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Evan Williams Posts Official Google Blog
Luis F. Escalante writes "Evan, creator of Blogger, owned by Google, finally convinced Larry, Sergey and Co. to start up a blog. According to Evan's first post, we'll soon be able to know "What Larry had for breakfast. What Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson's Creek character reminds us most of Eric.""
I'd much rather see how he and those other smart folks designed & "thought of" all those cool services in the first place. I could care less what kind of breakfast he eats, unless he brews his coffee with a Mr. Fusion.
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I really hope this provides us (web developers) with some insights on how google works and evolves so we can make sure good sites end up in the top results
I know GoogleGuy has been making some posts on webmasterworld and in the google newsgroups, but this is a more "official" source and I have allready added it to my feedreader since this afternoon (4 hours ago)
Artists against online scams http://www.aa419.org/
Perhaps more specifically asked is...Why do people choose to read so much about and into other people's lives and so little into their own?
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
It's kind of weird that there are no names on the posts unless people "sign" them (as Evan did, but as the second poster did not). Who knows if that's a marketing wonk or the real person.
Hear hear!
"Blogs"* have potential. Currently they are utterly disgusting because the whole thing regarding blogs and journals is ruined by boring people forcing their dull lives down our throats. Fortunately, the technology regarding journals is good and there have been some very good journals around. Now tell me, what's more interesting? A boring rand( 12, 50 ) year old (emo|goth|depressed) tosser from randomCity() ranting on about randomSubject() or having the creators of Google shed some light on the technical insides of Google? What about a journal where some people keep track of major (OS) projects? Gives one a view into what was considered during design, what was dropped, why it was dropped, what problems were encountered and so on. Even if you don't make your journals public, they'd make GREAT referrence material to improve oneself upon. After all, you learn the most from your own mistakes and if you can review the entire process instead of just the mistake itself, it ought to be more helpful.
* ... Change of name please. Blogs will forever be stained by the stupidity that is currently infecting them. That, and whoever made that word up should be hung, shot, burned, quartered and then REALLY hurt.
Hate me!
Originally he said something like, "But when we opened an office in Balgalore, suddenly we were knee-deep in the debate about outsourcing." They must have asked him to change it. Does anyone have the original blog item in their cache? I'd be interested to read it again, and compare!
They can be submitted by anyone.
People read blogs because it either a.) Validates their thinking (my guess: 95%), or b.) Offers an opportunity to challenge their current ways of thinking, and an avenue to respond to the opportunity (again my guess: less than 5%). Remember, blogs are usually heavily biased, so the people that read the blogs often enough to see every post probably agree with the author. Are not both stories and comments on /. heavily biased?
Actually, there's also the silent majority to be taken into account also.
There's always a bunch of people who just like to watch out of curiosity. Or, the site keeps up on things that they are interested in. Most people aren't bold, so they don't post.
It would be interesting to see the # of people who read replies vs the # of people who read AND reply.
If the ratio is anything like USENET, I would be surprised if 1 out of 100 readers post something on any given day.
Something to back that up without statistics: Notice that sites often get slashdotted and stay that way before 10 replies have been posted.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
hear hear!
/. journal and a weblog? I don't write in the former because, well, I cannot post to /. from the commandline, and I can for my blog. But aren't they practically the same? Except that /. actually allows moderation?
I don't keep a blog for just blog's sake, I keep it as a random scrap book as what I've been doing: what programming projects I was working on, how much progress I made, or what-ever the heck interests me at the moment. It is mostly stuff I know I will forget sooner or later but would like to remember. Now, friends and family come and check it out (which is extremely useful when you have both scattered all around the world, makes a good way to keep in contact with everyone who cares without spamming 100 or so people).
But I don't think I would ever keep a blog on places like livejournal and such. I also like to have room for other things on my website... the blog is only part of it.
On the third thought, what exactly is the difference between
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
You do realise that you don't have to read a particular LiveJournal don't you? Nothing is forced down your throat. How on earth does this ruin things?
;)
If you are using LiveJournal to read entries of random people from randomCity() ranting about randomSubject(), then you are completely missing the point. I read LiveJournals of my friends (or possibly, some random person if I've found them to be particularly interesting, but certainly not people I find to be boring) - if you have friends, you should read their LiveJournals
It would be like saying Slashdot is a load of crap, because who wants to read a load of boring (geek|nerd) "tossers" ranting on about random things.
Fortunately, the technology regarding journals is good
Yes, as you say yourself, the technology is good, and this is independant of what people use it for. When people use LiveJournal to document technical things (as some people do), how does that fit into your view of blogs and journals?
I disagree. Both of your reasons for reading blogs assume that people go there for the merit of the information and opinions itself (either to be affirmed or challenged by it). But only a few sites (usually written by highly egotistical people)are like that (aka drudge report), and they are really a completely seperate catagory. (although if they want to claim the title 'blog' they are welcome to it - damn I hate that word).
What is much more often the case is that people read webjournals to learn about the person writing them. People write webjournals as a way of laying out their opinions on the table and saying "this is who I am - take me or leave me". They are a 2000 word personal adv, a way to vent your frustrations, a filtering mechanism to find people you like, a way keep distant friends up-to-date with what is going on in your life since you can't have one-on-one conversations with all of them all the time.
Webjournals are inherently about people not information, which is what makes them such an annoyance for google, whose task is to find information.
Because not much is written about my own life...except for my blog...which I actually read more often than is considered normal and acceptable.
--Joey