TechWag

We have sold out, those of us who have technical blogs like Techwag, and others. The interesting part is that they are right. Bloggers want their audience, and once they figure out a good way of getting in front of the herd, we tend to stick with that formula because it works, it works well, and we gain a readership in what is otherwise a dry dull and not very popular subject matter. All the technical blogs aside, we do say the same things, and we tend to jump on memes just for the sake of the audience.

We do this because it works, it works today, it might not work tomorrow. This is one of the tricks to the trade, as much as following Google hot trends, and other write quick press publish kinds of ways of doing business.

HipMojo and AVC have both written beautiful articles about the whole process, and they are both well worth reading if you do nothing else today.

Blogging is a game wherein the writer seeks an audience; we all know that, this is not a surprising statement to make. We all also know that it is difficult to come up with some new trendy thing to write about, there are days where writers block is total, but we still need to write something. Techmeme, Google Hot Trends, Technorati and others give writers an invaluable insight into what is deemed popular of the moment, and that can go a long way to curing writers block. Not to say this is good or bad, but it is one way of addressing the problems we face as small bloggers.

Small bloggers, those folks nipping at the heels of the popular blogs soon learn that there are things they can do to gain a readership, like link to a major blog that has trackbacks; people will follow those links and instant readership. Following what is happening on Techmeme also provides some readership but not much, it is better for stature than anything else. Outside of praying that someone will pick up the story, or post a link in one of the major trade press on line magazines like Wired, or Information weekly is about all that a small blogger can do.

What ends up is a trade off, little in-depth reporting, small blogs are not the ones who are going to get a press release Iphone, IPod, copy of Microsoft software, or other things so that they can report on the events. We are at the mercy of what others write about, we rarely get “beta accounts” or other fun things to give an impartial review of a system, device, or software. As much as readers to other blogs, we also are at the mercy of bigger blogs, what is generating buzz, what is important today, not necessarily tomorrow.

What is probably the most amusing bit of the whole process is that in many ways all blogs who write in a particular space become the Public Relations machine. We do the buzz building for a device, if someone popular says it must be cool, then it must be cool, and everyone will write about how cool it is. It will not be until later that we discover that there are dead spaces in the Iphone interface, because we didn’t get an Iphone to play with. We report what others are reporting, but then we are also not journalists. We can’t be journalists, but we can be part of the PR Machine. We do that bit well.

The real problem is that the way to game Techmeme and other hot trends is well known, good and bad bloggers are going to use this tactic to get into the system. Jumping on a meme works, it works well, but does not lead to “journalism” or journalistic ideals. It leads to more buzz about another product, service, process that is the toy of the day. Hard reality, but being unique only works to a point, it is making one meme jumping article for the day, and many individual articles that might bring readers. But being unique and in-depth reporting will not bring readers, meme jumping will, hence we become and are part of the PR machine, and we do this to gain readers, who click on ads, that might make us independent of our day jobs.

Tags: web 2.0, Participation, business //