DISQUS

Good thoughts and well wishes. You are in our prayers.

Wow, we hosted two sessions and tried to get around to everyone we hadn't met before but amazingly enough, seemed to have missed you. Saw your Jott that tweeted over lunch that you were on your way but never caught up to you I suppose.

Unfortunately, if WordPress.com as a domain folded or if they started charging and you didn't want to pay, you would lose your OpenID. Even if that didn't happen and you moved your domain over to WordPress.com your old ID of username.wordpress.com would cease to exist and your username.wordpress.com OpenID would disappear right along side of it.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to help ensure longevity of your OpenID. The whole purpose to OpenID is to provide a decentralized system and ensure data portability. You can install a bit of code into your own homepage that points at your OpenID provider of choice thereby allowing you to use your own domain name/blog name as your OpenID account and should your provider cease to exist, you domain name won't necessarily (or at least you have control over that) and can just change the code at will to a new provider.

Simon Willson wrote a great howto so rather than repeat it or reinvent the wheel, here's the link to it: http://simonwillison.net/2006/Dec/19/openid/

Good luck and welcome to OpenID! :)

"Those who can't do, teach" comes to mind. It is unfortunate that those who reach notoriety should feel threatened by the very conversation that they invite. Blog commenting has always been a touchy subject, but I think that unless the comments are inappropriate (profane, threatening....) they are part of the conversation. We might as well just go back to the old way of posting static HTML pages to our websites if we all have to go back to our own blogs and link back if we want to be a part of the conversation. It's great that we have the ability to post to the topic thread from our own blogs, but I don't want to have to keep trying to find the threads all over the internet. It defeats the purpose of blogs. The conversations that come from productive disagreement is a learning opportunity. Too bad people tend to forget that.

I remember trying this out just a few months after starting to use Twitter. I found myself wandering the bookstore desperately wanting something to read and wishing I had some recommendations for awesome books that I might not otherwise find on my own. I didn't have a lot of followers at the time, less than 50 I believe, but I did get about a dozen replies.

I don't think quantity of replies necessarily depends on number of followers but a whole lot of other factors: time of day and topic seem to be the big ones. This applies to blog posts as well as tweets. I seem to get more comments on posts about pajamas than I do on more serious topics. There are some things people just don't have anything to add, especially if people reading your Twitter/blogs are doing so because they want to learn from what you have to say and consider you more of an expert on the topics you post about. It is typically bad form to leave comments that say things like "I agree" and "Well done" only so people just don't respond at all. The more common the topic the more likely more people have had experience with it (hence Wil Wheaton's cold, who hasn't had a cold?).

One more factor is how often you interact with people who follow your tweets/read your blog. If you regularly reply the more likely they will reply to you. It becomes more of a conversation and less of a question/response forum. Chris Brogan (even with the obscene number of followers that he has) makes himself feel approachable. If you feel like you are having a conversation with someone that you have something in common with, it will be natural to send a reply their way.

Christa
linuxchic on Twitter ;)

I remember trying this out just a few months after starting to use Twitter. I found myself wandering the bookstore desperately wanting something to read and wishing I had some recommendations for awesome books that I might not otherwise find on my own. I didn't have a lot of followers at the time, less than 50 I believe, but I did get about a dozen replies.

I don't think quantity of replies necessarily depends on number of followers but a whole lot of other factors: time of day and topic seem to be the big ones. This applies to blog posts as well as tweets. I seem to get more comments on posts about pajamas than I do on more serious topics. There are some things people just don't have anything to add, especially if people reading your Twitter/blogs are doing so because they want to learn from what you have to say and consider you more of an expert on the topics you post about. It is typically bad form to leave comments that say things like "I agree" and "Well done" only so people just don't respond at all. The more common the topic the more likely more people have had experience with it (hence Wil Wheaton's cold, who hasn't had a cold?).

One more factor is how often you interact with people who follow your tweets/read your blog. If you regularly reply the more likely they will reply to you. It becomes more of a conversation and less of a question/response forum. Chris Brogan (even with the obscene number of followers that he has) makes himself feel approachable. If you feel like you are having a conversation with someone that you have something in common with, it will be natural to send a reply their way.

Another fabulous presentation. I fell in love with your way of presenting at BlogWorld. Can you please teach others? KThnx. ;)

Great post Ed! It is great to see someone take up another side. Historical evidence has also suggested that the earth runs on warming/cooling cycles with multiple "ice ages" of varying scales. I am all for being "green" and living as earth friendly as possible but there is one thing I still don't understand; how does buying carbon credits make a company any more green and/or carbon neutral? Seems like a lot of lip service.
BTW, the Kennedy assassination? Result of global warming. ;)

Great article and very thorough! Thanks for the tips! =)