes that most of the sniping is conducted by journalists ranting
on their blogs. It’s tough to lose.
Rosenberg shows a dizzying range of
uses and business models for blogs and how they worked out. I got a
new appreciation for Sales
Lab Posts and Through
The Browser as well as ideas
for where to go next.
If you
blog or want to blog, read Say Everything.
You’ll be encouraged and
have a better context for proceeding.
Now I’m going to put in some of the
pieces that meant a lot to me while reading the book (yes, it’s
that good and that important), so I’ll now have a place to come
back for them. They are a tiny part of the book.
Evan Williams of Blogger and
Twitter implements the “ruthless simplicity”
business model when its
down to him, keeping Blogger
going, alone in his apartment. 130
Dan Gillmor, journalist to blogger, My
readers know more than I do 134
Andrew Sullivan, Peer-to-peer
journalism, I realized, had a huge advantage over old-style
journalism. It could marshal the knowledge and resources of
thousands, rather than the certitudes of the few. 137
Kos, Blogs are a tool, nothing more.
142
Dave Winer, It was a mistake to
believe that creativity was something you could delegate, no matter
how much better they were than you, because it’s an important human
activity, like breathing eating, walking, laughing, loving. 185
Joel Spolsky’s blogging formula, A
series of essays delivered informally, blog style...festooned his
technical discourse with recollections from his days in the
Israeli army and references to the Yiddish folktales he cherished..
172
Jon Udell, The demonstration of
knowledge and expertise over time in a weblog is the modern
equivalent of a resume. 173
Doc Searls, If you’re into blogs
to make money, you’re into it for the wrong reasons. Do you ask
your back porch what its business plan is?
Difference between making money with
a blog and because of a blog.
This sort of blogging wasn’t
really a media business at all, one in which you offer some creative
material or “content” to gather a crowd and then sell the
attention of that crowd to somebody else. It was more like a kind of
low-cost direct marketing - an
advertisement for yourself, by yourself. 173
Richard Dawkins, Meme – name for
an infectious (or viral) concept or idea. 209
Clay Shirky, Power
Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality. A mathematical explanation of why
the top bloggers stay the top bloggers. 213
Clay
Shirky, It’s not impossible to launch a new blog and
become highly read, but it’s harder than it was last year and it
will be still harder next year. 216
Insider’s
Joke Instead of being famous for 15 minutes, being famous
for 15 people 217
Chris Anderson, A passionate amateur
almost always beats a bored professional. 282
Marc Andreessen, led the Mosaic browser
development. When he was taking Ning to over 750,000 social networks, he was getting a lot of attention blogging.
Andreessen’s blog was my first subscription, substantially changing
my work process. I’ve said Marc was the Peter Drucker of the web.
After he left Ning, Marc took down his
blog. Jed Christiansen liked Marc’s blog more (and more usefully)
than I did, he
resurrected it. I go back and read it often.
Marc Andreessen, I should have
started doing this years and years ago.
Anyone who says blogs are not widely
read is incorrect. I have been absolutely amazed at the range and
diversity of the people who have been reading this blog, and so
quickly.
It is crystal clear to me now that
at least in industries where lots of people are online, blogging is
the single best way to communicate and interact. 302
Clay Shirky, The web inverts the
publishing structure. Say everything first, then filter. 318
Endnotes (links) are curated at
sayeverything.com.
Thank you for reading the parts I
wanted to save. Since you came this far, you might also like these
posts:
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