To mark 1000 posts on this blog, I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learned since post #1.

UPDATE: Now available in German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Portuguese.

UPDATE 2: I’ll be posting further ’1000 things’ via Twitter – you can find them with this search or this RSS feed.

1. Blogging is not ‘writing a blog’. Blogging is linking and commenting. Any writing is a bonus.
2. Regular posting is important…
3. But quality posting is even more important. Spending a week or more on a single post can be one of the most important things you ever do.
4. First knowledge, then analysis, then ideas.
5. A picture is worth a thousand words. More importantly, a picture is worth a thousand words in two hundred countries. The fact that readers don’t need to speak English to understand what you’re communicating can make a word-free post – or at least one with a good image – your most successful one.
6. For similar reasons, video works. It may not be search engine-friendly, but if people can embed it the word is more likely to spread.
7. When video meets conversation, good stuff can happen.
8. Everyone looks ugly on video. Get over it.
9. Online video is not online TV
10. Podcasts work better when there’s more than one of you
11. It takes time. Sometimes years. Persistence counts.
12. Being early matters
13. A big idea travels far
14. Pingback/trackback is a wonderful thing, a form of distribution news websites are still struggling to match. What can be more interesting than someone who is interested in you?
15. Cliques and old boys’ networks exist in the blogosphere too
16. We are too fucking Anglo-American
17. Language is a massive barrier (but having multilingual friends helps – see updates at top of post)
    
18. BASIC principles matter
19. Social bookmarking makes researching a post much easier
20. The best reason to blog is not to show everyone else what you know, but to find out what everyone else knows
21. RSS is one of the most undervalued technologies in the world. Once you understand what to do with it, you can bring the world to your desktop, your mobile, and your blog, and vice versa.
22. A blog doesn’t open doors for you, it just gives you the idea to try knocking.
23. When people Google you, it saves a lot of time explaining things.
24. Blogs are just one part of a social media ecology. Half the stuff that used to go on this blog now goes on Twitter; more goes on Delicious; and some on Flickr and on Seesmic.
25. Don’t get me started on FriendFeed, Plurk, Jaiku, etc.
26. Humour is effective, but not everyone will get it
27. I seem to like linking on verbs
28. Streaming live video from your mobile is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it
29. Streaming live video from your mobile uses up your battery quickly
30. Web browsing on your mobile also uses up your battery quickly
31. If you’re moblogging an event, bring a power lead, an extension lead – and a spare phone
32. The N95 kicks iPhone‘s ass
33. (But I’m prepared to be persuaded otherwise)
34. WordPress plugins are addictive
35. Firefox extensions are addictive
36. Signing up for beta web services is addictive
37. I don’t really care about Twitterspam
38. A simple, fun idea can be around the world in minutes
39. If you want to campaign against something, you already have the technology
40. If you want a service, create it yourself
41. Google is the biggest popularity contest in the world
42. When you realise you don’t have a readership – you have a community – then you also realise you can mobilise, and get things done.
43. Technology is easy; community is hard
44. Meeting in person is important: I read blogs by people I’ve met much more often than those I haven’t
45. Geography still matters
46. Birmingham has a lot of bloggers
47. Liveblogging and Twitter-blogging are not the same thing
48. Privacy is a fluid concept: just because it’s in the public domain doesn’t mean it’s not private
49. WordPress.com is better than Blogger
50. WordPress.org is better than WordPress.com (see Thing 34)
51. Content is not king.
52. Conversation is king.
53. Conversation is the kingdom.
54. We shouldn’t try to be the media
55. If someone is sending you a press release about something, you shouldn’t blog about it
56. As a journalist, blogging is a good way to rediscover the joy of journalism
57. Blogging is also a great way to rediscover how great having a good editor can be
58. Do what you do best and link to the rest
59. Blogs aren’t worth dying for. That’s what family is for.
60. Setting yourself a maximum number of posts per day is a good idea
61. Setting yourself a set time to look at your RSS subs every day is also a good idea
62. If you rely on third party services, prepare for the rug to be pulled from under your feet
63. If you publish the comments widget high up on your blog, more people comment
64. A blog without a comments facility is broken
65. A site that has comments, but edits or buries them, is not just broken, it’s malevolent.
66. Leave posts open ended if you want people to comment
67. Leave a post at the top of your site for more than a day if you want people to comment
68. Being transparent about your sources is not only good journalism, it’s good distribution.
69. The search engine optimisation industry is the new snake oil. I can tell you all you need to know about SEO in five minutes
70. Although it might take me another five hours to answer the resulting questions
71. If you expect to make lots of money from blogging, you are either naive, stupid, or Robert Scoble.
72. If you expect to make lots of money from blogging, don’t expect to make it through advertising
73. Being read by a few, key, people can be worth more, professionally, than having lots of visitors
74. Being frequently linked to can be worth more, commercially, than having lots of visitors
75. Beware advertisers bearing text-based gifts, or generous offerings of ‘free’ articles. Understand linkspam
76. Be aware that you have an ego
77. Be aware that everyone else has an ego
78. Unconferences are great
79. There’s only so much talking you can do. Sometimes you have to do something.
80. There should be more money available to do something
81. Ideas aren’t a problem. Knowing which ones to pursue is
82. Only 10% of Americans read blogs
83. But 26% of Americans write blogs
84. How does that work?
85. Blogs are far more ethnically representative than mainstream media
86. People may not trust the print and broadcast media, but they trust online news even less
87. The 1-9-90 rule
88. Rushing off a blog entry just before bed is a bad idea
89. Rushing off a blog entry hours before your wife goes into labour is not a good idea either
90. Some news travels faster than an aftershock
91. People don’t need managers to organise them – just connections
92. When I can record a video comment straight from my mobile phone, I’ll be a happy man
93. Don’t underestimate the power of corporatisation
94. Don’t underestimate the power of big corporations
95. Don’t underestimate the power of governments
96. If, after all this, we have to go back to living in caves and eating rats, it’ll be a real shame
97. Lists have become the biggest cliche in blogging and the most shameless tactic for getting to the top of delicious/digg/reddit.
98. But people still read them.
99. Have you bookmarked this yet, by the way?

1000. I can’t count.

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Yahoo! have released a family of Reputation patterns:

“They don’t tell you how to lay out a page or where to put an interactive widget. Instead, they address how to design a reputation system for your social software.”

Why is this important? The patterns are a wonderful resource for any news organisation looking to plan a community element in which reputation performs a role. In my experience, reputation systems are pretty important in encouraging users to keep coming back to your online community – you could argue, for instance, that the number of friends in Facebook or followers in Twitter is one simple example. Plurk more explicitly uses ‘karma’, as does (in a much better way) Slashdot (for more on Slashdot and karma systems I thoroughly recommend Gatewatching by Axel Bruns).

Yahoo say these are “the first of several collections of social-design related patterns that we’re working on,” so worth keeping an eye on what comes next.

To those who haven’t been caught up in the fuss, Plurk is a new microblogging service and rival to Twitter. Users are invited to post about what they’re doing using one of 15 verb prefixes, including ‘loves’, ‘is’, ‘thinks’ and ‘shares’. Indeed, it has found itself so successful among disenchanted Twitterati that Plurk has decided to introduce 15 new verb options. These are:

1. smokes - e.g. “ryanlim smokes another wimpy rollup”. In an attempt to generate revenue, users will be charged a 15% tax on every smoke-Plurk. However, due to health and safety regulations they will not be able to smoke-Plurk indoors.
2. shouts - for users who accidentally leave caps lock on. e.g. “ryanlim shouts GOING HOME NOW”.
3. lies - for double-bluffing Plurk users.
4. lurks - for users who are only there to read other Plurks. Lurk-Plurks are invisible.
5. waffles - for users who, even with a 140 character limit, still manage to talk too much.
6. dies - for users who smoke-Plurk 60 times a day.
7. rhymes - for hip hop artists, poets and drunkards.
8. impersonates - for identity thieves.
9. mutters - for users who really don’t want to be heard. mutter-Plurks disappear after two seconds.
10. reincarnates - depending on a user’s karma score, they may be reincarnated as follows:
    • 0.00 to 21.00: a bee
    • 21.00 to 41.00: a big bee
    • 41.00 to 61.00: a wasp
    • 61.00 to 81.00: a small mammal
    • 81.00 to 100.00: a drummer in a tribute band
11. steals - Plurk “warns users that valuables are left on Plurk at their own risk”.
12. denies - for users who have been accused of steal-Plurking and Plurk-lying.
13. shags - Plurk-porn is a further business model being considered by the founders, who promise shag-Plurks will be done tastefully and with great lighting.
14. gloats - for users with inordinately high karma scores
15. leaves - for Plurkers who have decided one Twitter service is enough.

Paul Bradshaw