Online Media Cultist

I've long been a big fan of RSS, and Google Reader continues to dominate a good chunk of my web working day. But though RSS plays a larger role on the web than most people realize, it has not quite reached the potential that many saw for it and has certainly eluded household name status. [...]

There are plenty of blogs that focus on the “make money blogging” space. Some are better than others, and generally a good way to detect quality is to look for those that preach that it's hard work to make money blogging, that it usually takes a long time, and the foundation almost always comes from [...]

Remember The Truth Laid Bear? It’s okay if you don’t. I’ve mentioned the blog directory/search engine to a few dialed in friends recently and received blank stares. At one time it was a pretty big deal though, at least within the bourgeoning blogospheric community during the middle of this decade. The search and ranking system were always [...]

My social media consumption workflow has changed quite a bit over the last year or so. I still really love Google Reader’s share feature and use that as a bedrock of how I absorb and share information, along with Twitter and even (for me) Facebook of late. I also like to use Google Readers “shared + [...]

Can bloggers publish opinions on the Internet without contacting companies that they’re writing about first?

Jason Calacanis is the CEO of Mahalo.com, “a human powered search engine,” as well as the former co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. and GM of Netscape. His latest mission (quest?) is to ensure that entrepreneurs are never forced to pay to pitch to angel investment firms. Jason was kind enough to provide his take via e-mail on [...]

Darren Rowse probably doesn’t remember this, but he and I had a lengthy IM chat circa 2005 or so. I lived outside of San Francisco at the time, and Darren lives across the date line in Australia. He was (and is) friendly, engaging, informative, and passionate about the craft, science, and business of professional blogging. So [...]

I’ve been thinking about how to write this post for a while. It’s not that I’m trying to convey anything earth-shattering; it’s just that I’ve wanted to both convey that my attitude toward blogging has changed (evolved?) while also *showing* the change through what I’m doing with Online Media Cultist. The result has been a hiatus [...]

For many bloggers, RSS subscriber numbers are a fun and useful way to get an approximate read on how many “loyal customers” they have. For others, however, RSS numbers take on a greater significance, impacting such things as advertiser and investor relationships, as well as a web site’s perceived influence. For example, when you visit TechCrunch [...]

As far back as 1992, when I was a freshman at Binghamton University (or SUNY Binghamton, if you like) in New York, I recall using the school’s “computer pod.” The pod had old school computer terminals where you could do a number of things education-related, but my favorite thing to do was to e-mail friends [...]