Opinion – Page 3

Blogger, Name Thyself

May 4, 2007 By Raj Dash

Okay, maybe you don’t think that a blogger needs to build a brand. But in light of the response that the infographic on the You’re Brand One? post received, it’s evident that branding is important for some bloggers. That is, if you plan to either earn a living from your blog professionally or indirectly. (Darren Rowse has a great post about making money because of your blog.) In which case branding is a necessity, be it a cool, memorable brand name, an infographic, or even just a picture of you.

If you want to blog professionally, even if just to promote your consulting or other services, I highly recommend getting a domain name with your name in it, or some variation. Set up a blog and make that your brand, to promote all your online and offline activities. You may even want to use a blog name that isn’t your name. Remember that you have to compete with websites plus 70 million blogs. Or is it 15 million? Who knows. Fact is, you need to stand out, and there are many aspects to building a popular site (promotion, content, posts, etc.), but branding yourself is the glue that ties it all together.

For me, I want to be the geeky diagram/ screencast guy. Hence my brand “Internet UltraGeek”. But here’s something to consider: I didn’t bother registering internetultrageek.com because I don’t like the way it looks. This should be a factor when you decide on a brand name. For example, noted web designer Chris Pearson uses Pearsonified, which I think is great. It’s more than his name, it’s a brand. Be creative when you set up your “brand” blog. And you don’t have to post every day. Each post should be well thought out and relevant to your brand. Once a week is probably sufficient.

If you need some branding pointers, NameWire, a blog about product naming, has a post on personal branding, with links to other relevant articles including, yes, my own. Though have a look at the rest of the blog and you’ll realize how much thought goes into naming a product or service. Or at least, how much effort should go in.

Borat, Justin, Rosie, 93 others more influential than Bush

May 3, 2007 By Minic Rivera

US President George W. Bush has been dropped from Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Sasha Baron Cohen (better known as “Borat“), Justin Timberlake, and Rosie O’Donnell all made it to the list that included 71 men and 29 women from 27 countries.

“I think Bush by this point in his presidency probably has less influence than the position should grant him automatically,” Time’s Deputy Managing Editor Adi Ignatius said in explaining the non-inclusion of Bush.

The list, which is designed to recognize “the men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world,” does not appear in any order or give the magazine’s reasons why some people were chosen over others.

Chinese blogger and activist Zeng Jinyan made it to the list.

Your Space, MySpace, Barack’s Space

May 3, 2007 By Raj Dash

Some people consider 2008 Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama to be the most “wired” candidate in either major political party. That is, he has utilized online social networks and even streaming video channels to his advantage – showing that he’s hip and understands a younger generation. He even has a MySpace page profile that had 160,000 “friends”. An Obama supporter has been running it for nearly three years, with the blessing of the Senator’s campaign team. They suddenly decided, though, that they were uncomfortable with an “outsider” running the page, which of course represents Obama’s viewpoints, etc.

The campaign team wanted control of the profile page, and the supporter, Joe Anthony, a paralegal, was fine with that, though he wanted nearly $50K in total fees to do so, which the Senator’s team said no to. Big mistake. At $50,000 of effort put in by Anthony to build 160,000 friends, each “friend”, and no doubt supporter of Obama, cost only about thirty cents. The stink that ensued caused Myspace to step in and decide that the Senator’s team could have control and Joe Anthony could take the contact info. All 160,000 friends. So what if it was supposed to be volunteer work?

Does this translate into 160,000 lost future votes? Maybe. Maybe less, maybe more. Who can know? The fact is, there are now only just over 21K friends. Obviously, it was a monstrously stupid move for the campaign team of a seemingly well-loved, charismatic candidate who has been a historic figure and may continue to be. Someone on the campaign team should be fired. It’s not like the campaign money isn’t there. But even more to the point, Anthony obviously was a good buffer and did a tremendous job building goodwill for the Senator.

Will the MySpace page be the same with the official campaign team running it? I doubt it. However, the Senator phoned Anthony to offer his apologies and try to win back his vote. Had the campaign team invited Anthony to be part of their team, everyone would be way ahead.

Digg would rather die trying

May 2, 2007 By Minic Rivera

Digg users can take down Digg. Literally. That’s what exactly happened when a code that unlocked copyrighted DVDs appeared on Kevin Rose’s front page and Digg users started digging it. The siteâ€™s administrators began taking down the links and suspending the accounts of those who posted them. The users disagreed and revolted by flooding the site. The New York Times has an article about it.

So, Rose posted on his blog: “But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, youâ€™ve made it clear. Youâ€™d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we wonâ€™t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

Kevin, you have to realize that you don’t “own” Digg anymore. Well, at least you did, with your blog post.