AdAge, reporting the other day that Technorati “now tracks 19.6 million blogs” (actually, 20.1 million as of today), noted that that number “has doubled about every five months for the past three years. If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009.”
And, as my brother aptly pointed out after forwarding me the story, two blogs by September 2009.
I feel a little uncomfortable making a blatant plug. For one thing, you’re one of maybe about three or four people reading this, so a plug won’t have much effect, anyway. For the main thing, an enthusiastic recommendation can (and should) raise the suspicion of the blogger having sold out.
Full disclosure: I’m not getting paid to blog about the December publication of PostSecret : Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives. I’m not even getting a free copy of the book. But I was pretty jazzed to get the email the other day that it’s happening. It’s material published on the PostSecret blog, plus additional material that hasn’t been published online.
I’ve been meaning to comment on PostSecret for a while. (The link’s been over there on the blogroll since day one.) I think it’s one of the most perfect sites there is, a supreme example of an idea blending with technology to facilitate a compelling outpouring of visitor-generated content. PostSecret is elegant in its simplicity, profound in its execution, and utterly fascinating in its mining of countless facets of human emotion, from the hilarious to the disturbing.
I can’t imagine the book being anything less than exceptional.
… for a word about our partner in keeping LOHAD up and running: Gryphyn Media Hosting. We had a rough day yesterday, with WordPress database error: [Got error 28 from table handler] SELECT * FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND (post_status = “publish” OR post_author = 1 AND post_status != ‘draft’ AND post_status != ‘static’) GROUP BY wp_posts.ID ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 15 showing up where a post about Flashturbation should have been. Stuff like this happens from time to time in the online world, but Gryphyn faces the issues with rapid-response service and genuine good humor. What more can you want from a site host? (Oh yeah, their pricing is pretty good, too!) Thanks (again!), Tracy — that new logo is lookin’ sharp!
AdRants posted something the other day that used the word “Flashturbation.” I hadn’t seen the word before, but I love it: What a perfectly precise way to characterize the all-too-prevalent misuse of Flash. But I wondered: Was this an AdRants coinage, or a word that’s been around for a while that I missed?
I missed. Google offered up 536 results for a search on “Flashturbation,” including this Suite101.com entry with a somewhat unsavory headline. This post from Jerry Bono over on chinwag.com was the earliest use I could find in the 15 minutes I allotted myself to dig: December 15, 1999.
In reality, it was probably coined by one of the first two people using Flash, when one teased the other about doing something stupid with the software.
And the stupidity has continued ever since.
Takeaway for marketers: Your site deserves the best, doesn’t it? Don’t Flashturbate all over it.
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