They have more of an incentive to put more into keeping Blogger going than all the other crap you mentioned, combined. Blogger makes them money...lots of money. The things you mentioned were not profitable at all...not for Google or the users.
Yes, in the form of a stable service it was but did you forget the buzz around Wave back then?
...and you can't tell me Google Notebook wasn't monetizable. Evernote probably had a 15% boost (random guessing) of user migration from Google Notebook going on hiatus. The only reason they never matched the output of Blogger (aside from quantity of users) is because Google pulled the plug rather than improved on them where as Blogger's userbase are the opposite and would be PPC migrators to begin with.
A facebook fan page is not a substitute for a website or blog. And you really can't make money on facebook with banner advertising unless you develop your own facebook app that people actually want to use on a daily basis (think games)
Oh, I was talking more about the advertising potential there.
Although in some ways, I might be indirectly saying that. I shun away from Facebook as much as possible and I've never tried to add any personal friends but it shocks me how much these few people are more active in sharing images, tidbits, personal stuff on Facebook than they would ever do on other services.
It's sort of like the difference between the noise of Twitter versus Tumblr but on a mob level as far as community, maybe it's because when people jump into an app or a page on Facebook they jump in as a group, but Facebook has a very forum-like community where the most popular pages match the output of popular blogging commentor habits - the ones that get 50-100+ comments.
I agree though that monetization is still iffy on Facebook but it's getting there. From what I've seen, it's actually e-commerce and not the social games that are the source for many users' money. Most of those still trickle back to blogs but it's like Facebook is a call to action magnet surpassing even Twitter. 5 likes automatically leads to 10 likes, 10 likes lead to 20 and then the comments - again there's just like a fan mob culture around a single account.
None of this is a substitute for having a blog or website either. Blogging will continue to exist and provide Google with a nice income for many years to come. Mobile ads are only good for mobile things that don't work well on the desktop. I don't see the regular internet being replaced by a bunch of tiny pages with minimal scripting made for handheld devices. The regular internet will exist for many years to come and there is still plenty of money to be made in advertising here. Plus, even if what you say does happen and we all throw away our desktop computers and buy a tiny screen mobile device, Blogger can easily be made suitable for those handheld devices with a simple template change...no need to throw the whole thing away. It can still make them (and their users) a ton of money for many years to come.
Oh, I was talking about the near future. Mobile ads are actually only called mobile ads because it's easier to consume on the mobile but it's like saying sms spam ads cannot apply to e-mail spam. A lot of these ads like Groupon clones are actually applicable to both.
A lot of the tiny pages also of minimal scripting are now being replaced by the social networking craze. People still consume the regular internet but now there are things like
Thinkery.me that can scrape and clear all bits and data from a blog post and show it like... a normal text file or a ReadItLater-like public Google Docs looking page.
You're right though. Blogger won't be thrown away.
Also to clarify, I don't think desktops would be thrown away and it would also defeat the point of me making an abandoned Wordpress blog if it did but Google can put Blogger on hiatus now like they did with Notebook and other services and they can still profit from it without really caring whether a few blogs break here or there.
The problem with MyBlogLog was that it was bought by Yahoo, and they kill everything they touch. They didn't develop the site like they should have, expected the features it already had to somehow make them money, and it didn't, so they are shutting it down, like they do with everything else they ruin. If the original developers had sold it to anybody else, it would have had a greater chance of survival and improvement.
You're right but that's also sort of the double edge of these communities. How do you know? When do you know?
If I leave DonationCoder and then return and then post and mouser said "Fuck you!" or "This isn't the old community anymore, you are no longer welcome. Goodbye" - I immediately know.
Even if he doesn't do that, the subtle shift in how the community talks and interacts is a clear hint. With blogging communities, you sort of have to know who are the influencers and where most of the comment culture are flocking to and then re-judging them based on that.
I absolutely agree though that this is true and I will never deny this:
I won't argue with you about the fact that there are plenty of small time bloggers begging for visitors, comments, ad clicks, etc. but you will find that just about everywhere, including facebook.
On the flip side, it also begs the question, is this really the right audience for a blogger that can't even format his posts, don't even want to consistently create scheduled posts on his blog or don't care for this culture of comment me and I will comment you.
Especially this abandoned blog. I want to sink my teeth into this eventually on a new blog but on an abandoned blog, I still want to comment when I spot it but really... it's not going to be a blog where I want to use it as a networking tool with others.
...of course, the flip side of that is the desire to get as much eyeballs on the blog so that people who need it can read it so for that I still thank you and maybe if things go well enough for this abandoned blog - I'll revisit the idea with you. Hopefully by then it's just going to be mostly a simple copy pasted Blogger version of this Wordpress blog.
Then don't use the standard archive widget. Use a link list and labels widgets instead. I did explain that all the widgets on the right sidebar of my example were optional. There are plenty more options than what you saw there.
True, but I didn't find one/get to customize one (through widget drag and dropping) that looks closest to these types of Wordpress themes: (I'm talking mostly simply add and insert free themes though, no widget configuration and other non-newbie options)
These are the ones that I'm currently considering in Wordpress, thank you in advance for providing the howto or the theme for the Blogger equivalent. (They don't have to be near exact replicas, just the interface elements matching closely to these or a static like page)
Choco:
Depo Masthead:
Depo Square:
Duster:
Elegant Grunge:
Inuit Types:
Modularity Lite:
Notepad:
Papercrunch:
Steira:
Structure:
Titan:
Under the Influence:
I have never seen a squeeze page that didn't look like a bad ebay ad, and I immediately close the tab when I land on one of them. If you want any sort of credibility, stay away from that method of presenting information, especially if you are not selling anything or if you want anyone with more than 2 brain cells to take what you are selling seriously.
Heh, I agree. I guess to me it feels like squeeze pages work better at convincing me to be curious.
I don't mean the e-bay looking pages though.
The ones that look like this:
http://www.kajabiapp.com/or for a non-squeeze page but just as much squeeze page looking, this:
http://www.dropbox.com/Even something like Google Chrome's download page, I would probably envision as a squeeze page:
http://www.google.co...html?hl=en&hl=enIt's the text that brings in people from search engines and you won't get that with links to pdfs and rtf files. You would be far better off publishing the content of those files in a blog post than going through the bother of making those files, finding somewhere to upload them, then dropping a link somewhere and expecting magic to happen. (unless you meant that you plan on selling them)
I don't know why you think you have to learn CSS and Ruby to have a blog. Most bloggers I know don't know either one of them. Most bloggers I know can barely copy & paste.
Yeah, I don't mean that for this blog but once I go with the pdfs and the rtf, I want to totally forget about SEO.
I want to totally aim at something that people would want to keep or bookmark and find via a Twitter recommendation or some other social way and ignore the spider altogether.
Uploading shouldn't be hard with posterous. Again I'm referring to something like
this but a more polished one.
Most bloggers aren't me. Most forum posters aren't me. I've come to accept that.
To repeat what I said in the other thread, I want to do everything I know of and beyond. I want to arrive at a point where if I just make a quote, people won't think I quoted something mindlessly. I want to arrive at a point where if I wrote a long post, people won't think I'm not trying to summarize.
Because all those haven't been enough. I can bold a sentence in DC or make the topic thread be the summary, and people will still think I didn't provide a summary or made any effort into editing the post.
I'm sick and tired of myself having to vocally speak out loud every one of my forum and blog posts, only to feel guilty and hollow when someone criticizes as if I didn't do my best.
I'm sick and tired of myself having to consider images/lay-outs/outlines for my blog only to find out that I couldn't add a blog post full of stock images without laughing at my own posts.
Worse, I'm just sick and tired of my poor communicative ability. I'm sick and tired of making the wrong bodily gestures. I'm sick and tired of people saying my words are confusing when I'm just trying to speak or write. I'm also sick and tired of making the effort only for it to not feel like it.
Especially when it comes to asking the right questions. When it comes to talking about something that's not exactly rocket science or algebra and being misinterpreted. When it comes to the simplest failures of charisma, clarity, interest in speech and in text writing...and the hollowness that follows from knowing I didn't do my best. Knowing I didn't maximize or optimize the stylesheet or lay-out or design of a page. Knowing that every day I wake up, I don't practice in front of a mirror like a public speaker. Knowing I don't write 15,000 words a day like a professional novelist. And knowing that I don't want to be those people. I want to communicate but I don't have a passion for public speaking. I don't have a passion for web design. I don't have a passion for being a forum regular. I don't have a passion for being a blogger. I just want to communicate and be communicated back to because it's a necessary survival tool.
That's why I want to pour myself into this before focusing on just any type of content. Even if I failed, I want to suffer so much and learn so much from it that when I post regularly again or blog or whatever the new way of communicating is, I'd have suffered so much that when someone advises me or offers to proof read my post or hands me several tools to try, I can just have a self-esteem that would absorb and apply all the advises and regardless whether I could make it work or not - I would have the peace of mind knowing that I tried. Maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe it wasn't the right thing. Maybe it was the wrong audience. But just to feel (for myself) like all my efforts are going into some place when trying to communicate - I want that and I'd also like to hope that some of my audience needs that to better understand my advise or to better criticize my posts. That's why I want to lose into everything.
I want to have that feeling when a designer finds out their design helps in communicating a vague intention or helping out a complicated need. I want to have that feeling when a novelist writes Twilight and they are able to communicate to an audience beyond all those classics. I want to have that feeling of a director or animation artist finally pushing through the "mature" kiddie version of a dark comic book character even though their final product to me is bad and cringe worthy. I want to have that feeling of a good copywriter or a good blog commentor or a good guest blogger breaking through interests without making a link bait post. I even want that feeling of a programmer knowing they wrote a code that even non-programmers can understand because they didn't just code a code - they commented in the right places, they wrote a manual that even though it quickly becomes outdated still explains the structure in all it's glory. I want to have those feelings within me you know? To have communication that is communication. To have content that is worth communicating. And to wield those in a manner that's just not singing to the choir or over-simplifying my message to the point that it's inspirational but not a manual or a manual that is a manual but not like a Gladwell or a Godin who can make a story out of it.
I want to wield all these free stuff and let it's burden, burden me because I'm not good enough instead of because I didn't do my best and didn't try to fully make sense of CSS or Ruby or Digital Art or Copywriting or Web marketing...all except for the most static ones on the barest dead level. Things like just relying on stock images or pouring most of my focus on SEO or bandwagonning on a popular content to talk about. I want to follow the fundamentals but I want to break those fundamentals and still communicate to my imaginary audience first and foremost ...and also still be able to communicate with others; still not only continuing to receive their advises but be able to level up myself so that I can receive your advanced advises too and not make any of you repeat yourselves or feel like I'm just not listening.
We had a long talk about this before. If you really like my blog that much, then follow my example.
I am, that's why I wrote:
Haven't settled on a font and haven't looked through the entire library of free themes Wordpress.com has and as far as the lay-out, I'll probably try to copy App's Cranial Soup blog except for things like when images are besides the text and all the cool stuff like images underneath Things You May Like
***
Then you just concentrate on writing, whenever the whim strikes. There is no reason why you ever have to plan on abandoning it before you even start it.
For me there is.
When I'm communicating, I want to focus on content. Content that I don't know of but may allow for feedback from someone who knows. Content that I have an opinion of. Consistent content that will get people back. Launch content that will hype it out for people to know the blog. Guest blog content that will help me network with the leaders in my niche. Style that may help me connect with the audience.
But that's when I can communicate and can communicate something that matters.
When I can't communicate my opinions. When my opinions are not even that deep or profound that it's worth being understood. When my efforts can't change the lives of others. Most importantly, when I'm not talented. When I'm not an author. When I'm not a pro-blogger. When I'm not a source of knowledge but rather a source of woe. If I want to really work on it, then I need to stop without first figuring out how those great authors can incubate content for years and release something that's good or how those great independent coders get to produce something that's on par with commercial products or how people like you can provide quality content to your audience - on a full time monitoring scale that's also introspective but most importantly, isn't relying on my current knowledge or talent.
Something that's in tune with emotions. An ingrained instinct where if I don't know the basics, I could recreate the basics just by my mere intention to communicate. Something I equate to real productivity systems aligning with a user.
There are productivity systems that to me that feel like they can't even teach you how to make an egg if you don't know how to cook outside of cheating and telling you to pay for a cooking class.
Then there are productivity systems or techniques that are praised because they can best teach someone to cook but not to pursue something more.
...or to be able to pursue them only because all that person needed was the mental motivation to act upon their passion.
Then there's the real productivity system. A system that even if it fails, you know it tries. You can feel the author who popularized it tries to make your need productive.
That's something that's also ingrained in the authors who spent their lives drinking and smoking to write something or to the bloggers who already know the inner innards of the system they are wielding and can just pop in, recommend and use Entrecards, implement PPC ads, register to domains, merge images to their posts... it's all rosy painted. I'm not saying you didn't go through hell learning and implementing all these stuff but for me who's not even a programmer. For me who hasn't even whiffed achievements that you consider minor to do, and to have that fortune of being a poor communicator, I may have to want to cut a part of my priorities. I may need to not even think about my drafts being posted in public.
I may need to match up with the greats of this generation just to grab unto some semblance of mediocrity. To draw before using images to break my long paragraphs. To pre-edit before even typing. To web design so that I'm not limited to bullet points. Whatever it is, what I'm doing isn't sufficient.
I'll always be here to help you.
Thanks. I hope one day I may be worth helping without causing frustration but for now, one thing at a time.
Right now, I'm just looking for a name for this abandoned blog.
Question - Why not host your blog on dcmembers server ? i'm sure mouser will create account for you in few minutes and you can create wordpress blog, abandon it or come back to it anytime to make changes without worrying about deletion of your content.
To be fair to mouser, I can't even figure out how to grab much of an audience with my forum posts so I don't event want to consider burdening mouser for that.
You don't need to learn php or css unless you want to make your own themes for blogger or any other php cms. You don't need to know HTML as well because most of the ad copy pasting or banner copy pasting can be done with any modern cms out there. By the way dont stop posting on forums, it's really feel good to see your findings and other posts.
True. The problem is, those CMS still require money. Money is also something I don't have much of. Much less knowledge about hosting and all those other sort of things.
Also the copy pasting methods are a lot like the usage of stock images in blogs. They're good but I don't want to leave any effort un-turned when I refail to communicate.
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