PureBlogging

If you’ve ever needed inspiration to keep blogging, just look at Johns Wu. This is a guy who sold his blog Bankaholic to BankRate.com for $15 million. He’s only 22 years old. Dreams can come true.

I conducted a little Q&A with him and posted it at WebProNews.

I’ve contacted him again, and should be writing a follow up article for WPN, which will look a little closer at how Wu achieved his success.

Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, we’ve posted some more great video interviews with bloggers (like Darren Rowse and Jeremy Schoemaker to name a couple) on the WebProNews Video Blog. You’ll definitely want to watch those.

Update: Posted the article. Didn’t get a response from Rowse or another one from Wu yet, but it still looks at how authority and user engagement can be use to achieve success. I may still follow up yet again if I hear back from the others.

You may recall my post from a week or two ago when I talked about blogs as credible news sources.  I consider  blogs and social media to be in the same ballpark, because after all, blogs are social and community driven as well.

After posting an article about CareerBuilder gaming Twitter at WebProNews, and talking about how social media legitimacy was deteriorating as a result of social sites not better policing their sites, I got into something of a debate with one of the commenters, who claims that there never has been or ever will be any legitimacy to social media as a news source. Obviously, that is a notion I disagree with.

Of course , seemingly right on cue, someone upset the “Apple” cart today on iReport.com falsely reporting Steve Jobs having a heart attack that temporarily sent Apple’s stock plummeting. I also talked about this at WebProNews.

That story would seem to favor the point of the guy I was debating with, but the community factor is what led to it being disproved, which kind of illustrates my own point.  To quote myself,

Where the legitimacy shines through is in the communities themselves. There are always others to call something out as BS in new media formats where discussion is the key to coming away with useful information.

When all is said and done, it is up to readers to use their heads and think about where they are getting their info. Just as has always been the case, (even long before social media, blogs, and citizen journalism were ever heard of) you shouldn’t believe everything you read. But damning an entire medium because some abuse it is just ridiculous.

Your thoughts?

You all seem to like the link lists, so perhaps, I’ll just try to make one post a week one of these. It’s certainly less time consuming for me too

Here are some notable ones for today:

From 0 to 2000+ Subscribers in 90 Days - This is a post from early in the year at ProBlogger, so some of you may have read it before, but speaking of using good titles, it’s hard to beat this one when you’re addressing an audience of people wanting to increase their blog traffic.

Too - Google Co-founder Sergey Brin started a personal blog a couple weeks ago called Too, which I talked about here. He’s only made one significant post so far, but it’s a blog worth watching, based on the fact that he is one of the brains behind one of the most important technology companies in the world.

Anatomy of a Social Networking Friendly Blog (video) - Again, the title pretty much says it all, but it’s an interesting and increasingly important concept.

Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda Talks with WebProNews - This is an interview from the BlogWorld Expo. While I’m definitely not a fan of Linkin Park’s music, Shinoda’s take on blogging is somewhat interesting, if only to get the perspective of a celebrity.

Top 5 corporate blogging mistakes and how to avoid them - Lists are always interesting, and there is not question that corporate blogs are always making mistakes. This is an interesting look at the issue from David Meerman Scott.

Enjoy!

Big news from StumbleUpon today!

Not only has the social bookmarking site (or “personalized recommendation engine” as they call it) announced a new partnership program that will see sites implement internal stumblability, but they are rolling out a new design that will no longer require users to install the toolbar into their browsers.

What does this mean besides added convenience for users?

It means that many more people are likely to start using it, and that means a whole lot more content. It also means a whole lot more potential fuel for bloggers (as I mentioned, it’s one of my favorite tools for overcoming writer’s block).

I think both of these announcements are going to turn into something really big for StumbleUpon, and they are announcements that are long overdue (particularly the non-toolbar one).

For more about it, I wrote a piece on it for WebProNews this morning.