Bagging the Post (continued)

After writing the bagging the post thing a couple weeks ago, I felt better and started blogging with enthusiasm again.

Then I did the Venture Fratricide post and took a pretty good beating for that one.

Here's the problem. I can't put out fully baked posts every day without spending a huge amount of time editing them. I don't want to do that. And blogging is supposed to be conversational anyway.

So a couple weeks ago, I was writing half baked posts and after reading them, I was bagging them.

Then after some encouragement, I went back to posting the half baked thoughts.

I took so much heat with that approach that I got an email from my friendly lawyer.

Michael Parekh said this in his comments to the Venture Fratricide piece:

Slow blog day, Fred?  or do you just like poking the bee hive with a stick?

I do like to poke the bee hive with a stick.

That's what keeps me blogging.

So when I do that, please see it as that and nothing more. 

And take it as a conversation starter. 

I think we'll all benefit more from that approach.

Comments

[Jason]

I've tossed some half-baked idea out and out *there* and had the same experience.

Once your blog reaches a certain level of a popularity--which your blog has--you have a ton of folks on it. Some of those folks don't get that this is a casual medium and many of them don't know you. Some of them will hate you or what you stand for and just go off on anything you say--just like a message board. This is your comment section so if someone it just here to attack everything you say in an agressive way I would ding them and tell them to do it on their own blog.

Your a VC and some people hate capitalists/VCs... so they are gonna FISK/FLAME you no matter what you write. I'm an capitalist/entrepreneur who's trying to make a business out of blogs... some folks really hate that.

When I posted my comments I specifically took the time to say I gave you the benefit of the doubt and looked into some of the reasons I thought you would poke the beehive (i.e. the low-class Urban Fetch rip off of Kozmo).

I say keep the posts coming.... I like hearing the raw/unfinished/risky stuff.

[One of the many Simons]

Fred,

Even those infrequent times when your ideas are half baked or wrong they do a tremendous amount of good in the sense that they force us to reexamine our premises and articulate our thoughts.

The impact of your blog both in promoting best practices among venture capitalists and demystifying the venture capital process for entrepreneurs is unquantifiable.

Keep on bloggin'

[Mike D.]

I think the first thing you need to do is change your concept of what it means to "follow a blog". I ran a blog a few years ago and it lasted about two months. Why? Because I simply didn't want the burden of updating it with fresh content every day or two. I hated the thought of people coming back to my home page several times in one week and seeing nothing new. Nobody used RSS back then so this was a legitimate concern.

Fast forward three years and now anyone who is at all serious about following blogs uses a news aggregator to receive notification of new blog entries. I can now run my blog again and go a month without posting if need be. Even a year really, if it came down to that. Once I have something new to say, it shows up in everyone's newsreader and that's that.

And so, my suggestion to you is not to worry about "posting daily". You aren't a full-time blogger. Neither am I. We are people with day jobs who happen to have blogworthy stuff to post from time-to-time. Why force it by posting things simply for the sake of posting them? I'm sure most readers of this site would appreciate 1-2 "fully baked" posts per week over the alternative.

And yes, I know that some people still visit your site in the traditional way (without RSS notification), but these people will catch on eventually. I've even thought of displaying a "how about trying a newsreader" message to people to come to my front page without a referring hit from their aggregator.

[jackson]

I beleive you can tell where I'm standing on this, but I wanted to go on record and say I disagree with Mike D, I want daily posts, multiple posts, about anything at all, baked or tar-tar, I don't care, just keep me entertained, please. Life isn't all serious business, and your blog should follow suit.
I'm a producer of business metteings, do I read blogs about meeting planning - no. I'm also a proprietor of a music studio, do I read muso-tech bogs? Sometimes. The blogs I read are the ones who entertian me, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

[Mike D.]

Jackson: That sort of thinking works fine when people don't have a lot to read. I'm not sure how many feeds you subscribe to but if it's under 30 or so, I understand where you're coming from. Once the number of feeds you subscribe to creeps up though (I'm at around 90 right now), the signal-to-noise ratio becomes much more important. For instance, I'm at the point now where if I get about 5 notifications of new content in a row from somebody and all of them are completely irrelevant, I'll either unsubscribe, or put them in my "quarantine" folder in Bloglines.

Have most people reached this point yet where S-to-N really matters so much? Probably not, as evidenced by your desired "just to be entertained". But as people get more comfortable with RSS and start following more sources, it will become more and more of an issue.

One strategy that I've seen used which I really like is to offer two feeds: one for ALL posts and one for "on-topic" fully-baked posts. That way, the author is free to publish willy-nilly and the user can filter those posts out accordingly.

Another thing I do on my blog is that I build up a small collection of "not quite blogworthy" stuff every month and just do a monthly post containing all of those items. Helps cut down the notifications.

[jackson]

Wow! Good luck Mike, personally I don't think I'll ever see the day when I subscribe to more than 5 blogs, much less ninety. I see your point, but why should bloggers curtail to your time constraints? I read it as you asking folks to slow down so you can catch up. I will never have the time to read that much online content. I'm trying to keep my life off the box as much as possible.

[Mike D.]

Jackson: Hmm, ok, well if you don't subscribe to 5 blogs, you probably aren't really "subscribed" at all then right? If it's only 5 blogs you follow, you're not likely to need a news aggregator. Better to just visit this front page whenever the urge hits you.

What I'm getting at is that that's sort of the 1990s way of doing things: have a mental collection of 5-10 sites you check regularly and that's it. But as people are becoming less interested in checking *sites* and more interested in checking *sources*, that's sort of where RSS begins to really take over. You can all of a sudden keep track of exactly the people you want to read, instead of just taking whatever MSNBC.com wants to throw at you on any given day.

I'd say my advice to Fred is less about slowing down so I can catch up and more about only notifying me about important and thoughtful things he might have to say (of which there are many). The less blogs you follow, the higher your tolerance will be for the "I just walked my dog" type of posts. But as soon as your number of feeds creeps up, that noise becomes a big detractor. And hey, if you think 90 feeds is a lot, talk to Robert Scoble! He's at around 2000 I believe.

[Mike D.]

On another note, I find it interesting to see Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" sidebar. Woop woop!

[jackson]

Once again I'm a good ten years behind, but hey, I'M BUSY!