Bored with Tech/Marketing Blogging and Moving On For a While
Blogging into the tech/marketing echo chamber has become insanely boring for me over the last few months, especially since the arrival of Mary Hudson this week.
I unsubscribed from TechMeme, TechCrunch, and about 25 other “top” tech/marketing blogs in the past week and I haven’t missed them a bit. Conversations like the recent “the truth about how much traffic I get from Techmeme” started by Scoble this week just put me over the top. Loren hit it on the head with this video.
I do respect and admire what those tech/marketing bloggers have created, but I’m just too much of a universalist to spend time on one specific topic. It’s a horrible shortcoming I guess, but I love science, music, religious studies, archaeology, politics, education, the open source movement and science fiction too much to spend time on just one topic like marketing or tech.
Blogging somewhere like samharrelson.com allows the kind of breadth that I need to stay in the game. Blogging here just makes me feel like a navel gazer since the scope is so limited and so over covered on places like Techmeme, etc.
Since I agree so wholeheartedly with Jim that searching for traffic is a complete wast of time and that you have to follow your passions in order to produce good content, I’m going to put CostPerNews on a hiatus. I’m not sure how long or short this will be, but blogging here has become just me randomly injecting my viewpoint into things without actually creating anything new or substantial myself.
However, I’m definitely not out of the blogging game (or even the blogging about tech and marketing game). I’m going to cotinue blogging daily at samharrelson.com (y’all come!) as I have been doing since 2004 as well as continuing my publisher duties over at ReveNews.
So, if you enjoy my perspective on things and want to follow me down all sorts of paths of my interest, head over to samharrelson.com where I’ll be blogging about what interests me and what I can offer in terms of unique content. Otherwise, I’ll probably return here one day, just not sure when.
To quote The Bard:
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
New Ze Frank Song: "A Social Network for Two"
Everyone knows I love Ze Frank’s work (again, if you haven’t watched The Show, drop whatever you’re doing and start from the beginning).
Nice to see some new material to tide over us fanboys/girls….
a social network for two :: a little song sketch i wrote today
I’ll consider this a birthday song for my new daughter since we’re working on building our social network just for two as I type this and hold her 
BTW, you can purchase the "greatest hits" from The Show on iTunes. Highly suggested!
ze’s page :: zefrank.com: fer you
Big Day and Joy2.0
My wife and I welcomed our first child, Mary Hudson Harrelson (it’s a double name… don’t call her "Mary"!), into the world this morning, so I’ll be sporadically offline and online over the next few days as we settle in and spend quality time together.
I thought I’d pass along that I was able to make communication with family, friends and colleagues much more efficient (and less stressful!) through the "web2.0" properties I constantly preach about here like Flickr, Twitter and Facebook.
Being able to share our joy through those mediums makes me confident about their future in the marketplace and the general public (I’ve had so many family members and friends ask me "how do I set up this Twitter thing, that seems like a great way to communicate?" today as well as family members hundreds of miles away following the pic stream from the day on Flickr).
So, if there’s a bubble, then so be it. However, we’re happy tonight that we’re getting some rest while sharing the joy2.0
Mary Hudson Harrelson entered the world this morning at 6:30am.
She’s beyond beautiful. The delivery was wonderful and an amazing experience for everyone.
As I watch Mary Hudson sleep after a long day, it’s amazing how much perspective I’ve gained just in the last 24 hours on life, what’s important and what’s not important (like squabbling about semantics on blogs). I look forward to bringing this newfound optimism and excitement to my online points of presence!
Google Acquires Jaiku
I’ve got much bigger news today with the birth of my first child, but had a few free minutes and wanted to include a link to this exciting development in micro-blogging:
Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.
What does this mean for Twitter? What does this mean for the future of micro-blogging and presence platforms? Needless to say, Jaiku gained a large following today. New signups are limited, but accounts already set up are good to go.
My Jaiku account is here (www.samharrelson.jaiku.com) if you’d like to add me as a friend.
Now, back to my baby
Jaikido Blog | We’re joining Google
Twitter Getting Ready to Monetize?
I haven’t seen any of these yet, but my favorite web app Twitter is supposedly getting ready to reveal its long awaited plan to monetize the geek-popular service.
While everyone is talking about Google and mobile advertising, has anyone else noticed the emergence of "Tips" on their Twitter mobile notifications? This is surely the precursor to mobile SMS keyword ads from Twitter.
I’ll gladly put up with a small text ad to continue my twitterin’ ways (up to almost 2,000 now) since I do the same for my webmail, searches, calendaring, etc
This is going to be BIG! - Twitter Prepping its Mobile Ad Units? It was bound to happen eventually…
Another Social News Site Acquired
Newsvine, the social news aggregating and content site, has been acquired by cable channel MSNBC according to TechCrunch…
Online news site Newsvine
, which launched in March 2006, has been acquired by MSNBC.com, a fifty-fifty joint venture between Microsoft and NBC. This is MSNBC.com’s first acquisition.
MSNBC is home to two of my favorite TV shows (Morning Joe and Keith Olbermann’s Countdown), so I hope they make Newsvine something noteworthy.
