Julien Smith gave a mindblowing presentation yesterday on trust agents and social capital. I cannot believe I have never heard of him before because his stuff is nothing short of awesome.
It got me thinking back to my “Blogs worth reading” feature that ran for a few months but has fizzled out recently. There are a few reasons for this. One was that I was getting very busy in summer with freelance work and just had no time to explore blogs the way I used to, the second is that my Google Reader was already getting overloaded, and thirdly, was that these blogposts just weren’t generating much interest for my blog, traffic-wise.
But Julien’s talk reminded me that sharing these links is creating value and social capital. It’s not about me and my traffic. It’s about sharing these resources to people who might not discover them otherwise, and the value that they bring. Even if that’s just to one person.
Stuff surrounding Social Media Breakfast | Singapore and certain events have affected my love for the local social media space over the last few months, but this really made me think back to why I started the blog, why we were helping each other on Twitter, why we went out on a whim and started Social Media Breakfast | Singapore with nothing but faith that it would work out.
And it was captured in one comment yesterday: Because that’s the kind of world I want to live in.
I hope you’ll think back and remember why you got into this space to begin with, and if where you are now is a far cry from that beginning. If it is, why did that happen, and is that something you want to continue to happen? If it isn’t, what changed?
I’m beginning to feel the load of reading a lot of blogs right now, so every month when I subscribe to new blogs, I put them on a “probation” list, look at them at the end of the month and then decide which are worth keeping. Here are those that I’ve added to my Google Reader permanently this month, as well as one post I loved recently that I would like to share with you.
Bloggers misunderstand PR and vice versa - Not a big deal in Asia yet (probably because the PR firms are slow in catching on), but an interesting insight to both sides of the coin.
What college students can’t get from blogging - A nice contrarian view from someone who’s also gotten an internship from blogging, but a good reality wake up call for students who may think blogging is the solution to everything.
That’s it for May, if you have new blogs to recommend, feel free to plug it in the comment box. Let me know if you liked these recommendations as well.
I’ve decided to take a page out of Louis Gray’s book and highlight six blogs (in no order) that have really caught my attention in April, as well as one link that I feel is a recent notable read.
The amount of new blogs I’m subscribing to monthly is decreasing (I suppose there’s only so much information I can process), but if you know any great ones, recommend them in the comments space below!
