Information at Your Fingertips - Who Needs the Newspaper?

Today, we live in a world of smartphone, iPad and laptop. And all these high tech devices are changing the way we work,  play . . . and do business.

They are changing our lifestyle.

Thanks to these devices, people now have a choice. They have access to almost all kinds of information - not only locally but worldwide . . .  all at their fingertips.

In the last decade or so, we have seen an exponential growth of online activities.

Like they say, if you stayed rooted to the ground, you'll be left behind.

And it has turned out to be true and profound for many newspapers around the world .

Recently in February this year, New York Times announced that it's seeking bidders to buy Boston Globe which it owns because it's losing money. This is another sad tale of a newspaper feeling the heat from the onslaught of the Internet.

You would not have thought that in an information age, the most badly hit victims would be purveyors of information . . . the newspapers. But, yes, it is.

To quote a Newsweek report about three years ago . . .

"Newspapers are getting wiped out in part because they didn’t realize they were in the information business — they thought their business was about putting ink onto paper and then physically distributing those stacks of paper with fleets of trucks and delivery people."

Ironically, newspapers have always thought that they are in the business of selling news printed on sheets of paper.

The rise of the Web has shattered that kind of myth and delusion.

So who needs the newspaper?

With your laptop, iPad or smartphone you can enjoy news and information online from any newspaper in the world. Or skip a newspaper website and go to some other site that carries more entertaining news with no hindrance of censorship or pretentious reporting.

Face it. Readers don't want to pay for yesterday's news on wrapping paper. More and more are migrating to the Internet to get their news. -- Markk

"Watching newspapers go out of business because of the Internet is like watching dairies going out of business because customers started wanting their milk in paper cartons instead of glass bottles."

-- Daniel Lyons, technology editor of NEWSWEEK.

Wind of Change Across the Internet

Wind of Change  In between blogging tasks, I try to keep up to date with what's brewing and who's cooking up a storm on the World Wide Web. In other words, sniffing the air and watching out for the wind of change in blogging and other online trends.

I don't know, but from the vibes and bytes that are floating around, a great number of bloggers seem to be going ga- ga about linking up to each other. It was like that six or seven years ago and I think not much has changed here today. It's still the same old, same old. But other aspects of SEO have changed.

Thanks to Google with its page rank ramification, bloggers are falling over each other trying to gain good ranking in the SERPs and hoping the Google web crawlers would come and index their sites.

What it boils down to is that moolah is, by and large, the main motivator behind this craze to ride high on the SERPs. High ranking means more traffic to your site and some other 'goodies" as well.

Obviously, the quest for link love is the natural thing to do if you want to see your blog rise. And, I think, it's not a taboo thing to do if you do it in the right manner.

But we have to be conscious of the fact that there are likely many blogs that don't get read very much. Lack of traffic is one thing. The other factor is the content on the blog and it goes without saying that the content should have quality and be compelling enough to draw the visitor in.

Now, a recent article on SiteProNews has it that Google has performed some major overhauls to the way it ranks the websites it has indexed by its web crawlers.

According to the article, these overhauls will be ongoing and will continue to develop further in 2013. It said Google wanted to create a web popularity landscape that depends not just on classical SEO tactics but also numerous other factors involving social media, website design and friendliness to the latest browsing systems such as mobile web viewing.

Remember when Big Goog went to war against black hat SEO in 2011 and last year? Goog's storm troopers took out link farming, content stuffing, keyword stuffing and other "nefarious" optimization tactics that don't actually reflect site popularity.

Matthew Ellis who wrote the article is of the opinion that "Google is steadily working its way towards creating a more humanized ranking index... and the end result is expected to be a more "real time" search results profile for queries and increasing amount of weight given to data from Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms".

Ellis wrote: "This almost certain 2013 trend is great news for a lot of content weary bloggers and site owners. Instead of giving heavy emphasis to massively content stuffed websites, Google and other search engines will continue to focus more on ensuring that their best ranked content is judged more by its quality, relevancy and freshness."

You can say things are evolving at a rapid pace today. If it hasn't hit you yet, now is the time to start noticing the wind of change that's blowing in from way yonder. What can you see beyond the horizon? - Markk

P/S:  Enjoy the YouTube video

Bots Cook and Serve Food at Robo-Restaurant in China

Wow! Have you ever thought of going to a robo-restaurant for a nice hearty dinner? Well, If you're looking for an out-of-this-world dining experience, head to China. Robots are now running a restaurant there. The bots take orders, cook and even entertain.

Just can't resist running this video on  this blog. We are moving nicely into the New Year and  I've decided to add some spice to TheNextPost with some quirky video news now  and then just to take the drag out of the usual SEO,  Internet marketing, How-to on  blogging write-ups.

Oh yeah, why not herald 2013 by enlivening my site with some new content ideas to change the pace of  this blog. So, enjoy.

> Grab Media video

How to Keep Your Blog Alive and Kicking

Faced with information overload, how do you keep pace as a blogger? Some of you may have that boundless energy to keep pushing the envelope, but others may not have that kind of determination and passion to keep going without stopping to take a breather.

Of course, there are those who regard blogging as a full-time "profession" or be better known as a "pro blogger" - that is someone who does not have a regular job or who has quit his or her day job and now strictly makes money online.

You have to sweat for it in the initial stage. You have to nurture your blog to maturity, build links to gain more traffic, write content that will draw in the readers, and keep up with the latest news and developments on the Web.


 Credit: Blaugh from Blaugh.com

The blogging landscape is not a static entity. It's vibrant and continuously evolving. Keeping up with the Joneses is like a daily chore, or perhaps, a pain in the you-know-where.

Blogging in general is not a walk in the park. It's daunting, exciting and addictive at the same time. It's like a jungle out there if you don't bring yourself up to speed as a savvy blogger with a real grasp of the way the blogosphere works.

Why do people keep writing posts on their blogs almost daily? Well, it's the belief that a blog has got to be fed with content to keep it alive. If it's starved of new content for a long period, it'll start to wilt like a plant without water. And traffic juice will slowly dry up.  This is generally true.

Will you become a successful blogger?

So much has been written about how to become a successful blogger that it boggles the mind (mine included). How is that? There are so many different views as to what the term "successful blogger" means.

Let me pose this question: How do we define "successful blogging"? The hard truth is that blogging "success" can be measured in many different ways - It means different things to different people.

Look at it this way: 

1. It doesn't matter where you start, it's where you finish that counts. No matter what field of endeavour, if you feel positively about success and you have attained something worthwhile, then you can say you have achieved a degree of success.

2. It's very easy NOT to achieve success. Your thoughts are you, and if you keep having negative and self-defeating thoughts, then the less successful you'll be.

So is there a connection between these thoughts and blogging?

You bet there is.

If your blogging objective is to be successful as a blogger and not just as something intrinsic like an online money spinner or wannabe, you should strive to make yourself unique. And not just be another commonly available "commodity" on the Net. Hope you catch the drift here.

There's no doubt that each person who starts a blog has a dream, and I won't be far wrong to say that this "dream" is usually geared towards making moolah online. Well, it could be a few hundred bucks a month for a start, a few thousands for some, or a zillion a month for the high-flyer!

I have such a dream, too. There's a saying..."if you don't have a dream of your own you'll work all your life to fulfil someone else's dream."

Blogging is a frontier where a lot of dreams can be achieved. Blogging for moolah is not just a hobby. It may start as a passion and end up as an online empire for some.

My line of thinking  is that if you can do or create something that generates  attention and word of mouth, you can build traffic to your blog. That's what most of the top bloggers do.

With their established audience, they just keep on writing good content and that's enough to keep things moving forward. Or should we say, moving in your direction.

Yep, if you continue to put out great articles, your traffic will grow. Maybe not as fast as some but it could be much faster than the average blogger.

Of course, if you're less established, you could also focus on building traffic and links. But above all, don't ever neglect putting out  the good stuff on your blog.

Who knows, if you work hard  enough, Google may bless you with a PageRank. Who wouldn't give an arm or a leg to have a good PageRank? -- Markk