Ivan is back with a vengeance
After a period of silence, Ivan Kuznetsov, a colleague of mine from Nokia, is back in S60 related blogosphere. Check his recent posts:
- Do we really have a mobile development platform? (provocative piece!)
- Jaiku - your key to social networking
- N95 - it’s what computers have become
Good to have you back!
As a side note: why do many S60 related blogs come and go in waves? I mean, as a whole we are witnessing more and better S60 related blogs, but many individual ones (think Russell Beattie, half of the E-series blogs, S60 Freeware, S60 User Experience, …) either close down or take a break at some point.
In the age of RSS, of course, this doesn’t matter much. If somebody on your RSS list wants to quit, it’s ok. And if somebody wants to take a break, it’s ok too. As soon as they start writing again, they are immediately noticed by their loyal subscribers.
> As a side note: why do many S60 related blogs come
> and go in waves? I mean, as a whole we are
>…
> Experience, …) either close down or take a break
> at some point.
I guess that’s an answer to the question whether there is a real platform or not
No platform -> Incredible difficult to create apps and make them work on all the inconsistent variations -> Low profit -> Little money -> Small number of small advertisement budgets flying around -> No ads -> No profit for S60 blogs -> Little motivation -> Blog stagnation
> No ads -> No profit for S60 blogs -> Little motivation -> Blog stagnation
No, I have to disagree. Most people don’t blog for getting money. Instead, there are different kinds of motivations. Some people blog for themselves: to vent out underutilized thoughts, ideas and frustrations. Others blog for getting respect, recognition or credibility in their areas of expertise. And others blog for just the heck of it, being part of an active community of insightful people. And others blog for influencing others, e.g. give feedback to Nokia to fix this or that.
Why do you write blogs yourself?
By the way, Artem, your http://s60applications.com site looks really promising! I have been pitching digg-like features on S60 application sites for a while, but so far nobody has been interested. Please tell me when your site works technically, and I’ll help you promote it to get critical mass!
Certainly I a bit oversimplified things for clarity. However, I still think that not having a platform is a key for low blog activity. Just because small number of difficult to (re)install apps means small number of users. And small number users means little motivation for the blog writers whatever you measure it in: ad campaign dollars, excited commetenters or just amount of eyeballs interested.
As for http://s60applications.com it is indeed a bit too early to actively advertise it. The site itself is fully functional, but some features have to be rolled out yet. To name a couple, there is going to be a bookmarklet for quick-submitting reviews and some front page promotion algorithm fine tuning so that storylink that receives 50 votes per hour would outperform the one that receives 500 votes per week.
As for my own motivation, I do blog for money. So if you’ve got some marketing/advertisement budget to support promising activities, just let me know
Certainly, it’s not only about the money. I do blog for engaging into the conversation, just to get in contact with the people in my area of interest. I also blog for delivering my point of view, hoping to make at least a slight positive [IMO] change. Maybe I also blog even for getting a bit of a fame
Still, all my motivation sources [including money] directly depend on number of interested people in the area. Less people interested in non-official S60 stuff -> Less S60 blogs.
> I still think that not having a platform is a key for low blog activity
I think you misunderstood my point. My point was that S60 related blog activity *as a whole* is getting higher and higher, but many *individual* blogs just come and go.
Thanks, Tommi! It’s good to be back
I don’t think this phenomena is specific to S60 related blogs. Blogging is a hobby for most of the people. And balance between work-family-blogging-other hobbies is always shifting.
To elaborate on Artem’s thoughts - blogs are mostly driven by individuals, and S60 at the moment seems to be targeted more to operators and other big players.
As Ivan mentioned, quitting blogs is not S60 only phenomena. Only 50% percent of bloggers are still posting after 3 months of establishing their blogs so I guess that S60 bloggers are doing pretty fine
(source: http://tinyurl.com/2hkvn7)
Thanks for the link Tommi, another good blog to feed my RSS reader
I can agree. I have ads on my site, but they don’t really do anything other than cover hosting costs, if that. It’s more of a hobby, and an outlet/networking tool for me. I’ve used S60 extensively and it’s a way for me to share my experiences.
As for the quick turnover, I think that’s because people see a blog and think, oh man, I could do that. However, once they start, they begin to realize how big of a task it is to continually update. Case in point my buddy Adam, started a “VOD Guru” blogspot around the time I started Symbian-Guru.com. He lasted through 4 posts and then got too busy to update.
I also thing that “reblogs” turnover even faster. When a blog becomes little more than a graphical RSS feed, without the author adding anything to the news/story/subject, that’s really what it is.
Jaro & Ricky: good point.
Consider this: Technorati tracks currently 72.2 million blogs. And Darla is well within the top-0.1% percentile in Tehchnorati rankings. If Darla doesn’t get more than funny-money with blog ads, it means that at least 99.9% of bloggers out there don’t get a serious ad revenue. And this means that the *vast* majority of bloggers have other motivations than ad revenue.
Well, maybe I was oversimplifying things, have to rethink. Anyway, I was using money more as the most easily calculatable motivation part (basing on the assumption that other motivation types often correlate)
I took a week break recently, funny you mention 3 months because my break was exactly at the 3 month mark. Thank god my traffic hasn’t been affected negatively.
I wish I could blog more, my own thoughts as opposed to just digging thru content and finding the best stuff. I think I’ve made it obvious several times as to why I’m blogging.
People stop because they loose interest, or they get blogger burn out. Most popular one is people don’t see what they get out of it. That is the one affliction I’ve suffered several times thru out the life of Ring Nokia.
I want nothing more than to get noticed by the people who count. The people who could get me a position within the company. It doesn’t even have to be Nokia, I just want to get paid to blog and I’ll do a much better job than I’m doing right now. Stress, family, school all contribute to it. I’m sure everyone else is in the same position.
“As a side note: why do many S60 related blogs come and go in waves?”
It’s the same for blogs on almost all topics.
People set a blog up because they’re all enthusiastic about something, but most of the time people get bored of having to keep them updated.
It’s the same story if you look at blogs on any tech subject, some bloggers stick with it while others drop out because they have better things to do.
It can be hard to maintain the necessary ethic to keep posting. Once you get there you’re generally fine, but even that can slip. I know I have off days and off weeks which is why having multiple authors to a blog / site works so well.
It great though that there are so many more blogs, that way you notice less when blogs go on a break.
Great to see Ivan back