Mark Curphey - SecurityBuddha.com

I have just logged in to some “interesting”  commentary on why I decided to leave the Security Bloggers Network.  This from Alan Shimmel and this from Michael Farnum.

Of course I am not the first to get the sharp tongue (see the last sentence) of the host of the SBN Alan Shimel, or the first to reply (Amrits blog is excellent BTW). I also had some good private emails from corporate security folks and analysts that I won’t post here for obvious reasons but needless to say they are more in line with Michael Farnum than the others.

The easiest thing would of course have been to unsubscribe from receiving the feed and silently slip away while still riding the bandwagon. I know of at least two other folks that have actually done that. I could have never spoken up and the rest of the people would never have known any difference and I wouldn’t be the bad guy. From a traditional media marketing view I guess it would have been the best thing to do, but having been involved in online communities like OWASP and now the ISM-Community, I think that if you don’t like something you should speak up and make your views clear; even if you know they won’t be popular with everyone this week. People know that they can trust that what you are saying is what you think (popular or not). I stood up in the early days of OWASP for things I thought were important (and made some enemies) but it was one of the very reasons I think OWASP has blossomed into such a great project with great people today. And yes Dinis Cruz and Andrew van De Stock, find me a project to run, that time has come again. I also watched my wife do this recently in a family issue and she oozed more integrity than anyone I have seen in recent years. Usually you find others are thinking the same and you are just speaking what others are thinking.

It turns out there’s some truth in that this time. I am a month old virgin to this blogging stuff and I am learning very rapidly. This sorry episode may have been my biggest blogging mistake to date (although I think quite the opposite at this point in time). There are two main points about blogging for me that this raised. Noise from blogging networks and association.

Noise from Blogging Networks

A) - Precision Context is surely one of the very reasons blogging has become such a powerful medium. I want to read stuff out of Microsoft from Mike Howard, JD Meier, Mini-Microsoft and Don Dodge but don’t want to hear the claptrap marketing spiel of some at Redmond. Following specific and precise blogs allows me to filter out the noise coming from Microsoft and focus on what’s important. It also allows me to trust that if Richard Bejtlich says something is cool I will go read it, if Alex Hutton points to a post it’s worth a look, Jeremiah Grossman says something about AppSec I read it, if Michael Santangelo or Mike Rothman mention things I will take a look. It’s what I call Precision Context (maybe should be the” OPML of Trust”). I don’t want to have to wade through piles of noise to get to signal and individual blogs allowed me to do that while my first experience with a blogging network didn’t.

B) - Scoble had a great moment in time. He had hooks into everything that was happening at Microsoft and it became compelling reading and viewing. As soon as he left his personal life raised the noise to signal ratio above my tolerance level and I stopped subscribing. Noise levels change when signal strength drops. 

C ) - Alan suggest thats if you don’t like some posts don’t read them. My point here was that the Feedburner doesn’t yet allow you to filter out noise.

I think to sum up Noise from blogging Networks, the Darwin theory is that the blogging networks will have a natural selection process. I agree they will but today not reading blogs posts that you yourself have made a conscious effort to subscribe too doesn’t cut it for me.  Until then I think Yahoo pipes will beat out Feedburner and today I plan to take Alan’s advice and do something about it by creating my own SBN type feed using it Ordering, sorting, truncating, filtering and even splitting. Gotta love web 2.0 technology! And yes my Yahoo pipe will be public to consume. Want to be a beta tester?

I think this leads me to Blogonomics # (whatever). Its not about the highest number of readers or a popularity contest. If all I wanted was a high number of readers I would do what Amrit suggested and posted some pictures of Britney Spears wearing no pants. Irony, humor, blogonomics? You decide.

I think its about communicating with people that you want to communicate with and deciding what things you want to influence your thinking and writing.

Association

I am actually a little upset by Alans accusation of elitism. It’s way way off the mark although I probably could have chosen better words.

When I get emails from potential customers (people who I want to communicate with) saying “one of your blogging buddies on your SBN network posted this [claptrap]….” then I am associated with someone else’s content; like it or not. I am trying to carve out my views on information security and I don’t want that kind of association to cloud the scenery. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that whatsoever. It’s certainly not elitist as charged. Would Thomas Friedman be happy for his work to be printed in the National Inquirer or would be prefer to stick to the New York Times? Is that elitist. I don’t think so.

OK now I have wasted a whole bloody morning on stuff thats really not important; which is exactly why I unsubscribed from the SBN in the first place. Argh, blue skies ahead.