Fortune had a short piece contrasting the idealism of the early internet and the brash, money-driven and bad behavior of the internet we face today. The words left by people are a bit shocking. What you say is there forever and not anonymous even if your public name is BigFootForever2.
We have an acquaintance making a lot of money from their food blog. Containing great photography and recipes and all written with an uplifting, fun style it appeals to a certain demographic, probably women, mothers in the 25-40 category. They've leveraged big data and evolving social media and really good marketing companies to leverage and build their following which now results of tens of thousands of hits per day, month, whatever. They continue to put on little seminars for other wanna-be bloggers. The charge a good rate for that but I think it's also an effort to make their blog production appears legitimate, more real, countering the reality of the internet being an incestuous churning of sites and ads. A recent Bloomberg Business Week identified 75% of all web site hits coming from bots, automated search/click/hit servers. All of this plays back into selling into big business advertising dollars.
Friends?
Facebook shows me people that I might like to friend. Some of them are former co-workers, some from my home town and others who appear to walked some of the streets. A consulting psychiatrist recently found that Facebook was presenting her patients to each other as potential friends. The psychiatrist was not a 'friend' with any of her patients. It appeared to be connections through geographic data. Normally I use Facebook at my desktop (geek) so I should really only be presented friend options from perhaps the plumber or the guy mowing his yard next door. I have been presented as 'friend' options people who have sent me unsolicited email in my Gmail account. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg will be at my door if I continue with this thought.
Dementia...
My iPhone had a pop-up ad promoting 'three things to do to avoid dementia.' That was yesterday. 1. learn a new word in a foreign language. 2. I have no idea. 3. Each certain foods. I did not follow the link for 'certain foods.'
Mobility and Brevity Versus 'Quaint'
Yesterday I saw the PC mode I like best referred to as 'the desktop age' and I read that as 'horse and buggy.' It's not always that I want to work at Starbucks with earbuds and a $6 coffee. New devices (tablets & convertible notebooks) do have keyboard options. It's possible that the 'swipe' generation will look upon this users as horse people, too. In the small business we did a favor for an instructor at a neighboring large college. He was teaching a class in marketing and required student groups to take on a small business as a project. The four kids showed up wearing hats, two backwards. One messed w/ his phone during two meetings. They were inarticulate, could not spell or write complete sentences. All had career goals of working in large advertising firms, hoping to start as account executives.
I guess I'll get a saddle seat for my desktop and continue to improve my typing skills and vocabulary (I am weak in foreign language potential).
Regarding brevity...it's 140 characters, hashtags and abbreviations, a constant feed of not sound bites but code bites, created, opened, closed and deleted with a thumb swipe. It seems that Elon Musk could do all that for us. Blogging, like this, sharing thoughts, dealing with life in sentences and images and a story line or disjointed connection of thoughts is now considered quaint. Henceforce #idontevenhaveadumbjob #quaint
I wonder what really happens on the interwebs. My readership (which was already small) has plummeted since I quit posting everyday.
ReplyDeleteI know there are some farming apologist blogs which have lots of readers and use twitter, Facebook, and farmer forums to promote their blog. But, it is mostly having subject matter than attracts clickbots. I suspect it is all a big scam.
I find the blogs I follow quite interesting but seldom have time to read them now.
It is quite interesting but I do suspect I have a really limited audience.
I think it is very hard to break into blogging and make money now.
It is a big automated scam. The key is posting daily, having good photos and something of interest, something that someone can perhaps learn, laugh or feel better. I'm challenged w/ creating that kind of content on the issues and topics that I want to write about. Having been a beekeeper for 50+ years I could write about that but lack the optimism. Your readership needs also to actually want to buy something, something you have produced or something from the ads or the marketing brokers need to think and represent that the readers will buy something. The food blog that I allude to has a photography e-book that they sell and a couple of other items. My goal was to make $10k in 2015 and I made $32 or $37. 2016 has been hectic and I, too, have been very bad at daily, even weekly posting. In this post I referenced an article that describes this blogging as 'quaint.' Perhaps it is but I do find like minded souls who document challenges and experiences and that might be better than the $10k. Check out "Inadvertent Cafe" on Facebook. He is also a farmer (hog) who has moved onto another vocation. His leg up is that he writes stories and editorials for three or four farm journals and has cranked out a few books. Hog farming may not have required as much tractor/equipment time.
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