Vinny Goldsmith

A short-little-nothing-throw-away post on an overcast and rainy Saturday.

I guess you could say this is actually about the Internet in general, but I’m going to talk about blogging specifically.

I remember way back when I first heard about hyper-links I thought it was the greatest thing ever.

It was probably the mid-80’s, and the story was on some news special about an information system that would provide additional information (via clickable text) on whatever you were reading. I think the actual information system they were discussing was an encyclopedia or something - it certainly wasn’t related to anything called the Internet.

This was great news for me. I spent large portions of my life with my nose deep in a book and if I wanted to learn something more about what I was reading, or I had additional questions - I had to wait until my next trip to my library and hope the information would be there.

Then, in the mid-90s the Internet exploded. By the year 2000 any information you could possibly be looking for could be found somewhere online.

But blogging takes it all to the next level. With blogging, you often find information you want - but not something you were necessarily looking for.

Let’s take today for example. I have about 6 hours of uninterrupted time before I have to start getting ready for a play I am going to tonight. So I thought I would catch up on making some entries into the handful of blogs I’m trying to keep current.

To get some ideas and inspiration I went to the blog of one of my fellow SEOMoz members: Montessori for Everyone. Lori is a self-described “stay-at-home, homeschooling mom” and she has done a tremendous job with her combination blog and e-commerce web site. I think it is an exceptional model for a small home based business that utilizes the Internet to have a big impact.

I visit her blog from time to time - whenever I have the time. And today when I clicked on her “About” page I noticed she had a personal blog as well.

And that is when things took off.

From her personal blog I found this entry on blogging and boundaries.

[side note: another SEOMoz friend posted a similar entry over at her blog on SEOSmarty (beyond niche blogging).]

Lori’s entry talked about Penelope Trunk’s blog so I clicked on that (and since I liked three of four of the entries I read - I added her to my already over-flowing rss reader).

Penelope had an entry where she talked about getting back on track - and on there she had a link to Guy Kawasaki’s new web site called Alltop which has already become one of my favorite web sites - even though I didn’t even know about it an hour ago.

If it wasn’t for Lori blogging about Penelope blogging about Guy’s Alltop - and all of them sharing the link love - I wouldn’t have found out about Alltop today - and that is what makes Blogging the best way to get and share information.

And these kinds of connections happen tens-of-millions of times a day all across the Internet between bloggers and their readers.

Now, sure I would have eventually found out about Alltop - but blogging makes such discoveries happen even faster.

Alright, now I have to get back to blogging for real.

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P.S. - it just occurred to me that this whole post is an example of inadvertent keyword stuffing. Oh well.

When I was a kid, the movie Follow Me Boys was one of my favorites. I don’t even remember that much about it now - except it was about scouting and had this kid named Kurt Russell in it - as well as the dad from My Three Sons.

I liked scouting and I was pretty active in from about 7 years old all the way up until college. At that point it just seemed a little creepy for me to still go on camping trips with a bunch of teen-aged boys - so I went ahead and resigned (for similar reasons I also ended my tenure as an altar boy at around the same time). I should probably find a copy of that movie to watch it now that I am an adult - I wonder how it’ll hold up to the passage of time.

Anyway, this is my way of saying I am now a “do follow” blog. I still have to approve all comments and there are only like 6 of you that even read this thing, so I’m not too worried about getting a flood of comment-spam coming in. I have some other blogs that get two or three spam comments a day - I actually find it amusing and a little helpful.

Oh, and I’m not putting up any “do follow” graphics and I’m not joining some larger movement of do-followers, I’m just removing the “nofollow” because I want to give back to the people who take the time to comment.

And while my pages don’t pass that much link juice, they might pass some, and I’m happy to give what little I can.