Carnival of the Capitalists

Creative Construction

Once again, change comes to Carnival of the Capitalists. Not to address the entire history or what this place is about in this post, if you’re new to it, but to note that this is a new location, which was also a previous location, but in the previous form it was merely the info site, and in the new form it will be the location of, picking up from Bizosphere, which has been both, and haltingly a business blog in its own right. Um… you got that?

No? Okay then…

When CotC started, it being the first niche/topic-specific “carnival” - meaning generated mainly from post author submissions, as opposed to being generated entirely by someone creating a link roundup - based on the original Carnival of the Vanities, one of my innovations was to have a dedicated web page with information and a list of hosts. There is still a page in that location, still one of the top search hits for Carnival of the Capitalists, and maintained as a source of redirection.

Eventually I thought it might be easier to maintain as a blog, and ended up with one in pMachine at thecotc.com. That was mainly for info and to announce when each edition came out, as they were hosted here, there and everywhere in what I consider true blog carnival fashion.

I came up with the domain idea Bizosphere.com, intending it to be far more than a mere home of CotC, but using it as such because it sounded cooler, easily brought me into WordPress for everything, and resulted in automatic boost for the rest of the content that was to be there. TheCotC.com was actually supposed to expire, but the registrar had it on autorenew and it got past me, to my utterly broke dismay.

Eventually people to host became harder to find, and I tried a change to hosting every edition at Bizosphere. That was a lot of work, depending whether I had a guest do the actual post for me. We were in a position where something that was several hours a week distraction from other things was a negative, even if I loved it, and it wasn’t clear the public interest was there or, frankly, that there would ever be payoff to take it all beyond a labor of love, source of minor internet fame, and prospective career (or career change) credential. I bowed to pressure and reasoning, real or imagined, and suspended CotC entirely.

Then came Twitter.

I’ve been known for verbosity, and my writing of descriptions for CotC entries was, while often a thing of beauty, no exception, and thus part of the time sink problem. There was also the work of compiling it into a post overall, which tended to be done last minute.

That wasn’t in a vacuum. I’d always regretted letting that interest amd others fall by the wayside. Some people were fans of CotC and did want it to continue/return. I was encouraged by Scott Allen’s interest in hosting it with my help on an ongoing basis at his now former About.com site.

The breakthrough idea was to use a CotC Twitter account, long established but little used. That would enforce concise posting of entries - too concise, perhaps - and enable a weekly post to be compiled automatically. People could click through to the links on Twitter, or could come to the carnival digest of those tweets. There might be other options available in the future, should I want to explore what could be done fueled by Twitter.

That meant giving up on having a blog carnival by the definition I was instrumental in creating, creating instead a similar beast built on an established if fallow brand name. It would no longer travel, or even have guest editors in-place. It would, I decided, no longer be rigidly for blog posts or limited to one per blog. “Of great interest” might be enough, rather than merely going for substantively original quality writing. And there would be neither the extensive blurb “hooks” to get people to go to the link, nor always an unambiguous link making clear the target, since either I or Twitter would usually use a URL shortening tool.

Would it fly? Eh, it’s not lit the internet on fire, but everyone is now onto business and economics, considering the times.

Would it fulfill the promise of keeping my time devoted to it modest? Yes!

Since it does that, and it is content, and a blog with content can generate a trickle of money, that means it stays indefinitely. I’ve not made a big push to improve the quality and number of submissions, and have relied heavily on my own discoveries, but we’ll see what happens after a grand, or even not so grand, reopening here.

There were two things that led me to move CotC-proper to its own domain. One is that Bizosphere is about tapped for revenue it might produce, short of becoming more prominent and well-trafficked, and that revenue is in my pending ex-wife’s name, which may also change, but even if it does, building for the future seems logical. The other is that I find myself itching to write further commentary on some of what goes into CotC, but that seems awkward or inappropriate to me, so I’ve resisted. Time considerations aside.

Thus I will try to do what I failed to before, use Bizosphere for meatier posts, using the fact I am back on CotC to provide inspiration.

I’ll finish by giving myself a to do list:

Setup Twitter Tools here

Port CotC posts from Bizosphere, as far back as they go

Create info posts/pages

Including an up to date history of past editions

Including simplified, updated info on submissions

Update Blog Carnival

Update original CotC pointer page

Post at Bizosphere pointing here

Publicize the new location of CotC as widely as possible

After that it’s the routine stuff.

PS - I’m using my real name on new and some existing blogs, for the most part, in keeping with everything changing in my life and leaving old associations behind.

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