Dumb question: Who is Louis Gray and other blogosphere questions
J Phil has a wonderful post on his site about full-time blogging. He shares his thought patterns on why he’s “sticking to his day job.” He cites criticism as one of the reasons. I can totally understand that.
But, another thing stood out in his post that I’ve been wanting to touch on for a while. He mentioned this dude named Louis Gray. I’ve seen this name quite a bit on Twitter feeds (especially Corvida’s) and his quotes, but could you help a sister out? What is the power behind Louis Gray? Why is he so influential and how did he get that way? (I guess I *could* Google him ‘eh?). I read his bio on this site, but I guess I’m looking for some type of timeline on him.
I’m not being antagonistic, it’s just that I really feel out of the loop about this dude…and I’ve been blogging since 1999-2000. That’s sad on my part. It also makes me feel quite…uh…old:-).
Additional confession: Another person I missed the boat on was Robert Scoble. I’d heard of him but didn’t realize how much of a blog star he was until LIFT. I was having a conversation with someone when they saw him, freaked out, excused themselves and ran over to him. I laughed my butt off. Then I saw folks surrounding him, trying to get their pictures taken with him and such. It was surreal, like someone giving out government cheese. I now know to get my camera and put him in a choke hold the next time I see him.:-)
Another post that Phil linked to also got me thinking: Cyndy Aleo-Carreira’s article Does the Silicon Valley Economy Drive a Luxury Bus?. She preached the truth there and said something that I’ve always thought. There seems to be a divide between SV folks and those of us who don’t have the cash or the connections in the blogosphere.
During LIFT and Going Solo I saw folks walking around with Macs, new Nokia phones and other cool gadgets. In terms of GS, some of them had flown in from the US and were on their way to other parts of Europe after the conference. I soooo wanted to ask: “How the heck can you afford all this?” My laptop crapped out on me a few weeks ago. I can’t afford to get a new one right now (I’m starting an MA program in the fall. Also, the Swiss tax man is pointing his sharpened pencil at us.:-)). I’d love one of those new-fangled Nokia phones. I peeped Stowe Boyd’s at GS and salivated (I thought he had an N95 but I guess it was a newer model than the N95). But I can’t shell anything out for that either (I paid CHF600 for an HTC Touch last year. I’ll never, ever do that again).
And let’s not mention the iPhone. The possible hidden rates give me the willies.
Side note: During her speech at GS, Laura Fitton discussed how a friend ran into Bob Geldof in the middle of Africa (or somewhere) and did a live streaming video interview with him using, I guess, a Nokia phone and qik. Who paid for the bandwidth and how much did it cost?
I remember years ago sending a popular blogger a bold note asking her how could she afford to do all of the flying she did. Her blog entries seemed to reveal the extremely cool, artsy, jet-set life of a blogger. She told me “frequent flyer miles.” That was great, but you have to *buy* flight tickets to earn frequent flyer miles.:-)
So, I guess this post asks two questions: What’s behind the rise of Louis Gray…and (unrelated, I guess) how can A-list bloggers afford their lifestyles? Revenue from Google Ads? Secret sponsors? These are serious questions.
Can anyone answer them?
Note: I guess following Mr Gray on Twitter would be a start at finding out eh?:-)
Some are Silicon Valley millionaires. Others work independently. In some cases, conferences foot the bill for speakers. A lot of this stuff can be written off as work-related. And then some folks are just up to their eyeballs in debt. Not an answer really
.
Comment by tiffany — June 17, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
I guess this means I should come up with something for SXSW to get them to foot the bill, eh?:-)
Comment by RT — June 17, 2008 @ 5:31 pm
I’m no secret, and my contact info (e-mail and cell phone) is right on the blog. Feel free to reach out any time.
Comment by Louis Gray — June 17, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
You are so not alone. I can’t remember what started it all… probably reading Engadget or some other random web surfing. I came across Techmeme and Twitter which lead to more folks and mentions of Scoble and Louis Gray. I wondered what was so special about them.
And I also want to know how they and other of these sparkly blogger people afford all these toys and trips everywhere.
Comment by Yolanda — June 17, 2008 @ 6:26 pm
@Louis – > Okay, so what happened? How did you blow up like you did? (Or should I take this to email)?
@Yolanda – >
Comment by RT — June 17, 2008 @ 7:09 pm
Don’t feel bad. What I have figured out about this whole Social Media Clique is that, if you hang around long enough, you will see who is “important” pretty quick. Everybody in the community is all on their…uh…”buddy lists.” I have no clue who these guys like Scobel and Gray really are, but I do notice that interesting people tend hang around where they are at.
Besides reading their comments and the occasional blog post, I have no clue who these guys really are either.
Comment by Rahsheen — June 17, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
@Yolanda: I’m not buying toys and taking trips. I don’t think my blog says I do.
@RT: I don’t feel like I’ve “blown up”, to be honest. I’m more visible in 2008 than I was in 2007, but not dramatically so. I could drop into a tech conference and go totally unnoticed, but Scoble couldn’t do that at all. I’ve been part of what a lot of us call “The B List”, which is hiding just under the radar.
There are places where I’m “overweighted”, like FriendFeed or on Corvida’s Twitter, which make me appear bigger than reality, but that paints a false picture.
As for why I got more visible? I think it came with finding new products early and recognizing their potential. I was among the first and loudest when it came to FriendFeed. Being right about that helped gain credibility and visibility on that site as it took off. You could also see my pushing of sites like ReadBurner and Toluu, which have done extremely well on their own.
Over time, it’s built on itself. One story leads to more opportunities which leads to more stories. Just being consistent, I guess.
Comment by Louis Gray — June 17, 2008 @ 7:23 pm
I came across this nice interview a while back that would seem to answer most of your questions on Mr Gray.
http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/04/15/whos-louis-gray/
PS: If you find the secret to having the latest everything and the jet set lifestyle keep me posted
Comment by Jon — June 17, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
I’ll have you know that I paint no false pictures of Louis on Twitter or otherwise
He’s a good guy with a great opinions and a cunning mind. Louis is also one of the evangelists of many new services that have taken off such as FriendFeed, ReadBurner, RSSMeme, and Toluu. He introduced me to all of these services and many more.
He’s popular because his voice and opinions are very impressionable and thought-provoking. For me, he’s lent a helping hand in getting my name out there. Plus, our interests just happen to overlap. He has a great writing style and great thoughts. However, this is all a preferential thing and entirely dependent upon your interests. He’s popular to those with relevant interests and who may run in the same blogging circles.
Comment by Corvida — June 18, 2008 @ 12:57 am
I guess I can answer part of your questions, about travel for example. I travel quite a bit, usually on my own money, but manage to save on hotels by crashing in friends’ rooms or couchsurfing. Going Solo paid for speaker expenses, as do many conferences, but not all — for example, SXSW doesn’t, I’m afraid.
I think that when it comes to new toys, some high-profile bloggers get the gear for free — or decide to invest a significant portion of their budget in “tech toys”. Stowe, for example, is on Nokia’s blogger outreach programme (don’t ask, it doesn’t exist here in CH-Europe, I already investigated), which you’ll find mentioned here and there in his posts about his Nokia toys.
I personally have a hand-me-down phone and a MacBook which I bought with my own money — my only significant technological investment all these last years.
As for “floating to the top” in terms of blogger visibility, I notice that many who do (Louis is just one example I’ve seen over these last 8 years of blogging) cover tech topics and tend to be in the “breaking news” race in some form or other. Not to take anything away from Louis, but you also mustn’t neglect the feedback loop effect when it comes to popularity.
Hope this helps? Ask more if you wish — I really liked your post.
Comment by Stephanie Booth — June 18, 2008 @ 12:58 am
@Steph – > Your comments answered a lot.:-) Thanks for taking time to answer them.
@Jon – > Great article! Thanks for posting the link.
Comment by RT — June 18, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
I knew that Louis Gray sounded familiar…. I tracked back a comment I made in DISQUS to his site.
As to “blowing up”, there might be a formula for it but if you have content that others latch on to the niche can expand rapidly. Having a dedicated blog does help in terms of traction.
Soon though, I’m pretty sure there will be (already is?) a niche of drive by comments that will be enabled with meta services like DISQUS and FriendFeed or summary approaches to the corpus of disparate interactions.
On TV we have talking heads that nobody tunes in for other than to see them opine in sound bites. Eventually there will be a celebrity in that with DISQUS and FriendFeed. Right now it’s probably limited to being a well known or influential commenter on a specific web property (DIGG, etc.).
Comment by Jay Cuthrell — June 26, 2008 @ 1:08 pm