Blogebrity

Dear PodTech videoblogger Loren Feldman, who usually entertains and interests me:

Shut the hell up.

Blog Millionaire Teaches How Not To Be An A-lister

Jason Calacanis, the blogger who founded the dozens-strong Weblogs Inc. network, just gave the world a horrible plan for becoming an A-list blogger.

While rebutting a lame claim that “blue-collar bloggers” can’t profit from their blogs without whoring out to paid review services like PayPerPost, Jason claims anyone could become an A-lister in three months. Step two on that get-big-quick scheme is “Go to 2-3 events or conferences a week.” Now that is a classist insult on the level of “let them eat cake.” That kind of event schedule is for power networkers, not good bloggers. Step four is basically “write about tech.” Actually, that’s a way to get ignored by the tech crowd and make everyone else scared or bored.

Look, some of the top “A-listers” that everyone reads are the four writers at Boing Boing. They have their own lives, write about anything they want, and when they cover tech it’s on their own terms. And they get over ten times the traffic that media critic and supposed A-list blogger Jeff Jarvis gets. They also dwarf former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, who now only gets attention when he complains about not getting attention.

Who are the hottest videobloggers? Are they tech pundits discussing Intel and gadgets on the Podtech network with Calacanis and Scoble? No, they’re a ninja advice columnist and a comedian with a duck fetish.

In other words, what Calacanis calls the A-list is really the C-list. Why does he delude himself? Maybe because he’s part of that C-list; maybe because his vision really is that small. Or maybe Calacanis wants the whole world of blogging to be reduced to bitter little men arguing about the future of RSS and HD-TV.

Photo: Rex Hammock

The 10-minute Ze Frank Musical

The Debt: Vlogger Ze Frank and singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton play the famous songs of Ze Frank’s The Show.

Ze Frank’s show ends this month after a year of daily episodes. Jonathan Coulton played guitar on John Hodgman’s 700 Hobo Names recording and recorded an acoustic version of “Baby Got Back”.

The Future Internets That Never Happened

I wrote an article at Valleywag (disclosure: I write articles at Valleywag) about the future internets that never happened: Web 2.0, the Semantic Web, Cyberspace, and other stillborn internets. My favorite is Bill Gates’s Road Ahead, which is now brought to you by Steve Jobs.

Conservapedia: Like Wikipedia without all the, you know, knowledge

Ever wish Wikipedia weren’t so damn accurate? OMG me too! Thank the internet gods for Conservapedia, the Conservative response to Wikipedia that got noticed by the New York Times today! In case you’re saying “Oh dear lord why,” Conservapedia has a list of answers. One item reads:

Wikipedia’s article on Feudalism is limited to feudalism in Europe and did not mention the feudal systems that developed independently in Japan and India until this defect was described here.

That last bit is how most of these items read, now that Conservapedia got noticed and the offending Wikipedia articles it named got fixed - which happens every time someone publicly criticizes the site, since, well, that’s how Wikipedia works.

But let’s see what the articles for “feudalism” looked like on Conservapedia and Wikipedia on the day that Conservapedia made this claim (February 2, according to Conservapedia’s logs).

Conservapedia: 251 words
Wikipedia: 3328 words, including a mention of Japan and India

Great fact-checking, dudes. Since then, the Wikipedia article has expanded to include more non-European feudalism, while the Conservapedia article…has stayed the same. If having info means being a dirty lefty, count me in.

HuffPo Drama Level: Yellow With A Chance Of Book Deal

We turn our attention to the megablog known as the Huffington Post, center of an important news story: the Guardian’s “What is a blog?”

Haha, no, that bores me to hell too. The reason I’m interested in HuffPo is the whopping seven-page account by Denis Collins of his time on the jury in Scooter Libby’s trial. Collins is a journalist who somehow stayed on the jury despite his relationships with several witnesses.

Collins wrote a book on the CIA, Fox News’ John Gibson points out, wondering if another book is in the works after this episode. And if so, asks Gibson, wouldn’t a guilty verdict make a better climax than not guilty?

In other HuffPo drama news, the site deleted comments expressing wishes that Dick Cheney had been killed by a suicide bomber that instead killed 22 other people. After Bill Maher questioned the decision to censor the comments, arguing that they were protected free speech, Fox News spun the story to say that Maher wishes Cheney were dead. While we’ll never know what’s in Maher’s heart of hearts, it’s safe to say that the man’s learned his lesson since the days of calling American war planners cowards.

Welcome to the Best (Non-Sheen) Part Deux Ever

Welcome to the relaunched Blogebrity: The Blog. If you missed us when we first launched in 2005, we were the first “blog about blogs” that dropped the boring trade-journal talk in favor of fresh, funny commentary on the personal and professional lives of bloggers. Writing tapered off when Gawker Media hired me away to edit Valleywag.

But I’m back, and I’m bringing a posse. Kyle Bunch, co-founder of Blogebrity with Jeremy Hermanns, will tell you about the kick-ass Blogebrity lists to come.

Coverage on the blog will blow up from just bloggers to vloggers, forums, and all drama that happens online. We’ll also post how-tos: How to hook up with your vlog crush, how to get linked on Digg, or how to win a forum war. Every now and then we’ll post a cluster of goodies we’ve found online — stuff like Adventure Time or Was the Death Star an Inside Job?.

We’re stepping up our coverage from blog-level rechurning to magazine-level original reporting. Most newsworthy bloggers are only asked the most basic questions by the press; it’s time that Internet rockstars had their own Rolling Stone. That’s why Blogebrity brings meaty full-length articles and interviews.

Right now, I’ll be the voice of this blog. But I need contributors both one-time and regular. If you’re interested, e-mail nick@ this domain with a link to your best work.

Will Leitch’s “Catch” — relive your awkward days

Hey there, Blogebrikids. I didn’t forget you, I just willfully abandoned you. And I’ve been so neglectful, hiding Will Leitch’s young-adult novel from you.

Leitch’s Catch, the story of a high school graduate’s transformative last summer at home, came out in early December (which means used copies are up at Amazon, but you know you’d prefer a shiny new copy). It’s hit the most obvious readers, the sports-friendly teens, but it’s charming enough for a wider audience.

Leitch’s choice of “young adult” isn’t a beginners’ copout; he has a full CV of book, magazine, and online work (most recently on the grand-slamming Gawker Media blog Deadspin). This urbaneness might be Leitch’s one flaw. He can’t help but crack a few jokes at his computer-illiterate protagonist’s expense, and the narration feels a bit too society-gossip for a small-town high-school baseballer. But there are worse errors of style, and Leitch still captures the spirit of the age (the age being 18, give or take some months).
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Liners: Ponzi nixed the “live lesbian kiss” idea

Calacanis and Scoble call into the Chris Pirillo Show, making Chris the Blogosphere’s Howard Stern. Or the Blogosphere’s Oprah, which would make Leo Notenboom its Dr. Phil, and that’s just unkind.

Calacanis is not buying any blogs. We assume he’s responding to feedbuzzard.

Jeff Jarvis discovers the new standard RSS icon. Kevin Marks and Dave Winer comment, and Jake heads down the road to a celebrity childhood which can only end in emotional pain and too many nose jobs.

Liners: Jews for Jesus show holiday spirit

In case Neil turned you on, Boing Boing de-sexifies porn with language AND image.

I have a feeling Joi Ito would be a terribly polite next-door neighbor.

JewsforJesus.blogspot.com pisses off Jews for Jesus. Apparently the org’s name is a trademark, and JfJ doesn’t want to dilute the Jesus brand, as it were. Reuters reports. [via Lifehacker]

People of Flint: Jason Calacanis says you are not professional. Revolt! March on Santa Monica! Do you have pitchforks in Flint? Bring pitchforks.

Problogger could do our job with Christmas comedy like the Virtual Christmas Party comic, featuring Steve Rubel (”I’ve got 10 hacks for photocopying bums”), Jeremy Wright, Darren Rowse, Robert Scoble, a sloshed Duncan Riley, Jason Calacanis, Nick Denton, and Paul Scrivens.

I do not know what these VisualMedia men are saying but I hope it’s funny.

Douchebrity makes a good try at relevance

The awkwardly colored Douchebrity launched a blog, and judging from the comment count, everyone else is about as impressed as I am. Might as well make them feel loved and go visit.

Not that there’s much to see. A Jessica Cutler gag makes me wonder if they’re even trying. At least they understand the Blogebrity spirit.

But giving a “fuck you” to Calacanis and Denton ain’t the best way to land a job at a real blog. And we’re sure as hell not letting you onto our fake blog. But we appreciate the backhanded legitimization of our presence. Sez Kyle, “Apparently when hack networks want to launch, we’re stop #1 on the bad parody train.”

Speaking of hack networks, Douchebrity’s choice of the triSexuality Wordpress theme from Jarkolicious unfortunately lumps it with Weblug, a fugly blog network straddling wrestling and laptops — a level of synergy only explicable through string theory.

Wordpress scores Yahoo hosting deal

Matt Mullenweg announces Wordpress hosting on Yahoo. Yahoo’s informative page on the deal shows an $8/month introductory price, which includes automatic upgrades of Wordpress, 200 GB/month of data transfer, and 5 GB storage. Quite an attractive package, and quite a boon for Wordpress. The deal comes days after Movable Type’s similar deal with Yahoo.

Cute, the URLs for Yahoo hosting with MT (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/problog.php) and Yahoo hosting with WP (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/problogs.php) differ by one letter, and the pages differ by about six words. I hope Yahoo did a thorough find-and-replace on the contracts. Geez, wouldn’t that be an embarrassing slip?

Liners: Or maybe there was a hole we didn’t find in the dark

WIN still has popups, 9rules still has an asshole.

Speaking of the which, some bloggers wrote a book to tell us that everything we know about sex is wrong. Come on, humanity, I thought we got this down! I don’t know, we’ve been wearing the wrong assless chaps or something…

danah boyd wishes you a happy consumption (the Sears kind, not the blood-coughing kind).

Rocketboom is live on TiVo, potentially letting advertisers wrap five minutes of commercials around a three-minute show.

Newley Purnell asks some bloggers (and Malcolm Gladwell) about their favorite books of 2005.

I’m unsure whether to be honored that Gawker unironically used the word blogebrity or to be worried that the word only came up in the skanky context of m4m-world (kinda NSFW).

This week at Automattic will be “jam-packed with announcements”

Matt Mullenweg promises much news this week at Automattic, a placeholder-turned-portal for a new company with a cute about page:

As the Chief BBQ Taste Tester of Automattic, Matt travels the world sampling cuisine and comparing it to the gold standard of Texas BBQ. Although he originally aspired to be a jazz saxophonist, Matt somehow wound up studying economics which took him to Washington D.C. where he began taking pictures and blogging. The rest, as they say, is mystery. He lives in San Francisco and has a crush on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Good crush choice. Audrey Hepburn is the webcam queen. Note the high contrast, washed out face, and coy “buy me jewelry” pout.

Quite a sunset you’re riding off into

Dear The Cowboy,

We’re so sorry to see you go. We loved your stream of posts — all both of them. Our only fear was that they’d drown out the wit from Angelina and Neil. Thankfully, you were smart enough to demurely give them all the good jokes.

I can’t say we’ll leave the light on for you, but when Scrivens finally Jacks you and sends you to that Liberal Ranch in the sky, send us your CV and we’ll see if we can get you a job adding real estate bloggers to the C-list.

Too bad about your back pain; next time, when you kneel in front of a guy that long, support your weight with your heels. It’s one of the overlooked occupational hazards of your line of work, what with all the attention going to communicable diseases.

Sincerely,
Blogebrity