March 2007

As you can see from the sidebar of our blog, and from our confirmed speakers page, Motorola’s Executive Vice President and CTO Padmasree Warrior will be speaking at the Blog Business Summit this September.

I must confess that since I came across Padmasree’s blog earlier this year, she’s become one of my heroes. Under her direction, Motorola won the 2004 National Medal of Technology.

She’s also been a passionate advocate for federal research and development funding to keep the United States competitive in the world economy. She recently wrote:

For example as outlined in a report on competitiveness from AeA, consider how federally funded R&D accelerated innovations like fiber optics and the Internet. Federal funding of solid-state physics and ceramics/glass engineering in the late 1960s created the knowledge base for widespread use of fiber optic cable in the 1990s. Department of Defense began experimenting with the design of a decentralized file and data-sharing network in 1969, leading to the explosive diffusion of the Internet 25 years later. The fact is that government R&D investments play an indispensable role in building the foundation of a knowledge-economy by investing in concepts years before they are commercially viable.

To top it all off, Padmasree is an advocate for women in an industry that, as Robert Scoble so aptly put it, has a “culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop.”

For all of these reasons and more, I think Padmasree Warrior is the bees knees and I’m jumping for joy that she’ll be joining us this September.

Hey guys! I know that some of you have been wondering, “what happened to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Project?”

The answer: I’m migrating it from the old site tomorrow. I didn’t forget about it, but I had to get the site up and propagated first before I could begin the process of transferring the wiki.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about the newest phenomena in the online scene: the “lifecast” Justin.TV and the “microblogging” service Twitter. Both provide an unbroken stream of constant content. The questions, “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” have never been answered more fully.

Both sites have generated a lot of buzz in the blogosphere, and both have been called gimmicky. But then, so was blogging when it started out. Come to think of it, so was the Internet itself. It’s like my boss Steve Broback says, “all exotic technologies eventually become boring commodities.” The Internet became a boring commodity, and eventually so will database driven websites (a.k.a. “blogs”), Twitter, Justin.TV and whatever else comes along next.

But as everything moves faster and faster, the issue of information overload becomes all the more relevant. It’s a problem for anyone who has any connectedness with media. And when you throw the burgeoning and fast-paced social Web into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for a headache. And the pace just stepped up again.

For businesses, this translates to a new loss of control. If you’re in business, chances are that just subscribing to a few RSS feeds and monitoring the Web for what people are saying about your company is more than enough to take in. But as more and more content flies onto the Web at ever faster speeds, how can you possibly pay attention to everything you need to?

Obviously, you can pay a consultant (like us) that specializes in this kind of monitoring to keep all the balls in the air. But that doesn’t solve the problem of which streams are truly relevant to your business.

Take Twitter for example. Each individual status message that is posted by someone using the service is searchable, and is indexed by Google. That matters because if someone says something about your company on Twitter, not only is it broadcast to whoever is listening to that particular user, but it also lives forever as a discreet chunk of content with a permanent URL.

But unlike the blogosphere, where permalinked blog posts can quickly make it to the top of a search engine results page, Twitter status updates are not frequently linked to. At least not yet. Until that happens, what happens on Twitter will likely not have anywhere near the same impact as a few aptly titled blog posts.

As for Justin.TV, the content exists in multiple formats. You can watch the live stream (which is actually time-delayed by 30 seconds), or you can go through Justin’s blog to view discreet chunks of past content in video form.

Because Justin organizes his “lifecast” around a searchable, text-based schedule, those chunks of content are more easily digested, linked to, and forwarded. They exist on a blogging platform, rather than a stream of mini-posts, so people are more used to the architecture. And because the videos are embeddable, they can be more easily distributed throughout the blogosphere.

If you’re interested in these newest forms of communication as a platform to make contact with people who are key to your business, then I’d put my money on Justin.TV. And I’m not saying that just because Justin and I grew up together. In their current forms, these two media sites offer very compelling content, but Justin’s is still the more impactful format.

What a week it’s been! I thought we were going to be live with this blog by Friday, but a number of unanticipated issues cropped up. We’re now fully propagated and live again.

I’ll be spending a lot of today re-building the tag cloud and tying up loose ends with the site migration. Right now, I’m sitting here with Steve and Kim working on yet another (!) proposal and discussing the editorial for our upcoming conference.

The big new kid on the scene while we’ve been out of commission is Justin.TV. Justin Kan — who happens to be a childhood friend of mine — walks around with a camera on his head. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. He says he’s going to do it, “until it stops being fun.” I would have reached that point about five days ago, but it’s been nine days and Justin’s still going strong.

The pace of social media has really picked up of late. I posted about this on my personal blog. Basically, between Twitter and Justin’s project, the streams of content are coming at us faster than ever before.

I’ll be spending a lot of the remaining week delving into the relevance of these emerging online phenomena to our business audience.

Welcome to our new WordPress-based blog. We’ve been geeking around all week with CSS and PHP and MySQL to bring you this fabulous new online property without compromising RSS feeds, permalinks or anything else.

We want it so badly that we’re willing to give our book Publish and Prosper: Blogging for your Business away for free.

To get your free book, send an e-mail to: freebook [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com.

Publish and Prosper has met with acclaim from critics, readers, and business bloggers alike:

“This is the book I wish I had a year ago when I first started the EasyStreet Business Blog”
-Day Tooley
blog.easystreet.com

“Indispensable…a practical guide to blogging for business.”
-Mobil’Homme
via Amazon.com reviews

“If you are a manager and have heard about blogs but don’t know what they are or how they can be used, then this book is right for you. The messages are clear, complete and will prove invaluable if you are considering or planning an entry into the blogosphere…Read this book before you start a business blog!”
-Charles Ashbacher
via Amazon.com reviews

For a limited time, the Blog Business Summit and our partners, Attensa, Marqui and Six Apart are offering this indispensable book free of charge to businesses that want to start blogging. If you qualify for the book, send an e-mail to: freebook [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com and we’ll be in touch.

In order to qualify you must:

• Work for or own a legitimate business with a verifiable website.
• E-mail us from your business e-mail address. (We are looking for an e-mail address like joe@acmewidgets.com. An e-mail address like chipsahoy@hotmail.com will not fly.)
• Have a mailing address inside the United States.

The Fine Print:

• We reserve the right to refuse to send a book to anyone.
• By e-mailing us about this promotion, you are agreeing not to resell this book.
• One book per mailing address.
• Initial offer limited to 500 books.
• Allow 2-4 weeks for delivery of book.
• The Blog Business Summit will e-mail you. We promise that will not abuse this privilege and we will only e-mail people who are sent books. You will have the opportunity to opt out of being on our mailing list.

To get your free book, send an e-mail to: freebook [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com.

I’ll be in and out of a deep, geeky bunker this week. Part of this bunker involves major changes that are forthcoming to this site. Stay tuned for all the excitement.

Adweek Magazine has an article about how turning your CEO into a full time blogger is a recipe for disaster. It cites the example of David Neeleman’s blog not being up to date during the great St. Valentine’s Day freeze.

The main complaint is that CEOs usually don’t have time to blog, even the most prolific among them - Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy - only have time to post once or twice a month.

So, should your CEO blog? Only if she’s prepared to blog at least three times a week. Otherwise it’s irrelevant. And most executives simply don’t have the time or the passion for blogging. Those that do are a rare breed and should be cherished deeply by their respective companies for the tremendous value-add they provide.

One of my favorite legal types, Kevin O’Keefe has a great post up from last week about how Google Analytics is incorporating Gapminder’s Trendalyzer into their analytics. This is interesting, but as Kevin points out, stats on top of stats are rarely helpful.

I’m already really satisfied with Statcounter which we’ve been using on our blog network for a few weeks now.

Many thanks to Chris Radcliff of Global Spin for putting Blog Business Summit 2007 on Eventful!

I’ve also listed the event on Upcoming.

I was pretty excited to read on the Facebook blog about a new plugin they’ve developed that lets users upload and tag photos directly from iPhoto.

One of my biggest problems with Facebook has always been that uploading photos is a ponderous, tedious, multi-step process. Next to the Flickr Uploadr Facebook’s little java-based app is kind of pathetic.

The only reason I use Facebook’s photo sharing feature is that it gives you the ability to tag people’s faces in photos and link those photos to the person’s profile. When you go to the profile, you can see “more pictures of so-and-so.” This is tremendously fun and also good for researching job applicants.

Now that I don’t have to worry about the annoying uploader any more, I’m even more excited about photo sharing on Facebook!

Blog Business Summit has secured a special reduced rate for conference attendees at the Chicago City Centre Hotel & Sports Club.

To make a reservation, click here and use the following booking code: BS1

You may also call 312-787-6100 to secure a reservation using the same booking code.

There are a limited number of rooms available at the special reduced rate so plan to book early.

You’ve been telling us for years that we need to take the Blog Business Summit eastward. And we’ve responded. We’re very excited to announce that the next Blog Business Summit will take place this September in Chicago, IL:

Monday, September 17 through Wednesday September 19, 2007
Chicago City Centre Hotel and Sports Club
300 East Ohio Street
Chicago, IL 60611
312-787-6100

We’ll be posting room information later this week and registration early next week. Editorial will start going up as we secure speakers. This conference is goign to be amazing. I hope to see you all there!

Todd Ziegler of the Bivings Group has posted about his top 5 blogging tools. What is number 1? You guessed it: Wordpress.

Says Ziegler:

Wordpress is the best blogging platform for my money because it is easy to use, full featured and completely open source (free!).  Make sure to install Akismet to help with comment spam and WP-Cache to help deal with the Slashdot/Digg/Fark affect.  Do those two things and you are golden.

This is right in line with what Steve saw in the Google Trends report about Wordpress surging in terms of queries and popularity.

I’m also right in line with Todd when it comes to Feedburner and MyBlogLog. Both tools are great for improving service to your community.

I guess I’ll have to check out some of the other services he recommends as well. Has anyone played with Clicky? What do you think about it?

For the uninitiated, “meum cerebrum nocet” means my brain hurts. (Don’t worry, I had to look it up too.)

I guess I just had to take a moment to gush here about a blogger that I discovered some time ago and have been following avidly. Padmasree Warrior is Motorola’s chief executive vice president and chief technology officer. She also writes the Bits at the Edge blog.

She may not post as frequently as I would like, but when she does, she has many interesting things to say. Her focus on technological innovation goes beyond the walls of Motorola. In one of my favorite posts, she waxes poetic about all of the marvelous innovations behind the iPhone and the implications for the rest of the industry.

Another cool feature of her blog is the “While I was Mobiling” and “Meum Cerebrum Nocet” sections, where she posts smaller, more frequent nuggets of interesting content. I just wish that those little nuggets showed up in her RSS feed.

I highly recommend her blog to all mobility enthusiasts, and really anyone who is interested in technology.

Lee LeFever has a post this morning about blogs vs. more old school message boards. He resurrects a chart a couple of years ago that he says is still relevant.

One of the things that I found striking was the distinction the chart made between blogs and message boards when it comes to comments and discussion. On message boards, “replies are required for a discussion” while on a blog, “comments are extraneous, not required.”

I know that I’m nitpicking a bit here, but I want to point out that I find comments unbelievably relevant. I agree with Scoble that the most interesting information about a blog post is how (and whether) people respond to it. Commenters on all of the blogs I work for have challenged my thinking, corrected my mistakes, provided me with handy information and kept me honest. Without comments, blogs would not be nearly so powerful as they have become.

Business Week, ever the leader in covering the intersection between emerging media and business has an interesting (and aptly titled) article about the rise of the corporate wiki.

One thing that I found particularly interesting is that corporate wikis need “shapers” as much as they need individual contributors. A “shaper” is someone with a passion for organization who keeps the information within the wiki well structured:

Over time, as wikis begin to get a critical mass of information, they tend to sprawl and become unwieldy…You need some kind of person who sees the long-term consequences of not organizing. Most often, individual contributors are not the people who will restructure existing content. Instead, that task is left to…an employee who is willing to take time synthesizing information so it’s easy to read. Executives need to encourage shapers as much as individual contributors. Otherwise, the wiki can become so unwieldy that nobody will use it.

David All of techPresident reports that his fellow contributor Mindy Finn has been hired by the Romney campaign.

Finn is a veteran political strategist, having worked on Rick Santorum’s online campaign. But Robert Bluey “she brings experience to a campaign that is only scratching the surface on the web.”

Romney’s blogger outreach lead, Stephen Smith has been on board with the campaign since the end of last year.

One thing I like about Romney’s campaign Website is that he has a “Word on the Web” section that links to blogs talking about his campaign. I just wish he didn’t put that particular widget so far below the fold on his Website. The top half of his site look just like an old school campaign site. It’s only at the bottom that the social media elements come into play.

I’m doing a presentation about business blogging for the Eclipse Women’s Group in Seattle tonight.

I’ll be talking a lot about the concept of “spitting” which was introduced to me by Robert Scoble during the cool chat that we all had together in Chris Pirillo’s basement a few weeks ago.

Spitting basically means that people now have control over the direction of little pieces of information. Images, articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos and many other forms of content can now all be easily isolated and transmitted to others via social networks, instant messaging programs, text messages, and Twitter in addition to blogs.

That reminds me of something that Anil Dash said in his talk about the future of the Web this time last year at our Essentials of Business Blogging seminar in Los Angeles. He mentioned that people would be given greater control over not only the kind of content they created, but the direction that content created by others would take.

Facebook’s share feature and the way that Google Reader’s users can create “link blogs” are both examples of spitting. Digg is another.