Part of the reason for this has to do with the relatively non-intuitive way that RSS feeds are added to RSS readers for end users. And part of it is due to the rise of social media applications for information sharing (read: Twitter, Facebook) and the real time web.

So where does that leave things heading into 2010? The consensus of the blogosphere is, well, a muddled one.

ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus reported late last month that the RSS Reader market is in disarray but then dialed back and returned with 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock. Venture Chronicles bluntly states that "RSS as a standard has failed to evolve in ways that solve publisher problems." And Louis Gray (rightly) points out that "the current discussion around RSS being less useful, or less important, than in years past, is flawed, period."

With the web, one thing that we know is that things are forever changing, and usually more quickly as opposed to less. So it is with RSS as well, and one thing we know for sure is that the use of RSS will evolve based on patterns affecting the social web, the real time web, and so on.

Allen Stern's smart takeaway is that the era of full RSS feeds may be ending because online publishers can now effectively promote themselves without "giving away" full content via RSS. Personally, as a heavy Google Reader user, this would not bother me all that much as I often click through to the stories that I take the time to read end-to-end.

Meanwhile, I still see huge potential and opportunity of Google Reader as a content sharing and social media tool. At its best, the shared and shared + note features offer the an ideal combination of "smart social network" and "smart content aggregator." And no doubt Mother Google will have more in store for us this year.

Finally, it just occurred to me: if Google had acquired FriendFeed rather than Facebook, would the RSS landscape look significantly different today?

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger has long been one of my favorites, and that’s because of the supportive and friendly spirit of its content and community, as well as Darren’s overall take on blogging as a professional business. A few recent ProBlogger articles have particularly drawn my attention. 

How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging is a good illustration of the it’s hard/takes time/quality content/quality promotion dynamic. It also delivers a fabulous primer on different kinds of online advertising strategies, such as CPC, CPM, commission, and sponsorships. And Rowse points out that using multiple advertising networks and types is a good way to maximize revenue. Of course, you need to drive a lot of traffic before you can expect to make anything close to $30k per year! 

And here’s helpful news for money-seeking blogs who use the popular Blogger platform: Google and Amazon Partner Up to Integrate Amazon Associates Program into Blogger Blogs. One of the more interesting things about this news is that Google-owned Blogger is now openly promoting a non-Google advertising product. And since many bloggers use both Google Adsense and the Amazon Affiliate program as a bedrock of their money-making strategy, the move makes a lot of sense. 

There are also a number of “indirect” ways to make money from blogging, including professional networking opportunities, promotion for consulting and online services, direct product sales, and more. Some of the most prolific and ambitious bloggers are writing books (both e-books as well as the dead wood variety) and promoting them to their readers. The latter – old fashioned books distributed via old school real world distribution – gets the spotlight on Mashable: From Blog to Book Deal: How 6 Authors Did It. Profiles include how Ben Huh of the I Can Has Cheezburger empire, Pamela Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation, and Walker Lamond of Rules of My Unborn Son converted Internet celebrity into book deals.

Even though the blogging game is highly competitive, it’s also fun and challenging and changing all the time. Bloggers are forging new business models out of online publishing, with the result that the best of the best online writers and self-promoters are able to live la vida blogger full time.

For a lot more information about professional blogging in 2009, check out Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

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 a little bit wonky, but what I loved about TTLB was its blogosphere ecosystem page. Beyond the fact that I’ve always been obsessed with rankings and statistics and numbers, TTLB did a few things really really well.

• Its ecosystem mimicked the real ecosystem – On the “lower” or less popular end, blogs are ranked into broad groupings such as Insignificant Microbes, Multicellular Microorganisms, and Wiggly Worms. Rankings are based on “the number of incoming links [blogs] receive from other weblogs on the list.” As blogs increase links and influence they “evolve” into categories such as Crawly Amphibians, Slithering Reptiles, and Marauding Marsupials. The most popular blogs according to TTLB take on lofty titles such as Playful Primates, Mortal Humans, and, at the very top, Higher Beings. I love the tongue-in-cheek titles and think that they did a great job of parsing the blogosphere into relative categories. A TechCrunch or DailyKos really is a “higher being” as compared to a blog with eight visitors a day, you know?

• It provided a daily snapshot of the growing blogosphere – I used to visit TTLB every day (particularly to see where Blogcritics was sitting in the mix), and it was interesting to watch the leading “higher beings” of the time flip flop rankings with one another. The overall trend was explosive growth. Back in the day, I kept an eye on the 100,000 page view mark (they used to use estimated page views as a main metric) and noted how achieving that milestone placed you relatively lower on the list as more and more blogs started to see serious traffic.

• It gave a quick snapshot of The Powers That Be – While I’m sure a few major players were missing, keeping an eye on TTLB allowed you to quickly know who really mattered in the blogosphere each day. Daily Kos, Instapundit, Gawker, and Boing Boing were then as now megapowers.

• It provided an early read on trends – Checking out TTLB over time revealed some interesting trends, including the rise of gossip blogs and the voracious appetite for gossipy content (which continues today of course) and the explosion of blog networks such as b5media and SB Nation.

What’s up with TTLB today? That’s a good question. I vaguely recall that it went through regular service outages some years ago, and at some point dropped out of my daily rotation. A bit of research doesn’t reveal much, though a few people seem to concur that TTLB is sadly “dead” or at least has been cast adrift for a good long while. (The current rankings don't seem to make a lot of sense and site blog hasn't been updated in nearly two years.)

The march to provide quality blog rankings goes on, of course. Today, Alexa and Compete and others are striving to provide the best and most comprehensive Internet-wide rankings and stats, while Technorati is a major player in the blog ranking space.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

I also like to use Google Readers “shared + note” feature as a quick and easy way to drop a short comment on stories I like while I’m sharing the story with my Google contacts. However, just today I realized that I’m doing myself and my fellow bloggers a disservice in the sense that I don’t leave comments on the “source” blog post page nearly as much as I used to.

I also realized that (the newly redesigned!) Online Media Cultist doesn’t get nearly as many comments as it used to. Part of this is my fault as I go through lengthy periods where I’m not posting a ton, and part of it has to do with the fact that comments get distributed on places like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.

The “distributed conversation” thing is where the Internet and blogosphere is going, and I’m fine with that. People want to have conversations where they’re hanging out, which in fact is why I’ve become so accustomed to leaving comments via Google Reader!

But, as they say, I can control my own actions. And that leads to my new year’s resolution #1 for 2010: comment more.

I resolve to comment on the source blog page of five blogs each day, every weekday.

It’s part of my social media goodwill plan for the new year. Pay it forward, y’all.

But let’s be honest: for most bloggers – even the serious ones – the online realm is going to be the primary source for most stories, with the blogger himself or herself adding additional perspective, commentary, analysis, and so forth using their own experience and research and writing skills.

Which brings us to Techdirt writer Mike Masnick’s tale. He answers a fair question – can bloggers publish opinions on the Internet without contacting companies that they’re writing about first? – with an affirmative yes.

I recently wrote a short post about something that was apparently happening with YouTube and soon after received an angry email from a PR person at the company first scolding me for not contacting Google PR first and then demanding that I insert some PR babble paragraph that said nothing that addressed the key questions raised in the post in "response." This made no sense to me. If I got something factually wrong, I have no problem having someone point out what was in error, but demanding that I first contact them and then include a meaningless statement is ridiculous.

I’m fully with Mike on this one. The possibility of the Google or YouTube PR department bothering to respond to the average blogger (and you tell me how you would even go about trying to contact a human being at Google about a blog post!) seems astronomically small.

Making demands to add an update to a blog post with PR gibberish sounds like downright cyberbullying to me (did I just make up that term? Sounds like something you’d hear on the local news in 2006 with regard to MySpace*)
And doesn’t Google have the ability to do what any blogger might do when they’re not happy with a blog post? They can write a reaction post themselves. And I’d think they have a none too small amount of online influence to make themselves heard.

* Apparently I did not coin the word cyberbullying.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

Jason was kind enough to provide his take via e-mail on a wide range of topics, including his involvement with Open Angel Forum, the latest doings at Mahalo and in the blogosphere, and the future of the New York Knicks.

What is Open Angel Forum, and what’s your involvement with it?
Open Angel Forum is a movement to create a *free* forum for angel investors and startup companies. It is a for profit effort that will not profit from charging startups access to angel investors.

The format will be like any other angel forum: a handful of startups will pitch a room filled with angel investors. If there is a match the investors will follow-up with the startups and make an investment. We’re going to start in Los Angeles, where I know two dozen high-profile angel investors, then we will move on from there.

You’ve always been something of an iconoclast. Do you see your current campaign to end the practice of angel investors charging entrepreneurs to hear pitches as part of some larger “quest”?

When I was coming up as an entrepreneur I had to fight for everything I got and there was no clear roadmap of how to be successful. I’ve been more successful than I probably deserve, so I’ve been spending 10% of my time trying to give back to “the game.” That’s why I started the TechCrunch50 conference with Mike [Arrington], that’s why I angel invest and it’s why I started This Week in Startups. I like to share what I, and others, have learned. I think entrepreneurship is a beautiful thing.

Is the practice of charging entrepreneurs to pitch similar to agents charging aspiring writers/actors to review their work/resume?

Exactly!

They are just as predatory and slimy as “model agents” who charge aspiring models for head-shots and modeling lessons. It’s repulsive, and no real angel investor charges.

What stage should startups be in when they approach OAF and what range of funding will be invested to successful entrepreneurs?

We’re going to target the OAF at pre-Series A obviously, but it will be open to entrepreneurs with or without a track record.

What kinds of startups will OAF be looking for?

Ones that want to change the world in the technology space I suppose, but we’ll see where we take it. If folks want to pitch restaurants and sports drinks, well, I guess we would consider it!

Can you describe the first time you pitched angel or VC investors – what was it like?

I think one of the first times I pitched someone it was Jerry Colonna of Flatiron Partners. He took the time to explain to me how venture capital worked and what pitching was, and that’s why he was a great VC.

Your lengthy essays that you send to your e-mail group (and repost at times to your blog) are always interesting, opinionated, and fun. Any additional plans for these?

Yes, I’ve got about five that are between 60-95% done. I just like to sit with them for a while. I’ve got one on “creating a corporate culture document” and another on building community that I’m almost ready to hit the send key on.

You famously “retired” from blogging some time back, but now use your blog presence as something closer to a microblog (posting pictures, content snippets, links, and video, etc.). What are your thoughts on this, and what’s your take on the state of the blogosphere?

Blogging is great and I read blogs all day long. However, my goal is really to have a deep meaningful discussion with people. For some reason I’m able to accomplish this best via email. I’ve gotten 2-3k word responses from CEOs of other companies to my essays! These same folks would NEVER have responded in a blog post, so I’m sticking with photos of my dogs for my blog and email for long essays.

What is the goal of Mahalo 3.0 ?

We’re trying to merge content, q&a and search on one page. It’s a really hard thing to do visually, and the truth is no one has ever done it.

Essentially we’re making Wikipedia-style pages with Yahoo Answers and Google search bolted on. The trick is to try and make it not feel bolted on.

How has the mission of Mahalo fundamentally changed, if at all, since you founded the company?

The mission remains the same: To help people find information they can trust.

How we accomplish the mission has changed. At the start I thought we would be 80% search and 20% content. Today we’re 50% content, 30% search and 20% Q&A. So, we will keep playing with the dials until we get it perfect. We’ve got two or three more years of work and I think we will solve the puzzle. If we do, we will have a site that is bigger than the Wikipedia.

Is your goal for people to think of products such as Google, Wikipedia, and Mahalo when looking for information and resources on the Internet, or do see it from a different perspective?

When people think of Mahalo I’d like them to think “the best page on the internet for any topic.”

Additionally, I’d like some percentage of folks to think Mahalo is “the best place to start” their Internet journey. That’s a really hard thing to do, but I think we will take 10% share of the search space in the next couple of years.

I’ve long thought that the changes that Netscape (now Propeller) went through while you were the GM there would greatly influence the future of web content; that is, a combination of user submitted content, original content, and editor-curated content would become the norm. What’s your take on this?

I still believe in that mission, and I think even Kevin Rose does to a certain extent–but on a different percentage. In fact, their Digg Dialoggs are a great example of laying produced content on top of community content. Gawker, GDGT and the New York Times are all doing similar things by promoting consumer content to the top level.

Curation is the future of the internet.

The Knicks… any hope?

Absolutely! The Knicks are going to trade [Eddy] Curry right after Christmas freeing up a lot of cap space.

LeBron [James] will lose to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals and then sign with the Knicks. He will then convince Chris Bosh to join him and the Knicks will win three championships in a row.

A boy can dream right?

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

So that’s to say I’ve long been a great fan of Darren’s ProBlogger, and want to congratulate for hitting the amazing mark of 5,000 posts. 13 Things I’ve Learned about Successful Blogging, which marks the occasion, is a great read and all signs point to ProBlogger remaining one of the best blogs-about-blogging that there is.

I’d say I’ve probably written somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 posts since late 2004 or so between Dumpster Bust (my original blog), Blogcritics.org, OMC, and various other professional and freelance gigs (such as Web Worker Daily most recently) I’ve had over the years. That feels like a lot to me, so I find a mark of 5,000 universally strong posts to be an astonishing mark.

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 of sorts from “native” OMC posts while doing some freelance writing for Web Worker Daily and going through a number of real life/web life roller coaster rides and machinations.

In any event, the general desire I’ve had for a while is to get back to more of a homegrown style of blogging, to write about and point out what I find to be cool about the Internet. Without worrying about what are the hottest stories of the day, without worrying about blogging as a “business.” The practical goal (I hope) is to publish more frequently, faster and (a bit) looser, shorter and punchier posts.

While writing longer reviews and analysis of new web products and services is rewarding, I’m looking to get back to what brought me to the blogging game (in 2004, originally with Dumpster Bust and shortly thereafter with Blogcritics) in the first place.

See something cool, write about why I think so, and publish it with the thought that others might feel the same. Maybe even open up a conversation about said thing. And that’s where things get really cool.

Make any sense?

So, I’ve piled up a goodly number of topics over the last several weeks, and now I’m ready to give it a go.

And if you see something worth being made mention of, drop me a line at dumpsterbust@gmail.com.

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 and note that it has north of two million RSS subscribers according to its FeedBurner chicklet, it stands to impress and make you give its articles a degree of consideration that you may not lend to web publications with a lower subscriber count.

So this is all to say that RSS subscriber numbers are a pretty big deal on the Internet. But how are RSS subscriber numbers calculated, can they be trusted, and what do they really tell us? And while FeedBurner is certainly the industry leader in “burning” RSS feeds for web publishers and providing subscriber counts, what are the alternatives?

Unfortunately, there’s no easy or simple way at present to provide RSS subscriber numbers other than as an approximate snapshot of how many people are actively subscribed to a feed at any given point in time.

Confused yet? The FeedBlitz blog (FeedBlitz is a Feedburner competitor) does the best job I’ve seen in explaining how subscriber counts are tallied in a piece called “On RSS Subscriber Counts and FeedBurner Metrics…

(read the rest of this piece at Web Worker Daily)

Anyway, this bout of nostalgia was brought on by a Slate piece that recalls the wild earlyish days of the web — web 1.0 in its ascendancy — circa 1996.

t’s 1996, and you’re bored. What do you do? If you’re one of the lucky people with an AOL account, you probably do the same thing you’d do in 2009: Go online. Crank up your modem, wait 20 seconds as you log in, and there you are—”Welcome.” You check your mail, then spend a few minutes chatting with your AOL buddies about which of you has the funniest screen name (you win, pimpodayear94).

And here’s a nice bit on the history of blogging:

There’s a similar trend in blogging. The term wasn’t coined until sometime in 1999, but several seminal blogs were already online by 1996, says Scott Rosenberg, one of the co-founders of Salon and the author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters, which will be published in July. Rosenberg points out that Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist credited with inventing the Web, and Marc Andreessen, the coder who founded Netscape, had both set up frequently updated, reverse-chronological Web pages by the mid-1990s. Later, a Swarthmore College student named Justin Hall began links.net, where he’d post a short personal musing nearly every day. “I think I’m gonna have a little somethin’ new at the top of www.links.net every day,” he wrote in his first post, dated Jan. 10, 1996. Hall’s site—unlike so much else that was on the Web back then—lives on today.