I’ve been blogging on this domain since 2001. I’ve written thousands and thousands of blog posts in text form, and while I enjoyed doing it all those years, it’s, well, boring now. This will be the last text blog entry I will post here at JimKukral.com in 2008. Instead, I’m committing to only creating video or audio content. and I’m not looking back. Who will join me?

There are several reasons why I’m doing this…

Reason #1: Stop Being Lazy
Steve Rubel’s post about “the lazysphere” really hit home with me, then kicked me in the arse and left a mark. He’s right. I’ve become too lazy in my blogging efforts as of late (well, for years actually), and moving to video will force me to break that mold.

I’m taking your challenge Steve. By committing to video and audio posts ONLY, there’s no possible way for me to be lazy. It’s just too darn hard to create high-quality video content, so I either will be forced to make good content, or I won’t have content all.

Reason #2: Video Rules For Marketing
Hey, I’m an online marketer. It’s only natural for me to use a marketing method such as online video to improve my game for myself and my clients. If you’ve been following my blog at all for the past year or more, you’ll know that I’m neck-deep into the world of online video, especially for marketing purposes.

From producing, to directing, to acting, etc… I’m doing it all. Why? Because video is VERY effective from a marketing standpoint. I’ve used videos to close 80% of my consulting gigs in the last year, and at the moment, 90% of all my income comes directly from work in online video.

Reason #3: Online Video Is About To Rock The World
According to Pew online video traffic doubled in 2007 (more at Techmeme). Let’s face it, the eyeballs are starting to move to the web, and writer’s strike or not, it’s going to continue.

On top of that, when Google finally releases universal search, the flood gates are going to open and everyone and their mother will be scrambling to produce videos. Internet video marketing through the search engines is going to rock the seo world soon enough. My plan is to be right there, in the forefront, with as many videos as possible to take advantage of it.

Reason #4: I’m Bored With Text
I’ve been blogging on this domain since 2001. I’ve written thousands and thousands of blog posts in text form, and while I enjoyed doing it all those years, it’s, well, boring now. Producing online videos is hard darn work, yet, for me I’m finding that the work is very, very satisfying and entertaining, and fun.

Reason #5: Video Is A Challenge
There is no challenge left for me in writing text blogs anymore. Been there, done that for years. I could either keep doing it forever, or, challenge myself to take it to the next level, which is video/audio. Look, everyone should challenge themselves from time-to-time. That’s what I’m going to do.

Reason #6: I Like To Entertain
One of the things I’ve learned about myself over the past year of playing around in video is that I like entertaining. I like being in front of the camera. I like producing “live” content. It’s a lot of fun for me. I do not get the same satisfaction from writing text, not even close.

I’ve found that once I got over the “I look silly on camera” or “My voice sounds weird” fears, I began to have a lot of fun. And frankly, if it ain’t fun, why do it?

Reason #7: Nobody Else Is Doing It
Ok, some are leading the way, but if you look at the grand scheme of things, nobody, and I mean nobody, is out there producing videos like I want to make. Sure, there are millions of kids falling of their skateboards and YouTube stuff like that, but if you look around, video content, good video content in the form of professional “shows”, is hard to find.

Summary
This is it. Finito! This is the last few paragraphs of text you’ll read in blog form on this blog in 2008. Thank you for the years of readership, and hopefully I can count on your future viewer ship. :)

Please take a moment to subscribe to my rss feed to be updated on new video shows. There will be a podcast feed available soon as well.

The next post you see from will be in video form, coming next week. It will be the first of my new Daily Flip shows which I hope you will enjoy as much as I am enjoying creating them.

Lights, camera… Action!

fin.

I’ve been following IceRocket for over a year now, and have written a series of posts here and other places about them. Summary: Depite the CEO Blake emailing me to tell me they are very much alive and well, I keep writing them off as dead. But perhaps I’m wrong? Blake left this comment on my blog back in April of 2007.

# Blake Rhodes on April 3rd, 2007

Jim- We are spending most of our time on trying to make updates faster and getting rid of splogs. We are a pretty small shop so at times it is tough to get everything done that we would like.

You are welcome to email or call me ANYTIME, my email is rhodes@icerocket.com , I will provide my cell if you would like to chat. I’m available 24/7.

We have made great strides in filtering out spam blogs and we feel like we do a better job at this than anyone else.

Again, ping me anytime. I am all ears if you feel like you have ideas that will better our site.

Blake

Today, Matthew Hurst posted that maybe IceRocket is coming back to life? Mark Evans makes a good call and asks if IceRocket is finally fulfilling its destiny as a vertical search engine?

IceRocket’s attempt to revive itself will be a huge challenge given its shot at success has likely come and gone, but the blog search market is still ripe with opportunity because it still doesn’t have a dominant player. Unlike general search, Google is battling for share along with Technorati, Sphere, Bloglines, etc.

Blog search is ripe for a hot, new start-up to capture the imagination of people looking for a search engine that works well. For all the investment in me-too companies in the photo-sharing and social networking markets, it’s been puzzling not see more activity in the blog search business.

Why should you or anyone care? Because blog search, even from Google, sucks. Across the board.

I’m going to email Blake, the CEO, to see what I can find out. Or perhaps he can leave a comment here.

Will IceRocket step up and save the day? Or is this just another flirt? Will someone save blog search? Stay tuned.

Does this make any sense to you? I just noticed that they are filling ad spots with Adsense ads. I mean, this one on the top in the leaderboard position makes no sense to me at all. First off, Adsense in a leaderboard converts horribly. Secondly, why aren’t they running paid ads in that spot?

Wait, I think I know why… Because the ads are completely overpriced. I got a rate card from them earlier in the year, after 3 attempts to ask for one, and I can tell you that they wanted like $50k to do a run of ads. Are you kidding me?

Look, Technorati has a new CEO, and I hope they kick things back for the better for themselves. But as of right now, I’m not sure they even have a plan? I did talk to some guy from Technorati at the Blogworld show and he assured me they have a plan…

But I’ll believe it when I see it. So I’ll continue to be disappointed and confused by their actions. How about you?

I think I need to write a post about how I would save Technorati. Although, I did that for Icerocket and nobody listened or made any of my changes.

Mathew nailed it on the head. The rati doesn’t suck, no, but it severely lacks from being great when it has had every opportunity to do so.

Technorati has been riddled with performance issues for longer than I care to think about, has launched new features that seem poorly thought out and are already being done better by others (WTF comes to mind), and is in danger of being overshadowed by a website run by a single person, Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera.

That’s the real story here, which he nailed… that a one-man show (Gabe at Techmeme) is seemingly doing a better job than a big organization (Technorati).

Frankly, I’m disappointed in Technorati because I expected so much more. I did from Icerocket too (my analysis in that link), but they did nothing as well. They had EVERY opportunity to kick butt and take names, but they didn’t. Why? I’m guessing they never had any good ideas. Problem is, I had, and still have plenty of killer ideas for them.

Anyway, maybe this new ceo can change things at the rati. Is it too late? Perhaps. Still the best blog search? I dinna think so.