Not even funny

Many people who commented on the posts did not agree with my point that many bloggers do not provide meaningful content that deserves to be followed by thousands.

As I was browsing most subscribed youtube channels- which are essentially just videoblogs- I found some really interesting/funny ones. However, most seem to confirm my general opinion.

I’ll give you an example: CarlieStyle's Channel (#2 subscribed channel on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/user/CarlieStyle#p/a/u/1/2rngF5S4qfc)

After watching this video, do you believe that the channel has over 200,000 views and over 25,000 subscribers?
I did not find it particularly funny, or informative. I personally would not watch someone sitting in a bathtub and telling me to shave my legs with dishwashing liquid.

This made me wonder: What made people want to watch or subscribe?
Trying to answer this question, I looked through the comments people left- maybe I can find some hints there. Here are some of them (I picked comments to summarize various reasons to subscribe).

Top 4 reasons to subscribe:

1. snipercolt99 “she is hot”

me4uk “blondes win the internetz :D”- no comments

2. BlenderBabies “Hey Carlie! Cool channel "If cheerleading was easy, it would be called football." That cracked me up.”- some people actually find it funny

3. KmanCentral “Hey Carlie please subscribe? :)”-trying to get Carlie to subscribe to their own channel by subscribing to her’s

4. Jennatopia “Hunny... i adore you... but you gotta make it so stupid people cant leave dumb comments on your vids. soooo rude... and i think for your third video your doing great. :)

You have my 100% support!!!


Love, Jenna”
Interesting spelling choices there… I guess some people love to create illusions that they are friends with someone they don’t know

I could not find any meaningful (to me, at least) reasons to subscribe by looking at people’s comments. Maybe videoblogs are different from regular blogs- but does it mean that the actual content/information is less important?

Blogs can be good, too

I have to confess: despite my passionate believe that blogs can potentially be a source of misinformation, I do subscribe to one- Diana Kimball: regular expressions http://www.dianakimball.com. In this post I will try to evaluate her blog and Diana herself as a leader.

Why I subscribe?

I found Diana’s blog completely by accident as I was searching for GMAT preparation software. In this blog, that was skillfully written and visually appealing, I found interesting thoughts on the concept of GMAT and other standardized tests. Diana’s blog appealed to me because, unlike many other blogs of potential b-school applicants, it emphasizes the experience of studying for and taking GMAT, not the numerical result. I found it well structured, clearly written, and very engaging.

New Age Leadership?

In the blog itself, I found out that an outside agency that provides GMAT tutoring services has contacted Diana and asked to use the services and write about them in her blog. What is it, if not a recognition of leadership? The company believes that if Diana says the services are good, people will follow.

Thought Leadership: redefined

For thousands of years, people considered great innovators and philosophers to be the thought leaders of humanity. Plato and Aristotle spent their days at the city square trying various philosophical questions, and many people spent their days listening to them. People followed them, because these philosophers were very well educated and incredibly intelligent. Their EXPERTISE gave them AUTHORITY to speak their thoughts to large audiences. They were able to answer questions better than everyone else, so everyone else listened. Their EXPERTISE made them THOUGHT LEADERS.

For the first time in thousands of years the definition a THOUGHT LEADER has changed. We get information not only from professional journalists, but also from bloggers- that is, people around us who do not necessarily have EXPERTISE. In the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, the founders of Western thought, noone could even imagine that other people start talking themselves instead of listening to the experts. What has changed?