My secret blog
Posted on November 11th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,072 views
Do you have a secret blog? One that only you know about?
Perhaps you tell one special person? Perhaps not? Perhaps no-one knows but you?
Well, today, I’m going to out myself! Today, I’m going to tell you the location of MY SECRET BLOG!
I think EVERYONE should have a secret blog! Why? Because it adds interest. It makes you a secretive, furtive, clandestine individual. It makes you a SECRET AGENT!
It does NOT make you GAY!
And even if it DID make you gay, that would be okay, because its cool to be gay.
My secret blog is on stumbleupon and it’s where I write a whole lot of private things – reviews of web sites that grabbed me in one way or the other.
Today, a friend of mine, Clangnuts, who is a cartoonist, blogged about a penguin called Nils Olav. Nils Olav holds the ceremonial rank of Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian King’s Guard.
So I hammed it up in this review:
"Gentlemen, welcome to Hell! I am Colonel-in-Chief, Nils Olav, your commanding officer, and I am a penguin!"
*applause*
"Gentlemen, you are here today, enrolled in the Royal Norwegian Dive School, for one reason and one reason only. Apparently, you are the best!"
*Hoooo-rah!*
"But gentlemen, only the creme de la creme of you will survive. Dive commander, today you will test these men’s abilities to remain underwater. Any man, not able to sustain a depth of 300 metres for at least 20 minutes (without oxygen) will be disqualified!"
"Gentlemen, get your beaks and flippers on! This is going to be a long day for you all. Chief, move the men out!"
I use my StumbleUpon blog to write about a whole bunch of web sites that I come across in my travels across the glorious seas of the world wide web, which reminds me of a song by one of my all time favourite pop groups – OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark).
Tags: clangnuts, OMD, Sailing on the Seven Seas, secret blog, StumbleUpon, sugartax
Filed under My secret blog | 2 Comments »
Neville Newey of muti responds: you just don’t get it!
Posted on October 19th, 2007 by Richard Catto 2,988 views
Richard
It seems that you (and a few others) still don’t get the point about self submissions. I have always said, and continue to say, that self submission is okay as long as its not repeated self submission of all your posts. (Go back and read all my comments on muti if you dont believe me, I have been saying it from the start) Why is the distinction so difficult to understand?
Here is my point again: If you are a new blogger or have a new site its fine to self post it as a way of introducing the site or yourself. Even if you are a known blogger, and you feel you are making an unusally strong point, such as your post here Richard, and noone else has posted it then its fine to post it. What is NOT acceptable is to post each and every one of your items over and over again and NEVER post anything to any one else’s site. This is just plain selfish.
Regards
Newey, you’re waffling and I’m not interested in being congenial towards either you or Duarte. Your system doesn’t work. I’ve been completely put off submitting any of my own articles to muti, ever since you tarred, feathered and rode Guy McLaren out of town.
Now you say, that under some circumstances, it’s okay to maybe self submit. That’s as CLEAR AS MUD. No-one knows when it’s okay and when it’s not okay, except perhaps you.
Not good enough. You and Duarte need to rethink how muti works. Essentially, you’ve got something similar to digg and other social networking sites. Well digg doesn’t give me much traffic either. Muti would give me perhaps 10 visitors in a day and digg would send me perhaps 150 – 200. StumbleUpon usually gives me over 500. Sometimes more.
I think the key to StumbleUpon’s success is it’s toolbar, especially the Stumble! button which magically transports people to the next site, without them knowing what it’s going to be. It’s a surprise. That’s part of its charm. People like surprises. 
Here is what I would like you to do:
- Fix the muti system – make it popular, make it send us visitors. Stumble takes people directly to the site, rather than presenting a list of articles to click on.
- Fix your attitudes towards people who self submit. Publish clear guidelines.
- Consider giving bloggers a subscription option to allow self submission of their posts.
- Stop giving people (me) grief about the tags we (I) choose. I have never once been scolded on digg for my use of tags, which are identical to the ones I submit to muti.
As long as a tag is relevant to an article, it’s okay. Tag spam is a different story – that’s where people attach tags such as ‘sex’, ‘Paris Hilton’, etc. to wholly unrelated stories just to show up in searches. Also your tag system does not handle ‘Paris Hilton’ as one tag – it breaks it into two tags. You have bitched at me about this. This is YOUR problem, not mine.
If you can build a system which attracts a wider user base which uses your system joyfully without the current rancour, then you will be on the road to giving the South African Blogosphere what it needs – MORE EXPOSURE.
That is what we want.
What we don’t want is more of the same old shit. We’re done with that. It’s old hat. It’s Passe.
The proof is in the WEB TRAFFIC that you are able to generate – either you can produce that for us bloggers or you cannot. That is the key barometer to measure your success by. That and having the ability to float QUALITY content to the top whilst filtering the junk out.
Your major problem right now with your system is that the people in it who are rating the submissions have gone BAD. StumbleUpon works because they have a large user base, so the effect of any particular rogue element is muted by the sheer number of users in the system. Not only has your user base gone bad, but so have YOU. You and Duarte are leading the users into bad practices.
I wrote these posts to get YOUR attention and also that of others, with the vague hope that perhaps you folks can get your arses motivated to fix things and put an end to the friction that has been generated by your summary axing of Guy McLaren and your siding with a bunch of pricks who have slandered him up and down the SA Blogosphere for absolutely nothing.
Guy McLaren is NOT a spammer. He’s just a regular blogger like the rest of us. Actually, he’s better than that. He’s put together his own network of bloggers and he looks after them quite well as far as I can see. He’s doing very well these days, in terms of the amount of traffic his network receives.
Essentially you managed to make muti irrelevant to the entire South African Blogosphere when you bared your teeth and bit McLaren. You have succeeded in scaring people away from using your service. Not many people want to get involved in conflict – they’d sooner avoid it. I take it upon myself to engage those who need engaging. That is why you are in the firing line right now.
Tags: David Duarte, Digg, muti, Neville Newey, reddit, Social networking sites, StumbleUpon
Filed under David Duarte, Neville Newey, muti | 27 Comments »
Thakadu aka Neville Newey self submitted muti.co.za to StumbleUpon
Posted on October 18th, 2007 by Richard Catto 2,212 views
Yeah!
The same people, Neville Newey and David Duarte, who banned Guy McLaren from muti for submitting his own site urls DID EXACTLY THE SAME THING THEMSELVES.
Thakadu’s twitter showing his name as Neville Newey
Gentlemen, you’re screwed! You have been caught red handed!
Now I’ll inform you HOW IT WORKS because both of you, Neville Newey and David Duarte, need some basic educating because you’re not SMART enough to figure it out for yourselves.
People are self-absorbed. They mostly care only about their own interests FIRST. This means that they are motivated to submit their own articles to social networking sites in order to get traffic. They are not particularly motivated to submit other sites UNTIL they have first taken care of their own business first.
This applies uniformly across the board – it even applies to YOU TWO, because that is in fact what YOU DID.
The whole point of a social network is to get your own articles in front of people who are interested in reading it.
That is the ENTIRE DEAL.
The problem to solve is how to create such a system which allows people to zone in on what interests them and filter the rest.
StumbleUpon seems to have figured that out, above all the other social networking sites, because their system gives the MOST traffic.
StumbleUpon doesn’t have to ban people who self-submit. They simply impose a limit on the number of times a user can stumble their own site, and they lift that restriction if the person is prepared to pay $20 per annum. Plus they offer various other advertising options.
Stumble users see only the sites that they’re interested in because Stumble provides them with a system to filter out stuff that they have no interest in. A user is only shown sites which belong to categories that they are interested in. Then as they are presented with sites, they can give a site a thumbs up or a thumbs down. A thumbs down tells Stumble not to present sites like that to the user again.
The bottom line is that they have an automatic system that individuals use to decide what they want to see and what they do not. Blanket bans on sites or people are bad because they deprive people of choice.
Just because a whole bunch of people aren’t interested in seeing someone’s blog postings, does not mean that EVERYONE feels like that. Why should EVERYONE be deprived because a bunch of irate punks don’t like it? This is precisely the situation on muti. And both David Duarte and Neville Newey are buying into this insanity.
Muti is bad. Neville Newey and David Duarte have designed a crap system. Furthermore, their attitude is crap. They’re typical patriarchs – they’re men who rule with an iron fist giving no-one a choice.
In short, they’re hateful human beings. I give them all one BIG THUMBS DOWN.
This is NOT the South Africa I subscribe to.
I DEMAND individual choice. I refuse to allow either the majority or a minority to decide for me.
So get that straight right now.
Tags: David Duarte, muti, Neville Newey, Social networking sites, StumbleUpon
Filed under David Duarte, Neville Newey, muti | 13 Comments »
Bolton Deventer admits he is a faker
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,723 views
An anonymous coward calling himself Bolton Deventer created this WordPress.com blog calling it Web Traffic Made Easy.
The little cowardly shit-for-brains wrote a pathetic excuse, today, for his activities which although satirical in nature only aspired to be comedy on its best days, and there were no best days. His latest post announced the closure of his fake blog and the termination of his fake personality, Bolton Deventer, but without disclosing his true identity.
Bolton Deventer, you are a fag!
The site he created was meant to parody Guy McLaren who recently ran into trouble for his controversial ideas and his use of muti to submit his own blog posts. A rabid crowd of arseholes on muti objected to his tactics and banned McLaren from using it further.
David Duarte is a co-owner of muti, one of the movers and shakers in the local SA Blogosphere and he should know better than to buy into the banning of McLaren. I’m not saying that he explicitly banned McLaren, but he also has not intervened to say that that is not ethical and fair and see to it that McLaren is not hindered from further using muti.
Fact is, muti is as, McLaren states, largely irrelevant in bringing any significant traffic to local blogs. Muti does not drive much traffic here. What does is StumbleUpon. Very often when a post of mine is stumbled, I get a sudden rush of hundreds of visitors.
My friends stumble me often and I stumble them to avoid the self submission of posts injunction. That injunction, however, is anyway lifted by StumbleUpon if you upgrade to a sponsored account which costs $20 per annum, which I have done. However, there is NO FRIKKING WAY I would give muti one red cent until they fix the bullshit that is going down there.
Until then, the David Duartes of South Africa can kiss my arse. I am not impressed with their offerings. Gentlemen, you are just going to have to do so much BETTER than what you are currently doing, which is sweet fanny fuck all. Giving me 3 or 4 visitors a day just does not CUT the mustard.
Tags: Bolton Deventer, David Duarte, fag, Guy McLaren, mashable, muti, Social networking sites, StumbleUpon, WordPress
Filed under Anonymous coward, Bolton Deventer, Fake blogger | 18 Comments »
The South African Blogosphere FAQ
Posted on October 2nd, 2007 by Richard Catto 3,119 views
What is this thing that people call the South African blogosphere?
It’s a collection of (mostly) South African web sites that have installed upon them blogging software.
What is blogging software?
Blogging software is the upgrade to classic web sites.
A classic web site contained mostly html and image files which mostly displayed as static (unchanging) web pages. The ability to interact with a clasic web site was, for the most part, very limited. There was no software behind the site which managed it as a whole and had built-in features that engaged visitors. Updating the site involved changes being made offline to html (and other) files and then uploaded via FTP. FTP remains an arcane and elusive protocol to master by many internet users today who find it beyond them technically.
Blogging software replaces that old model with something that is more accessible, especially to those who are not technically inclined. It allows a person to update their blog via a web based editor.
WordPress is one of the most popular blog software packages that is used by many South African bloggers. WordPress calls itself a personal publishing platform. Simply put, it affords almost anyone the ability to get their stories published online, without having to worry about a myriad technical details.
Where do I find the South African blogosphere?
Blogging software is designed to interact with various blog indexes to update them whenever anything new is published on them. This is something that classic web sites did not do – one needed to manually add them to search engines, and even then, there was no way for search engines to know when a site had been updated and needed reindexing.
Blogs are programmed to tell a whole bunch of, mostly American, blog indexes (including google) when they have been updated. If you are a South African blogger who mostly desires a local audience, then you need to add your blog(s) to the South African blog indexes, which are amatomu.com and afrigator.com. Instructions, which tell you how to do that, are found on both of them.
Both of those South African blog indexes display a list of South African blog sites known to them in order of popularity, as well as a list of the most recent blog posts. By browsing the list of recent posts, you will be able to pick out articles that interest you. You can also browse by category and do keyword searches.
There are two other South African blog related sites that you should be aware of – muti.co.za and sablogger.co.za. Those two are not blog indexes, instead they are social networking sites to which people can submit stories that they find interesting. Many of the submitted articles are from blogs, but not all. One can browse those sites to find out what other South Africans found to be interesting content.
What is the South African Blogosphere about?
Anything and everything really.
It’s a very interesting diversion from reading the mainstream media web sites, that most South Africans spend almost all their time online browsing.
You will read a diverse selection of opinions and monologues, some that will resonate with your own beliefs, others that may make you want to punch your monitor out, and still others that will just bore the life out of you.
Along the way, you will discover interesting people that will engage you and cause you to think about what you think you know and believe and hold dear. You will discover new things, new people, fresh ideas. You will grow.
Most bloggers desire to interact with their visitors via comments left in response to their articles. If you have an opinion about what was written, you should submit your comment. You will soon discover that it can be a lot of fun and that it can lead to new exciting friendships with people you might ordinarily never have come across.
What should I watch out for in the South African Blogosphere?
The usual suspects – disinformation, slander, general unfounded nonsense masquerading as fact, vociferous arguments about nothing, bad people.
Bloggers are often referred to now as citizen journalists. Being a journalist implies having a responsibility to report things accurately. Journalists still make mistakes. Bloggers, however, have no responsibility at all to report factually. They can make up anything they like, so take care about what you choose to believe. Many bloggers, including myself, will cite sources at the end of, or in the body of their articles so that the reader can see for themselves where they got their information.
Not all bloggers take care to meticulously research their articles before they write them. They may authoritatively state utter nonsense, and you may be inclined to take what they write at face value. It’s general laziness – laziness on the part of the writer and laziness on the part of the reader. Truth does not simply fall out of a tree like a ripe apple – it must be searched for. Remember that at all times.
How do I become a blogger and join the South African Blogosphere?
The best type of blog to have is one at your own domain, typically a co.za domain. You will need to have your domain registered and hosted and blogging software deployed on your server space.
I do recommend that you register a domain in one of the .za domain namespaces if you intend blogging primarily for a South African audience. I recommend WordPress to power your blog, and I recommend that you host it on a Linux platform, not Windows.
There is more to do and an expense associated with this option. It is also the most flexible and any and all advertising revenue that you manage to derive from your blog is yours to keep.
If you prefer to start off with a free blogging option, then I suggest you register with either iblog.co.za or wordpress.com. iBlog.co.za uses the WordPress blogging platform too.
If you would like any advice in this regard, leave a comment and I will endeavour to give you useful answers.
Tags: afrigator, amatomu, Digg, iBlog, muti, reddit, sablogger, South African Blogosphere, StumbleUpon, WordPress
Filed under South African Blogosphere | 3 Comments »
