Blogging and the Wisdom of Crowds

[virgohippy]

The three you mentioned are damn fine blogs - I hope I can add my unfinished project to that list when the time comes...


I think if I just put half as much energy into a real blog as I put into posting here I'll be all set.

Interesting find. Gives me just the motivation I need to push forward with my quest for a true blog.

[virgohippy]

What I found to be most interesting was the value placed on flexible data, software, and business models. Although, I imagine anyone working with porn can probably attest to these concept pretty easily.

Set inclusive defaults for aggregating user data as a side-effect of their use of the application.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is the equivalent of valuing content based on view count and possilby anonymous surveys/voting. I'm sure there's more, just can't think of any at the moment. Anyone else?

I think I need more practice at thinking up stuff to make this one work:

Design for "hackability" and "remixability."

[ponygirl]

Interesting article.

I must admit, when I started a blog it was basically one of those 'this is a cool idea, let's try it' type of things. A personal blog fits perfectly with those of us who have those PAY ATTENTION TO ME personalities

What I didn't quite get at the time was the whole 'dynamic' aspect of blogging. It IS really hard to keep it updated, it takes a lot of time, and I don't know anywhere near enough about the whole thing yet. Technorati, permalinks, trackbacks, RSS - I knew nothing and am still on a very steep learning curve that I'm trying to cram in between everything else I'm doing. For someone who is used to 'build, submit and forget' this is a real challenge, and the community aspect of blogging is an area where I am sorely lacking.

'If it were merely an amplifier, blogging would be uninteresting. But like Wikipedia, blogging harnesses collective intelligence as a kind of filter. What James Suriowecki calls "the wisdom of crowds" comes into play, and much as PageRank produces better results than analysis of any individual document, the collective attention of the blogosphere selects for value.'

I read the linked blurb about Suriowecki's theory and find this very interesting. It's funny because I was just having a conversation with hubby about how things like Youtube & blogging are going to affect the future, giving 'regular' people as a whole more power and influence than ever before. Big business and government cannot stop the information from flowing, and I think their control over society is going to decline as the collective group becomes more adept at sharing ideas and opinions in a more global way. I love this line:

'large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.'

Which fits perfectly with my thoughts that one person (or political party, or corporation) controlling the masses is just not working and has to change.

So Walrus, when you talk about the community aspect of blogging, especially in 'adult' blogging, how do you suggest we incorporate that into our own blogs and business models? For myself, I want my blog to be personal, while at the same time to be a way to drive some traffic to my other sites, rather than a sales-generating machine. I have found a few good ones out there that are similar, but wading through a ton of splogs and babelogs (and what I call deadblogs - ones that haven't been updated in 6 months) to find the 'real' blogs is tough. Then when I do find them, I'm really at a loss as to what to do other than trading links. I guess I need to work on my blog social skills lol.

I have way too much to learn, I'm really glad there's some good teachers here

[walrus]

Originally Posted by ponygirl

So Walrus, when you talk about the community aspect of blogging, especially in 'adult' blogging, how do you suggest we incorporate that into our own blogs and business models? For myself, I want my blog to be personal, while at the same time to be a way to drive some traffic to my other sites, rather than a sales-generating machine. I have found a few good ones out there that are similar, but wading through a ton of splogs and babelogs (and what I call deadblogs - ones that haven't been updated in 6 months) to find the 'real' blogs is tough. Then when I do find them, I'm really at a loss as to what to do other than trading links. I guess I need to work on my blog social skills lol.

I have way too much to learn, I'm really glad there's some good teachers here

I agree there is an overabondance of crap out there that makes just searching decent blogs a difficult task for any one person. But as a community, the task becomes much less daunting. Plus, like you already said, breaking that build and submit mentality is a difficult one, blogging is a long term commitment which means that it's easy to get either discouraged or allow changes in prority as results are slow to come and it's hard to take it on faith that doing so will benefit you in the long run.

So, I guess what I am suggesting is that we, those who are participating in this thread, form a community and spend a little time each day checking out eachothers blogs....and leaving comments or doing trackbacks to them, or some combination of both. In other words , we generate conversations with each other. You, when you post, are pretty easy to do that with because you look at porn from a different perspective, a female one. In the long run, I think that can and will generate a lot of interest. Plus, others are much more likely to comment when they see others have on a post.

Simon also posts stuff that its pretty easy to converse about. As an example, he talked about pube dye yesterday. It was reallly pretty simple to work that into a trackback from my blog and still post a little porn to go along with it.

You and Simons blogs are pretty easy for me to keep up on simply because of your RSS feeds. Your feed is used on XXX Blog Feeds and I use the xlog feeds in my sidebars on almost every blog I do. Therefore, I would suggest using a RSS reader to keep tabs on whats going on at a few of the blogs plus when you leave a comment or a trackback, subscribe to the comments RSS feed. That way, you know and are able to follow the dialog.

Also, as a community, when we find others we invite them in and try to grow.

Yes, it would take time but, based on everything I've read, would in the long run pay dividends much worth the time.

[virgohippy]

Originally Posted by walrus

Plus, others are much more likely to comment when they see others have on a post.

I can vouch for this. Back when I kept a private little personal blog I noticed comments seemed to come in waves - a bunch at once, or none at all.

[GrosCochon]

Great post, great tread. This article was incredibly interesting for a clueless newbie like me. It made me understand a little better the concept behind blogging. It also makes me think that my original concept for my blog is obselete, and closer to a very slow tgp rather than a web log. This has given me ideas, I made a much bigger effort in writing a text about the gallery that I posted today and offering to users to interact with my blog.(post a comment)

It took me a long time to decide how I was going to enter the adult biz and decided when I discovered blogging through this site They essentialy suggests to mass produce low quality blogs and update them automatically with plugins. The posts in those blogs will generally be 1 line of text, with one thumbnail going to a gallery. Right off the start it seemed a bit odd to me, seeing as how blogs are supposed to seek search engine traffic which is attracted by good text? I'm sure it works well for a few, but seems like an uninteresting way of doing things. I'd much rather focus on a small amout of blogs with high quality content..

Originally Posted by ponygirl
For myself, I want my blog to be personal, while at the same time to be a way to drive some traffic to my other sites, rather than a sales-generating machine.

I surfed around on the blogs posted in the various signatures, and I have to say they are amazing!

So my newbie question/rambling to you pros is, do you think it is possible to only have one (or a few) quality blog as a main source of income? Or do you absolutely need other types of sites(like how ponygirl has that liquisexx site) in order to make any money?

Thanks in advance

[walrus]

Originally Posted by GrosCochon

So my newbie question/rambling to you pros is, do you think it is possible to only have one (or a few) quality blog as a main source of income? Or do you absolutely need other types of sites(like how ponygirl has that liquisexx site) in order to make any money? Thanks in advance

Blogging is a long term commitment and I think it would take a few years and a lot of experimenting to get to the postion that a few quality blogs could be ones main source of income. Therefore, having a strategy that does more than just quality blogs makes sense to me.

Whether that strategy is to build splogs like explained at zippedsites or build freesites / galleries. Honestly, I think a freesite / gallery strategy will work better for you than the splog route but since I don't build freesites or galleries thats purely an opinion and i have absolutely no facts to base it on.

I do know some people who started building galleries and have moved on to mass splogging and clain they are having much better success as mass sploggers.

Either way, I think you need both a short term and a long term strategy to be successful.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by ponygirl

... I'm really at a loss as to what to do other than trading links. I guess I need to work on my blog social skills lol.

One thing that will help is to review the comments waiting for approval. It's hard to start a dialogue unless the comments appear after they're posted.