The Constant Observer

By conservative estimates, the New York Public Library alone has over 5 Crore Books!

On an average, a person probably reads about 5,000 books in his lifetime.

So why are we incessantly creating more content every day. Often - in various fields, mankind has gone to the depths of knowledge and grappled with some of the most important questions and yet, often; most of us love to air our opinions on everything under the sun - speaking without listening and observing. Speaking for recognition, speaking to just oil the mental machinery, speaking almost always - just for the heck of it! (possibly this piece of writing comes in the same category - it does, actually)

Maybe speaking and being heard is a desired necessity. Something that sparks off a sense of importance, a sense of instant immortality - a chance to be remembered. So you have about one blog or more being born every half second!

The result is content that is churned out - most of which bases itself on pop culture crap or conventional wisdom. While a lot of the content that blogs churn out is interesting, useful - very little of this content actually has lasting value.

So should we be blogging? Or should we trying to gather more information and contemplating more than the average human being - listening more, observing more - and 'doing' (observing and listening is also 'doing' - but people conventionally think of the 2 as extremely passive) ? Should we be reading few more of those 5 crore books in the New York Library!?

Wavering a bit - just looking at the sheer numbers is humbling - 5 crore books in one library = millions of hours of contemplation - much more than we can imagine. With the lower barriers to entry and the blog - as a - book phenomenon; i seriously sometimes question the value in what most of us consume. The social media/ web 2.0/ blogging revolution has most certainly made us poorer readers (note, i am completely aware that we read faster and that we read more) and we often cannot determine the depths of value in pieces of work.


I guess blogging has it's place in the mass media spectrum - and it satisfies the inherent need that everyone has. With respect to value, i think people will place more value in the future (near future) on ability to collate and piece together information and make sense of it - in the larger perspective.


Blogging i think for all at some base level is a means of expression and more. So a few got on board. But what about the others who couldn't do so on a consistent basis. Well for them, the stuff they shared is now being compiled as a feed and being made into a life blog. Sharing options are easier - feeds are easier to access. So one part of blogging is moving towards just a compilation of expression.



While this is great, it still probably does not hit the sweet spot of the lowest common denominator. So lo and behold - before you know it - we'll probably have an aggregator that makes a big deal out of every click we make out fingers perform on that mouse (which is soon to be obsolete btw). The result will be a ton of senseless information and too many inflated egos trying to make a point with every click.

Have we gone any further?

I think i'll read one of those books now. Or maybe sit still, and think. I rarely do that these days.

I met up with Kiruba Shankar - THE MAN when it comes to the Blogosphere in India. Received his famous card as well.

Kiruba did a quick session on 'Why You Should Blog' - i jotted down a few points. I will not add too much. To read my thoughts on Blogging in the last 10 years - check this post.


So Kiruba feels that the collective intelligence of the audience is much better than the speaker which is why he let other do the talking.

So the conference was all about anectodes.

Some of the things that came out of the anecdotes:

Be a thought leader in your field. Provide valuable content. That can be done by even challenging the thought leaders, ensuring that the right tags are placed, if you're on WP, use the All in One SEO Pack. Use Post slugs appropriately.

(i said i wont add but i saw an IPL Blog with the slug '-ipl' at the end of every post. The content was relevant wrt to the tags and slugs so obviously the blog was a success)

Interestingly and not surprisingly enough, Kiruba had the best anecdote:

He spoke about an orthopedic surgeon on YouTube – he records video surgeries by giving discounts to his pattients. He then puts up these videos online. He thus has started to get clients from the US – people who were over 60, whose medical insurance has expired. He books tickets for them, books rooms. They find him credible, they have a better experience at a better price. They are 80% of his clientele.


If you want a blog to become successful:
- Don’t drum yourself down; just start!
- Whatever you write, there is an audience!
- Start writing and continue writing and don’t bother about site stats.
- Link to big blogs – trash big bloggers.
- Be a thought leader. Be the best. Or try.
- Blogging as an identity check for getting hired. Be a thought leader. The big guys are looking. Your blog can get you hired.


Blogging is also about purity of intention.

Don’t have the time for a full-fledged blog? Start a MoBlog, or a MicroBlog. SMSGupshup and Twitter await.

Be a Part of the Web 2.0 Revolution!

Globally, approximately a blogger signs up once every (1/2) seconds. What that invariably leads to is clutter in the blogging space.

There quite obviously seems to be a market niche (or maybe it’s not really a niche since there are so many bloggers anyway) here which can be occupied. A variety of players like buzzfuze.com, minekey.com (an Indian player), and blogrush.com are providing their services to bloggers where bloggers can sign up and generate more traffic on their website over both, the short term and also the long term. The mechanism is simple. A blogger signs up with the website, gets the widget of the website embedded on his url, in return, he gives the viewer generation website access to his contact list – and Voila!, the content generator sends out updates about the users blog to everyone on his/ her contact list. So in a sense it operates like an RSS feed that is sent out to everyone on your list.

Since there are doubts of such a strategy working in the short term (as a mail from your blog may invariably be considered as spam if people on your list do not like it), there is a strategy for the long term as well. Over the long term, the accumulated contacts of all bloggers are analysed with respect to the blogs they view (if at all), and view frequently (which means they like them). These consumers are then sent weekly newsletters of blogs that they might enjoy. So in a sense it’s a customized email to every consumer who signs up on these sites. The hitch lies there – what if customers do not sign up?

I have my doubts, for the long term as well. How will these user generation sites differentiate the good content from the bad? Especially since they would be looking to send out email updates. So if the link provided by the updates are not of a good quality, the updates may ultimately be mentally blocked out as spam. Since the popularity calculation mechanism for this kind of an exercise relates to how many people visit the blog in the short term, one could argue that bloggers with more contacts in their email accounts will generate more hits. This does not necessarily mean that their content is superior. These bloggers will then be sent out as links for the email update (since they are popular, the calculation mechanism will assume that they are of a good quality. This may then lead to more hits – and the vicious circle can continue and quality will be the sole loser.

Apart from generating traffic on a users blog, these sites also provide users with feedback (the Google Analytics kind) where bloggers can get data on who has viewed their site, from where etc. There may also be some tips with respect to streamlining of content (since every blog, like any marketing activity has to have a ‘positioning’ that it seeks to capture in the prospects mind)

Lets get back to square one. How do users find blogs that are relevant to the topic they wish to read about? Well, they can go to Google Blog Search (or Digg) and type in their key words. But what happens once they are onto a blog? They generally have to revert back to Google and then look for the next blog (which as a regular blog reader, I must confess is mighty tedious). So these content generation sites (well at least some of them) help users to cross syndicate content. Thus what invariably happens is that with the help of a Widget, bloggers can direct their readers to other blogs with similar content. And this list of blogs that users may enjoy keeps changing with the post and also with other bloggers posts (with the help of tags, keywords etc). Thus what invariably happens is that similar content is bridged – which makes it easier for users who are interested in particular subjects.

This kind of an exercise is extremely interesting as it is based on over all welfare as well as contextuality. Linking contextual blogs is one big step that will probably enable the entire blogger ecosystem to grow because one blogger automatically becomes a marketing tool for another.

I think cross syndication will be more successful than the sending out of so called customized email alerts as blogs are merely linked for content similarity and there is no effort taken to highlight that these are ‘recommended reads’ – the ‘forgiveness span’ of readers for such widgets will thus be higher.

User generation sites provide online writers with feedback, generate more readers, and make the blogging process more quantifiable so they are probably worth the ‘share of mind’ from bloggers.

P. S. All these user generation sites are loaded with Google Ads – it seems that they are benefiting the most from Buzz marketing. It must also be kept in mind that such sites are mostly maintained by experienced bloggers and it looks like they definitely have found a way to ‘differentiate’ themselves and laugh all the way to the bank. Smart marketing.