Oh my. Apparently the entertainment industry has embedded bloggers now. Let’s just hope these embedded bloggers don’t give away any information that could harm this country’s most important economic product, lest we play right into the hands of those anti-U.S.-cultural-domination zealots. Now if I could only make myself care.
Dave Sifry’s overview of the world of blogs includes the astounding estimate that the number of blogs has doubled nearly every 6 months for the last 3 years, meaning the Blogosphere is 60 times bigger than it was in the spring of 2003. The current growth rate is one new blog per second, with 55% (19.4 million) of those blogs having a lifespan of more than 3 months.
Sifry’s next “State of the Blogosphere” post promises to talk about the tagging phenomenon. Given how large the blog world has grown, one would really expect it to somewhat spontaneously organize itself somehow. Tagging, of course, is one way to organize content - by topic. And I suppose awards like The Webbies pull together the highest quality sites from a range of categories, at least at the elite level — you’ll be able to peruse the latest crop of Webby Award winners when they are announced May 9 — but that’s not really self-organization.
Since I don’t believe I blogged about some of the new features Technorati released a while back, this would be a good time to point out that you can sort your Technorati searches by levels of “authority.” Your blogs authority is measured by…. you guessed it: how many other posts link to yours.
Think of it like the New York Times Best Sellers List. The more attention you get, the more attention people think you deserve.
(One day soon there will also be the equivalent of an Oprah’s Book Club for blogs … a way to make blogs even more accessible to those who like their hands held through their media consumption.)
Couple of weeks ago I wrote about the hiccup in Wal-Mart’s blog strategy and mentioned Steve Rubel, one of the new execs at Edelmann, the PR firm behind Wal-Mart’s blog outreach. Within hours, Rubel left a comment on my blog to clarify his position. If you think he’s a regular reader of my blog and that’s how he happened to read my post, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. You see, when your niche is online reputation monitoring and management, you make sure the tools you’re using to keep your eye on what’s being blogged about your clients are also set to track what people are saying about you.
And people do like to talk about Steve Rubel, There’s a Steve Rubel tag in Technorati, and he’s not using it himself. (C’mon kids, everyone wave “hello” to Mr. Rubel and thank him for visiting today. Oh, and no disrespect intended, just illustrating a point here.)
About a week ago, a new blog purporting to be “A Naked Journal of the PR Business” shot one across Steve Rubel’s bows with its inaugural entry. Immediately,[The next day] another blogger trashed the post as “The Worst of PR and WOM - All In One Post“, so within 24 hours there’s a blog that at that point is only about Rubel and another blogger talking about that post, and suddenly “blogging about Steve Rubel” is a “topic” in the Blogosphere.
You ever have that feeling that someone is talking about you, and then you realize that several thousand people are listening in and adding their two cents? Yeah, like that.
Rubel counters with a big yawn, focusing instead on Dale Carnegie’s basic principles for building relationships and how they apply to blogging.
Reputation monitoring seems to be a hot topic lately. There were a couple of panels devoted to the topic at SES New York. And Andy Beal has a great intro tutorial on online reputation monitoring. Last month I wrote about some ways that small businesses can improve their visibility for searches on their company name.
And last week I contributed some tips to a hapless soul who has “negative information” ranking in Yahoo for searches on his (her?) name. The approach to wiping out negative pages about an individual should differ from corporate strategy; not necessarily easier, but with a lot more opportunity for some fun and creativity. As I point out in my advice to “bergey,” you don’t even need to have your own website to dominate the first page of results.
(But as I also hint, unless you’re in the business of online reputation management or a politician, you might be kidding yourself if you think anyone but you cares what comes up when you do a search on your name. And, yes, I understand that this includes me.)
David Utter of WebProWorld reports on a survey conducted by Gallup: blog readership is flat or declining.
A scant 9 percent of users read blogs frequently, with 11 percent reading them occasionally. Out of the 13 activities Gallup measured in its poll, reading blogs finished dead last.
And Slate columnist Daniel Gross, contrary to the rah-rah tone of Dave Sifry’s report on the blogosphere, wonders whether blog popularity among the business sector has hit its peak. In his February 12 article, titled Twilight of the Blogs, he writes that “[t]here are troubling signs — akin to the 1999 warnings about the Internet bubble — that suggest blogs have just hit their top.”
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Just like the Internet didn’t disappear after the bubble popped, blogging isn’t going anywhere. Too much attention, too quickly always leads to a big let down. Once the hype is over, things will come back into perspective and the best blogs will continue to provide value and exert influence.
Dave Sifry has reported on the state of the blogosphere, and folks, the State of the Blogosphere is strong.
He points out that attention has been shifting in the blogosphere. Mainstream media stalwarts like The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post [which he calls the "big head" (in contrast with the "long tail")] continue to dominate, but the long tail of the blogging world goes out to 27.8 million blogs.
Sifry summarized his post in bullet points:
In other words, the popular blogs are now more or less seen as legitimate news media. Before you go believing everything you read online though, keep in mind that the traditional news media aren’t always right either. Keep those critical thinking caps on.
I was recently asked what purpose a blog could serve for a small business. It’s true that “blogging” is very trendy for corporate communications now - but it is also a very effective and low-cost way to build online visibility for a small business.
Blogs are more personal than online advertising and easier for the technically inclined as well. Best of all, it costs as little as nothing (except your time) to post about happenings in your industry or to give users advice and how-tos on things you already know well.
Business blogs, filled with original content written with a unique point of view, also give entrepreneurs a unique opportunity to come across as real people. And consumers generally prefer dealing with a real person over a cold, faceless corporate entity. On the Internet no one knows you’re a dog, so a blog can help you put a sympathetic human face on your business.
Take for example GoDaddy.com, which sells domain names and hosting solutions. Bob Parsons, president and founder of the company, uses his blog to share his small business marketing insights with anyone who cares to visit. Sometimes he shares his opinions on industry news. What Bob doesn’t do is blatantly promote his company or treat his readers like marks.
These days, the domain registration business is hyper competitive - with some registrars selling domains for as low as $3 a year; and there’s nothing to prevent shoppers from simply picking the lowest prices. But you can be sure that loyal readers of Bob’s blog will consider GoDaddy.com when it’s time to buy a new domain or upgrade their website because they like and trust him.
Engage your readers in conversation, solicit feedback, don’t try to disguise advertising as information, and most of all be helpful and informative - then you’re on the right road to developing a larger and more loyal customer base.
My blog is worth the same as the Technorati blog!
Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.
That’s the lead for the cover story of the current Forbes magazine (registration required).
Whoa! Overreacting much? David Utter of WebPro News responds with some great quotes and links to other bloggers’ responses.
Superb overview of the current blog landscape by Technorati’s Dave Sifry:
http://www.technorati.com/weblog/2005/10/53.html.
Among the data he shares:
Big to-do in Blogland this week. Some are saying Google has allowed the criminals to take over the asylum. Seems someone was crafty enough to find a way to automate the creation of thousands of blogs on Blogspot aka Blogger (a free blog creation and hosting site owned by Google). Those blogs then steal content from elsewhere on the web to lure users to the site and then bombard them with Google AdSense ads.
Since the blogs have no real content and are designed just to make money via commission on the ads, they’re called spam blogs (= splogs). The result? Lotsa (more) crap on the Internet.
Not familiar with splogs? I dare you to click the “next” button on the upper right of this page to get sent to a different blog. Odds are that if you do this a couple of times, you’ll find some pretty obvious examples. Unless Google has cleaned up the mess already.
Recourse
Matt Cutts - a V.V.I.P. over at Google - gives this tip on spotting and reporting splogs:
You see a low-quality site that is running AdSense. If you run across a site that you consider spammy and it has AdSense on it, click on the “Ads by Goooooogle” link and click “Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw”. Enter the words spamreport and jagger1 in the comments field.
Updated Oct. 21
Seems like a lot of the spam has been cleared out so it’s not as easy to find. I’m linking to an example so you can see what blog spam might look like.
