February 2006

Sony Ericsson’s new mobile phones will allow users to take pictures, write blog entries and post both directly to their Blogger account.

Rich Ord has a point when he says that there’s a lot of hype surrounding blogs. But just because they’re being hyped like crazy doesn’t mean that they’re not a genuinely exciting step forward. Even if you don’t believe the hype - you have to admit that blogs are a robust and powerful communications tool for businesses.

That’s why Ord’s recent post entitled, “Blogs are Just Websites, Stupid,” misses the point. Yes the technological components behind blogging are very similar to those behind websites, but the key differences - RSS and permalinking - enable behaviors and a culture that go way beyond the technology, and the hype.

Eventually, we hope that having a blog will be as commonplace for businesses as having a website. But even then, blogs and websites will play different roles within a larger communications plan. Websites will inform, blogs will engage. Websites will showcase, blogs will converse and debate. Web sites will remain a part of command and control “messaging” while blogs will level with customers in an authentic way.

It’s not the technology. It’s what it enables.

Zeldman’s post on a Web 2.0 patent, an Information Week article, and an exhaustive email thread I was on, demonstrates the general misunderstanding, ignorance, and myths about the patent office. We’re knee deep in the patent process now and our attorney would just shake his head at the alarmist reporting and the blogosphere’s propensity to pile on. Same thing happened with the patents on iPod menus. To see how patents play out, check the RIM case and the rejections issued on Friday last week.

Any one of patent-holder Balthaser’s claims could be challenged and overturned. And I could develop Comet, a web technology that cleans better than AJAX, apply for a patent, win it and attempt to license it to the world and claim in a press release that I’ll vigorously defend it. Better yet, I’d rollout Diamonds on the Soles of My Shoes an alternative to Ruby on Rails, and booyah I’m finally living some dotcom fantasy. Not exactly.

Periodically a reporter watches for new patents and reports on them and starts a flurry of speculation on what conventional wisdom thinks about the USPTO.

Key point:

Are we ready to defend our patent?” Balthaser asks. “Absolutely. We’re ready to defend it vigorously if we have to. But [litigation is] not the approach we’re taking in terms of licensing.”

Balthaser can yell bingo with the ruling and now will try to win the megalotto by hoping some company would rather license the patent then fight them. Check the name on the Attorney, Agent or Firm that prosecuted the patent and it’s Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP.

That’s a big gun most likely aiming, if at all, at a company with bigger pockets than a design agency/application developer that gets real with web-based productivity applications; considering how dated the technology is, I’d expect the profitability of the patent to be as old and stale as the champagne Balthasher poured on Valentines day when the patent was issued.

To all the girls I loved before,
To all the girls I cheated on before,
To all the girls I loved before,
– To all the Girls, Wyclef Jean, The Carnival

This goes out to all the email I’ve loved before . . . to all the email I used to know. For all the mailtos waiting for a response, action, or just to hear from me again . . . I still love you, but it ain’t working out.

Maybe I’m too focused on other things, not listening to you, or we’ve grown apart. I wish I knew how to quit you email.

It’s not you, definitely me, and no I don’t think we can still be friends.

If you need to reach me and my business, leave a comment on my blog, and I’ll respond with a personalized RSS feed.

This lament, with props to Wyclef Jean, got me thinking about how broken email is and whether it’s time for business to communicate with blogs, RSS, and abandon email. Just this week a colleague told me how his email server got hacked and he has spent days delisting himself from spam blacklist houses — he gets hacked and now can’t send email to anyone, including clients — and he’s using instant messaging and a phone. Wondering what I’m up to? Check my blog and IM me because who knows if I’ll get your email and actually respond to it.

We’ve had several meetings lately with corporate PR and Marketing departments who are apprehensive of blogging. They voice several concerns, not the least of which has to do with the posting of comments. The big question is “what if people say bad things about us on our blog?”

A response we give that tends to resonate with executives is that people will say negative things anyway, (and it all shows up in Google,) so why not have your own platform with which to respond?

Jonathan Schwartz wrote a great piece on executive blogging for the Harvard Business Review (November 2005 issue) titled “if you want to lead, blog.”

“Remember when, not long ago, CEOs would ask their assistants to print out their e-mails for them, and they’d dictate responses to be typewritten and sent via snail mail? Where are those leaders now? (The last of my contacts of that breed just retired.) In ten years, most of us will communicate directly with customers, employees, and the broader business community through blogs. For executives, having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice, any more than using e-mail is today. If you’re not part of the conversation, others will speak on your behalf- and I’m not talking about your employees.”

The special Blog Business Summit seminar rate offered by the Westin LAX for the Essentials of Business Blogging seminar is $169 per night. Attendees who would like to reserve rooms, will need to e-mail Allison Fox at allison dot fox at westin dot com with their information. She will be happy to get them into the system. She will need your name, check in and out dates, and a credit card to guarantee.

We’d like to extend our belated thanks to Kip Meacham a.k.a. RSS Pundit for his kind words about the Blog Business Summit in his recent post about his top ten marketing & communication related blogs.

Thanks, Kip!

A couple of weeks ago - when I first heard that Mattel was getting Barbie and Ken back together in the hopes that their reunion would boost flagging sales - I wrote on my blog that Mattel was making a serious miscalculation. Moving backward isn’t going to make one bit of difference. My suggestion: make Barbie single and fabulous, and give her a blog.

Now longtime girl-oriented brand Holly Hobbie has done just that. Parent company American Greetings has made Holly more contemporary - trading her old patchwork skirt and bonnet for jeans, tees, and wavy blonde hair designed to appeal to today’s ever more fashion conscious tween girls. They’ve also given her a theme song performed by country star LeAnn Rimes.

In addition to hot theme music, a more contemporary image, and more racially diverse friends - Holly has an online journal. This in and of itself would not be revolutionary. After all, Barbie has a diary on her site. But Holly Hobbie is the only product for girls in the 7-15 age group that - to my knowledge - gives her customers their own journals right on her site and lets them link their journals to those of their friends.

Is this starting to sound familiar?

When we think about business blogging - we usually think of adults as our primary audience. But kids are customers, too. And they crave a connection with the products they choose to buy every bit as much as adults do.

What’s more, kids have unique incentives to spend their money. The events of children’s lives are - more often than not - beyond their control. For the most part, their choices are simply not their own. Spending money offers children a sense of power in the face of so much powerlessness. That’s why they sometimes seem to enjoy spending their pennies even more than they enjoy the toys they ultimately buy.

Kids also express the overwhelming opinion that their voices aren’t heard nearly so much as the voices of the grown-ups around them. So give a kid a blog and presto! - instant voice. And if you can associate that blog with a product that kids identify with - and parents approve of - you’re in business.

We had several meetings last week with marketing and PR staffs of Copper Mountain and Keystone resorts. Ostensibly, these meetings were to allow the resort folks to ask questions of the bloggers and gain insights into how the blogoshpere can assist them in dialog with their customers, but as expected we learned a lot from the resort people as well.

One of the illustrations we commonly employ to punctuate the benefits of blogging is that of Google mentions. Marketing people tend to acknowledge that mentions on Google is a non-trivial indicator of a campaign’s visibility. We asked the PR team from Copper Mountain resort to describe a high-priority campaign that they had worked on recently (and we looked for a unique search phrase associated with it.)

They said that they had done a big push with their campaign to promote the “Main Vein Superpipe”, which was the only superpipe in the United States. It opened in December 2005 and is so unique that Olympic competitors flew out to train on it. They did a traditional PR campaign which did not include any blogging component.

While at Copper Mountain, we found 57 mentions on Google for “main vein superpipe.” We then compared that to our “bloggy mountain high” gathering being hosted at that very moment (which had no traditional PR effort associated with it). Result? 11,000 mentions.

Before the comments start coming in, let me qualify this. I am not saying Google mentions are the defining metric of a campaign’s success. Nor I am not saying that Google accurately counts mentions on Web pages. I am simply saying that if you are after Google mentions, it appears that posting about an event, and cultivating other bloggers to do the same will garner many more mentions than sending our press releases alone.

Anil Dash is Vice President of Professional Products at Six Apart. He’ll be giving the closing talk at our Essentials of Business Blogging seminar in Los Angeles. In our interview, Anil offered some excellent insights about business blogging, crisis management in the blogosphere and the future of the Web.

Click here to listen to the file or here to listen to the file and subscribe to the feed. This podcast is also available via the iTunes Podcasts Directory.

Colorado Ski Country is getting buzz from Bloggy Mountain High, our evangelism event/ski blogging expedition. As of today at about 9:30 AM, BMH has over 58,000 Google mentions 18,700 Google mentions. (Thanks to Jim Turner for the correction.) And keep in mind that this is an event that was announced less than a month ago.

Ok, ok. So I’m back-patting a little. But it was a good event and we’re rightfully proud of it. Now, let’s look at some of the buzz in the blogosphere:

• Scoble posted about the marketing component of BMH and the business savvy of the Colorado Ski people he also raved about the blue skies and perfect powder.
• Buzz Bruggeman blogged about the technological advances that make skiing even more fun and how much he loves Rock Resorts.
• Mie did four posts (!) complete with wonderful photographs. She rocked the inner tubes, did some snowmobiling with Scoble, was astounded by the beauty of Colorado, and raved about her room at Keystone.
• UPDATE 2:42 p.m. - Jason at Colorado Ski Country has posted a roundup of Bloggy Mountain High. My favorite “lesson learned” from the event: “Get a deposit from Scoble before loaning him a helmet.”
• UPDATE 2/22/06 2:43 p.m. Jeff Schmalenberg of the New West Snow Blog writes that the powder wasn’t the best he’d seen, being a local and all - but that BMH ruled nonetheless.

A couple of points of analysis:

• In one of Scoble’s posts, he criticized the lack of free WiFi at Copper. This honest critique lends more credibility to the other things he says about Copper, just like his honest critiques of Microsoft in the past have lent more credibility to his employer. Otherwise, he would be just a paid shill for both. That’s one of the hallmarks of the blogosphere: independent, critical thinking.
• Some criticism has popped up about the way that prominent bloggers are given these sorts of trips in the hopes that they’ll blog about them. One commenter on Scoble’s blog even went so far as to call the practice unethical. See comments numbered 7, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24 and 25 for our conversation on the subject. The bottom line with this event is that our friends in Colorado absolutely did invite bloggers to enjoy a vacation on their dime. But as Scoble so aptly put it, “you can’t fake a good experience.”

These sorts of events are typical of what makes the blogosphere such an exciting space for marketing. It’s explosive, but it’s more than just a new space in which to sell things. The most exciting thing about this space is that for blog marketing to work, you need to have a great product.

In our era of constant advertising, people become inured to the bombardment of messaging, spin and imagery. People begin to think that honesty doesn’t really exist anymore in business. The honesty and authenticity of the blogosphere grabs people’s attention in part because they know and expect that in order to thrive among the bloggers, a product has to be able to hold its own. It cuts through the crap.

We’ll be covering more about how businesses can work within that structure at our upcoming seminar.

I got caught up reading [Ritchey's Breakaway Blog](http://breakawaytoday.blogspot.com/). The combination of a world tour, photos of a wooden bike, the Rwandan National Cycling Team, and learning more about Tom Ritchey (a Tom Selleck style mustache!) had me at hello. I’ve been racing and riding on the bicycle components Tom’s company manufactures for about 12 years. Ritchey is also a sponsor of my [cycling team](http://www.unionbaycycling.com/) and I just built a new Trek [race bike](http://www2.trekbikes.com/bikes/bike.php?bikeid=1476000&f=1) with their [latest carbon equipment](http://www.ritcheylogic.com/).

Besides all the cycling topics that interest me and being reminded of our [Alaskan Bike Tour](http://texturadesign.com/2004/08/hundreds_of_miles_in_alaska.htm), the Breakaway Blog is a perfect example of posting with passion and what to write about. As the blog says, Tom explores “ways to put his passion for the bicycle and his connections in the bike industry to good use.” And that good use is found on a blog.

I like watching [Canadian coverage of the Olympics](http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/) because they show more Olympics and more sports with less gold-medal disappointment and less scripted, reality-television style back stories. The Canadians will also celebrate with a national holiday for any medal they win and kick-ass at [Curling](http://www.nbcolympics.com/curling_men/index.html), which is way more exciting than the easy-to-diss [Ice Dancing](http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/special_packages/olympics/13907106.htm) (only “sport” that awards points for hair extensions).

Here at the Blog Business Summit, it was Canadian style winning on Friday with high-fives all around and lots of falling over from exhaustion when we learned that Onalytica said we’re the [2nd most influential business blog](http://www.onalytica.com/blog/2006/02/who-are-most-influential-authorities.html). If we had a flag, we’d raise it, sing a fight song, and thank our parents and fellow bloggers. Joining us on the podium are [Corante](http://corante.com) with a gold and a bronze to [Business Week](http://www.businessweek.com).

Just as we’re writing a chapter about launching your blog and getting noticed, Guy Kawasaki posts on [How to Suck Up to a Blogger](http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_suck_up_.html). At our [Blogging the Stratosphere](http://blogbusinesssummit.com/evangelism/blogging_the_stratosphere/) and [Bloggy Mountain High](/evangelism/bloggy_mountain_high/) evangelism events, Scoble said it differently [when he wrote](http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/17/travel-day-2/), “you can’t fake a good experience.”

And I said, “[you can't front on that](http://www.beastieboys.com/),” when I showed the [ski resort marketing staff](http://coloradoski.com/clubcolorado) that their customers were already blogging.

To talk to bloggers, a company should use the same conversational techniques that bloggers use on their blogs. Say hello, link, quote, be friendly, and most important show them something good. Or a good time!

The blogosphere is buzzing about the fact that Steve Rubel has decided to move himself over to Edelman. Here’s a roundup of the talk in the blogosphere:

• AdPulp
• Strategic Public Relations
• Weblogs Work
• NewSome
• Naked Conversations
• Texas Venture Capital Blog
• A footnote in Scobleizer

Six Apart has posted about our upcoming seminar which will take place in Los Angeles on March 16, 2006.

Six Apart VP and influential business blogger Anil Dash will be joining us to talk about his vision for the future of the blogosphere and the Web in general.

Yesterday, top executives from Cisco Systems, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! appeared before the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations.

The execs were grilled by Representatives from both sides of the aisle about their participation in China’s suppression of free speech on the Web. Memorably, Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) said to each of the executives, “I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.”

The finger pointing flew fast and furious. Business leaders were quick to point out that Congress had granted China most favored nation status. Lawmakers mentioned that the business lobby had worked hard to give China that distinction.

Later that day Subcommittee Chairman Chris Smith (R-NJ) proposed the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006 that sets standards for US corporations that deal with the Web. The act would prohibit search engines from altering or filtering the results of their searches at the behest of “internet restricting” governments and from revealing sensitive user information to those governments “except for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes as determined by the Department of Justice.” It would also allow non-citizens to sue U.S. corporations in American courts for restitution if they are aggrieved by a violation of the law.

China recently issued a statement defending its right to censor Web content, while closer to home, the State Department announced its intent to fight Internet censorship.

Previous Posts:
Blogging for Freedom’s Sake, Microsoft Censors Chinese Blogger, Good Analysis of Microsoft’s New Blog Policy from PC Pro

UPDATE 2/16/06, 12:54pm Forbes reports that some analyists have aired concerns about the effect of the proposed bill on the Nasdaq and other United States listings.

We’re meeting with members of [Colorado Ski Country](http://coloradoski.com/) today during our 3rd day of Bloggy Mountain High. After talking with communications and marketing staff during lunches, dinners, and the [chair-lift](http://www.chairlift.org/) to the summit at [at Keystone](http://keystone.snow.com), the one important topic to discuss in the rest of our meetings is how to engage the blogosphere and not fear blogs. And I think that’s happening at businesses everywhere.

Businesses get what blogs can do for them, in terms of marketing, but are terrified of opening a forum for critics on their own blog. Our response has been to tell them to take the criticism head on. What works in the blogosphere is to respond directly to any negative comments or posts (Scoble is a master). Businesses will quickly learn that once you engage, even the harshest critic will most likely change their mind and realize you’re a good company and want them to be happy.

We write about engaging the blogosphere throughout our book — Publish & Prosper: blogging for your business — and fully realize that engaging critics is the opposite of traditional PR, we hear that all the time, but have proven how and why it works.

[Buzz](http://buzzmodo.typepad.com/buzznovation/), [Scoble](http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/), Broback, and me will talk more about this topic today. It’s going to be a lively discussion!

You can read more about Bloggy Mountain High on our [Evangelism blog](/evangelism/).

The details of our [Bloggy Mountain High Meetup](http://upcoming.org/event/55803/) are on Upcoming.org. You’re invited to meet up with us in Colorado, have some beers, and discuss all things bloggy. The last time Scoble and I hung out, a Channel 9 thing mascot was seen doing [obscene things to an iPod](http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollyeh11/65050936/) — Brownrigg is featured in the photo as well.

I leave early tomorrow for [Bloggy Mountain High](/evangelism/), our latest evangelism event. I’ll meet with Jason in Denver to discuss [their new blog](http://coloradoski.com/clubcolorado), then to [Keystone](http://keystone.snow.com), dinner at Paisano’s, and a long night of [book writing](/blog_book/).