I mean real beginners. If you have been blogging longer than a week or so please move along there is nothing for you here, you already know this stuff.
Actually I've been blogging a lot longer than a week. But all the blogs I have built in the past have essentially been marketing fluff - blogs designed to promote the idea that you are a great company staffed by real people who care about the same things as your clients do.
This model has become very popular especially since the publication of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands by Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts. Nothing wrong with the model - I maintain several blogs in that genre.
But there is another model altogether where the blog itself is the product.
Just about all the blogs on the Technorati top 100 follow this "real blog" model.
Some are just online diaries that generate no income. Others like girl with a one track mind start off that way and then turn into real blogs.
For me the two quintessential examples of real blogs are Ken Rockwell's photography site and Hugh Mcleod's gapingvoid. The two sites are very different from one another.
Ken Rockwell dishes out some of the most valuable and reliable photography advice (mostly nikon DSLRs) that you can find at any price. And his site is free! All he asks is that when you buy your equipment you do it through the links on his site. I guess it works. Both he and his wife have given up their jobs to spend more time with their new baby.
I should mention technically Ken's site is not a blog at all, it's a very basic html website, but it functions exactly like a blog without the comments. What is important is that he updates it a lot and the new stuff is at the top, so it's a blog. Why doesn't he use blog software? I have no idea.
gapingvoid started as a blog to showcase Hugh Mcleod's "cartoons on the back of business cards". The cartoons are still a prominent part of the site - but gapingvoid experienced explosive growth after the seminal "Hughtrain manifesto: how to be creative".
Hugh works in the UK where he gets a lot of attention from the mainstream media and has several prominent clients. Microsoft recently signed on to his Blue Monster jag.
Hugh's blog is kind of the studio 54 for the blogging cognoscenti. The people leaving comments (along with their blog addresses) are the folks behind the rope. The people Hugh blogs about are the folks inside the club.
So that's it. Real blogs for real people, or the other type of blogs, "for when you want to give people the illusion that you care." (Sam Kinison)
Digg it
More on (and moron) blogs
About 90% of what I read on the 'net besides The COW forums is blogs. Gaping Void is a longtime favorite, for a ton of reasons: sharp commentary, cartoons, and art.
Here's a favorite recent cartoon:
And since you mention MS:
And a favorite bit of art:
Cool, cool, cool.
A couple of quickies before I duck out.
Funniest blog on the 'net by faaaaaar: "The Secret Diaries of Steve Jobs," aka FSJ, or Fake Steve Blog. Speculation is rampant on who it really is. Some even inside Apple thinks it's the real Steve. I doubt it, but I see why people think so: FSJ is inspirational, a visionary, and a pot smoking, peyote dropping, foul-mouthed egomaniacal blowhard...with the heart of an angel. What's not to like?
The REAL Steve Jobs came out publicly this week saying he likes it. Bill Gates said he likes it...and he's not behind FSJ. Amazing, but true.
Steve's management style (maybe funniest thing I've ever read on the web)
A crazed tale of driving with Bono
Those are both kinda long, so here's a short one, re: Microsoft's new coffee table.
Other blogs I check out:
Until we get all of ours cooking, ZDNet has the most interesting technology blogs in one place. I frequently cite Jason O'Grady, one of the sharpest Mac reporters in the biz. Ryan Stewart's Rich Internet Applications blog is compelling enough that Adobe just hired him as an RIA evangelist. Emerging Technology Trends tries to be practical, but it's just geekdom at its best. Today's headline is "Diamond-based Quantum Computing." YOWZA!! I love this stuff. Anyway, easily a dozen blogs I track regularly among these.
I've already mentioned Google's official blog. Love it. Wouldn't miss it.
Between RSS feeds and bookmarks, I've got well over a hundred that I track. I'll sprinkle more in now and again.
But for now, I have to end with Soxaholix. All kinds of awards, a front-page feature in the Wall Street Journal, etc. Witty, profane, literary, and Red Sox through and through. Worth checking out because it's not what you probably think of as a blog.....
Vallewag outed FSJ a week or
Vallewag outed FSJ a week or so back.
Speaking of Steve one of Hughs gems:
Steve Jobs wants to be Bono
Bono wants to be John Lennon
John Lennon wanted to be Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ wants to be God
God wants to be steve Jobs
FSJ = ?
Funny you say that, because I've been keeping my eye on it. Blogs all over the web, and print publications including Business Week, have been saying for for a while that FSJ would be outed last week. Most of them cited the same names that Valleywag has (probably the source for everyone else) but I haven't seen any follow-up.
I admit, I only read Valleywag when Fake Steve Jobs mocks them and provides a link. But looking around, all I see are references to the guesses they've missed -- as recently as yesterday. That was a post referring to the pre-announcement of FSJ's book at Amazon, which I very much look forward to.
Since it's by no means one of my regulars, I could easily have missed the story. If so, spill.
I just saw an RSS header
I just saw an RSS header with "Valleywag outs Fake Steve Jobs" . I'd never heard of FSJ and don't read valleywag - I liked the Bono story. Apologies for the false start - I had no idea that the identity of the author was a major news story - Business week no less! - and then Bill gates opens the big interview with "I am not FSJ". - 50,000 visitors a day -the blogsphere is insane. Yesterday Feed Burner- a startup that provides stats on who is reading your RSS feed - sold to Google for $100m.