Joao

Excellent! congrats. - Rob Diana

congrats!!! - Arjun via twhirl

Hustler is an excellent magazine, congratulations. :) - bob corrigan

Found a link! http://www.icir.org/mallman/sh... - Benjamin Golub

the poor kids are being pimped out for tshirts now - worked their way up from stickers - Allen Stern

Were your stickers personalized, Allen? These shirts were pretty good. :-) - Louis Gray

Future super☆s - Nice Fish Films

FriendFeed babies really get people's attention. :) - Daniel Schildt

Allen, it looks like you lost your chance at some hot recruits. - Rob Diana

rob - yea i can't compete with tshirts, i don't have vc funding. also, if the kids are going to swap brands every other day, then it's best not to be part of that - it's about loyalty and clearly these kids don't have it - what's next a google bib? yahoo booties? tesla? - Allen Stern

Allen, the answer is yes to all. These kids are the official "schwag magnets" and those brands that capitalize... capitalize. - Louis Gray

Attn all startups: Matthew and Sarah will be available for press photos using your schwag this tuesday at the san francisco mall from 2-4pm. Bring your schwag and you get signed photos, a "my schwag's with gray" sticker and your photos placed on flickr. Tipping is allowed. Schedule may change based on #2 duty. - Allen Stern

Allen: #2, duty, doodie? :-) Maybe Louis could hire the folks from DoodieDuty and outsource that (doodie) duty. :-) http://www.doodieduty.com/ - Lisa L. Seifert

Schwag magnets or not- they are stunners. Wow. You do good work. - Abby Martin

How could you not 'like'? - Charlie Anzman

went to news cred site because of this picture, .... a tough front page to read ... the moving banner doesn't help, wondering how it all can be simplified so that i want to go back there a second time. - Gregory Lent

They are adorable... we were so excited to see this on our launch day. Photos are already up on our wall. PS Allen, we aren't funded either. We just love cute babies. - Shafqat Islam

Milan is adorable (and fast!) - karen2

Very cute Robert. Were you walking around with your laptop using seesmic, or do they have a new mobile app I'm unaware of? - Leif Hansen

Howdy Mr. Scoble, nice hanging with you in the airport. Milan *IS* sooo adorable and fast. (And I am willing to bet he will be a drummer.) And Leif, that was his laptop, but we're (seesmic) very excited to go mobile. - Thomas Knoll

so cute!!! - Christine Lu

Leif I was using my laptop for that. - Robert Scoble

looooooooooooooooooooove - ehsan11m

OMG I hope you sanitized him from head to toe - do you KNOW what's on the bottom of the shoes of Vegas air travelers? - jeneane sessum

heh, yeah, he got a good wiping down. Me? It is good for kids to get exposed to some dirt here and there. Prepares them for school. :-) - Robert Scoble

This is too cute! Why wasn't he at the expo? :) - Daynah

Nice reports, even if the chart could be better. I'd be interested in being able to track this as well, including load times. - Louis Gray

Basically I had been overloading the database. I was crawling WAY too fast and the database was getting locked because writes are higher priority than reads. So users suffered. I've made a simple config change to make writes happen at a lower priority. It hasn't gone down since that change. - Benjamin Golub

RSSMeme is the new Twitter ;) - Jason Carreira

thx. yes, full blazer + tie for winter - Duncan Riley

Congrats, thank god he looks like SWMBO ;-) - loren feldman

Loren, lol :-) Not all that good though, he has his mothers chin - Duncan Riley

I'm telling you... all kids should wear uniforms. I did and hated it but now I know why my mother loved them so much. - Cyndy

Happy birthday, young man. - Frank Roche

not wearing a uniform isn't an option here, even in State schools. - Duncan Riley

+1 for Duncan! Great photo. My son is 2 and getting more handsome every day. Cheers! - Morgan

Congratulations. Isn't that fun! - Franklin Day via fftogo

Duncan, you know he really looks like you...Don't tell him I said that though, poor fella.;) Only messin, happy birthday from me & London town. - Zee. via fftogo

awesome! 6 is such a beautiful age. My son Will is 6. - Thomas Hawk

My eldest is 6 too, she's starting to get really independent now - Glenn Slaven

My younger son is 6-1:) - Igor Poltavskiy

Nice. My son is going to be 1 soon. I can't believe it, I can see this is going to go very fast. And yes, I think he does look like you Duncan, I can see that. - jjprojects

Fantastic Duncan, congrats! :) - Steve Spalding

Cutie pie :) - mojay

Mine turned 7 last month ... They grow too fast! *cry* - tj hanton

what a handsome little guy. my girl turned 5 in april and is already talking about all the 'big girl things' she'll do when she turns 6. - Anika Malone

It seems a million years ago that mine were young and cute. My "baby" turned 17 last month and I can barley remember that I love her between bouts of wanting to strangle her! - Aura Mae

smart uniform and cute smile :) - nouhad

What a handsome young man! - Skye B.

A heartbreaker! So handsome. (It goes too fast, doesn't it? My baby is 4 and I don't know how that happened.) - Abby Martin

Robert, I agree, so please watch and keep me honest. I'm absolutely easy to reach if you think I've made a mistake. - Louis Gray

I so don't see a mistake coming. Especially if you stick to our deal and just let me blog about the good stuff you find out. We did have a deal, right? :) - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★

I've always found it weird that people are willing to use the phrase "opening the kimono" in an otherwise polite, decorous and respectful business context. - ⓞnor

@nor, it is weird and I almost didn't use it, but it is an understood phrase. The alternative, and even worse, term, is "a complete upskirt". - Louis Gray

I am a bit late now – but first of all my congratulations for you joining ReadBurner’s team in an advisory role/equity owner You have been doing such a great job over last months with your blog that has benefited many of us (me included), I just hope that to continue. And about monetizing your blog – I think you should do it as well, I assume you spend quite a good amount of time researching and writing in your blog and that should be compensated. I few unobtrusive ads will not bother the great majority of your blog readers, I would assume. - Joao

Jesse III is on the left. ? - Louis Gray

Louis very good - how did you know? - Jesse Stay via twhirl

What's even funnier is I even got it wrong - the one on the right isn't my 6 year old son, Thomas, but my 4 year old son, Joseph. That's what happens when you have 4 kids :-P - Jesse Stay via twhirl

they are same! - maysam shahsavari

I make mine wear name tags. Well -- okay. i don't really. but I've threatened the ones who visit the least that way. - Chris Baskind

I assumed Jesse III was on the left because the quality of the photo is slightly better and the white is a bit whiter. - Louis Gray

Chris, I could use name tags - I call Jesse Joseph all the time - the two are almost exactly identical at this age! My wife had to point out that they were two different children when she showed the pics to me. - Jesse Stay

Before I read Louis's post, I guessed correctly also for the same reason. The image on the left is much higher quality than the one on the right, which I assumed was the older photo. - Jeff P. Henderson

Love Sarah's smile in the 2nd one... :-) Now I have that 80's song stuck in my head. "Sarah... Smile..." Hall & Oates? - Lisa L. Seifert

omgzbbq!!! How cute is that. the shirt might as well say feed feed tho. :-) - jeneane sessum

jeneane: HA! :-) Feed Feed. Love it. - Lisa L. Seifert

Their mom loves Feed Feed as well. :-) - Louis Gray

Is this a product placement? ;-) - Jan Horna

Are these the friends to be fed? :) - 9000

lol @ jeneane , and 10/10 on the cute scale... - Chris Wright

In the 2nd pic it looks like Sarah is saying "Hey peeps!" - Yolanda

shouldn't those shirts say "babyfeed" given the placement of the logo?? :-) - Stephen Roberts

CUTE -- youngest FriendFeeders yet!! - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)

Aren't there tshirts for tiny friendfeeders? - JC unwired

You're welcome!! I'm so glad it fits them so nicely. Thanks for Thomas's presents as well (Thomas the tank toy and book). Camilla took the toy and actually put it in Thomas's crib because she knew it was for him. - April Buchheit

Awww all round, to the outfits, to the cute babies, and to Camilla giving her brother his toy. - Clare Dibble

awwwwwwwwwwwww - Sarah Perez

cayooot! - Monique

Kawaii - Mike Reynolds

Thanks Louis. Signing up right now. - Larry Kless via twhirl

Must check it out. I've been registered on the site for a while, but haven't been on it much. - Hutch Carpenter

i'm slowing getting into it...it certainly has a lot of potential - Trent Olson

Once again Louis - a great post from you - ; as I was reading your post something come to my mind; - we are clearly moving away from posting comments on the original blog post. A story that becomes popular in any or the news aggregators will get comments in Digg, Reddit, FriendFeed, SocialMedian…ect. Soon we will need a techmeme for blog comments as comment will become more and more disperse. News aggregators will soon realize that is OK to not only grab the news from the blogs but also grab a portion of the meal by allowing users to post comments directly on their sites – I assume Gabe is already working on this one at techmeme. What I would like to see and I am sure someone is already thinking about this is to aggregator comments around top stories from all possible news or social aggregators. So that we would get all comments in just one place. - Joao

@Joao - Also, on the flip side, I would like a way to bring all those dispersed comments to my blog. I don't mind if the conversations happen at social networks (that is what they are there for), but I would really like to see them all in one place and allow my readers to see them as well. - Justin Korn

@Justin - I agree 100% with you. - Joao

Currently, SocialMedian does not have a public API, so the comments are not available. However, I know Jason G. and the team are working on this. Regarding finding the comments and getting them back to your blog, let's just say that I am working on that problem :) - Rob Diana

The problem with coments all over the place is that the discussion gets too fragmented. The social media space urgently needs a defreg pass. It doesnt matter if Comments are pooled here at FF or, at Social Median or, the blog or all at once. As long as we get to consume anad participate in the whole discussion rather than just the one local to the service you are using. - Roberto Bonini

Part of me doesn't want to get involved in yet another conversational outpost, but then, that was the same part of me that dismissed FriendFeed for months. I suppose I'll get there in a bit. Once I accept that it's another part of my morning (okay, all day!) ritual. - Chris Brogan

You mean I guess I have to go back today? That's it. Fourth Monitor. - Charlie Anzman

I have to admit, I like it a lot better now that there are people to follow. :) I've been using the email alerts since early alpha, but it's improved. - Cyndy

I think socialmedian is getting better all the time. Great place to share news and read comments. - Sean Sharp

Hey Louis, we don't care! ;) - Meryn Stol

Ok...but how do I find the conversations? - Shey

Nice post Louis, thanks. As Rob points out, we're working on getting the API's out there. We also want to help take all this comment fragmentation and bring it back together. Robert Scoble and I were noting last night that the goodness in comment fragmentation is that it is exposing bloggers' content to new audiences they were not reaching and thus extending their personal brand. That said, it would be nice to tie it all back together and Roberto Bonini suggests. - Jason Goldberg

digg chased me off any kind of voting site - Gregory Lent

socialmedian isn't about voting. it's not a popularity contest. it's designed to be more about "me" than "we" -- not about what's popular, rather about what my social graph is clipping for me and me for them - Jason Goldberg

Jason, the interface is way uglier and inefficient to use for me, and as with other services - I just do not care like I do not care about discus. to louis: guess what. there are even more pages where my postings are discussed. Which I do not follow either, and neither are you. If somebody wants to stay in their community, they will post there. if they want to be read by the poster or get an answer, they better comment where the poster is reading. - Nicole Simon

Still not sold on social median. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it's next to impossible to find info there and my interest isn't in 'clipping' what someone else has clipped. And yes, if my favorites toolbar in FF3 actually existed, I'd probably use the bookmarklet to clip more stuff. Maybe if shareaholic added a social median feature... - Anika Malone

Not 100% sure about the site. I have been on there for a few days but we'll see how it works out. - Marcus Hamaker

Nicole, Marcus, etc. We're still very early on this one ... please pass along any and all feedback. I hear you Nicole on the UI -- we have spent a lot more time on basic functionality vs. UI at this point. We need to simplify. - Jason Goldberg

I'm enjoying it, but I created a newsfeed near & dear to my heart, email marketing... and I digg and/or clip those articles daily anyways... http://www.socialmedian.com/ne... - anna

I'm sure it's fabulous, but I'm feeling like I'm spread a little too thin as it is. How many more places besides Google Reader do I have to go to read the news? :) - Sarah Perez

I share this only to point out how much I disagree with this article. Of the 15 blogs listed here as "must reads", I only subscribe to ProBlogger, and the rest don't look interesting. How can you make this list without TechCrunch and Scobleizer, for instance? Here's who I'm reading and sharing: http://www.louisgray.com/live/... What about you? - Louis Gray

Interesting: I've only heard of 2 on that list. Seems like an overstated blog promotion list. - Mark Trapp

Louis, not all bloggers are tech bloggers -- most of them aren't. It seems this list was aimed at "all bloggers" and helping them with thinking about blogging and the various tools, strategies etc. - Robert Seidman

So how many of them are must reads to you Robert? - Louis Gray

I enjoy Copyblogger and DoshDosh too. But this post smells of half-linkbait, half-brownnosing. - Andy DeSoto

How many of them are must reads to me is irrelevant. But, what's relevant is this: if you're blogging about "sports" or "politics", Scobleizer and TechCrunch probably aren't "must reads". I now see you for the "tech-ist" that you are. :-) - Robert Seidman

i don't know what i think yet, because i heven't read these blogs. i'll formulate an opinion long after it's relevant to comment, but a couple of them look interesting to me. note that i'm not a blogger yet (i've written two posts), so as someone who is neither a part of the superset writer nor the subset blogger, i don't think those look entirely worthless at a glance. lots of "make money" things i'm not interested in, though. - idnan

@Andy .. it is ... a screen shot of the site and a simple one or two line description the majority are making money online type blogs - Steven Hodson

Steven, don't ProBlogger and CopyBlogger have the aim of helping people figure out how to make some money too? - Robert Seidman

cool, thanks Louis!! I appreciate you sharing this. - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)

@Robert - never said anything against any of the blogs .. just making a statment that I - like Andy - felt the post was linkbait. It wouldn't have been so bad if the writer had included some more information about the blogs etc - Steven Hodson

@Steven: sorry about that, it was Louis and some others who had shown support for Problogger and Copyblogger. Since whatever the blog that wrote this list has "Make Money Online" branding in its page titles, I'm not particularly surprised! ;-) - Robert Seidman

Robert, I am unabashedly "tech-ist". :-) - Louis Gray

So sick of lists, - Andrew Feinberg

Nice list, but got to give it EPIC FAIL status. What it should have said is every blog a blogger who is interested in making money should read. For the record though, I read a good portion of those blogs - Duncan Riley

I can admit that I subscribed to at least half of those blogs before I read this article. I don't subscribe to TechCrunch and have only read it when linked to from somewhere else. It all depends on your goals and your blogging knowledge (I just started blogging). This list was primarily aimed at Make Money people and a couple of those blogs appear to just be friends or something...obviously no proof on that :) - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★

A couple favorites in there, and several I find utterly spammy and unreadable. - Chris Baskind

Another angle to look at "best" blogs is perhaps in terms of their "value" http://bit.ly/89uj9 . - Hayk

I have to admit that I'm subscribed to some of these blogs, although they are not my favourites by far. It's just that I have to keep track on what's new in the Blogosphere, so that I'm able to report on that. Most of them I really hate, because it's all the time about moneymaking via blogs. I try not to mention them in my posts. :-) - Ton Zijp

+1 on Duncan Riley's comment. If all you are interested in is blogging for profit, then maybe these are must-reads. But if you are not then why read any of them? - Tom Quinn

Because blogging for profit and blogging for influence, reputation, or reach have a lot of similarities: create a lot of interesting, meaningful content and people will visit your site and happily consume whatever content you produce. - Andy DeSoto

I disagree. Most of these sites appear to be all about making money while blogging. - Corvida

sure, let's just put techcrunch on every "must read" blog list - yea that's a great idea... c'mon people. if that's the case, then certainly over a short period, the list will be one blog. probably the same in every single category. - Allen Stern

@corvida, bloggers love to blog about blogging... it's very meta... and navel gazing - Jason Carreira

I've read most of those blogs and most of them certainly do have their good points. There is certainly a heavy emphasis on how to monetize your blogging in a number of those blogs or on social media marketing. However, there's plenty of other good blogs out there if you want a good read or want to learn some new stuff. The title/theme was too overarching to match the material, IMHO. - Mark Dykeman

what's with the bitching, sure we all hate lists, but this one ain't that bad - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Making money while blogging and building a blog that is a "success" both come down to a single goal: Traffic. I'm sure nobody on this list will doubt that problogger is a good blog...so you can't just discount all the smaller blogs on the same topic. This type of thinking is why there is an echo chamber in the first place. As Morpheus said, "Free your mind" :) - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★

@Jason Carriera That's why this list isn't the best or even in the top 50 of must reads. - Corvida

I think you're partially right, Vincent. I remember reading a comment from Chris Brogan that his posts that contained lists were always the most popular even if there were more valuable posts without lists. People like to make them and I guess like to read them even more. You go over to the IMDb discussion boards and it is ALL about making lists of favorite/best movies. They are quick to read and easy to decide whether you are on the same page as the author. - Liz

Doesn't appeal to me. But if it was called "15 blogging about blogging blogs must reads" it would be OK - Sarah Perez

Another interesting one: Flickr? - Alexander van Elsas

I pay for Smugmug and Twitterrific. - Robert Scoble

I would pay for smugmug, 37signals, bitbucket and many other great services. - Augusto Becciu via twhirl

I didn't actually write it down, but I also wonder if there is a group of mainstream users that will pay a reasonable amount for a service regardless of free alternatives. The reason for this could be that they (unlike early adopters) don't want to spent time to find and try free alternatives - Alexander van Elsas

I pay for Yahoo!Mail ($20/yr for clean POP access), Picasa ($20/yr for 10 GB storage), 1and1.com ($5/month for business website). Still using Blogger for free blogs, but may switch in the future for better designs. - Mitchell Tsai

I pay for last.fm and flickr. The company I work for uses basecamp extensively. - Gez

I pay for Google Sites, Picasa (extra storage), Genealogy.com (although a bit pricey, it provides great resources for research), and LinkedIn (b/c as an independent consultant it is the absolute best networking tool, and I want it to succeed). Although the sites who offer a free trial but require a credit card upfront, and then make it impossible to cancel without a phone call...yeah, I can do without those. - cjmart

I pay for flickr. I used to upload a lot of photos there (not as much anymore). $24/year for unlimited storage seems very reasonable to me. And the fact that they have such a nice API so my photos are not locked away if I want to use them made the idea of supporting them financially much more appealing. - Lindsay Donaghe

I pay for Smugmug,Yahoo mail for Pop and Remember the Milk. - Henry Burger via twhirl

I'm thinking of paying for SmugMug, but haven't decided yet. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

I think it really comes down to whether the service is good enough and close to best of breed. - Rob Diana

basecamp, icontact - Jason Goldberg

I've got to think Flickr has the highest number of paid subscribers of any pure-web service. They provide a good service that's useful for free, but if you want to be a serious user you have to move up to pro. There's a good lesson there for all of us in monetizing a w