People love to classify things. 

I thought it was because it was just the way we were taught, but I read recently (cant remember where), its actually how our brains remember things.

For example, if each time I saw a chair, I had to run a quick test in my brain (it has four legs, a seat, a back and its near a table) I would be crippled from forming any higher level thought. (What exactly is a leg and a seat? or a table?) So, we humans, classify things. We make assumptions. We take the complex, and make them simple. Just so we can think.

People have to classify things. People have to assume.

Of course, that action of assuming and classifying can sometimes be bad. (I classify all men as evil; and assume that if they are Jews, then they are untrustworthy). And, sometimes, it can retard our ability to grow (I assume college is just too hard for someone like me). But mostly, it makes life easier to live (I classify rocks as things I dont eat).

So, when I began to think about what kind of blogger I am; how I would be classified, I stopped. You see, my first boss out of college taught me a very important lesson.

Assumptions about people are usually wrong. And therefore, are not good pieces of information for basing an opinion about that person.

I dont make assumptions about people. I can tell that I am about to, and I stop, and I think to myself, “is that actual information or assumed facts.” And I ask questions.

My friend Aaron Brazell, recently launched a site called Pain in the Ass Blogger where he attributed a quote to me that I never said. Initially, I was annoyed, but knew that Dave Taylor knows me well enough to assume that I would never say such a thing.

Shoot, I am even on the thing, which I guess is a compliment (careful when looking at the picture, my greatness may be seared into your eyes like when people looked into the Ark in Indiana Jones.)

But it made me think about what kind of blogger I was.

Robert Scoble calls himself a “tech geek blogger” - but he blogs about trips to Yosemite.

Gary Vaynerchuk calls himself a “wine video blogger” - but on his personal blog talks about personal branding and connections.

AJ Vaynerchuk, who might be the most fearsome Cranium player I know, says he blogs about “social media, twitter and web design”, which I guess makes him a social media blogger - but he has been writing about his internship at Revision3.

Chris Brogan blogs about “community and social media” - and out of most of my friends, I would say that he is pretty true to that, except when he blogs about his family.

Erin Kotecki Vest is a “mommyblogger” who blogs about political things.

Chris Pirillo is a tech blogger who blogs about tech, mostly.

And I could go on. It seems that most folks have a core focus, but dabble in other topics. 

Not sure if that fits me. I tried to blog about politics, and it just didnt feel right. They were my thoughts, but not what I normally write about. I try to keep politics off the table in any discussion.

I write about startups, and the feedback is good. I write about my personal issues and values, and the feedback is generally good. (BTW, the medication seems to be doing wonders, which is why I havent written about it in awhile). I write about things that just make me laugh.

But what kind of blogger am I? Do I need to be a type? Can’t I just be a blogger?

I was approached by a member of a Techstars team the other day, and said “you have been really tough on some startups, I would love it if you would write a post that was critical of us.”

Is that the blogger I am? The mean one?

(BTW, my response: “I am never critical of companies, only people. Do something stupid and I will write about it.” Guess I did, punk!)

On my ride home last night, I saw a quote by Mark Twain on the back of a bus.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest. 

I think thats the kind of blogger I am.

What kind of blogger are you?

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I am not political. I dont vote, and in return I dont complain.

When I was in college, ethnic pride was beginning a rebirth. It was the late 80s/early 90s, and the “Me Generation” of the 1980s was being replaced with the “Who Am I?” generation. The discussions were around the origins of groups, how groups interacted, and how they clashed.

There was a lot of discussion, at least at UC Davis, around Blacks and Jews and our traditional and current interactions. We had people like Leonard Jefferies on campus, and Louis Farrakhan in the news.

One topic that we always seemed to come back around to, what this question:

Which would be the first elected to be President of the United States? A Black Man, A White Woman, or A Jewish Man?

I always stated that the United States of America was inherently Anti-Semetic, almost institutionally, since Jews came to the US as immigrants, and in many ways became quite successful as an ethnic group.

With African-Americans and Women there was a universal guilt around slavery, the civil rights movement and women’s rights.

In addition, for me, the biggest difference was that bigots HATE Blacks and Women; they dont TRUST Jews.

And here it is, 15 years after I graduated, and we have a Black man that is about to run for president after narrowly beating a Woman. Yes, 8 years ago, a Jewish man was the VP candidate, and 20 years ago there was a Woman VP candidate. But that almost doesnt matter. They werent running for the top job.

It looks like Obama has a great chance, and he might chose Clinton as his running mate. I truly wonder how the South and other traditionally bigoted areas of the States will vote.

Can the United States raise above their institutionalized racism, sexism and bigotry? I dunno, but maybe if they did, I would believe again in our system and its ability to truly represent me, which would lead me to vote.

Until then, I will chose to not complain at the choice made (even if I chose to be disappointed).

I am beginning to really like the Skribit widget in my sidebar. It allows people to leave suggestions on topics I should write about. What’s interesting, is sometimes the suggestions are things that I either never thought of, or are topics that I have shied away from.

The other day, “what are the top reasons to use Lijit?” showed up. I cringed because I have really tried to keep my work life out of my blog. I dont want this to become a place where I shrill companies I am involved with, either as an employee (like Lijit), investor or advisor.

The right place for that, in my mind, is on those companies blogs.

But, I thought an interesting twist on the topic would be to answer the question of why I chose to work at Lijit. And, I might take the oportunity to list a couple of the top reasons the Lijit widget is a necessary tool for publishers.

After selling my company, I went to work for the acquiring company, with the intent to work there for approximately a year. Then we would evaluate the situation and figure out what the next best move for me and the company.

As the year came to a close, it became apparent that the best move was for me to walk away. Not because there was anything inherently wrong with the situation, but because I had provided all the value I could and sticking around was not helpful to anyone.

When evaluating opportunities (which ranged from starting a new company to joining a growing startup), I met Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit. To be honest, I met Todd through Tara, who reached out to me after installing Lijit on my blog. I had a client that I felt Lijit fit with, and we (Todd and I) spent some time together discussing the possibility.

After a little while, it became apparent that my skill set fit with Lijit, and Lijit was in need of someone with my skill set.

Initially, I balked at the idea of working for someone else (I had been on my own for 5 years building Current Wisdom), but at the same time, I was exhausted from running my own company, and was hesitant at the propsect of starting another company so soon.

Also, my long term goal is not to be a serial entrepreneuer. I dont want to start multiple companies over and over again. Rather, I have a strong desire to move to the investment side of the equation, and after talking with my mentors, it became clear that the best decision for me was to join Lijit. So I did.

To date, it has been a blast. I have been able to shape the product, bring in some decent deals (you may have read about one in TechCrunch), and really be a positive member of a growing team.

I have seriously learned a ton from so many people. Every day I wake up with a wierd mix of excitement to talk about Lijit both internally and externally, and straight fear that somehow I am not going to push the business forward that day.

How do we pitch Lijit? (you can skip the rest if you dont want to hear my pitch).

When I started to pitch Lijit to publishers, we worked through several messages, and it became quite clear as to what the real benefits of using Lijit for a publisher are:

1) The ability to aggregate all the publisher’s social content and trusted sources and make it searchable, creates a better search experience for the reader. Content that would be buried in Google is uncovered. After all, Google wants to index everything; Lijit just indexes what important to the publisher, and all that content is trusted by the reader.

2) The “re-search” function (do a search on google for “iphone flip” and click on my blog post. You will see re-search in action), helps to drive reader engagement by presenting additional content items, which reduces the times a reader clicks the back button.

3) Deep analytics around search behavior. My favorite is the section about “searches that return no results.” Similar to Skribit, I am learning inherently things that my readers want me to write about.

There are other benefits, such as our flexibility around the widget design itself, and the corresponding lightbox, but those are the three main items we discuss with publishers, and they are important, especially if you have a publication that gets a fair amount of traffic, as re-search and our improved contextual search drive more engagement and page views.

But, for me, there is one overriding reason why I like what we are doing at Lijit and why I think we are a perfect fit for all publishers.

Lijit understands that our purpose for existing is to increase the value of the publisher to its readers.

Meaning, for us to be successful, the publisher has to be successful. I see so many other widgets that really only provide value AFTER the publisher is successful. Rather than sharing in the journey, those widgets enjoy the spoils of success. This is why so many publishers hate widgets. The widgets provide no real intrinsic value.

So, the final answer as to why I work at Lijit is:

We are publisher focused. We understand that the publisher’s job is to provide value to their readers and Lijit’s job is to make the publisher’s job easier.

(And our shirts are comfy.)

If that makes any sense.