This post needs to be at the top of Techmeme. That is all.

Twitter Fail

Macworld Keynote (my pics)

I know the new me isn’t overly negative, and I’ve got to say that the last couple of weeks personally has been amazing. I’m discovering new things, seeding great conversations about the new wave of blogging, and I’ve perhaps never been more excited about the 2.0 space since my days at the Blog Herald.

But every now and then you have to call a spade a you know what.

This post from Twitter makes me feel ill.

Lets see, here’s a company that just took $15m, a company that sees itself as a utility player, which is a fair call, and yet we get this

We’ve gone through our various databases, caches, web servers, daemons, and despite some increased traffic activity across the board, all systems are running nominally. The truth is we’re not sure what’s happening. It seems to be occurring in-between these parts.

I’m sorry, but WTF???

Ah, but there’s a solution, apparently it’s about usage widgets:

We’re busy working on instrumenting and adding meters to provide visibility into what’s slowing Twitter down. We’ll use this data both to alleviate the current woes and to help inform our long-term architecture work to make Twitter a utility service people can count on

I noted in the Inquisitr post the argument that people who complain about Twitter downtime will never leave, and that’s a fair call, but how can Twitter, this far into the process, have zero idea as to what is going wrong? More importantly, how can VC’s invest in a startup that is apparently completely clueless?

I’m all for transparency, and the post from Twitter is beyond overdue, but at the same time admitting things are going wrong is one thing, saying you have absolutely no idea why this is the case should scare small children.

It’s like the X-Files, I want to believe, but I read this and I see complete and utter bollocks.

The new Labor led Australian Government will announce its first budget tonight and harking back to the class-warfare of the past, Labor is expected to increase taxes for the so-called rich, and at the same time reduce or remove non-means tested benefits such as the baby bonus.

I won’t spend the post writing about how the seriously rich hardly pay any tax anyway and that a couple earning $100k a year in Australia isn’t rich in an age of unaffordable housing and astronomical rents (for the record we pay $550/ wk for a 3×1 in Canterbury, VIC). Consider that the average weekly wage for men in Australia is now $1101, or $57,000 a year, and a women the average is $725/ wk ($37.7k/ yr), so presuming both couples work the average family with 2 people working brings home $95,400 per year. (source). So apparently Labor wants to strip away breaks and bonuses from average Australians.

But I digress, because I wanted to talk about the tax increase for so-called luxury cars. Labor thinks that “luxury” cars start at $57,000. WTF? It can cost $30-$40k (even more) to put an Australian built car on the road. 4WD’s, needed in regional areas and the bush are higher than this (indeed Land Cruisers can go as high as $100k), no luxury there.

But consider this: European cars are frequently offered in Diesel variations. It’s less common with other makes, although we are slowly seeing more diesel cars. What’s the one great trait of diesel powered vehicles: they are frugal on fuel use, resulting in less consumption of oil and less environmental damage. In the age of the great Global Warming scare, shouldn’t an allegedly green friendly Government be encouraging motorists to buy more diesel cars? Wouldn’t a tax break on cars based on fuel consumption be better than INCREASING taxes on these very same cars?

For the record I drive a 2003 Toyota Echo which I’ve owned since new, it does roughly 4.5l/ 100kms.

I’ll save all the formal stuff for a post at The Inquisitr later this week, but I’m sitting here on a Monday, nearly a week into the process, and thought I’d share some thoughts and numbers.

- I’d forgotten the joy (or pain) of running my own large WP blog. I’ve managed to break the template a number of times, including Sunday night where I thought it would be smart to auto-update the plugins. Big mistake

- Feedburner is still like a Rollercoaster years after launching. I can’t give an accurate subscriber number because it’s up and down, but it’s roughly 1200 subscribers on average one week in (highest count has been 1500+). Not huge, but more than the 300 or 400 I thought the site would get. BTW: why isn’t Feedburner using Google logins yet? have they forgotten about the service?

- All the missing bits are now fixed: about page with full bios, contact page complete with form (3 form plugins later), Twitter account here which auto updates via plugin, but painfully posts on pre-posts.

- The site is averaging around 18,000 page views a day as of yesterday (but including the entire month including pre-launch). The biggest day was Thursday (US time) where a post hit the front page of Digg. If the average holds (it wont) about 750k page views month. I’m betting on 500k, but hope it’s higher. When planning this I thought 100-200k, so I’m more than happy (its nearly hit 200k now)

- Started running some basic affiliate ads to demo the 125×125 spots. I’m not going to actively try to sell them until there’s a month worth of traffic to use, but if anyone is interested and would like to buy one now, I’m certainly open to offers.

- The writing team is working really well, I woke up Saturday to find I didn’t have a post on the front page. It was magical knowing that there was a pile of content up and I wasn’t pressured to add to it. Spent 2 hours playing with my son: it’s been a long time since I’ve felt able to do that without stressing about getting content up. I still worked both days of the weekend, but it was more leasurly and fun…well the Sunday night breaking the template and coding part aside

- slowly working my way through some value adds and partnerships. Couple of small announcements hopefully in the next few week.

- Haven’t had one headline on Techmeme yet, only the odd link in. Reddit and Digg headlines therefore have become easier to obtain. Bizarre.

Finally a brilliant opening from Crikey to justify my (again renewed) 2 year subscription

Things seem to going along nicely.

In Western Australia the government has clawed its way through a crony-strewn corruption inquiry that seemed to implicate half the cabinet.

Now, thus rejuvenated, it is facing down an opposition led by a creep who can’t finish a meeting with advisors without either tweaking their underwear or dry humping the furniture.

In Tasmania the government seems to see its primary function as the delivery of aged eucalypt logs to the monopoly supplier of cardboard noodle boxes to the Koreans.

In Queensland appalling infrastructure planning has led to level 12 water restrictions in the wettest state in the federation and a health service apparently populated by suspected terrorists and subcontinental sociopaths.

South Australia? Whatever. Just as long as we keep the writers’ festival and the V8 supercars.

In New South Wales the premier is apparently convinced that he actually holds authority thanks to the divine right of kings, an impression long shared by his planning minister.

In Victoria everything should be fine as soon as the government finds a way for monetising the TV rights to gangland murder.

Honestly, we’re a model.

I’ve had a lot of questions following yesterdays announcement, and I’ve tried to respond to all of them where I can (the direct ones anyway, haven’t worked through the comments yet). Ed Sutherland at Problogging News wanted to interview me so I responded to his questions; there was a slightly odd angle but I never gave it a second though, and it resulted in this post.

I’m don’t hate it, but his angle seems to be trying to whip up some scandal or controversy where there really isn’t one.

For the record here’s my actual responses to Ed, you’d note the how the full response wasn’t used and instead bits were picked: fair call I guess reporting wise.

Hi Duncan,

Since you’ve left TC, I had a few questions for a piece I’m writing at PBN.

Michael Arrington kiddingly said Inquistr will compete with TC - will it? Or, do TC bloggers agree to some sort of non-compete?

He was joking. Only completely insane people think they can compete with TC, besides that the site isn’t strictly tech, it’s pop culture and odd/ funny stories as well. I was essentially a contractor as opposed to an employee, so no, I’ve never signed a non-compete, the full time staff may have non-competes, to be honest I don’t know.

Do you know who will fill your shoes at TC? Schonfeld is the most recent addition, but Arrington and a few other bloggers are writing there now.

Jason Kincaid started just before I tendered my resignation a month ago, he’s young and still a little raw but he has a lot of potential. I’m not sure what Michael’s plans are in terms of hiring someone else: when I started I was the only f/t writer besides Michael (Nick Gonzales did write, but he also did tech/ coding for TC as well), and now there’s Mark, Jason and Erick, and a couple of occasional guest writers (including me).

Is TC like Gawker in that there is base pay plus advances based on traffic bloggers generate?
Not at all. I was always paid a flat rate per month irrespective of the traffic. There’s obviously a culture that encourages success, be that with traffic, Digg mentions, Techmeme, even Yahoo Buzz and Yahoo itself (I managed a story on the front page of Yahoo once, insane). Michael has always had a strong emphasis on quality and originality: sure, the site covers major news that others are covering, but if you watch it carefully you’ll see it still covers startups other people haven’t covered, it still covers funding announcements first, and it still breaks a lot of news.

More here. Some really nice words from Michael.

The thing that’s surprised me about this is it didn’t leak in a month. Probably helps that I didn’t tell all but a few people, but it’s cool knowing that in the age of uber-gossip it never leaked.

The video below covers more (serious NSFW language warning…I no longer have to watch my f*cks quite so much). The key points: 1. I want my weekends back (although it wont happen for sometime, but at least I have control over that aspect 2. I’m a little tired (the whole Louis Gray thing being case in point) 3. I feel that if I’m going to kill myself doing this (blogging) it should be building something I own or have a stake in.

The other news is that I’ve soft launched the new site The Inquisitr. More details here. It still needs some tweaking and I wont be going hell for leather posting until the morning (still clearing up some TC stuff…and I need some beer ). It goes without saying that I’m excited about it, and I believe the mix of tech, pop and funny stuff is pretty unique. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll have more to say on that in the coming weeks.

My thanks to all those people who sent well wishes across when the news broke. I’m stoked and humbled by the response.

I’ve been watching the whole Troy Buswell, chair sniffing scandal from afar, having left WA in February.

For those not familiar with the story, WA Liberal leader Troy Buswell, having managed to become party leader last year despite a “bra-snapping” scandal, was exposed as a chair sniffer. The short version is that Troy apparently sniffed the chair of a female staffer, then apparently crawled around on the floor, all while completely sober.

I’ve met Troy, his wife, his family, even been to his house. She who must be obeyed helped Troy roll the sitting member for Vasse a couple of years back so he could enter Parliament.

Troy would be one of the most talented politicians I’ve ever seen speak, and I’ve seen a bloody lot during my time in politics, including even Clinton back in 96 and William Hague in 98. His ability to capture an audience has always been first class, and as the record shows much of his rise to the leadership was off the back of his stellar parliamentary performances.

But there was always a dark side to Troy. We learnt very early on that his ambition and greed for power were unfortunately his overwhelming driver. He slowly turned on or failed to support those who had supported him along the way. Over time my opinion of him diminished significantly, from one of awe and deep respect to one of disgust. They say loyalty means nothing in politics, but in my experience good politicians remain true to their base, and never forget those who helped them along the way.

So today, in Perth, probably by the time you read this (I’ll update the post later) Troy is facing a spill in the party room. He claims that he still has the numbers and he will live on. Even in political death, Troy has once again shown that his lust for power and position is more powerful than honour and doing the right thing.

The right thing is that Troy should resign.

Imagine the 2009 WA election campaign with the Opposition being headed up by Troy Buswell. Imagine the fun the Labor Party will have with chair sniffing attack ads. Here’s the key: the bra-snapping might have been a drunken lark, but chair sniffing is down right creepy and the people of WA will know that. More importantly female voters en-masse will flock to the ALP when presented with a creepy chair sniffer as the alternative Premier of the State. Simply Troy is now tarnished goods, and there is absolutely no amount of spin that can save him in the eyes of the electorate.

Of course the alternative Liberal Leader is a rather interesting choice: Steve Thomas, the vet from Donnybrook. I thought he was an awful candidate for the seat of Capel, but much to the surprise of many in the South West he’s worked extremely hard and actually turned out to be a really good, honest hard working member of Parliament. But there are Skeletons in his closet as well, no chair sniffing incidents that I’m aware of, but lets just say Steve on the piss is one of the more interesting things I’ve seen in my life. Having said that hard drinking is a badge of honour in WA, if and when the stories come out they’ll probably help give him a boost in the polls.

I’ve never once tried to interfere with my old site, The Blog Herald. I sold it and that was the end of the matter. It did well under Matt Craven and the folks who bought it from me, but a year later Splashpress bought it and turned it into a poor mans Problogger with little or no news and I completely stopped reading it. The site always did advice, even before Problogger, but it was an occasional special that complemented the core news function of the site, it was never meant to be the main source of content. The original motto (since dropped) was more blog news more often, and I always prided myself on being the first with news from the then new blogging world.

Fast forward to this year and some sanity has prevailed. I believe Thord Daniel Hedengren is editing the site now and I’ve always thought highly of him, and he’s bought back Matt Craven and David Krug. Suddenly The Blog Herald has become a decent read again (news wise…I still don’t like the self help stuff, but it’s not dominating anymore) and I re-subscribed to the RSS feed.

Then someone decided it would be smart to switch from a full feed to a part feed. [insert loud WTF here]

I know in years gone by that I took a side in favor of this, but I always looked at it from the publishers viewpoint, which in short is all about preventing your feed being scrapped, but I never really considered it from the user/ readers viewpoint. Put simply, to me today a part feed is as useless as tits on a bull. The jury has long since decided that full feeds are the way to go.

So here’s my little bleg: TDH or who ever made the decision, please go back to full feeds. I know the scraping sucks, but it sucks that your readers cant read all the content in a feed reader either. Just as the site was getting good again, you’re now turning people away, and that makes no sense at all.