When bloggers read each others stuff too much, they fall into group think mode and end up either fighting online to get attention and traffic or they end up regurgitating the same lame articles, concepts and ideas on a topic.
I don’t succeed at avoiding regurgitation every day, there’s just too many bloggers out there to have an original thought sometimes, but reading blogebrities stuff will surely help you fall into the quicksand faster than almost anything else.

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Why this example is good for Utterz?

So any way getting around the paparazzi aspect of this
article a bit. If we Utterz folks ask our selves the question "So What is the important take away from this example?" [emphasis on So What]

I think the important thing to consider is that both authors and personalities as exhibited in this article are dialoguing in a blog.

Lay of the Land of Linkbait and blogger types

1. @rizzn ‘s initial article takes an extreme position and calls out a couple blog-ebrities in a way that definitely could be described as a put down. (even though I did read the humor in the article, appreicated it, and felt the analogy sink home ringing with a bit of truth, despite the generalizations that were often off mark. I was creative enough in reading it to get it.) – This tactic makes the article a linkbait, useful for generating traffic, links to mashable, and hundreds of sites referring their readers to go watch the lunch room brawl.

2. @scobleizer did the proper blogger thing and jumped in to taking the contrarian position.(He’s a blogging pro, so it doesn’t really matter if he did this with the intent to create a linkbait or not, it just happened and it works in the blogosphere) This is also a linkbait tactic, in addition to be the blogger equivalent of responding to a negative attack ad. A great way to attract readership and attention (notice he drops links all over the place) is to purposefully and personally disagree with the author. We’re not talking about playing devil’s advocate in a discussion, we’re talking about absorbing the attack emotionally, channeling that into indignation and maybe a little fury and then writing a response intended to keep the fighting going, bring more people into it and force the internet masses to take a side (which can increase both subscription numbers as people choose sides and attract fan boys, or encourage people to take a passionate stake in things and get their inner fan boy ramped up.

3. So anyway, this entire process points out how any jerk on the street can gain traffic, and if you want to be a blogger it is a tool that you need in your tool belt. That said, it points out one of the inherent flaws in blogs, and the culture of blogging.

Why Can’t We all just get along?

4. That blogging culture flaw can be cured or solved by Utterz technology. When you create a blog, you initially create it in a vacuum. Even with a large number of subscribers, when you write an article you can not be assured that anyone will show up and read the damn thing. This encourages people to use a number of writing techniques developed by those miserable journalist types over the years to get people’s attention. You hook people with something, they read, and then you work to keep them engaged. That happened with this article on several levels.

BUT!

The fight did not advance the conversation nor enhance most people’s views on the topic. (note its a pretty weak topic and barely holds itself above water, without the humor and attacks)

The conversation almost immediately devolved into a spectacle as opposed to a discussion. The writers likely knew each other, but chose to get into a fight as opposed to having a nice conversation over cocktails or dinner or something like @MichaelBayer mentioned. They did that because blogs do not lend themselves to pleasant conversation that builds on itself, builds up the people involved and revolves around building understanding first.

Blogging conversations are often only good for handing a bully pulpit back and forth in a dehumanizing process.

That definitely happened here.

Where Utterz and similar technology comes in! – So What Answered

So in utterz we have the means (when things work well and people don’t fall into old cultural models like twitter, or blogging) of having a slightly more humane conversation. We can include audio and video which helps to convey that charming note in your voice or that twinkle in your eye or expression that helps convey the message, that you respect the person you are talking to and that said, you either see things differently, see a tangent that needs developing, or even respectfully disagree, but would like to find common ground.

Utterz and blogs both have the means of using pictures to help convey a better message, but in a blog discussion, you can’t include a picture typically in the comments (unless you use Drupal see http://www.performancing.com/ for an example). So the original author has the means of conveying a better message with a picture, but no one that joins in the conversation after has this advantage.

In Utterz, its a level playing field. Anyone can respond with a video, audio or a picture to help get their message across more effectively and in a way that often times will be more respectful of the views of the other people in the conversation.

When Utterz Attack

5. Now all that said, you can still have personal attacks in Utterz, you can still see misunderstandings, and you can still see people get their ‘feel betters’ twisted up in a state of righteous indignation to the point that they are hopping mad. This can and does also happen in real life.

But here at Uttez when things work well, we all have a slightly better chance of a higher level of understanding in a conversation. We are not talking with 1 hand, two teeth and a fourth of our tongues tied behind our backs, as they are in blogs.

So when I see this fight take place on Mashable, I see this as an opportunity for these two people to come over away from the dark side of the force, smoke the peace pipe and start learning something through a dialog in a better platform.

And the Bloggers Yell Show Me the Money

6. So a possible challenge for the Utterz team (how to get a few hundred million bloggers to use the hell out of Utterz) is to find a way to encourage people to come into our house here on Utterz and have their conversation to better effect. The problem is that both @rizzn and @scobleizer earn their living from writing (as do I). If they do not have the conversation in and around their own blogs, they can not pay the bills, build their investments, support families and do their part to maintain the global economy. Find the way to make Utterz a viable tool to add to their regular tool belt (like link baits and SEO techniques) and Utterz will be a slam dunk success.

(Note, I’ve had some success with this myself here at Utterz on a number of levels, but as a guinea pig I’ve seen some things that break conventional blogging wisdom to pieces and from a conventional bloggers perspective would make working with Utterz seem detrimental to the health of a blog as most blogs work today relying on Google Search Engine God.)

The Real Risk for Utterz mentioned in this conversation on Mashable

If you ignore the cafeteria fight aspect of the article, there is an extremely important lesson for Utterz to gleam within those words. It talks about the concept of corporate types trying to avoid wasting time.

Utterz definitely has the potential to waste a persons time.

We’ve had several conversations about utterz direction, around names, trademarks, logos and things and around the new groups functionality.

The risk item that is mentioned in @rizzn ‘s article, is probably one of the single biggest risks that Utterz has to face up to with groups functionality and trying to take a more corporate acceptable path.

Utterz can become a sterile place ripe for a HR Director to have a wet dream and infomercial specialists to go to town offering weight loss products, but it will not bring more corporate business into the system, if there is the perception that Utterz can waste employees time. I’ve seen corporations shudder and walk away from project management systems for the same reason, walking away from a social network will be a now brainer IF Utterz doesn’t find a way to make the conversation go somewhere useful and in a more efficient way (with less in fighting and politics would be a nice bonus).

Utterz does have this potential, but failing to focus on the functionality and goal of how that functionality can achieve a result, will end up being a dart stuck in a wall instead of a bullseye.

I didn’t notice it myself (just saw the bugs in the upgrade http://www.utterz.com/…Nzk5Mjg3NA ) but @MariAdkins astutely noticed that our favorite cow has disappeared(http://www.utterz.com/…Nzk5Mjg4NQ ).
I’m going to miss the old girl myself. I’m going to miss all the great puns, and conversation starters we had at bessie’s expense and at the expense of political correctness in deference to our Bovine cousins of the world.

As a person born with and continuing to have 3 nipples, I’m even going to miss Bessie’s bravery in displaying her multiple teets to the world, proud of her body, proud of her mutli-teeted appearance.

Her teets may not have been terribly sexy, but they brought us all together, they got us talking, they made us friends as we gathered together suckling at ear buds, blue tooth headsets, web cams, cameras, video cameras, microphones, and keyboards.

Bessie may not have been politically correct, and she may have inspired us to be less than politically correct at times as well, but she did bring some humanity to this social network. She got us to drop our guard a bit and be a little more human and even humane to each other in our conversations.

Her jovial sensibility may have even kept things considerate and light hearted here and on the internet where so many gangs and flame wars often abound in other networks.

Now that she’s gone, the place isn’t going to be quite the same. For us old timers on Utterz, we’ll have the memory of Bessie, but for new comers to Utterz, this is going to seem a lot more sterile.

Post upgrade, I can upload video again!

Not sure if it works everytime yet, but so far so good. No more internet explorer 7 video uploads for me!
Anyway, got to run, my neighbor just stopped by after getting back from the Outer Banks. We’ve been caring for his plants and some other things so will have to cut this short…

I really like this little section of the design that shows the people currently in this discussion. It definitely helps to add to the community feel, almost like a group of people standing around talking about something at the water cooler or shouting over cubicle walls filled with CAT5e cables and telephone lines or possibly sitting around a lunch table.

Yet another nice attention to detail that will be a subtle, but powerful improvement at Utterz.

I really like the ability to update a title with an email. So I can now call in and leave a voice Utterz, then send a quick text message with the title for that Utterz. Very cool. I know there’s lots of big things here too, but the attention to little details will keep new user frustration levels down, while people are wowed by the whiz bang stuff too!