The mind bloggles

An interesting trend we noticed over the last short while is that tech bloggers have most of their traffic during the week, many drop dramatically over the weekend. On the other, the 'social' bloggers (people who blog about everyday life) tend to maintain their readership pretty evenly over the week including weekends. It makes sense when you think about, for many, blog reading is part of their profession and routinely done during work hours while catching up socially is like brushing teeth, you kinda want to do it every day. Which led us to conclude that some A-listers when dissected on a daily basis actually become B-listers on a weekend! As we reach out to more communities, it is very apparent that it's a case of different strokes for different folks. There is no one formula and we feel like privilege observers of a digital/social phenomenon we call blogging, dare I say, like hitchhikers in the Blogosphere. Quite mind-bloggling...er mind-boggling or maybe I did mean the former.

I read Mark Evan's (tongue-in-cheek...at least I hope it was) comment about Web 2.0 now truly done. That would be shame, Tealeaf and I just got started! But the scenario is not unique and can be found in every facet of life. It is in the human gene to create and invent. If it weren't for the 1,000 failures, how would we find the one that succeeds. Start-ups in general (not just Web 2.0) are not discrete events or singularities, they are hotspots in the technology continuum. Each one that comes after learns from the one before. Life has its seasons, why should technology be different. My only problem with it all is that we too often can't discern value from hype and sometimes religeously following the A-listers, we perpetuate the emperor's new clothes folly.

I do have a lot of respect for all those who tried and failed. It takes guts, talent and dedication to work long days with little return and huge sacrifices. Whether you believe they were building to flip or too naive, these folks deserve our respect, because it's not for the money. Deep down, I think they do want to make a difference. They do want to leave a legacy. In our modern times, we judge success by the dollar sign rather than whether a contribution was made that took us down the technology yellow brick road one more step.

The question is...has Elvis 2.0 really left the building?

Sidenote: If you ever wanted to justify making every computer wireless enabled, here's a good one. Over the weekend, my home network was hit by lightning, not a power surge as one would expected but this one came through our cable system. It succeeded in demolishing my cable modem, 2 routers, one computer and crippled another. My notebook which was wirelessly connected at the time was spared an early demise. My trip to Best Buy was like a reunion as I reconnected with others also looking for network cards. So much for all power surge protectors I installed a while back, unfortunately, I left the backdoor open.