Decline of Web 2.0

In a prior post, I wrote about a whimsical 1870s era cartographic depiction of America as a Young Hog. The source publication from which I first learned of it, University of Michigan's Map Library blog, has since been discontinued. I shouldn't be surprised, even though it makes me feel sad.

Web 2.0 is user-contributed content

Blogs, Huffington Post and Forbes per-pageview paid contributors, BuzzFeed, Second Life, YouTube, image sharing services, question-and-answer sites, and comment sections (for online newspapers as well as blogs) are examples of user-created online content. It is difficult to believe that Technorati tracked millions of active blogs at one point in time. User-contributed content sites seem to have been in decline for years.

Technorati was considered an authoritative source for blog activity. It was before my time, but sounded great, even including a blog search engine that was superior to Google's blog search. Google Blog Search vanished years ago, like many Google services.

Blog growth outpaces Moore's Law?!

That's what Technorati claimed in 2005: Blog growth was frequently doubling. The BBC seemed VERY excited about Technorati, and blogging in general, see "A new blog created every second"! Even though the dot com bubble was years earlier, there was still a lot of Internet hype then.

In August 2005, Technorati was tracking 14.2 million blogs, up from 7.8 million in March of the same year, according to the BBC. New blog count was doubling every six months! That's analogous to the real Moore's Law, applicable to technology, not blogs. 

Moore's Law isn't a law of physical science, but rather, a rule of thumb based on the observation that semiconductor processor speeds double every six months. (Moore's Law hasn't held up so well due to the physical limitations: there are only so many nanometers of room on processor chips.)  There's more to read about Moore's Law here including a link to Gordon Moore's original article about it. 

Technorati landing page

With such amazing growth, it wouldn't be long before blogs outnumbered Earth's adult population! 

Ultra short epistemology post

So many clever people, such good writing, so little time!

I read something that I liked today. Let me share the joy. It seems fitting, particularly in these uncertain times, with a possible rapture scheduled for the weekend, amongst other things:

Probabilities are for understanding... Truth is a rhetorical device.

Tempered by this wry observation,

On the other hand, "justified at an 83.5% probability" leaves something to be desired for whipping the tribesfolk into a frenzied mob.

via Aretae: Short epistemology post

For more political economy-flavored thought delivered with the sincerity of an electrical engineer, see Aretae and his list of BlogFriends.

Some of my own favorites are featured:

• The Volokh Conspiracy, which sounds sinister but isn't. They are actually a very loosely affiliated and mostly cordial cabal of blogging law professors.
• The Money Illusion, a very sane and friendly site where the author and readers discuss serious policy matters in an agreeable, self-deprecating way. Two typically understated examples are Other activities bumped and Still Not Blogging.
• xkcd: A math, physics and etymology web comic. It is also supposed to be about sarcasm and love, but there is not so much of that lately. I even wrote my own tribute to Randall Munroe, the author and creator of xckd in my earlier post, With love and geo-hashing.
• Greg Mankiw's Blog: I think he won a Nobel Prize. He's an often reviled pillar of economic orthodoxy, whatever that actually means. Maybe "University of Chicago-school monetarist" or "economic heterodoxy" would be more accurate. He has an arrogant style sometimes, but is very bright. Bonus: Mankiw gives links to sites with nice free things. Like economics or statistics textbooks. Or gratis access to the Brookings Institute economics journal.
• Overcoming Bias
• Foseti on banking and regulatory capture
• The Unenumerated: I really liked this post, Signals, Gifts and Politics.

FeedBurner Security and Sensibility

Universal Feed Symbol

Feed Security

For any blogger or creator of syndicated content who might happen to pass by The Annex, I'd like to pass on this tip about the importance of keeping your Feed Bulletin feed private.

Feed Function

Confirm that your feed is working correctly and captures the intended content, whether headlines only, headlines plus content etc.

The best way to accomplish this is with a periodic feed check-up. Once every month or every other month is usually adequate.

Two reputable sites offering secure feed validation are:

• World Wide Web Consortium Feed Validation Service, a free service that checks the syntax of Atom or RSS feeds,
• FeedValidator dot org, a validator for syndicated feeds. It works for RSS feeds, versions 0.90 through 2.0. It also validates Atom feeds. 

To use either, simply enter the address of your feed and click Validate. Any errors are listed, with suggested remedies for repair.

Feed Sense and Faux-pas Avoidance

Problem: Why is the Posterous website overstating my subscription count? I only subscribed to ten blogs. Yet my profile indicates that I have 20 subscriptions! See image below.

Root-Cause: Carelessness by the blog owner or administrator! Note that the blogs written by journalists, who earn their living through digital publishing, have but a single entry on the list. The Laughing Squid is the only exception. He has two entries. One is a link recommendation list. The other is the actual publication. It is possible that I am at fault for selecting both rather than the blog (publication) alone.

Screen Shot of my blog subscriptions.  Click on image to enlarge.

The other websites are run by experienced bloggers or website developers. They are not journalists, nor earn the majority of their income from writing. Yet they should know better than to make this mistake. But it is a very easy mistake to make, even for the savvy.

How did this happen?

This can occur if burning multiple feeds for the same blog, but forgetting to delete the old feeds. Or creating new blogs, and not tracking carefully enough which blogs have feeds already. It can be avoided by taking care to keep track of the names and resources used for one's feeds.

Glance again at the example image. Despite my fondness for Adam Rifkin's wit, I don't need four versions of his blog. Some are very puzzling e.g. who is "Trout Girl"?

The same can be said for Dustin Curtis's design and usability insights. One subscription is sufficient. This is how an unintentional spam-like duplication (or quadruplication) effect can occur, sometimes exacerbated for those who choose to subscribe by email rather than RSS feed. Such effect is one of the fastest ways of alienating readers. I have first hand experience, inflicting this (accidentally) on my own subscribers!

Note that all individuals mentioned by name are prominent in their fields of expertise. I did not disclose information, nor negatively impact professional reputations. All are well-established.

Better to learn from their mistakes. It is far more damaging for a novice to commit feed faux-pas!