Blogtegrity

Mar 7, 2006 meta blogging suggest edit

Scott over at LazyCoder called me out in my comments for participating in Channel 9’s viral marketing campaign for On10.net, whatever that may be.

I have never met Scott in person, yet he challenges me about this. And this is exactly what I love about the ~~blogosphere~~^1^ .NET blogging community. That despite never meeting, it really does feel like a community in which we know each other well enough through our writings and feel empowered to challenge each other if need be.

On his blog, he writes (and my ego leads me to believe this is a response to my post) a promise statement that everything he says will be genuine. This is a statement of his blog’s integrity or blogtegrity for short (sorry, but I like making up words). Think of blogtegrity as being kind of like journalistic integrity, but with much more integrity to the truth and not beholden to the government or large corporate interests (ooooh, I went there).

I love this and it gave me an idea to take it to the next step. For a while now on the top navigation of my blog I have had a link to my privacy statement. I have now added a link to my blogtegrity statement. It is a promise similar to Scott’s that I will maintain my Blogtegrity to the best of my ability.

As for me being a Microsoft Shill, here was my response…

I have a couple of friends I know personally (I knew them before they were assimilated into the borg) that work there who are very excited about the work they’ve been doing and told me about this, but couldn’t give me details.

This is just friends helping friends. I trust their judgement.

In a follow-up I mentioned

Ha ha. Oh ye of little faith.

Scott, after writing this post (Better Developers Through Diversity) critical of “Microsoft-Think” you’d still think I might be a Microsoft Shill? ;)

Till next time, Goodnight and Goodluck.

^1^ Apparently it is no longer de rigueur to use the term “blogosphere”. I have never personally had a problem with the word, despite the fact that it is ill-defined. The term “architecture” is ill defined as well but useful in discussing software.

How many words describing a community are well defined?

Meaning of words are hardly ever set in stone, they are an ongoing negotiation. Much like grammar. Otherwise meaning would never change to fit the changing context in which we live.

Found a typo or mistake in the post? suggest edit

Comments

10 responses

Scott • March 7th, 2006
Maybe I'm just an a-hole though. ;)
Actually, my post wasn't a direct response to you since, after I thought about it, I figured that you weren't being manipulated. I'd never seen anything like that on your blog before. It was more an outpouring of distress at the current state of the blogowhatsit. I see the marketers, PR folk, and "evangelists" talking about the best way to manipulate people and trick them into having a "conversation" (instead of a "sales pitch"). The viral stuff is the worst of all. It used to at least be clever, a funny movie or image. Now they just put up a web page with "coming soon" and send the link to a bunch of well trafficked blogs. Then they, predictibly, post about it. People link to the popular blog hoping for some traffic juice, everyone speculates and it's really all a bunch of crap. I trimmed out a bunch of blogs from my aggregator, a lot of A listers, because they just weren't saying anything I wanted to hear. I didn't make a big post talking about who I dropped and why mainly because it would have given them what they wanted, attention. I'm more interested in people MAKING technology than people TALKING about technology. Which is ironic because I haven't had a really technical post in a long time on my site.
It's also part of the reason I haven't posted much lately. Trying to post more original stuff rather than pointing at others marketing efforts or piggybacking and saying "me too".
I mean, look at the on10.net. Why should I be interested? It's movies of ex-G4TV personalities, and not even the ones I thought were genuine to begin with. (a'la TWIT). It doesn't tell me anything about the product, yet I'm supposed to be excited. Oragami.com or whatever didn't do anything for me either. Maybe I'm just not excited by technology anymore? No it's not that. I'm ecxcited by Ozzies web clipboard concept and a lot of the Javascript development (Atlas, DoJo, Prototype, etc...). I just don't want Marketers and talking heads telling me what's cool anymore.
Haacked • March 7th, 2006
See, my ego was wrong again. ;)
I see your point though and agree. I have absolutely no interest in Origami. Many viral marketing campaigns suck. I prefer word-of-mouth campaigns based on the actual product, not the hype. Like Flickr, I love it.
The only reason I'm interested in On10 is that my friends are excited about it and they worked on it. I think that's cool. But if it sucks, that'll make for an awkward beer conversation. ;)
You're not the first person to challenge me about being an independent voice. A friend asked me how I could have advertising and be truly independent. As I pointed out, since I don't know specifically who is advertising on my blog (it's chosen algorithmically), there's just no real way for it to affect my writing.
I have no problem complaining about Google's support of a repressive regime by stifling search results in China. See?
In any case, keep up the good fight.
Scott • March 7th, 2006
We'll you're screwed now. Nothing but Clay Aikin ads for a while. Hope a lot of American Idol fans read your blog. :)
Haacked • March 7th, 2006
Oh My Lord NO! Well in the interest of full-disclosure, I did do some development for the IdolUnderground.com website. But I do NOT want these ads here. Quick, I need to write something technology related.
Erik Porter • March 7th, 2006
We're not trying to tell you what's cool or even really tell you anything about what we're doing. It was more supposed to make you go "wtf?!?!"...did it work? :P
Jeff Atwood • March 7th, 2006
That picture of a pregnant woman's nude belly was viral marketing? I don't know about the marketing thing, it just made ME SO HORNY!!!1!!one
Are we viral marketing for smut now? Really, people.. is this necessary?
Scott • March 7th, 2006
No, it made me say, "Whatever".
Haacked • March 7th, 2006
Jeff, based on your reasons for going to Mix06, I think a piece of toast with a vague image of a woman on it would make you horny. ;)
I think smut is the one thing that doesn't really need viral marketing. It is viral by nature.
Scott • March 7th, 2006
I would be more concerned about living up to any expectations of length imprinted on her belly.
Erik Porter • March 8th, 2006
Honestly, I don't know why we started passing around the pregnant woman image. It was funny when we used it internally, but I thought that's where it would stop. But whatever...I was more talking about the videos. Sorry you're not interested. Or is it more that you're sick of this type of "viral marketing" or whatever you want to call it?