Seth Godin (
whose blog I've been reading for some time) talks a lot about marketing, but his thoughts on human perceptions are equally valid in other places. This morning
he wrote something that caught my eye:
"I don't blog to make money. I don't run ads on my site. I don't even blog to win awards. I blog because it pleases me to see my ideas spread. I like it when I see people talking about one of my ideas--without even mentioning where the idea came from. That means it's the idea that spread, not my brand. Which is the whole point."
Earlier this month, a group I'm part of published a document that I wrote, without my name attached -- which is exactly how I wanted it to be published, so no worries there. It's been a lot of fun to see the ideas and even direct quotes from that document spread around since then. I'll be watching for it to continue.
I think perhaps one of the reasons that I avoided turning my thoughts into something bloggish until recently was that I don't want to publish something simply to stroke my ego, or to stroke my cat's ego (as
so many have done.) I want to spread ideas, and see where the memes cross.
(NOTE: when first posting this, I mistakenly said that Seth was one of the perpetrators of The Cluetrain Manifesto; he replied and corrected me, as you'll see in the comments below.)
