I’m very happy and excited about the results. The homepage has a much more online magazine-like look, but still maintains a “reverse chronological” feel that is to me true to the blogging tradition.

I’m also using categories for the first time. Looking back at the three year history of OMC (oh man, it’s been three years already!), I realized that while most things I write about are very much tied to Internet and online media topics, I do stray far afield every now again (particularly when I get into a Posterous mode). So I’ve split things into three main categories:

OMC – All the online media cultery you can handle. Some good recent posts include Digital Curation and the Future of the Internet and an interview with Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis.

Memes & Oddball – This is kind of a grab bag of stories that include Internet memes that aren’t strictly about media and tech (like a riff on the Kanye West meme with rap star Xzibit) but is also “oddball” in the sense that it includes stories that don’t really sync up with anything else (like a quick link over to Ain’t It Cool News with regard to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds).

Television – Finally, I can’t help getting obsessive-y about TV every now and again. I try to tie it to the webs where I can (like with showcasing Slate’s amazing TV Club coverage of Mad Men), but sometimes I simply must point to some element of classic television lore).

This is not necessarily 100% locked yet. I’m going to let it go for a while and see how things play. For example, I may change the name of the “OMC” category as it’s kind of a placeholder for “most of the stories on the site.” And since I made the switch pretty much everything has been OMC. Which is a good and appropriate thing I guess.

Most of all, I’m trying to continue to write about things that turn me on about the Internet, social media, content aggregation, blogging, and entrepreneurship.

Thanks so much to all of you who have stopped by and commented over the years, and here’s to at least three more!

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.

I’m also thinking a lot about the future of this site. Here are some scattered things that have been on my mind for a while. I’d really appreciate your thoughts on any or all of them.

Chasing quality – Probably the biggest change that I’ve made over the last six months or so – and it was more of an organic and intuitive thing than a conscious change in direction – is to stop “chasing” the biggest tech and web stories of the day, and to instead write about things that I feel add something new to the overall conversation.

The counterintuitive thing about doing that is that while my stories rarely get attached to story clusters on Techmeme these days, traffic and RSS subscribers are up modestly. And that’s with writing a little bit less in terms of overall quantity of posts.

There are days where I’m busy or don’t feel I don’t have something really new and valuable to say, so I hold off on posting something here. Because I’ve been very active on Twitter, FriendFeed, and Google Reader (via shared stories + note), I still feel that I’m very involved and engaged in this social media space that I’ve found a home of sorts in.

The payoff too has come in the form of recognition and opportunities. Earlier this year, for instance, I was honored to be included on The Industry Standard’s Top 25 B-to-Z List Blogs. The blurb attached to OMC’s entry is so embarrassingly congratulatory that my ego forces me to reprint: “Ingenious, insightful, and gosh-darned clever writing about online media of all descriptions. Covering traditional Web sites, blogs, social networking, and more, Eric Berlin pulls no punches.”

And more recently, several OMC stories have appeared on Duncan Riley’s The Inquisitr in excerpt form, with the cherry on the 2008 cake coming by way of being invited to participate on louisgray.com (my first piece, just published yesterday, can be found here).

Following passion – And part of what “chasing quality” has meant for me is that I’m freed up, in a sense, to write about exactly what turns me on the most at any particular moment. In admitting freely that I’m don’t run a full service newsroom, I’m not TechCrunch, I’m not Mashable, and I’m not chasing the hot story of the hour, I can focus on areas that I’m most passionate about and can contribute something meaningful.

When I founded OMC in January 2007, I wrote a lot about social news and social networking and blogging. These days, I find myself writing about such things as Twitter and wondering what the future of microblogging will bring, how RSS-driven content aggregation platforms will continue to evolve and change, and how the Internet and social media are fundamentally changing what things like television, video, and even conversations mean!

So what’s next? – My short answer is, “I like where things are going, and hope that those of you who stop by with some regularity (and thanks ever so much as always for that!) do as well.”

There are times when I consider publishing shorter and more frequent posts, times when I’m tempted to add more posts that are personal or not fully related to social media and the web (the occasional Because it’s Friday series is an example of such dabblings). And I try hard to keep these introspective “what does it all mean” posts to a bare minimum.

But maybe y’all like them, for all I know! (I actually love the opportunity to peer “behind the curtain” on websites and blogs that I enjoy.)

As I said at the top, I would love feedback on any and all of the above, and nonetheless look forward to a great 2009.

Like.com’s Perfect Timing: $32 Million Series C Round

With a new round of $35 million, could Mail.com be the next Yahoo?

AdMob Raises $15.7M in Series C Funding

Metaplace Raises $6.7 Million For Custom Virtual Worlds

Howcast lands $2M more for how-to videos

Mark Cuban, Jonathan Kraft Invest in CitySquares

And there’s a goodly chunk of other good stuff going on as well:

Google Android Market Goes Live With 50+ Apps

AOL Quietly Launches One of the World’s Biggest App Platforms

Russian search company Yandex acquires ad agency

Rackspace Acquires Slicehost and JungleDisk: Challenges Amazon’s Could Computing Services

Hulu Surpassed 140M Streams in Sept.

This site hit 200 subscribers just two and a half months ago, so it’s been remarkable to me to see the growth since. Topics fascinating to bloggers and content publishers but perhaps absolutely groan-inducing to others include: what’s the right editorial balance? What’s the right publishing volume? What’s the right mix of fact and “link journalism” and personality and opinion?

These are things I’m always thinking about, but most of all I’m trying to be true to myself in writing about things that turn me on and that I would want to read about. I’m a web producer by trade, which only leaves a finite time to write about my “cultural learnings” (apologies for the Borat reference!) of the online webospheres. I won’t chase every big or hot story going on unless I feel I have something valuable to add to the conversation. But of course, sometimes I can’t help myself. Interpreting a Jerry Yang e-mail to investors and speculating about a potential Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo yesterday, perhaps a little too presumptively, is a great example.

That said, here are some stories that pretty well represent the direction of the old OMC over the past few months:

* I wish FriendFeed or Google Reader would tell me who’s sharing my stories
* The post-blogging generation
* Twitter and FriendFeed: where the future may tread
* The future of content may come in the form of a Cavalcade
* ABCNews.com, please stop with the video ad autoplays
* Amazon’s Kindle and the tipping point
* How do bloggers hold onto the value they’ve created?
* The online video revolution will be televised… on television
* Blogging 2.0: from surviving to thriving
* Bridging the Blogging 1.0 and Blogging 2.0 divide
* Online Media Cultist honored by The Industry Standard (I’m already self-propping here, so… )
* The rambling shambling social networking funhouse that is MySpace
* Are social news sites like Digg useful anymore?
* Gadgets threaten the Internet’s future? Ridiculous
* Using smart content aggregation and smart people networks to beat back the over coverage plague
* Creative destruction and the online video gold rush
* Good traffic, bad traffic, silly traffic, traffic traffic

I take all of the great feedback I get very seriously, and am always amped to respond to comments, e-mails, and other hails of the digital sort. If you’ve got any thoughts or just want to rap about things online media, drop me a line at dumpsterbust@gmail.com