Now that we are on the road again and living with reduced electricity, I am trying to adjust my blogging and social media accordingly. Blogsy for iPad might help me blog more often and easier. Worth a try. This is my first post from Blogsy.
OK heres a test ride.
A few videos thrown in . . .
Someone congratulate me. My blog is pregnant and about to give birth to a number of little bloglets, some of which will be bookable blogs and all of them will be more focused on specific conversations: unlike their mother blog, which has always been a stream of consciousness on a variety of things that interest me.
I know . . . welcome to 2012!!!
So if you notice I am only blogging sporadically, its because things are brewing behind the scenes. Stay tuned. My birthday is on Sep 7 and I will probably announce what I am doing then.
On April 19, 2002, at exactly 11.23am, I gathered a few of my blogging friends and launched a commununal blog called A Kingdom Space. The tag line was "A global diablog - stories that are bigger than our own." Within a very short time, we were about 40 bloggers telling our stories of what God was doing in our countries. A few bloggers got their first taste of blogging on A Kingdom Space and others were quite new at it.
Here's a list of some AKS bloggers that I copied off the WayBackMachine - not all of these links to their own blogs will work but you will recognize some of the names. To everyone on this list, and to the many others that contributed to A Kingdom Space, we thank you and appreciate your efforts not just for blogging, and for snapshotting the emerging church in your countries at that time, but also for being part of shaping the future of the blogosphere.
If you are feeling nostalgic for the early days of Christian blogging, jump into the first month of A Kingdom Space and have a read.
And if you are a budding blog-historian, tell me if you think A Kingdom Space was the world's first Christian communal blog or if it was preceded by something else that we don't yet know about.
KUDOS to Blogs.com for including me on their Top Ten Blog list for Christianity, and to Patton Dodd for his impeccable taste in quality bloggage. I am still getting hits from this list.
TOP TEN BLOGS IN CHRISTIANITY:
Tallskinnykiwi is ten years old today!
This blog you are reading was born on June 3, 2001 and it replaced my earlier blog, Andrew's Tea Salon (from 1997). My yearly blogiversaries have become a wonderful part of my life, almost as meaningful to me as my real birthdays.
Thanks for coming along all these years and making it an enjoyable ride.
A little history and some milestones.
In 2003, Tallskinnykiwi, then on the blogger platform, reached Number 3 blog in the world according to Blogger Forum. From that great and wonderful height, perhaps never achieved by a religious blog, either before or after, it has tumbled embarrassingly and violently to nestle itself among mortal blogs and the hoi polloi. But among Christian and religion blogs it still manages to find its place.
It enjoyed the status of the highest ranking Christian blog for some time but since then has been bumping up and down the ladder, depending on how much time I have to blog (less and less) and how much wifi access I can find in the countries I visit. And of course there are much better blogs and bloggers than me and I am glad to blog in their shadow.
There are 3251 posts on this blog with 19, 622 comments. If it was a book, it would take a really really ridiculously long time to read. Heres a graph of what my blog looks like with your blogs attached to it.
I did the same graph exercise 5 years ago on my 5 year blogiversary
2 thoughts on the future of blogging:
1. As blogging continually finds itself supplemented by micro-blogging platforms like facebook and twitter, it is even more important to hold your own space on the web. Your blog is your playground, not someone else's. It collects the streams of your virtual life, organizes them, presents them, and its something that you get to control and add your own flavor to.
2. As blogging moves from the computer screen to mobile devices, having an online presence will be increasingly important to point people to your published work and to host the conversation and comment regarding it. In the new world of e-publishing, bloggers will have the edge. The web is shifting from sites to apps, from viewing/surfing to downloading/reading, and that means there will be greater opportunity to get your self-published posts and thoughts into billions of devices, and greater scope to make some money from your work if that is important to you.
Blogging has come a long way in the past decade, but it is still in its infancy and there is a lot more that will happen in the future. Its not as punk rock as the early days but its still a vital part of self-publishing and providing compelling and accurate information to the world.
So be part of that future.
Blog on.
If you are interested in starting a blog, and I totally recommend you do, I have some friends who can help. I recommend Darren Rowse's book Your First Week of Blogging, as well as checking out Tentblogger John Saddington. Both these guys are Christians and both will help you be a better blogger.
Earlier Blogiversaries:
June 3, 2004 - some thoughts on the blogsophere
June 3, 2005 - remembering the birth of TallSkinnyKiwi blog
June 3, 2006 - 5 year blogiversary and some games
June 3, 2007 - 6th year and thanks a million.
June 3, 2008 - 8th year. Taking a break
Now is the best time to start blogging. Really!
Darren Rowse has just released the Probloggers Guide to Your First Week of Blogging. Its a great little guide to getting started and developing some rhythms of writing and posting which will be a great help.
- Set up a folder for ideas
- Use mind mapping techniques for ideas
- Post your content the day after you write it
- Check google for key words that others use
- Integrate with other social media
There are also a lot of helpful links to previous content that you probably wouldn't find without the book.
Yesterday I listened to the podcasts from Faith 2.0 Religion on the Internet, a conference last week in England about religion on the internet. Jointly sponsored by Tony Blair Faith Foundation and Durham University.
The best talk in my opinion is the keynote speech [download here] by Catherine Wybourne, the "invisible nun" from Holy Trinity Monastery and blogger at ibenedictines. She seems a competent native and her online instincts are spot on. I might adopt her . . .
There is another podcast on extremism which has an interesting talk on Muslims in second life and virtual reality but unfortunately ends up in some tense conversation which is not really on topic. It should be noted, and was noted, that extremists online are from many faiths and not just Muslims.
The first three podcasts are more helpful and worth a listen although a little fast forwarding here and there might be in order. Podcasts 1, 2, 3
Best speaker was Dr. Heidi Campbell, esp. on the second podcast. Heidi came up to Orkney Island to interview me for her book called When Religion Meets New Media. If you like the conference podcasts, you will probably appriciate Heidi's book. As part of her history of religion online, she mentions my efforts in the early part of last decade in the area of communal blogging and virtual reality experimentation like our cyber seminary. Hey . .. just buy the book.
Related on TSK: Church 2.0, Cyberchurch Symposium, Virtual Church in the 1940's, The Skinny on Cyberchurch
Church blog rankings have one purpose and one purpose only: To allow the reformed bloggers to ridicule the emerging church bloggers. If there was another purpose, it would be for all of us church bloggers to stroke our tender blog-egos.
Kent Shafer just released his Top 200 church blogs and it seems the Reformed bloggers are kicking butt. Again. Ouch!
[you probably didnt know it was a contest . . ay?]
TOP 200 CHURCH BLOGS
as of March 26, 2011
| Name | Author |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
| 1 | Between Two Worlds | Justin Taylor |
41670
|
95287
|
6
|
4254
|
176112
|
| 2 | GetReligion | Various |
206553
|
49788
|
7
|
2294
|
472214
|
| 3 | The Resurgence | Various |
118067
|
79455
|
5
|
4602
|
313338
|
| 4 | Michael Hyatt | Michael Hyatt |
33048
|
41480
|
5
|
1888
|
184228
|
| 5 | DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed | Kevin DeYoung |
41670
|
95287
|
5
|
1837
|
82634
|
| 6 | Jesus Creed | Scot Mcknight |
21454
|
154562
|
6
|
928
|
67490
|
| 7 | Don Miller | Don Miller |
128980
|
12232
|
5
|
10755
|
93282
|
| 8 | Internet Monk | Various |
371386
|
13075
|
6
|
2114
|
256242
|
| 9 | Pyromaniacs | Various |
230138
|
9379
|
5
|
3287
|
175631
|
| 10 | Dr. Albert Mohler | Albert Mohler |
118908
|
42069
|
4
|
2342
|
362420
|
OK - I am looking at 5 blogs that would probably be "Reformed", 4 blogs that would probably come under the "Emerging" label, and one blog (Get Religion) that would be neither. 5-4. A fair win.
Perhaps Ed Stetzer is correct: "Reformed nerds rule. Emerging church is dead".
But wait! Lets look at another list.
Wikio has released the Top 20 religion blogs and you will find a completely different list of blogs. I copied this from Maggie's blog.
In this list, the Reformed dont win at all. HA HA!! Does it make a difference that the Wikio list is composed in UK? Yep I guess so. A little reality:
1. Language matters. All these blogs are English only so its not fair to call any of them "world's top blogs" without ranking foreign-language sites.
2. Geography matters. Even Kent admits that.
3. Criteria matters. Kent uses 5 criteria to measure his Top 200 but there are many ways to measure a blog. Blog Rank, for example, uses 20 different criteria and the results are very different.
| # | Blog Title |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
RSS | Site Score | Badge |
| 1st | Challies Dot Com | 16,010 | 83,758 | 77,742 | 380,327 | 5 | |
100 |  |
| 2nd | Christian Personal Finance | 8,614 | 7,774 | 28,051 | 50,636 | 5 | |
99.65 | |
| 3rd | Desiring God Blog | 28,258 | n/a | n/a | 139,671 | 3 | |
99.34 | |
| 4th | Ragamuffin Soul | 6,829 | 169,061 | 198,138 | 104,784 | 5 | |
99.33 | |
| 5th | 22 Words | 5,331 | 20,004 | 38,332 | 68,112 | 5 | |
98.7 | |
| 6th | ChurchCrunch | 4,390 | 120,018 | 74,351 | 31,758 | 4 | |
98.53 | |
| 7th | Bible Gateways Verse of the Day | n/a | 444 | 1,344 | 2,764,431 | 7 | |
98.52 | |
| 8th | Tall Skinny Kiwi | 2,842 | n/a | n/a | 83,240 | 5 | |
98.35 | |
| 9th | Church Relevance | 5,151 | 149,605 | 359,709 | 5,546 | 5 | |
98.3 | |
| 10th | Between Two Worlds | 37,385 | n/a | 2,295,000 | 135,292 | 6 | |
97.99 | |
| 11th | tonymorganlive.com | 7,086 | 299,510 | 480,589 | 66,098 | 4 | |
97.95 | |
| 12th | WithoutWax.tv by Pete Wilson | 2,266 | n/a | 309,525 | 108,871 | 4 | |
97.85 | |
| 13th | Compassion International - Christian Blog on Child Poverty | 3,285 | 14,057 | 72,600 | 41,028 | 5 | |
97.62 | |
| 14th | Human3rror | 2,180 | 370,913 | 141,873 | 41,500 | 4 | |
97.61 | |
| 15th | Perry Noble dot com | 10,618 | 223,936 | 439,366 | 85,798 | 4 | |
97.52 | |
| 16th | Logos Bible Software Blog | 36,790 | n/a | n/a | 43,605 | 6 | |
97.17 | |
| 17th | GetReligion | n/a | 38,152 | 205,524 | 434,509 | 7 | |
97.02 | |
| 18th | TheResurgence | n/a | 24,524 | 100,569 | 309,464 | 5 | |
97 | |
| 19th | Albert Mohlers Blog | n/a | 44,634 | 112,904 | 364,716 | 4 | |
96.96 | |
| 20th | internetmonk.com | n/a | 124,851 | 404,776 | 230,241 | 6 | |
96.95 | |
In this scenario, I beat out Justin Taylor (who was number one on Top 200) but Tim Challies rules the roost. [once again].
At least they do for now . . . but just you wait . . . heh heh!!
RELATED: Why the Reformed bloggers are beating the Emerging Church bloggers.
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