BoomerNation/VOX

Just wanted to let some of my terrific VOX neighbors know that getting to know most of you [as much as that's possible on this kind of a venue], has been an absolute delight, unquestionably the very best part of the time I've invested on this site. But after looking forward to helping VOX grow [word of mouth] and doing everything I could to support my neighbors, with what I've personally observed/discovered and then discussed this past week with friends and colleagues, my postings here on BoomerNation will probably not be as frequent as they have been.

I'm not yet saying goodbye, but until I see some genuine changes, I am no longer totally invested in the VOX concept.

a very warped, 30-something Manhattan-based friend of Mr. & Mrs. boomr.

It's an old one, but what does success mean at any age?

At age 4 success is . . . . not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 16 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 20 success is . . . having sex.
At age 35 success is . . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 60 success is . . . having sex.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.

Tosca, the mother of this baby Polar Bear named Knut at The Berlin Zoo, has apparently rejected the newborn cub and zoo officials must now feed Knut by hand.

How friggin' cute is this cub.

Knut - Baby Polar Bear rejected by mother

Knut - Baby Polar Bear rejected by mother

After everything that happened this past week re our discussion here about how VOX is or is not taking care of its members, comes this news report today out of Davos, Switzerland and The World Economic Forum, from Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube.

From The Associated Press:

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) - Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, said Saturday that his wildly successful site will start sharing revenue with its millions of users.

Hurley said one of the major proposed innovations is a way to allow users to be paid for content.

. . . "We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users," Hurley said. "So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up."

Nice concept.

Here's a news item that almost slipped under the radar.

I'm also warning you that this is a terrible, horrible and very sad event but one which needs to be featured for obvious reasons.

From The Associated Press:

ATLANTA (AP) -- Two teenagers accused of duct-taping a puppy's snout and paws and cooking the animal alive in an oven pleaded guilty Friday to animal cruelty and other offenses.

Prosecutors said Joshua Moulder, 17, and his brother, Justin, 19, broke into a newly refurbished community center, where they tortured and killed the 3-month-old puppy, damaged computers, broke glass and splattered paint on the walls.

The brothers then brought neighborhood children to see the dead puppy and threatened to kill them if they reported it, prosecutors said.

Can you believe that?

You do have to wonder what kind of a family life these two brothers came from.

My original intent and objective in the post, "Is VOX hurting the community dynamic and other assorted flavors?" was to look at how VOX may or may not be negatively impacting we members through some of their strategic decision-making and rules that seemed designed more for their derived benefit than ours. But I think some commenters may have lost sight of the fact that I too love VOX for the community that it has brought together. Check my archives, I have effusively smothered VOX in kudo kisses.

But rather than continue going back and forth with any more of these discussions that are really nothing more than sincere personal reflections and opinions on what VOX means to each of us, how it meets whatever it is that we each need, and since there is really no wrong or right answer, we're now pretty much done with that discussion, and I sincerely thank every person who contributed their povs.

But let's move on to something even more constructive.

Since my overriding objective is to actually help VOX come closer to being all things to all people, I want to do a study on VOX, in VOX about the VOX we all seem to care so much about. So I've written down my original methodology, which must always be fluid since you cannot predict the new directions you may be pointed to go, and I would also like two VOX members to contribute their opinions, advice and analysis both during and just before publication based upon the facts and observations discovered.

Sort of like The 9/11 Commission. ;-)

Now, I already have at least two VOX members in mind whom I think would make outstanding contributors and be very discreetly silent [hint] during the study. But let me know privately privately privately by this Sunday night @ midnight Eastern if you're interested as well, through a VOX Private Message, and maybe we'll have to put the names into a hat or something. We'll see.

Anyway, let's have some productive fun with this.

Just before I posted my response to the comments on the post immediately below, I watched an old "Starsky & Hutch" episode from January 1976 on AOL.

John Ritter was playing an Armored Car driver unhappily forced into helping others rob it, and I looked to IMDB as to whether this was his last guest appearance on any show just before he began doing "Three's Company."

That seemed to be the case.

But having enjoyed cop shows like "Law & Order" and "CSI" since then, looking at the desks, their communications systems, their professional interactions, even their dialogue on "Starsky & Hutch," what back then seemed to be so cutting edge and so absolutely cool . . . now looked so outdated as to be almost downright embarrassing.

I nonetheless enjoyed watching every minute, oh that era when I was but so young.

[Cue Roy Clark singing "Yesterday, When I Was Young," break out the Kleenex and have a tall one.]

UPDATE: I began this post @ 10:20 p.m., Wednesday evening, I see it's now 2.56 a.m. Thursday morning, and this has obviously turned out to be a much longer effort than I originally expected to expend. I do warn you that this is also a longer post than usual, but I also hope it's still an easy and fun read and gives you some food for thought as well. And remember, what's below are only my opinions, analyses, interpretations and experience, with maybe some feelings thrown in, nothing more.

* * * * * * * * *

Well, this has been a mucho busy day for the boomr, and tonight I was hoping to just relax with my wife on a night out. But then I remembered promising to publish my thoughts about this VOX system and how it may or may not affect us all, so we actually cut the evening short and I am now reconstructing my thoughts and notes from last night, because some revisions were needed.

First up, I want to thank all of my VOX neighbors who posted comments on this, and who, once again, were nice enough to contribute their thoughts and always keep vigorous and enlightened discussions going.

Now, let me tell you what my VOX Neighbor Irma said that both changed my opinion matrix and added fuel to the fires of frustration:

I'm posting as often as ever, although I have to admit, I post to groups more, to private groups as well. I've also been posting slightly more to friends only.

Since I never once considered posting on BoomerNation/VOX for any other reason but public consumption, as an entirely open discussion that encourages return dialogue, Irma's answer gave me more argument ammunition than I originally had, but as I said, it also provided significantly more frustration with the counter-productive rules and capabilities of blogging on VOX.

And yes, I actually did forget those private options of posting only to friends or family or now to groups, even though I do see the drop-down list of publishing choices with every post I publish.

What can I say, the occasional brain fart.

So let's now temporarily park what Irma said, and allow me to go back to the basics of my original thoughts and then weave it all into a matrix of consequences.

To do so, I will block quote what I wrote last night, to save time and to make it easier to follow the progression of my thinking:

These past few weeks, I've noticed a number of my VOX Neighbors not posting anything or posting much more infrequently on their own blogs. Some had a history of posting daily while others posted multiple times in a day, so I started watching for a trend and I sure enough found one.

One lady actually made BoomerNation one of her neighbors on the very same day she cancelled her blog with VOX.

And yes, I've already taken into account holidays, vacations, back-to-work, work overload, family obligations, the lot of it, but something else is afoot when this many very smart, very articulate, very willing to share VOX Neighbors suddenly slow down or stop posting after, again, posting so regularly.

Opinion Reason #1: Visitor Counts

But then I came to what I thought were some of the primary reasons/causes for this:

Well, here are a few of my opinions as to the possible causes for this, based upon, as I see it, the strategic failures VOX has engendered/propagated through their decisions about how to develop VOX:

I can only speculate, but one of the primary reasons may not be just the blogger's realization as to how much work and time can be spent on blogging, but how fruitless it may sometimes seem if no one makes any comments on your blog. But if no one comments on your post, you can only assume - - - and too often will incorrectly assume - - - that no one has read what you had to say.

It's then pretty easy to develop a what's the use kind of an attitude . . . or you just quit altogether like two of my Neighbors have in just a very short amount of time.

At WordPress, something so simple as a visitor count is offered for free, along with its blog service, and quite clearly tells you who's been around and which posts they happened to visit. You even know where your visitors came from and how many are actually RSS-subscribing to your blog.

What's been holding VOX back from providing any of that data to us?

Whether they even want us to know that data could also be a question to ask further down this post.

Anyway, and IMHO, not having a visitor count option was a significant launch mistake.

Opinion Reason #2: Non-Members Can't Post Comments

A variant of the strategic mistake mentioned above is excluding non-VOX readers from commenting. I've been told by a number of visitors to my site on VOX how much they resented being forced to join VOX in order to be allowed to comment. But I only discovered that pov after I set up an open-to-anyone-to-comment sister site on WordPress.

VOX has strategically missed an incredibly important part/aspect/nature of those who like to comment on blogs, but who don't want to blog themselves [even if it is free] and strongly object to being forced to just to be able to post a comment.

After reading this second point above, you can then see how dead-on my VOX Neighbor Christopher was with his guess when he said:

i'm guessing that one of the rules you think Vox needs to change is their requirement that only registered users can post comments. i've had a few friends who have visited my blog, but don't comment because they don't want to register.

bloggers thrive on feedback, on knowing that someone out there is listening. so anything that diminishes the likelihood of feedback is a BAD THING.

Follow The Money

Now, following up on the "free" part of this blogger-host relationship and after reconstructing this analysis, I've come to realize that something has been a tad [sarcasm] neglected.

Money.

Does anyone know whether VOX has ever even hinted at sharing their ad revenue with us on our blogs or whether they'll at least be allowing us to independently post AdWords or similar revenue-generating services for bloggers?

Let me know, would you?

Customer Acquisition Costs

And have you asked yourselves how VOX plans on reaching the critical mass of memberships needed to make it self-sustaining amongst its own membership?

There's a business phrase, expressed in dollar terms, called New Customer Acquisition Costs. And although we don't know where VOX [SixApart] is actually spending all [or actually any] of their New Customer Acquisition budget dollars, we do know a terrific way they can do just that with absolutely no dollars spent on the outside.

By encouraging us to post and to bring in our friends, other family members and now groups.

And then think about how both inexpensive and easier it then is to snag a new VOX member when they visit one of our posts, because posting your opinion on someone's blog is both blogging tradition and an unmistakable allure.

It's actually strategically quite brilliant from a cost standpoint and significantly cheaper than spending precious cash assets for online ads or television or radio.

Where's The Vox Community?

Now, with all of these points and questions to ask now considered, if we then add Irma's comments to this matrix of issues, when VOX offers its members the option to blog only for family, or only for friends or only for groups, or for any combination thereof, it unfortunately and automatically just creates a clique mindset environment, which is entirely counter-productive and counter-intuitive to the concept of a community-based website, from a macro perspective, which is what I thought VOX was trying to be.

And you know, I've never personally cared for MySpace, finding it to be ridiculously silly, invasively dangerous and technologically unmanageable. It also appears to be totally dominated by possibly thousands of sub-communities [a.k.a., cliques] and their own privately chosen members - - - that even with the dramatically exponential growth of its overall membership it hasn't hastened any kind of a macro sense of community. As I see it, MySpace is the worst of Junior High in an online incarnation or venue.

But unfortunately, it looks as if VOX may have strategically succumbed to a clique-centric MySpace approach to VOX growth.

Consider this.

If 30%, 60% or more of VOX membership create sub-community cliques, and if these cliques are all private, then how is anyone new let in and where do they then go? Do they simply drop-off the face of the earth because what's the point of membership in VOX if there's no community to join, or do they create their own sub-community cliques by bringing in more of their friends and family?

How clever and convenient that then is for VOX to not only let cliques drive their membership rolls but to increase their company's ad revenue via those higher membership tallies because their ads don't discriminate - - - they still intrude upon all public and private blogs and groups as well.

But then where's the VOX community VOX so likes to brag about?

And consider this, those of you who only blog publicly, if most of the VOX membership ends up like MySpace and spends most of their time within their own groups and friends and family, only exploring on occasion, who within the entire VOX membership will then be reading any of us or even being around to comment on our posts?

The visitors who don't even want to join VOX and who can't post because they're not members of VOX?

Give me a break, VOX, you're killing a great concept!

Turn to Digg: Community Defined

To conclude, allow me to point to Digg.

Digg gives its members the right to privacy or to publicly share, but there's still a master page where all members of the Digg community submit and share opinions on. And yes, they do require registration and membership in order to submit, comment, Dig Up or Dig Down, but that's only fair based on the overall invested interest of every Digg member to submit stories that have, that maintain and that sometimes raise the inherent value of the website.

At Digg, everyone has a vested interest in its success, so everyone willingly follows the rules and polices its own, and all it asks of anyone is to submit to an equality standard that is the essence of the democratization of Front Page news-worthiness - - - and every member's right to accept or reject the value of a particular news story [content] submitted.

And yes, there are cliques on Digg, and certain Diggers are more highly regarded than others, but the point is, that Digg did not set its community up to be cliqued!

Hey, before Irma's comments, I thought I had three of the simplest strategic "cures" for whatever I saw was substantially but unnecessarily interfering with the actual growth of the entire VOX community.

But now, after Irma's comments, I'm seriously reconsidering my time involvement with posting on VOX.

I may be totally wrong, partially wrong, but then again, I may be right in my opinions above.

But if I am right, then that sucks because then I'll be stopping this blog, not wanting to waste further and precious time nor make someone else very wealthy on the sweat of my public [and unpaid] work.

I spent the past two hours of time that I don't really have writing about something I have been observing about my VOX Neighbors over the past month or so.

What I'm blathering about is a significant declining trend I've observed whereby too many of my VOX Neighbors have stopped posting entirely or are posting far less frequently on their respective blogs, many having been daily, if not multiple times daily, posters.

So I set about to find out why that seems to be the case and what I came up with centered around a couple of what I felt were strategic mistakes by VOX planners in the rule development phase of VOX coming out of beta.

But rather than coming forth with those opinions right now, I thought I would give it to you to see if you may have noticed the same thing, whether your VOX Neighbors were also posting less frequently or have simply stopped completely.

To make that call, just visit each of your VOX Neighbors [or even mine] and look to when their last post was, then look to see how often their prior posts were, by simple observation. That way you'll see what their standard rate of posting is - - - but their last post date will then tell you if their posting rate continued or they've put more time in between.

And certainly, my VOX Neighbors may be unique and not reflect the whole of the site or any cluster of other VOX Neighbors, but I somehow don't think so and believe as well that we all share in the same common problems and issues with how VOX handles visitors to our blogs.

We'll talk more about it later, but if I'm going to spend the kind of time to make this blog work within the community known as VOX, then I need my VOX Neighbors and we all need VOX to step up and change two very silly rules that interfere with the growth of our community.

The wife and I love dogs and I personally love every breed of dog.

A ton of boomers grew up with dogs, and nine out of eleven houses on our block back in the '60s all had dogs, although I can't say that subsequent generations have been so lucky.

But now someone in the Netherlands has come up with a beer for dogs.

Relax, it's not what you think.

From The Associated Press:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - After a long day hunting, there's nothing like wrapping your paw around a cold bottle of beer. So Terrie Berenden, a pet shop owner in the southern Dutch town of Zelhem, created a beer for her Weimaraners made from beef extract and malt.

Well, you know that at this point, we had to ask why?

"Once a year we go to Austria to hunt with our dogs, and at the end of the day we sit on the verandah and drink a beer. So we thought, my dog also has earned it," she said. 

OK, makes sense, and dogs are magnificent creatures to hunt with and they do work their tails off, well, so to speak, but does this story stop there?

Berenden consigned a local brewery to make and bottle the nonalcoholic beer, branded as Kwispelbier. It was introduced to the market last week and advertised it as "a beer for your best friend."

And it's selling for about Euro1.65, or about US$2.14 per bottle.

Forgetting the yeccchh factor when they say it’s also fit for human consumption, my only other concern is for the health and welfare of the dogs drinking it, [1] as far as the fat it may generate and/or [2] any other ingredients that I would prefer be endorsed by an association of veterinarians.

And whether a human would tend to howl @ the moon once every lunar cycle.