December 2, 2005
the porn metaphor
The good news is, Technorati, my favorite blogosphere-monitoring service seems to be working much better than in the past. Whatever bug they had seems to have been fixed.
The bad news is, my Technorati rankings have been taking a pasting ever since. Down from around 100 a month ago, to around 175 today.
It’s gapingvoid’s first real downward Technorati trend since I first started paying attention, three years ago. What do I think?
1. There are a lot of great blogs out there. Thousands and thousands of them. To get into the Top 1000 is hard enough, let alone the Top 100.
2. Metrics don’t really matter. What matters is your network, your readers, the quality of your writing etc etc. It’s an easy thing to forget, once you first start seeing your traffic exploding and the lucrative consulting offers start landing in your inbox.
3. My interests have evolved somewhat this year, away from cartooning and blogging, and into other areas i.e wine and suits. Some of my readers were not impressed and have quite rightly taken their “attention dollars” elsewhere.
We bloggers are very fond of the “conversation” metaphor. I’m starting to like the “porn” metaphor better. Rock on.
[UPDATE:] gapingvoid already has the No. Two Google rank for “business porn”. Rock on.
Hi Hugh,
Long time — hope you’re well. I’ll bite:
a. Metrics don’t matter — go for quality of relationships not whoredom.
b. Some people have left because you are an advertising channel.
c. Porn is bad, dare I say “wrong”? This is just one more way in which you seem to be thinking yor way back into trad advertising. Porn is for sad lonely jerk-offs. It is fake, manipulative and de-humanising. Not a good metaphor at all.
BTW — I was staying just off Madison Avenue yesterday and it’s quite nice
Hope you’re well — if you fancy a pre-Xmas drink or lunch down here then let me know.
“It is fake, manipulative and de-humanising.” I agree. Which is why it’s absolutely everywhere.
Also yeah, I have to watch that “trad advertising” stuff. Easy to get caught up in it… especially as it’s a subject I am genuinely interested in.
Don’t worry, if you google “Gaping Void” then your “business porn” link comes to the top …
Porn, like music, or any other expression — reflects the viewer as much as the artist. If you see depictions of explicit sexuality as inhuman, fake and manipulative that says something about your outlook. Some porn, is truly horrible but to use porn — which is impossible to define — as a catch-all phrase for all that’s bad is simplistic.
Unless you’ve seen a good deal of it how can you pass judgement anyway? If you have, does that cast you as a ‘sad lonely jerk-off’ too?
Unlike many I’ve worked on Madison Ave., in movies, in publishing and in porn (and continue to do so) — I know from experience that porn is enjoyed by many beautiful single women (as is big budget sci-fi) and that sad-lonely-jerk-off’s enjoy both entertainments as well.
I call foul and will happily continue this debate over a drink in NY, London or LA at leisure.