Rather than attempt to answer a question today, I thought I’d ask one instead. This is a question primarily for people who read blogs, though certainly people who write them may be interested as well. The question is this: How much should bloggers disclose?

Let me explain. Bloggers tend to put a lot of work into their sites but receive relatively little in return. There are usually just a few options open to bloggers who wish to make a few dollars. One of the more popular of these are affiliate programs. Stores like Amazon and Westminster Books offer programs whereby anyone who links to them will receive a small amount of compensation. It’s usually a safe bet that if a blogger links to Amazon, he is doing so through his affiliate account, meaning that any items that are sold after people click through that link will kick back about 6%. Westminster’s program is a little different in that they tally clicks and pay out a certain amount at the end of the month based on the total number of visitors sent to them.

What I am asking today is whether you think bloggers should disclose when they are referring people to some kind of affiliate program. If a blogger writes a book review and links to a store for which he is an affiliate, should he disclose that he is part of the affiliate program?

I’d be interested in your responses to this.

Why? Well, there may be several ramifications. Here is just one: In theory, a person may direct visitors to a particular store or even a particular product he would not otherwise direct people to because he knows he will receive some kind of compensation. He may direct people to a store that offers higher prices or inferior service not because this represents the best deal but because he stands to benefit. Just take a look at the number of bloggers who chose to announce that Westminster Books (which has an affiliate program) upgraded their design compared to those who announced that Monergism Books (which at that time did not have a program) had upgraded. People stood to benefit directly from one announcement but not the other.

This is not to accuse anyone of dishonesty or deliberate deception. But it is definitely something worth considering as bloggers attempt to establish some kind of code of conduct and as they seek to find their place in this new media.

So let’s talk it through…

Just a couple of days ago I completed a project for New Reformation Ministries, the teaching ministry of Dr. Steven Lawson. The timing was largely coincidental to the fact that only last week I was down in Mobile, Alabama at a conference hosted by Dr. Lawson and by his church. This is what the ministry is all about: “The unique focus of New Reformation is to recover and reclaim in the church a high view of God, an exalted vision of Him, who supremely reigns over all. Especially does this ministry seek to magnify the sovereign grace of God in the salvation of sinners. These transcendent truths that once shook the world in the sixteenth century are those same doctrines that are particularly featured in the preaching and teaching here.”

I assume that Dr. Lawson will eventually write a “Welcome to this site…” kind of article pointing out some of the site’s new features. But until he does so, I’ll outline some of the good new features that I’m most excited about.

First, and perhaps most importantly, the Sermons section has been completely overhauled. Because it is difficult to know what an audio file contains, and thus it is difficult to search for just the right audio file, we created a tagging system to try to pull out some of the key words. Thus you can look at the sermons through a tag cloud, picking out particular key words that are of interest to you. Of course sermons can also be viewed more traditionally through titles, texts, series, dates, and so on.

Second, the site’s Books section has been expanded a little bit. I think it will be improved further as the site evolves. But even in its current form it contains some good information about Dr. Lawson’s books, and especially his most recent titles from Reformation Trust.

Finally, the site now has both an RSS feed to update you on new articles and updates, and also a podcast address so you can receive Dr. Lawson’s sermons and conference messages as soon as they are posted at the site.

Of course this is not all the site has to offer. There are some good articles there along with information about Dr. Lawson and his ministry and information about where you can hear him speak. So be sure to drop by the new web site and let Dr. Lawson’s ministry serve your faith. He is, I am convinced, one of the finest expositors of our time and I’ve benefited greatly from his ministry.

Making an impact on the world of social media.

On Saturday I had 11,000 unexpected guests drop by. One of my stories got picked up by Reddit and StumbleUpon, two of the big social media sites, and it ended up on the front page of both sites concurrently. This caused about 11,000 people to drop by my blog in a matter of hours (on a Saturday, no less, when traffic to these sites is probably far less than it is during the week). I was out and about and busy for most of the day so didn’t really notice much happening, but a quick check of my statistics monitoring later in the day showed that about 1,500 to 2,000 people per hour were dropping by while the stories remained on the front pages. This is the first time one of my articles has been picked up by these sites. It was far less thrilling than I might have imagined, especially because it was just a silly story I wrote a couple of years ago that offered nothing at all profound.

I guess there is no real way of knowing if the people who poured in to read the article that ended up on these sites actually stuck around to become regular readers. I’m guessing none of them did, or certainly not many (though if you are the exception I’d be interested to know it). These social media sites have an amazing ability to drive traffic, but I’m not sure how adept they are at driving long-term visitors, especially to what is rather a niche blog like this one. I suspect that most people visit these sites to get a quick entertainment fix and are not looking for any kind of long-term commitment!

It got me to thinking, though, about how Christians might take advantage of social media. After all, it seems that if a story ends up on the front page of Digg or StumbleUpon or Reddit, people click and read. It is no doubt a safe assumption that the vast majority of people using these sites are completely disinterested in anything even resembling the gospel. Most of the stories that show up on Digg (the only one of these sites I tend to keep an eye on) that deal at all with Christianity are firmly opposed to it.

Digg is one of the ways information moves these days. The site has caught on like wildfire and has spawned hundreds of imitators. But none of them have the sheer power of Digg. The term “the Digg effect” refers to the site’s ability to send so many visitors to a particular site that the site’s server can’t handle the capacity and gives up the ghost, at least for a time. A whole mirroring program has been put in place to attempt to make links visible even after Digg has crushed the server. A single story on Digg’s main page can bring in tens of thousands of visitors in a very short time. If a story ends up on Digg and a few of the other sites, well, you do the math.

The concept is simple but brilliant. Wikipedia sums it up well: “News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ.” In other words, individuals post links to stories and the user community gives these stories either a “digg” or a “bury.” The stories with the most Diggs make their way to the front page where they are seen by hundreds of thousands of visitors, producing a veritable flood of traffic. The other social media sites each have their own features, but they work in roughly the same way—users submit stories and they are democratically promoted or demoted.

It is an interesting system. The stories that are promoted are often well worth reading, though certainly they need to be read with discernment and the headlines must be read carefully to ensure the reader knows what he is likely to see when he clicks.

The biggest problem I’ve found is the unbearable stupidity of so many of the comments—and perhaps even the majority of the comments. Digg seems almost incapable of producing good, useful or interesting discussion. This article is a case in point. The article describes the “hero” of the Minneapolis bridge collapse and his efforts to avoid media exposure. His desire for privacy even led him to decline a photo opportunity with the President.

Mr. Hernandez was not available to comment on the offer; Ms. Schwartz said he left town for northern Minnesota late on Friday, overwhelmed by the attention and concerned that his co-workers were being overlooked. He spent the weekend fishing. When President Bush’s staff contacted him to request a photo opportunity, “He was just, like, ‘Nope,’ ” she said.

Here are some of the comments provided by the Digg users:

• he should have taken him up on the opportunity and called him out on some **** when he was there.
• He should have gotten an “I’m with stupid ->” t-shirt! :)
• I’m guessing it was more of a ‘photo opportunity’ for Bush rather than for the kid.
• Well good for him, coz BUSH IS AN IDIOT
• lol. Owned. I wouldn’t want to be in a picture with that ******** either.
• If he was a real man he would have taken the opportunity to speak his mind.

Enlightening, isn’t it? Unfortunately, this kind of discussion is endemic within Digg and other social media sites. And the people who leave such comments are the same kind who are involved in promoting stories to the main page. Needless to say, this means that stupid stories by far outweigh good ones and frivolous content outweighs serious content. A story bashing President Bush is on the fast-track to tens of thousands of visits; one supporting him may as well not even be submitted. Again, some of the stories are certainly interesting and worth reading, but one certainly does need to look for the diamonds in the rough.

And so I wonder if Christians could use Digg and other sites to try to drive people to the occasional good article. Say, for example, that a blogger wrote an article that refuted five of the most common claims of today’s most prominent atheists, or someone wrote an article showing why we can trust the gospels. Or what if there was a ten minutes video clip (with transcript) of John Piper sharing the gospel? Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if these could be promoted to the front page and be seen by thousands or tens of thousands? It would require a coordinated effort, I’m sure, and might even be destined to fail (is it true that there are a very few people within Digg who have an outrageous amount of influence in demoting certain stories?). It would be nice to be able to promote just a few kernels of wheat amidst all the chaff.

For those who participate in social media, I’d be interested in knowing how such an effort might work. I’d be interested in knowing if it is even feasible. Can sites like Digg be salvaged, or are they destined to primarily only ever promote content that is unbearably light, inconceivably stupid? Can Christians hope to make an impact in the world of social media?

Just helping a brother figure out Facebook.

Josh Harris needs help with Facebook. In fact, he has resorted to begging for friends. It’s kind of sad, really. So I thought I would try to help a friend out with this Facebook Survey.

Now Facebook is kind of a neat phenomenon. I’m not convinced it has much lasting value but for now it’s kind of a fun way of connecting with friends, and especially long-forgotten friends. The problem I’ve found is that once you connect with these people by becoming their “Friend” there isn’t a whole lot left to do. Facebook is, in my experience, more fun than useful; more entertaining than beneficial. But maybe I just haven’t quite figured it all out yet. Nevertheless, here are the answers to Josh’s questions.

1. How many times a day do you check your Facebook account?

   I don’t check it more than once most days unless I receive an interesting-looking notification or if I want to post a note. I don’t find there is a lot of reason to visit it otherwise. But maybe that’s just me.

2. What do you do when someone you don’t know wants to be your friend? This hasn’t happened to me yet but it might, and I was homeschooled so I’m not sure what I’ll do.

   I suggest doing the same thing as when you receive an email you don’t want to reply to. Ignore it and hope the situation goes away! That said, I don’t think I’ve rejected any friend requests yet. Basically you have two options when you start using Facebook—either accept only friends who are really friends in a more traditional sense of the word (and then be prepared to reject a lot of invites) or widen the definition of friend to “anyone who asks.” I think this is what most people do. The concept of “friend” doesn’t have a lot of meaning in a Facebook context.

3. What’s the most useful thing about Facebook?

   I’m still trying to figure this out. But I think it’s probably in allowing you to find long-lost friends and to have a way of keeping in touch with them. I think Facebook has more value to people who do not have a blog than to those who do. If you are already involved in some kind of Web 2.0 media such as a blog, you may find that Facebook doesn’t offer a whole lot of value that the blog doesn’t.

4. Are there any really cool add-ons that I should know about?

   Not that I’ve found. I am quite convinced that every Facebook application is a complete and utter waste of time. You know, unless you like to make believe that you’re a pirate or you like to pretend to throw pretend food at people (and actually, in Oregon that may just be considered fun!).

5. Does your church use Facebook to build “community” online? Give examples. I found out my church already has a group. I’m curious what other churches are doing.

   Our church has a Facebook group and every person who goes to the church and has a Facebook account is a member of that group. But that’s about it. I don’t think that’s the same thing as building community, is it?

6. Is it true that some people have dumped email and mostly use Facebook to communicate?

   I doubt it. I don’t think that would be very smart.

7. How do respond when someone posts on your wall? Do you post on their wall, on your own? I’m not clear on this.

   The wall is a really bad way to communicate. it isn’t quite the equivalent of a blog where comments are ordered in an obvious way and it’s also not the equivalent of a forum which offers threaded discussion. So I avoid writing on walls. Walls may be one of the worst ways of communicating online ever invented.

8. I joined a group for Humble Orthodoxy and New Attitude. I also considered joining a group called “Josh Harris Ruined My Dating Life” but I was afraid I would spoil the fun they were having. But, boy, could I give them scoop on what a jerk I am. Any other groups I should think about joining?

   Probably not. It seems to me that the vast majority of groups serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. This is especially true of the group called “Tim Challies Needs a Day Off.” Lots of groups have cool or funny names or are organized around good topics, but I haven’t found much interesting discussion.

9. A more serious question: Are there any unique spiritual pitfalls or temptations that you’ve encountered on Facebook? How have you responded?

   Not so far. But if something comes along, knowing my track record, I’m sure I’ll respond wrong the first time, then try to correct it and do better the second time!

10. What does it mean to “poke” someone. How does that work?

    You press the “Poke” button and the next time that person log on to Facebook he’ll receive a message saying that you poked him. I think you also allow him to see your account for a few days when you poke him. Now trust me when I say this because I’ve tried: it’s a LOT more fun to just poke a person in real life. So rather than poking the person in Facebook, walk up to him in church, ram your finger into his rib cage and say “Poke!” There are some things Facebook just can’t simulate well. This is one of them.

11. Why do so many girls use a picture of themselves that includes three other friends? Is this like visiting the ladies room in herds? Is this something I’ll never understand as a man?

    You’ll never understand. I’m pretty sure this is a post-Fall behavior and one we men folk will never really understand. It’s kind of like the “Ooo…let’s all go and try on our dresses and brush each other’s hair and tell each other how pretty we look!” behavior. It’s almost as incomprehensible as the rules for cricket. I’ve long since given up even trying.

I hope that helps some. But it probably doesn’t much…

I’m on vacation this week. Aileen and I are perched in a nice little cottage just over a dune from a beautiful beach. The cottage is great. It has electricity and all kinds of good amenities, but no phone and no access to the internet. There is a television but it is useful only as a means of playing DVDs and receives no channels. My cell phone only picks up a roaming signal out of the U.S.(which we can see just across the lake) so I’m not about to call anyone. All-in-all it’s a beautiful thing. The only way of getting on the Internet is to drive a few minutes to a nearby town and visit the public library (or, I suppose, drive around looking for a wireless internet conection at a cafe or hotel). Since we’ve been here I’ve spent a maximum of fifteen minutes a day wired in to the world, this in comparison to the usual ten or twelve hours a day when I’m at home. I check my email, make sure my site is alive and well, see how badly the Blue Jays got beaten the day before, and make a brief check of the important news feeds at my Netvibes account. Then I shut down and return to my isolated existence.

It has been a good experience. I don’t miss the internet nearly as much as I might have thought had I known long in advance that there would be no access here. In fact, I’ve felt a certain freedom here. Some time ago I told Aileen that lately I’ve felt something of a captive to technology. I’ve been unable to get away from the phone, the cell phone, email, the internet and all the other forms of communication. This is a problem inherent, I suppose, when both my job (web design) and my hobby (blogging) depend upon the internet. Much of my communication with friends and family also takes place through the Net. Thus it’s very easy for work to intrude into leisure and leisure to intrude into work. My workdays can quickly become wrapped up in all kinds of person concerns as I respond to emails and blog posts while I should be working. My evenings are rarely quite as relaxing as I’d like as it seems that there is always something popping up, something I need to head online to solve. I told Aileen that I had decided not to check email in the evenings (or not as often at any rate) and that I had to try to separate work from the rest of life, something that isn’t always easy to do when a person works from home as I do. This vacation has forced this upon me and I’ve found that I like it.

Technology is largely a good thing, I’m sure. I’m convinced that part of our mandate for this world includes creating and enjoying new kinds of technology. But while these technological advancements can certainly do a lot to make life easier and better, they also have a way of making life more complicated. They extend our work days and worm their way into our leisure, at least if we allow them to. I’ve found that it is important to create boundaries between work and leisure and the only way of doing this, I think, at least in my case, is to be deliberate about creating space and time where technology does not intrude.

This vacation has shown me that surviving without internet and without being always-available isn’t nearly as difficult as it may seem. It is more a matter of willpower than necessity. I’ve found that I like being away from the internet for a time and that it gives me more time to do things that somehow seem less important but are, in reality, more so.

Not too long ago I mentioned that my wife and I were ready to give up cable television. Perhaps strangely, our concern stemmed not only or even primarily from the content of television shows. After all, if we do not like the content of a show we can easily simply avoid watching it. Will and Grace is a show that glamorizes the homosexual lifestyle. We do not like the show and what it represents so we can easily avoid watching it. Rather, the primary reason we have decided we’ll have to abandon cable is the commercials. We can control what we watch and what the children watch but it is much more difficult to control the television commercials that play six times every hour.

This morning FoxNews has an article that deals particularly with commercials.

Ever since Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, citizens and children’s advocacy organizations have called upon the FCC, broadcasters and even Congress to re-examine television content and the guidelines that rate it.

But one type of programming that is viewed by all audiences at all hours on every network has continued to escape regulation: commercials.

From Paris Hilton’s spicy burger ad to the ever-proliferating erectile dysfunction commercials, many parents have not been happy with recent television ads. And now, domain registering Web site GoDaddy.com is fighting to reprise its controversial 2005 Super Bowl ad during this year’s upcoming game.

Senator Mark Pryor, at the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation open forum on decency, spoke for many parents when he said, “I have a 10-year-old and 11-year-old at home, and my wife and I are scared to death for them to turn on the television without us in the room.” And even when parents are in the room children can be exposed to words and images that are inappropriate for them (and often inappropriate for anyone!). Another Senator, Barack Obama, described himself as “‘a parent who has had to sit through uncomfortable Cialis commercials while watching television with my 7- and 4-year-old daughters.’ The ad Obama cited, for the erectile dysfunction medication Cialis, features snuggly moments between couples of all ages to the tune of The Ronnettes’ ‘Be My Baby.’ And FDA regulations require medical ads to specify risks verbally, resulting in somewhat embarrassing dialogue. ‘Cialis is only for men healthy enough for sexual activity … erections lasting longer than four hours, though rare, require immediate medical help,’ the ad warns.” Of course Obama has not had to sit through the commercials, has he? No one has forced him to watch television, particularly with his daughters present. But I digress.

The article goes on to describe several recent commercials that have raised the eyebrows of many parents, including a commercial in which Paris Hilton, wearing high heels and a skimpy bathing suit, seductively washed a car (‘seductively washed a car’ - something of an bizarre concept, isn’t it?). The product she was selling? Hamburgers from Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s.

Now I’m sure none of this comes as a great surprise to anyone who has a television. We all know that the commercials are becoming racier and more provocative. In fact, advertising in general is relying increasingly on shock value in place of cleverness and innovation. There would not be much a story here were it not for another article about commercials I read only a few days ago. An article at CNET and other media venues discussed digital video recorders and the effect they are having on commercials. In the U.S. broadcasters and advertisers are growing increasingly worried about the effects of TiVo and other digital recorders on ad-watching and thus on ad revenue. After all, these devices allow people to record programs and then easily skip over advertisements.

In Japan the problem has become so prevalent that broadcasters have begun playing commercials that highlight the benefits of advertising to viewers. They point out, correctly of course, that without advertising there can be no television programming. The economy of cable television is such that subscriptions are not nearly sufficient to cover the costs of creating shows. It is advertising that allows viewers to enjoy “quality” programming.

There is something of an irony here, isn’t there? Cable programmers are demanding that we watch their commercials, yet are creating advertising that is increasingly sexual and insipid. While driving away the intended audience with inappropriate ads, they are at the same time blaming these people for not watching them. The cable companies cannot have it both ways. A parent, cuddling his young children on the couch, need only sit through a few highly-sexualized ads before guilt and common sense drive him to find an alternative. If the cable companies want us to watch advertising they are going to have to insist that advertisers clean up their act. They are going to have to regulate the advertising they pipe into our homes.

P.S.- I wanted to title this article “Be Thou My Television” which I thought was terribly clever. But then I found that I have already used that title on another article.

Care to share advice?

I am thinking of cosolidating my various RSS feeds (there are currently three per blog) and only publicizing a single RSS feed (through Feedburner) for each of the blogs. Is there anything I need to know about Feedburner before I do this?

A couple of weeks ago Six Apart released the latest version of Movabletype, the software that lies at the heart of this site and hundreds of thousands of other blogs. The new version, 3.2, offers so many new features that it could almost have been called version 4.0. Here are a few of my favorite features and wishlist of things I would like to see in the future:

New Features

• New Dashboard - The first screen the user sees when logging into the administrative interface has been tidied up and the functionality has been increased. A couple of useful plugins and a new Stylesheet go a long way to making it even better.
• Spam protection - Perhaps the single greatest annoyance when it comes to blogging is dealing with spammers. Many of us deal with, literally, hundreds or even thousands of spam attempts every day. The new version of MT has a great tool for dealing with this problem in the form of SpamLookup. This plugin was released for MT 3.x but has been incorporated into the software for the new release. While I do not use the commenting system in MT, I do use the trackbacks. A couple of weeks after installing MT 3.2, the program has blocked all of the thousands of trackback spam attempts while properly allowing most of the legitimate trackbacks. The protection is perhaps a little bit too strong, as it does block some legitimate trackbacks. But it’s hard to complain.
• Plugin Management - Plugins can now be disabled without being removed (similar to WordPress). There is also a central repository that displays all the tags the plugins make available.
• There are many other improvements, but these are the ones I felt were most beneficial to me.

Plugins

Movabletype has always had a great community developing some incredible plugins that extend the functionality of the program far beyond what Six Apart provides. The “out of the box” experience is negligible compared to what it can be when it has been “plugge-in.” Here are some of the most important plugins:

• BigPAPI - This plugin does nothing in and of itself, but does allow some great functionality for other plugins. It is a must-have for MT 3.2.
• UpdateAuthoredOn - Corrects one of MT’s most inexcusible oversights - the lack of an “update” button to insert the current time in the date field when making a post.
• EnhancedEntryEditing - Adds WYSIWYG capabilities to the entry fields relying on the TinyMCE utility. This is a great improvement on the hack for previous versions of MT which relied on HTMLArea. Unfortunately there are some small problems in Firefox but I trust those will be resolved soon.
• StatWatch - A tiny utility that allows the site owner to track visits to the site. It is a great concept, though needs to be extended to be a serious competitor to SiteMeter. One great feature is that it breaks down traffic by blog for those of us who have multiple blogs in one installation of Movabletype.
• Media Manager - This is the successor to BookQueueToo, the utility that allows tracking of Amazon wishlists, reviews, reading queues, and so on. It is newly upgraded for MT 3.2 and looks great.

Wishlist

There are a few features I would still like to see. Among them are:

• Scheduled posting that does not rely on cronjobs. Many servers do not allow the type of cronjob necessary to allow scheduled posting to be effective.
• A native WYSIWYG interface, or at the very least one that has been properly tested and implemented.
• A utility for managing site assets such as graphics, photos, etc. This is an inexcusible oversight and something that is desperately needed. There is currently no way of managing photos that have been uploaded to the site.
• Custom fields. I would love to have the ability to add custom fields to the interface. I do realize this introduces many levels of difficulty (and I realize that it is quite easy to hack the software to add them if necessary).

All-in-all, Movabletye 3.2 greatly extends the functionality of the software. While I have always preferred Movabletype to the competitors, these new features only reinforce my belief that Movabletype is the best blogging package available.

An old version, that is…

It’s quite a long and boring story, but if you have an old version of Adobe Photoshop hanging around your bookshelves I’d be quite interested in purchasing it from you. Contact me if you’re interested…

I am beginning to wonder if the recent upgrade to Movabletype 3.2 has caused trouble with my RSS output. For those of you who read this site via RSS, can you let me know if the feed is working properly for you?