Dotmad.net

More than 2 years ago, Ayelet Noff (AKA Blonde 2.0)  wrote a post on social networks vs. blogs (with Myspace as an example for a social network). She claimed there is room for both in the life of a blogger.

I disagreed with her:

“Blogging takes effort, time and at least a little talent.
MySpace requires choosing a template.
Blogging is about sharing your view, opinions and (some times) personal life with your readers.
MySpace is about sharing links to your “friends”, meaning other pages in which the only meaningful data is links to more “friends” and so on.
(Why do I use quotes? ask Samy)

If a blog is the equivalent of an autobiography, MySpace page is the equivalent of a phone book.”

And

“I think that with some social networks (MySpace again) you need to do most of the work OUTSIDE the site by mails, IM, phone, etc.
In other words, the SN site itself gives very few tools to help you make new friends, while a blog gives you information on the writer on it’s own.

Bloggers must invest more effort, while people on social networks can do it.
The result is that the chance of encountering a social network page containing meaningfull information is lower.
Blogging has a much higher entry bar than most social networks.”

Funny reading it now.

I can’t image my life today without social networks. I’m still not using Myspace, but constantly use Facebook and Twitter. I have met many fascinating people through social networks, went to events I would have never heard of without them, and learned a lot using them.

In fact, using social networks to that extent also affected my writing, as after channeling creativity using Twitter I’m often left without any for a new blog post. On the other hand, I have recently wrote a post on my Hebrew blog, posted on Twitter - and got a tremendous response, as people liked the content and promoted it on their own.

In fact, the focus of the problem today has shifted from “Social networks vs. blogs” to large vs. small communities on social networks, but that’s a topic for another post.

So it’s time for another Blog Day, and with it the dilema - which blogs should I recommend?
Last year I tried focusing on new or unknown blogs (unknown to me, that is) - I’m not sure I’ll use the same criteria this time.

1. Ken Egozi’s Blog - C# development blog (over 300 posts as of yesterday)
2. My 25% - A comic strip about working in the Israeli HiTech industry.
3. 10x Software Development - Did you liked the book “Code Complete“? Think of this site as a more up-to-date summary of the book.
4. Maor David - A recommended blog dealing (mostly) with Visual Studio Team System.
5. Nicholas Allen’s Indigo Blog - Probably the #1 source of information regarding WCF.

Although I actually started this blog on 02/2007 (covering the first Microsoft developer academy event), I began using Google analytics one year ago.

Let’s start with the top 10 most popular posts:

1. WebBrowser.DocumentCompleted is raised more than once
2. Help file generation for framework 2.0
3. Five steps for creating a transparent user control
4. How to be a better team leader
5. The high cost of Visual Studio Express edition
6. Reinventing the wheel
7. List of TFS tools on CodePlex
8. “Cannot call methods on bigint” error
9. Validation of a NumericUpDown control
10. Generic Singleton Factory

My readers mostly use Windows (over 90%) and IE (60%) and are from all over the world:

1. United States (33%, with the largest % from California and also many visitors from Texas, Washington, New York, Florida)
2. Israel (15%)
3. United Kingdom
4. India
5. Canada
6. Germany
7. Australia
8. Netherlands
9. France
10. Russia

After writing in this blog for a while I decided to start another blog, which is a combination of Hebrew and English posts, so here are some popular posts from there:

• How to Get a Job at Google
• David Platt on Why Software Sucks
• Tech Ed Israel 2008 lectures for English speakers

Jeff Atwood (CodingHorror) complained about the fact a caching addon for Wordpress is optional, and is not included in the basic software:

Personally, I think it’s absolutely irresponsible that WP-Cache like functionality isn’t already built into WordPress. I would not even consider deploying WordPress anywhere without it.

And why is that?

This is an incredibly scary result; blog.stackoverflow.com is getting, at best, a moderate trickle of incoming traffic. It’s barely linked anywhere! With that kind of CPU load level, this site would fall over instantaneously if it got remotely popular, or God forbid, anywhere near the front page of a social bookmarking website.

I don’t have a traffic report for stackoverflow.com, but since both Jeff’s and Joel’s blogs (both being among the most popular technical blogs in the world) point there, I suspect my definition of “moderate trickle” may differ from Jeff’s.

And as Arik pointed out, Wordpress may target smaller users, for which this is not an issue (someone wrote the problem occurred with more than 20000 users per day) while power-users can install optional components to deal with the traffic issues.

• Still learning how to properly use Twitter (any tools recommendations?)
• Facebook seems to be using 100% CPU on my home computer for each page load
• Removed the “Blog RSS feed reader” Facebook application - it stopped updating the feed some time during TechEd and never recovered (even removing the feed and adding it again didn’t help) - now I’m trying the “Simply RSS” application instead

Guy started the debate by calling Israely bloggers (and the blogs.microsoft.co.il platform) to write in Hebrew to encourage the creation of professional resources addressing the Hebrew reading crowd.

I disagreed by stating the fact I like to share my knowledge with the entire world rather than just sharing it with Hebrew readers and Omer agrees with me.

Tamir contributed to the discussion in his own unique way, demonstrating the frustration a non-English post can cause to English readers (and assuming I understood the translation he is basically saying “write in whatever language you feel comfortable with”)

I would like to address Guy’s second claim, saying the blogs.microsoft.co.il site should be used to encourage Hebrew blogging (and that English bloggers have alternatives such as Blogger and Wordpress).
Blogger and Wordpress are excellent platforms, but if I want a blogging site focused on IT blogs, they are wrong for me.
The unique thing about the blogs.microsoft.co.il site is that it’s an aggregator for IT professionals, and unlike the MSDN blogs site - most of them are not Microsoft employees.
I think this is unique and would not like to close this special community to the rest of the world.

As 31/8 is BlogDay, I decided to find some blogs to recommend.
I have tried recommending relatively new/unknown blogs (at least as far as I can tell), and also focus on people publishing new posts at least once a week.

1. Blonde 2.0 - Recently opened, and already quite a success, focuses mainly on web 2.0 items.
2. Latest gadgets and the technology used - As the name says, the focus here is on electronics and gadgets.
3. Israely VCs blogs - An aggregation of the blogs behind the major VCs in Israel.
4. Gray’s Matter - I started reading this blog after Justice posted his plan to take over the world (and becoming a better developer) by reading a new professional book each week.
5. Information Technology Dark Side - David Christiansen’s blog about the IT profession.

Technorati tag: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2007