BlogTalkNotesKeynote3

Blogtalk 2.0, Tuesday 06.07.04 Keynote:

Ben & Mena Trott: "Blogs, Bandwidth, and Banjos"

Six Apart: The Company

The company has gone from 2 employees to 35, in 3 years. It is currently located in the US, Europe, and Japan.

They talk about an audience that is "outside this room" ("the common users").

There's more and more media attention for weblogs.

Mena: high ambitions for adollarshort when she started

Banjo story: Ben was discouraging Mena to get a banjo she would never play; she posted a humorous comic strip portraying Ben as a kind of household tyrant. Surprise! People didn't really get it.

Humour is often difficult to translate on the web - even with emoticons :)

Mena re-evaluated the goals for her weblog (size of audience, etc.).

Definition of a weblog:

• nothing to do with structure, or form, or even content

• about communication

Typepad

TypePad is aimed at "families and friends" (it's not about reaching a large audience) - but didn't see too many 'family and friends' blogs: they were private! (ie, invisible to the outside world). Statistics, as of today:

• 33% private

• 10% password protected

It can be difficult for many to imagine a weblog which is "private" (for instance, Mena's mom).

A problem with e-mail spam is that e-mail, for communication, becomes really broken.

One use of MovableType is as an "e-mail client"; the workers post status reports via MovableType, the manager reads the feed, and nobody thinks about the "weblogging/publication" part.

When weblogs become invisible, the 'weblogging revolution' will have occurred.