"If you made this story into a blog post, people would listen."
That's what I hate about people. What makes people pay attention isn't the ideas themselves, but whether it looks like you worked hard in writing it. I've made comments on HN that no one paid any attention to, and then turned them into blog posts and had them get to the top of Reddit or Digg or whatever. Exact same ideas, all I did was visually change the text to make it look more professionally laid out, and carefully rework some of the phrasing to make it sound better to the ear. (Plus add a couple really good first sentences and a good headline.)
I've found that if you actually leave a couple minor mistakes in your blog post it gets more votes, because it look like you're thinking at the edge of your intellectual ability, and people like that. It's the exact same thing Seth said in his post about the Chris Bliss Diss video:
"Today, I got a video, featuring Jason, who just might be the best juggler I have ever seen. Same music, similar routine. Except... five balls. Not three, five. Infinitely more difficult. And Jason makes it look easy.
The thing is, even though I know how much more difficult Jason's routine is and how skilled he is, the very ease of his delivery makes it less likely an audience would give him that same ovation. Interesting how important effort seems to be."
* all I did was visually change the text to make it look more professionally laid out, and carefully rework some of the phrasing to make it sound better to the ear. (Plus add a couple really good first sentences and a good headline.)*
Those changes are non-trivial. Layout and writing style are integral components in the user interface for comprehending text.
There are a lot of hn news posts I've made that I think I could make into blog posts or even articles. But I can't claim they already are in a form people will pay attention to.
For example, the posts I'm most proud of generally get few mods whereas simplistic but irrefutable objections to some other story tend to get the highest mods. But that's logical. People just aren't reading the ten or fifty posts on a paper to find the gems. They might read the first that way if you're lucky. Otherwise, they are more likely to skim. Even on the web, the writer has to present their ideas so they are accessible.
(And here I go again. This post will get far less mods than statements like "where's your evidence")
I like Seth's writing, but I don't like this post. He's missed the point entirely.
In the Chris Bliss video, he's on a stage with all kinds of lights and scenery, performing an original routine in front of a crowd. In the Jason Garfield video, he's copying someone else's routine in a high school gym with no crowd. Sure, Jason's performance may be harder, but Chris Bliss's performance is more interesting. Its not that Jason made it look too easy, its that he made it boring.
Instead the takeaway could be this:
You users don't care if what you did was hard, they care about whether they like the product. And that's as much presentation (i.e. UI) as nuts and bolts.
That's what I hate about people. What makes people pay attention isn't the ideas themselves, but whether it looks like you worked hard in writing it. I've made comments on HN that no one paid any attention to, and then turned them into blog posts and had them get to the top of Reddit or Digg or whatever. Exact same ideas, all I did was visually change the text to make it look more professionally laid out, and carefully rework some of the phrasing to make it sound better to the ear. (Plus add a couple really good first sentences and a good headline.)
I've found that if you actually leave a couple minor mistakes in your blog post it gets more votes, because it look like you're thinking at the edge of your intellectual ability, and people like that. It's the exact same thing Seth said in his post about the Chris Bliss Diss video:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/03/its_how_you_...
"Today, I got a video, featuring Jason, who just might be the best juggler I have ever seen. Same music, similar routine. Except... five balls. Not three, five. Infinitely more difficult. And Jason makes it look easy.
The thing is, even though I know how much more difficult Jason's routine is and how skilled he is, the very ease of his delivery makes it less likely an audience would give him that same ovation. Interesting how important effort seems to be."