May 2005

Bloggers took central stage at the The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, which was held Sunday through Tuesday of last week. The D: Notebook summarizes the event with quotes from Wonkette, Dan Gillmor, and Mena Trott. The never-ending frenzy of blogging was noted by Wonkette and she compared blogging to punk rock, where “there’s always someone in the garage” waiting to take over. It won’t be long before another generation of blogs arrive with page rank, status, and revolutionary ideas.

Ironically, for all the blogging love that the WSJ shows, the have no blogs are any known blog strategy. They’re also sticking to their subscription model and predicting it will grow to match print.

Under the radar tracks early stage technology innovation and there’s an information, deal-making event today. Of note are the “emerging services in vertical search, and of course, social software/blog/RSS space.” Eric Rice will demo audioblog, along with PubSub and 32 other companies.

Boeing has launched their second blog, a Flight Test Journal for the 777-200LR Worldliner. As the first post notes, “flight test activities are rarely publicized.” The blog is a unique opportunity to follow the progress of the program as it completes 500 flight hours and 300 ground hours leading up to the February 2005 rollout.

ABCNews.com is now offering podcasts, MSNBC will have them by June, and the Seattle PI publishes a food-critic podcasts. KUOW is offering podcasts, as well and a second webcast station. To top all that off, the Podcast & Videoblog Roadshow is coming to town on June 26, right after Gnomedex.

One of the (many) reasons we started hosting the Blog Business Summit was that we could see that the architecture provided significant search engine visibility advantages without all that SEO busywork. We knew business people would eventually catch on and stop fiddling with those silly metatags and “linking strategies” and decide to get into blogging instead. In fact, when businesspeople (mostly PR professionals these days) ask me “what’s the big deal about blogs?” my elevator pitch is that blogs (if done right) “are a great way to get search engines to love you”.

In a previous post, I took John Dvorak to task for dismissing some of the most well known bloggers as “people whom you’ve never heard of”.

The page he originally made that assertion from does have a link that broadcasts syndicated new product reviews, but I don’t see that this specific article (based on a technorati search) was ever distributed out in a feed.

I decided to see how Google would compare Dvorak’s article to my reference to it by searching for keywords that are on both pages. My request was specifically:

dvorak “utopianist bloggers”

I was very surprised to see that not only did my post rank higher (top spot!) but that Dvorak’s original article came in a lowly 7th place behind 3 other bloggers. Now, I’m not complaining, but it seems to me that the original article that people are commenting on should rank higher than the commenters posts. I would also expect two longtime powerhouses of relevant content (Dvorak and PC Magazine) would kick butt over 4 different guys that are likely sitting in their kitchens wearing pajamas.

In my mind, this can only be explained by the fact that items posted using a Google-respected blogging engine are much preferred (inordinately so?) over alternative architectures.

Here is a screen grab of the specific search results:

My post is in red, three other bloggers in green, and finally, Dvorak’s commentary in yellow.

Want to learn how we trumped PC Magazine in this search engine experiment? Come to the next Blog Business Summit (currently targeted for August 2005). Please take our brief survey, and we’ll email you very soon when we announce the next conference.

I started enthusiastically reading John Dvorak’s columns back in 1984, at my first job selling IBM PCs and Mac 128k computers from a storefront in Seattle. I have always enjoyed his candor and attitude despite the fact that he has been so wrong, so many times. I still have the 1984 column where he derides the Macintosh mouse as being like a “joystick” and how it tries to make computing like “a game”.

In his latest piece he makes a wrong-headed jab at the more prominent bloggers:

“The influential bloggers should be defined here. These are people whom you’ve never heard of, but whom other influential A-list utopianist bloggers all know.”

Hey John, it’s more than the other utopianist bloggers who know these guys. Look at the Google mentions for a handful of the “A-listers” as defined by the Open Media 100, and see how the compare to you. I just grabbed the first 6 listed here and then threw in Robert Scoble as he is one of our co-conspirators. Here are the mentions Google sees for the following searches:

“joi ito” 775,000
“robert scoble” 610,000
“dan gillmor” 561,000
“doc searls” 553,000
“dave winer” 401,000
“clay shirky” 399,000
“john dvorak” 58,600

To his credit, I should mention that “John C. Dvorak” (which is his usual byline) finds 69,500 mentions. If you add that to the 58,600 he gets close to having half the mentions of Clay Shirky.

I find this remarkable. Dvorak has been pounding the keyboard since the day the World Wide Web came online, and was one of the first and most prolific contributors of ongoing content to the Web. I suppose the issue was that he failed to recognize early enough that all those non-syndicated pages he coughed up for years are deemed comparatively irrelevant by search engines.

The how and why of maximizing Google juice will be covered at the next Blog Business Summit. Tell us where we should host it.

The author of the longtail blog and forthcoming book posts on how the theory is indeed “full of crap” and at the same time brilliant. The long tail is about “how the mass market is turning into a million niches.” I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but I guess we’ve created a bag closure niche with Clip-n-Seal, an “alternative bag clip” that’s at the end of the freshness long tail. Ironically, I bet if you asked any niche market to sell out to Target or a Walmart, there’d be little hesitation. “Longtailer goes short!,” now that’s a potential headline for a small business and a good topic for our next event.

The NY Times reports on how a network of 4M blogs is impacted China’s authorities and culture, calling it a “death by a thousand blogs.” Insurgent blogging is “eroding the leadership’s monopoly on information and is complicating the traditional policy of ‘nei jin wai song’ — cracking down at home while pretending to foreigners to be wide open.” Business blogging is catching on as well, as posted on Kevin Wen’s blog. Imagine the impact of a long tail in China, with 100 million Chinese now surfing the web.

Earlier this month, I posted on the trouble with memes, Podcast radio, and how we should be able to “add a podcast show to iTunes from a public radio menu.” Steve Jobs just announced at the D3 conference that the next version of iTunes would support podcasting and I let out a small cheer. With that update and services like ipodder, expect podcasting to mature from the “Wayne’s World of Radio” to a more prevalent media, that’s much easier to use, understand, and enjoy.

We’ll podcast our next event and discuss it at length.

According to the Wall Street Journal special report How Old Media Can Survive In a New World, Blogs are prominent among technologies threatening to “push the traditional newspaper, television, radio, music and advertising industries into the dustbin of history.”

A user poll on the site indicates that readers say newspapers (by far) should have the most to fear.

Many reports of late have covered the crisis facing newsapapers, and this article does too. In addition, the WSJ details the challenges facing the TV networks.

* The nightly broadcasts on the big three networks have had a 28.4% decline in total viewers since 1991. In 1978, the three original broadcast networks captured about 90% of the prime-time audience. Today, it’s less than 50%. The Journal credits this to cable and the advent of online news sources, blogs and email alerts.

Specific tidbits related specifically to the advantages of the Blog platform:

Honest, unfiltered content:

Larry Ellin, an associate professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University says “People aren’t going to the Internet because it looks like a newspaper,” Mr. Ellin says. “It’s because they’re getting something exotic and fresh and new and unfiltered. It’s like eating French cheese. It hasn’t been pasteurized. And it’s good.”

Open two-way communication:

Andrew Swinand, a senior vice president and group client director at Publicis Groupe SA’s Starcom Worldwide says reporters should be allowed to craft blogs about their topic of expertise. Readers should be able to add comments and reaction to a story in an online community.

Targeted editorial:

“The newspaper of the future is going to be a coalition of niche products,” says S.W. “Sammy” Papert III, chairman and CEO of Belden Associates, a Dallas newspaper-industry consultant.

More relevant format than TV and print:

“The old-media world told us we should jam our commercials in between their programming,” suggests James Vincent, a global managing director on Apple Computer Inc. business at Omnicom Group Inc.’s TBWA\Chiat\Day. “What if a brand could communicate in a longer format? You can do that on the Internet or in places that become destinations.”

Ron Chernow, a leading biographer and author of such books as “Alexander Hamilton” and “Titan,” says he worries that the screen is replacing the printed page.

If you are a member of the traditional media, come to the next blog business summit and top bloggers will show you how to leverage the latest blogging tools and techniques. We’ll email you when the next event is happening, just enter your email address on our home page.

That blogger a-list mentality is always present and has risen again with an attempt to create an A-list of A listers by the Open Media 100. The tag your nominations method of the contest demonstrates the dificulties of tagging, as Zeldman describes so well in his critical post on tag clouds. No doubt other a-lists or b-lists will appear, as one blogger noted, “whatever happened to ending hierarchies and popularity contests and how folksonomy/tagging will break it all down and ‘celebrate the long tail’ and yadda yadda yadda.” Speaking of the long tail, see the book blog covering that topic.

In contrast to the almost weekly reports on how blogs are changing everything, Reuters reports on a new study showing that blogs haven’t displaced traditional media in terms of information and influence.

Women and blogging is a controversial subject in the blogosphere. See Molly’s post on how Women Bloggers just aren’t good enough. I agree there needs to be more women and minorities bloggers and we’ll do our part at the Blog Business Summit to encourage blogging diversity. Here’s a quick list of blogs by women

• Found in the footnotes
• Marketing at Microsoft
• Pause
• Decent Marketing
• Misbehaving
• napsterization
• Molly.com
• Halley’s Comment

Black bloggers:

• Postcards from the edge
• Negrophile
• Tiffany B. Brown
• Lynned Johnson
• Busblog
• Negro Please

and Hispanic

• Hispanic blog
• Hispanic Trending
• KC Hispanic

If you’ve got something to say about diversity and blogging, please let us know and we’ll consider it for our next event.

I spoke at the AIGA Currents9 Influenced conference yesterday and my slides for Blogging your portfolio and Designing with standards are available on Sample Blog. Sample blog was created for the event to show how quickly you can start blogging (note the default MT styles) and as a sand box for blogging technologies. It’ll also be interesting to see where the site’s page rank will end up among the 8M google hits on the phrase, “sample blog.”

My main points about blogging your portfolio is that your blog is your portfolio and you can use it to reach new audiences, customers, or just create a community. One important note for designers, is that the blogosphere doesn’t necessarily need another blog about design. It does need your voice and talents. Examples include:

• Asterisk*
• Erisfree
• Weightshift

Regarding standards, they should be considered as a best practice for business and blogs.

File under Long Tail.

In the article Why Newspapers Aren’t Dead And How Print Needs to Evolve, the Wall Street Journal interviewed Gary B. Pruitt who is CEO of McClatchy Co. which owns 12 daily and 17 nondaily newspapers. Here is what was said about the challenges they are facing, and how they plan to deal with them.

Listed in the piece are these market facts:

* The average daily circulation for newspapers reporting slumped 1.9% for the six-month period ended March, 31.

* Newspapers face increasing competition from news outlets that weren’t around 20 years ago, including 24-hour cable news channels and the Internet.

* Restrictions such as do-not-call lists are making it harder for newspapers to sell subscriptions.

* The barriers to entry for competitors are less, and there are many more classified companies that can compete.

What is Pruitt’s plan for success? Here is what he says (emphasis mine):

“In many ways tailored niche products will be the key to newspapers success online, because more targeted online offerings can supplement the mass reach of the print product. As we learn more about our online users through registration, we are able to tailor content to their interests and sell more targeted advertising to them. And of course advertisers are willing to pay a higher rate, if they know their advertising message is going to an audience already interested in their product or service… we are blogging everything from pop music to politics on our sites. We are expanding into community-based services and grassroots journalism. As a result of this multifaceted innovation in our Internet operations, we would expect that there would be successful business models to support niche products.”

Niche, targeted, advertising, grassroots… Blogs.

For all the CEOs that are blogging, most aren’t. USA Today compares the blogosphere to the Wild West, a metaphor I found rather uninformed, and continues with quotes from various CEOs. One from Randy Baseler notes how he’s not going to start a gossip column blog. I’ve always been puzzled by the blogospherians who think everyone should blog like they do and this effort to enforce rules on the medium.

The Cluetrain has left the station

As blogging matures, I think businesses will realize that it’s a platform. Blogs are for clients, customers, employees, and not just the blogosphere. The Cluetrain left the station long ago, but it’s not the end of business as usual. It’s the end of communicating as usual.

The University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy recently interviewed 1,000 adults for a poll covering media issues. among many of the revelations were numbers that reinforce the notion that PR professionals should embrace blogging (and working with bloggers) as a key tool in their promotional arsenal.

According to their research:

* 83% of journalists reported the use of blogs (less than 1 in 10 others do so).

* four out of 10 say they read them at least once a week.

* About 90% of the journalists surveyed had a college degree — versus only 23% of the general public.

* Journalists interviewed were relatively well-paid (with a significant number making more than $100,000).

More info here.

We’re adding additional sessions of interest to PR professionals at the next Blog Business Summit. Click here to go to our main page and fill out the “keep me informed” email box to get more details.

Speaking directly to how bloggers are becoming a force to be reckoned with, David L. Westin shows surprising candor in his Wall Street Journal commentary Caveat Vendor. Westin responds to the recent press that newspaper readership and television news viewership is declining. Some of the relevant snippets include:

“Why should someone turn to ABC News or The Wall Street Journal rather than to the news blogger that pops up on our computer? And this is where we may be falling short.”

“The size of the news pie is not shrinking. If anything, it’s growing.”

“People don’t want to wait for their news”

“But recently we’ve seen not only a dramatic increase in the ways that people can get their news, but also dramatic examples of some of our best and most respected news organizations falling short.”

“We have a lot to be proud of. But, in the end, the strength of our work lies entirely in the eye of the beholder, our readers and viewers.”

We are involved in a project that is restricted because a government agency says bloggers are not “Press”. I’d say this makes the case otherwise…

Scott Hensley at the Wall Steet Journal says in his piece Some Drug Makers Are Starting To Curtail TV Ad Spending that drug makers are concluding that they have overspent on TV. They now want to have a sharper focus on the return on the money spent. A “deeper dialog” is the way to go and feel the internet provides a viable alternative to TV.

AstraZeneca PLC, one of the heaviest TV advertisers changing its spending mix. David Brennan, president and chief executive officer of AstraZeneca’s U.S. unit says “We have more online activity than we have ever had. In broadcast, you wonder how many things you can actually get across.”

According to the article, many advertisers are saying newspapers, magazines and the Internet allow deeper communication with consumers than TV. Also that Internet usage is taking viewers away from the tube:

“Television advertising faces tough questions about its value from marketers across industries, as consumers ignore the spots, pass over them with personal video recorders such as TiVo or skip the tube altogether to surf the Internet.”

Stuart Klein, president of Quantum, a unit of ad giant WPP Group PLC says: “What I’m seeing is the recognition by companies that the last 5% to 10% of TV spending is much better spent on relationship marketing or on the Internet, where you can have a deeper dialog with people.”

On a related note, top position keyword pricing per click for “chronic heartburn” is $5.81, and “erectile dysfunction” is $6.67.

The alignment of keyword pricing and entrepreneurial Blog viability is one of the topics we’ll cover at the next Blog Business Summit. Let us know where we should host it.

“Share your passion for baseball with people who are important to you. Post photos, comment on your favorite team, keep a season journal,” is how the banner ads read for MLBlogs, a site launched last month by Major League Baseball, in partneship with Six Apart. These blogs are for the fans and are an official affiliate with unofficial opinions. Blogging and sports are a natural, but not everyone is impressed. Businesslogs dissed the site the model, and suspects something sinister. I think at some point, us bloggers will have to get over ourselves and realize that “our medium” will become more and more like MSN blogs and other communities. I agree with Balls, Sticks, & Stuff and Baseball Musings that think it’s good place for fans to start. Nascar fan blogs are probably not far behind, they’re close with ThatsRacin.com