One of my recent posts kicked off a debate about monetizing the content of blogs and revealing it for corporate eavesdropping. There is a large industry forming that is making money off of the Blogosphere.

The money is in selling services that answer which blogs are the most influential, and what is being written about companies and their products.

This is measured by page links and algorithms that assign levels of authority to blog sites, and to specific posts. There are now many tools and corporate services that monitor and listen to the conversations of tens of millions in the Blogosphere.

But some, such as Robert Scoble, the uber-blogger at Microsoft, have pointed out large differences in metrics from leading blog tracker companies such as Technorati, indicating possibly that the data is faulty. Earlier this week BlogPulse released a revamped blog tracking service that claims more reliable results.

Jason Dowdell, over at his blog MarketingShift.com has been following these things and he is an excellent source on such matters. Take a look at Jason's posts (in chron. order) on the subject:

BlogPulse new & improved blog search engine

BlogPulse profile tool has the Blogosphere buzzing

BlogPulse addresses profile performance issue