Welcome to The Very Daily Weblog of Joshua Blankenship

So, I’ve been doing this blog thing for close to five years. Some of you have been with me that whole span of time, some of you popped in last week. I like all of you and I’m super thankful that we get to have some interesting conversations from time to time.

Blog advertising has always been one of those things I look at a bit skeptically, essentially thinking it brings another voice into that conversation, one that is rarely contextual. How do you feel about these new-ish targeted ad networks (like The Deck or the recently-launched Fusion Ads)? Less noise? Same thing?

The Virb Six post a little update on the progress of the new and improved Virb. (And by “new and improved” I mean “new and actually useful.”) Their development Twitter has been dropping feature hints for a few weeks now. I’m excited about profile RSS feeds, embeddable customizable audio players and better audio/video encoding.

But I’m most excited about how they’re embracing openness and allowing users to use whatever apps/sites they want to to interact with Virb. It’s the path to web success.

1. Allison Arieff’s NYTimes opinon column By Design
2. Fail Blog
3. Phil Coffman
4. Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish
5. LetterCult

Lovely infographic from Very Small Array depicting where Craigslist Missed Connections occurred. Dorothy has great work all around.

I am a filter. A cherry-picker. I am often an editor, sifting through and providing occasional commentary. For some, I point you in the direction of interesting hyperlinks in a variety of areas so you don’t have to do the work.

I wonder what happens when someone with a somewhat established role/direction on the web decides to veer elsewhere? Are you drawn here by my instincts and my taste, or by some other aspect of personality or adherence to a role?

I say all that to say this.

Within a few minutes of getting my invite to Daytum, I had set up a few graphs and statements. After a few hours, I got obsessive and had a date-specific pie-chart of all the addresses I’ve lived at based on how many months I spent at each one.

I’m a sucker for solid information graphics. And I obviously love the web. Designer Nicolas Felton (client work at Megafone) has put out his personal annual report for the past three years and I distinctly recall thinking it was a great idea, it just needed a web framework to capture all that data easily and then graphically represent it.

This collaboration with Ryan Case does that, with gusto. Quote, “Daytum is a home for collecting and communicating your daily data. Begin tracking anything you can count and display the results immediately.” Daytum is still in private beta, but you can go and request an invite. In the meantime, you can find me at daytum.com/blankenship where much info graphic fun will continue to occur.

Quote, “If you’re hiring for people to work online, I can’t imagine not screening people [on the social web]. This is the work, and you can watch people do it for real before you hire them.” — Seth Godin, excerpted from Learning from a summer intern program

Godin is discussing his an intern selection process, which involved creating a Facebook group and watching potential interns interact there, but it applies to any role I think. At NewSpring we’ve been interviewing for several web-centric communications roles lately, doing initial talks via Skype video, which is the perfect way to see if someone can hold your attention in that medium. When I look at a designer’s portfolio and they don’t pay attention to how users interact with the web, chances are they’re not a good fit for our team. This stuff is important.

If you don’t understand the medium, how can you possibly be effective within it?

Quick growth is often seen as an indicator of success on the web. But in my experience, hardly anything that grows fast does so without strain and stretch marks. The quick growth often forces your hand to implement before you can strategize. Then you waste time trying to fix mistakes brought on by speed, hopefully before the hoopla surrounding your launch dies down and everyone leaves for greener pixels. I wonder why slow growth isn’t popular on the web? Too boring for us? Not immediately measurable?

Here’s my subscriber stats from when I started using Feedburner in November ‘07—current:

No huge swells of change, no massive influxes of traffic. Not very exciting, is it? Just a slow, (surprisingly) steady uphill climb which enables me to (hopefully) build long-term relationships with fine people like you. Nothing flashy. Nothing newsworthy. Not even a lot of traffic* in the grand scheme of things. Then again, sustainable relationships take time, effort and hard work, and those things aren’t nearly as sexy as big stats.

But they’re way more valuable.

*It would have been easy to prove the point without the actual stats numbers, but why bother trying to be something I’m not? Transparency is valuable, too.

Aspiring super-villain Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) wants to join the Evil League of Evil and win the girl of his dreams, but his nemesis, Captain Hammer… oh, just go ahead and block out your lunch break to watch the newest offering from Joss Whedon and Co.

You’re sort of boring lately. Or maybe I’m more detached. Or maybe I’m not looking in the right places. Or maybe I just like playing outside and making things with my hands and my brain more than pixels and code. I mean, I’m not going anywhere…don’t think I’m taking a hiatus; I really like you.

I just feel like we’re going in circles of silly lists, linkblogs (guilty), YouTubes and outbursts of “FAIL!” It’s 99% junk food. Can’t we do better?

Let’s take it up a notch,
Joshua

Where did all my RSS subscribers go?

Sad,
Joshua