Although my blog is apparently worth just a couple of euros, there are blogs that are worth a lot more. Swedens most popular blog called Blondinbella (= Bella the blonde in english) is written by a 18 year old girl, Isabella Löwengrip, and it has more than 400 000 visitors each week (estimated, not confirmed). If Bella writes about some new lovely toothpaste, that should show in the sales statistics the next day. And that makes her blog a very attractive place for companies to be seen on. And Bella definitively gets something from that too. Ad revenue from her blog has been estimated to be worth 5 million swedish crowns per year (that’s about 500 000 euros).

Yesterday Isabella celebtrated her 18th birthday. Congratulations to her. And for about 7500 euros even your company could have been there. For 7500 euros you could get 10 invitations to her party, some photos with her and three articles on her blog. Guaranteed about 1.5 million views. So the secret is out (was it ever a secret?): when she recommends a product or just mentions it, she gets paid. I wonder when this will turn against her? I remember cases from the early days of blogging where the readers have turned against the blogger when they have realized that the blog was mostly/partly about paid product placements, paid ads. Or maybe times have changed and it is acceptable to get paid for product placements. Acceptable for the readers that is. The Swedish Consumer Agency might not be as forgiving…

My site is worth $2438.2. At least according to websiteoutlook.com. Apparently this gives my site a tiny lead over the other webometrics-blogs that such comparisons are usually done among us. Webometric Thougths is worth $2394.4 and the original webometrics blog is worth $2255.7. Comparisons like these can be fun, but that’s just what they are. Besides, I’m not completely convinced that the data they are using is quite correct.

Oh, interesting. Twitter autonatically creates Tinyurls to replace long urls. Every day you learn something new.

You can find the blog entry on: http://tinyurl.com/6yuswc

It was an interesting experiment to try to be a bit more active on Twitter. I’ve blogged about it now in case anyone would be interested.

Few days ago I promised to test Twitter for a week to see what the fuzz was all about. That experiment didn’t last too long. It was soon apparent that Twittering is not for me. I still think Twitter and Twitter-like services have some potential in education and conferences as a backchannel for “creative cacophony”. In fact we will test this in practice with my students in a couple of weeks during their presentations. It will be very interesting to see whether Twittering during the student presentations will increase interactivity and participation or not. But just to Twitter (is that a verb?) for the sake of twittering is not for me.

I have to say that although I wasn’t converted to a heavy user of Twitter, especially not a heavy producer on Twitter, I enjoyed following some Tweets very much. Before this experiment I was following three Tweets that never had any action on them. But then I found Stephen Fry on Twitter and I have enjoyed his tweets very much. Apparently he is currently in Africa filming a documentary and it has been fascinating to follow his adventures almost in real time. Thank you Mr Fry for sharing your experiences on Twitter.

I think I started this experiment on the wrong foot. I don’t have to update my tweets frequently to take part of it. I don’t have to update it at all to be part of Twitter. Twitter isn’t that different from other Web 2.0 services when it comes to using, producing and participating. In Web 2.0 Pareto’s law doesn’t apply anymore, 20% of the users do not create 80% of the content. Depending on the service it’s probably closer to 1% of the users creating 90% of the content (participation inequality). The point is that Web 2.0 services do not require 100% activity of 100% of the users to create value for 100% of the users. This is true for Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube and probably for Twitter too. So I think I’ll keep lurking on Twitter every now and then, following how Mr Fry is doing in Africa, and who knows, maybe I’ll de-lurk some day.

I’ll blog about this short twitter experience in a while. Stay tuned for that at http://webometrics.fi/blog/

One tweet yesterday. I guess it’s established already that Twitter isn’t for me. I could be a twitter-lurker though. It’s been interesting.

I’ve done my duty as a citizen and wandered off in the storm to cast my vote. Now I’m allowed to complain for another 4 years.

It’s almost interesting to watch Twittervision. Better some programmes on the tv.