Friday, November 30, 2007

People Want to Create UGC

Websites like Wikipedia and Yelp don't create content for themselves. People take the time out of their workday/life to post reviews/articles without receiving any pay.

So why do it? People are passionate about the subject that they write about. That is for sure, there were a couple of articles I read about this way back and the author came to the conclusion that bloggers/reviewers did it because they were intrinsically motivated.

Intrinsic motivation literally means that you are doing something for the "right" reason. Of course it is more complicated then that but if you think about it, a person who is writing not for a paycheck but for himself will be able to write more freely.

There's a saying in writing that you should write for yourself. Go into an endeavor trying to predict what your audience wants and the quality of the piece goes down.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Blogs Are the New First Impression

Joshua Porter, wrote a stimulating post on his blog about blogs being the new Resume. I completely agree with his post. And I do think that people in the tech industry would be foolish not to start their own blog. Let's face it, employers will probably try to Google your name so you might as well have something to show for it.

A well developed blog can encapsulate the personality of a person. Integrated Flickr photos, delicious links and Last.fm tracks can show a lot about a person. In my case I have a creative banner plus an informative/unique about page that will give the potential employer an impression of what I'm like.

Writing styles can be picked apart and analyzed, delicious link can be compare and people can be pretty judgmental when it comes to music. So yes in a way your blog can serve as a comprehensive first impression to a person who's never met you.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

The YouTube Effect: Creating the Means

One of the cool things about making website is that once you actually create a super awesome mechanism, the creators of that website loose the ability to make major change.

Website creators need to create websites that almost anyone can find useful. And as much as the creators would want to influence the tastes of the users, chances are that they won't. I mean who listens to the Amazon.com editor recommendations anyway?

The YouTube Effect refers to the idea that anyone in the world can create a video about a politician/political issue and get a potential audience thanks to the power of the web. Now chances are that you or I will never have anything funny enough nor important enough to make it past the 500 page view mark but YouTube is there waiting.

P.S. the article that speaks of the "Next Cultural Revolution". Wasn't original Cultural Revolution the one where children under the direction of Mao beat and tortured their teachers. Sickening. I hope the Internet doesn't do something similar...