Troy

My buddy, Ron Kavanaugh, who runs the Literary Freedom Project, has just launched a Kickstarter campaign for his upcoming literary conference. Support Mosaic Literary Conferences’s Fundraiser Ron actually started a website dedicated to Black book before AALBC.com launched. He discontinued his website in 2014, for all the reasons reason I've lamented over the years. We met each other back in 1998 at a now defunct bookstore Nkiru Books in Brooklyn. One of the store's booksellers introduced us, because he was aware of both of our websites. Ron actually went to the same high school and graduated the same year I did, but we did not know each other in school (it was a big school). Interestingly, our friend, @Mel Hopkins, was also a member of that class (it was also great school).

The feedback from this mailing was very illuminating. I'm going to craft a part 2 message in a few weeks taking into account some new insights: Alexa Rank Requirement I made a having an Alexa ranking a requirement to be added to the list of sites that I would monitor. About half of the suggested sites I received today for consideration did not have an Alexa rank. I suspect the person complaining about my use of Alexa had a site without an Alexa ranking. While they did not say this was the reason, I can now understand now why someone would react the way they did. Now an Alexa ranking is a very low threshold to meet but the fact is 20% of the 300 sites I have evaluated so far did not have an Alexa Rank. In fact they are still on my list of sites: https://aalbc.com/top_black_websites/top_black_sites_list.php But I have to draw a line somewhere and the Alexa rank is as good a place as any; Right now the Alexa Ranks for sites in the Top 50 range from 1,026 to 470,817 (lower is better, Google's Alexa Rank is 1, Facebook's is 3). The worst Alexa rank, for the sites with a ranking, in my database is 19,987,545. I have never see a ranking worse than 30,000,000. Having an Alexa rank is generous cutoff, but I'm open to suggestions for alternatives. While I'm the only one handling this here will need to be a cut off. I have a booksite to run after all. “I've Never Heard of Most of These Sites” This is the most common comment I've received. Indeed it is the point of this entire effort. There will be some sites you've never heard of that has produced something you will truly appreciate but never see, because it could not be found on Facebook. Facebook “Likes” Are Powerful Facebook likes are very, very powerful--for Facebook. People measure the effectiveness of their ad spend and engagement on Facebook by the number of likes they get. If does not matter if the likes do not translate in getting an email address, a sale, visitors to a website, or improved branding. Likes are the measurement tool. They are readily visible and have the added benefit of providing an ego boost. Facebook is known to holdback likes so that they are timed for maximum impact. There is i ample reason to believe that many of those Facebook Likes are fake, and one should always measure the effectiveness of those paid visitors, you might find as I did they are not very engaged visitors. Most Users Don't Visit Websites I suspect that the majority of new internet users are mobile users using social media. These types of users are much less likely to visit a website. When these users run a Google search they don't leave the Google search results page, because Google will pull answers from websites, most often Wikipedia, and present the response on the page or read it aloud. For these types of users the social media/google/Wikipedia/amazon is the internet. Demographically this is where the growth appears to be. But there is a category of users (like anyone reading this message), who wants deeper information. Like readers of books, the types of users of the web are in the minority. But like readers of books, there are enough of these types of internet users to enable independent Black owned websites to thrive. Finally Don't Forget Email In the four hours since I sent this email, several hundred extra people have visited the pages linked in my mailing. There is nothing I have ever done that has generated as much traffic as quickly from social media. Now I've had some content go "viral" and that brought thousands of additional visitors from Facebook primarily during the same period of time. But I can not ln which post will go viral and they are very rare occurrence anyway. Nothing, I've shared this year went viral, but 2017 will be the year this site see the most page views ever.

This is an interesting subject. DNA has helped to reveal many family secrets.

Less than 30 minutes ago I sent an email (the entire message is at the end of this post) to my entire mailing list. Anyone one who knows me is familiar with the theme. What makes this issue different is that it does not just deal with Black book sites; it deals with the entire Black owned World Wide Web and how little of it we own and control. Even I was alarmed because I'm having difficulty finding 50 websites with a meaningful level of traffic. What is so striking is that we spending so much time hyping the benefits of social media and we have completely overlooked our ownership. This is like bragging about how warm and comfortable Massa's house while most of us live in crappy shacks we don't even own. What puzzles me is that there is no outrage, no alarm, no concern? This why I find our bitching over a stupid Dove commercial so exasperating. But check this out. This is the very first response I received in reaction to the message was the following: Why is everything controlled by Alexa rank? Is Alexa "black-owned"? Is Howard University the only HBCU that is "Alexa-ranked" and is therefore on your list? What's up? I replied with the following message: Hi XXXXXXX, Everything is not Alexa ranked. I used a proprietary method of ranking websites The AALBC Score and that is Black owned. I find Akexa to be a rather poor indicator of judging the relative traffic of websites. I only use it to help me separate sites that get very little traffic from those that do. On that basis the Alexa Ranks is adequate. Of the HBCU’s I checked, Howard had the strongest overall AALBC Score. If you have any websites you’d like to suggest I more than welcome you to add them to the list of sites to be considered. The instructions are in my original email. Thanks for the feedback it was helpful. Peace, Troy Now this message is from my own tribe! This reader completely missed the point and spirit of my message. I'm not sure how I could have communicated my message any differently to help them understand my point. Does anyone see where I went wrong? So far this message, after only 32 minutes, is the most shared message I've sent in a long time, so it is apparently resonating with some readers. Which is encouraging. I just hope this issue gets some coverage and that Black folks start to patronize Black websites, before the web is complete owned by Amazon and Facebook owned websites. A few weeks ago, I created a list of “The Top 25 Black-Owned Websites.” Over the past week I've reviewed, improved, and expanded that effort. The result is a list of “The Top 50 Black-Owned Websites.” I’ve even come up with a ranking system to objectively score the relative strength of each website. The truth is, the list only has 38 websites. I’ve having a great deal of difficulty identifying 50 Black-owned websites who meet a rather moderate level of performance criteria, and I’ve evaluated hundreds of sites. I was so taken aback by the lack of large Black-owned websites, that I was compelled to write an article, “We Must Patronize Black-Owned Websites or Lose Them.” My goal is to raise awareness and to issue a call to action. Despite the fact that websites are easier than ever to create and more people have Internet access than ever before, Black websites are growing weaker, more difficult to find, and presumably less profitable. TROY, help me identify and promote our top Black-owned website’s by posting the website’s information on AALBC.com. Please share this message with anyone you think will help. We can’t allow a couple of social media websites and a search engine to serve as gatekeepers who control access to, and profit from, our culture on the web. Peace & Love, Troy Johnson, Founder & Webmaster, AALBC.com AALBC.com eNewsletter – October 16, 2017 - Supplemental © 2017 AALBC.com, LLC | 1325 5th Ave Apt 2K, New York, NY 10029

I actually saw most, if not all, of the movies captured in this retrospective. I recently saw that "comedy" Pootie Tang it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen

@Pioneer1, Wall Street is a monolith if there ever was one. Yes ,Wall Street did invest in both sides. As you said, they will win no matter who is elected. Obama bails them out gives many of them cabinet positions. Even 45 hired a bunch of Wall Streeters, despite campaigning to do the opposite. But you were arguing that Wall Street wanted to derail a Black president. Again don't you think they could have accomplished that more easily by not contributing to his campaign at all? Obama raised more money on Wall Street than any candidate before him (if memory serves)--helping to fund perhaps the largest presidential campaign warchest ever.

@Pioneer1 How do you conclude from CNN's coverage of the study, a deliberate effort to make Black children, in the US, dumber. White people are subjected to as much, if not more, fluoride than Black people.

Well I'm glad the activity was not found to be serious. But obviously something was going on. While self diagnosis is not usually recommended searching the web for other with similar symptoms might reveal something.

Greed implies excess so the one could argue the adjective is unnecessary, but it is not an oxymoron. How then @Pioneer1 do you explain the tremendous amount of money Wall Street contributed to the Obama's campaign. If they wanted to derail his efforts they could not given him a red cent.

@Delano, as you know I'm really not keen on talking in terms racial terms (there is only one race), but Black people in terms of the way I assume you are thinking about it them out number white people. If you throw in all of the other non-white people on Earth, white people are in the minority. Demographically, here in the United States, their days as a majority will come to an end--soon. Of course white folks see this as a threat, which is why they are so keen on building walls. Even though we all know that will never happen, nor would it actually be effective.

Yeah Apple and Google keeps tabs on your every move, where you go, what you buy, who you talk to, what sites you visit. The people who used these products simply do not care about privacy or what the implications of it being eliminated mean. The information age has not served people. No one will argue that the pubic is more informed, smarter, or any wiser as a result of all of this technology. The performances of our students compared to other countries will tell you that. 45 in the whitehouse is obviously a consequence. On a global scale despite of our technology, global literacy is half of what it was just 40 years ago down to 17%! SO much for technology. Information technology, and the vast amount of data we prove has benefited corporations. We are easier marks for anything they have to sell. Much of we don't need and some of it does is harm. And I'm someone who is fundamentally for technology--I just don't like the way it is being used against us today.

Education. Full stop. If you really want the full solution; stop consuming most forms of media and go back to reading books and newspapers. That is it. --------------------------- I think we need to seriously consider the media we consume. There is some media that I simply do not subject myself to. Social media is one. Sure I post a link to AALBC.com on most days, but you will never see me scrolling through my own feeds. There are no social media apps installed on my phone. I say this because people lie, misinterpret things, or just make shit up. I prefer to consume my news directly from reputable sources --even then you need a variety of reputable sources. Speaking of cell phones. I do not keep it next to me. I don't even sleep in the same room with it. I primarily use it as a wifi hot spot, to text family and friends, and to look stuff up. I barely used the telephone ap. , Whenever I'm in public I see people fully engaged in the cell phones, they could be driving, walking down the street, at dinner with friends, or just riding in an elevator. The thing never seems to live their hands. At the airport, I see people sprawled on the floor slavishly tethered to an outlet because their stupid phone can't hold a charge for a full day. I think cell phones are one of the easiest ways for corporations to get into our heads and manipulate us. starting with getting us to buy a brand new one every two years--at least. I use the devices accordingly.

Classic Cynique. @Cynique, do you still send editorials to the newspaper. You should send something to the Defender. Well @Del, I've been to Nigeria and that country alone has about 180M Black people. Black people will absolutely survive. We will survive even here in America. My only issue is will we share equally in the spoils, or continue to allow ourselves to be exploited. I will never give up fighting for our piece of the web--even if I have to fight for it single handedly...

@Del, you can;t use yourself as the benchmark for the masses. We were born before marketing was so pervasive and effective. Remember we only had a few TV stations and they stopped broadcasting late at night. Today kids have handheld devices and are targeted nonstop by marketers 24 hours a day--every day of the week! They never knew a world different from this. You and I can go without out cell phones and TVs. The average person under 30 would probably have actual physical withdrawal symptoms if they with without a cell phone for more than a few hours. Their minds are never still... it makes a big difference in how we think.

Well I obviously agree with you @Del, the more I dig into who controls Black images, at least here in the web, I beginning to see that Black people control FAR less than even I expected. As a result, people are confused because they simply do not know he truth. White people are at a loss to understand why Black people have anything to complain about. We have high paying jobs providing their entertainment, expensive cell phones with internet access to consume their products, and even a Black president--what else could we want?

Partially, Ebony and Jet magazines were. The company that purchased it is Black owned.

During my research on Black websites (a deeply enlightening activity for we own far less than I through), I stumbled across this article on DiversityInc. @Pioneer1, of course you and I will notice how much darker the model is in the photo compared to the commercial... maybe you are on to something man when it comes to the motivation of these corporations.... "The Black model who appeared in a Dove ad that garnered negative attention for its racist message claims that critics may have jumped the gun before knowing the full commercial’s intended message." —Kaitlyn D'Onofrio, DiversityInc

I agree. I doubt I could be hypnotized, but I can be, and have been, influenced by marketing, which is why I try to avoid the efforts of corporate marketing--which is virtually impossible unless you live in a cave. Even in a cave, in some far flung country, Facebook is coming for you; they are going as far as building infrastructure and giving away handheld devices to accomplish this.

I've been working on my top Black owned website project I've modified my formula for ranking sites, adding the age of the website as a factor. This seems to have elevated sites with more serious content, as they tend to have the oldest domains. I been removing many tops sites because quite a few websites focused on Black content are simply not Black owned. We don’t own the web-based hip-hop presence. It really is worse than i thought... Fortunately there are many great sites out there. We just need to patronize them. I'm afraid if we don't Facebook and the website they own will be our only options, and then we'll really be in deep doo-doo.

Well the lack of control is just a function of knowledge and technology. Controlling brains will come first because, as it is child's play compared to controlling the weather. I've seen people hypnotized, I see how easily we can be deceived and manipulated, and of course the owners of social media with access to tremendous amounts of our data have taken this type of control to a new level.

OK @Delano please start a new conversation when you add more. Also can you explain what you mean by "...existential contemplation of essence." Finally, some believe the mind and our actions could be perfectly predicted like the trajectory of a tossed ball, provided we have complete information about the initial conditions, external forces, and sufficient computational power. But like weather or brains are very complex and it is only a matter of time before we can predict and control both.

OK then we agree @Pioneer1, I guess our fundamental point of disagreement stems from motivation. You believe industry created high employment because they wanted to thwart Obama's efforts. I believe they did it because their excessive greed led to terrible decisions; decisions they were ultimately rewarded for when they should have been thrown in jail.

@Del, yeah someone else on YouTube argued that content was important when comparing the two videos. Dove was selling soap so that made the commercial racist. It seems "context," or one's interpretation of context, is subjective. The context to me is an environment were people are easily distracted by nonsense, losing track to what is actually important. Del, if you don't decide what is important then someone else will do it for you. We as Black people lets others set our agenda. I know I sound like a broken record with this, but it is true. This is why I side with @Pioneer1 on this issue; thought I may disagree on some points. I may disagree with Pioneer about the motivation of what is going but the outcomes is the same nonetheless. We are busy running round complaining about some stupid commercial meanwhile Black people are fighting for survival. I watched News One convene a panel to talk about the Dove commercial--Their news is directed by whatever nonsense is trending on Twitter. .All talk no call for action. Five minutes from now we will be focused on the next shiny object held in front of us. As predicted, we've forgotten all about Colin and are now debating how to respect the flag. We have no control over our agenda. It will remain that way until we own some platforms that do more than discuss what is on twitter and that the rest of us value through patronage.

An old buddy of mine reminded me of the Michael Jackson Video below. Again it seems social media has has driven people in sane. I guess today Michael Jackson would be vilified as a racist all over Twitter too. Interestingly, "the gloved one" did make is own personal transformation from Black to white, including his own progeny... We have better things to be outraged about.

I dunno @Pioneer1, Wall Street made a pretty good mess of things before Obama came into office. Wall street s motivated by greed not race. They did however make Obama bail them out by holding a global financial crisis on his watch if he failed to do it. They'll use 45 in a similar manner. In fact 45 will be easier because he is greedy too and has no moral compass to restrain his behavior.