I just finished reading Barry Schwartz’s book “the paradox of choice; why more is less“.

The author suggests, that the more choices people have the more complicated it becomes for them to make a choice.

The popular series of studies “When choice is demotivating” [downloadable as *.pdf here] speaks for Schwartz’s argumentation.

In one of these studies, the researchers set up a display featuring a line of high-quality jams for customers to taste. If a customer boughta jar she would receive an one dollar coupon. I one condition of the study, the display had a variety of only 6 jams while on another condition there was a set of 24 varieties available.

Although the large array attracted more customers it only convinced the 3% of the customers to actually buy a jar. On the contrary 30% of the customers bought a jar from the small array.

The explanations for the results of this and other similar studies vary:

• a large array of options may discourage consumers because it forces an increase in the effort in making a decision.

• a large array of options reduces the attractiveness of the product.

Barry Schwartz examines the subject of choice by concentrating on 4 major subjects:

1. What drives people to choose

2. How do people choose

3. Why do people suffer from vast options

4. How can people stop suffering from choice

Choosing not to choose

The paradox of choice can be applied to many fields of our life and the virtual world is also included.

The number of blogs and sites which constitute the web is certainly overloading people, which in the end conclude on reading the big hubs and refrain from searching and choosing.

It is a fact, that I also notice in the way I surf the web lately.

I have chosen 3 social sites and a small number of blogs to follow and am no longer interested in searching for new possibilities. I prefer to settle with lesser quality, than striving to find the perfect resources.

I guess I’m what Barry Schwartz describes as a satisficer:

If you’re a satisficer, the number of available options need not have a significant impact on your decision making. When you examine an object and its good enough to meet your standards, you look no further; thus, the countless other available choices become irrelevant.

On the other hand though, there are also the maximizers:

Maximizers need to be assured that every purchase or decision was the best that could be made. Maximizers seek and accept only the best.

Anyway, this subject has drawn my attention lately; I’ve already written a post at pandemicBlog inspired by the book and will return with at least one more.

A series of two posts has been published at pandemiclabs about blog posting.

1. The first one (how to attract more productive comments to your blog) has provoked an interesting discussion and suggestions. From surrealistic arguments on beer (!) by lago to a great tip from Nick about the intensedebate.com service.

2. On the second post about blogging, I argue about the negative effects of daily posts. It is a subject I currently experience first hand, since (as you might have noticed) I’m not posting that often lately.

Nonetheless the subscribers to my blog increase, although (naturally) the traffic has significantly fallen. In short I suggest, that daily posts may increase the traffic of the blog, but the subscribers will come once you don’t clutter their RSS Reader.

One of the first steps every new blogger takes, is to submit her blog in Technorati. It is argued very often, that technorati can really boost the traffic of your blog.

Apart from the fact, that I have never seen any traffic coming from Technorati, I really don’t believe it is a service worth a blogger’s time.

I will not discuss its ugly design and slow interface but will concentrate on more actual reasons. Reasons, that deeply influence the user experience and also disregard fair blog ranking.

Usability issues

Anyone who has navigated in the Technorati page understands what I’m saying.

First of all the categories are not “synchronized”. As the image below shows, the entertainment roll-over category has subcategories such as “main”, “tv”, “Celebrity”, etc. while the entertainment category of the blogs has different subcategories.

Apart from that, administrating your account and blogs is a really hard issue. Lets say you want to ping your blog. The start page of technorati has a box of your blogs on the right giving the user the option to manage them and/or ping them.

But if the user is in his account, there is no ping or manage option - even when she clicks on the blog link itself. (see the above image and the two below) Shouldn’t these options be gathered in one place, or at least available in many?

I have my blog under a directory on my server. The main url (changemod.com) redirects to the directory of the blog (changemod.com/755). It’s something many bloggers do. Why can’t we just merge two domains?

Ranking issues

To be honest, I don’t find Technorati fair. It has a ranking system, based on authority (incoming links to a blog) and number of fans which does not take categories, topics or freshness into account. The authority ranking of Technorati:

• compares completely different blogs (e.g. gossip with technology). You cannot say, that icanhascheezburger is more popular than Smashing Magazine. They are completely different topics and it is like comparing apples with oranges.
• it promotes seniority and not freshness. Since authority and fans are the only ways to see popularity, it is logical that the most old blog will be the most popular. New blogs, do not get fairly promoted in Technorati, even if they increase in popularity faster than the major blogs.

Conclusion

I don’t say, that Technorati is absolutely worthless. It works great as a data source to monitor your reputation. But as a blog aggregator or a traffic-building tool is not our best bet.

This doesn’t mean, that Technorati collects bad information, it just doesn’t show them right. The relation between time investment required and information provided is not for the benefit of the user.

I really stay in awe, that this service remains so successful, without improving itself and I would really like to know why.

I’m really interested to know, what is your experience with Technorati. Do you get any traffic from it? Do you use it as an information aggregator among the other social networks?

Now, that’s why I find the web great! Yesterday I suggested that we should share our RSS Feed and just today a social network called Toluu emerged doing exactly that!
I just read a review of Toluu at ReadWriteWeb and immediately joined in. It is still in private beta, so I’m waiting for my invitation. As the invitation mail says: “When you do get in, you will have 3 invites to use to invite your friends and buddies”.

So, who’s interested?

I’ve been thinking lately a lot about my RSS Feed.  I want it to be in constant flux, steadily changing, showing me new blogs, new ideas, new subjects.

I actually wrote about the RSS Curse a while ago, explaining how we get used and accustomed to our Feed; how we are not welcoming change to our established subscriptions. My suggestion back then, was to delete all subscriptions and start looking for some new ones.

Barry Welford suggested checking the sites submitted by like-minded people in StumbleUpon and Justin Kirstner dropped the idea of implementing and using Yahoo Pipes with the RSS Feed. Great ideas both, but they are time-consuming efforts; that was also one of the problems of deleting the whole feed.

Apart from that, I agree with the opinion, that deleting all your feeds is a harsh measure - maybe necessary, but harsh. So, I started looking for new ways to expand my feed and discover new blogs.

Share your RSS subscriptions

I noticed, that most RSS aggregators have this great function called Export. All you have to do is press Export and the aggregator makes an *.opml list of all your subscriptions. This list can be read by any aggregator.

So, instead of searching new blogs and entries all by yourself, clicking submissions in SU and wondering through Mixx, you can just read the RSS Feed of your friends. This is certainly something missing from the social web; we can follow our friends in almost every social network, but it would be great to follow their subscriptions in their RSS Aggregator. (am I missing something, is there such a network?)

Until such a network comes along, I’m still interested in sharing my subscriptions. So you can download my *.opml list and simply import it in your feed.

I’ve thought about the best way to use this import/export trick:

• You export your own feed and save it in a Folder,
• In this Folder you don’t have only your feed, but also the ones of your friends
• with the import/export function you can change feeds, whenever you feel like it, without actually losing your own.

 How to share

I’ve been trying to find the simplest and fastest way for us to share our feeds.

1. One thought was to put an upload button under this post and everyone could simply upload the file. I don’t know how to do that, so if anyone has an idea, speak up!
2. You send me your *.opml file, I upload it and make a list of all the feeds, of course with a link back to your blog.
3. We start a meme, you write a post in your blog and share your *.opml file there. I then put a link at the bottom of this post, pointing at your article.

I think, that’s a great way of discovering new things; having a constantly growing list of the feeds of your friends, people you trust and have the same interests. Much easier than deleting all your subscriptions and of course much more fun.

It is also interesting to see, how many blogs overlap between these feeds. Are we all reading the same stuff?

Go Share

Go

• write a post in your blog posting your *.opml file or
• send me your *.opml file and I’ll upload it here with a link to your blog   or
• tell me how to put a damn upload button here!!

Let’s share our subscription lists, I’m really interested in reading new blogs. Aren’t you?

Download my feed list.

I just wrote a post at pandemic blog about the role of the avatar. Using pictorial examples, I point out how your popularity in the blogosphere and the social networks you participate, can be significantly increased by the avatar you select.

A more wise, careful selection of your avatar can significantly boost your position in the networks in which you participate and, consequently, the popularity of your blog.

Apart from the reasons why, I also provide the right ways to choose the right avatar. Some examples of eye-catching avatars are given to prove my points.

So if you are interested in more indirect ways to increase your popularity in the blogosphere, check out the post. It can be a good way to start.

Blogs are almost 10 years old. They are probably the first tool, that gave a voice to the wider public. The revolution they brought, started slowly but developed steadily. it hasn’t been long, that almost everyone has the power to express himself/herself and literally contribute to media production.

In these 10 years, blogs have also expanded in a variety of forms:

• Video/Photo- blogs: instead of writing copy, people have used their camera to express themselves.
• AudioBlogs: similarly, people express their thoughts verbally. The iGeneration, subscribes to podcasts and listens to discussions, interviews, books, ideas, disputes, etc.
• MicroBlogs: a relatively new way of blogging, which facilitates the wide use of mobile phones. People follow each other, to see what they can say in 140 characters.
• LiveBlogs: that’s the IRC version of blogging; anyone been online for 10-15 years can see the obvious similarities.

These genres are just a representative example of the possibilities of blogs. But purpose of this post is not to define these categories. Instead, I’m wondering if the blogosphere’s potential is actually exhausted.

Remediating

For anyone blogging actively and daily for more than a couple of months, probably understands what I’m implying.
Bertolt Brecht in the early 1930s was talking about the radio as a communication apparatus; a medium, which people can use not only to listen but also produce and communicate. His vision got realized in the cyberspace and blogging era.
The revolution of the blogosphere was 10 years ago, when it brought the production process to the public. Previously, we were witnessing few producers providing data to many readers; now every reader is a potential producer (what Inke Arns described as ‘small media production‘).

The technologies and genres developed after that explosion are not revolutionary anymore. They just apply the revolution to new fields (video, audio, mobile, etc.).
What audio-, video-, audio-, micro-, live-blogs in the end bring is the practices of old media to the immersive environment of the blogosphere. The similarities of blogs to newspapers, videoblogs to television, audioblogs to radio are more than obvious.

Are blogs really a new medium, which will change the way we perceive media production? I believe it is. The problem is again comfort and convention. Mass media production is so deeply embedded in our flesh, that we take it for granted and continue producing with the same old tactics.

Redefining

So is there a way to redefine the blogging process and take advantage of its full potential? In order to re-revolutionize the blogosphere, we should keep some important aspects in mind, aspects, that seem natural to us but we usually forget about them:

1. Communication. We don’t write content for passive users to read, but for active producers to discuss.
2. Connection. The six degrees theory is very insightful, but in the blogosphere people seem to be more connected than in any other network.
3. Combination. There are thousands of tools that can be implemented in a blog. It is our job to study their applications - and hopefully find new ones.
4. Exploration. We should not only explore the blogosphere for new, insightful voices, but also the topics. Blogging is a powerful tool, we shouldn’t use it only to write about making money online.

Conclusion

Redefining the blogosphere and providing something honest, intriguing and revolutionary is certainly not a simple process. I cannot provide a step-by-step guide on doing something radical with this medium; but instead of thinking about our next post, its content and its subject, we should also think about the medium.

Is it possible to use blogs in a completely new way? How can we expand the blogging experience?
I’m interested to see if you are using or thinking about using different tools to evolve your blog.

The way Robert Scoble used Twitter to get questions of the public and directly pose them in the Davos meeting is a great combination of the existing tools and an example we should all get inspired from.