So this really chaps my ass, when I see a single tweet, a whopping 140 characters of consciousness, expanded into 2,476 characters of pure speculation. Yeah that’s right, TechCrunch managed to just explode one tweet by Alex Payne of twitter into an entire blog post without bothering to verify anything first. Not only did techcrunch writer MG Siegler operate the engine of this speculation train, he managed to drag Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider onto it as a passenger. Henry in this case is no victim as he just paraphrased/quoted MG on his post.

So all this, a total of close to 3700 characters spawned from an innocent 140 characters. (Not counting the comments in each place, or this rant right here) So are we really getting a revolution in journalism? Or just half-assed journalism of old delivered faster? Do we really need to sensationalize EVERY tweet and turn it all into “news” ?

The best response though comes from one of the comments posted on SAI
“this article, and its headline, are bullshit. gruber nails it: https://twitter.com/gruber/statuses/9806432443
”

I can’t wait until someone like Eric Schmidt tweets out “felt good dumping all that stuff” and people assume he is dumping google stock and all hell breaks loose.

So call me a hypocrite if you like for posting 1400 characters about this, but in this case I’m commenting on the “reporters” writers, not the actual tweet. I personally can’t wait for an upgraded API & website from twitter.

Hey in case you were wondering why things were so quiet around here, I’ve been microblogging at my new tumblr site: brbreslin.com. It is somewhat of a lifestream too as it imports everything from twitter, to webplus, to this blog too.

so for those of you looking for good blogs to read (c’mon isn’t mine enough???!?). you should check out technorati.

see my profile on technorati Technorati Profile. and don’t forget to add me as a favorite.

So Alex and I were discussing the nature of how fast Web+ has been growing lately, and how its almost gained on his personal blog as far as Technorati rank is concerned. As of writing this here are the stats:

• Tapio.com – Rank: 101,410 (156 links from 36 blogs)
• WebPL.US – Rank: 144,526 (105 links from 26 blogs)

So here is my challenge to you loyal readers of this site: help me catch Alex. Is this shameless? Of COURSE! Why am I doing it? Curiosity primarily and the desire to bring more exposure to Miami on the web. This also gives me an excuse to keep tabs of technorati every 2-3 days. So I can come back in 1 week and update you all on the progress.
More importantly though, the nature of this blog is to help spread awareness of the scene down here in Miami and the South East, and to do that the best way is to ask those who read to share with their friends. Now this was blatantly ripped from inspired by Noah’s competition last fall, so I am going to offer some prizes.

Now we do a fair amount of traffic analysis here, so basically the site that drives the most traffic will win. Maybe we’ll do 2 prizes. I dunno, we’ll see. Anyway here are the things I am offering:

• Web+ Tshirt (having some printed soon)
• Permanent Link in the blogroll
• If you are a miami company, then free banner ad space (this was already free, but hey, i said this was shameless)
• 1 hour worth of me looking at your company product,design, or personal blog and giving you good honest feedback.
• Some stickers. Not sure of what, maybe barcamp miami stickers. or refresh, or something.
• I will write about you, your company, or any person or group you ask (assuming its appropriate).
• I’ll buy you a drink at the next web+ bar meetup.

So thats it. If you’re up for it, post a comment, if you think its stupid, post one too. And by no means am I trying to make you think this is a real competition, this is just for fun.

Are there any web based stat trackers like google analytics, but that I can install locally to track my RSS stats? I know feedburner is great, but I keep getting XML parse errors. So why can’t I install something on my server to do this?

So i’m looking to start vblogging or vlogging whatever you want to call it. Anyone got any suggestions for a quick and dirty camera that is easy to import the video onto my computer(s) with? Whats a good app for editing them (I have iMovieHD).

so if you have any tips, post away.

So you might have been thinking of starting a blog, but aren’t sure where to even begin. Well this is a basic primer of how to get started with blogging for both personal and business purposes.

1. Come up with a topic
Yeah I know, sounds easy, but often time this is the hardest part. In our case we decided that blogging about the business end of the web was something that we wanted to share with everyone. So here at web+ we figured we would cover neat things such as how blogging and social media can help businesses and people too. Think of it as our soapbox of free consulting.

2. Pick a theme that suits you
So this may not be totally applicable to us, since we custom designed this theme, but there are plenty of themes out there you can use. Our decision to use this design (which I had originally planned for webimpresario, but decided it would get more visibility here) was based on the idea that it conveyed the same message we wanted our writing to convey: clean, straightforward, and modern. So try and pick a color scheme, and layout that reflects your writing, this may seem silly, but its not very hard to change the default theme on a blog, and you’ll notice it helps you stand out.

3. Embrace social tools
Now this is something we’re still working on implementing, so bear with me. Tools such as Del.icio.us,technorati, digg, and ma.gnolia all work to your blogs favor. By making it easy for your fans to take your content or url to these networks, you are eseentially empowering your readers to be your evangelists. We’ll be integrating tagging, delicious, and all these tools within the next week or so, so we do in fact practice what we preach.
4. Invite the community in
One thing that I think lots of readers will appreciate from time to time, is a different perspective than what they are normally accustomed to. In our case, we figured we were covering that approach by having multiple authors, but we will probably have guest posts from time to time as well. This is the information age people, and the best way to get a good understanding of a topic is to hear what multiple people have to say on it. Also, encourage commenting, at least for a short period of time. Keeping comments open on a blog for the first few weeks of a post at least is a good way to keep the community invested in your topic, and keep them interested. Once people have commented, they have a vested interest in what others might say on the subject, and that my friend is called repeat traffic.
5. Have fun
Last, but certainly not least, is to make sure you have fun while blogging, because if you look at this as a chore, then thats what it is. If you look at this as an obligation, and not an exercise in social interaction, then you will lose steam quick.

Do you have any tips? Share them!

Sorry for the lack of postings lately, been waiting on my buddy Chris to finish applying my design to the Web+ (webpl.us) blog.  Not to mention being unusually busy this past week. We’ve been working on some exciting stuff over at the infiniHQ.
Some of the things we’ve been working on:

• Rebuilding Squurl from the ground up (much faster, and more flexible)

Working on a new brand theme for infinisuite

• Branding for TonalWar – check out the new logo courtesy of our new designer Antonio
  
• A couple of cool client projects for PACE, Fortune International, and Schenker
• Strategy and more for castvertising
• some minor design improvements to campusfix before we launch
• discussing code alot lately too
• oh yeah, and working on a new blog with Alex called Web+

So as you can see, those are SOME, not even all the reasons i’ve been so tired lately.

I’ve been reading a bunch of blogs on blogs lately, I know that sounds moronic, but whatever, I have to change up what I read every few weeks. One of the key things i’ve noticed, blogs aren’t evolving. they seem to be content with just writing quick little posts, but not really providing a richness to their content. Another thing blogs aren’t tapping into is the fact that they are all providing rich content, why not link to related posts on your friends sites. So here are my simple ideas to evolve the blogosphereand give it longevity:

• Sell your own ads (or get someone to do it for you other than google)
• Cross link the hell out of your site.
• Think of your blog as a media outlet more than a journal. – People get bored with journals, media is changing, change with it.
• Network network network (kinda related to #2)
• Make your content accessible to everyone
• Accept the fact social media is changing every day, and adapt to it. Embrace social networks, and integrate your blogs into them.

So if anyone is interested in pursuing any of these ideas, email me. breslin[at]infinimedia.com

While perusing the latest issue of business2.0, I came across an interesting statistic: only 5% of our national marketing dollars are spent online even though the internet now commands 30% of people’s attention. Now I don’t know if this is accurate, but if it is, then this only reinforces my idea of how niche networks of micro-published content will thrive in the coming years.

Now don’t take this as a call to arms for everyone out there to go and setup a blog on any old topic and take google adsense as your sole revenue source because its easy. I don’t want people bitching and moaning that they aren’t making any money even though the market is soaring, thats not my fault. What I am arguing for is the pursuit of valuable niche markets. Jason Calacanis said in a post on his site recently that sports were an interesting market to pursue (mainly because fans are VERY opinionated). I totally agree here, I’ve been mulling a sports-related micro-publishing network (i am no longer going to refer to it as a blog network, because its not ONLY about the blog) for a while too.

What we need to see emerge in this market are two important things: advertising sales companies (sort of like doubleclick in the past, but more niche focused, and intent on targetted ads), and small niche publishing networks (note, not blog networks, as they won’t be positioned to capitalize on the market here). You need more clarification? Well what I am saying about these publishing networks is not that blogs are dead, far from it, but I think blogs will become more a feature of sites, and not the entire site itself. Blogs will need other products and services attached to them to fully capitalize on their traffic growth and monetization potential.

I will undoubtedly discuss this further in the coming weeks, but for now I am going to turn the conversation over to you all.

p.s. if someone is interested in starting a sports-themed network, let me know, I will bankroll it, design it, and have a domain waiting for it. Just need writers and an editor.