TechWag

Image via WikipediaInteresting question coming up in the community about the lack of blog coverage in the Seattle area about the 200 plus startups that are in the local area. From my vantage point, of blogging about technology now here on Techwag for a year and a half, and blogging about technology on other sites since 2003, Seattle has some of the poorest blog coverage for new exciting companies. But we do exist, bloggers do exist, and we do cover startups, but Seattle startups have no idea how to leverage social media.

The part about blogging is that there are about a dozen bloggers that I know of in the Seattle area that do cover technology, they have various page ranks, various abilities to write, and get some support from their friends that are starting up companies. This is good; there are a variety of platforms, bloggers, and writing skills for a new company to choose from in terms of quality. Even my quality can vary from day to day depending on what is going on around me.

Occasionally a purely political post will make it into the system, usually because I am horrified by what I am seeing on traditional media. Occasionally I will be picked up by techmeme, Google finance, or get some air under an entry because someone out there voted it up on a social site like Stumbled Upon (thanks all you stumblers!). Overall, I still cover what is happening in technology worldwide, because of the “bad part about blogging.”

The bad part about blogging is that over the last two months I have made a very real effort to start going to meetups, meetings, and other places where I know startup companies tend to hang out. When I whip open the lap top and start live blogging or live tweeting the meeting, many people will come up and ask me what I am doing. It is not to make me stop blogging about the event, it is an honest question, they have no idea what live blogging, live tweeting, or stream casting the even can mean to them. They have not thought about it, it is not on their radar. They do not know if they want it or not, because they do not know what it means.

When a company has no idea of what a blogger brings to the table, outside of being featured on Techcrunch, then we have the proverbial “Failure to Communicate” process going on. Startups are off doing their own thing, building their company, which is something that they should be doing. Bloggers on the other hand should be going back and seeing how the company is doing. Last year I wrote about Transmutable, who are now in process of reinventing themselves. Would I love to talk to transmutable again? Sure, would it be of value to them, maybe not. They got two interviews, one early attempt at a video interview, and a standard written article.

Did it give them a realized benefit of having more people check out their stuff? Don’t know. Did it increase traffic to their site? Don’t know. That is the problem; we have not worked out the metrics that work here in Seattle when it comes to blog coverage. Do we as bloggers help, hinder, or remain neutral in the “get the world out, generate a base of consumers” that new companies need.

The other problem, hate to say this, but there is very little new and shiny. There are tons of copycat companies that are building out the next best greatest ever social whatever, but very few that are really blending new/old technology to do something wonderful. Something new that has not been seen before. Sure, you can make a living off selling Iphone applications or Facebook widgets, but is that worth the three hours on average I will spend with an in-depth interview entry, nah.

Somewhere along the line the communications paths, the power of the crowd, the social fabric that new companies need start with bloggers, enthusiastic users, and enthusiastic management. If you look at the CUIL growth curve below, that is just the wrong growth curve for a business. Most of the initial spike was caused by the blogosphere looking at the company and making their own judgments about how cool CUIL really is.

Would a Seattle Startup be willing to put up with spikes like that? Don’t know.

Bloggers will cover what they will cover, it is not that there are not bloggers here, it is that there is a disconnect between startups understanding what a blogger can and can not do. And many companies have not put social networking or crowd sourcing on their products map. Companies understand the idea of “buzz” but fail to generate it by not connecting with social media in such a way as it keeps a steady state of “buzz” to build out those enthusiastic users.

My case in point on this one, Earth Class Mail, tons of buzz, featured on Techcrunch, hit the meme of the day, but when has anyone heard from them since?

Tags: bloggers, seattle, cuil, earth class mail, blog, blogging, social network, buzz, time, energy, effort, engage

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