In my last blog I promised my Rotarians friends, average age population of the Rotary club: 53.222, that I shall share with them the small budding knowledge I have about Blogging. By the way, I have well passed the average age.I have decided to start blogging to understand the E-volution of today’s world.
How I got hooked?
Indeed I was kicked off by my son who shared with me his experiences coming from a WEB 2.0 symposium some time ago. He was talking to me in a vocabulary which was beyond my understanding. I had to choose to die stupid or carry on living on today’s world and be part of the E-volution to stay wired & connected. I have chosen.
I found existance in the virtual world. My son gave birth to me in this newfound world by setting me up as a blogger. Through “FTP†(sorry for the jargon) he took over control of my computer whilst sitting in his apartment Toronto, Canada. Like magic, I watched my mouse and computer cursor zapping all over my screen. In a few minutes, his voice came back to me over SKYPE to tell me that I am done, ready to be in the Blogosphere. I am now enjoying my new existence. Everyday is now filled with new discoveries and new thrills; I have acquired a new mobility in spite of my recent physical handicap.
My latest thrill is Naked Conversation. Robert Scoble & Shel Israel who prophetize an E-volution of communication through blogging.
“Today’s consumer craves human contact. We’re sick to death of voicemail.
Menus of options that never offer the option we need. A deluge of
carefully spun “information†designed not to answer our concerns, but to
influence our decisions. Mechanical voices telling us our call is important
to them even as they refuse to answer it.
We’re frustrated in our attempts to reach a live human being, and when
we finally do, all too often it’s someone who barely speaks our language
and only reads from a script.
Is it so surprising that the consumer distrusts the corporation?
Into this charged atmosphere comes a phenomenon called blogging. It’s
interactive. It’s informal. It’s peppered with misspellings, grammatical
errors and an occasional forbidden word.
It comes from a real person. And it allows the consumer to talk back. The experts believe blogging is
already changing the face of business.
The experts show readers of their book, how employee
bloggers altered the public’s perception of Microsoft, how company leaders
use blogs to connect with customers, how small businesses and Fortune 500
companies alike can benefit from blogging and how failing to use it properly
can be disastrous.
The Six Pillars of Blogging
1. Publishable. Anyone can publish a blog. You
can do it cheaply and post often. Each posting is
instantly available worldwide.
2. Findable. Through search engines, people will
find blogs by subject, by author or both. The more
you post, the more findable you become.
3. Social. The blogosphere is one big conversation.
Interesting topical conversations move from
site to site, linking to each other.
4. Viral. Information often spreads faster through
blogs than via a news service. No form of viral marketing
matches the speed and efficiency of a blog.
5. Syndicatable. By clicking on an icon, you can get
free “home delivery†of RSS-enabled blogs. RSS lets
you know when a blog you subscribe to is updated.
6. Linkable. Because each blog can link to all others,
every blogger has access to millions of other bloggers.
Everything Never Changes
The birth of the blog was a little-noted incident. A brilliant,
curmudgeonly technology pioneer — Dave Winer —
was fiddling with a project and organized a series of entries
in a new way. He looked at it, thought “Wow, that’s cool,â€
and circled back to expand on it later. He added a variation
on an emerging technology and created a syndication feature
that would eventually emerge into Really Simple
Syndication (RSS). Other people — such as Ben and Mena
Trott, who founded Six Apart Inc., and Evan Williams, who
co-founded Blogger — would make blogging tools easier
so a great number of people could use them. The number of
users has gone through the roof ever since.
Do you want to live or die stupid? It is your choice!