NLY a few days ago, Netscape and AOL offered money for people to participate in their on-line portal. Having created a Digg copycat, they were willing to pay some generous sums of money for influential Diggers to defect and help create a larger and healthier community elsewhere. The cited article views these recent events in a rather objective way.

Dollar signs went off in the blogsphere Wednesday, as blog pioneer and recent Netscape recruit Jason Calacanis offered up to $1000 a month to woo volunteer posters away from popular reader-generated link sites like Digg and Reddit.

[...]

“I’m just surprised that he feels like he had to steal people away from Digg,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief at SearchEngineWatch.com. “Certainly it’s starting to feel forced now. He’s looking for leaders in his community. None of them have emerged apparently, so he’s hoping to bribe them away from another place.”

[...]

Will the cool hunters in the Digg community take the bait? Reached via e-mail, Digg’s second most popular user, Dirtyfratboy (also known as Henry Wang), told Wired News that he was torn.

“Mr. Calacanis shows up this week and informs the world that users can receive payment for their work. I’ve stayed by Digg’s side ever since the 2.0 birth, but I’m in real pain right now. I would rather break my arm than to dismiss Digg, but my college tuition doesn’t pay for itself.”

Even to me this was tempting. Out of curiosity I got in touch with Calacanis and tested the ground, so to speak. They seem interested at the time, but this truly conflicted with my principles. It would also be awkward, if not a poor strategy altogether. Paying people to do what others already do voluntarily? A couple of days later this led to quiet riots by existing Netscape.com fans. So, I imagine the plan has been fully conceded by now.

E often face the need to compromise and rearrange priorities. We do so in order make better use of our time, but there are trade-offs involved. A few months ago I said I would give up on blogging pace, which stood at about 3 posts per day. According to one blogger, this deems quite reasonable. At present, neglect of pace appears like the right strategy, for a wide plethora of reasons.

Daily posts are a legacy of a Web 1.0 mindset and early Web 2.0 days (meaning 12 months ago!). The pressure around posting frequency will ultimately become a significant barrier to the maturity of blogging. Here are 10 reasons why.

Ever wondered if running a recreational Web site can become a full-time occupation? Ever wondered if bloggers can be paid a wage to blog in favour of a particular company? That it, using the audience as a tool for income? It is a rarity, yet a reality, which more and more people strive to attain.

I pretty much know what ambitious Webmaster are trying to accomplish with advertisements, but if it is income for life, I would warn them in advance. There are very few Webmasters who, at the moment, can actually boast getting a wage out of advertisements (WebMasterWorld is just one example). However, there is a difference between making ends meet and sustaining an income for life. As with all businesses, the terrain changes and one must change and adopt to to this perpetual change. This change is not intervention(time)-free.

The Web, for instance, is changing all the time and all sites need to evolve. Advertising channels and income sources are running dry even for journalists, in part due to online content, bloggers, and Web 2.0 sites, which are far more fascinating (interactive) than ‘old school’ news sites. And by the way, all my sites combined do not generate more than $30 dollars a month. This is not even enough to cover the hosting bills.

To elaborate on the issue of evolving to facilitate trends, 6 years ago I was using nothing but Windows. I thought my skills were well-invested and bound to endure. Nowadays, I never even lay my hands on Windows and, while I consider this change a tremendous improvement, I just know I would never have managed to do the same things as effectively had I stuck with where I was (a monoculture).

HEN Webmasters discover that someone stole their content, they often report this to Google. Blog plagiarism has truly become a plague, but stolen content, spam, site scraping, and copyrights infringements ought to be reported to all search engines, which is why I set up this one particular Web page. It enables any Webmaster or user to report content misuse to three search engines at once (or in parallel at the least).

What was the motivator for this little handy frameset? I noticed that many people report undesirable content to just a single copany called Google. But what about the others? Shouldn’t all be infomed at once? I believe there should be an impartial, not-for-profit body that watches over content theft. somehat like the DMCA, I suppose. Such a body (or site-accessible service with interfaces) could centralise knowledge regarding Web offenders and prevent various companies from doing this independently, merely reinventing the wheel to achieve the same (search) results.

Think big(ger). Let’s get the Web more organised, better structure, and immune to fraud. Never delegate this responsibility to companies, which are slowly making our Web more commercialised and semi-privately owned.

Can you make sense of the numbers? They spell out “blog”.

Y blogging patterns have been rather patchy recently. When I first began blogging, back in 2004, a few short items per week seemed beyond sufficient. I even argued strongly in favour of short posts, which better suit the low attention span of people in the age of information overload.

In due time, I began sticking to a daily post. This was less sporadic then before. I perceived it as a rather steady and predictable pace that accommodated my readers. At some later stage last year, the figures began to climb up. I opted for 2 posts a day; then 3-a-day became a new ‘standard’. I kept this pace going for a long time, but at the back of my mind I kept saying to myself: “blogging is dying. Just enjoy it while it lasts”.

Much has been changing in recent weeks. At the moment I have several hundreds of readers, yet I seem to encourage little feedback in the form of comments. That is perfectly acceptable to some, although it is also nice to receive feedback from the readers. Comments are a very pleasant bonus, not a hindrance. Currently, with nearly 100 posts that I send to mailing lists and UseNet on a daily basis, I get more than enough interaction with people. I consider some level of interaction to be a basic necessity. Who is to oppose this aspect of human nature?

So, what does it all boil down to? I cannot deny the fact that the terrain of the Internet is changing and this includes the existence of over 100 million blogs, just a year or so down the line. I wish to cite less articles and submit more unique contributions to the Web, whenever I have something to offer or say. For the time being, I may as well stick to just a daily blog post. I will remain quiet when nothing noteworthy crawls among my synapses.

What is net neutrality? As one site puts it, it is:

“…the idea that every packet of information — a piece of an email, a piece of an mp3 of a radio broadcast — carries equal importance. That is, a message from me moves no faster or slower over the Internet than a message from the Queen. Or from CNN…”

It is no secret that the Internet is vast and it’s growing at a tremendous pace. With increase in size, unless capacity catches up, there will have to be compromises, in terms of resources. We are yet to discover how the entry of developing countries will change the terrain of the Web.

In other news, expect China to have 60 million bloggers by end of 2006.

Links can lose their value and
get rusty, even with Google

was innocently browsing the Internet this morning. By serendipity, I then arrived at a page where Google boast their contributions to Open Source software through funding (Summer of Code). It is only one example among others. But then, upon immediate inspection, merely all links turned out to be rel="nofollow"ed. SearchStatus made it evident by highlighting those links with red shades.

I have always adamantly believed that the purpose of this new class for links was different. I thought it was introduced in order to prevent and deter spam, among other things such as accommodation for microsformats (e.g. XFN). Here is the snag: If Google themselves are using rel="nofollow" to obstruct dynamicity into relevant, on-topic links, why should anyone else be hesitant to do so? rel="nofollow", a concept that was put in place by Google, is confirmed to have become something that can be misused. Its use has gone beyond the so-called ‘link condom’ (for spam) utility. Otherwise, Google demonstrate hypocrisy herein.