Marc Andreessen's Blog: my modest point of view on this great blog

update 2 10/07/07: Marc himself answered on this blog. Impressive answer

update 10/07/07: when i published this post i was not aware of Ning massive round table. My post is now part of the Techmeme homepage among the conversation on the round table, although it is not relating to it. However this information just helps me being more confident that Marc's content (most of it) could not have been written between June and July only. Such an equity operation sucks a lot of time. Btw Ning is what we use for iDrink.

It's been a while i have strongly urged any entrepreneur/vc to read Marc Andreesen's Killer Blog. I found it SO good that i have asked myself for a while how this man can write such amazing long posts with so much insights in so little time.

I have came with some modest conclusions and if Marc reads my blog i hope he can answer/complete/disagree with me.

I believe that Marc has been preparing the content of his great blog for a very long time. In fact i believe most of his content was aim to a book or some other kind of public/private publication that was never published and that he patiently wrote his long posts about entrepreneurship /VC/corporate strategies for a long time and decided to publish them one day.

One of the reasons that make me think so is that most of his post have very low number of outbound links and absence of visual elements and that the frequency of publishing of his series of posts is VERY high. Even by typing very fast, Marc is not just blogging (he is involved in Ning for example and invests in several startups like Netvibes) and no matter how good he's in execution i know what it takes to write good contents (i say that from my modest experience as a blogger): TIME!

So i am not saying Marc was preparing his blog by patiently waiting for the right day. But it looks to me that it is more of a personal decision to share notes he has collected for a while maybe for publishing one day a book (hence the low number of links and writing style which is closer to personal notebook than actual blog). Of course now you can see more "on the go" post. But i believe the basis was already there.

I think also his blog has experienced tremendous growth and popularity for a blog launched about only 2months ago. And this unexpected success has lead him to turn off comments on his blog. Not being able to scale the moderation of comments and interaction with readers.

I have tremendous respect for this guy i do not know and i am in admiration of his content and insights. But i believe this is a shame he decided to do that.

• First he should include Technorati incoming links to his blog so readers can follow discussions on other blogs
• Second if i may throw a suggestion i would have preferred him to publish at a slower rate but involve himself more in the interaction with readers. In a word spend more time with his community and less writing.
• Third i think he should include tools that require little moderation but still enable user interaction with audience: rating system (Marc you could use Outbrain.com ) and Polls

One thing i am happy though, is that he decided to change the awful template of his blog making it cleaner.

i have sent him a copy of this text by email and i am not sure he will answer. But i am very curious to learn more. I will meet Marc at TechCrunch20 conference and will be able to ask him directly about it

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Comments

[adam benayoun]

Marc's blog is very very addictive, his content is awesome and I must say that i came to almost the same conclusion.
I couldnt really understand where the "comments" disappeared, now I understand he couldnt keep up with the "spam cleaning".

I miss the interaction. I was also very proud of the fact he quoted one of my article!

Anyway, hope marc will turn on his comments and eventually get into a conversation with his readers.

[adam benayoun]

Another quick note, Marc has a list of "coming soon" posts, I never saw this on other blogs.
I usually know what I am going to blog about only the same day or a day before.

[Adrian]

It's not really a blog in the pure sense if the information isn't timely... I wonder if it could be a new way to release books... one post at a time?

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi Ouriel -- thanks very much for the kind comments!

I'm flattered that you think the content is good enough that it must have been written in advance :-). Truth be told, it wasn't -- although in a sense I have been working on it for 13 years, since I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1994 -- it's just all been in my head the whole time.

I began the blog as an experiment and frankly wasn't all that sure what I'd write about. Then my repressed opinions started to come out :-). And the more I write, the more ideas I have for things to write, which is fun.

I usually write and post in the same day. The posts never start out long but sometimes they are by the time I finish. I try to edit them down as best I can.

I doubt I will ever do a book -- one of the things I love about blogging now that I'm doing it is that it fits much better with my style of work, which is short concentrated bursts. I'm not sure I'm capable of sitting still long enough to do a whole book, even assuming it would result in something that people would want to read.

I totally take your points on interacting with the community -- I'll be doing a lot more of that and I think your suggestions are great ones. I'm going to try to do more stuff like you suggest in my new design. I think comments are a nonstarter for me at least for right now -- too much spam, too many trolls. I think cross-linking and trackbacks and blog search engines like Technorati are a much better approach because they result in each person having responsibility for their own content. Will be writing more about that topic in the future.

Frankly, I bet there are some good startup ideas in that area :-).

Adrian -- I completely agree that blogs would be a new way to release books -- I think John Battelle very effectively used his blog to help seed his book in a way that was very interesting and helpful both for him and his readers, for example. Tim Ferriss is another guy who has really thought this through. My #1 recommendation to anyone who is going to publish a book would certainly be to have a blog going on the topic of the book at least six to twelve months in advance of the book, and to have real content on the blog that then ties into the book.

[Avi]

Ouriel, thanks for the "urge" - I followed your advice and am trying to keep up with this talkative ;-) blogger.

[Louis van Proosdij]

Marc Andreessen's blogging debuts reminds me Guy Kawasaki own start of the art of blogging... :-) I just hope Marc will succeed in keeping posting such amazing good content on a regular basis while Guy quickly dropped his rate and average quality.
Keep on posting Marc! :-)