Ultimate Las Vegas Smackdown – Technorati vs. Tall Skinny Kiwi

Some folks do this crazy thing called LiveBlogging. I’m not into that. I like a little more time for reflection and processing. Like, you know, 12 hours or so. This morning, I’m thinking through the highlights of what I learned yesterday at BlogWorld and GodblogCon and I thought you might be interested.

So I present for you the Ultimate Las Vegas Smack Down: Tall Skinny Kiwi vs. Technorati! In one corner, we have the reigning champion…

Technorati and the State of the Blogosphere

The first event I attended was the keynote address by the CEO of Technorati. (Six Apart spoke too.) Beginning tomorrow, Technorati will be posting their State of the Blogosphere report all week.

He said, “Blog content means authoritative and opinionated voices—with a loyal audience who really values that voice. Blogs are media… All blogs are not created equal.”

Some Interesting Stats

I give these here with the warning that they are ball park and have not been closely examined yet. We’ll have to watch the details as they come out this week:

• 1.2 million blogs have registered with Technorati. (Do this if you haven’t yet.)
• Technorati has 133 million blog records. (But a lot of these are dead or spam.)
• 7.4 million blogs posted in last 120 days.
• 1.5 million blogs posted in last 7 days.
• 900,000 posts went live in 24 hours.
• 76,000 blogs with Technorati Authority of 50+ (Do you know your Tech Authority?)

Here’s the statistic that everybody was talking about though.

Looking at the top 10% of revenue earning blogs, the average annual revenue was $19,000. They were posting an average of 81 times per month.

Do the math. That’s an average of $4.50 per post. Dreadful.

I think I’ll stick with hobby blogging and nonprofit blogging.

Which brings me back to the Ultimate Las Vegas Smack Down. In the challenger’s corner, we have…

Andrew Jones, Tall Skinny Kiwi

Apparently, Andrew Jones inspired Darren Rouse to start blogging back in the 1990s. That’s right. Andrew was blogging before there was such a thing as blogger or typepad or wordpress or livejournal.

Even comments didn’t exist.

Here’s what Andrew said, “Church 2.0 isn’t about bringing the old church structures into the internet. It’s about starting with the platforms and seeing how we can use those to encourage each other.”

I’d say that idea applies to all institutions. Business 2.0 can’t bring the old structures of business onto the internet. Marketing 2.0 can’t rely on old structures. Media 2.0 certainly can’t. Movies 2.0 (according to Mark Joseph) might actually shake up Hollywood the way iTunes has already shaken up the big music labels.

Of course, Andrew is a missional guy. So he brought it back to this:

“The first reformation turned hearers into readers. This reformation is turning readers into writers… We blog to give ourselves away. This is the heart of ministry. In giving ourselves away, we become part of the gift economy.”

And the winner is… ?

I’d like to say Tall Skinny Kiwi, but it’s not that simple. There are real problems with publishing in a gift economy, for sure. How does my poetry have any value for instance if I put it online for free? I mean, simply the fact that I’ve made it freely available somehow cheapens it for new readers.

I guess that just puts a heavier onus on me to write truly great poetry. (Oh well. I guess you’ll just have to settle for cheap poetry at GoodWordEditing.com. If you want the greatest new poetry, subscribe to 32 Poems or Poetry Magazine.)

So that’s it. Today I’m going to play poker with the b5media people and focus on how to be a good steward of the sites God has given me.

Bonus Highlight

One more thing to leave you with before I head onto the tradeshow floor. Chris Alden from Six Apart had a good reminder for everyone:

Publishing used to be really hard—in tv, radio, print, and even on the web. But industries change when it becomes much easier to use and much less expensive. New abilities are changing the way we blog as well—from comments to RSS feeds to all sorts of tools that help us connect. That’s the bottom line.

This isn’t about technology. It’s about human connection and finding other people who care about the same topic we do.

Tagged as: blog income, blogworld 2008, gift economy, godblogcon, pay per post, techonorati