The Twitter Effect on Blogging

I’ve noticed a direct correlation between the increase in Twitter and the decrease in blogging.  Not that I still don’t get thousands of blogs a day in my RSS reader, but I noticed it in the high volume analyst bloggers and the top analyst Twitterer’s, thanks Jonny.

To confirm this, I asked James Governor if my hypothesis was correct and he confirmed it is true, but that there is more to this than just the blogging effect.  Underlying twitter is another discussion that carries on in answering or discussing issues.  Full investigation into that is worth looking at and that is the value.  Naturally, I asked him to present this to the A/R crowd, and he agreed to blog about it as a starter.  Look for that discussion at the above link to his blog.

But What About Blogging?

James did say that there is an upside.  A lot can be handled by Twitter, but his defense of blogging is that it’s relevancy has increased.  Now when something is blogged, it either can’t be addressed in the 140 count, or it needs to be dealt with in depth, and a blog is the place to do it.  So the blog discussion gets bumped up and issues are also solved on Twitter.

Social Media Word of the Day

Liveblogging, according to The Disruptology Blog, which quoted me as a Live Blogger when I captured Sam Palmisano’s Keynote at the Business Partner Leadership Council, formerly known as Partnerworld.

The Stupidest Thing I’ve Seen in LA

Ok, I think that the Prias is not a good car idea to begin with.  Depsite it’s fuel mileage, it’s basically testosterone free and the batteries they use cause more ecological problems in creation and disposition than it’s benefits.

But to make it a police car?  Look, if I was a bad guy, I’d have a bad car that could out run a souped up police charger hemi.  But would I be worried about out running a Prias?  Pulleeeze

Today is the National Day of Prayer

Since our country was founded by by pilgrims seeking a new life and the desire to worship (see the bill of rights), today we celebrate the National Day of Prayer.

I believe this is the root of the feelings that that a lot of America haters have (also those with Bush derangement syndrome).  Guess what, they’ll get prayed for also.

So ironic that also today is the Holocost Memorial, and Hamas issued a video blaming it on Israel, how unfortunate, and so untrue.

So the Show Begins - BPLC

Being on East coast time, I of course woke up early, to be greeted by the European analysts who had been up since 2 AM…already having done a full day’s work before the conference.

After having an nice discussion on everything from Microsoft to terrorists with Steve White, we were able to scheudule a rare 1:1 with Steve Mills for later in the day.

So as it goes, we will be doing the usual conference dance with the Press/Analysts/Executives and partners.

Here is a picture of the Press team scheming all things press for the day.

BPLC - Uncle Sam Wants To Talk To You

Well, more like Sam Palmisano, who will be the keynote speaker at BPLC on May 1. It’s always interesting to he knows more about where and what IBM is doing than anyone. He hasn’t updated me on the content yet from our weekly 1:1 meeting…..right.

It was a Good Weekend

Although I started the weekend by going to the wake of a friend who died in Iraq, I was very proud to know him and to have trained with him in Karate. He wanted to serve our country and was proud to do so. We need more people like Lance Eakes, Hero.

Next, I did my patriotic duty and voted in the NC primary. It’s down to three democrats running for president, no republicans this year. I’ll get to that in a few posts.

Next we took the family to the Military Appreciation Parade in downtown Raleigh. It was great to see such appreciation for our military. There was a flyover by F15 Strike Eagles, all branches represented and lots of guns, cannons, soldiers and patriotism. What was great was when a few wanker protesters cowards tried to start something, the crowd roundly booed them and stood up for our soldiers…..Loved it.

Freedom isn’t free, we have to fight for it and defend it every day, or the enemies of freedom will try and take it away.

On the way home, I (as always) was listening to a country music channel and when the ditsy twits dixie chicks came on I switched to another channel to and heard Toby Kieth, whom the twits tried to diss while they were ruining their career’s, justice was served.

I then got to plant another acre of corn, soy beans, alfalfa, chicory, clover and brassica for the deer to eat and fatten up…..prep for hunting season. Next I planted a pecan and fig tree for both our consumption and the deer.

Today we went to Church to worship the Creator not the Creation and heard Muslim preachers who converted to Christianity. They finally felt connected to God which Islam couldn’t provide them.

Next, Kimi Raikkonen then won the Spanish Grand Prix…which meant I got to hear him speak at the winners press conference, very entertaining.

All in all, a very good weekend.

The New PartnerWorld, Now Called BPLC: Issues and Housekeeping

What we used to know as PartnerWorld is now the Business Partner Leadership Conference or BPLC.  It is roughly half the show as TPTB are concentrating on the relationships that we can mutually nurture at a conference event.  On the side, PW turned out to be a week long extraction from work that took huge chunks of time to plan for on both the partner and IBM side, so file this in the realm of more reasonable.

Why this year is important is that Sam Palmisano will be there to keynote.  It doesn’t happen every year and it is always interesting to hear what he has to say.  We haven’t had our weekly 1:1 update for him to give me his speaking points so I can’t blog them yet.  I’ll be giving him my usual advice on running the company when we meet over coffee as always.

What is happening ?  First the housekeeping:

The tag is IBMbplc08

The Twitter hashtag is #IBMbplc08

Next, the order of events.  Today is the Express Advantage analyst call.  Thursday is the BPLC announcement call for analysts.  You should have received an invite for both.

There has been an unusual amount of interest in Live blogging the Keynote events, so I’ll be doing that.

The event starts on the 29th mid-day, running through the 2nd of May at Lunch.  The emphasis will be the executives meeting with the partners rather than a trade show atmosphere.  Get business done!

So look for updates as I blog and twitter my way through the show.

Gun Owners Are Happier

According to the WSJ,

Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.

Nor are they “bitter.” In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were “very happy,” while 9% were “not too happy.” Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.

In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling “outraged at something somebody had done.” It’s easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn’t true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don’t have guns.

The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest.

Why are gun owners so happy? One plausible reason is a sense of self-reliance, in terms of self-defense or even in terms of the ability to hunt their own dinner.

Not only are they willing and able to take care of themselves, they take care of others more it appears:

That response is not evidence that gun owners only care about themselves, however. In 2002, they were more likely to give money to charity than people without guns (83% to 75%). This charity gap doesn’t reflect their somewhat higher incomes. Gun owners were also more likely to give in other ways, such as donating blood. Are gun owners unsentimental? In 2004, they were more likely than those without guns to strongly agree that they would “endure all things” for the one they loved (45% to 37%).

It amazes me how often politicians get the demographics wrong about the real America.  We are not bitter, and don’t have to cling to G_d, we do it because we want to, not a crutch.

Last round of elections they trashed NASCAR also, bad move there.

I’m happy, glad to be able to take care of myself, and if you want to see some of my guns, break into my house at night….I’ll give you a good view of the front end of one of them.

Blog Rankings - Who’s Number one

I guess someone has to keep it.  Here is the ongoing list of blog rankings by Wikio of the influential bloggers.

Most are either technical or political.

H/T to Pamela at Atlas Shrugs, who is higher on the list than I’ll ever be.