Into the Blogosphere - Stumble Upon

A long time ago (maybe 20 years or so) I was reading how in the future we would all have personalized newspapers and content coming into our lives each day. My thought was that this would come from traditional media such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, etc.

For the last few years, we have googled our way to content we want to read.
Some who are more sophisticated are now using RSS (really simple syndication) to bring content into our own "readers".

A few weeks ago, a few fellow bloggers introduced me to the new age of "Stumbling" at www.stumbleupon.com

"Using search engines to locate relevant content typically means hunting through pages of results. Rather than searching for quality web sites, StumbleUpon members are taken directly to web sites matching their personal interests and preferences."

Stumbleupon is collaborative and personal. Stumbleupon seems to learn about your interests via your preferences and the friends and sites you rank . My mediamensch website is a perfect example. I am not showing up very high on search engines for my stories about working on the George Clooney "Leatherheads" film or a conversation with a film producer who has an autobiographical film about being Elvis' bodyguard. My "friends" on stumbleupon are now able to read these and then their "friends of friends" are finding out about this as well.

I use the Stumbleupon toolbar. If I see a website or content that I like, I press the thumbs up icon. If I did not like it I would press the thumbs down.


Since I also list favorite movies, books, television shows, interests, etc. I can find others in the world with similar interests All the stumblers who like the TV show Seinfeld or the film "Godfather". According the their website, Stumble upon offers nearly 500 topics which users may choose to indicate their interests and preferences. The content I have encountered in my first weeks of using stumbleupon has been unique, humorous, informative and enjoyable.

What I enjoy about this site, is that it really starts to find the "essence" of the individual and matches you up with like minded people. Definitely an interesting way to further "flatten the world".

To see me on Stumbleupon just go to http://ewarrior.stumbleupon.com. If you like what you read or see, you can click to become a "friend".

Happy Stumbling!

My Blog Journey - MediaMensch.com and Leatherheads

May 17, 2007 In the beginning of the year I made a determination that I wanted to set upon a journey to become a world class blogger. As in all my journeys, I work hard to find the top people in this area to advise and mentor me. I found blogging to be someone tedious when just having to write about technology. Although it was my interest. My passion was about the creative side also where I had worked in radio, television and movie distribution.

I was tracking the movies being produced in North Carolina (where I live) for my daughter who has a strong interest in singing and acting. I noticed late last year that a film called Leatherheads, written and directed by George Clooney would be coming to the Carolinas and my home town Charlotte.

I ended up at an casting call at a large regional mall and submitted a profile and headshot. A few weeks later, I received a call to be an extra for 7 days on the film.
I decided that this would be a great opportunity to blog my experiences as a "first timer" on the film set of a major motion picture. At the same time, I also had decided that it was time to learn how to upgrade the technology within my blog to work toward making it as professional as possible.

Through this journey, I connected with a very talented blogger community from around the world mostly from the social network called www.linkedin.com. Many of these bloggers all started the same way, working to build an audience and produce interesting content on a consistent basis.

A few of the areas or sites they told me about were Feedburner, MyBlogLogs, Google Analytics, Picasa, and a few others.

Over the past month, I have worked hard to keep up with my goal to blog daily (reality is probably more like 3 to 4 times a week). Most of the work was on the mediamensch side on my experiences on the film, plus other projects. As I begain to write an interesting thing began to occur. As much as I wrote, (just like this posting), 3 or 4 related story ideas would pop into my head.

The next phase of my blogging will be to build an audience. The best advice was to find a way to post on popular blog sites related to your own content wth a link back. It also occurred to me to seek out other media such as radio and magazines to promote the blog.

This journey is only about 6 week old to become a top blogger. I will detail as much as I can some of the tips and tricks and people and companies I meet along the way.