Holy Crap! Is this why more people don’t know about RIAs?

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Steve Rubel has a post about the “Underground” blogosphere. What is this? Here’s the info straight from Steve:

The Underground Blogosphere is an intricate web of hundreds of thousands of emails that bloggers send to each other every day. In essence, they are “pitching” their latest posts in hopes of getting a link.

I hardly ever do this. Why? I just didn’t think it ever actually worked. Shit, as a Y-list blogger I would love to have more links, and more people talking about RIAs, but I’ve never actually thought that emailing a bunch of A-listers would result in links. Now allow me to make a broad generalization: I don’t think very many other Flash/ColdFusion/RIA/Adobe bloggers do either. Why? Because we have MXNA. All of the fun conversation is on MXNA and it’s really easy to see what posts the community thought were the most interesting. It’s a great tool, and I use it all the time. I assume that others do the same, am I off base on this? Do you guys send other bloggers posts you’ve written in hopes of getting a link? If you want a link from a Y-list blogger, send them to me!
Now that I know this actually works I’m going to be an emailing fool and spread the word about Flash, RIAs, and Apollo. Wish me luck.

Related posts:

  1. Why Are A-List Bloggers Old?
  2. Apollo – People Taking Notice?
  3. A Big Thanks From Me, and ZDNet Update
  4. Getting People to Switch to CFEclipse
  5. John Dowdell is On Memeorandum, Where are You?
  • http://renaun.com Renaun Erickson

    Interesting, but come to think of it. All my good finds are from MXNA, its easy to use and a great aggregator. I find more there then even going to cflex.net or other specific sites. But then again it could all change as the community grows and the quality of posts go down hill.

    Why not just start a blog ring where you can link blogs. Kind of a “lets all hold hands” type of deal. Better to just blog because you like what you are talking about then worrying about email phishing for links.

    Write it and they will come, thats the new mantra! (disclaimer: only works when aggregated by MXNA)

    lol, what fun blogging is.

  • Ryan Stewart

    That’s an interesting idea Renaun. I’ve always wanted to see a Techmeme for the MXNA community. I think it would be an interesting way to look at what everyone is talking about.

  • http://www.thosebastards.com King Bastard

    It’s more fun to link bait — you get Michael Arrington admitting he’s an asshat.

  • http://danny-t.co.uk DannyT

    It’s interesting to think about your mission of spreading the word about RIAs. In that instance MXNA is probably the least helpful place to achieve that as all the readers are RIA enthusiasts anyway.

    That’s not to say I think MXNA is bad, it’s great. I just wonder who the non-RIA aware audience are and where they are?

  • Ryan Stewart

    King Bastard – HILARIOUS post, very well done *golf clap*

    Danny, that’s exactly it! Talking about RIAs on MXNA is fun, but for the most part, everyone has bought in. So who should we try to reach? The tech “influentials”? Who are they? I try to do that some with my ZDNet blog, but now I guess I’ll start sending out emails to the big names when I write something, and more of the Flash/MXNA bloggers should do the same.

  • http://www.atp.ie/blog M Gilmartin

    Never even heard of MXNA till I read this post. Congratz on getting onto techmeme.

  • http://www.jessewarden.com JesterXL

    When Flex 2 was released, I started venturing into other tech blogspheres & hubs. Techcrunch, the java heads, etc. I suddenly realized just how isolated we are, and how intimidating the task is to be a product evangelist OUTSIDE your sphere of comfort. MXNA / The goog, and readers of those sites (not writers/bloggers) are very isolated. You might not think so when you read that MXNA has like 900+ blogs or something, but it’s true. Some of these people, even during the Flex 2 launch, had no f’ing clue what they were talking about, and suddenly instead of announcing the hotness, you’re doing rumor-mill cleanup. Adobe needs someone OTHER than John Dowdell doing this fulltime.

    As far as cross-linking, it may feel dirty, but it’s worth it. If you can get the A-listers to at least stir up interest, that’s a good thing.

  • http://deitte.com Brian Deitte

    Interesting post. In addition to doing this Ryan, I hope you keep on asking people to join digg (and del.icio.us). These are the best places to get the word out, but the usefulness of MXNA keeps too many from venturing out to the other aggregators.

    I’ve become an active digger myself now, and I use your digg list (as well as a few others) to find new stories to digg.

    I think there’d need to be a hundred or so Flexers who were actively digging to start getting some of the Flex stories (many of them yours!) to the front page.

  • Ryan Stewart

    M – MXNA is pretty sweet, so welcome. Also, what plugin are you using for your social bookmarking icons with your WordPress blog?

    Jesse, I had no clue how isolated we were either until I started checking out the bigger bloggers. Now that I know, it’s crazy. Hopefully more Adobe folks will jump in and start getting links. And dirty or no, I’m going to start link baiting like mo-fo :)

    Brian, I want to set something up that makes it easy for people to digg Flex stories. Maybe talk to Tariq about it, maybe get a list of diggers in the MXNA community – SOMETHING – that drives digg traffic to all of the cool Flex things.

  • http://deitte.com Brian Deitte

    I just realized a great and obvious way to get more MXNA stories on digg: have “digg this” links on weblogs.macromedia.com. Yes, many people read MXNA through RSS, but based on the number of clicks reported on the site, this could have a big impact.

    Now only if I knew who to bug within Adobe to get this done…

  • Ryan Stewart

    Brian, THAT is an awesome idea. A digg link right on the front page? Genius. I’m sending an email to mxna. Great call.

  • http://none Craig D. Gundlach

    I dont believe in luck, but God Bless your on your mission to evangelize the masses about the joys of RIA, and MacroAdobe products. I love em myself, and found your post here because of FLEX, so go for it, link on brother!

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  • http://www.fullasagoog.com/ Geoff Bowers

    Bah.. MXNA. Discerning readers choose Fullasagoog.

  • Ryan Stewart

    Craig – will do!

    Geoff, hah! I’m a big fullasagoog fan, but you guys don’t get my ZDNet blog :)

    You should add a “digg this” link to the Fullasagoog posts – that would be really cool.

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  • http://www.congresscheck.com Tough Wanderer

    The only weapon we have to oppose the bad effects of technology is technology itself. There is no other. We can’t retreat into a nontechnological Eden which never existed…It is only by the rational use of technology, to control and guide what technology is doing, that we can keep any hopes of a social life more desireable than our own: or in fact of a social life which is not appalling to imagine.

  • http://www.congresscheck.com Erratic Bandit

    To set foot on the soil of the asteroids, to lift by hand a rock from the Moon, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of kilometers, to land on its satellite or even on its surface, what can be more fantastic? From the moment of using rocket devices a new great era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.