Connections, part 2

I just finished skimming a totally boring book: Social Networks and the Semantic Web, by Peter Mika. It might be great if you're into academic language and maybe have a PhD. I don't, so it was not riveting.

The one concept that was sort of new to me is the idea that you can be a unique bridge between various spheres of interest. You might be the only person on this planet that could make an important connection between someone you know and someone they need to know! So the area of social media does have payoffs. Some are financial but the most important ones are relational.

If you're into social media...

Look at my report on a recent conference here.

Social media is the new graffiti

Dave Taylor spoke at a conference I attended over the weekend, the Thin Air Summit. He basically said that social media (blogs, video blogs and podcasts) is the way people can express themselves in a rebellious way without defacing public property.

It's true!

A million new blogs are started every minute and few are actually read by very many. One of the reasons for this is the "seed on shallow ground" paradigm - people start with a lot of excitement and then fade away after a few weeks or months. The "hot sun" of life's busyness kills off their desire to keep it going. Or they simply lose their passion for posting stuff.

It would be fun to find a statistic about how many people start blogs and quit within the first six months. And it would be fun to see how many blogs have lasted more than three years. (I have been blogging since August 2005, which makes me a grandaddy in the world of blogging.)

Why do you keep blogging, if you are still out there? Why did you quit, if you're done blogging?

By the way, the photo is from my buddy Josh in Kenya - he shot it in a remote canyon in a national park there! Obama is well-loved all around Kenya.