Category: Blogs

I did not realize that blogs were the new scapegoat for every rumor in the gun industry, but apparently that is our new role.  Today’s Outdoor Wire reports that blogs were a source of crazy rumors about Daniel Defense on Friday and throughout the weekend.  I turned to Sebastian and asked if he had even heard of Daniel Defense, muchless remembered reading anything about them this weekend because I certainly did not.  He did not.

The first thing I need to handle is rumor control. I know the blogosphere was rolling Friday and through the weekend with the story of the demise – or impending demise- of Daniel Defense. The company that’s been known for very nicely done AR-15 accessory rails and other parts had jumped into the hot complete-AR rifle market with both feet, adding a barrel-machine and other capital investments to allow them to market their own, branded Daniel Defense rifles. …

As a company official told Rich, the rumors of their demise is “complete BS.”

I checked Uncle’s site – nothing.  I checked the go-to blog for industry news, The Firearm Blog – nothing.  So if Uncle didn’t hear about it as one of the largest linky-love gun blogs, and if Steve who focuses specifically on the industry-related news didn’t hear about it, who in the blogosphere was spreading this rumor?  It’s research time.

A Google blog search shows exactly one result for any news about Daniel Defense’s bad fortunes.  I found one forum hit.  One.  And it was not a blog, it was a forum.  That forum hit also did not say that Daniel Defense was going out of business, merely reporting that they furloughed employees, which is exactly the story that Jim confirmed in today’s Outdoor Wire.  When I searched the general web for any other potential blog hits Google may have missed, I don’t see any such rumors in many pages of search results.

This is the second time in a month that Jim has used the blogosphere as a scapegoat for the rumor mill when I could find no evidence to back up the claims.  If any readers find evidence that the blogosphere was responsible for spreading rumors about the demise of Daniel Defense this weekend, please share it, and I will make the correction.  In the meantime, I find the claims dubious.  One forum hit that merely discusses the fact that Daniel Defense really did furlough their workers does not justify the wording in TOW’s story to lay the blame on blogs.

UDPATE: Uncle just found weekend hit number two – again, a forum.  And once again, as I read through it, it’s all about the confirmed information from the CEO of Daniel Defense who did an interview with the local paper.  Still looking for that big bad blog rumor…

Snowflakes In Hell is now running on my new server, which is a Core 2 Quad 2.83 GHz machine with dual 1TB mirrored disks, and 4GB RAM.  We’ll probably go up to 8GB of RAM at some point, but for now we should be good.  The old new server will be re-provisioned to be a MythTV frontend.  You might notice the blog is a bit more responsive with the much faster server.

We notice that Jacob is no longer running his blog off the New York State Rifle Association’s web site, and has decided to strike out on his own.  We wish Jacob the best of luck in his new independent blog venture.

I want to thank Wyatt, Captain America, Dod, Cemetery, The Geek, Dave, and Smite for coming out on a hot, humid july day (the only hot humid day all year practically) to the Philly Area Blogger Meet.  Much fun was had, chick drinks drank, and hippies smote (or is that smited?).  Well, we didn’t actually see any hippies to smite at the Cheeseburger in Paradise.  I mean, it’s Cheeseburger in Paradise, not Tofuburger in Paradise.  I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be paradise anyway, even with plenty of chick drinks on the menu.  We’ll have to be sure to do that again sometime in the fall.

Happy Blogoversary to The Firearm Blog, which is two years old.  In my opinion, one of the best gun blogs on Al Gore’s Internets.  If you’re not following it daily, you should be.

I decided to try out this Twitter thing. SebastianSH is my Twitter ID. Feel free to follow if you want a closer look into my depraved mind, or just want to be bored to death seeing all the things I decide not to blog.

Bitter has organized a Philadelphia-area blog meet up. We’ll be having lunch with folks from all around the area on Sunday, July 26. If you’re a blogger who is willing to come out to join us, just let Bitter know.

More details can be found on her blog. As she hears from more folks, she will update the list of attendees.

blog·o·sphere Pronunciation: \ˈblä-gə-ˌsfir\ Function: noun Date: 2002 : all of the blogs on the Internet as a collective whole

e–mail Pronunciation: \ˈē-ˌmāl\ Function: noun Etymology: electronic Date: 1982 1: a means or system for transmitting messages electronically (as between computers on a network) 2 a: messages sent and received electronically through an e-mail system b: an e-mail message

Sometimes we need to go back to the basics like Merriam-Webster. Why would I turn to them for the definition of blogosphere and e-mail, definitions I clearly understand? Sometimes other people forget, and the blogosphere is unfairly blamed for falsehoods. Unfortunately, there was an implication of that in this morning’s edition of The Outdoor Wire. (Link is only good for today since they aren’t archiving on the website.)

In talking about an email rumor which has been going around for months (some sources say years, though Snopes just says months), Jim switches gears and gives us other news from the blogosphere. Wait, what?

If you get one of those semi-breathless notices, please send your well-meaning friends a note telling them they’re perpetuating yet another internet rumor.

And speaking of the “blogosphere” and rumors, the FBI took a fairly unusual step yesterday regarding soon to be ex-Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Huh? How is an email rumor “speaking of the ‘blogosphere'” in this case? Are there blogs reporting that SB 2099 is real? In the main gun blogosphere, I haven’t seen anything of the sort. On the various right leaning blogger email lists, I haven’t seen anything come across, nor have I seen it rearing its ugly head on the general right-of-center blogs. In fact, in a quick survey of Google’s Blog Search, all of the actual blog results I see say upfront that it is a hoax email. In fact, the posts are dated long before NSSF’s statement & Shepherd’s announcement.

This post isn’t meant to imply that Jim doesn’t understand new media. In fact, he’s one of the few in the industry who does understand new media since he’s created his own version of it with his wire service for various outdoor industries. However, when one of the people who “gets it” makes a comment like this, it’s no wonder that so many in the industry are hesitant to approach new media or attempt any new projects on their own. The implied connection between email rumors and bloggers in the outdoor industry wire service could easily leave a staffer who isn’t familiar with the various technologies confused about the value of bloggers at all. If the Google results are any indication, bloggers have actually been instrumental in getting word out to defeat the rumor of SB 2099.

Of course, it’s also important to note that the story in today’s edition of TOW that does actually have to do with the blogosphere – the Palin rumors that sparked the FBI’s statement – isn’t talking about the gun side of the blogosphere. While news does comes from all sides of the blogosphere, I’m not sure that many in the industry understand the breadth of the blogosphere – mommy blogs, left wing blogs, right wing blogs, gun blogs, personal journals, tech blogs, opinion/commentary blogs, link love blogs, business blogs, and everything in between all of those categories and more. Then there are forums which are another beast altogether, email lists, social networking groups, and so many other technologies with their related communities. There’s so much out there, and since all of the previous TOW coverage I’ve ever seen on blogs has focused on the pro-gun blogs, I hope that Jim’s readers understand that the outdoor blogosphere is by no means spreading the vicious rumors about Palin, nor are they involved in perpetuating rumors about non-existent legislation.

I have to congratulate Robb on his new Tattoo, and also on not wearing pants.

Megan McArdle points out this interesting article over at 11D on where blogs have evolved to, that I think is largely correct.  Here are some interesting points, but go read the whole thing:

1. The A-List Doesn’t Matter Anymore. I just read a really nice paper that came up with a new method for determining the top 20 bloggers.[…]

I think this is mostly correct, but I wouldn’t discount the fact that most of these blogs have traffic into the stratosphere compared to niche blogs like mine, or even SayUncle’s for that matter.  The A-Listers still matter, but my understanding from Bitter, who was doing this long before me, is that the assertion that A-List blogs don’t drive the readers they used to is true.  Many of their original blogs have also disappeared, and were subsumed by new media projects like Pajamas Media, or Hot Air.

2. It’s all about niche blogs. If you have a particular expertise and unique perspective, they you can quickly gain a following. Everyone else is out of luck.

This is absolutely true, and largely because there will never be another Instapundit.  The nature of the ‘sphere has changed too much, and I don’t think anyone who’s not a niche blog is going to be able to rise to that level.  When I “blogged” on LiveJournal, I covered generic political topics and guns occaistionally.   When I launched into blogging two and a half years ago, I stuck strictly to gun blogging because I thought it was the only area I’d have a unique perspective to offer.

3. Norms and practices. Bloggers have undermined the blogosphere. Bloggers do not link to each other as much as they used to.

This is true, and it makes it a lot harder for someone to become successful in this medium.  I would have not found success if it hadn’t been for SayUncle and Bitter, who linked to me heavily in the beginning.  The problem is, finding things to link to is extremely time consuming.  I have several dozen blogs on my RSS feed, and it’s been whittled down as of late because I couldn’t keep up with everything.  I have 785 unread posts in total right now, even with a reduced number of blogs.  There’s no way I can go through everything.

4. Blogger Burn Out. Many of the top bloggers have been absorbed into some other professional enterprise or are burnt. It’s a lot of work to blog. Most bloggers, and not just the A-listers, spend 3-5 hours every day blogging. That’s hard to maintain, especially since there is no money in this.

It’s true.  It takes a tremendous amount of work to find things to blog about.  Truth is, since Bitter is no longer blogging, she helps me with that a great deal.  I probably couldn’t keep this up if she weren’t constantly scouring Al Gore’s Internets during the day looking for things.  If she ends up getting a job, it will cut down my free time in the evenings and in the mornings greatly if I have to do this all myself.  Having Bitter largely stop gun blogging, and having one of us unemployed, is good for the blogging, and taking the pressure off me.

9. Link Monitoring. In the past, I could easily figure out which blogs had linked to me and then send them a reciprocal link. For whatever reasons, Google Blog and Technorati aren’t picking up the smaller blogs, and I have no idea who’s linking to me.

This is a big pet peeve of mine.  Technorati tracking is no longer worth squat, and Google picks up too many useless spam blogs, forcing me to have to pick through to find the real people who are linking.  In the past, linking was a way to get noticed, and way to keep a conversation moving through the blogosphere.  A great traffic driver was writing something everyone else wanted to talk about.  Now I have little idea who’s linking to me.  Trackbacks are pretty much dead too, thanks to trackback spammers.