Observed

Technorati has a pretty good idea why we blog. Since 2002, the blog search engine has been tracking millions of blogs and social media worldwide.

I plan to have a big birthday May 12th.  (As a public service, here’s my Amazon Wish List.)  So, I identify with the blogging impulse identified by Kevin O’Keefe in his Why bother with a law blog? post yesterday.

For an answer, Kevin turned to Bill Gates (son of a prominent lawyer) and others.  He heard that at least some of us blog in order to leave a legacy.  In other words, it’s recognition that life is short and the written word is long.

No doubt.  A sense of mortality explains a lot of the choices we’ve been making every day for centuries…from child rearing to cave paintings and a lot in between.

If, however, you care to really know why people blog, ask Technorati.  It’s the preeminent blog search engine, tracking and analyzing blogs since its launch in 2002.  In 2008, it claimed to be following 112 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media worldwide.

Technorati’s go-to State of the Blogosphere reports that expressing a personal passion (such as a hobby) ranks high in explaining the urge to blog. So does seeking a connection with others — particularly if others are like-minded.  Conversely, making money is toward the bottom of the list.

On the other hand, a lot of us apparently blog to advance careers or to gain professional recognition.

So, Kevin’s right.  Leaving a legacy is part of the answer.  Maybe a big reason why we blog.

My sense, however, is that we all blog for different reasons.  Or, different shades of one or two big, virtually universal reasons.

Because after all, we never get any better than human.  Whether we blog or not.

Take a look at Seth’s post from this morning.  Tell me if you agree that vendors and clients live in the binary world Seth seems to describe — where we either use our power to choose or we don’t.

Or, as Seth puts it, we abdicate.

So many things are now completely up to us, more than ever before. Where and how and when we work and invest and interact and instruct and learn…

If you think you have no choice but to do what you do now, you’ve already made a serious error.

It seems to me that passing the buck on this merely because it’s easier than choosing is precisely the wrong strategy. It enables an abdication of power that will be very hard to reverse. It’s up to you, and that’s part of the power that you’ve got.

I get that I have the power to choose.  I also understand that my clients have the same power, authority and ability to choose that I have.

In the best, most satisfying relationships, however, I’ve found that my clients and I share.

I typically, for example, offer my clients options.  I might say, Would you like me to make some recommendations?  Or, perhaps, I might even ask, Would you like for me to choose?

They might say no.  They might say yes.  Whatever they say at any given moment, it’s part of a conversation that reflects the respect we have for ourselves and for one another.

And one that reflects the need to be willing and open to the possibilities of collaboration.

A tech novelties article caught my eye the other day.  I found Anne Eisenberg’s coverage of on-line dictionaries (think Worknik) fascinating for how it reminded me of the humanness of language.

(It also hit me that the editors of The New York Times placed an article about words on the Business page.  Yeah, I know, it was really a tech piece.  It also underscored — in my mind, at least — the importance of good writing to good business.  Just saying.)

I noticed the tension between Web purists like Wordnik’s founder, Erin McKean, and Old Schoolers who admonish writers not to lean too far into the Internet.

Example?  Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, likes Wordnik’s oceans of words and word associations.  On the other hand, Nunberg says,

“The idea that you can pull lexicographers out of the loop and have an algorithm to mediate between me and the English language is goofy.

“Without hand citations done by trained people, you get a mess.”

Then again, Wordnik (launched in June 2009) has raised almost $13 million in VC so far and has business partners on the hook.  Somebody’s leaning.

Dakota L. Meyer was there. The Kentucky native was in the middle of the death-defying chaos and carnage of Sept. 8, 2009. Yet, Sargeant Meyer may be the least reliable source of the facts or truth of what happened during the Battle of Ganjgal.

What happened? can be a dangerous question.  For example…

• Criminal defense attorneys depend on their ability to poke holes in our hazy “eyewitness” recollections.
• Polemicist and filmmaker Errol Morris has created a entire genre out of casting doubt on what images really depict.
• Stieg Larsson used interpretation of an old newspaper photo as the key MacGuffin in his crime-solving novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

And, now, there’s Sgt. Dakota L. Meyer, USMC (ret.), and what happened Sept. 8, 2009, near the village of Ganjgal, Afghanistan.  That’s when and where Meyer was a 21-year-old Marine corporal serving as a scout-sniper with Embedded Training Team 2-8.

The clear consensus is that Meyer earned the Medal of Honor that day.  Accounts of what he actually did, however, vary…despite the testimony of several eyewitnesses and the rigorous review and vetting by the Marine Corps and others.

A McClatchy Newspapers correspondent embedded with Meyer’s unit, for example, has agreed that the young Marine richly deserves the Medal of Honor.  Nevertheless, in a Dec. 14, 2011, story based on the reporter’s findings, the paper declared that the official account of Meyer’s actions was “marred by errors and inconsistencies, ascribe actions to Meyer that are unverified or didn’t happen and create precise, almost novelistic detail out of the jumbled and contradictory recollections of the Marines, soldiers and pilots engaged in battle.”

So, once again, I am reminded of the fog of war.  The phrase — coined by 18th-century Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and popularized by Robert McNamara in Morris’s 2003 documentary — most likely captures Dakota Meyer’s frame of mind that fateful day…and since.

The concept of the fog of war helps explain the difficulty we humans have in discerning either facts or truth, especially under stressful circumstances.  And always will.

OK, granted, you’re probably not writing for fans of Fergie or will.i.am.  Work with me anyway, because I see a connection between the digital freneticism of the Black Eyed Peas and your visitors’ non-linear distractability.

If your goal is to get read (much less, remembered), keep your content short.  Probably under 250 words for anything you might consider a page — such as a bio, practice group description, About Us…or, this blog post.

The Neilsen Effect is why.  As in Jakob Neilsen, a Danish software engineer considered to be one of the foremost user experience gurus.

Neilsen and others have found, for starters, that we read online content 25 percent slower than we read the same content in hard copy.  As Neilsen characterizes this and other Web visitor behaviors,

“[U]sers are selfish, lazy and ruthless.”

Here’s a still-timely 2008 Michael Agger post that explains this and more…including the average user’s unwillingness to scroll.

Distractable

We’re addicted to Anything But This.  I check Facebook, listen to BEP on YouTube, look out the window, tweet something…etc., blah.  You?  It’s not in the DSM (yet), but some psychologists label it Fear of Missing Out.

And, my sense is that it’s in our DNA.  That we survived on the ocean or in the jungle or on the savannah or prairie by being hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant.

In other words, we didn’t have the luxury of The Long.  So, keep it short.

Newt Gingrich's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination seems undeterred by his campaign to sell his books. He and wife Calista often drive their handlers crazy by spending time signing books instead of stumping for votes. Or, are those the same things?

Doesn’t it make perfect sense that 2011 holiday book sales are strong…despite the growing popularity of electronic reading; or, perhaps, because of it?  Or, despite the loss of bankrupt Borders’s 650 stores from the retail mix?

Books — real books — are tangible.  All the better to put under the Christmas tree or hand to someone special as a gift.

And, to show that you care. Really care.

Retailers and publishers report, by the way, that sales of non-fiction titles are the strongest sector in their industry.  In addition, big, expensive books seem to be a niche unaffected by the recession or worries about online competition.

Some people mean more together than they do apart, whatever the stage. Churchill and Hitler. Bogart and Bacall. Ali and Frazier.

Writers want to engage, not distract their readers. Dave Anderson may have done the latter with his use of a much-hated name to make a point in his article about champion boxer Joe Frazier.

This is the lead in Dave Anderson’s farewell to Joe Frazier, the heavyweight boxer and former champ who died of cancer Monday night.

Did you notice the name in the second sentence?  Did you react the way I did?  With puzzlement?  Wondering why Mr. Anderson reached for such an inflammatory name to engage his readers and make a point about synergy?

Instead of being engaged, the analogy distracted me.  If I had been looking for a third pair for that match, I would have kept my distance from naming mass murderers.

But, hey.  Maybe that’s just me.

When I step into the room created by social media, it's incumbent for me to stick around for the conversation...particularly when I start one myself. In other words, I shouldn't shake your tree if I don't want your peaches. No?

LexBlog’s Kevin O’Keefe wasn’t the only reason going to Boston for most of this week was worth it for me.  But he was a big reason.

Kevin, Igor Ilyinsky, Deb McMurray and other law firm marketing thought leaders were presenting at the annual conference of the LMA New England Chapter.  A couple hundred marketers and vendors met to talk about this year’s topic — the interface between lawyers and technology.

When Kevin moderated a panel on social media, he reminded me of why I still resist Twitter.  It’s because I already feel overwhelmed and over-connected.  Despite the filters and other settings I can use to configure who and what I follow (and vice versa), it just seems like another case of being careful of what I ask for.

I also get what Kevin says about the risks of being technically clever and merely auto-Tweeting new blog posts.  (more…)

Keeping the door open allows for an engaging and sustainable conversation. When that happens, customers feel valued, leave happy, and are more willing to return.

I read a great post by Seth recently.  It was about the value of keeping the conversation with customers open.

It reminded me of an exchange I had a few weeks back with a customer at the video store where I work part-time.   On particularly busy Friday night, a customer I hadn’t seen in a while came up to my register to rent some movies for her and her kids.

Everything was going smoothly.  I was even able to sell her a candy bundle and agree to spend the extra 5 dollars to renew a month of half-off rentals.

Then, when I totaled the transaction, the system told me that she owed about 20 bucks in late fees from some movies rented months ago.  This is the point of the conversation where I’ve learned to keep the conversation open, making sure I set the expectation that they need to pay their late fees while giving the customer room to negotiate.

So, the conversation went something like this. (more…)

Maybe it's never taken much to launch a concept. But snarky comments about interior decorating? A random post from The Unhappy Hipster reads, "The door, pushed to depression by neglect and an unwarranted preference for plush, sadly inched closer to the end of his track." Really?

I read a piece about The Unhappy Hipster blog in yesterday’s New York Times and got the sense that the story of the two funny, smart and talented women behind it unfolded over years.

Then, I went back to the top of the article. “It was early in 2010.” In other words, the whole damn thing BEGAN about a year, year and a half ago, right?  From boredom to blog to book to gray eminence in 12 months or so.

Maybe it’s my Boomer DNA. I tell myself, Things take time.

Not anymore. Things don’t take anything. Molly Jane Quinn, Jenna Talbott and their followers have proven it, yes?