WebProNews - Blogs

Technorati CEO Talks State of the Blogosphere

Chris Crum — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:00:45 +0000

Update 2: Here is our exlcusive interview with Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra from the BlogWorld Expo this past weekend:

Update: The State of the Blogosphere report is now availalbe here.

Original Article: Technorati's 2009 State of the Blogosphere report is due to come out Monday, but attendees at the BlogWorld Expo (including WebProNews) got a preview from Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra.

First and foremost, Jalichandra says the "State of the Blogosphere is strong." Some have suggested that it might be dying due to microblogging services like Twitter, but he says it's not dying or leveling off. It's thriving. "Blogs are media," he says.

The report is based on a survey of 2,900 bloggers and includes interviews with blogging pros like Steve Rubel and Arianna Huffington. Here are some key findings:

- 72% blog for hobby/fun and don't make money
- 28% are professional bloggers
- 2/3 of professional bloggers are male
- 60% are 18-44
- 40% of professional bloggers have at some point in their life worked for traditional media
- 7% are actually still employed in traditional media
- 73% of bloggers use Twitter vs 14% of general population

That last statistic is particularly interesting. Chitika just released results from a study finding that most Twitterers are looking for news.

Jalichandra says, "There's a rising profession of professional bloggers" and that traditional media has given bloggers a bad name.

"These findings prove that wrong." He says that all bloggers' number one use of Twitter is to promote their blogs. Famed blogger Robert Scoble said from the audience, that they use Twitter "to pimp their blogs." Either way, the main reasons deal with helping their blogging business.

According to Jalichandra, 24-32% of professional bloggers blog over ten hours a week, and they invest seven times more money in their blogs. The top 500 authority bloggers generate almost 300 times more posts, and the top 5,000 generate 100 times more.

63% of bloggers in general say that they have become more involved with what they are passionate about as result of blogs and only 6% say relationships with friends or family are suffering.

Pros monetize their blogs via:

- display ads - 40% (up from 28% last year)
- Search ads - 39%
- Affiliate links - 36%
- Paid postings - 8%

According to the report, self-employed bloggers are most likely to sell their inventory through a blog ad network and use affiliate links. 70% of all bloggers blog about brands.

Technorati itself just launched a big redesign. You can read more about here.

WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this report from BlogWorld.

FTC Guidelines Raise Big Blogging Questions

Chris Crum — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:25:04 +0000

Update 2: Now Cleland says, "If people think that the FTC is going to issue them a citation for $11,000 because they failed to disclose that they got a free box of Pampers, that's not true. That's not going to happen today, not ever." (via)

Update: The FTC is now saying that the $11,000 fine is not accurate, at least for the first violation. Fast company got some responses from Richard Cleland, assistant director, division of advertising practices at the FTC, who says:

“That $11,000 fine is not true. Worst-case scenario, someone receives a warning, refuses to comply, followed by a serious product defect; we would institute a proceeding with a cease-and-desist order and mandate compliance with the law. To the extent that I have seen and heard, people are not objecting to the disclosure requirements but to the fear of penalty if they inadvertently make a mistake. That’s the thing I don’t think people need to be concerned about. There’s no monetary penalty, in terms of the first violation, even in the worst case. Our approach is going to be educational, particularly with bloggers. We’re focusing on the advertisers: What kind of education are you providing them, are you monitoring the bloggers and whether what they’re saying is true?” [empahsis added]

Cleland addresses more of the concerns here.

Original Article: The Federal Trade Commission has released its revised guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising. The revisions include a focus on "bloggers" and social media users, requiring them to properly disclose when they have received payment in the form of either money or product from a company or organization and produce content regarding said company or organization. The word is that bloggers can be fined up to $11,000 per post for not disclosing.

Have you ever mentioned a free product you received online and not disclosed it? Comment here.

The reasoning behind the guidelines seems noble enough - provide transparency and keep consumers safe from hokey information. However, the concept of the government dictating how this happens does not sit well with a lot of people. The revisions (which can be found in this 81 page document [pdf], should you care to peruse them [they start around page 55]) have ruffled quite a few feathers and the conversation has become one about free speech.

Well-known author/editor/publisher Jeff Jarvis makes a really good point. He says the FTC assumes that the Internet is a medium. "It’s not. It’s a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don’t think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism. I imagine that virtually no one on Facebook thinks they’re making media. They’re connecting. They’re talking," he says. "So for the FTC to go after bloggers and social media – as they explicitly do – is the same as sending a government goon into Denny’s to listen to the conversations in the corner booth and demand that you disclose that your Uncle Vinnie owns the pizzeria whose product you just endorsed."

It's not hard to find echoes of Jarvis's sentiment all over the web. Although, I don't believe I've seen it as eloquently put as with the Denny's analogy. Still, not everyone sees the FTC regulations as a bad thing. In fact, Google's Matt Cutts stepped into the conversation with Jeff Jarvis, expressing a bit more enthusiasm for the guidelines.

"As a Google engineer who has seen the damage done by fake blogs, sock puppets, and endless scams on the internet, I’m happy to take the opposite position: I think the FTC guidelines will make the web more useful and more trustworthy for consumers," he says. "Consumers don’t want to be shilled and they don’t want payola; they want a web that they can trust. The FTC guidelines just say that material connections should be disclosed. From having dealt with these issues over several years, I believe that will be a good thing for the web."

Commenters essentially tell Matt the whole thing would smell a lot better if he were the one regulating it. The reasoning for this is that Matt is involved with the industry. He is not a government worker that has been one his whole life. He's been in the field. He knows the score. The argument coming from most of the opposition is not about the fundamental principle of making content more trustworthy for consumers. At the root of it, it appears that people are much more concerned about a government body of regulators who aren't necessarily involved with online content production telling them how it is, when there are many, many questions about what falls under the criteria.

A number of these questions are nicely placed in an "open letter to the FTC" from Ron Hogan at MediaBistro's GalleyCat. Here are a few of them:

- If an unpaid blogger at the Huffington Post "endorses" a consumer product without meeting the FTC guidelines for disclosure of "material connections" to the makers of that consumer product, who's liable: the blogger or the Huffington Post?

- If a blogger prints out a series of blog posts and distributes those printed copies, is he now the publisher of a newspaper or magazine? If so, the Village Voice is distributed for free, so can a blogger/publisher distribute his newspaper or magazine for free, too?

- What if a blogger confines herself to stating demonstrably proven facts about a book, its author, its contents, and the matter of its publication? Does the FTC consider that an endorsement? What if she confines herself to stating such facts and includes links to an ecommerce site? Has her writing somehow been transformed from a statement of fact to an endorsement?

There are plenty more where that came from. The list goes on. You can probably think of a few yourself. It may be hard for the guidelines to be enforced. The FTC does acknowledge that its guidelines aren't exactly the law themselves. The FTC says:

The Guides are administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves. In any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.

It should also be noted that the rules presumably apply to publications beyond bloggers and social media users, but for some reason it appears that "bloggers" are the ones with whom the FTC had on its collective mind when drafting these guidelines. You have to wonder if they are able to come up with a definition for "blogging" (others have had trouble in the past. Even those directly involved in the online content industry). The rules are scheduled to take effect on December 1st.

What questions do you have about the FTC's guidelines? Share them here.

Can New Media and Old Media Get Along?

Chris Crum — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:10:43 +0000

An interesting topic was discussed at the BlogWorld Expo in a session called the "Death and Rebirth of Journalism," which WebProNews attended. Brian Solis moderated with speakers including Hugh Hewitt of the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show, Jay Rosen, an NYU Professor of Journalism and Author of Press Think, Don Lemon of CNN, and Joanna Drake Earl of CurrentTV.

As you probably know, the debate about blogs and journalism is a controversial one, and has really been going on for years. The emergence of social networks has really only fueled the debate. Considering reports that most Twitter users are looking for news, the debate will not likely be cooling down anytime soon.

Solis began by suggesting that new media is outperforming traditional media. Lemon jumped right in and disagreed, saying that people go to CNN to find a trusted source, and that people get their info from them and other sources and then go and re-tweet and blog about it.

Rosen spoke about growth in the industry and said that the pieces are starting to get filled in. The live web has enhanced it, but also made it more competitive, he says, noting that in the beginning new media was similar to old media, but not anymore.

Hewitt suggests that there are plenty of growth opportunities, but for new networks, it's hard to get noticed and will be even harder in another ten years. There are numerous questions, such as: where are the jobs going to come from and how will journalists get paid?

Lemon says traditional media and new media need to work together. They shouldn't fight. Earl agrees.

Rosen says that before news breaks, the facts and verification have to be there, but it's not true that only professional journalists do this. Hewitt agrees, adding that new media evolution involves the human aspect.

Solis asks the speakers if the "statusphere" (status updates) is the salvation for traditional news. Lemon says that traditional news organizations took a while, but are now being transparent, and that "big media" gives new media understanding.

Rosen says that new media is shared more horizontally as opposed to the former vertical way from big media, and that part of that horizontal shift is humanizing it. "Give bloggers and regular people credit." It needs to be a "mutual" relationship. Lemon says that bloggers can't be as responsible as the original journalists who researched topics.

When asked if the school of journalism has a place in the future, Hewitt says in his experience, they're teaching irrelevant tactics. Rosen says they used to segregate between newspapers, magazines, and broadcast, but not anymore. Now, he says, they combine and incorporate the web and yield a new media system.

WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this report from BlogWorld.

Technorati Relaunches with Unique Content

Chris Crum — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:47:44 +0000

Technorati has launched a new version of its site. Among the changes is a feature that lets users post content directly to the site. This pretty much gives authors a chance to promote their blogs with links from their profile pages, while giving Technorati itself some unique content.

Another significant change to Technorati is to its Top 100 Blogs. "Until today, the top 100 blogs were determined based on unique links from other blogs during the previous six months," explains well-known blogger Michael Arrington. "The top list was fairly static. Now they are focusing much more on recent data within the last month and giving blogs an authority rank between 1 – 1,000. Scoring factors include posting frequency, context, linking behavior and “other inputs.” The result, says the company, is a lot more volatility in the lists as blogs surge up and down."

In addition, Technorati also categorizes blogs by a number of topics, and provides lists of top blogs by topic.

One might expect a site like Technorati to have suffered as a result of the "Twitter revolution," but according to data from Compete, Technorati.com is bringing in more unique monthly visitors than it was a year ago. To me, this is a good indication that traditional blogs are just as in-demand as ever.

The redesign still appears to have a few kinks. For example, I am having a hard time subscribing to RSS feeds, and am instead receiving error messages. Kinks are to be expected with new designs, however, and they will likely be worked out.

Following are a few past WebProNews interviews with Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra, in which he talks about standing out in the digital age, his first year at Technorati, and more.

Blogger Gives Commenters Faces

Chris Crum — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:21:02 +0000

Blogger has extended the comments feature it annoucned last year, which lets users embed comments and the commenting form below blog posts. The feature has been extended to display profile images next to comments that blog visitors write.

"Though profile images have been available with the other commenting options, we are happy to bring them to embedded comments as part of the Blogger Birthday feature series," says Lu Chen of the Google-owned Blogger.

The series Chen refers to has so far included things like:

- a partnership with Blog2Print tha allows users to turn their blogs into books

- a partnership with Widgetbox , which allows users to turn blogs into widgets

- jump breaks, which let bloggers show a snippet of a post on the blog's index page with a "read more" link

- the SocialVibe gadget, which lets bloggers earn donations for charitable causes

- the Blogger NavBar, which lets blog readers click to share blog posts/blog hompages

- the label cloud and selected labels - extensions of the labels gadget

- the send to feature, which lets users send posts to Blogger

- support for the PubSubHubbub protocol

As part ot today's announcement, Blogger has also made it easier to upload profile pictures when you leave a comment. From the comment preview, users can just click "add a photo" and upload one. The next time they comment on any Blogger blog, their photo will appear.

Google Trying to Differentiate Between Blogs and News?

Chris Crum — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:15:34 +0000

Google News is now labeling certain publications as blogs in search results. I'm not sure exactly how long it has been like this, but I noticed it for the first time today. In the past they have separated "news" and "blogs" on some results pages, but in what I'm talking about now, the results are mixed together, but some publications have "(blog)" written beside their names.

You can see a few examples here:

The system clearly has some flaws. Notice for example, in the above screenshot, Marketing Pilgrim is not labeled as a blog. Nothing against Marketing Pilgrim, but it is clearly a blog. This is even acknowledged on Marketing Pilgrim's own about page.

Now let's look at this sample New York Times piece that is listed in Google News results (obviously not as a blog):

Look at the style of this article. It's nothing more than a couple paragraphs that link out to none other than a New York Times-based BLOG. Now I'm not insinuating that the New York Times is merely a blog. Clearly it is a well-established, respected, and historical publication. But their site certainly has some blog-like tendencies, not to mention actual blogs (like Bits, which is linked to in the above example, and clearly considers itself a blog).

So I guess this opens up the ever-popular debate about what is classified as a blog. Is it based on journalism credentials? If so, then are you sure all of the publications without the blog label meet this criteria? What do you think? Share your thoughts.

This is no doubt a move aimed at appeasing the big publishers, at least to some extent. Still, I think the system has some holes.

TypePad Gets Real-Time Blog Updates

Chris Crum — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:16:55 +0000

Today Six Apart, the makers of TypePad, released a new TypePad PubSubHubub hub, which automatically promotes blog updates in real time. It's a free feature for bloggers who use TypePad, and it automatically updates Google Reader, FriendFeed, SuperFeedr, and LiveDoor.

It's not even a plug-in, but simply an automatic feature, which requires no changes from bloggers. Although, those using Advance Templates in TypePad will have to add a line of code to their atom.xml, which can be found here.

Pubsubhubbub is described as a "simple, open, server-to-server web-hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol as an extension to Atom and RSS." This is a protocol that Google itself has adopted for shared items in Google Reader, which allows it to contribute to real-time search. Google recently provided the following presentation:

"The PubSubHubbub protocol is decentralized and free," explains Six Apart's Nima Badiey. "No single company controls it and anybody can run a hub, ping (publish) or subscribe using open hubs."

"The new TypePad PubSubHubbub hub builds on the exciting work that Brad Fitzpatrick (a Six Apart alum) and Brett Slatkin’s team at Google have done with the implementation of PubSubHubbub," Badiey says.

A lot of blogs are hosted by TypePad, so this could prove to be another big stride for the real-time web, which we hear more and more about every day. That's why real-time search is not limited to tweets and Facebook updates. Content in general is rapidly pushed out from many different media channels all over the web. Freshness can play a big role in some kinds of queries.

Speaking of "real-time," a way to get close to real-time search using Google has been discovered by way of tweaking a URL using a time-related search option. More on this here.

Blogs Can Still Drive Big Traffic

Chris Crum — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:26:43 +0000

You would almost think blogging was dead, the way headlines are dominated by Twitter, Facebook, and social media in general. I've always considered blogging to be a part of social media anyway, as the commenting factor lends to engagement between author and user.

But blogging is so five years ago right? It's all about microblogging and status updates now isn't it? If you think that's the case, think again, because blogs can still drive big-time traffic to websites. An example of this has been illustrated by the launch of e-commerce site Alice.com.

How much traffic are you getting from blogs? Let us know.

If you are not familiar with Alice.com, it is a site where consumers can buy everyday household items like toothpaste, toilet paper, laundry detergent, diapers, etc., right from the manufacturers, rather than through middleman retailers. It launched in June, and by July it had doubled its traffic to 387,000 unique visitors, according to Compete.

Guess where the majority of that traffic came from. According to Compete, it came from word-of-mouth from blogs. In fact, its number one traffic source was Blogger.com. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not search. Although each of these no doubt played valuable roles as well., Blogger.com has been the biggest factor in driving traffic for this site, and from the looks of things, that traffic is showing no signs of slowing down.

Blogger accounted for 18% of Alice.com's referral traffic in July, and obviously there are plenty of blogs out there that aren't hosted at Blogger.com. On top of that, Compete says Alice's conversion rate jumped to 3.5% in July as well.

Of course, you have to give bloggers something to talk about to get valuable blog traffic. It's no different than getting people to talk about you on social networks or through any other form of word-of-mouth marketing. It starts with your product. Clearly Alice.com, has something that many people find worth talking about.

"Anyone who has previously shopped online for household products knows that prices are generally higher (sometimes considerably) than those found in stores," Compete's Matt Pace says of Alice.com. "By selling directly to consumers, manufacturers are able to price their products below those found on most online retailers and more competitively to those found in stores."

Clearly this is a void in the lives of consumers that Alice is attempting to fill. It's still early to tell if this site will remain a success. As long as it keeps the bloggers (consumers) happy, it could enjoy a long life. Because one thing to remember about word-of-mouth is that it works both ways. Reputations can quickly move in different directions online. So can traffic.

Do you see more traffic from blogs or from social networks? Comment here.

Blog Comments Going Real Time?

Chris Crum — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:34:00 +0000

Comments on blogs posts and articles have in the past generally been a good measurement of how people have engaged with content, but as the web becomes more social and "real-time," the conversation is going all over the place, and there are other ways that people are engaging in conversation about content (this is why shareability is so important by the way).

You see it on Twitter and on Facebook. You see it On Digg, on FriendFeed, etc. People are still commenting on blogs, but they're not always choosing the blog comments section as their venue for furthering the discussion. This is why you see other buttons on content sites like the Digg button displaying the number of Diggs a story has, or the Tweetmeme button displaying the number of retweets.

These types of things offer just a bit more of an idea of how much a story is being discussed, but they're not perfect. Nothing is. It’s hard to bring all of the engagement that stems from a piece of content back to the home base of that content itself.

Now we're starting to see things like real-time commenting. Robert Scoble talks about this and how it could piss off blogggers...at first. Disqus has such a feature, and it essentially lets users comment and "chat" without having to reload the page, as Scoble points out. This means less page views, which could translate into less advertisers for publishers/bloggers.

There is potential for increased engagement though, which means more time spent on the site. "Overall we’ve seen the time spent on page increase about 3x," Scoble says of his Building 43 site.

"Which shows we need a new way to get paid for advertising," he continues. "No longer is refreshing the page important. That’s the old way of paying for advertising. The new way? How much engagement you have on the page."

I would suggest that we might see trends catering to a mixture of both page views and engagement levels. Engagement is very much a significant part of the equation these days, and a growing part at that. I wouldn't shoot down the relevancy of a page view, however. Some people still like to read without talking.

Google May Face $15M Suit Over Blogger's Outing

Doug Caverly — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:51:40 +0000

Obeying a court order and revealing the identity of a formerly anonymous blogger might not work out so well for Google. Rosemary Port, who was exposed as the author of the now infamous "Skanks in NYC" blog, has said that she intends to sue the search giant for $15 million.

A little history: Port's blog uses Google's Blogger software. Port used her blog to call model Liskula Cohen a skank. Cohen then sued in order to find out who was behind the insult, and following a legal skirmish, a federal judge forced Google to hand over the relevant information.

That brings us to the $15 million lawsuit-in-the-making. Port told George Rush, "Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."

And according to Port's lawyer, Salvatore Strazzullo, Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity." He also said, "I'm ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court."

Either a win or a loss could have a significant impact on how anonymous bloggers operate. We'll keep an eye on the matter.

FCC Creates Blog, Twitter Account

Doug Caverly — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:45:38 +0000

A little more than one month ago, we discussed how Google was asking regular people to give their thoughts about the National Broadband Plan. Now, the FCC's doing something similar, with a fresh blog and Twitter account apparently intended to reach out to the public.

The Twitter account will perhaps be a sort of general-purpose thing, as it goes by the handle "fccdotgov" rather than anything broadband-related. Still, since there have been three tweets in the five or so hours since the account went live, the FCC's done a good job of keeping it updated so far.

As for the blog, the first post explained, "Blogband is part of the FCC's commitment to an open and participatory process. Blogband will keep people up-to-date about the work the FCC is doing and the progress we're making. But we want it to be a two-way conversation. The feedback, ideas, and discussions generated on this blog will be critical in developing the best possible National Broadband Plan."

It should be interesting to see how the FCC's critics respond to these overtures. Given that the organization's often been called out of touch, it seems to be taking a good stab at modernizing its image.

Anyway, there are just 183 days left before the FCC is supposed to forward the National Broadband Plan to Congress, so don't wait too long before entering the conversation.

What Blogs, RSS Feeds Bring To The SEO Table

Doug Caverly — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:24:27 +0000

Tending to a website can take a lot of time and energy, and the people who run them deserve nothing but applause. At the same time, though, blogs and RSS feeds can really benefit an SEO campaign, and so a session at SES San Jose focused on how and why to incorporate them.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos. Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Amanda Watlington, who's the owner of Searching for Profit, suggested integrating blogging into your marketing efforts. She warned that you can't view this as a tactical SEO project, and "me too" positioning and content won't do the trick. Instead, think about the long term.

Watlington recommended creating an editorial battle plan to maintain quality and sustain readers' interest over a period of time. Try to treat every post like a miniature campaign, too, using social media to announce your posts and extend your reach. And show that you value your readers by responding to their comments in a timely manner, and perhaps highlighting popular posts.

As for some SEO-specific tips, she proposed leveraging the SEO benefits of the blog by customizing the templates, and using a keyword list when building content.

Dixon Jones, the managing director of Receptional LTD, then said his piece. He started by pointing out that blogs can be pretty significant; Dave Naylor's blog has ties to more than 6,000 referring domains, for example. People who are just getting started may want to know that Jones favors Drupal over WordPress, as well, and believes it's important to use multiple bloggers.

With regards to RSS feeds, Jones also added that RSS feed widgets can confer SEO benefits.

And that brings us to Sally Falkow, who's the president of PRESSfeed. She emphasized that search engines pay attention to sites with RSS feeds. "Share this" links are also helpful in a strictly human sense, since people will be able to drive new audiences to your website.

Next, the subject of blogging came up again thanks to Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing. Odden named a full eight blog link tips, starting with "quality in, quality out." "Link out" was his second recommendation, since links are often seen as a currency among bloggers. Tips three and four are then rather reciprocal: make a big list, and get on other big lists.

Recommendation five is trickier, but make a killer tool if possible. Spread goodwill (and your name) by writing guest posts, too. Power up retweets, and don't forget to network offline.

Finally, we have Jim Hedger, Webmaster Radio's lead blogger. Hedger mentioned that he assigns each show a unique RSS feed, title, tags, and descriptive text. But Hedger stressed that, whatever approach you take, you must know your audience. From there, you can tackle the fine art of narrow-casting to a wide audience or wide-casting to a narrow one.

Wall Street Journal's Interesting Take On Embargoes

Jordan McCollum — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:32:13 +0000

It’s been eight months since TechCrunch announced that they would no longer honor embargoes, with several other sites jumping on that bandwagon in the interim. One of the issues here was undermining the credibility of the blogosphere at large. As Trisha Lyn Fawver put it,

A lot of the complaints that real journalists have about blogs is that they don’t adhere to the same ethics and standards as real journalistic endeavors do, or real reporters.

This is just another one of those things that proves them right :/ It makes bloggers in general look bad in my opinion.

No worries, folks! Now, the mainstream media is joining in—the Wall Street Journal has a new anti-embargo policy for its editorial staff. Rather, like TechCrunch, they’ll accept exclusives, and honor embargoes when the story is big enough.

I have to assume that means the WSJ will agree to embargoes only when they’re the only one getting the story or that the story is too good to pass up for some silly little policy. And even then, it almost sounds like they would prefer you to query with the story’s hook and the embargo terms for them to choose.

Unlike TechCrunch, the WSJ is NOT saying that they will agree to an embargo and go back on their word as a policy. Instead, paidContent reports, WSJ reporters are encouraged to . . . you know, do actual research. While expensive in an industry that’s struggling to adapt, in some respects, this could actually be good for the WSJ and MSM at large. PC explains:

In general, WSJ reporters will no longer be part of a herd of journalist briefings, which results in a spate of stories from various outlets all at the same time. If PR professionals approach them on a story, then they can refuse and go around and hunt down the story if they want to.

paidContent also looked at the policy in action: recently with the Yahoo homepage relaunch story, both Jessica Vascellaro and Kara Swisher went around the embargo by talking directly to sources—though, as PC points out, they did so with varying degrees of success/credibility/violating the embargo. As I said in December, “the practice of sending a full release with the headline ‘embargoed until such-and-such EST on such-and-such’ is taking your life in your hands.”

What do you think? Does talking to independent sources after learning about a story through an embargoed release and going live early violate an embargo? Will the WSJ’s new policy affect other MSM outlets? Is this the death of the embargo?

Comments

Facebook, Twitter, & Wikis Really Do Impact the Bottom Line

Chris Crum — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:03:44 +0000

Companies have long had problems putting numbers on social media marketing results. Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group have now released a study looking at how engagement with consumers through social media correlates with financial performance. How much emphasis does your company put on social media efforts? Tell us.

The "ENGAGEMENTdb study" shows that companies who measured as having "the greatest breadth and depth of social media engagement" grew revenues by 18% over the last year, while the companies that were the least engaged dropped 6% on average.

"This is the first study of this depth on the top global brands and we think the results provide a good guide for corporations and brand marketers in every industry," says Charlene Li, Founder, Altimeter Group. "The success stories we have uncovered provide a blueprint for companies making decisions about how to best apply their marketing and consumer relations resources."

Channels taken into consideration for the study were:

- Blogs
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Wikis
- Discussion Forums

Brands looked at were the 100 most valuable ones as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking. In case you were wondering what the top ten brands are according to the ENGAGEMENTdb study, they are as follows:

1. Starbucks
2. Dell
3. eBay
4. Google
5. Microsoft
6. Thomson Reuters
7. Nike
8. Amazon
9. SAP
10. Yahoo!/Intel (Tie)

So what are these brands doing right?

According to Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group, the companies that scored well have dedicated teams (of varying sizes) who are active in the social media channels they utilize. Basically, it shows that it pays (literally) to have a team working full time on engaging with customers via social media. Even if that team consists of one person, it means they will not be distracted by other tasks and can give the social channel the attention required for it to make a significant impact.

As the social web continues to grow (meaning more people joining social networks, more people blogging, and more sites becoming social), there is a growing number of channels that require said attention.

"The ENGAGEMENTdb study goes a long way towards validating the importance of social media for business," says Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. "The closer any company is to its customers, the better, and it's hard to argue with the ability for social media to create such proximity. In this day and age, companies should feel much more comfortable investing in social media -- the correlation to results is so clear."

It is in fact that clarity that many companies have had a hard time seeing in the past. Social media is still in its early stages though really. In the grand scheme of things, it's still a relatively new concept. Keep in mind, that many businesses still do not even have websites, let alone a social media presence.

It is going to take studies like this and concrete data showing the financial benefits for more small businesses to truly get on board and engage. Having dedicated teams is a strategy that will likely become more commonplace as companies realize that half-assing it is just a waste of time.

A couple of other highlights from the study:

- The study found that the most successful teams evangelize social media across the entire organization to pull in a broad range of stakeholders.

- These companies view social media as an indispensable tool to help them achieve results, and their approach is conversational.

Along with the study, the ENGAGEMENTdb site was launched as a tool where companies can measure themselves against the top 100 in terms of the strength of their social media efforts. It's probably not a bad idea to take a look if you're serious about those efforts.

Would you focus more effort on social media if you knew it would increase your bottom line? Do you think the study holds water? Please share your thoughts.

Google Recognizing Non-Blogs as Blogs

Chris Crum — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:45:15 +0000

A number of people have noticed that Google is viewing their websites as blogs when they are not really blogs. They are finding that Google is placing them in blog search portions of universal search results in regular Google searches.

This is the topic being discussed in a thread at the WebmasterWorld forum. "There are a lot of mixed emotions; I’m on the first page but in the wrong place," says one WebmasterWorld member, who started the thread on the issue.

Why would Google do this?

Another person suggests the inclusion of commenting on a site, but the original poster says their site doesn't allow comments. A different user suggests that RSS feeds could be the reason that Google is viewing sites as blogs. At Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz also discusses this as a possibility.

He does note, however, that Apple.com has RSS feeds, but is not included in blog search results, so there must be more to it than that. Many sites that aren't blogs are included in blog search though, he says. He also makes another good point.

"Should webmasters be upset if their sites are included in Google Blog Search?" he asks. "Can it hurt?"

If you're getting into blog search results (particularly in Universal results), you're opening up your site for additional traffic. If your site isn't a blog, there's a good chance users will figure this out once they click through to it. Hopefully the content on the site is at least relevant to the user's query.

Real-Time Search Engine Collecta Launches

Jeremy Muncy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:36:31 +0000

Collecta, a new search engine, launched today with a unique twist... they're one of the first real-time search engines.

Searching with Collecta, you get real-time results from blogs, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, social sites and various news outlets.

Collecta's homepage gives the following description of the new search engine...

"Collecta is not like other search engines.
The web is alive with real-time information. So why search a stale archive? Collecta monitors the update streams of popular realtime blogs and sites like Twitter, Wordpress, and Flickr, so we can show you results as they happen. Give it a try."

What do you think of Collecta's real-time search? Tell us.

Collecta's UI is very simplistic and easy on the eye. No frills, just search. Upon doing a search, your term shows on the left (with options), results appear in the middle and selected/highlighted content appears on the right. (click the image below for full size view)

With each search users have to option to include/exclude certain search parameters such as Stories (blog posts, articles), Comments (on blog posts), Updates (Twitter, Jaiku, Identica), and Photos (Flickr). Collecta even has an option to pause a search stream (not really sure why).

Under the hood Collecta uses the XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) technology, which allows Collecta to keep tabs on information as it happens.

Collecta, so far, has had a very so-so launch day. The search engine was down for quite some time, leaving the company having to explain themselves via Twitter to potential searchers.

I guess they could argue that the demand for real-time search was so great their servers couldn't handle the traffic.

It's no secret that search is evolving, and real-time search is the future. Google's own Larry Page has even said, "I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real-time search".

Twitter, for example, already employs real-time search... and it works wonderfully. I often find myself using Twitter's search over Google, just for the real-time aspect.

So, with the launch of Collecta... when do some of the major players jump on the real-time bandwagon? Let us know what you think.

Google Takes Blog Search To Next Level

Doug Caverly — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:57:13 +0000

Blog posts that aren't less than two days old no longer have to be considered lost for all time. Google's made the Custom Search AJAX gadget available to all Blogger users, and as a result, it's become much easier to call up entries from the past along with other info.

A post on the Official Google Blog explains, "You can configure this gadget to help your readers search all the information that's relevant to your blog - your posts, webpages that you link to, and sites that you link to from the sidebar - all in one shot. When your readers search using this gadget, the results are displayed with the look and feel of your blog. And they show up inline, so readers don't have to leave your blog."

Not bad, all in all. Making it even better is the fact that adding the Custom Search AJAX gadget just involves opting to edit your blog's layout, clicking "Add a Gadget," and next selecting the new offering. Plus, since the feature's undergone a period of testing thanks to Blogger in draft, there shouldn't be many bugs.

Rajat Mukherjee, a Group Product Manager, requested feedback, so feel free to let Google know what you think of all this.

In the meantime, test how it feels to have blog posts from beyond the last 36 hours remain findable.

Yahoo 360 Finally Going Away

Chris Crum — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:11:34 +0000

There has been talk about Yahoo 360 closing down as far back as 2007, but only now is it truly official. They've set a date - July 13 is the day that Yahoo 360 will be no more.

Yahoo has been easing the transition for users to switch to their "new profiles," and is now requesting users move into their new profile by no later than July 12. Yahoo Community Manager Melissa Daniels at the 360 Blog writes:

While we know that many of you have faithfully used this service over the past few years, our goal has been to find a way to unify your social experience and connections across all of Yahoo! and anywhere you travel across the Web. So, while we’re sad to say that we will no longer be supporting Yahoo! 360°, we’re excited about this larger plan and hope you’ll transition over and be a part of it, too.

We also want to reiterate our commitment to preserving your blog content. We have been working to make sure we put the right mechanisms in place so that you can move your content and minimize disruption. It is with this thought in mind that we’re happy to introduce a new blogging feature that has already been integrated into your profile.

Melissa goes on to answer questions like:

- Why is Yahoo 360 closing?

- It’s been almost two years since you first announced 360 was closing—why shut it down now?

- What is going to happen to my blog?

- First you shut down Mash, now you shut down 360—why should I give profiles a shot?

- What about customization and photos? On 360 I can change the look and feel and upload multiple photos—can I do this with profiles?

...so if you want the answers to any of these, check this post. In addition, there is a FAQ page here.

Yahoo says the new profiles do not have all the features and functionality that 360 profiles do, but they're looking forward to incorporating new ways of expression in to them.

Comments Make Content More Valuable

Chris Crum — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:51:40 +0000

Comments are the backbone of the social web. Everything is going social if it has not already been that way for some time. Why is that? People are social by nature. It's how we communicate. It's how we learn. It's how we teach. Do you find comments to be valuable resources? Share your thoughts.

Conversations are built upon comments going back and forth and branching out in new directions, taken from one channel to the next. As the web as a whole has become more social, the conversation has gotten larger and it has become easier for anyone to get involved at a growing number of destinations, whether you join in the comments on a blog post, a Twitter stream, a Facebook News Feed, an email , a Google result (courtesy of SearchWiki), IMDB, a forum, a YouTube video, etc.

The web has never been as connected as it is now, and it is only becoming more so each time any service rolls out a new sharing feature. Facebook launched Facebook Connect, Digg launched the Diggbar, somebody launched the Shareaholic Firefox add-on, etc. These are just a few examples of thousands of content sharing tools.

There is value in conversation. I'm sure you've heard of the wisdom of crowds. Is every blogger an authority on something? No. Are all bloggers the authority on the subject of each of their posts? Of course not. That's why commenting is an option.

Comments add value for the reader. If a blogger is wrong about something (or even if he is not, but there is some debate), there are comments there to at least provide different views. Readers can then take these in with the original post and use their own judgment to reach their own conclusion, or use it as reason to further research the topic. Either way, they are getting value out of it because they are not taking one person's word for it.

When you're talking about a blog, or a news site, or really any kind of content site, comments add value. They don't just add vale for the reader, but for the publisher as well.

WebProNews recently conducted an interview with James Smith, Chief Revenue Officer for the Huffington Post, a very popular social news site. In fact, James attributes the site's success to being social. He says the site currently logs over a million comments a month.

More WebProNews Videos

"The reason I like to read HuffingtonPost is because of the comments - it makes it feel so much more community based AND the comments are refreshed quite quickly," writes Susan, commenting on a WebProNews post looking at the interview (and adding value to that post of course).

In the above clip, Smith talks about some types of things that attract people to want to "dive into" content. He mentions polls, images, and most popular stats, like showing the most popular news stories, and how many comments they have. Readers see hot topics of conversation, and often feel more compelled to look at that content because they have an indication that it has generated some interest.

Of course this helps page views, which can help advertising, and so on and so forth. This benefits everyone involved. Advertisers get more clicks. Publishers get more money from advertisers. Readers get more valuable content - not only from the comments, but because if the publisher is doing well financially, they'll be able to keep providing the content. Everybody wins. Furthermore, the publisher will be more inclined to post on subjects of interest, because they will attract comments, and the cycle continues.

Sometimes readers need a little push for commenting (which is why you'll often see comment links scattered throughout WebProNews content). It's simply a call to action for added value for all parties. Blogger Neville Hobson has a nice list of tips you can use to encourage comments.

As a blogger/publisher, once you get comments, keep up with them, and stay involved in the conversation when applicable (certainly time can be a factor here). For one, it will give the commenters a reason to come back, and conversations that come from comments can often inspire future posts. There also may be some things that fit right into your post that you hadn't thought of, and they will be there as additional resources for your readers.

Do you enjoy reading comments on articles and blog posts? Do you find yourself commenting frequently? Tell us.

Why Would Twitter Kill RSS?

Chris Crum — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:14:24 +0000

There is no question that Twitter and RSS have some things in common. However, they are not the same, and Twitter will not kill the feed reader. This is a concept I have seen come up a number of times, and frankly, I just don't see it happening, at least not without some dramatic changes in how Twitter is presented to its users.

Note: There are many different feed readers that offer different options. I am not familiar with all of them. There are also many Twitter applications out there that allow for different kinds of integrations, and again I am not familiar with all of them.

There are similarities and differences between the concepts that are RSS and Twitter. Let's look at a few of them.

How They Are the Same

- One thing they have in common is that there are a lot of people that don't understand the purpose of either one.

- Both can bring you a wealth of information that you are interested in receiving into one convenient place.

- Both can keep you up to date with news.

- Both can provide a means of discovering new and interesting content.

- From the content provider's perspective, both can provide a convenient delivery method.

Did I leave some out? Share some similarities in the comments.

How they Are Different

- Of course, Twitter is a two-way communication tool whereas a feed reader only brings information in. Although some have social features that allow for interaction...Google for example has gotten more social with sharing and commenting features.

- With RSS there is a better chance that content won't go overlooked. Feed readers put a number on the unread posts. Twitter is a never-ending stream. Granted, you can go to each person's stream separately, but you won't see any specific number of unread posts.

- RSS Readers can be organized, broken down into categories...how do you organize Twitter messages (without RSS feeds)?

- With Twitter, you can only subscribe to or "follow" those you find on Twitter. With RSS, you pretty much have the entire web as long as the site offers feeds, which most providing regular content do by now. Most blogging platforms create feeds automatically.

- With feeds, you get a lot more visible content. With Twitter, you get 140 characters. Some feeds allow for full text. With tweets you will always have to follow links to get full content.

- Tweets are real-time. RSS tends to drag behind a bit (at least in my experience).

Did I leave some out? Share some differences in the comments.

Jeff Chandler puts it well (if not bluntly):

"To limit yourself to Twitter instead of RSS is a dumb move because your feedreader provides you the opportunity to see the bigger picture. You get to see many viewpoints instead of just one. You get to see trends outside of what people are talking about. Instead of updates or cool posts from here or their on the web, your feedreader serves the purpose of bringing all sorts of great information from across the web to you in one location."

You can subscribe to Twitter streams as RSS feeds, for better organization, which is another endorsement for RSS. Use a feed reader to organize your Twitter friends' posts. You can also set up your blog to post to Twitter via RSS.

Will Twitter replace feed readers? I don't think so. But it certainly could become more mainstream (if it hasn't already). You could probably find more people on the street that have heard of Twitter than have RSS at this point. But for those who have already been enjoying RSS, you're going to have a hard time convincing them that Twitter will replace it in their lives.

While similar in some aspects, they are clearly two very different animals. Like blogs and Twitter, there is no reason why they can't co-exist, and even feed off of each other.

The best links on Twitter often come from people who acquire those links themselves via feed readers. Likewise, a lot of bloggers are gathering information from Twitter to compose their content.

I do think that RSS and Twitter can be used to explain each other to those who don't grasp the concept of one or the other. If you describe Twitter as "sort of a feed reader" type service, you may drive (at least part of) the point home. If someone doesn't understand RSS, you might be able to explain it using Twitter as an example. Just a thought.

Associated Blogosphere Seeds Begin To Sprout

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:34:58 +0000

I’ve been trying to coin phrases since I started this gig in 2005—fraugs (fraud blogs), googlings (Google nuts), spitter (Twitter spammer) etc.—and not a one has stuck except “hamsterbating,” which I didn’t actually create but was credited for in an online dictionary.

I only bring it up now because if Danny Sullivan gets credit for “Associated Blogs” then I’m gonna blow my top, kick some dirt, and whine a whole lot about it. In 2006, I wrote “Seeds of an Associated Blogosphere” and have mentioned it every chance I got since then, including last month in “The AP’s Battle for Relevance in a Decentralized Universe.”

Associated Blogosphere is mine. I want it. Replace hamsterbating with it, please, whoever actually runs the Internet neologisms department.

Since Danny brought up my concept, and in the spirit of great minds thinking alike (because I assume he missed those articles), let’s take a look at Danny’s post, entitled “Dammit, I’m a Journalist, Not a Blogger: Time for Online Journalists to Unite?”

In a nutshell, Danny bemoans all the special treatment the traditional mainstream press gets while bloggers get “bupkes.”

“I wanted to float the idea that perhaps it’s time for an Associated Blogs to take on the Associated Press,” he writes.

That should read: I wanted to float the idea that it’s time, like WebProNews’ Jason Lee Miller has repeatedly suggested, for an Associated Blog[osphere] to take on the Associated Press.

After that, we’re cool, and ready to cheer on some classic Sullivan-esque ranting:

“we’ve got a newspaper industry increasingly portraying us as part of an evil axis that’s killing them. Blogs steal their attention, and Google steals their visitors.”

Yeah! That sucks!

“I don’t recall Google calling me in, or TechCrunch, or ReadWriteWeb, or VentureBeat [or WebProNews] or any number of other online media outlets and asking about our financial health and ways they could help us. I don’t recall any groups proposing special laws to help our financial health. But I do get sick and tired of seeing the journalism we do not getting near enough credit from mainstream media sources that depend on us, plus us being dismissed as mere bloggers."

Preach it!

“I’m a journalist, not a blogger. I use a blog platform to publish, but that doesn’t make me a second class citizen in the journalism world.”

Rock on, Danny, you tell’em. and I’m all about promoting “your” idea of an Associated Blogosphere, or Online Journalism Association or United Bloggers, I guess, whichever you prefer, so long as, if everybody goes the Associated Blog[osphere] route, I get mentioned in the Wikipedia article about it. ;-D Cheers.

Wall Street Journal Gives Employees Social Media Rules

Chris Crum — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:17:21 +0000

We've seen newspaper publishers forbid employees from accessing social networks before. The Wall Street Journal is not restricting access, but they are restricting how social networks are used by their employees.

Dow Jones Deputy Managing Editor Alix Freedman sent an email to staff outlining some rules for the use of social media with regards to WSJ and other Dow Jones properties. "The use of social and business networking sites by reporters and editors of the Journal, Newswires and MarketWatch is becoming more commonplace," the email reads. "These ground rules should guide all news employees' actions online, whether on Dow Jones sites or in social-networking, e-mail, personal blogs, or other sites outside Dow Jones."

Some of the ground rules mentioned include:

- Consult your editor before "connecting" to or "friending" any reporting contacts who may need to be treated as confidential sources. Openly "friending" sources is akin to publicly publishing your Rolodex.

- Let our coverage speak for itself, and don't detail how an article was reported, written or edited.

- Don't discuss articles that haven't been published, meetings you've attended or plan to attend with staff or sources, or interviews that you've conducted.

- Don't disparage the work of colleagues or competitors or aggressively promote your coverage.

And likely the favorite of most critics of these guidelines...

- Business and pleasure should not be mixed on services like Twitter. Common sense should prevail, but if you are in doubt about the appropriateness of a Tweet or posting, discuss it with your editor before sending.

Don't mix business and pleasure. Many proponents of social media that use the medium for work will tell you that's exactly what you are supposed to do.

"The Wall Street Journal's rules for Twitter and the internet rob the paper and its reporters of a few key benefits," says Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMac. "This misses the chance to make their reporting collaborative."

Collaboration, particularly in news, is where social media and blogs thrive. More of the story tends to come out when there is an open conversation.

Editor & Publisher has the entire list of guidelines posted here. Many of them are common sense, and some pertain to things outside of social networking.

Google Latitude Badge Launched for Blogger

Chris Crum — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:44:25 +0000

Google has released the Public Location Badge, which allows users to publish geographic information to their blog automatically whenever they go somewhere. The badge is powered by Google Latitude.

If you're unfamiliar with Google Latitude, it is a feature of Google Maps that when enabled, shows your friends your current location wherever you are if you have given it permission to do so.

The Public Location Badge will allow you to share your Google Latitude location in two ways:

1. Use the badge's standard embed code

2. Use a KML or JSON feed to create a custom experience in your own application

To add the code snippet, you can click the "add to Blogger" button or copy and paste the code into an HTML/Javascript gadgetthat you can add from your layout tab on Blogger.

Users can choose to share only their city-level location or the best available one. If enabled, the location is publicly available to everyone. Users can't limit where and with whom info is shared through the badge.

You have to be a Latitude user to enable the badge. "We made it easy to customize the type of badge that you want on your blog and let you choose between showing either your best available location or just the city that you're currently in," says Rick Klau on Google's Blogger Buzz Blog.

If you want to see how the badge looks in action, Klau refers readers to Danny Sullivan's Daggle blog. You can see Danny's location in the right-hand column of that blog.

Google also introuced the Google Talk Location Status app (in beta), which shows your contacts in Google Talk or Gmail Chat where you are.

Bloggers Replacing the AP?

Rich Ord — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:26:46 +0000

Yes, the AP (Associated Press) is desperate. Yes, the AP has lost control of the news. And yes, bloggers are more and more going local with their focus. That leads to an obvious question, will bloggers eventually replace the AP and other news organizations?

Wall Street Journal columnist Mark Penn points to statistics which claim that in the U.S. alone there are over 20 million bloggers, of which 1.7 million get paid for it. Mr. Penn also references a Technorati report which says that there are close to a half million bloggers receiving there primary income from this activity.

I don't necessarily buy into these exact numbers but clearly there is an important game changing trend at work here. With likely millions of bloggers worldwide and many making their living blogging it's only a matter of time that all news is covered in blogs.

The current problem with blogs is not unprofessionalism as many in journalism will tell you, its a lack of central distribution channels. The local court house in your community may have blogger coverage but do you know about it? New restaurants open in your area all the time and bloggers are reviewing them, but are you reading? Your high school won their basketball game last night and it was covered by 2 blogs, 4 twitterers and one Facebook post, but did you notice?

The challenge for us Internet entrepreneurs is how to bring this coverage to peoples attention. News aggregation sites and search engines are working at it but they have not yet succeeded at replacing the local newspaper. However, once real-time local news which is covered by hundreds of local bloggers, Twitterers, Facebookers, YouTubers, etc... can be integrated into high-traffic websites then who needs the AP!

What Separates a Blogger from a Journalist?

Chris Crum — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:03:14 +0000

The New York Times is running an article looking at "hyperlocal" web sites as replacements to traditional newspapers. The catalyst for the concept is obviously the fact that some newspapers have been dying off, at least in print form.

The piece looks at web startups EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placebologger, and Patch, which "collect links to articles and blogs and often supplement them with data from local governments and other sources." It is an interesting look into some possibilities for local news options beyond the local paper.

Some bloggers take exception to a couple of things implied in the article however. Matt McGee, who has a blog dedicated strictly to local blogging, pulls the following excerpt from the NYT piece:

One hurdle is the need for reliable, quality content. The information on many of these sites can still appear woefully incomplete. Crime reports on EveryBlock, for example, are short on details of what happened. Links to professionally written news articles on Outside.in are mixed with trivial and sometimes irrelevant blog posts.

That raises the question of what these hyperlocal sites will do if newspapers, a main source of credible information, go out of business. “They rely on pulling data from other sources, so they really can’t function if news organizations disappear,” said Steve Outing, who writes about online media for Editor & Publisher Online.

"Inherent in those two paragraphs is this idea that there’s some kind of separation between so-called 'professionally written news' and what local news blogs are doing," says McGee. "This Just In: Professionally written news articles are also sometimes trivial and irrelevant. This isn’t just a blogging thing. But that’s an attitude that continues to thrive in some traditional media circles."

Matt makes a great point. It's not a new point. It's often made in the whole blogger/journalist debate, but he phrases it well.

So I ask you, what separates a blogger from a journalist? I've seen plenty of credible and non-credible bloggers, as well as credible and non-credible "journalists." Where is the line? Your thoughts? Comment.

Update: Steve Outing, who the NYT quoted in this story has commented on this article below saying that his opinions were misrepresented by the Times. Kind of ironic, given the subject of discussion.Join the discussion.

Getting More Blog Readers and Twitter Followers

Chris Crum — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:19:51 +0000

Of people who both blog and tweet, the majority would overwhelmingly prefer to have more blog readers than followers on Twitter. This is according to surveys conducted by Darren Rowse who runs ProBlogger and TwiTip.

Would you prefer more blog readers or Twitter followers? Tell us.

This is not entirely surprising, since generally, much more effort is put into a blog post than a 140-character or less tweet, but there is certainly a gold-rush for Twitter followers. Jason Calacanis for one is willing to pay a pretty penny for them.

Rowse polled both his ProBlogger audience (which is presumably comprised mainly of bloggers) and his Twitip audience (which is made up of Twitterers). As expected, the Twitip crowd favored Twitter followers slightly more, but there was still a very clear majority wanting more blog readers. Rowse provides the following graphs:

There are certainly arguments for the value of both categories, and Rowse covers them pretty well here. There are some pretty obvious ones for blogs:

- they require more time/effort

- they provide more info

- they are most likely not going anywhere, while Twitter may be hot right now, but who knows where it will be in the future?

- the more blog readers you have, the more times your posts are likely to be linked to on Twitter anyway

There are obvious benefits to having Twitter followers too though, particularly for marketers.

- More followers is a good indication that there is demand for what you offer as a business, and that people are interested in your product(s)

- relationships easier to form (yes blogs have comments, but typically not the real-time conversation factor, and people are at Twitter to talk...they're not necessarily at your blog to do so)

Of course people who both blog and tweet know they don't have to choose between one medium or the other. They compliment each other, and ideally can work to each other's benefits. Twitter can gain you more blog readers, and a blog can gain you more Twitter followers.

It's all in the execution. Write good content that Twitterers want to link to. This has plenty of potential for getting you more readers. Include chiclets on your posts, making it easy to share your content (this shouldn't be limited to Twitter). Include a prominent link for people to follow you on Twitter (a Twitter logo here will help draw attention).

Link to good content from others when you Tweet. If people like what you're pointing them to, you'll likely gain more followers. Who would've guessed it all comes back to content? You could also mention your blog casually from time to time. This may increase awareness of it. Just because someone follows you on Twitter, does not mean they know about your blog. That said, you probably don't want to ram it down their throats either.

So, blogging Twitter users, would you rather have more blog readers or Twitter followers? Tell us.

Tips for using blogs & Twitter together? Share with WPN readers.

FTC to Regulate Blogs and Social Media?

Chris Crum — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:50:17 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission plans to begin regulating blogs and social media. While they're getting tougher on results-based advertising, they are also looking at going after blogs and social media users who portray products they're promoting in a less than accurate light. AdAge explains:

As part of its review of its advertising guidelines, the FTC is proposing that word-of-mouth marketers and bloggers, as well as people on social-media sites such as Facebook, be held liable for any false statements they make about a product they're promoting, along with the product's marketer. This could present a significant issue for marketers, including the likes of Microsoft, Ford and Pepsi, who spend billions on word-of-mouth and social media. PQ Media projects that marketers will spend $3.7 billion on word-of-mouth marketing in 2011.

And the blogosphere reacts...

Frank Reed at Marketing Pilgrim: "Regardless of what side of the political fence you are on it’s starting to get a bit scary as to just how much the government wants to be the overseer of everything."

Les at My Radical Blogs: The next question is what will the FTC do to those bloggers that do write paid reviews? Will they prosecute and turn them into criminals? That is fine if you are based in the US. What if your based in Britain, Europe or Australia - will the law cross borders?

Peter Da Vanzo at SEOBook lays out what social media marketers need to beware of if the FTC's plan goes into effect. For one, check claims that appear "outrageous" and make sure there are studies to back them up.

Here's a glimpse at what Twitterers are saying:

"The commission is attempting to update guidelines that are 30 years old so that they address current marketing techniques, and in particular to address the issue of whether or not the safe harbor that's currently allowed for 'result not typical'-type disclaimers is still warranted," says Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC's advertising practices division (via AdAge).

There seems to be a mixture of paranoia and praise throughout the web. On the one hand, people feel that the Internet should not be regulated in this regard, but others view the whole thing as a positive way to weed out "sleazy" practices. What are your thoughts? Tell us.

Boss-Bashing 2.0

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:35:00 +0000

It’s a lot easier to embarrass one’s boss than it used to be. You can thank the now dreaded internal leak for that. What was once reserved for water cooler gripe sessions, collective bargaining and, if things went really sour, lawsuits and national media coverage is now instantly public and brutally humiliating.

In Silicon Valley all corporate leaks are referred to Valleywag, where they live in infamy. It was there Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk’s “digital witch hunt” was chronicled and the practice of employee entrapment was given light. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg subsequently emulated Musk, also sending out specially encrypted emails—messages with slight alterations in the text: “I am” versus “I’m,” etc.—to identify employees leaking news indicating Zuckerberg’s totalitarian management style as the chief catalyst for mass executive exoduses.

Newly appointed Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz pleaded with her staff to tighten their lips about what was going on inside the company before reportedly going all Chuck Norris and threatening “to drop-kick to f**ing Mars” press-friendly employees.

Unfortunately for all the executives mentioned, employees just widened the information funnel.

The most recent and humorous target of employee retaliation is John Soden III, a managing director at San Francisco based investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners. An email from Soden to “everyone below the MD level” saying that unless they were “an orthodox something” they should get their butts back to the office on Good Friday and that they should get jobs as tellers if they want bank holidays.

Soden probably didn’t anticipate his whip-cracking would end up on Valleywag, nor, probably, did he think his detractors would set up a spoof Twitter account, where the Fake John Soden bemoans how only one person worked all night, thinks sushi is Chinese food, and yanks employees out of mosques during working hours.

Some managers probably yearn for the pre-digital culture days when crudely drawn cartoons popped up in break rooms and employee bathrooms.

Big Publishers Want Special Treatment from Google

Chris Crum — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:39:05 +0000

Update: In an interesting turn to this story, the New York Times has eliminated 993,000 article pages as it rolls International Herald Tribune (IHT) into the NYT site. Instead of redirecting the articles to the same article on NYT, they all simply go now to one landing page.

Ryan Tate at Valleywag writes, "The Times' longtime online chief, Martin Niesenholtz, recently whined that a Google search on the word 'Gaza' didn't include any of his content on the first results page. And yet he just nuked 121,000 of his own articles containing that keyword."

Original article: Big-brand publishers don't like being overshadowed by bloggers. What else is new?

A new AdAge article discusses a group of such publishers (including brands like the Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and the New York Times) which make up Google's Publishing Advisory Board, which is calling for Google to rank their content higher because they're "the original sources" of news stories. Of course we all know that while that may often be the case, it is also very often not. Somtimes even "original sources" even come from Microblogging. Remember when the news of the emergency landing on the Hudson River broke on Twitter?

This is not a new discussion. As Steve Rubel says, when he read the article he felt like he had stepped back into 2004.

The truth of the matter is, many big brand publishers have become more blog-like and many bloggers and blog-style news sites have become big brands themselves. Rubel phrases it well, "To me, we don't have zebras and elephants anymore. They have mated and we're all one species."

But that's not how some of these publishers see it. They'd rather get special treatment based on their own brand rather than putting forth the effort in search engine optimization that others would when they weren't ranking to their satisfaction. Matt McGee (who has also joined this particular discussion) recently looked at a study showing that the Fortune 500 is still "largely invisible" in natural search results.

So where does Google stand? A recent update did supposedly cater to bigger brands anyway. "There's absolutely value to original content," AdAge quotes a Google Spokesperson. "There's value to derivative content, too. We look at this in many ways from the point of view of the user. But the truth is there are so many shades of gray even within, quote, original content."

The big-brand publishers are awaiting a more concrete answer from Google. The council meets again on April 30. With so much gray, that answer is probably going to be hard to reach.

Where do you stand on this subject? Talk about it with WPN readers.

Google Updates Blog Search Algorithm

Chris Crum — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:56:49 +0000

Google has updated its Blog Search algorithm after postponing the update earlier in the month. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable quotes Googler Jeremy Hylton who explains:

We have launched a ranking change that reduces the number of results that are returned because of blogroll matches. There are still problems to work out, but this change appears to be a big improvement over our earlier fix. We had originally planned to launch an experiment for link: queries, but decide more recently to release this change first. We are still working on the link: change and expect to have that ready in a few more weeks.

The change can improve the convenience of using Google Blog Search as part of your online reputation management strategy. Anyone with such a strategy in place is probably used to wading through all kinds of mentions of their company that are simply just mentions from blogrolls.

"Well, lets say you are like me and you track who links or mentions you via Google Blog Search," says Schwartz. "If someone has the Search Engine Roundtable in the blogroll, and the do a daily blog post, even if that blog post doesn't mention the Search Engine Roundtable, blog search would show that new blog post as a match. Why? Because it is in the blogroll and Google thinks it is part of the content of the blog post."

The update should eliminate this problem and make tracking your brand through Google Blog Search a little easier. On the other hand, if you really like finding who has you in their blog roll, you might consider the update a loss.