The Hypocrisy Weblog

As I’m writing on a project related to blogs in corporate environments, I am in contact with bloggers, both here in Sweden, but also around the world.

What other place is better to ask around in about the history of blogging, thoughts of the new medium, and how blogging will be developing in the future, than to ask the actual users themselves?!

I came into contact with Annica Tiger, who is the author of the well-known, in both the blogsphere and outside, blog “Annica Tigers Blog” (written in swedish). I asked Annica about the early diary community “reload”, that was widely popular around 1997-2000 here in Sweden.

While being in contact with her, I asked her about her concept “four-leaf clover”-blogs, where she lists 3-4 blogs, mainly swedish, on her own blog each and every day.

I thought that this concept of hers was about promoting her own blog, but she surprised me by telling me that it was about promoting other, not so well-known, blogs out there – as she stated; “I’ve got enough traffic to my site to be worrying about getting more visitors”.

Surely, Annicas four-leaf clover-concept helps these bloggers to get more readers, and she also gets more traffic to her own blog, as many of these bloggers link back to Annicas blog. A win-win scenario! (the web at it’s best )

Many of you readers also active on email-lists on the mesh, err… Internet, can’t have missed the stir which the new design on Yahoo! Groups caused.

Numerous users scream out “I want the old design back”, “my group’s messages gets sorted in the wrong order”, “everything is harder to find”

Though, I can’t seem to understand this. It took a while to grip the new design, after being so used to the old look, but I really don’t have any complaints about this new, blue:ish style of Yahoo! Groups! Maybe I am one of those who should be counted into the “ignorance is bliss”-type of people, but I can actually say that I like the new design!!!

My own reflections on the issues users have on the design-change aside – there is a much more important issue at hand; and this is related to how Yahoo! are handling this onslaught of users wanting to speak their minds of the changes of their beloved website that these individuals use every day. A picture has been growing on me the past couple of days, and this picture says that Yahoo! aren’t dealing and communicating with their disgruntled users as they should, I’d dare to say that Yahoo! aren’t dealing and communicating at all!

Sending out corporate answers (if any) to a user who has specific issues that he / she wants rectified just doesn’t cut it! The product of this behaviour is that many administrators of Yahoo!’s Group-service are thinking about moving to an alternative service, and here Google Groups seem to be their primary choice.

Want I want to say with all of the above is that you can’t drastic changes in your website, and not put away a budget large enough to handle the customer care need that might surface due to this change. What will happen in the long run, is that by showing negligence towards your users, thus saving money in a short term perspective, you will lose money in the long term.

On http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/7506669/ you can read the following;

“but the commentary is all below, at “more on 360.” [disclosure: that's not a glare on the whiteboard; it's where Yahoo!'s internal network password was posted, deleted in order not to tempt the easily tempted.]”

Though user jzawodn, your average friendly Yahoo! employee is fast with a comeback and says;

“Heh. That’s the first time anyone has every airbrushed my handwriting.

That was the password to the guest network. Our real internal network requires more than a bit of stuff copied from a whiteboard, of course.”

I guess Jeremy got the last laugh after all!

After having read the article ‘Podcasters’ look to net money over at the good old BBC, I can not see what Adam Curry is thinking about.

Adam says; -”It is totally going to kill the business model of radio,”

I say it won’t! I may sound like a grumpy old man now, even if merely 26 years old (haha), but just because Adam Curry is a remarkable DJ and host in his podcast (and in his past as well), I doubt that he’ll have an easy job getting the visitors and advertisement-base that is needed to be able to live on his pod-cast.

Look; Adam is the top-name of podcasting, and yes – the concept of being able to subscribe to the programming of your choice into your portable mediaplayer is cool and I support his mission with all my heart&mind, yet podcasting will never threaten traditional radio. (Note that “never” can be transcribed to ~10 years, even if I am right most of the time, I can be wrong! (I know, tragic is it not?! ))

“Why won’t podcasts threaten traditional radio?”, you might ask yourself… I say it is very elementary; individual podcaster do not have the marketing muscles that tradional media has. It is very rare that a new radio company comes up from nowhere and cuts a large (if even any) portion of the market, and this is impossible without both marketing know-how and capital.

What I personally am looking forward to is an al� carte-type of television, that I can obtain fast and for a moderate sum of Euros (yes, I’m a Swede in mourning) – after this is introduced with a working business-model and with a demand for this kind of service, then I think that the market is ready for Adam Curry&his fellow podcasters!

Over and out