March 31, 2004
emptier
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books. gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
We also have a daily cartoon newsletter that makes a lot of people happy.
If you just want to say ‘Hello’, feel free to email me, anytime.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
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Archive for March, 2004
ipod speakers
“Apple is a fashion company.“
Thus spake Seth Godin. Again, the guy’s got a knack for brevity. Wonderful.
Fred Wilson loves Apple too, even if he uses Windows far more often.
I love Apple. You love Apple. Everybody loves Apple. I wish corporations would come up with more things to love besides Apple and the new VW Beetle. Gets irritating loving the same things as everybody else all the time.
personal faves
In case you haven’t spotted it yet, a reminder:
On the top of the sidebar, in the “Basic” section you’ll see a link for my “personal faves”, which has a dozen or so of my sentimental favorite cartoons.
There I’ve also written a few paras on the personal story behind each cartoon. I’ve been told it’s an OK read…
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back of the taxi
One of my favorite early ones. Laminated. February 1998, NYNY.
Funny. It was drawn on the back of this business card a certain girl gave me. She and I never saw each other again after that evening, in spite of what transpired in the back of the taxi.
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congrats hazel & dave
David Mackenzie (one of my best friends and director of Young Adam) and his partner, Hazel had their first baby arrive this morning at 9.30am.
A daughter. 33 hours of labor. Ouch.
All 3 are fine and healthy. Hooray!
OK, I’m going off to have a weepie…
2 million
Technorati just passed the 2 million mark a few minutes ago. That is a good thing, for reasons I’ve stated before:
“… if this curve continues for another year or two the blogosphere will have the population of Dallas or Chicago, and perhaps the population of New York or LA a year or two after that. Not a bad demographic.”
I wrote that 10 days ago, when it passed the 1.9 million mark. Right now Technorati is growing by 10,000 blogs a day. TEN THOUSAND.
Staggering.
March 29, 2004
technorati
Besides my readers, my fave thing on the web is Technorati.
I’m playing around with this idea I call “the death of traffic”. Traffic was how we measured website success back in the bad ol’ dotcom days.
“We got a million hits in November!“
Eh. Gapingvoid’s gotten a million hits in 24 hours. It’s no big deal. It’s called a “spike”- people come, but then they leave just as quickly.
For the vast majority of us bloggers, what’s far more important long-term is what I call “hum”. To pass on your link from one person to another requires energy. The more often this happens, the more energy. The more energy, the louder the hum.
And that’s what Technorati is good at measuring. “Hum”.
Technorati allows you to see who is linking to your blog right now. It gives you as good a snapshot of who’s digging your work at this moment in time– who’s reading your site, and who’s reading their sites. It gives you a real-time quality assessment of your audience.
“Quality” is more important than quantity. As a blogger, you don’t need thousands of visitors to validate what you’re doing. You just need one or two of the right kind of visitor.
What is the “right kind”? That depends on your own agenda. For me, an advertising hack, the right kind is the person who will offer me a job one day.
And of course, it also does the same for sites similar to your own. Makes it easier to evaluate how well you’re faring compared to them, within a certain “space” etc.
Measure your blog by size alone, and you will fail. Measure it by “hum” and you are more likely to succeed. Technorati allows you to do this better than any other tool out there, as far as I know.
Hum, hum, wonderful hum…
Comments Off simplicity
A nice wee rant on the virtues of simplicity from Outsidethefence.
Once, when Lincoln signed a document, as he usually did, “A. Lincoln,” some asshat at his side said, “Shouldn’t you add, “President of the United States?“
Lincoln replied, “I don’t think I need to say, ‘this is a horse.’”
Churchill, early in the war, sent a memo to his top commanders asking them to deliver to him that same afternoon, on one side of standard sheet of paper, their plans for prosecuting the war in Europe.
The Gettysburg Address is Ten Sentences.
I have this same problem trying to explain blogging to people. Simplicity scares people. We’re too used to being told what to do, think and feel by what my father calls “The Clever Little Pricks”.
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laptop
(Loic Le Meur, European head of Six Apart (The company that owns blogging software Movable Type, Typepad etc) blogged this one yesterday. Thanks, Loic!)
March 28, 2004
pj carney’s
Another early laminated one. Drawn at PJ Carney’s, an Irish pub on 7th & 57th, NYNY. February ’98.
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usual reminders
1. The best way to support this site is to buy a box of blogcards.
2. I want to spend more time in New York. Looking for advertising work.
3. You can syndicate the site via RSS.
4. Yes, the originals are for sale.
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blog millionaire
(Diet Coke & Lime website here)
As Bill Hobbs and I mentioned before, Blogads just signed their first big corporate account– Time Warner’s Roadrunner high-speed internet service. I think the story is huge– I am genuinely surprised more people aren’t talking about it.
As business models, the advantage Blogads has over say, Gawker Media or Weblogs Inc is lower overheads. It doesn’t have to pay cash for original content (Gawker) or enter into deeply involved equity-sharing partnerships (WeblogsInc).
Basically, what Blogads does is so much simpler, easier and cheaper for all parties concerned.
I also think Blogads delivers the advertiser’s message at a much deeper, diverse, non-mainstream level than any big website. This increases the effectiveness. Once Blogads’ clients witness this effectiveness work on their own products, word will spread through the corporate world like wildfire.
Which is why I think Blogads is the most under-reported media story I’ve ever come across. Then again I’m not surprised– media journalists are paid to come up with stories that are “big & sexy”. Gawker was big & sexy for a while, so the hacks typed away like dervishes. Blogads beginnings were more low-key. A harder story to pitch to an editor.
My prediction: Henry Copeland will be the first blog millionaire. You heard it here first.
March 27, 2004
old site
Don’t forget to check out my old site. It’s still there– over 400 drawings. The link is on the side bar, marked “old site” in the “Basic” section.
It was built before I discovered blogs.
Comments Off front & back
(Another early one: front & back of the same drawing. Laminated. New York, 14 January, ’98)
This was drawn in a very crowded bar, very late at night. I think it shows.
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corner bistro
(Drawing on Corner Bistro matchbook cover– eventually torn off and laminated on blank business card. New York, August ’98)
March 26, 2004
why content is free on the web
The price of information has not only gone into free fall in the last few years, it is still in free fall now, it will continue to fall long before it hits bottom, and when it does whole categories of currently lucrative businesses will be either transfigured unrecognizably or completely wiped out, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Certainly that’s true with large advertising agencies. It’s not that their stock prices will plummet overnight. It’s more of a “death by a thousand cuts” process. A layoff here, a layoff there. Senior people getting shafted, juniors working longer hours etc. Clients demanding lower fees. Working weekends becoming more the norm.
This is not a bad, post-9/11 patch we’re seeing.This is permanent meltdown.
Comments Off amy langfield uses blogcards
Amy Langfield says: “Get your own Blogcards to increase your powerful geek points in the blogosphere.“
Heh. Thanks, Amy.
blogging is amazing
1. You’re sitting at the the bar, getting buzzed on caffeine.
2. You doodle something on the back of a busines card.
3. When you get home later you upload the image onto your website. Takes all of 2 minutes. Costs practically nothing.
4. Within hours hundreds, sometimes thousands of people all over the world are seeing it. USA, France, UK, Japan, Estonia, Brazil, Portugal etc etc
5. Well, I think it’s amazing, anyway.
UPDATE: And SPAIN. Never forget SPAIN, or risk suffering the fury of a certain woman’s scorn.
“making blogs a business”
Jeff Jarvis is giving a talk at Bloggercon (the big annual blogging conference at Harvard) on “making blogs a business”. If this is an area that piques your interest at all, please, please, you must click on this link.
Steve Hall from Adrants makes an excellent point in the comments:
It’s not all about using a blog to make money though. A blog can also be a representation of a company’s intellectual capital through “expert opinion” posts. So many corporate sites are flat and without any redeeming information value. Blogs can fill a gap here.
Henry Copeland from Blogads.com does likewise:
“Potential business”… why the future tense? Blogs need PR? What better PR than having 200 going on 200,000 of America’s smartest writers mentioning blog advertising to their friends, neighbors and co-workers?A rising tide of advertisers is placing ads on a network of the best and brightest — bloggers like Tim Blair, Markos Moulitsas, Atrios, Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, Daniel Drezner, Kevin Drum, Daniel Drezner and hundreds of others — through blogads.com.
Who wouldn’t want to see these infopreneurs succeed and call their own shots? And who wouldn’t want to shake the opinion epicenter?
Blogs have already run more ads this year for different political campaigns and causes than the Washington Post or CNN or Advance.net. Blogads are THE STANDARD for online political advertising.
Folks on the street may not realize it yet — particularly if they don’t read the WSJ or MediaPost or NYSun or Minneapolis Star Tribune or Raleigh Observer — but blog business is Here and Now.
My two cents: the blogosphere is ablaze with gossip about Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis. Frankly, I think Henry’s Blogads is a much bigger story.
UPDATE: Speaking of, Nick Denton will be moderating a Bloggercon panel to do with Clay Shirky’s Power Law. Thanks for the tip, Cynthia.
young adam receives NC-17 rating
Just talked to Dave Mackenzie…
Young Adam has received an NC-17 rating for its US release (April 16th). As Dave told me, “basically, the Yanks consider it porn.“
Yeah, well, after seeing what Tilda Swinton is capable of as an actress, I’m not really surpised.
Heh. Obi Wan Kenobi in a porn flick.
(pic of Dave directing the Young Adam shoot)
Comments Off March 25, 2004
the sex & cash theory
(Early bizcard drawing. Laminated. New York, August ’98)
The Sex & Cash Theory: From“How To Be Creative”:
The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the assignment covers both bases, but not often.
A good example is Phil, a NY photographer friend of mine. He does really wild stuff for the indie magazines– it pays nothing, but it allows him to build his portfolio. Then he’ll go off and shoot some catalogues for a while. Nothing too exciting, but it pays the bills.
Another example is somebody like Martin Amis. He writes “serious” novels, but he has to supplement his income by writing the occasional newspaper article for the London papers (novel royalties are bloody pathetic– even bestsellers like Amis aren’t immune).
Or actors. One year Travolta will be in an ultra-hip flick like Pulp Fiction (“Sex”), the next he’ll be in some dumb spy thriller (“Cash”).
It’s balancing the need to make a good living while still maintaining one’s credibility. My M.O. is gapingvoid (“Sex”), coupled with writing advertising (“Cash”).
I’m thinking about the young writer who has to wait tables to pay the bills, in spite of her writing appearing in all the cool literary magazines.… who dreams of one day of not having her life divided so harshly.
Well, over time the “harshly” bit might go away, but not the “divided”. As soon as you accept this, for some reason your career starts moving ahead faster. I don’t know why this happens. It’s the people who refuse to cleave their lives this way– who just want to start Day One by quitting their current crappy job and moving straight on over to best-selling author. Well, they never make it.
Anyway, it’s called “The Sex & Cash Theory”. Keep it under your pillow.
