vali petcu .com

most disappointing moment in your life

vali — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:26:02 +0000

…is when you realize you will never be more than you are right now!

quote of the year

vali — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:03:39 +0000

“People will realize the most important voice on the web is their own, not the people they are following”

from Mr. Loren Feldman, of course.

About the embargo and the news

vali — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:04:43 +0000

There are 2 major problems with what Mr. Arrington is saying here.

It sucks when the news gets out at the same time. 20 major blogs, the same news, nothing news. I like techcrunch for the news they bring, the news nobody else has. I don’t like the papers that are reporting the same news, without a personal or a documented angle. It’s just empty news.

PR companies need to take responsibility. And give the news to the guys who matter the most. That is why ZF (leading Romanian financial newspaper) gets all the big news, because people know and admit the power of that paper.

After all, how hard can it be to find 20 sites that are the top players on your niche and build a relationship with their editors? That is how it used to be done. Now, in the age of email, nobody cares.

I am a blogger with a journalism background. I get press from companies i never reported on. They know who i am and i know who they are. And i never wrote about them. But maybe sometimes…

It’s not hard to build a business relationship these days. Send an email, invite the editor out to a drink, get to know some basic things about him and that is it. I have 5 different gifts on my desk from PR people i worked. Out of obligation? Out of false pretend? I don’t know. All i know is that they cared enough to send me a gift, even if a i am a blogger.

And in Romania that is a lot.

Preparing for the worst

vali — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:51:09 +0000

With the economic chaos waiting to hit Romania, I have made some plans.

First is not to keep all my eggs in one basket. Not one source of income.

Second is preparing to have my income drop by 50%. Sounds reasonable, I think. And I hope it will not go beyond 50%. After I’ve done the math, I can still go by, hopefully.

I pity the folks who don’t spend an hour to look at the numbers, do the math and spend lavishly now.

Problem with the .ro blogosphere

vali — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:20:51 +0000

I’ve been blogging since 2005, when the blogs were few and people were eager to read something outsite the crappy journalist/pr press. The door was open so me and a few others just walked in.

Now that blogs are mainstream, I see a lot of the new bloggers that step up and want to be like me (getting cars for test drive, being invited to conferences and television, getting exclusive news and previews). The problem is that they do not have what it takes to be good bloggers (I am speaking about the ones who want to be probloggers, of course, not the guys who write personal blogs). Most of them do not know how to write proper in romanian, most of them do not know how to report news or events. Those who don’t have such problems, have bigger ones. Like not being able to produce opinions. They translate the idea, add a few more details and that is a blog post. No valid opinion, no added value.

But they want to be important.