Blogging Watch

August 19, 2005

Microsoft Blog Business Summit in SF: Chockablock with marketers

. . . and Robert Scoble

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher
I should be writing an end of week wrap but I'm exhausted from running around all over Silicon Valley. Summer is usually slow regarding news but this time it's not. And everybody I know seems to be the same way, busy.

I did gatecrash the Microsoft sponsored Business Blogging Summit reception Thursday evening and ran into the indefatigable chief editor of ZDNet Dan Farber, New Communications Blogzine publisher Jen McClure, and Phil Gomes (now blog czar at Edelman).

I didn't go to any of the sessions, but, it seems that Robert Scoble, Microsoft's "Geek Blogger" seems to have come out of the marketing closet. Check out these sessions on the first day:
In the session "In Building Traffic: Posting isn’t Enough!" Robert Scoble and Dave Taylor promise:

In this session, you'll learn some of the best ways to build blog traffic quickly, increase interest in you and your product or service, and improve your bottom-line results.

Plus:

Tips and tricks to keep your visitors coming back for more.

Later in the day Robert Scoble and Janet Johnson provide tips and tricks in the session: "Dealing with Bloggers: Partnering and Defense Strategies." Which includes:

* How to get the bloggers to deliver the right positive message(s) * Prioritizing the bloggers * The power of linking to your critics * Saying you’re sorry—what the Lawyers don’t know.

Then on day two, Robert Scoble and Dean Hachamovitch provide the keynote: "Why Microsoft is Betting Big on Bloggers and RSS." And they promised to reveal:

where the world of blogging and syndicated content is going as they create the largest single platform on which business bloggers will deliver their messages.

I'm a big fan of Robert Scoble, who writes the popular Scobleizer blog.

I first met him earlier in the year when he and I were on a Nooked sponsored panel [Nooked is also a sponsor of SiliconValleyWatcher] at the Syndicate conference in New York.

And I remember a fascinating conversation at dinner when he said he found it impossible to lie online. Every time he tried to fudge something, his readers spot it. I said maybe we could devise a sort of Turing test to see if readers could spot a lie, because I agreed with him, there is something about writing online that means you can't hide behind inauthenticity.

Robert Scoble is also a text-book brilliant example of how to blog, and how less is more. Also, until fairly recently, Microsoft barely knew he existed. Yet he is one of the giants of the blogosphere.

And Microsoft's PR department wasn't too happy with his popularity. Microsoft didn't stop him from speaking at conferences but they wouldn't give him a travel budget and he would also sometimes have to use his vacation days. That's why he had to share a room with Jeremy Pepper of POP! Public Relations at the Syndicate show--which demonstrates how his extraordinary passion for blogging surmounts any adversity.

My concern is that if Microsoft has now woken up to the power of blogs, and is now using him so blatantly as part of its marketing efforts, he will be seen as a marketer and much less so as a A-list blogger. There is a difference and I'm sure you know what I mean.

- - -

A star struck Scobleizer meets Silicon Valley's Babe Ruth: Steve Jobs

My first Steve Jobs meeting

http://www.blogbusinesssummit.com/

Blog Business Summit speakers
- - -

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | Top Stories | trackbacks

July 22, 2005

Selling of the Blogosphere heats up as a revamped BlogPulse challenges Technorati mano a mano on blog search

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

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | trackbacks

July 20, 2005

A permalink for youthful indiscretions....

Tuesday evening the Electronic Frontier Foundation hosted a panel discussion on the legal issues surrounding blogs and also produced a "Legal Guide for Bloggers."

I caught the tail end of it, but Blake Barbera over at the Wetfeet PR blog, caught most of it, and he discusses an interesting issue. Are blog posts really forever? Suppose someone posted in their youth on a topic that is embarrassing in later life? The search engines will keep churning up that older post.

Take a look at Blake's post here:
A blog post’s shelf life; when will search engines let it go?

Coincidentally, this an issue I've been thinking about lately and the answer is increased use of pseudonyms. In fact, we older people should take our clues from the younger generation where made up nicknames are used all the time online.

It is similar to Burningman, where the participants generally have a "playa" name. The goal is not to hide identity, but to portray persona. By which I mean personas come and go :-).

My 16 year old persona was not the same as the one I had when I was 26, or 36. Personas represented by nicknames are one way to avoid the problems of your past coming back to bite you.

And, increasingly, there will be a less public world of the internet visible/searchable.

| comments 1 | tagged Blogging Watch | trackbacks

In the company of BlogHers . . .

SiliconValleyWatcher is a proud media sponsor of the BlogHer conference, the first conference highlighting the emerging elite of women bloggers.

As far as I know, tickets for this conference are already sold out; unfortunate, as I would like to take my 11-year-old daughter, Sarah. I've no idea if Sarah wants to be a BlogHer, but I'd love to expose her to a new environment and dynamic role models.

BTW, wouldn't you almost think that a blogging conference focused on women, or anything gentrified as such, is more of an artefact of the 70's, 80's and 90's? Along those lines, I'm interested in the vibe they'll try to extend, if it'll be a NOW-type one.

I often say that blogging is about meritocracy of content. I never check for gender bylines. And blogging is about authentic voices and a viral distribution system. Women bloggers will surely find their way into the limelight. I meet more of them every day.

The BlogHer conference organizers want to publicize the best women bloggers and encourage more women to climb into the top echelons of the blogosphere.

I'm glad somebody is encouraging more women to become bloggers, because we need some fresh voices. It is always the same A-list bloggers, you know who I mean. At every conference I go to, and every panel I moderate or take part in, it's the same group. It's people like Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, John Udell, Ross Mayfield, Marc Cantor, Jeremy Zawodny, Dan Gillmor, Mike Manuel, Om Malik, etc.

It is a group I like because the company is never dull. But it is all men, except for Charlene Li, Forrester's superstar analyst, who seems to be on every panel on blogging in the western hemisphere :-).

I've no doubt that the male dominated geek blogger community would do everything in its power to encourage women to blog, and to attend their geek conferences in large numbers.

And I'm happy to accelerate the building of women blogger media brands - if you'd like to send me a guestblog.

| comments 1 | tagged Blogging Watch | trackbacks

July 07, 2005

Fix found for Movable Type-CPanel bug...Six Apart hits the ground running in wake of J4

There wasn't much in the way of burgers and beer for Jay Allen and his colleagues this past barbecue weekend. As product manager for Six Apart, the publisher of Movable Type, Jay faced a big problem: an upgrade to a popular third party software application was causing tens of thousands of Movable Type blogs to behave erratically.

Movable Type engineers (Brad Choate gets a special mention) worked with the third party software engineers to fix the problem and so everything should be fine once the software gets updated at web server hosting facilities.

On top of that, it was Jay's birthday too, and the poor guy says he won't see sunlight until he gets version 3.2 of Movable Type out the door--that's the Geek Life and it's not for the faint of heart. But we wouldn't want it any other way...

From Jay:

An update to the DBD::MySQL driver has been posted by the developer.
Movable Type users affected by the problem because of the automatic CPanel updates will also be automatically fixed within 24 hours.

Update also posted to the Six Apart ProNet and MT News blogs.

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | trackbacks

July 06, 2005

Thousands of Movable Type weblogs affected by bug...

My apologies for the comments section still being down, but it is a much wider problem and tens of thousands of installations are affected. Six Apart, the creators of Movable Type are working on a patch which is to do with strange interactions with an updated version of CPanel, a utility for managing server installations at many web service providers. But, it has been several days now and no patch has appeared...

Six Apart risks losing more users to competitor WordPress, an open-source weblog platform.

In the meantime, you can send a "letter to the editor" to: tom @ siliconvalleywatcher.com (ommitting the spaces) and I will compile and post your comments manually as a seperate entry. Thank you.

Here is info from Anil Dash at Six Apart about the problem.

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | trackbacks

June 27, 2005

The seemingly boundless interest in blogging. . .the Horse's Ass blog. . .and why forced blogging doesn't work

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher
I continue to spend a lot of time speaking on the subject of blogging, and I've heard many of the same questions from different audiences. There is a lot of confusion about how best to respond to blogging, and in general how to adapt to a changing and very fragmented media landscape.

I don't pretend to have all the answers — but it's fascinating being in the middle of this, and being part of the still relatively small group of people trying to find answers to these questions.

In recent weeks I've spoken with representatives of the Semiconductor Industry Association, with the Seattle chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), and most recently at an event presented by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and TheNewsMarket. These events usually attract mostly corporate communications and agency people, they are in the front lines in trying to get to grips with the blogging phenomenon.

At each one of these events I try to freely share as much as I can about this blogging phenomenon and the medium's unique aspects. And it is always worth it, because I come back with a ton of stories about how other people do things within their organizations, and the cultural and other obstacles that they deal with in their work. Also, I meet other bloggers from other sectors and compare notes.

Differences in political blogging

Suzanne Hartman, from Hill & Knowlton, invited me up to Seattle to speak with the local IABC chapter after reading one of my essays on the future of journalism at New Communications Blogzine, and here on SVW.

It was an interesting trip and a memorable group. One of the people I met was David Goldstein, a political blogger (Horsesass.org—the straight poop on WA politics and the press). I remember saying to David that one good thing is if you make a mistake, a dozen people are looking over your shoulder and will point out factual errors by leaving messages at the site. Thus, there is a self-correcting process at work and an opportunity to grow a communal type of journalism such as that espoused by Dan Gilmor.

David says he gets hundreds of comments on his blog - but he says there is no community correction of facts. In the political sector, it seems people won't readily accept that certain facts they use are false. Instead, there is a partisan battle based around ideology

That seems a bit disheartening to me, because it means that when it comes to political issues, facts and reason can do little to change people's minds. Is there any such thing as meaningful debate, or are political arguments just lines drawn in the sand by opposing blowhards?

Blogging as a work duty rarely works

At the recent Dartmouth Business school event I was on a panel along with Charlene Li, Forrester's superstar internet analyst, Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief of Red Herring, Wade Roush, senior editor at MIT's Technology review (now edited by former Red Herring editor Jason Pontin), and Jason Smith, ENPS project manager at Associated Press.

I was the only full time "blogger" even though the other journalists work for publications and write blogs. This is fine but I think that as established media continue to add blogs, problems are going to mount.

I can already see stress fractures at some large publications.

[This is not to say that my colleagues on the panel suffer from the following problems ... it just reminded me of some issues on the topic of journalists and blogging that I've come across over the past few months.]

The reason there is stress in established media organizations is that it is difficult to create a difference between the online publication and its blogs. Journalists are confused about what stories should go into the blog, what style should they be written in, and why the blog gets edited by the same editors as the publication.

In addition, writing a blog at work is yet one more extra task piled onto an already full plate. Many journalists that survived the dotbomb are working two to three times as hard as five years ago. It's a workload brought on by constant staff cuts and difficulty in recruiting experienced journalists to fill the job vacancies.

Adding blogging duties is a lot of extra work and it is forced work - forced blogging comes across as such and cannot be disguised. You know it when you see it.

Also, blogging journalists need time to develop a "blog voice" - or maybe several blog voices, depending on the time of day or mood. These are different personalities, and the style is different from the rigid house style of their employer. That's why journalist blogs are better done from home, and not hosted on their employer's server, and driven by passion and interest - not by the need to fulfil employee duties. IMHO.

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | Promo 2 | trackbacks

June 15, 2005

More hidden secrets of the Google 3D mapping truck

Our scoop on the Google 3D mapping truck last week generated a large number of trackbacks and they continue to come in, nearly a week later.

They show the viral nature of some stories. Some spread very quickly yet are soon gone, while others have a steady momentum that continues to generate trackbacks.

Here's the original story: Scoop! Smile for the Google 3d mapping truck.

We actually have a little bit more information on the 3D mapping truck: here is a low res Treo 600 photo of the hut where the Google truck is hidden. The location is Palo Alto.

| comments 1 | tagged Blogging Watch | Promo 2 | trackbacks

Blogs of freedom: Reporters Without Borders picks top free speech blogs around the world

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

In countries where the press in under the direct control of the government, blogs provide the equivalent of a free press. That's why Reporters Without Borders asked Internet users around the world to pick the best blogs defending independence and freedom. Now the results are in. The winners hail from Maylasia, the US, Afghanistan, Europe and Iran.

Most notable of these bloggers is Mojtaba Saminejad, an Iranian blogger who was sentenced this month to a two-year sentence in Iranian prison because of his writings. Other winners were:

• Screenshots (Malaysia) written by Jeff Ooi, who was threatened with imprisonment in 2004 for comments "insulting Islam."
• Shared Pain (Afghanistan), commentary on Afghanistan's social and political turmoil.
• Al Jinane (Morocco), Tarik Essaadi tries to "understand the complexity of the world."
• ICT lex (Italy), a blog on Internet law and new technology.
• Press Think, Jay Rosen's thoughtful blog on media old and new.
• Netzpolitik (Germany), blog dealing with open source, Internet rights and free expression.

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | Promo 1 | Top Stories | trackbacks

May 31, 2005

Bubbler blows up distinctions between websites and blogs

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

I'm often asked how a blog differs from a website. I usually say that blogs are websites that are organized like journals, generally created with software that lets you make frequent posts and supports things like reader comments and trackbacks, which aren't typically found on business sites. Blogging connotes a lot of other things, of course, like strong opinions, brutal honesty, and an ongoing conversation. SiliconValleyWatcher, for instance, uses Movable Type even though it is organized more like a news website than a traditional blog.

Bubbler, a new service from Palo Alto-based startup Five Across, really blurs that distinction in interesting ways. Founded by graduates of Apple and Adobe, Bubbler is a database-driven service that lets creators toggle between blog and website conventions, does away with ftp'ing files to a server, and even removes the concept of a broken link (except for outside links).

When I talked to Five Across CEO Glenn Reid, he emphasized that divorcing content from presentation was the key to the company’s technology. That’s been an objective of Web technologies for many years now, especially Cascading Style Sheets. But having a goal is one thing and having a system that actually works seamlessly is quite another.

Glenn comes from Apple, and Bubbler’s model is pretty Apple-like. It uses standards like CSS and JavaScript as appropriate, but at the core is proprietary technology that enables the company to deliver a solid user experience. There's no part of the process that Five Across isn't touching - you use its client software and its servers. Bubbler sites run on Five Across servers. While the service sits on TCP/IP and outputs HTML/CSS/JavaScript to a web server, everything in the middle is proprietary Five Across stuff.

This approach is not unusual. Flickr, for instance, takes a closed source, open API approach. How they do what they do is secret; what is open is the method of writing apps that lock into it. Bubbler is also closed-source, and it's not clear how open the APIs will be. It’s hard to argue with the success of the iPod and its tight integration with iTunes. On the other hand, its hard to argue with the success of the Web. But, why argue? There is obviously room for both kinds of companies.

Although Bubbler is intially offered as a hosted service, Five Across' ultimate business model, unlike that of Movable Type creator Six Apart, isn’t to run a hosting service but provide an OEM technology to other companies and networks. Look for ISPs to offer Bubbler to customers as a blog- or web-building tool that blows away anything they currently offer. And look for Bubbler to cut deals with institutions in vertical markets, such as real estate.

Blog or site? The difference is a template
Like Blogger.com, Bubbler offers a bunch of CSS-based templates. But unlike Blogger and other blog tools, the templates don't all look like blogs. Enterprise and small business templates look a lot more like website than blogs. Because Bubbler lets you disable blog standards like date, author, comments, trackbacks and so on, your “postings” can easily look like web “content.” Bubbler makes it easy to upload photos and files - just drag from the desktop to the app.

To put Bubbler through its paces, I took a site operated by my sister in law, Working Aussie Source, and re-created the home page in
Bubbler. I think she’s an interesting and typical case study. She paid someone to build her site but it’s become gainly and out of control. Not knowing any HTML, she’s been unable to update it and certainly unable to redesign it. Using a basic template, I recreated her home page in about an hour. But that took some faking up of blog entries, and I wasn’t able to replicate her basic design. Here's my Bubbler version of Working Aussie Source.

To move past the templates (shown in the screen shot), you have to dive into CSS. Clicking on Customize Template simply opens an HTML file for you to edit and upload to Bubbler. There’s no ftp app to run though; Bubbler handles the uploads. Editing the CSS isn’t that hard unless you’re building elements from scratch - moving elements around is fairly easy. Still, I don’t think that matters much. The creator of Working Aussie Source is not going there - she’ll need a wysiwyg editor for rearranging page elements or many more templates to choose from. Even TypePad, which is no wonder of user interface, allows users to control the positions of different elements and makes it relatively easy to paste in code for AdSense and other JavaScript do-hickies.

Five Across PR told me that the company's low-end market - real estate agents, photographers - would be happy to use templates, especially since Bubbler lets you use your own images in the templates. But I think this is leaving a lot of potential customers on the table. Designers, for instance, insist on total visual control but have no love of maintaining sites, tracking down broken links and threading through JavaScript rollover code. They would be very happy with the amazing way Bubbler makes those issues go away. If Bubbler can combine design control and ease of use, it could become a very interesting product. It will never be for everyone, but it is an exciting breakthrough in web authoring.

| comments 1 | tagged Blogging Watch | Promo 4

May 09, 2005

Blog, the Movie

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

This is pretty much inside baseball, but Josh Hallett has done the casting on "Blog, the Movie," which I guess is the story of the saints and sinners who built the blogosphere. With Rob Reiner as Dave Winer, Dr. Katz as Steve Rubel, McCauley Culkin as Jason Calcanis, Kevin Spacey as Dan Gillmor and introducing Wonkette as herself. Pretty funny. (via John Paczkowski's always amusing Good Morning, Silicon Valley)

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch

April 25, 2005

Are bloggers journalists? This is one of the most important cultural questions facing society today....

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Here is a version of an entry I wrote for New Communications Forum, in which I postulated that one of the most important cultural questions facing society is: Are bloggers journalists?

It is an important question; because the media is part of the trusted channels of communication that society uses to think, distribute ideas, and exercise its right to free speech.

It's an important question; because the answer carries with it considerable responsibility. If bloggers are indeed journalists, then they deal in the same currency of ideas and influence as the established media.

But this fragmentation of the mediasphere, into millions of blogs, upsets society's trusted ways of distributing its ideas and free speech; and, in the process, journalism is being transformed in many ways. Print journalism, the most dominant form, is under economic threat from online media, with its lower cost business models. And the profession of journalism is under society's microscope, as millions of bloggers challenge the accepted notions of what journalism is, and who can, or should be allowed to, practice it.

The Internet is a disruptive media technology

This transformation of journalism is best understood if the Internet is understood as a disruptive force, not of the technology sector, but of the media sector. The Internet is a collection of disruptive media technologies; and blogging, RSS, wikis, podcasts, etc., are part of a second wave of powerful media technologies that are accelerating this disruptive process.

The first wave of Internet media technology was the flood of web browser technologies that enabled anyone to read a web page, regardless of the computer or operating system. Similarly, blogging allows anyone to easily publish a web page, regardless of the computer or operating system.

But blogging is more than a web browser; it is more like an "asynchronous" media technology, Geek speak for "can move both ways." And this is reflected in how the early pioneers understand this Internet 2.0 or Web 2.0 emerging phase of the Internet.

Richard MacManus, one of my new colleagues on SiliconValleyWatcher, (and ionRSS.com coming soon!), has a web site called ReadWriteWeb.com. Joe Kraus, co-founder of JotSpot, developer of a corporate wiki platform, said he'd considered using Escher's drawing of a hand drawing a hand for the logo of his company.

This two-way web concept is just emerging into the mainstream culture, having been closeted in the Geek community for the past few years. But the concept of a two-way media is more than just a handy way of describing the blogging phenomenon. It is leveling the "free speech" playing field of journalism between established and new media.

In a nutshell, bloggers can now publish their free speech, their ideas, their influence, and reach 4/5ths of the world's population for virtually nothing. I'm not saying that 4/5ths of the world's population would read the bloggers; but the reach is there, and essentially for free. It costs less than $10 per month to host a blog; and the online network of bloggers can carry the content far and wide for free.

Anyone can have a powerful web publishing platform that is near completely automated. And that upsets the channels of influence in our society, which were protected from competition because of the high cost of publishing high quality content.

In Part II: Apple's hunt for leaksters threatens to muzzle the press...
cd1915

| comments 7 | tagged Blogging Watch | Media Watch | Promo 3

April 01, 2005

Mark Jen, fired Google blogger, helps Plaxo draft a blogging policy

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher
Bloggers with jobs were all a twitter when Mark Jen, the "Google blogger," was fired from his job because he posted some complaints about Google's compensation package, compared to his previous employer Microsoft. Mark has landed at Plaxo, a privately held company that offers electronic address book updating services.

Mark is taking the lead on drafting a blogging policy for Plaxo, the current draft of which has been released for public comment. "We want community comment," Mark told me in a phone call. "One of the draws of blogging is to connect directly to the community and open lines of communication. If companies want to use our policy or modify it, that's great."

Plaxo's policy supports blogging but takes clear steps to protect the company against communication that might cast the company in a bad light. For instance, the policy says, "We expect and insist that such communication does not substantively demean our environment. This means that constructive criticism — both privately and publicly — is welcome, but harsh or continuous disparagement is frowned upon."

Mark says that he and Plaxo management both realized the need for a formal policy, something he learned the hard way at Google. "After the incident I became aware of the issues involved in blogging in a corporate setting. You need sensitivity to corporate culture and climate."

In the blogosphere, Mark said, information travels in a "very interesting way" -- it can move extremely quickly or be completely forgotten. "Personally, I treat my writing as if my identity is blended into my employer's. I try to remember that it's known who I work for," Mark said. "Even if people don't disclose who they work for, that information isn't hard to come by."

Companies shouldn't be afraid of blogging, though, Mark cautions. It's an extremely powerful way of connecting with customers and partners. "Businesses can aggregate information across blogs and learn what customers are thinking."

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | GOOG | Media Watch | Promo 1 | Tech Watch

March 30, 2005

Uncovering the madness of crowds...the flickrliscious effect on research labs

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I was at HP Labs Tuesday morning, chatting with Josh Tyler and Philippe Debaty about their work in trying to determine how people will use camera phones. A primary goal of HP Labs is to be able to predict novel uses of consumer technologies and develop supporting computer products or services.

But in today's world, these researchers are realising that they cannot do things the old way, and that they have to get out of the labs.

One of the HP Labs' projects was photo-blogging. About 20 researchers carried camera phones linked into a location-aware cell phone network. As they took pictures with their camera phones, the images would be uploaded to a central database along with location data. A heavy concentration of images in a location would flag that some type of event took place. It would also uncover large aggregate social behaviors, a subject of high interest to Mr Tyler.

The photo blogging project closed because HP doesn’t make camera phones, Mr Tyler said.

But, I asked, hadn’t Flickr obviated the need for this project anyway? If you want to discover aggregate social behaviors around photos and sharing, take a look at Flickr’s millions of users. There are communities on Flickr that could not have been predicted. And this is true of all true platforms--in the current sense of technology platforms for groups: unpredictable behaviors and communities will arise.

Using 20 HP Labs researchers is not going to reveal many, if any, novel uses. How many people using a platform technology would it take to flag the potential for large aggregate social behaviors, I asked?

That’s a question we have been pondering, says Mr Tyler, and "we don’t know" is the answer.

Mr Debaty showed me a photo-sharing slideshow project where you can add your own voice narration using an iPaq handheld computer. That project is still in development because it uses an HP device.

On the way home, I wondered how HP Labs or other researchers will be able to plan innovative consumer products if they cannot predict how people will use them, or what unexpected types of services will be needed. Product development and design of consumer digital devices is expensive and takes about 2 years.

Clearly, these researchers will need to change their approach. They should be out on the Internet crouching in the bushes and taking notes on what people are doing, and then determine new product development. In fact, these should be boom times for anthropologists. Surely, now is their time(!)

Spotting potentially large aggregate social behaviors, and being the first to monetise them, is going to be the name of the game in the consumer digital space.
cd1015

| comments 1 | tagged Blogging Watch | Promo 3

March 14, 2005

Filling up on Those Bloating Blog Burgers

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

I just arrived in San Diego for the O'Reilly Emerging Tech con, running Tuesday through Thursday, and I picked up the LA Times to look at over my burrito touristo here in Old Town SD. There are two stories of interest. A study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism which is associated with Columbia U, carries the headline "Study Warns of Junk-News Diet," and it's really a mixed bag. On the one hand the study warns that people are getting too much "journalism of assertion" from blogs and cable news; on the other it notes that journalism need to become more transparent. The first trend leads to the second, the report said.

[It's important] to document the reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it. ... Since citizens have a deeper range of information at their fingertips, the level of proof in the press must rise accordingly. In effect, the era of trust-me journalism has passed and the era of show-me journalism has begun.

The study looks at the election and the war and tries to figure out if the media have been pro- or anti-Bush. The results are not particularly interesting (election: 30% anti-Bush, 12% anti-Kerry; war: 25% neg, 20% pos). The LA Times notes the study "did not try to assess whether the outcome reflected partisan bias, ... a tendency to view incumbents more harshly, or some other reason." (Such as ... Bush's policies deserve negative coverage, far more than they received? But I digress.)

Really interesting, and really dismaying to anyone who might have thought newspapers might have a clue as to how to save their asses, is the news that "62% of those working for Internet news outlets said their newsrooms had suffered cuts in the last three years, far greater than the 37% of news people at traditional outlets who said their staffs had been cut."

That is just astounding, when you realize that the report also noted that online advertising increased 30% in the past year to $10b and blog readership has increased 58% in the last six months.

While the Project for Excellence in Journalism thinks that citizens are guilty of "news obesity -- consuming too little that can nourish and too much that can bloat them," we need just surf over the New York Times' boffo story that hit on Sunday: "Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News":

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.

It's gettng harder and harder for the news establishment to claim they have some special claim to integrity, independence, or ability. The study's dichotomy that journalists report facts and bloggers spew opinion is just entirely the wrong way to cut it. Even the notion that "bloggers" is a single group that can be characterized is really hogwash.

That said, bloggers are not journalists; they're people. Blogs reflect the range of conversation that people have, largely opinionated. Some of us blogpeople are journalists; some of us make an effort to gather and break stories. And we reserve our rights to have informed opinions about the topics we cover.

| comments 2 | tagged Blogging Watch | Media Watch

March 10, 2005

PartII: If a Blogger Blogs in the Blogosphere…

…does anybody blog it?

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher
In the first part of this essay, I asked how will PR communications teams apply media relations to the blogosphere? The traditional methods of influence can’t be applied to such a fragmented media landscape. (Part I is here.)

The normal means of spin-control cannot be applied either, because in this new world where everyone can be a blogger, be a journalist, there would be no way to monitor and address all the unexpected issues. There would be just too many bloggers to deal with, and each one is a potential friend or enemy, able to broadcast praise or contempt to potentially millions of people.

This is a nightmarish situation for PR communications people, because if they cannot influence the unruly blogosphere then what role remains for them?

Yes, there are going to be new ways of communications, new methods, new procedures. We know what some of those will be, but there is a heck of a lot that we don’t know yet on how best to use media technologies such as blogs and wikis in the enterprise. The new rules are being forged right now and that’s what makes things interesting.

Zombie media

Media technologies are changing the established media world too. Print publications won't go away but there are a lot of zombies out there—media companies not quite dead but not quite alive, continuing to stagger along. Many print based publications won't survive the new media sector that will emerge from these changing times.

Yes, the blogosphere is a mighty media beast, uncontrollable, it does what it wants, it can wreck havoc and wreck careers. But, if an individual blogger blogs in the blogosphere does anybody blog it?

That depends on the relationships readers have formed with the blogger, the “brand” experience that is created, the trusted relationships formed. These are exactly the same things that media brands such as BusinessWeek or CNET News.com focus on every day and it takes time to build media brands.

Ten more years of hard slog for Cnet

I met with Shelby Bonnie, CEO of News.com last summer, and he told me that after more than ten years of hard work building the CNET News.com media brand, there was probably another ten years to go before the media brand could be properly monetized.

“We just have to remember that building a media brand is a long process. The New York Times was not built in ten years,” he said.

Individual bloggers have to build their media brand, just like the traditional media, and that takes time.

Negative and positive comments made by bloggers carry little weight either way—until a blogger establishes their credentials, their media brand. And that is a long process requiring a lot of diligent writing and reporting.

If you look closely, you’ll find there are lots of experienced journalists, editors and publishers within the blogosphere such as Om Malik, Dan Gillmor, Chris Nolan, Nick Denton, who runs the fast growing Gawker Media blog empire out of his HQ loft in New York; so is John Battelle; and Jason Calcanis with his Weblogs, Inc collection of blogs.

Raising the bar

Growing numbers of media professionals within the blogosphere raises the bar for all because the competition for reader attention will be that much fiercer and editorial standards will be that much higher.

Building a personal blogging brand and cultivating a key readership within such an increasingly noisy media landscape will become increasingly difficult for individuals. We will see consolidation as blogs become group blogs and then become fully-fledged online news magazines.

There will be lots of these Internet 2.0 (net-two) news mags, in every area of human endeavor. There will be a worldwide flowering of the media landscape--at least that’s what I see in my crystal (8) ball :-)

And consolidation will eventually make it easier for PR communications teams to apply standard methods of influence.

| comments 5 | tagged Blogging Watch | Top Stories

March 08, 2005

If a Blogger Blogs in the Blogosphere...

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

The rise of blogging has a nightmarish quality to it --if you are in the public relations or corporate communications fields-- because of the fact that anyone can become a blogger. And that means that anyone can become a journalist.

There are millions of bloggers, and thus the media landscape has shattered into a million pieces. Each blogger shares in the power attributed to journalists and the established media: the power to influence, and cause, change in society and markets.

And that means a public relations nightmare; because how can a public relations firm or corporate communications department manage its media relations?

Before the rise of the blogosphere, it was easy to know where journalists worked, their names, what beat they covered, the size of their readership, the demographics of their readers. That made it easy to target the journalists with press releases, with invitations to events, with story pitches, and to establish working relationships with them.

The more contact with journalists, the better chance of media coverage, and the better chance of having a specific message communicated.

It’s astounding how much effort goes into influencing journalists. I always knew it was a lot; but I never realized how much until I left the Financial Times in June, and started doing some reporting on the Silicon Valley PR sector, through the Silicon Valley Watcher.

For example, PR firm Waggoner Edstrom, mostly known for its chief client Microsoft, will plan a media campaign in extraordinary detail. It decides which journalists will be offered exclusives, and which ones will be snubbed. It even prints up dummy front covers of BusinessWeek and other magazines with the images and story angles it wants communicated to its readers.

And it doesn’t want a rosy, super-positive story; it wants a balanced, neutral-to-slightly-positive news story/feature/interview. That’s because a balanced, slightly positive story carries more weight: the reader respects that the journalist offered contrary views, yet the subject came through mostly unscathed.

How can that level of highly-detailed media control be applied to the blogosphere? Do you start with a mock-up of the Slashdot headline you’d like to see?

Answers later this week in part II of “If a Blogger Blogs…”
cd1555

| comments 3 | tagged Blogging Watch | Blogging Watch | PR Watch

If a Blogger Blogs in the Blogosphere...

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

The rise of blogging has a nightmarish quality to it --if you are in the public relations or corporate communications fields-- because of the fact that anyone can become a blogger. And that means that anyone can become a journalist.

There are millions of bloggers, and thus the media landscape has shattered into a million pieces. Each blogger shares in the power attributed to journalists and the established media: the power to influence, and cause, change in society and markets.

And that means a public relations nightmare; because how can a public relations firm or corporate communications department manage its media relations?

Before the rise of the blogosphere, it was easy to know where journalists worked, their names, what beat they covered, the size of their readership, the demographics of their readers. That made it easy to target the journalists with press releases, with invitations to events, with story pitches, and to establish working relationships with them.

The more contact with journalists, the better chance of media coverage, and the better chance of having a specific message communicated.

It’s astounding how much effort goes into influencing journalists. I always knew it was a lot; but I never realized how much until I left the Financial Times in June, and started doing some reporting on the Silicon Valley PR sector, through the Silicon Valley Watcher.

For example, PR firm Waggoner Edstrom, mostly known for its chief client Microsoft, will plan a media campaign in extraordinary detail. It decides which journalists will be offered exclusives, and which ones will be snubbed. It even prints up dummy front covers of BusinessWeek and other magazines with the images and story angles it wants communicated to its readers.

And it doesn’t want a rosy, super-positive story; it wants a balanced, neutral-to-slightly-positive news story/feature/interview. That’s because a balanced, slightly positive story carries more weight: the reader respects that the journalist offered contrary views, yet the subject came through mostly unscathed.

How can that level of highly-detailed media control be applied to the blogosphere? Do you start with a mock-up of the Slashdot headline you’d like to see?

Answers later this week in part II of “If a Blogger Blogs…”
cd1555

| comments 3 | tagged Blogging Watch | Blogging Watch | PR Watch

February 25, 2005

Congrats to Media Guerrilla for Best Blog Award!

We are very pleased to see that Mike Manuel has received the due recognition he deserves for his ground breaking blog Media Guerrilla. He is the winner of the 2005 Business Blogging Awards for Best PR Blog.

It takes a lot of work to consistently produce great copy and Mike does that while also staying on top of a demanding job at Voce, the Silicon Valley public relations firm.

| comments 2 | tagged Blogging Watch

February 10, 2005

2005 Business Blogging Awards

by Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher
Jeremy Popper, of POP PR, just sent us an email informing us of the 2005 Business Blogging Awards:

I'm up for a blogging award at BusinessBloggingAwards for the Best PR blog. While the prize is unknown, it's not a bad thing to be able to put on my blog, and use as a footnote for an article I am writing on blogging for an Arizona business magazine.

So, if you could take a moment to vote, that would be greatly appreciated!

But, more importantly, check out my blog -- http://pop-pr.blogspot.com -- for an interesting piece on blogs and libel.

Unfortunately, I can't vote in the best PR blog category, as I'm personally acquainted with both Jeremy Popper and Mike Manuel (of POP Public Relations and Media Guerilla, respectively, and don't want to show favoritism. Besides, I really don't know a thing about PR or marketing as I'm neither a PR bunny nor marketing maven myself).

Nevertheless, it's interesting checking out the categories and nominees. My favorite categories are The Peacock Award (Most Self-Important), and The Chris Pirillo Award (for Shameless Self-Promotion).

So, think this will evolve into a spectacular like the Webbies were in their day?
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| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch

February 07, 2005

Bloglines acquisition official

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Ask Jeeves' acquisition of Bloglines became official at the stroke of midnight this morning, with a press release and FAQ posted to the Bloglines site. No financial data was released. Here's the meat of a letter to subscribers from Bloglines founder (now an AskJeeves VP) Mark Fletcher:

...We're excited about becoming the newest member of their portfolio of web services. We view this as a huge step forward for Bloglines, and a chance to achieve our mission of making RSS news reading and blogging a part of everyone's internet experience. You can learn more about the transaction by reading our press release or reviewing our Frequently Asked Questions.

We want to assure you that the Bloglines service will continue to grow and thrive. Like other companies in the Ask Jeeves portfolio, we will operate as a standalone, separate service -- the Bloglines name will remain, as will our URL, www.bloglines.com. We will support our current features and services, so please continue to log in to Bloglines to search, subscribe, publish and share RSS news feeds and blogs. All users will continue to be governed by the Terms of Service you agreed to when you registered for Bloglines.

We have a great roadmap on how to integrate some of the many innovative technologies of Ask Jeeves, including its Teoma algorithmic search technology. As always, we will share news of our progress on our blog, Bloglines News. And we encourage you to participate in the conversation. Our users have been amazing help in guiding the evolution of Bloglines, and we hope you will continue to give us input so we can remain the gold standard in blogging, search, and news aggregation.

via Blog Herald

dk0851

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | Media Watch

February 05, 2005

Ask Jeeves Buys Bloglines

Mary Hodder at Napsterization has the scoop: Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines and will announce the sale on Tuesday. Right now, however, check out the Ask Jeeves blog and you'll see that all the blog links go to Bloglines.

Is this the beginning of a blogging buying spree?

Mary makes the point that while the technology of companies in the aggregator business is not hard, the value of the data they have collected for years now definitely makes it worth buying the company.

One thing to note, Ask Jeeves, or any other search company, could built a system like this very quickly. What they would have trouble doing is getting all the data, going back more than say, a month, structured, organized and pulled. That's because blog posts fall off the front pages (depending on frequency of blogging and how many posts the blogger displays) and go into archives. If you think about how many kinds of blog software out there, which means many kind of data structures for the blog post data, which then makes it difficult to get all the various types of data structured into a database, just imagine how all the variants of those professionally and homegrown systems differ for archival posts. Lots of people customize their archives, as I have in MT and other blogs I participate in with Wordpress, Typepad, etc. Spidering and structuring archives is really tough, tougher than getting the stuff on the tops of blogs right. The point is, a comprehensive database of blogs structured as well as can be, going back a couple of years, is really valuable. As is the knowledge of how to put that database together, and run it, along with understanding why this kind of search is very different than those done by Google or Ask Jeeves, whose results don't understand the temporal qualities of blog data, or other aspects that make it different.

Links:
Napsterization

Ask Jeeves Blog

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| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch

February 04, 2005

A conference on the sociology of blogging

by Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

If you are interested in blogging from a sociological standpoint, there is an online conference Online Social Network 2005. It's happening Feb. 9-23, and registration is $35 before Feb. 8.

The keynote address will be presented by Howard Rheingold, whom I made the warm acquaintance of many years ago (hi Howard!) and Lisa Kimball. They will give an updated presentation of their paper, How Online Social Networks Benefit Organizations.

Focus areas will cover organizational social networks, personal social networks, and political social networks.

LINKS:
Online Social Networks 2005 Homepage
Howard Rheingold's Site
Lisa Kimball's Group Jazz

TF

| comments 2 | tagged Blogging Watch

February 03, 2005

More Notes from the recent New Communications Forum...

by Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

BLOG. It's an awful word. Clunky and unsexy, for me it conjures up images from the '50s sci-fi film The Blob. The Blog is coming to get you, or maybe it's a blog monster clamoring up a slick green slope . . .

We'll have to get used to it. THE BLOG is here to stay, and if you believe what you read (yes, here and elsewhere) it will revolutionize online communications to the point of affecting the very core of our social fabric.

Having just attended the New Communications Forum, it is quite clear that corporations are going to have to get with it and incorporate both internal and external blogs (and wikis), or quickly fall behind in the game. Neville Hobson, an articulate gentleman who presented the "Blogs and Employee Relations" session (of which I missed the first 20 minutes--sorry Neville!) had some startling things to say:

Dresdner Keinvort Wassstein, a German bank, has 120 internal blogs (as first reported in the Financial Times).

A new Forrester study entitled "Blogging: Bubble or Big Deal?" concludes, among other things, that the new direction of employee relations dictates that all employees run their own blog.

Even more startling: Neville thinks the report's 18 pages are well worth their $350 price tag! Clearly, something big is brewing.

Andy Lark, a big man in many ways, gave a provocative and entertaining keynote address entitled "Participatory Communications Revolution, or 'The Really Wicked Blog Revolution That Killed the Media and Changed Everything.'"

To emphasize the point, he opened with EPIC, a 1984-type video that tracks the trajectory of media development to 2014, a year in teh NYT becomes a print-only newsletters available for only the elite and elderly*. His core message was that blogs are a social movement that demonstrate the higher value of conversation, over just publishing information.

I agree with him when he says, "we have become appalling at communications, though excellent at talking." And that the blogosphere, with its democratic means of disseminating information, will kill the hype and BS “so inherent in media as a business."

Instead, we have the powerful notion of media as community, as bloggers become advocates for many causes.

*This reminds me of the blue sky sessions I had the privilege to sit in on with Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Bill Atkinson, and other very smart media people back in the heady early days of multimedia.

I was the project manager of the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog -- we excitedly discussed how hyperlinks would change how people would view and gather information, and how the printed book would become rare. Come to think of it, it seems many of us now display symptoms of ADD as a result of being able to jump all over the place by hyperlinks . . .and I heard a recent stat that less people are reading literature than ever before.

LINKS
Neville Hobson's Weblog

Executive Summary of Blogging: Bubble or Big Deal

Museum of Media History Video

Andy Lark's Blog

Fewer People Make Time for Literature, NEA Study Shows

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| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | Media Watch

February 02, 2005

The (high) value of blogging

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Alan Meckler noted in his blog last week that Jupiter Research's blogs are "reaping business."

Our JupiterResearch team has been writing blogs for close to two years (JupiterResearch was the first Research company to offer blogs). Readership has grown dynamically (Close to 70,000 page views per day). And we now have several cases of gaining sales leads as a result of a reader becoming interested in our research because of being impressed by analysts' comments.

Other areas of Jupitermedia have blogs as well. In addition to my blog, Danny Sullivan's blog has been growing significantly as well. Danny and his news editor Gary Price now garner near 30,000 page views per day. When combined with our SearchengineWatchforum and Searchenginewatch.com site we have daily page views in the Search field of over 200,000 per day (and growing).

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch

January 04, 2005

SiliconValleyWatcher named as one of the most influential blogs by Bacon’s -- the media watcher bible

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
(Our good buddy Tom Abate at the SF Chronicle brought this one to our attention.)

This is fantastic news because Bacon’s is the gold standard in the media industry. And we are barely three months old!

Check out the third paragraph in this story from Media Post’s Media Daily News (I added the bold type):

Bacon's To Track Blogs By Gavin O’Malley Monday, December 27, 2004

Bacon's Information, the provider of media research, distribution, monitoring, and evaluation services for public relations and corporate communications professionals, has endeavored to light the depths of the Blogosphere. In January, Bacon's MediaSource will begin sharing with its clients the names of what it considers to be the 250 most reputable blogs, the messages they contain, and the frequency with which client-relevant information appears on them.

Ruth McFarland, senior vice president and publisher for Bacon's, said she vacillated about the significance of blogs, but was sufficiently convinced this year to assign three of her 56 editors to monitor the Blogosphere. "We're adjusting our network because no one is accurately monitoring these guys as their influence continues to grow."

Bacon's is keeping tight raps on its blog list, which covers technology, politics, business, travel, and religion. The racy Wonkette, the Miami Herald's Dave Barry, and the Silicon Valley Watcher are three well-known blogs run by "reputable, credible professionals" that McFarland said will be on the list.

Full story is here.

| comments 1 | tagged About SVW | Blogging Watch | Media Watch | PR Watch | Tom Watch | Top Stories

December 16, 2004

Silicon Valley PR firm Voce is building a business around its blogging expertise

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Voce Communications is a PR company that likes to go against the grain--a quality that never fails to catch my attention. When its competitors were fawning over dotcom clients in 1999 (many accepting payment in shares), Voce was snapping up big enterprise clients. These were companies that already had a business model, rather than dotcoms in search of a business model.

Now Voce is moving against the grain again. Local PR companies such as Outcast, Text 100, Bite PR and Horn Group are intently focused on winning large enterprise clients. Voce revealed to SiliconValleyWatcher.com that it is working with the biggest dotcom of them all: Yahoo, the world's largest Internet media company. And what is it doing for Yahoo? Helping set up its blogs, helping it publish internally-generated content and involve thousands of readers.

My colleague Dida Kutz and I stopped into Voce on a recent Friday lunchtime (10-Dec). It's something I like to do, visit with local PR agencies, chat about what we're doing, what they are working on, the mood of the industry, etc. Voce is also the home of Mike Manuel of Media Guerrilla, one of our favorite PR bloggers.

We met the three founders of Voce, Richard Cline, Dave Black, and Matthew Podboy (cool name) and many of the team, plus the man himself, Media Guerrilla Mike Manuel. (This is a great example of the power of blogging; I would never have noticed Mike if he weren't writing his blog--- this shows that you have to publish to your communities.)

We had no idea that Voce would reveal its relationship with Yahoo--it had not made it known before. We met Nancy Evars, who is working at Yahoo running the Yahoo Search Blog. And we met one of the superstars of the blogosphere, Yahoo engineer Jeremy Zawodny, who writes a hugely popular blog from his vantage point within the engineering group at Yahoo Search.

We talked about blogs, and what blogging means, etc. And it wasn't long before I realized that we were all talking about the same thing: how to produce compelling, high-quality content; how to be editors and reporters. We were all, essentially, talking about how to produce quality journalism. Because you can't fool the readers.

At Yahoo, Nancy was saying that the Search Blog has had a tremendous response from readers; but also, has been extremely well received internally by senior management. Nancy also said that Yahoo has collected lists of the most influential blogs, and that it pays particular attention to what those bloggers are discussing.

When Jeremy spoke about his blogging, it sounded like good old-fashioned journalism to me. It was about how to tell a story, and tell it honestly. In journalism it's fine to have an opinion, which lends itself well to blogging; but the content also needs authenticity. And you can't fake authenticity for long; your readers will know when it's not there, or not coming back. "Do you always keep it real?" Jeremy asked. (Did I tell you that Jeremy is a natural journalist?) Let me put it this way: if you can't keep it real, don't say it (...or use a pseudonym!).

Richard Cline spoke about how Real Networks hired Voce to engage in online discussion groups on the subject of Apple's refusal to open up the iPod platform to competing digital music vendors. This was a successful project because the media spotted the debates and took up the Real Networks angle on the story.

Matthew PodBoy and Dave Black spoke about how they managed to persuade their client, JotSpot (very cool application BTW---more on that later), to use the power of the blogosphere for their recent product launch. Joe Kraus, the CEO of JotSpot, initially resisted, but finally gave in. What they got from Kraus's blog was a far higher response from the target market---software developers and corporate IT experts---than through any media coverage. This is a key point here because JotSpot received a lot of media coverage when it announced its wiki-like enterprise application in the summer, largely because Joe Kraus was the first president of the early 1990s search firm Excite.

(I remember meeting with Joe in about 1993, Excite was one of the leading contenders going after Yahoo's success. Excite promised a search engine that had semantic capabilities: it could distinguish the search term "bond" from "James Bond," "chemical bond," or any other bond out there. That never came about...and it merged into Excite@home, which just seemed to sit there, next to a very bright, electronic animated billboard on 101... .until it went away and its former office became a "see-thru" building, one of many.)

Back to Voce... Matthew Podboy said he is working on putting together a committee to create a collection of best practices around blogging for PR professionals.

There's a lot more to say about Voce and the work they are doing. And it's very similar to what we are trying to do at SiliconValleyWatcher.com: figure out how to use the blogging format and the blogging software to publisher compelling content and, very importantly, maintain ---at all costs--- that trusted relationship with readers.

(More on this topic in numerous future articles...!)

By the way, in real-life Mike Manuel does not look gritty or grainy like his photo. He is clean-cut and mild-mannered, although he says he has come under pressure to replace the photo. Dida said he looked like a heroin addict; a colleague agreed; and his wife wants him to change that photo, too. I think he just looks a bit hung-over. I sometimes feel grainy in the morning too.

Links:

Dida's companion article on the Yahoo's ability to turn its geeks into marketing mavens.

Voce Communications

Yahoo Search Blog

Media Guerrilla

cd1126

---

Give her Coco, by Chanel (she'll thank you.)

| comments 1 | tagged Blogging Watch | Media Watch | PR Watch

Yahoo Search Blog: Blogs as a Feedback Tool

by Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Tom and I met with the founders of Voce Communications last Friday, 10 Dec., for an informal lunch meet and greet (see Tom's companion piece). Among the guests were Nancy Evars and Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, who worked together to put up the Yahoo Search Blog.

This pairing in itself was interesting to me, as engineers (Jeremy) and marketing types (Nancy) have traditionally been allergic to one another. (I've seen this many times from my former vantage point inside many startups.) So I found it fascinating they have managed to work together to create a succesful blog.

Nancy said the Yahoo Search blog was created as a means of creating a 2-way dialogue with customers regarding internet search.

She stressed that it was not set up to be a PR tool, but as a resource that "influencers" (influential bloggers) would read and contribute to, thus providing valuable feedback to Yahoo from those who matter most. (Which brings up the point that metrics such as hits and unique visitors are not in themselves useful -- it's WHO is hitting on you.)

I asked her whether the blog could become a way of replacing traditional marketing and research. She replied that no, they would not take the place the place of focus groups and other traditional means of doing market research, but instead the blog is viewed as a tool for enhancing marketing efforts. Other Yahoo departments considering new product launches are now consulting with her on how to use blogs to beta test and launch upcoming products.

This is one of the greatest strength of blogs: they provide companies a relatively low cost means of conducting market research and obtaining user information from those who are actually using the technology in question. All companies need to create a genuine dialogue between themselves and their customers, and blogs provide an elegant low cost solution to the age old problem of figuring out what the customer wants.

Links:

Voce Communications

Yahoo Search Blog

cd1007

| comments 0 | tagged Blogging Watch | Media Watch | People Watch

If you are not publishing to your community, you are not known to your community--send me a guest blog!

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

For at least a year, I’ve harbored ambitions of becoming a micro-media mogul. So much so, that I even bought the URL: MicroMediaMogul.com. This would give me the option of at some point, using Tom@MicroMediaMogul.com as my email address. I think it would look good on a business card. (I also have ThinkTankThinker.com, which looks great on a business card.)

However, I am not yet a micro-media mogul. I need a lot more content. And so while I try to recruit others to join me in this innovative venture about the business of innovation, in the innovation capital of the world, I have devised a process where I can nearly double my content without increasing my workload by much.

Which is why you will see us repackaging some of our content in various ways, and continuing core themes in future entries, columns, and e-books.

Also, you will see a lot of guest bloggers. Think of these as guest columnists from people you probably already know, and others such as you and your colleagues.

Would you like to blog but can’t find the time to do it?

Those RSS news readers are a vicious way to root out the weedy bloggers. If there haven’t been any new entries on your blog for a while, it’s likely to get deleted from the news reader. So then you lose your audience. Which is why you should send a guest blog to us. And then you can have a life too, because blogging is extremely time consuming.

Your guest blog doesn’t have to be long, you can keep it under 800 words, or cut it into smaller chunks. The content should be meaty, original and fluid. Shoot from the hip style, one-take journalism! Or use your own compelling style in your voice. This way, you can get your name out into your community. Because these days, if you are not publishing to your community, you are not known by your community.

For software engineers, this has been the case for a couple of years now; you can’t get hired if you are not blogging. And your page rank had better be good too. Jeremy Zawodny, the Yahoo engineer that runs one of the top tech blogs, got his job at Yahoo largely because of his blogging. It is the best and most honest self-promotional tool out there--bar none.

That’s why you should consider becoming a guest blogger for Silicon Valley Watcher. You can directly address your community, and we will feature you on our “watch” sections focused on tech, PR, media, VCs, Angel and many other Silicon Valley communities.

Also, you’ll be reaching an international audience. The Silicon Valley name is a huge global brand that has acquired a mythology that rivals that of Hollywood. The world is very interested in what goes on here, and it wants to listen in on what you and your colleagues are thinking, saying, doing.

So send something to us. Think of it as “letter to the editor” or a column or, better yet, an e-mail. Over at Voce Communicati