Early last week, I received a couple of unsolicited offers for revenue generation from the content I’ve generated on the Web:

- D2, a newspaper-insert magazine-lette akin to the New York Times’ T Magazine, requested permission to use a long-ago photo I took of the former American Apparel billboard adspace on Manhattan’s Houston Street (a crop of which is featured above).

- The same day, someone at vectorTrap asked to place a text ad on the index page of this blog. Something to do with wireless phone service, I think.

The common thread? Both offers flaked out. I might have scared them off. I asked for a relatively hefty sum from vectorTrap (“hefty” if you consider that I’m sure these outfits usually pay out only a couple of bucks to more naive bloggers), while I told D2 that I’d expect accreditation and some sort of compensation. I didn’t hear back from either after relaying that information. I know D2’s request was time-sensitive, hinging on the production deadline for their next issue, so I assume they moved on.

No big loss, although I’d gladly take the money/credit if it was offered up. Part of my ulterior motive was to avoid going out of my way for such non-spam inquiries, so in that sense, I got what I wanted. The micro-monetization of user-generated Web content doesn’t seem well-structured for substantial cash outlays.

Two years after the turn of this century, I started blogging. Two years after that, I moved my bloggage to Population Statistic. And today, to the day, I’m celebrating six years of running this every-single-day-posting blog.

And how am I celebrating? By seriously considering closing up shop.

It’s true. The handful of regular visitors to this space may have noticed the precipitous drop-off in posting lately, down to a single post per day. That’s well off my pace from years ago, when I would routinely knock out 4-5 posts daily. There’s no doubt about it: I’m running out of steam. I still enjoy writing on this, my little corner of the Web, and even look forward to it most days. But even when the motivation is there, I’m finding it difficult to produce anything that I’d consider worthwhile. It’s getting to the point where I’m disqualifying potential material, ostensibly because it’s not interesting enough, but really because I don’t feel like going through the exercise of crafting a mini-essay.

I can’t say that this low-ebb phase will last. It’s entirely possible that I’ll recharge the creative juices soon, whether due to a change in climate, a shift in lifestyle, or some other factor. But at this moment, I can’t see it. And I don’t see the point in pushing on when I’m not fully into it. Rather than go to a non-daily posting schedule — which is the present trajectory — I’d sooner just pull the site down. Maybe to start over with a new site/blog, or maybe not.

This is kind of a downer way to commemorate a six/eight-year run, especially since most bloggers are lucky to keep at it for more than a few months. All thing have to end eventually — assuming I do end this online hobby. Stay tuned.

Blog-housekeeping note: Starting today, I’ve installed Twitter’s official Tweet Button onto this blog, for both individual posts and aggregate post pages.

This replaces the Topsy Retweet Button that I’d installed as a plugin back in March. I’ve long since deactivated that one, as it started exhibiting some bugs a few months back. It doesn’t look like Topsy is even supporting the plugin anymore, so I’m 86ing it. The only thing I’ll miss is the included feature of pulling in “reaction tweets” as trackbacks onto the linked-to posts; but that was the main feature that was bugging out, so I’ll just have to find an alternate solution for that one.

We’ll see how the Tweet Button flies around here. It’s currently in a butt-ugly placement at the end of the post content and atop the post-footer info; if I find the motivation, I’ll hack through the CSS to make it line up prettier. For now, it’s functional, which is good enough.

Today I received my first-ever payment check from Yahoo! Publisher Network. It’s also my last-ever check from them, as Y! shuttered its answer to Google AdSense not long ago.

My grand total? Five dollars, eighty-five cents.

That’s four years after signing up to be a Network partner. But my tenure was short-lived: I swapped in the YPN ads for a brief test-run, immediately saw that they weren’t serving up anything of value, and promptly ended my experiment. I never did tinker with them again; AdSense pays well enough that, frankly, it’s not worth my time trying out blog-advertising alternatives.

I never bothered to close my YPN account. I would receive infrequent auto-messages over the years. From those, and casual news-tracking, I knew that Yahoo!’s foray into ad syndication was doing poorly. I figured it would end soon enough, and now it has.

And I’ve got a paper check to show for it. Hardly worth the cost of printing it and mailing it out, but there you go. I will indeed deposit it. My dreams of Internet millions obviously won’t involve the Sunnyvale company.

As much as we’re accustomed to consuming online content in decentralized, permalinked chunks, it sometimes pays to take in something in its “true” synchronized state. To wit:

Liz at Bobulate follows up a post about the virtues of standing still with one about the joys of jumping. Both dealing with the wholly literal versions of those states of being, to boot.

The free-form ease with which you can switch gears so completely from one day to the next is probably why some of us started blogging in the first place. Always good to come across such entertaining reminders.

This is apropos of absolutely nothing currently going on, but it’s occasionally rattled through my mind ever since I first read it a couple of months ago, and has yet to fail to make me smile. From Puck Daddy’s coverage of this past Winter Olympics:

Puck Buddy Comment of the Day: Jerk Store responding to Wysh’s mother-in-law thinking the name of [Team] Canada’s goaltender was Roberto “Ulongo”:

“its actually oberto ulongo. hes half samoan, half beef jerky.”

Somebody check Roberto Luongo’s locker at GM Place for packets of dried meat. It might explain the secret of his National Hockey League success (and shortcomings, to boot).

I’m not sure why it comes as any surprise to anyone that online product review sites are routinely gamed by PR firms and/or their clients:

Dozens of companies, with names like BzzAgent, Brickfish and Ammo Marketing, offer to help shape the online conversation. The Zocalo Group, in Chicago, categorizes commenters as “hear-MEs,” “reputation terrorists” or “competitive destroyers.” On its site, Zocalo promises to “relentlessly monitor online conversations to ensure your brand is talked about in the right ways.” When it’s not, the firm jumps into the conversation or recruits supporters to “go to bat for you.”

I’ve touched on this before, in regard to blogs. But the late class-action lawsuit against Yelp highlights the manipulation that goes on. All the talk of transparency, crowdsourcing, and the rest of the buzzwords all just boil down to this basic tenet:

Companies are not looking for reviews. They’re looking for endorsements.

That is, they’re not interested in fair and balanced product/service opinions. Dissatisfied users needn’t bother to post anything online, because any sort of negative feedback has the potential to do damage, especially when viewed as a stand-alone piece. And as it happens, the typical behavior of an amateur reviewer on Facebook, Twitter, or blog is to say nothing at all, rather than write something less than nice. That’s not so unusual — those motivated to give feedback, in any medium/channel, tend to be so only when they have extreme reactions, either good or bad.

But that winds up filling “review” sites with almost nothing but positive reviews, with no semblance of balance. At that point, they become little more than semi-officially commissioned endorsements. Ultimately, that’s the aim of online reputation management anyway. To pretend that anything more substantive is coming out of the user-generated online channel is foolishly naive.

Just a blog-housekeeping note, for my own records: As of today, I’ve installed the Topsy Retweet Button for WordPress plugin.

Thus have I added a true one-click social media widget to this blog. I previously installed CommenTwitter, and it remains in place, but it’s fallen well short of my hopes in spreading this blog’s permalinks. I have to face it: People don’t want to jump through any content-creation hoops just to add to the Twitter-stream. A retweet button is a dead-simple solution, so we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve done very little to enable the Topsy plugin; thankfully, it appears to be working correctly straight out of the box. I may have to tweak it going forward, but for now, it is what it is. I’ve already seen a few reverse-trackbacks on old posts come back as a result, and that’s what I’m looking for, so it’s so far, so good.

If the idea behind Twitter is to encourage constant bite-sized chatter, the majority of the online flock ain’t chirping:

It seems that Twitter is becoming more of news feed than a social network, said Paul Judge, author of the report and chief research officer at Barracuda Networks. And that raises questions about its growth potential, as well as how the Internet phenomenon will make money.

As of December 2009, only 21% of Twitter account holders were what Barracuda defines as “true users,” meaning someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times. That indicates that most Twitter users “came online to follow their favorite celebrities, not to interact with their buddies the way they would on Facebook or MySpace,” said Judge.

On a basic level, this is normal: Most networks, online and off, are driven by a dedicated minority-vanguard of members. That’s the nature of any organization, social or not.

Still, the service’s nature does encourage a stalker-ish approach. Certainly, the celebrity accounts often sport a huge imbalance between “following” and “followers”, as practically a badge of honor. Their fans are bound to emulate that approach, even on a vastly smaller scale.

I’ll also point out that the notion of Twitter as more of an information stream, and less of a clubby hangout, is the chief reason I bothered to start using it. So maybe my instincts were right in the first place; or else the rest of the Twitteratti have come around to my viewpoint.

…And we’re back.

Anyone who pokes around this URL on a regular basis knows that there’s only one rule, content-wise: At least one post per day, every day. So the past two days of blog silence — the first since mid-2008 — should have a good reason behind them, right?

Well, they do: A big, honkin’ winter storm that dumped a couple of feet of snow hereabouts, and managed to knock out my Internet connection from Thursday night through to this afternoon. Yep, total Web (and, incidentally, cable TV) silence for an extended weekend. And I was obliged to stay home that whole time too, venturing outside only for short sprints — but, alas, nowhere close enough for a reliable Web access point.

It pretty much sucked. I can’t say it was unbearable, but it was definitely a major drag. I had a load of work to do, and basically couldn’t do it until today. So I’ve been scrambling to catch up, finally finishing less than an hour ago.

Not that I didn’t find ways to fend off the snowbound ennui. I acquainted myself with my new, barely-used Blu-ray DVD player, discovering that it can play music CDs — although it can’t read some of the extra media (music videos, basically) loaded onto older, turn-of-the-century discs. I also used it to re-acquaint myself with some of my DVD collection, taking in episodes of “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, along with an overdue re-viewing of The Falcon and the Snowman.

And now, to complete this crippled weekend’s entertainment: I’m restarting the consecutive blogging streak. Let’s see how long this one can go before Mother Nature intervenes.

I’d like to say that the following paragraph is the part of this compellingly raw-boned confessional from a boy-crazy girl that got me hooked:

so often i worry and act out when i don’t get the attention i want from every guy who comes my way. i don’t take the time to consider if i even like THEM! unless they’re a TOTAL dorky/ugly/pussy… THEN i don’t give a fuck! but I’d still have sexxx with a bizarre looking/interesting/successful dude! in a heartbeat! my friend Dallas thinks i have the worst taste in men cuz I’ve slept with fat, ugly, short, abnormally tall, sickly skinny, balding, and bald dudes. not all at the same time! don’t worry! I’ve only had one threesome, and it was with a girl and a guy who were both hipster/heroine chic. but that’s another story, for another time.

But I’ll be honest, and admit that the post title, alone, had me at hello. I’m not going to reproduce it here, but the eponymous URL is as close as a mouseover (above) away.

While blogs are routinely identified as part of the social media landscape, they’re losing ground among the youngsters:

Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older.

What’s behind this trend? Basically, blogs represent too much work for those versed in online short-form:

The explosion of social networking is one obvious answer. The Pew survey found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago.

With social networking has come the ability to do a quick status update and that has “kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging,” says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior researcher and lead author of the latest study. More young people are also accessing the Internet from their mobile phones, only increasing the need for brevity. The survey found, for instance, that half of 18- to 29-year-olds had done so.

Correspondingly, shorter attention spans are becoming the norm. Not that older folks aren’t as impatient with reading more than a hundred or so characters at a clip. If anything, this points to more of a distinction between online communication and online media consumption — status alerts and such are more in-the-moment pieces of information, while blog posts are more asynchronous and (intended, at least) for archiving and posterity.

None of this is any surprise. From the start, blogging has been a minority pursuit, best cut out for those comfortable with filling content wells, mainly with writing (sorry, podcasters/vloggers). Maybe by the time telepathic status updates are the norm, blogs will finally wither away and join stone tablets in the ol’ dustbin…

I’m assuming the 2010 budgets have kicked in at various advertising agencies, which accounts for the three solicitations for blog-based marketing that landed in my inbox yesterday:

- One for Yarie, a niche-level competitor to Google AdSense;

- One on behalf of Dentyne, for some fab new packaging they want to promote;

- And one for MatchPoint, a PR clearinghouse for online pitches.

This, after months of no nibbles from the product-placement pushers. Always nice to be asked, even if it’s an obvious, relevance-free shotgun approach. I might just take the first two up on their offers; scant chance on the last one.

Theoren Fleury is not playing in the National Hockey League this season, and he really thinks he should be:

The report says that Fleury believed that his performance at Calgary’s training camp last fall during his comeback attempt should have been enough for him to make the squad.

“At one hundred and eighty pounds, I finished 11th out of 56 guys at camp in the fitness test and scored a historic shootout goal in an exhibition game after being out of hockey for six years,” Fleury reportedly wrote. “What does that say about the talent level in the NHL? 4 points and a plus 4 rating in four exhibition games and I get cut. What a joke! Craig Conroy goes the first 37 games of the season with zero goals. I wonder how many I would have had?”

That rant came from Fleury’s blog, on a post that’s since been removed. In addition to the media report, the original lives on on various hockey forums. Looks like typical publish-first-think-later blogging.

The thing is, I’m somewhat in accord with Fleury on his getting a bum rap during training camp. In fact, I used it as a test case for how inefficient pro sports training camps are:

On something of a flip-side, 41-year-old Theoren Fleury’s comeback attempt was snuffed by the Calgary Flames. Even with the odds against him — age and six years out of the NHL — he posted four points in the preseason, and certainly didn’t look out of place. Still, Flames brass deemed him not good enough to crack the team’s top six forwards. What more he’d have to do is undetermined.

I’m hoping I didn’t inspire Fleury to post his legacy-threatening comments. Although if I did, the least he could have done was sent me a trackback link…

As was the case on my flight from New York to LA, I’m once again, on the return trip, blogging from 36,000 feet thanks to GoGo Inflight Internet.

And, like last time, I’m paying nada for it. The other promo code I found worked for this session. So I got about 26 bucks’ worth of free wi-fi-in-the-sky on this cross-country sojourn. I’ll take it!

I’ll keep surfing until this netbook dies on me. And then probably connect with my iTouch.

One thing about GoGo: Their slogan reads, “The sky is no longer the limit”. That’s the same retro-futuristic tagline used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for the never-realized Pan-Am passenger space jet. Just throwing that out there…

Since I can’t fathom going more than a couple of hours without being online, I’m tapping the InterWebz while in-flight to Los Angeles. I’m blogging this post from 36,000 feet, thanks to GoGo Inflight Internet, the wi-fi provider for Delta.

It ain’t free (exactly). The cheapo in me resents having to pay for Web access, especially on a 6+ hour flight. Only a few years ago, Delta and other domestic airlines were providing free onboard wireless. But I guess I knew that wouldn’t last. And it’s hard to blame them for taking advantage of the situation — this is the ultimate in a captive audience. We’re lucky we’re not paying for our oxygen…

Anyway, I am getting this hookup for free. While I did have to register for an account (which I did last night, anticipating that this particular jet would be wi-fi enabled), I came across some free promo codes. Luckily, the one I chose worked! I only get to use one for this account, so unless I can create a new one (actually pretty likely), I’ll probably have to pony up the $12 for wi-fi on the return flight to NYC. But for now, I’m set.

The connection seems pretty good. If anything, I’m more concerned about having to access it via my HP netbook. The battery’s draining all too quickly; I doubt it’ll last more than another hour. And I’ve yet to get used to the cramped keyboard and generally slow processor. Still, it’s better than nothing. Besides, if the netbook conks out too early, I can always switch to my iTouch…

In the meantime, I’ll have to flag down the flight attendant for a bag of peanuts, and perhaps a mojito or two. Ah, the vagaries of air travel…

The stats don’t lie: This here blog has been getting a distinct uptick in Web traffic over the past couple of days. And the tracking confirms that the reason is the odd little photo above, which I first used on New Year’s Day 2009.

That year-old post pondered the upcoming chronologically-delivered demise of these goofy double-zero party specs. Based on all the Internet searches landing here, I guess party people aren’t ready to give up the ghost on these glasses just yet.

I hope everyone looking for these oh-10 accoutrements finds a source. Obviously, I’m not selling any — heck, I have serious doubts that the photo on display here is even Photoshopped-free. But at least I can provide a point of reference.

And with that, and with the strategically-set timestamp at the foot of this post (think 24-hour time), I’d say it’s time to usher in the new year-slash-decade…

Greg “Puck Daddy” Wyshynski saw fit to link back and expand upon my little post on what might have been had the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs swapped cities/arenas in the early 1980s, the proposal of which recently has been alleged by former Oilers owner Peter Pocklington. Much thanks to Wysh for the added exposure in the hockey blogosphere.

I was inspired to comment on the Puck Daddy blog on some of the further ramifications from this what-if-ing. Included in that is Wysh’s point about the New York Rangers’ Stanley Cup drought possibly having extended well past 1994, since they wouldn’t have had a cash-poor Oilers franchise from which to import Cup-winning ringers that year (in which case, the New Jersey Devils’ new Prudential Center arena might have a seat count representing the year 1940). Another commenter pointed out that the Calgary Flames would also have been affected in this scenario; since they arrived in the province in 1980 (from Atlanta), I’d speculate that they, not a relocated Leafs team, would have become Alberta’s favored team.

Anyway, since I went a little long in my commenting on Puck Daddy, I figured I should bring that verbiage back to this blog, for personal posterity’s sake. So here it is, and if it doesn’t speak for itself, at least it’ll leave some cryptic puckery for future pondering:

As for team mergers, it’s the NHL’s distinction to have fostered the last one among the 4 big leagues: 1977, when the Minnesota North Stars basically swallowed the Cleveland Barons (formerly the Golden State/Oakland Seals, answering the question, “Whatever happened to the now-extinct 6th team from the 1967 expansion?”). The major consequence of that deal is that it brought the Gund brothers into the league, who later moved on to the expansion franchise in San Jose.

Minor quibble: The league was already set on Sunbelt expansion before Bettman, under President-For-Life John Ziegler. If anything, to further the never-was scenario, I’d think they’d have started planting flags in Florida and Texas earlier, in the late ’80s — and maybe achieve a favored-nation-status with ESPN that extends to present day? (Hah!)

Anyway, Gretzky would be the central figure here. Reminds me of similar speculation from some AP writer 10-15 years ago, who wondered what would have happened had Bobby Hull never signed with the Winnipeg Jets, thus strangling the WHA as a stillborn. Ultimate upshot: Gretz enters the Draft in the late ’70s, gets picked by the Leafs in the 2nd round (due to size concerns), and goes on to lead his hometown team to glory. (If anyone can track down that anonymous wire article, I’d be a happy camper.)

The previously-announced Federal Trade Commission plans to combat blog-delivered stealth marketing were more clearly delineated today, perhaps too abruptly for some:

Some marketing groups fought the changes. “If a product is provided to bloggers, the F.T.C. will consider that, in most cases, to be a material connection even if the advertiser has no control over the content of the blogs,” said Linda Goldstein, a partner at Manatt Phelps & Phillips, a law firm that represents three marketing groups, the Electronic Retailing Association, the Promotion Marketing Association and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. “In terms of the real world blogging community, that’s a seismic shift.”

Ms. Goldstein added, “We would have preferred the F.T.C. to work closer with the industry to learn how viral marketing works.”

Translation: “We would have preferred spending a few more months sandbagging the FTC while we squeezed the last few drops of juice out of this unregulated channel.”

I guess the unmarketing folks will just have to fast-track their migration to Twitter and other post-blogging platforms. It’s a nomadic pursuit, of course — you exploit the new territory for as long as you can before regulation comes in to spoil the party. Left in the wake are the party favors and a lot of noise.

It completely slipped my mind that this past Wednesday marked the five-year anniversary of the launch of Population Statistic. Frankly, if today wasn’t such a slow news/blogging day for me, I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it here now, two days later.

So obviously, if this blog were my wife, it would have ample grounds for divorce.

Better late than never, though. For what it’s worth, the posts I did publish on blogiversary day were high-quality, I think. Judging from the feedback and traffic they’re drawing, I’d say I did the fifth birthday proud, formal observance aside.

As for the state of the blog in a larger sense… It’s worth noting that the past five years of permalinking are an extension of my original two-year training-wheels web journal on Blogger/BlogSpot (which remains, and will remain, on Google’s servers indefinitely). My Web writing and editing style has evolved somewhat over that stretch; the main shift has been well away from the personal insights that I intended to include in this space. But overall, the basic framework remains: Generally unfocused beyond a broad range of my personal interests, and a commitment to update with at least one post every day of the week, weekends and holidays included. Nobody’s perfect — I’ve have occasional lapses in that span, but mostly have stuck to the script. When you can still measure the average blog’s lifespan in a matter of weeks, I’d say I’ve proven my staying power.

On to the next 12 months. Hopefully this InterWebz fad doesn’t run out of steam before then…

There’s no getting around it: I’ve drunk the Twitter Kool-Aid. Why else would I have installed on this blog not one, but two WordPress plugins specifically for Twitter-interfacing purposes? And this is someone who doesn’t mess with plugins: Up until recently, I’ve only had one other non-spam-filtering plugin installed, and that covers the entire time I’ve had this domain up and running.

Anyway, CommenTwitter is today’s new add-on, and its presence is apparent in the comment-box section of each blog post (and the comment pop-up boxes, should you prefer those). Hopefully it’s a simple concept: Fill out the comment fields as normal, then click on that link next to the Twitter icon to fill in your Twitter handle and password, so that when you hit that “Say It!” button to submit, your comment will appear on this blog and also in your Twitterstream. Two birds with one stone, sorta (hey, the bird motif fits with Twitter, anyway…)

CommenTwitter appealed to me because it’s one more way to spread blog linkage via tweets. This method spreads that linkage beyond my own Twitter account, to that of my engaged readers. A short-URL link accompanies this comment-tweeting, so hopefully that drives a few more eyeballs back thisaway, to read beyond the first 140 characters of feedback if nothing else. I’ll be curious to see how much it’s used. Extending the conversation is a constant aim in this bloggin’ biz…

CommenTwitter is the overt way to plant permalinks from this blog into the Twitterverse. The under-the-hood way is via WordTwit, the other dedicated plugin. I’ve been using that one for months, pretty much when I first jumped aboard the tweet-train. It’s an auto-generating push-to-Twitter tool that shoots out a tweet every time I publish a new post, with the title and permalink included. I can’t say it’s generated a ton of traffic back to the blog mothership, but it’s passive enough that it’s worth maintaining.

No one’s more bemused by this Twitter devotion than me. After years of spurning the other social network hangouts, for some reason the little bird-brained site snared me aboard. Of course, if it runs its course in similar fashion as the other community-based online fads, I can always deactivate the plugins and go back to lone-blog-in-the-wilderness thing…