7 Things You Didn’t Know About My Social Media Journey

Jasmine from my social media class tagged me for a meme for “7 Useless Facts About Myself” and I thought this would be pretty cool to do, but I’d tweak it to fit the theme of the blog. So here we go:

1. I had my first “blog” (well it was called a website then) in 1997 (when I was 13). Links and archives weren’t the norm back then, so basically each time I added in new info the page grew longer and longer and longer.
2. Before blogging “seriously” at this blog, I’ve covered everything from comic books, music, movies, books, food, you name it.
3. I used to be a guest writer for Fanboy planet (one article here) back in 2002
4. The first friend I made online is also my closest. We met in a chat room.
5. I was always very proud of my ICQ number having only 7 digits (early adopters rule!)
6. Until I moved here, I blogged by manually tweaking html codes. ie manually inserting dates, links, pictures, etc by typing out the html codes.
7. Despite being a very heavy web user from 1997, I’ve never made any money from it.

There you have it. I won’t tag anyone, but feel free to replicate this on your blog and share something fun about you and your passion!

Content Or Popularity? The Follow-Up.

Well now that we know what Mitch Joel would say about the content or popularity post, I’ve been thinking about it and I would say that there’s definitely a divide/separation/segregation between the content blogs, and what I like to call the Meepok Blogs, where people type “today I went to eat meepok” or whatever they had for breakfast. (For non-Singaporeans, meepok is a type of noodle available at most places).

So knowing that these different types of blogs exist, my next question would be: Where does the interaction, or possibility of interaction, exist between the two “genres” of blogs?

I realise that content bloggers very rarely have Meepok posts, and similarly the other way round. In fact I remember reading an advertising blog that wasn’t half bad, until the author posted something that sounded a lot like a personal, whiny rant, which was just so jarring and inconsistent with the advertising of the blog.

So what do you think? Is it inevitable to have this divide between Meepok and non-Meepok blogs? Or is there some interaction, hidden or otherwise, where all these authors come together?

Update: From Mitch Joel:

“I think Journey finding a singer like this answers your question. There are enough people looking for all sorts of different stuff that it’s the niches that matter.

It’s a story like this that inspires someone like Christopher S. Penn and myself to be re-energized about this space.

It sounds like you’re trying to create a co-relation between this type of media and Mass Media – you can’t.

Some niches have bigger audiences – and some people play towards that bigger audience.”

Thanks, Mitch!

Content Or Popularity?

Propelled by the fact that Xiaxue actually was deemed important enough to be included in the National Library’s archival, I checked her blog to find that there are in the region of 16,000+ visits per day.

Admittedly, I initially thought that this was some inflated number or spam or something, but looking closer at her comments, they’re in the 300+ region for a post. Given that it’s widely accepted that content is written by 1-2% of the population (so 300 comments translates to roughly 15,000 readers), it’s probably a somewhat accurate figure.

So I’m really wondering what someone like Mitch Joel or Seth Godin’s take on this would be. I wonder if it’s a local phenomenon, or if this is seen elsewhere as well. (Tila Tequila points to it being the same case, at least in the US).

I kinda think the fact that someone who literally blogs randomness about her life gets 16,000 hits a day, is probably a little hard to swallow for those people trying to really do good for the community and make the world a better place.

From a marketing point of view, it’s amazing though. I could send Xiaxue a free product of mine, and instantly generate word of mouth among 16,000 other people.

Who knew when we were learning about “gatekeepers” of communities, they might one day refer to her.

WordPress > LiveJournal, WordPress >> Blogspot

I had a little dicussion with Dor about blogs around the time I set this up, and she chose WordPress and Blogspot as her favourites, and I chose WordPress and LiveJournal (LJ). Let’s take a look why:

WordPress

• RSS
• Tags
• Categories
• Trackbacks/Pingbacks

LiveJournal:

• You know when your comments are replied to (I really want this function)
• Friends
• Communities

 Blogspot:

• Downtime

‘Nuff Said.

I have to admit I’m a little peeved with Google tonight. Buttons I could find using Toolbar 4 I couldn’t find using Toolbar 5, and editing bookmarks on Toolbar 5 is a chore because it opens Google Notebook (although I love Google notebook). I hope all this gets ironed out by the time Toolbar 5 gets out of beta stage.