Ok—so, as you can see in the previous article, the experiment did not work. It barely topped my top content-oriented article (x1.1), and I over-estimated my reach by a factor of ten. This is a big miss. So either the assumption or the variables were not correct. I am still convinced about the power of entertainment for content, but the packaging was probably not optimum.

Here are what I got wrong:

1) Too Late:

By the time the article was posted, the original event was already old (4 days old). While people gravitate more around drama-oriented content, they also have a shorter attention span. For example, an article today about Susan Boyle won’t do nearly as well as when she was in her highest (or lowest) days. In other words, drama has to be fresh, langouste fresh.

2) No Echo Chambers:

When popular bloggers start a drama thread they usually attack and respond to each other, which creates a huge echo chamber and multiplies the audience. Targeting a too-big fish significantly reduces the probability of being echoed, as fish like to swim in schools. It is very hard for a small fish to be accepted by the big fish (even though all fish were small at some point).

3) Too Long:

The post was probably too long. Either the content part or the experiment part should have been removed. From a content point of view, I wanted to have all of them, and even wanted to add this post as a fourth act (The Result). However, from an effect standpoint, the more concise, the better.

4) Too Honest:

While the disclosure part was definitely good (and necessary from my standpoint), the experiment section was perhaps over the top. People do not like to be guinea pigs (neither do I). It might have been a funny and ironic experiment, and I really appreciate people sending the tweets, as they were raising the right questions; however, it probably turned many people off. In a way, if you want to start a true drama story, it is better to accept some hypocrisy in your argument; otherwise, you are tempering the emotional effect of your post. While you will probably be spotted from time to time, the main audience will probably get emotionally involved with your argument anyway and will carry the torch (by commenting, trashing, tweeting, sharing, [micro]-blogging, etc.).

5) No Sixth Sense:

Interestingly enough, shortly after the article was posted, a reader commented on HN that I “you do not have the drama sixth sense.” At first, I was pretty surprised at this statement since I thought I did well. After a few hours, I realized he was right. I just do not have it. So the best I can do is to try to analyze what I do not have.

For better or for worse, outside of the length (#3) there are not many things I can improve on to be a good drama-tech-blogger. Honesty (#4)  is part of my core values, and I would not trade it for anything (I have already lost a few opportunities on this, so I am getting used to it). I need to be spelled-checked, which makes producing daily-fresh content difficult (#1). It’s always hard to change your DNA, so it might be too late for me to get the drama “sixth sense” (#5).

The echo chamber (#2) might happen over time; however, statements such as “big fish like to swim in schools,”  “It is very hard for a small fish to be accepted by the big fish,” and “big guys will probably not support a small-guy argument,” are not making it any easier to get accepted by the big guys. So I will either have to change my tone or find other ways to swim with the big fish.

Finally, the not so surprising conclusion is that I am bad at drama-blogging; and while I am glad of having tried it at least once, I am actually proud to be a content-centric blogger.

The Drama: L’Arroseur Arrosé

Popular tech bloggers tend to have an inner capability to manufacture drama, and that is exactly what Michael Arrington did [again] on the Leo Laporte Live video show last Saturday. While Michael was very fast to give his version of the facts on his blog, commenting back has proven to be a little bit harder—at least, it was for me.

To give some context, Leo Laporte was hosting the Gillmor Gang, and when he started to talk about the Palm Pre, Michael interrupted and asked if the device was “given” and mentioned this was an important disclosure to make. Leo got [overly] upset, as he took this interjection as an insult to his integrity, and shut down the show. Michael Arrington then quickly posted an article on TechCrunch showing Leo’s outburst and sharing his view of the incident.

After watching the video and reading the post, I decided to politely, respectfully, but directly share my opinion on the matter.

So, I commented (rewritten from memory, since I do not have the original):

Five minutes later my comment was censored, and I was banned (by email or IP).

I always use my full name (Jeremy Chone), my main email address (jeremy.chone @gmail.com), and I have a static IP address (67.124.145.92 sometime .93). I do not plan to hide, since I always try to be as honest, polite, and respectful as possible. However, my candid opinion apparently was not welcome, and I am now banned from commenting on Techcrunch and can probably forget about any Techcrunch product review for any present or future venture I might have.

While my comment was direct and blunt, I think it was neither disrespectful nor aggressive. I do not always share Michael’s points of view, but I respect what he has built. I like some of the Techcrunch content, and I am a big fan of the ChrunchBase service. I comment from time to time, and this was actually the first time where I openly shared my difference of opinion with the editor. In my comment, I just wanted to make three points.

1. First, that his question was a leading question and directly questioned Leo’s integrity (over a review unit).
2. Second, that his remark was probably stimulated by the fact that he did not get a review unit from Palm (which he might have interpreted as Palm questioning his objectivity—kind of ironic, isn’t it?).
3. And third that “conflict of interest” is often subjective.

For the last point, I used a specific example (the Seesmic/Arrington/Techcrunch potential conflict of interest) which might have been the thing that tipped me to “the dark side.” I actually did not say it was a conflict of interest; I said that I did not know but that some people might see it as one. No conflict at all may exist. Seesmic might have a commercial agreement with Techcrunch, as other sponsors do, or Techcrunch might need the Seesmic add-on to operate its service competitively. I truly and honestly do not know, and since Michael seems very meticulous about pointing out potential conflict of interest to others, I expected to get a clarification. Instead, I just got censored.

The ironic part is that my comment, especially the Seesmic/TechCrunch, was a little bit in the same tone as Michael’s Arrington comment to Leo, and apparently Michael Arrington really did not appreciate getting some of his own medicine.

Two things to conclude the drama part of this post.

First, while I do not always share Michael Arrington’s point of view or style, I do not have any personal animosity against him or TechCrunch and even have great respect for its accomplishments. I just wanted to share my point of view on his topic as honestly and directly as possible.

Second, this post is not a complaint about having been censored but just a reflection about it. TechCrunch is Michael Arrington’s blog, and he is totally within his rights to remove any comment he finds inappropriate on his property without giving any explanation to anyone. In other words, he has the right to censor on his property, even if it he does not like to be cencored himself.

The Content: The Power of Entertainment for Content

Besides the drama, some good content came out of the Leo Laporte incident. After some mutual apologies, Leo Laporte invited the Gang back to talk about the incident and how to move forward. Leo explained that he loves hosting the Gillmor Gang, but that he wanted to remove the drama from their great content. Gillmor responded that the drama was part of the content and that he did not know how to create such content without the drama. It was a great discussion, since everybody was calm and trying to constructively understand the other point of view to build a good solution for their audiences. But how could two extremely smart people not agree on such an apparently basic point?

While I tend to be like Leo Laporte (see previous section, last paragraph), I also recognize the benefits of mixing emotion with content. First, as my friend Bob Buffone put it, “contention drives integrity,” and the right level of emotional involvement is required to build up a constructive debate. Second, and more importantly, I think that we are all becoming more and more entertainment driven. Technology has been driving our society to be overly connected and extremely time sensitive. Consequently, event and information need to be excessively exaggerated to get the appropriate attention and emotionally packaged to get the expected assimilation.

I think the best leaders of the 21st century will be the ones who master of the art of mixing content with entertainment, to provide ultimate and unique experiences for their audiences while quickly and efficiently imbibe their message and product.

In political and world-matter scenes, Al Gore and Barack Obama are great examples of such leaders who have the capacity of making their actions so entrancing. In business, great executives, such as Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, while different, have the same gift for making their respective company visions a destiny rather than a roadmap. Innovation is also subject to this trend, as Silicon Valley investors tend to prefer investing in high-risk potential phenomenon rather than revenue-centric businesses. Even professional entertainers are now trying to catch up with technologies so as not to miss out on what they have supposedly created. Ashton Kutcher is a great example of this new generation of gifted entertainers who completely embrace new ways of engaging with their audience.

Popular bloggers, such as Michael Arrington, instinctively know this, which is why they always (voluntarily or not) become surrounded by some drama. The reason drama is the main type of entertainment in the blogosphere is that drama is the cheapest form of entertainment to manufacture. While it still takes some talent, just a few well-placed words in a conversation or in a blog title can create some great drama (some bloggers have a sixth sense for this). Other types of entertainment centric content can be much more expensive to produce. For example, the famous Twouble with Twitters: SuperNews! is a very entertaining production (one of my favorite) with some great content in it; however, it is not something someone can drop into a casual conversation or make in an hotel room in front of a laptop. 

So, I do not think that either Leo Laporte or Gillmor were wrong or right. I just think they have two different styles for passing along information. Leo Laporte has a more traditional approach, where content should be king, while Gillmor and many other popular bloggers think that emotion is part of the content.

Personally, I blog for my future-self. I like to crystallize and capture my present thoughts to later assess what I got right or wrong. I am a strong believer of “if you don’t fall, you don’t learn,” and therefore you need to accept being wrong if you want to be right. I genuinely like to be proven wrong; it gives me this warm feeling that I have learned something new. In other word, my blog is my learning tool. Obviously, I am extremely pleased and honored when my articles are read, re-tweeted, and commented on, and I am using this opportunity to THANK YOU ALL. However, I always try to keep emotion out of my content to keep the reasoning as pure as possible.

Anyway, thanks to this little drama, I have discovered another great tech show http://live.twit.tv/. I really like Leo’s style and content choice.

The Experiment: 10x

If my reflection about the power of entertainment for content is correct, this post should be doing extremely well compared to my other usual content-centric articles. It think I could do 10 times as "well" twice as well. My best content articles, such as “Compiled Web vs Interpreted Web”, average 2,500 visitors in the first 48 hours (which I am very proud of). This will make a 25,000 unique visits target for this article. For the fun of it, I am going to set a target of 30,000. (see below for progress tracking)

So, given that this is an extremely small blog compared to Techcrunch and that Michael Arrington will probably avoid, as much as possible, commenting about this article, I need your help. If you are against censorship, think that Michael Arrington should not censor this type of comment, and that he should stop questioning other people’s integrity when he cannot even defend his own, help me to spread the word by Tweeting one or more of the following drama oriented tweets:

#Arrington attacks NY Times integrity but censors when questioned. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship http://bit.ly/tooIronic#Arrington If you are not clean, do not spend your time soiling others. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship #Arrington cannot take criticism but can censor. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship#Arrington, the self-proclaimed paladin of integrity, censors rather than answering. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship #Arrington does not take his own medicine very well. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship#Arrington accuses but does not accept to be accused. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship#Arrington is quick at pointing out conflict of interest to others, but much slower to answer his owns. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship#Arrington, upset to not have gotten a Pre, questions host objectivity and censors comment. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorshipComment about #Arrington, #Seesmic and Techcrunch get censored. http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship#Arrington hates to be questioned about the potential conflict of interest with #Seesmic http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship#Arrington, stop complaining about censorship or stop censoring. Cannot have both http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship

Obviously, you can make your own (I will add the best ones to this article for others to RT). Feel free to use the “http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship” to keep track of them all.

Also, if you liked this article a +1 on HN, +1 on Digg, are greatly appreciated and here is a more R-Tweet if you feel unconfortable with the drama ones ;).

RT @jeremychone How I got Censored from Techcrunch http://bit.ly/TechcrunchCensors #NoToCensorship

Thank you very much for your support. Michael Arrington can be very intimidating, and the other big guys will probably not support a small guy argument. So, alone I cannot do much, but together we can make a statement. Just Tweet, Digg, Share, +1, Comment about this article and the Internet will take care of the rest.

Article Progress: The race is CLOSED (and it FAILED, postmortem in a following post)

• Target: 30,000 visits in 48 hours
• Time elapsed: 48 hours
• Current page views: 2,746 (FAILED)

Checkout others tweeting about it (and the bit.ly stats), the more tweets the better. Also, feel free to blog about it, this blog follow back.