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Blog, Twitter, Facebook: Now, where's the magic?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while honestly. The amount of comments I leave on other blogs have considerably dropped in the last couple of months, but it is not because of my lack of interest. In a certain way, I still comment: it’s just not formal and traditional comments. I retweet posts, I comment on them on twitter, friendfeed and Facebook and sometimes on  blogs directly. I still show my interest and give feedback, but just not in a traditional way.

In fact, I think the 2 lines comment is dead. You know, the classic “nice post, you rock!” comment. While it is extremely annoying on a blog, it is perfectly suited for twitter. On the opposite, the smart 10 lines comment won’t and will probably never die.

I think we’re about to see some important changes in the blogging world, but all for the best. Things have already changed a lot with all the different channels available to produce content, but in my opinion this is only the beginning.

How do you see this evolving?

Tumblr

Tumblr is not a traditional blogging platform even if it looks like it. At the same time, it is not a traditional microblogging platform like twitter. Tumblr allows you to share text, photos, quotes, links, audio and video all very easily and quicker than a WordPress post.

You can add a Tumblr button in your browser toolbar to quickly share a link or a video. If you’re on YouTube, it will automatically detect you want to share a video so it will embed the video for you and let you add a comment. This means you can share just about anything within a couple of seconds/minutes.

Tumblr just makes your life easier when it comes to sharing links, text, photos and videos, that’s the strength of the platform. You can of course setup a connection between tumblr and twitter so that everything you post on tumblr is automatically posted on twitter if you like that kind of things.

ishare – Bringing value to what I share

I personally use tumblr to bring additional value to what I share. I like sharing links and videos on twitter, but 140 characters is too short for me to properly comment and give my opinion on what I share. Today for example, I posted a video of Gary Vaynerchuk on my Tumblr blog (ishare) with a short comment:

My comment was too long for twitter and too short for a blog post, so I posted it on ishare and shared the link on twitter. This way, I gave credit to Gary for his great video and it allowed me to properly comment and give my opinion.

Tumblr is what you want it to be

I use Tumblr on ishare as a way to combine regular blogging and microblogging, but you can really do whatever you want with tumblr. You can make it a microblog or a regular blog. In fact, Tumblr is what Gary Vaynerchuk uses on his main blog at garyvaynerchuk.com and it looks like a traditional blog, so it is very flexible.

Limitations

I wouldn’t use tumblr for a main blog for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s not a standalone system like WordPress that you can install on your own server. A tumblr blog is hosted by tumblr, but you can of course have your own domain name pointing to it. The fact it’s not hosted on your own server makes it a bit less flexible. From a SEO point of view it’s also not very good and there is no plugin that can be installed to solve this. It is not that bad, but it could be better.

The theme system is bit weird and I can’t say I love it or hate it. It’s just OK.

As you use it, you will see some of the limitations compared to let’s say a WordPress blog, but if you want to share some material quickly like me, it’s the best platform.

It’s not a blogging or a microblogging platform, it’s tumblr. I could go on and on, but the best way to understand tumblr is to try it.

Tumblr experiences

Do you have any tumblr experience to share? Let us know.

Thanks guys! (Oh, please comment on the changes! )

Crapternet (aka Internet filled with crap)

Both my parents went through health issues this year (no worries, it’s all fine now) and one thing you do (at least most people) when having health problems is a Google search. You know, when you build websites just for money, you don’t really think about the end user and what kind of information you are going to put out there: you just pray for a good CPC. But when I learned my parents were using Google to find more information, I immediately felt bad because they didn’t know a 15 years old kid could write health articles and get a decent ranking on Google. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. Most people don’t realize that by building a website or a blog you can have a direct impact on people’s life. This is particularly true in health or finance niches and unfortunately there are too many people in that business just for the money.

Imagine you have cancer. It is not a very nice thought to have, but that’s the only way to really understand the impact we have as bloggers, internet marketers or whatever you like to call yourself. You will Google about your specific cancer and find some information, but who actually published that information? Is it a 15 year old kid? Is it a doctor? Is it reliable? Was it built just for the money? Is there a full time SEO person working to get that website on top of Google? Imagine the information you just found says that most people die of the type of cancer you have…I think it’s freakin’ important to know if the person who wrote that is a 15 year old crapternet marketer or a doctor. Unfortunately, there are good chances it’s a person like you and me.

Google keyword tool and the crapternet

Most Internet Marketers only think about finding good keywords in Google keyword tool and don’t care about the end user. “Oh, look! ‘Breast cancer’ average CPC is 20$, let’s start a breast cancer blog”. Yeah, let’s pretend you know what you’re talking about. That keyword tool is responsible for a lot and I mean a lot of crappy content in all niches on the web and it’s really sad.

30 years of crapternet domination?

I think about my career all the time and one of the thing that obsesses me (and you know there’s a lot) is “Will I be able to do this for the rest of my life”? I also think about when I will meet new friends in my life and tell them what I do for a living. Something that is important for me and that I hope is important for you as well is to be proud of what I do everyday. I love blogging and Internet Marketing and I wouldn’t have any problems with saying that’s what I do for a living, but Internet Marketing is very vague.

“Oh Internet Marketing sounds good, what kind of website do you promote?”
“Well, I build about a hundred websites every year about whatever hot subject and suck money out of it.”
“Oh, I see, so you must be a guru in a lot of fields!?”
“No, I usually don’t have a clue what I’m talking about: people just end on my websites because I’m on the first page of Google”

Could you?

I’m guilty

Yes I already built crappy websites just for quick cash and AdSense. We are all (mostly) guilty of the quick cash trap, but it always takes an important event in your life to realize the impact you might have on other people’s life.

I’m just sayin’

I’m not saying to anyone to stop their online business, I’m just saying it’s important to think about the impact you might have. You can build a weight loss blog, a cancer blog, a debt relief blog or whatever, but do you bring anything to this world?

Bring back ethic

Unfortunately there is not much ethics left in this Internet Marketing world. Everyone wants a share of the pie no matter what it involves. I say bring back ethic and try to actually do something that will help people around you.

With a long term vision you might win. So, what do you guys think?

Tell me!

I’m actually surprised no one really talked about it because it deserve the spotlight. The web application I’m talking about is called bbPress. bbPress can be installed without a WordPress blog, but for that we already have some good forum platforms like vBulleting and phpBB. The real cool thing about bbPress is that it integrates with your WordPress blog’s database. You can share the same users and login so you don’t really have to manage two different things, it’s really an extension of your blog. It supports what made WordPress a success: Templates, easy administration interface and plugins.

Full of features?

bbPress doesn’t have the look of traditional forums running phpBB or vBulletin, it looks a little bit lighter but it doesn’t mean less features. Users can have their own avatar or Gravatar, you can have users with different levels of security, they can also add signatures, smiles and all that good stuff you would expect from a forum. If it doesn’t have the feature you want, there’s probably a plugin doing it. It’s really like wordpress. When you look at wordpress without any plugins it’s a good platform, but nothing that impressive. It’s really when you start customizing your template and adding plugins that you understand its power. If you want to have a look at what a forum might look like, you can have a look here:

http://bbpress.org/about/examples/

In the examples you will find the wordpress.org support forums and also the technorati.com support forums. These are two pretty big and important forums so even if bbPress looks light at first sight, it’s packed with features and can scale to a very large forum very easily.

Here’s the official features list from bbPress.org:

• Fast and light

  We keep our code lean so that you get the best experience possible.

• Simple interface

  One of our biggest goals is to keep things simple and make things intuitive. Our dream is that you forget you’re even using the software.

• Customizable templates

  Not everybody likes the same pair of pants, so we allow you to dress up your forums however you like.

• Highly extensible

  bbPress can’t toast your bagels, but a plugin for it sure could!

• Spam protection

  A bundled Akismet plugin offers you an amazing weapon against spam.

• RSS Feeds

  You want feeds? We get ‘em; they’re everywhere.

• Easy integration with your blog

  WordPress and bbPress are siblings, and they get along together a lot better than you and your brother did when you were kids!

So there you go, you can now integrate a nice forum into your wordpress blog without too much pain!