Routine Order

You can buy targeted traffic, and I am not talking about google’s product here. Quality Traffic Supply promises to deliver targeted traffic to a website that is contextually driven. I wonder how their business model works - seeing as how google pretty much dominates the show with regard to contextual advertising. The benefit, as far as I can see, is that Quality Traffic Supply drives traffic from contextually related sites in “over 250 categories”. So unlike google’s product which mostly directs visitors your way based on the search terms, this service is search term independent in that the traffic will come from like-minded sites.

I was just casually looking into ways of getting more traffic to this blog - I have been blogging for about 6 months now, and the number of visitors I get is growing slowly. Writing here would be a lot more fun with more readers and comments. However, I can’t spend hundreds on adsense/adwords, and I would like to get visitors who are interested in arcane technology, popular science — the kind of stuff I write here. That’s what led me to the targeted traffic firms other than google. But the question now is, how do I define myself as a target? I don’t really sell anything, or write about one specific field. Oh well, perhaps I should just stop checking my stats every day, stop navel-gazing and write whatever I like, regardless of whether there is an audience. The idea of spending money to get visitors might be overkill for me at this point.

I unsubscribed from Gizmodo and Engadget today. While I don’t expect this to change the internet, I wish it did.

Let me try and explain why I unsubscribed in the hope that you see my point, and you too unsubscribe:

1. They are not blogs any more

   They are more like dedicated newspapers that cover the latest shiny “bling” on the street.

2. They suffer from article diarrhea

   The number of posts they put out is ridiculous. Part of what I trust the people who write the blogs I read is to use their judgement to reduce the amount of data I have to sift through. Human filters, that is what blog authors are, or should be. A good blog will only have good stuff - common sense, really.

3. The blogs are incredibly sexist

   Some, if not most of the posts on either blog are offensively sexist - and I not even female. How do you justify the use of words like “broad”, “chick”, etc, and the gross sexual language that is seen from time to time.

In short, I used to read the blogs, but now, I find that I can use less than 5% of the posts I see on these blogs. Somewhere in the past few months, they went from being interesting to plain irritating - writing about all kinds of junk in impolite, unprofessional language. Maybe that is what keeps most of their readers happy, but sadly, I don’t belong to that section of the population that likes it. I gain very little useful information, news, tips or insight.

And I am not alone, this post from kottke.org reports on a former editor of gizmodo who winds up a rant about gizmodo with “..because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket.” That’s precisely the kind of language I have come to expect from the “editors” of these blogs(more evidence that these are not blogs but tech-pornographic newsletters).

So off you go engadget and gizmodo - find some other feed reader to infest.

So John Edwards joins the race to become President, and hires Scoble to Blog for him?

Great, you say? Well, wait a second. Scoble is a geek - he worked for Microsoft and was good at apologizing for the many shortcomings of the monolithic software giant. He was really good at dropping names, connecting with people etc. But, and that is a big “but”, he did it all for a software firm. Can he pull that off for a politician? I guess not, and here’s why:

Scoble is not really behind blogging tools, the technology and the stuff that goes with it. For one, his blog is hosted at wordpress.com, a service provided by wordpress. So you hire him, and you still need to hire a technologist - someone who can keep your blog running in the face of heavy traffic, and optimize and design it so it pulls readers by virtue of its looks and functionality. So why not hire someone who can do both things, or can at least advise on the technology behind it all?

Scoble is old, let’s face it - he’s got family. Passion is what pulls readers. Give me a twenty-something with fire in his guts for what he’s bloggin about, anytime. I hope you get where I am going with this train, ’cause its one of those freight-train like trains of thought - I don’t really know where it is going, but I’ve hopped on now

Lastly, Scoble’s skills covering technology are admirable, to say the least, and it is difficult to imagine he will put the rest of his blogging on hold, or even slow down temporarily, which means the Edwards campaign won’t get 100% from their blogger.

Call me a skeptic, but I can’t think of one good reason why a technology blogger will help you win a presidential election. Oh well.