The Four-eyed Journal » Technorati

John Chow dot Com: an essential read for bloggers

jhay — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:31:45 +0000

This blog is about to reach it’s one-year-anniversary mark in two months’ time. Already it has improved so much and the journey has been all worth it. A reader once asked me via e-mail, “What’s my secret?” Now I know that I’m no problogger, I don’t have fat AdSense cheques that comes to my mailbox every month, I’ve never even made it to Digg or del.ico.us’ front page before, but little by little, my efforts at improving this blog are being slowly rewarded.

Going back to the question I was asked, among my secrets, well it’s not exactly a secret since there are a thousand more bloggers who do this is to read the blogs of the A-list bloggers, the probloggers that is. Among them, is John Chow’s blog which will help you make money online.

Why read his blog?

It motivated me to do more, to work more on improving my site’s traffic. Whether by writing more useful and creative content or by making more connections and friendships over the net by visiting other blogs and sharing a comment or two.

This improvement in traffic would bring more exposure to my blog which in turn will help me get my messages across. Of course it will also improve my earnings from the ads I put up here but that I’ll use to help me get through the month’s telephone and broadband bills, contribution to my undergraduate thesis fund, and if there’s any extra money left I’ll save up so that one day I’ll be able to buy my dream digital SLR camera.

Another reason to read his blog is to gain ideas on how to be a better blogger and have a good blog. One of the key elements I’d like to learn from John is how to always give something back to the readers.

I could say more about his blog, but we know experience is the best teacher so I strongly urge you to visit his site. If you have a blog of your own, it’s also a good idea to review his blog and trust me, he’ll give back something well worth your time, space and link love.

*Unlike to other posts that came before this one, this is not a paid review post for John Chow, the benefits he offers in exchange for this review is just to good to pass off.

So I’m a B-lister, cool!

jhay — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 00:46:55 +0000

First found this via Sir Abe’s blog, then saw this on Ade’s Friendster blog, I figured what the heck might as well give it a try.

So it says this blog belongs the B-list category, what does it mean?

The High Authority Group [B-List Bloggers]
(100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
The third group represents a decided shift in blog age while not blogging much more frequently than the last. In keeping with the theme of the maturation of the blogosphere, it seems evident that many of these bloggers were previously in category two and have grown in authority organically over time. In other words, sheer dedication pays off over time.

So it’s another clever interpretation of how Technorati sees your blog. Wonder what would the Web 2.0 version of Technorati would be like? How will it rank this blog? Still, it’s very creative and would appeal to almost everyone. Heck, I’m quite happy with the rating it gave this blog.

Hope my sponsors will consider this when they evaluate the things I’ve done with this free .com.ph domain and continue to keep it open for free. There’s still six months to go, plenty of time to improve this blog, its content, design and meet more blogging friends!

The Kimveer Gill effect

jhay — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:59:35 +0000

It has been quite a long while since I last watched TV in more than two hours at a time. I’ve been so busy or so entrenched in my computer I have totally forgotten to get my regular dose of the ‘idiot box’ unlike before.

Before my computer was connected to an unlimited broadband connection and my web surfing life was dictated by those dial-up prepaid cards, my hours spent at home were equally divided among my three main activities: web surfing and blogging, reading books and watching TV. How that changed is another story.

When I did get to spend more than two hours of watching TV yesterday, I was very concerned when I heard the news that another civilian school-shooting spree occurred in a college in Canada. The country holds a special place in my heart for reasons I’ve yet to disclose and again, that would be another story. Stories of that bloodier shooting incident in an American college some few years ago, (I totally forgot the details) flashed before my eyes, I literally blurted out, and do forgive me, upon hearing the news; “Jesus Christ!”

I was eager to know where in Canada and what particular college did the shooting occurred. I was relieved that the name of the college in my mind and fearful of, was not mentioned but instead the news anchor man stated that the tragedy took place in a college in Montreal and sadly, two people have died while almost 20 have been injured.

My prayers and symphaties to all the victims and their families. May God be with you all, always.

A tangled web

News of this and comments on this tragedy have already spread like wildfire in the net, particularly in the blog-o-sphere. The shooter’s name, Kimveer Gill currently sits at the number spot in technorati’s most popular searches. Much has been said and blogged about this 25-year-old’s shooting rampage. It is fascninating to note, that ramifications of this sad and senseless shooting spree has extended well beyond the traditional media, international borders and has made it into the world wide web. It may have even started there.

To say the least, blogs again played a big role in this story. Reports say that Kimveer Gill, had a website in which he threatened violence and made known his violent tendencies through photos and autobigraphies, literally painting a chilling portrait of an ‘Angel of Death.‘

This has raised the eyebrows of experts, saying that Police are powerless to find killers online. It is a growing concern that authorities should scour and monitor the web for potential criminals and social misfits as to prevent them from committing actual crime, but would this include that they should be barred from being able to use the web or make an online presence to begin with?

Already, the site that hosted Kimveer Gill’s blog has all but closed down until police has completed its investigation. Imagine if Kimveer or any other potential criminal had set-up his online presence in other social sites, like for example, Friendster, Multiply or the current king; MySpace. Would they also close down their sites and put on a press release saying that they had nothing to do with it?

Again, issues of online freedom of speech, and of expression, indemnity and disclaimer coverages are at the heart of this issue now that tragedy has passed and we are left to clean up and fix things so that this would never happen again.

MySpace on top but not in the Philippines

jhay — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:07:32 +0000

Friendster users wake up! MySpace has just made headlines when Hitwise has come out with a press release stating that “MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites.”

It has even surpassed Google and Yahoo! according to Hitwise. Speaking of Yahoo!, Glen Chapman writes on Mail & Guardian Online about Yahoo! crying foul over the report of Hitwise that is has been overtaken by MySpace to become the most visited social networking site in the internet.

Yahoo! rejected the claim as “misleading” because it ranked the search engine’s domains such as search, news, and e-mail separately instead of adding them together.

MySpace.com got more online visitors than the Yahoo! or Yahoo! Mail websites last week, according to Hitwise, an online intelligence service based in New York City.

Yahoo! said it wasn’t accurate to compare MySpace traffic to that at one of the separate internet doors used to reach the Sunnyvale, California, company’s services.

“When taking into account all of Yahoo!’s domains together as an entire network, Yahoo! clearly remains the number one property in terms of audience share, duration share, page view share and days visited per month,” the company said in a release.

Yahoo! calculated that it attracted 129-million unique visitors in the United States monthly while MySpace drew fewer.

Yahoo! contended it was the world’s most trafficked internet destination, with 500-million visitors monthly.

Well, it seems that all of this buzz is taking place outside the Philippine webspace as I did a quick search on Technorati and Pinoyblog.com and there is little talk about MySpace grabbing the top spot. I guess it’s a no brainer when considering the fact that Friendster seems to remain king of social networking sites here in the Philippines.

I consulted Google Trends to compare the amount of searches of the keywords ‘MySpace’ and ‘Friendster’ first in the global level for 2006 and I came up with this:

Are we Pinoys the only ones using Friendster nowadays? Then I did the same comparison but this time I told Google Trends to focus only on the searches from the Philippines for the same keywords ‘MySpace’ and ‘Friendster.’ The results were a complete reversal of things:

So again, here in the Philippines, just say social networking sites you will be answered with ‘Friendster’.

I just wonder how the other sites are doing if Friendster will ever loose its foothold in the Philippines.