Blog pour les nuls [en]

Un dénommé Petzi, lecteur de ce blog, a laissé ici un commentaire me demandant quelques conseils pour blogueur débutant. Je tente de répondre à sa demande ici. (Soit dit en passant, merci à mes lecteurs d’éviter à l’avenir squatter les commentaires de n’importe quelle page pour des communications générales — à la différence de Robert Scoble, je reçois une quantité tout à fait gérable d’e-mail, même si je tarde parfois un peu à y répondre…)

Tout d’abord, Petzi me demande si j’ai un livre à recommander. Personnellement, je n’ai pas lu beaucoup de livres sur les blogs, mais ce que j’ai lu de Blog Story était tout à fait bien. C’est une bonne intro générale au “phénomène blogs”. Mais ce n’est pas exactement un livre de recettes.

Quel que soit le blog que l’on désire faire, je crois que mes conseils principaux vont se résumer à ceux-ci:

  • parlez de quelque chose qui vous passionne
  • si vous êtes dans les domaines politiques ou professionnels, évitez la langue de bois, la poudre aux yeux, le language marketing — bref, parlez comme un être humain et non pas comme une agence de comm’
  • encouragez la discussion: lisez d’autres blogs, commentez, réagissez, interpellez vos lecteurs

Ensuite, un peu d’étiquette:

  • soyez respectueux des autres blogueurs, que ce soit dans leurs écrits sur leurs blogs ou dans vos commentaires
  • ne “cassez” pas la conversation en effaçant commentaires ou billets auxquels d’autres auraient pu réagir (trolls exceptés)
  • évitez trop d’auto-promotion directe

Quelques infos techniques:

Et un mot de prudence:

  • n’oubliez pas que tout le monde peut techniquement lire votre blog (sauf si vous lui mettez un mot de passe!) — n’y écrivez donc rien qui vous mettrait dans l’embarras si vos parents, amis, voisins ou employeurs tombaient un jour dessus!

Voilà , Petzi — j’espère avoir un peu répondu à ta question. Quant à te donner un exemple de blog suisse comme modèle… je suis un peu empruntée, parce que je ne comprends pas assez clairement ce que tu désires faire comme blog. Mais tu peux toujours aller fouiller sur SwissBlogs ou blog.ch.

Happy blogging!

Mise à jour: Il y a de longues années, j’avais écrit Conseils Premier Blog sur SpiroLattic. C’est un peu basique, mais c’est encore actuel…

Revue de presse pas si expresse [fr]

[en] Updated my press page. Complaint about the sorry state of some journal online archives and sites. La Liberté seems to get it right, though. All this smattered with early Sunday afternoon ramblings.

Tout d’abord, un grand bonjour aux lectrices et lecteurs de Femina qui passeraient par ici pour la première fois. Je vais être d’une originalité déconcertante en disant que j’espère que mon blog vous plaira. Si le technologie vous rebute et que vous préférez les photos, j’ai aussi un certain nombre d’albums en ligne.

N’hésitez pas à laisser un commentaire pour me dire bonjour — je vous promets, même si c’est la première fois ça ne fait pas mal.

Passons aux choses plus graves. J’ai mis à jour la page presse du mieux que j’ai pu. Je commence à me retrouver citée dans les journaux sans le savoir. C’est d’ailleurs la deuxième fois que Raph me l’apprend — “(12:39) ah ben c’est ça, la popularité, machin”. Et dans le même ordre d’idées, Stéphane Le Solliec m’informait que mon nom figure dans le dernier Joël de Rosnay… Bref.

Si vous avez lu dans La Liberté que j’ai dit que la Suisse avait un net retard dans l’utilisation des blogs en politique… disons que je n’ai pas été aussi catégorique. J’ai plutôt dit quelque chose comme “euh… oui… ben je disais il y a quelque temps qu’on était un peu à la traîne, mais là il me semble depuis quelques semaines qu’il y a vraiment des choses qui sont en train de démarrer, enfin ça bouge, donc on a un peu de retard, c’est clair, mais il me semble que c’est en train de changer…” Bref, moins catégorique. Et comme j’ai précisé à la journaliste, je ne suis vraiment pas une grande spécialiste du blog politique. Parce que moi et la politique… ça fait plus qu’un.

On notera en passant que sur le site de La Liberté, on peut faire des fouilles assez efficaces dans les archives web (une fois qu’on a trouvé le minuscule lien dans la colonne de gauche). En utilisant la recherche par date, je trouve sans problème toute la liste des articles “Régions” du 17.02.2006, par exemple. En mettant mon nom dans les mots-clés, on trouve deux articles — mais pas celui-ci, bizarrement? Donc, bravo La Liberté, c’est bien mieux que d’autres que nous ne nommerons pas ici!

On notera également en passant (je vois bien que je suis incapable de publier quoi que ce soit “d’express”) que la romandie compte maintenant enfin une star blogueuse: Marie-Thérèse. J’ai voulu ouvrir un blog chez Romandie.com, pour voir, mais alors là … Un gros cactus, allez — vous avez vraiment envie de donner votre adresse postale quand vous ouvrez un blog, vous? Allez plutôt chez WordPress.com. Même si pour le moment c’est en anglais, il y a plein de blogs en français là -bas, c’est joli, il n’y a pas de pub, on vous demande juste une adresse e-mail pour vous inscrire, et c’est une super plate-forme. Laissez l’adresse en commentaire si jamais vous décidez de vous lancer à l’instant, et j’irai jeter un oeil!

Je termine ce billet avec un autre gros cactus, pour Femina. Eh oui. (Rien à voir avec l’article, qui est très gentil et flatteur.) En allant chercher la version en ligne de l’article en question pour ma collection, j’ai vu que le site de Femina avait été refait. Peut-être il y a longtemps, je n’y vais pas souvent. Bon. Alors. D’abord, intro Flash avec son, non. On ne me donne même pas le choix d’y échapper. Et si j’étais en train d’écouter la radio pendant que je surfe, déjà ? Ou ma chanson préférée? Me flanquer du son dans les haut-parleurs de mon iBook sans me demander, c’est vraiment malpoli.

Ensuite, recherche d’articles. D’abord, c’est tout en je-sais-pas-quoi-j’veux-pas-l’savoir, et puis il faut s’inscrire avant de pouvoir voir quoi que ce soit. Au revoir, moi j’essaie même pas. C’est quoi le problème avec un bon vieux répertoire d’archives en HTML (valide, si possible)? Je crois vraiment qu’il faut arrêter d’essayer à tout prix de rendre l’accès à l’information difficile…

Bonne fin de dimanche!

History of Online Life [en]

[fr] J'ai beau dire dans mes conférences que ce que l'on met sur le web est hors de notre contrôle, et risque de devenir permanent, je suis de plus en plus confrontée à  la disparition de l'histoire numérique. Quelques réflexions sur l'histoire de Kaycee Nicole Swenson, l'adolescente fictionnelle qui mourut de leucémie en mai 2001.

I’m having a chat with Kevin (who should blog more!) about some past things, and he’s hunting around in the Internet Archive for photos and stuff. A lot of it (2003, 2004) is already gone. Can’t be found.

During my talks to teenagers, I always stress that something you put on the web is out of your control, and that you cannot “remove” it. In some cases you might, but you can’t be sure there isn’t a copy lying around somewhere.

Another thing I tell the kids I talk to is the Kaycee Nicole Swenson story — the young leukemia patient who died; she blogged for two years, was active in online communities, exchanged phone calls and presents with other bloggers and chatters, and was even interviewed for the New York Times — but never existed. Her original blog has been taken down, and a lot of stuff I referred to at the time when I wrote about the story. I googled for her to see what came up. Amongst various results came this blog entry from 2004. It ends like this:

Debbie Swenson did something that few writers have done before: she brought a character into the world of the living, gave her a working heart and soul, and affected real people’s lives with her work.

In my opinion, that should be the purpose of all writing: to make a real difference. So in this case, my hat is off to Debbie for her skill and wisdom.

Pardon me? Duping people is “wisdom”? Please allow me to disagree strongly. I wanted to post this comment and although it appears in coCo, it didn’t get posted to the original blog because of some MovableType templat problem. Here it is:

Well, maybe we (because I was one of Kaycee’s readers) can cherish the memory of many cancer patients, but we can also cherish the memory of having been duped.

If I’m going to put energy in a relationship, I want it to match reality, somewhat. Otherwise it makes no sense.

Have you seen The Matrix? Maybe we should all eat little pills that make us happy — if we don’t know we’re not living in reality, where’s the damage?

Some of my thoughts on the topic, in French:

And in English:

All this happened in May 2001. It makes me feel like such an old-timer. Was anybody else around? Who remembers Kaycee Nicole?

Power Laws, Popularity, Authority, A-Lists and the Rest… [en]

Things are colliding in my mind and slowly falling into place. A word of warning, however: contents may have settled while shipping. Here are the ingredients:

Popularity begets popularity

Neige et lune 13When the photograph you see here suddenly ranked number twelve in Flickr “interestingness” for the day it was taken, I got a bunch of very appreciative comments about it. But something bothered me: it’s a nice photograph, but it’s certainly not the best photograph I’ve taken. However, it was attracting all the attention. And as it was attracting attention, it was becoming more and more “Flickr-interesting”.

Then I stayed stuck on the WordPress.com home page for a couple of days, and watched my traffic soar up and come right back down again. I was getting visitors because I had been labeled as “fast-growing” or whatever, not because I had suddenly become brilliant. Proof being the decrease in traffic after the peak. What’s popular becomes more popular, or stays popular, because it’s popular. At some point, just being popular is enough.

And, as I was already hinting in my previous post on the subject, it’s normal. That’s the way things go. I found confirmation of what I suspected in this article on hit songs. They explain that we are more likely to say we like a song if we see that others have already said they like it. Yeah, it’s not a part of us we like looking at, but we’re influenceable. It’s human. They set up an experiment with two groups which have to rate songs. One group can see ratings of other group members, but the other cannot.

In the independent condition, participants chose which songs to listen to based solely on the names of the bands and their songs. While listening to the song, they were asked to rate it from one star (“I hate it”) to five stars (“I love it”). They were also given the option of downloading the song for keeps.

.[…]

In the social influence group, participants were provided with the same song list, but could also see how many times each song had been downloaded.

Researchers found that popular songs were popular and unpopular songs were unpopular, regardless of their quality established by the other group. They also found that as a particular songs’ popularity increased, participants selected it more often.

So, let’s say it so it’s said: it’s normal that the most “popular” blogs get the most visibility, links, and visitors. That happens because they’re popular. They don’t totally suck, of course, or they wouldn’t have got “popular enough” for the feedback loop to work in the first place, but they are helped in remaining popular by the fact they are popular. Which maybe puts pressure on some to keep the quality level up.

Popularity or authority?

Popular? Visited, linked, or some combination thereof. People hear about it, talk about it, go and see it. That’s popular. Popularity is pretty close to things you can measure, like how many visitors a site has (that’s the numbers you see in news articles), or how many incoming links it has (that’s what Technorati tracks).

But is that what we really want? People who blog clearly want recognition of some sort (otherwise, we wouldn’t take the trouble of writing in a public space), but is recognition in numbers really what we’re after? At LIFT’06, I heard Robert say that it wasn’t the number of readers of his blog that mattered, but who these people were. Is your readership going to come and leave without a word, or react, start conversations, influence the people around them? What matters is how your audience scales. But in some way, we’re still thinking about numbers, here: “how can I have the most influence?”

I think that what we’re really after isn’t recognition by numbers, because somewhere inside we know that numbers are fake. I can be hugely popular but still not feel recognized for who I am or what I’m worth or what I’m saying. I suspect that what we want to be recognized for is more along the lines of authority in a certain field (ie, what we write about). We want people to see that we have something valid to say. That we have ideas that are original or provocative or that help things move along. That we know what we’re talking about. That, for me, is authority. And that cannot be measured by incoming links, visitors, or even conversational indexes.

This is why I find it increasingly disturbing that Technorati is calling (and has been calling “authority” something which is in fact much nearer to “popularity”. It gives us the impression it’s measuring what we want (authority) when in fact it’s measuring something which is maybe more superficial (linkedness-popularity) but more measurable. So we get all worked up by the A list popularity problem, and gatekeepers, and stuff like that — when in fact being in the A list probably isn’t really what most people want. It’s confusing something qualitative (authority) with something quantitative (number of links).

Quality and visibility

Robert wrote a post giving tips for joining the A list, and Stowe Boyd responded with tips of his own, saying Robert’s were a bit superficial.

Both posts have valid tips and insights, but they run along two different lines. Robert’s post is more about “how to be more visible/become more popular” and Stowe’s is more about “being a good blogger”. Both are important. You can be a good blogger, have a good blog, but stay in the shadows more than you deserve because you’re not visible enough. And you can make yourself visible all you want, all that agitation isn’t going to bring you recognition if you don’t have “good content” (in the wide sense).

A list thoughts

People often think that getting mentioned in some high-traffic blog will automatically bring visibility. Not true. Robert mentioned me twice in his blog during the last week (and he actually said really nice things about me), but that just made a bump in my stats. Not a huge peak with server overload and comments pouring in and hundreds of other links. Just a little bump. (And it’s not like I already have 5’000 readers anyway.) On the same day, Robert talked about coComment, also saying really nice things , and as a result, all hell broke loose and in a matter of hours, coComment was all over the blogosphere. Well, that’s because coComment is a major advancement for the blogosphere, and I’m not. It’s not being linked which is important — it’s what you are. (So, if you’re a post or a blog, whether you’re an interesting post or blog.)

Another interesting thing about most of these so-called “A list blogs” is that I barely read them (OK, I barely read any blogs, but that’s another story). The only reason I drop by on Boing Boing every now and again is because it’s “blog number one” and people talk about it all the time. It’s not on my A list. (Which isn’t to say it’s bad — it isn’t — it’s just not a compelling read for me.) Robert’s blog was exactly the same for me until recently. I’m reading it now, but that’s because I met him at LIFT’06 and discovered he’s a really sweet person. I read his blog because I appreciate him as a person, and I’m generally interested in reading what people I like are writing.

Maybe I’m a weird blogger who doesn’t know how to recognize a great blog and only reads blogs of people she knows. I see this trend in my reading habits, I’ll be honest about that. I think Random Acts of Reality is one of the rare exceptions to this rule. I remember when the “A list complaining” was about Megnut, Evhead, Kottke and the like, in the good ol’ Blogger days. None of these blogs really attracted me as a reader, their popularity put aside.

Wrap-up

I’m not sure many of you will have had the patience to trudge through this long, rambling post, so I’ll try to summarize things for you:

  • being popular helps you stay popular; it’s a normal thing, because we tend to like what other people like; nothing wrong with that, just be aware of it;
  • popularity is not authority; popularity is easy to measure, it’s quantitative; authority is qualitative; maybe we think we want popularity, but what we really want is recognition for our authority;
  • being a good blogger and being a visible blogger are not the same thing, though they can work together well; different tips apply;
  • a link on an A list blog is not going to drive tons of traffic your way and put you in the limelight unless you really deserve it; A list blogs aren’t necessarily fascinating for all readers — remember part of their popularity comes from being popular, so don’t fret if you don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

As a final note, I’m pretty happy where I am:

  • in the Swiss French media, I have what amounts to “popularity which begets popularity”, and it’s not always all that great: I often feel I get called for interviews more because my name is all over the place than because the journalist has read stuff I wrote and wants to know more about what I have to say on this or that topic;
  • I’m not certain I’d like to have 20’000 readers ready to tear apart every post I made;
  • I don’t think I’d like people gravitating around me in the hope I’d “out” them and bring them their well-deserved popularity;
  • and I certainly wouldn’t like having resident trolls!

Thanks for reading (or skimming), and feel free to react to what I say here. I’m aware some of it is probably a little clumsy or beside the point. Show me where.

Nuit du Journal Intime: réflexions [fr]

[en] I was part of a panel in Geneva last Saturday. It was about intimacy in the age of blogs and the internet. Interesting experience, very different from the geek/tech events I'm used to. Some thoughts about the evening.

Nuit du Journal Intime 30

Je reviens (pas trop à  chaud) sur la soirée de samedi à  Genève. Dans l’ensemble, ce fut une bonne soirée, malgré mon rhume bien installé. Quelques réflexions en vrac. J’ai pris quelques photos que je suis en train de mettre en ligne.

Accueil

Je suis de plus en plus sensible à  la qualité de l’accueil lorsque je me rends quelque part pour une conférence ou un interview. Est-ce que quelqu’un est là  pour m’accueillir, déjà ? Dois-je payer mon café? Ce sont des petites choses qui ne sont jamais spécifiées dans le “contrat”, mais qui comptent. Quand je me déplace pour parler dans une école, on me paie, certes, mais je suis quand même une “invitée”.

Par exemple, j’ai récemment commencé à  insister pour qu’une personne soit présente quelques minutes avant le début de mon intervention pour régler les problèmes techniques s’il y en a. J’ai déjà  à  porter le poids de la prestation publique (si on peut appeler ça ainsi) sans avoir à  courir à  droite et à  gauche juste avant de parler parce que telle ou telle chose ne fonctionne pas.

Lorsque je me déplace pour un interview, je suis sensible aussi à  ce genre d’attention. Est-ce qu’on me fait poireauter dans la cafétéria durant près d’une demi-heure, Nuit du Journal Intime 3comme cela m’est arrivé récemment? Est-ce qu’on s’occupe de mes frais de transport? Comme je l’ai dit ici il y a quelque temps, j’ai passé le stade où je suis heureuse de donner du temps et de l’argent simplement pour figurer dans la presse.

Assez de grogne: l’accueil à  la Nuit du Journal Intime était très bon. Petit salon pour les débattaires, choses à  grignoter, boissons, petit cadeau joli (un carnet d’écriture et une boîte de thé), souper offert après le débat. Foie gras, s’il vous plaît. Très bon de surcroît. J’ai un peu poireauté dans le hall, mais par ma faute: j’ai marmonné un peu trop timidement au réceptionniste que j’avais rendez-vous à  18h30, sans annoncer clairement que je venais pour participer au débat. Ça m’apprendra, pour la prochaine fois.

Intimité

Nuit du Journal Intime 34

Qu’est-ce que l’intimité? Qu’est-ce qui est intime, pour moi? Pour ouvrir le débat, on nous a demandé à  chacun d’expliciter un peu notre rapport à  l’intimité. Quelles sont les choses qui font partie de notre sphère intime? J’ai de la peine à  répondre. De prime abord, je dirais “ce que je ne publie pas dans mon blog,” car pour moi, l’intime s’oppose au public. Mais ce n’est pas aussi simple que ça. On peut étaler son intimité en public — cela reste l’intimité. Ou non?

Nuit du Journal Intime 10

Disons plutôt que pour moi, ce qui est intime est ce que je ne partage pas facilement. Ce que je ne livre qu’à  des personnes choisies, et pas au monde. Ou encore, c’est ce qui m’expose quand je le partage. Dans ce sens là , on peut trouver dans ce blog quelques (rares) passages qui abordent des sujets intimes.

Je pense qu’il y a une distinction importante à  faire entre “l’intimité personnelle” (ce que je considère intime) et “l’intimité sociale” (ce que le société considère comme faisant partie de la sphère intime). Catherine Millet, auteur de La vie sexuelle de Catherine M., disait lors du débat que pour elle, l’intimité se situait plutôt au niveau émotionnel que corporel/sexuel. Voici à  mon avis un exemple de cas où son intimité personnelle ne coïncide pas avec l’intimité sociale.

Ambiance

Ambiance très sérieuse, pour moi qui sortait directement de LIFT’06. Les événements geeks et le milieu des blogs en général sont très relax. On se tutoie, on ne se prend pas (trop) au sérieux, on se plante et on recommence. Me retrouver sur scène, avec des personnes que je connais à  peine et que je vousoie (c’est bête, mais pour moi ça fait vraiment une différence), qui ont clairement plus l’habitude que moi de ce genre d’exercice, éblouie par les projecteurs… J’avoue que je me sentais relativement peu à  ma place.

Ça s’est bien passé, pourtant. J’ai “fait ma blogueuse”, j’ai dit un peu mes doutes, ce que je ne savais pas, et aussi un peu ce que je savais. J’en prends conscience en écrivant: il y avait beaucoup plus de mise en scène ce soir-là  que ce dont j’ai l’habitude. C’est ça: la mise en scène. C’est étrange pour moi.

Nuit du Journal Intime 25

J’ai trouvé le débat un peu difficile à  suivre par moments. Je ne voyais pas tellement, en fait, où était le débat. C’était intéressant d’écouter ce que les autres invités avaient à  dire, mais des fois j’avais l’impression que l’on ne s’entendait pas vraiment.

Hors de la grande salle de spectacles, de retour dans le lounge avec bougies, velours rouge et petites tables pour les lectures de journaux intimes et le repas, c’était très joli et chaleureux.

Nuit du Journal Intime 18

Ce que j’ai beaucoup aimé, c’est l’interview-radio avec la DRS, après le débat, de retour dans le petit salon. La journaliste nous a demandé de revenir sur le débat, sur ce qu’on y avait appris, ce qu’on en avait gardé. Puis on a commencé à  discuter. On a abordé des choses qui n’étaient pas intervenues dans le débat. Pour moi, c’était plus riche, finalement, que la forme un peu dirigée du débat. Ce n’est pas étonnant que ma préférence aille dans ce sens: les blogs, les podcasts, internet… c’est le lieu de la conversation, sans forme prédéfinie. C’est dans ce milieu-là  que je me sens à  l’aise.

Droits d’auteur

Après l’interview, j’ai demandé à  la journaliste s’il était possible d’avoir une copie de ce qu’elle avait enregistré, entre autres parce que j’y avais mis en mots des choses que j’avais envie de pouvoir garder et utiliser. (En passant, ça m’a fait très bizarre, durant le débat, de penser que nous n’étions pas enregistrés. J’ai trop l’habitude, avec le web, de laisser des traces derrière moi.)

Nous avons ensuite parlé de droits d’auteur, parce que j’exprimais mon désir de rendre disponible certaines choses sur le web. J’ai lu récemment (je ne sais plus sur quel blog, honte à  moi) qu’un blogueur avait reçu l’interdiction de la part d’une journaliste de publier l’interview par e-mail qu’il lui avait accordé. Le blogueur en question disait quelque chose comme ceci: de quel droit peut-on m’interdire de mettre à  disposition mes propres mots? De même, la DRS peut-elle prétendre détenir des droits sur ce que j’ai dit durant cet interview, parce qu’elle a fourni le matériel d’enregistrement? Et si j’avais enregistré en parallèle avec mon matériel? J’ai mentionné l’épisode du vidéocast de Robert Scoble, où j’ai fait précisément ça, avec l’accord des intervenants.

En fait, a précisé la journaliste, ce n’est que sur ses mots à  elle que la DRS détient des droits d’auteur. Cela fait, sens, car lorsqu’elle nous interviewe, elle représente la radio pour laquelle elle travaille. Quand j’aurai reçu le CD, je ferai donc un montage avec mes propres mots et le mettrai en ligne.

La journaliste connaissait EFF, Creative Commons, etc… j’en suis baba!

Et vous? Etiez-vous à  cette soirée? Qu’en avez-vous pensé?

Tags and Categories are not the Same! [en]

[fr] Les tags et les catégories, ce n'est pas la même chose. En bref, les catégories forment une structure hiérarchique, prédéfinie, qui régit l'architecture de notre contenu et aide autrui à s'y retrouver. Les tags sont spontanés, ad hoc, de granularité variable, tournés vers le partage et la recherche d'information.

Update, Sept. 2007: when I saw Matt in San Francisco this winter, he told me he had finally “seen the light” (his words!) about tags and categories. Six months later, it’s a reality for WordPress users. Thanks for listening.

I got a bit heated up last night between Matt’s comment that tags and categories function the same and a discussion I was having with Kevin on IM at the same time, about the fact that Technorati parses categories as tags.

I went back to read two of my old posts: Technorati Tagified and Plugin Idea: Weighted Tags by Category which I wrote about a year ago. In both, it’s very clear that as a user, I don’t percieve tags to be the same thing as categories. Tags were something like “public keywords”. Is anybody here going to say that keywords and categories are the same thing? (There is a difference between keywords and tags, but this isn’t the topic here; keywords and tags are IMHO much closer in nature than tags and categories).

Here are, in my opinion, the main differences between tags and categories, from the “tagger” point of view.

  • categories exist before the item I’m categorizing, whereas tags are created in reaction to the item, often in an ad hoc manner: I need to fit the item in a category, but I adapt tags to the item;
  • categories should be few, tags many;
  • categories are expected to have a pretty constant granularity, whereas tags can be very general like “switzerland” or very particular like “bloggyfriday“;
  • categories are planned, tags are spontanous, they have a brainstorm-like nature, as Kevin explains very well: You look at the picture and type in the few words it makes you think of, move on to the next, and you’re done.
  • relations between categories are tree-like, but those between tags are network-like;
  • categories are something you choose, tags are generally something you gush out;
  • categories help me classify what I’m talking about, and tags help me share or spread it;

There’s nothing wrong with Technorati treating categories as tags. I’d say categories are a kind of tag. They are special tags you plan in advance to delimit zones of content, and that you display them on your blog to help your readers find their way through what you say or separate areas of interest (ie, my Grandma will be interested by my Life and Ramblings category and subscribe to that if she has an RSS reader, but she knows she doesn’t care about anything in the Geek category. (By the way, CTTS is not a good example of this, the categories are a real mess.)

So, let’s say categories are tags. I can agree with that. But tags are not categories! Tags help people going through a “search” process. Click on a tag to see related posts/photos. See things outside the world of this particular weblog which have the same label attached. Provide a handy label to collect writings, photos, and stuff from a wide variety of people without requiring them to change the architecture of their blog content (their categories). If you want to, yeah, you can drop categories and use only tags. It works on http://del.icio.us/. But have you noticed how most Flickr users have http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/ in addition to tagging their photos? Sets aren’t categories, but they can be close. They are a way of presenting and organizing things for human beings rather than machines, search engines, database queries.

To get back to my complaint that WordPress.com does not provide real tags, it’s mainly a question of user interface. I don’t care if from a software point of view, tags and categories are the same thing for WordPress. As a user, I need a field in which I can let my fingers gush out keyword-tags once I’ve finished writing my post. I also need someplace to define and structure category-tags. I need to be able to define how to display these two kids of tags (if you want to call them both that) on my blog, because they are ways of classifying or labeling information which I live very differently.

Am I a tag weirdo? Do you also perceive a difference between tags and categories? How would you express or define it? If categories and tags are the same, the new WP2.0 interface for categories should make the Bunny Tags Plugin obsolete — does it?

DailyMotion Problems [en]

[fr] Un problème avec DailyMotion, heureusement réglé. Si vous n'avez pas pu voir la vidéo où je fais la bobette derrière Robert Scoble, c'est le moment d'y aller!

You probably know I like DailyMotion. I posted some feedback about DailyMotion yesterday, and bumped into some naughty problems today.

The problem with DailyMotion is that it doesn’t have a nice forum or a real devblog like coComment where we can leave feedback. So I’m posting it to my blog and tagging it in hope it will be found. By the way, I’ve been wondering what the best place is for this kind of feedback: here or on the Cheese Sandwich Blog? What’s your take?

After LIFT’06, I put this video of Robert being interviewed online and wrote a post about it here. Unfortunately, it seems at least one of my readers is not able to view it . (I guess there are at least 20 of you out there who just didn’t tell me about it.) The message says something about a key not being valid for this blog.

DailyMotion allows you to blog your videos directly from the site. That’s neat, but as I’m a control freak, I like dealing with the code myself. Back in November I had posted a video to my other blog, so I grabbed the code from over there, adapted it (video id), and it seemed to work. Actually, that was because I was still logged in to my DailyMotion account.

I first tried adding CTTS to my DailyMotion account, as a second blog. That failed (error message, just doesn’t work). As I was writing this post, I tried logging out of DailyMotion, and actually saw the message all my poor readers have been seeing these last days! In a click of my trackpad I was able to fix everything.

So, if you haven’t seen me goofing off behind Robert Scoble as David and Marc-O try to podcast him (red wine and Apple hardware involved), now’s the time to do it! Sorry for the buggy post, and thanks a lot to Raphael for pointing out the problem to me.

Tracking Keywords: PubSub and Technorati [en]

[fr] Comparaison de PubSub et Technorati pour surveiller des mots-clés dans la blogosphère. Aucun des deux vraiment satisfaisant.

One thing I came back with from LIFT’06 is that what one should monitor is more keyword watchlists, rather than blogs. I used to have a few hundred blogs in an aggregator, but gave up using it ages ago. Too much to sift through, considering it isn’t my day job to do so.

During his talk, Robert mentioned that he used PubSub to track keywords like “Microsoft” or his name. Of course, it makes sense. Tracking topics that are of interest to you. I created a PubSub account and set up a few subscriptions to try to track things like mentions of my hometown, Lausanne, teenagers and weblogs, and of course my name. Tracking your name makes a lot of sense if you’re looking out for conversations. Think of highlighting in IRC: if everybody tracks their name in blogs, then you can just call out to them. Hi, Robert, by the way!

Now, this name thing. I guess tracking your surname with PubSub is all right if you’re named Scoble, but if you’re named Booth it makes things much trickier. I added my first name, but that didn’t help much if I omitted the quotes. And as people are likely to refer to me as “Stephanie Booth”, “Stéphanie Booth”, “Steph Booth” or even “Stéph Booth” that’s a bunch to track, but let’s say it’s manageable. But it rules out people who refer to me as “bunny” or even “Tara” (yeah, and if I start tracking those too, it’s not going to make things less messy).

What I really liked about PubSub is that it offers me an out-of-the-box sidebar for firefox. I can get a list of the recent posts containing my keywords in there, browse them, click, check, move on. It has highlighting too, and that’s really nice — helps me see straight away if the Stephanie Booth on the page is me or some homonym. (For some reason it’s not working anymore, but it was nice while it lasted.)

What I didn’t like is that it didn’t seem to be returning as many results as Technorati. Also, I wasn’t always sure if it was responding or not (I guess the current conversation around my name isn’t very busy ;-)). And the “Latest Messages” option only gave me the last three posts in each subscription. It gave me the impression of being a little incomplete in the results it returned. I suspect it isn’t really incomplete, but I can’t really nail what gives me the impression. In any case, PubSub and Technorati give different results for a search on “cocomment”

The slight unsatisfaction with PubSub made me go back to Technorati watchlists, which I had never really used. I like the idea of tracking URLs in posts. If somebody links to me, then it doesn’t matter if the person called me “Stéph Booth” or “Tara” or “la Mère Denis“, I’ll see it. I can also track links to my Flickr account and other blogs and stuff easily. Keyword searches work too. So, neat, I now have a watchlist page on Technorati with all my monitoring material. I can subscribe to each of them by RSS.

Gripes, however. And for the sake of it, let’s assume I’m hoping my watchlists will replace my NewsReader, and not go and live in it:

  • I can only expand one watchlist at a time.
  • Expanding a watchlist shows only the three last results.
  • I don’t have a compilation page with the latest results from all/any of my watchlists.
  • I’d like a sidebar!
  • Blogroll links keep showing up in Technorati search results. It’s nice to know you’ve been blogrolled, but you don’t need to be reminded of it each time you do a search.
  • No highlighting!

What it boils down to: I’d like a Technorati Watchlist sidebar for FireFox and highlighting of search terms or URL in the pages which are loaded from it.

Do you monitor keywords, URLs or search terms? Do you use PubSub or Technorati? Do you stick the results in your feed reader to keep track of them?

Update: of course, I’m much more familiar with Technorati, so there might be something about PubSub I’m missing completely. Feel free to educate me.

Visibility is in Feedback Loops [en]

[fr] Ce qui est populaire le reste, et devient plus populaire encore, justement parce que c'est populaire. De temps en temps un pic de visibilité se présente à  nous (comme le montre l'illustration ci-dessous). Est-ce que ceux qui sont les plus connus le sont simplement parce qu'ils proposent un menu qui convient à  la majorité, et qu'ils savent tirer avantage de ces pics pour rester la tête hors de l'eau? Est-ce vrai? Est-ce bien? Est-ce mal? Qu'en dites-vous?

Last month, I had a jump in my Cheese Sandwich stats:

Traffic peak graph.

This was because the post Get an iBook! had for some reason or another made it to the “Fastest growing weblogs” list which appears in every WordPress.com dashboard. And it stayed stuck there. I think there was a bug or something and it got stuck there, but it might also have been a little feedback loop: what is popular becomes more popular because it is popular — I’ve discussed this briefly regarding a photograph of mine which suddenly became ‘interesting’ in Flickr.

So, let’s first note one thing: this little peak of traffic finally had no long-term effects for me. My traffic is back down to what it was before. Sometimes a feedback loop can send you into another playground, but most times it doesn’t. So either you try to create another popularity burst, or you just keep plodding along your way.

My second thought is that popularity, visibility, fame, or whatever-you’ll-call-it mainly has to do with feedback loops. If something is very visible, you’re more likely to know about it. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? I think I’m coming to accept it’s a rule of the game. But to stay in the limelight once the feedback loop has put you there, you need certain qualities. Which ones? Look at the latest interesting photos on Flickr. What do they have in common?

I think you can have a great mind, great style, great many things, and still stay in the shadow if the right feedback loop doesn’t come along. Is being successful just a case of managing feedback loops and getting them to work for you? Is this bad?

I know nothing about feedback loops, actually, so what I’m saying here might very well be a lot of BS. I’ll let you decide. I’m feeling very conversational after LIFT.