Tuesday, April 19, 2011

"buy and sell your friends" = Digital Slavery

There are a few nutty netizens who subscribe to the offbeat belief that there is a need for a "Social Currency System."

Blog Engage Blog Forum and Blogging Community, Free Blog Submissions and Blog Traffic, Blog Directory, Article Submissions, Blog Traffic

Perhaps they're tired of the Sims and Farmville, or they've grown complacent in their second lives.
Empire Avenue may be a fun diversion. OneTrueFan was a fun diversion for a moment or two. Some bloggers write like crazy and get no recognition, while other bloggers write two ro three posts or upload a controversial photo and become instant stars. You just can't predict what will happen when to who!

And how many times do truly useful tools or services disappear or get fixed when they're not broken? Like Google trends, for example!

Then there's Technorati... still has a web presence but lost a lot of credibility when it suddenly accepted MySpace pages as blogs! I pity the fool who made that fateful decision! I believe Technorati would be up there with Google and Facebook today had they stayed true to the course!

Remember why MySpace died? Facebook came along and gave the world back what MySpace originally provided: an easy to load and navigate social interaction system.


Whatever the "next big thing" on the internet is, I can tell you with the greatest confidence that it WILL NOT be anything that anyone blogs about or otherwise says WILL BE "the next big thing." It has never worked that way, and never will.

Here's what definitely WON'T be big: BlogCatalog. I kinda cheered them when I was getting emails from them. I thought maybe they liked me.

We all know that MyBlogLog is due to die soon, being put down by yahoo, and there have been rumblings that BlogCatalog wants to acquire the service. Not a bad idea, I thought to myself. Then, reality splashed a bucket of icewater on my keyboard...

For some reason, I am banned from BlogCatalog. I must have written something that pissed off somebody. Odd thing is, as they've been trying to muster support to take over MyBlogLog, they've been barraging with emails of late, begging me to sign up for a USD $ 1499 program and so I wrote them:

Davelucas Notes, Apr-16 07:46 am (CDT):

tried to login, says "account de-activated" --- I receive regular emails from you, the latest one within 24 hours...

They wrote back:

BlogCatalog, Apr-18 05:56 pm (CDT):

Sorry your blog was declined.

The BlogCatalog Team

WTF? This is the thrid time over the years I've been "declined." They don't give any reason! I've been blogging since 2003, and my blog has been embraced by services far above any offered by BlogCatalog!

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3 comments:

Tom Ohle said...

Hey Dave... funny you mention digital slavery... :) We've actually talked about Empire Avenue as a way to free you from exactly that. While it might not be readily apparent in its current form, our goal with the site is to allow you to actually profit in the real world from your activities online. Digital slavery is posting all sorts of things on Facebook and Twitter -- creating value for those networks -- with those companies making all the money :)

Dave Lucas said...

@Tom, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt... I based the slavery thing on the website header, which mentions it... I'm always willing to give new things a go, so don't count me out just yet!

Scraper said...

As difficult as it might be to believe, it was not that long ago that MySpace dominated the social networking market, and made Facebook look like a pipsqueak. MySpace ruled the roost in such a major way that Rupert Murdoch spent nearly $600-million to make it part of his News Corp. empire. Now, MySpace is evaporating before our eyes while Facebook is battling Google for digital dominance.

…which brings us to Twitter: <a href="http://www.markevanstech.com/2011/04/16/could-twitter-get-myspaced/>Could Twitter Get “MySpaced”?</a>