Hey, thanks for stopping by the blog! I appreciate the comment.
I want to elaborate a bit on the voice in the hopes that your next book will be more naked, less clothed. I found an irony in the third-party references in a book about blogging and more importantly, a book encouraging transparent blogging. The barrier that rises when you begin to write in the scholarly third-person (”we found…”, “scoble thought”, etc….) is a big one!
There’s more than one way to write a non-fiction work that holds readers’ interest, conveys a message and gives great help and advice. Your book succeeds hands down on points 2 and 3, but I think you’d have a REAL blockbuster on your hands if you decide to publish the next one using that wonderful conversational style that you’ve cultivated on your blog.
Your credibility comes out of the authenticity of your blogging voice. I’ve heard you on podcasts too, and there’s just no pretense. Yet there were areas in the book that read in a pretentious way, even though you surely didn’t intend it. It’s just the nature of that particular style — the standing-apart-looking-from-the-outside-in journalistic style, which is the exact opposite of what you advocate for bloggers.
That’s what stood out for me.
Finally, I realized I used the term “A-listers” on my review entry. And then there’s all this angst about gatekeeping, a-list v z-list, exclusivity, etc. Well, all I have to say is that I cannot imagine an environment prior to blogging where any book review I did would get the attention of the author to the extent that he would take the time to comment. Nor would my random blatherings gain any kind of audience.
My first reason for this blog is self-expression. My second reason is because maybe something I write might hit home with someone else, inspire, or even anger someone into action they might be contemplating but haven’t taken. My third reason is to share some really crappy experiences with insurance companies who give all of their attention to the bottom line in the hopes of raising awareness as to avenues for protest, possibilities for appeal, and ways to hold them to account where it is possible.
None of those reasons include being on anyone’s “list”. I do like it when people stop by and comment, letting me know that something I say is resonating somewhere, but it’s unimportant to me to be on a “list”.
With that said, Technorati is “voodoo” to me. I have never figured out how it does its stuff. Why is it that my old Blogspot blog has a higher ranking than this one despite the amount of links and traffic this one has received? Why is it that many links to this blog have not been picked up and included in the overall ranking? Is Technorati’s ego ranking reliable?
I have no clue, so I am playing along with the brrreeeport game to see if I can figure some stuff out.
Update: Technorati still isn’t picking up the tag. Also, thanks to Shel Israel for his comments, and for understanding my choice to blog under a pseudonym. 
Technorati Tags: brrreeeport, robert scoble, naked conversations, alist
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