DrunkenBlog

Dear Mr. drunkenblogger

I've seen your site linked on Macsurfer a bunch of times, but never clicked on it till the Matas/Delicious story broke... and proceeded to read that kickass interview of Wil for hours, and then re-read it and analyze why it kicked so much ass. And then I started methodically going over the rest of your site, clicking on links, reading back stories, watching screen grabs, digesting your knowledge with a subtle peppering of wit.

I wonder if I'll ever leave my room again? Can the human body handle this much green tea? Do we really ever need to sleep?

And I suppose none of that really matters because you are an awesome writer and I'm now addicted to the Drunkenblog. Forever.

HOOYAAH!

thanx,
Scott

Well, yay for addictions. Structure in our lives is important, and addictions can be an easy, effective and efficient way of adding some. Every once in awhile I'll get a ping like this from someone where Macsurfer is mentioned, and it always makes me smile, as Macsurfer is on the "warm fuzzy" list.

Some time ago, someone at Macsurfer just started picking me up and throwing me into their listings wherever they could. I didn't really pay much mind to it, even though it wigged me a little, but when one involving a Cow showed up, I had to get in touch with them because it was just too amusing as someone there was either drunk or stretching just how associated something on DrunkenBlog was with the Mac on purpose..

First of all, Macsurfer has been around forever, and while they aren't the largest site on the internet in the grand scheme of things, there is some history there.

I cut my teeth on them way back when, and can distinctly remember eating a sandwich at an old job during lunch and scrolling through the Mac-related news, so it was a little charming to actually see my name on it, or something I'm involved with. If you go back through the RSS Roundtable, there's a question involving sites feeling an "RSS Squeeze", and Macsurfer was front in my mind at the time.

Anyways, I was glad I talked to them, as they turned out to be a pretty cool group of guys. I give Mac sites a hard time every once in awhile, but I don't really dislike any of them, and the people behind them are generally good guys, with the exception of "The MacObserver", who employs the biggest ponce I've encountered in the Mac Web, Brad Gibon. To be fair, I'm having to leave out the guy who runs MacUpdate who is just completely bizarre and, in my short dealing with him, didn't convince me he was completely sane and its not nice to make fun of mentally handicapped people.

To be fair, the only problems I've had with most Mac sites have been:

• They're often very myopic, in the sense that they love the Mac but don't really know a whole lot. They generally aren't geeks that just happen to use a Mac, so they'd know what's going on, which means you're just spoon-fed the same regurgitated stuff over and over that they've had fed to them.

• The larger sites generally have little content to really speak of, its all press releases and if you're lucky the odd link to something else. This almost really isn't their fault, as something you learn when sliding through the shark pool of media is that this type of publishing is cheap.

  The Mac doesn't command the readership, and with it the advertising dollars, that a larger more general site could, and actually having to sit down and create content gets expensive. Just rolling in press releases and such isn't, so thats what these sites are made of, and if you're lucky they'll throw together a forum because, well, forums rock for cheap advertising revenue.

Macsurfer is in a separate boat from most of them, and all they really do is aggregate links to other sites with new Mac-related content. That's it, just a long listing of links in several categories, with the only real key being that:

• You're on their radar

• You're talking about the Mac

Before the days of RSS, they were a godsend for scraping a lot of the content that is out there together. After talking to them, I know they're working on incorporating it, so it should be interesting to see how it plays out... Anyways I started in on this talking about why they are on the warm fuzzy list. If you look at this screenshot, you'll get an idea...

To quote Sesame Street: "Two of these things are not like the others." I can remember back enough to know how strange it would have been to be reading through MacSurfer and then see this DrunkenBlog thing mixed in with Macteens, Macs Only!, Mac 360, etc. and I have to give them some props for deciding their readers should be exposed to my weirdness, and then sometimes going to amusing lengths to work something from me in.

So sure, its hard not to like someone sending some hits your way, but it's a little more than that. After awhile, I think people just gloss over the Drunken part of the name, but the first few times you see it on a site I'd have to imagine you get a little thought bubble above your head with "wtf?" inside it. I'm pretty sure the guys at Macsurfer are aware of this phenomenon, and just keep throwing me in anyways.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    July 30, 2005, at 01:17 PM