Last week I issued a challenge to friends, readers, and folks who generally lurk in the shadows.  the responses were, themselves, interesting and pretty consistent when it came to explaining why someone may or may not comment on sites or blogs that they read:

• The point was already made (don’t want to be redundant), and tied to that:
• Nothing new to add except “I agree”
• Folks who use RSS readers like Google Reader, find clicking through to the site to comment impedes their likelihood of commenting (though a few comments did mention the different scripts and applications that allow for commenting straight from a reader)
• It’s time consuming, and tied to that:
• Marking a post to return to later to pay closer attention to the response often leaves starred items forgotten until much later, if at all
• Too much time has passed to feel like a comment would be relevant
• And the most surprising was the number of folks who voiced a fear of sounding less witty, informed, or “intelligent” than the post warranted.

I hope those of you who took on this challenge were able to better estimate your reasons for not commenting, and I hope that by forcing yourself to comment, you were able to expand your own boundaries and shoo away some of those fears! 

So…. How did it go?  What did you learn about commenting or your pattern for commenting in the process? What was the experience like? And, perhaps most importantly, will you continue?

Tags: Bloggers, Community, Culture of Commenting, social media

Podcamp Pittsburgh 4 was this weekend. 

As you can tell from my previous post, I was excited to go.  Thrilled, in fact.  But by now, you also know that I did not, in fact, get to go back to Pittsburgh for this year’s sold out PCPGH4.  Without going in to the gory details, let’s just say that digestive distress in cats is no joking matter, and it’s one hell of an expensive problem to have. Couple that with the fact that symptoms usually show up too late for any intervention and the need to visit Vet Emergency Hospitals, and you have a very hysterical Dawn worried about her cat and graduate school companion dying because they wanted to hospitalize him for $2500.  At least.  Long story short, we took him home, and complied with the required monitoring of him for 48 hours, and made him as comfortable as possible.  Hell, Jack even went out and bought him a water fountain in the hopes that it would make him feel better and help his water consumption.  ~*sniffle*~

So yeah.  No Podcamp for us.  I’m sad.  I miss YinzTeam as it is, and the opportunity to meet new folks and have discussions that open doors on so many levels come so infrequently anymore that it was just heartbreaking to be sidelined.  Because the crew organizing Podcamp this year was on the ball, I was able to watch a good number of sessions remotely.  But one thing that I noticed almost immediately on Saturday, was that the comments and chat system for the live streaming video stopped working.  I was struck with a whole new level of frustration.  The sessions are inspiring and informative, sure, but Podcamp happens (most innovation and idea hatching, for that matter) during the conversations.  The questions and answers. The discussions.  The panels and debates.  I’ve said it before, and I firmly believe, that Podcamp happens in the hallways.  And here I was completely shut off from the hallway conversations and even from the conversations in the actual sessions!

This all has a point. 

Trust me.  See, one of the things I planned on talking about at PCPGH4 was the culture of commenting.  It’s disappearing.  It’s no longer dwindling; it’s flat out dying.  It ages me to say this, I know, but I remember a time when blogs didn’t come with comment functions (~*gasp*~ I knnnnooowww!!).  And when some coder started passing out free code to insert comment features it exploded the entire notion of what websites and “blogs” were, and of the potential they had.  Suddenly people had interaction on a whole new level! Suddenly, you could rant about just about anything and have your friends and random passers by leave notes of agreement or rebuttal.  You could have a dialogue.

But that’s going the way of the Dodo now, and I think that’s a terrible mistake.  As blogs become more common place, and more and more people post whatever they want whenever they want, they’ve taken the dialogue out of the conversation, and when you do that you no longer have a blog.  You have a basement printed broadside that no one can discuss with you.** 

What happens when no one comments?  Comments and discussion fuel the conversation and development of ideas.  It becomes a tidal wave of thought!  So you may have tons of email responses, or comments on your site.  That’s grand.  But how many comments do you leave on other sites?  Are you closing off your fishbowl by only fostering the culture of commenting on your own site?  Look, I’m as guilty as the rest of you.  I have, sitting in my Google Reader, the dreaded (1000+) unread blog posts.  Some are from news feeds, but a good many of them are blogs just like this one.  I read daily, or weekly, and rarely leave a comment.  Why? 

You tell me. 

Why do you read (and I know you do.  I see you….)  and not leave comments?  Not just here, but elsewhere?

I’ll make a deal with you.  For one week, starting today, see if you can leave a comment on each blog you read.  It doesn’t have to be every post, but at least leave a thoughtful response indicating that you engaged the post.  Can you do that?  For a week?

I know @BurghBaby is in over at TheBurghBaby.com, and if a working mommy blogger who posts at least once a day, takes care of a zoo, a new house, and a family can do it, can’t you? 

Let me know how it goes.  Remember, we’re all watching. 

~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

** I’ve never agreed with closing off comments on blogs.  That’s what makes a blog a blog.  I’ve also never agreed with News sites opening comments on fact based articles.  The news is the news.  It’s not up for debate.  Editorials are for debate.  Letters to the Editor are for debate.  Once you make factual articles something to debate, you undermine their validity and turn your entire news organization into a blog of editorial opinion by the masses and moderated by journalists. News sites are not for discussing ideas and hashing out positions and opinions.  Leave that job to the blogs and message boards.

Tags: Bloggers, Culture of Commenting, PCPGH4, social media

It looks like the sky is falling again.

Yesterday the FTC announced that, “beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.”  Immediately bloggers, Twitterers, and Message board trolls whipped themselves into a fervor over the regulations announced by the FTC. 

I don’t get it.

Do people not read anymore? Has it really come to a point where people take a headline and run with their anti-whatever mentality without actually reading the issue/article/ruling/judgment for themselves to see if they even disagree?  Just because you may sit on one side of the political pyramid doesn’t mean that you automatically agree or disagree with a statement or ruling based on whether something is said by a governing body or not.  We rail against people who don’t think before they vote, or who don’t bother to get the facts when it comes to an election, so why is it any different when it comes to regulations?  We’ve become a country of knee jerk reactionists who want everything to fall in line with our personal ideologies, and if it doesn’t, regardless of the inherent value of the idea, it’s wrong and bad, and it will cause your children to grow up godless and destitute—or worse yet, as humanitarians or socialists!  FOR SHAME!

I honestly expected more from the Social Media community.  Maybe I was naive.

First, read the damn ruling. 

The first three sections review the commission’s examination of the guides, the comments on proposed revisions by interested representative parties, and then gives a description of each change to proposed guides published in 2008.  The comments (section II) are worth reading.  The revised Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising are section IV.  They start on page 55. READ THEM.

Second, establish whether your argument is based on puffed up political ego for the sake of making a point, or on the actual issue of deceitful practices.  If you just want to grandstand about a political viewpoint, please move along… nothing left for you to see here… If you have a blog, if you’ve ever reviewed something that was sent to you by a company, if you aren’t sure where you stand because you don’t know how it effects you, then please continue reading.

Where do you fall?  Why does it matter?  What is the purpose of your blog?  Is reviewing X Product/s the primary purpose of the blog? Do you consistently receive products (in my case, books) to review?  Is the editorial independence of your blog clear if you are not endorsing a company/product? Are reviews likely to be negative as well as positive?

Are you a blogger who has joined a pay-per-post community?  Are you part of a “group” that is compensated by companies to endorse (speak highly of their product regardless of perceived value/quality) their product?  Do you receive “gifts” because you are part of a blogging network or community in the hopes that you’ll tell your readers how wonderful a product is (i.e. free advertisement and “word of mouth” endorsement based on your perceived trust level with your readers)?  Do you routinely review products from the same company positively in order to continue receiving comp products in exchange for your visible approval of their company/product?  Do your readers know that the car you just got, or the phone you’re raving about was given to you with the understanding that you would tell them how glorious it was whether you felt that way or not?

Like it or not, the FTC is forcing companies and bloggers to be ethical in their interactions with their consumers.  It’s not about censorship or telling bloggers what to say or what not to say.  It’s about fair practice and ethics.  The government isn’t dictating what you can or can’t say on your blog.  Anyone who sees that clearly isn’t reading the document.  It’s about fair business and advertising practice.  It’s about stopping companies and individual bloggers who are profiting off of their readership & consumer base through deceitful means.  If you receive “gifts” or “comps” from companies to review and your review is as likely to be negative as it is positive, and your readership is aware of this, that’s one thing.  If your blog is a personal blog dedicated to the life of your prize beagle, and Alpo begins sending you products for free with the understanding that you will continue receiving these products as long as you speak highly of the company, and you never disclose that relationship or business transaction (and it IS a business transaction) to your audience then you are misleading them.  Would your readers think differently of the value of your opinion on those products if they knew of your arrangement? 

Look, if you want to shill for a company, that’s fine.  If you want to play in the Pay-Per-Post pool, that’s fine too.  But do NOT make waves about being considered a BRAND and then balk when you’re expected to follow the same ethics and standards that businesses are expected to follow.  If you have nothing to hide, then why the big fuss about the disclaimer?  Well… if you receive a car, or a computer, or a trip around the world and then rave about the magnificence of the car, computer, and travel company and you never disclose it as a “gift”…  or as a “business transaction,” well then, it’s not just your audience that you have to worry about, now is it? 

IRS anyone?

Tags: FTC, rants, Social Commentary, social media