Factiva launches blog monitoring service

See article on Revolution. Given Factiva's reach in the corporate world, it is definitely an acknowledgement of blogs' growing influence. Alan Scott, chief marketing officer of Factiva, said: "There are millions of blogs and message boards worldwide and any one of them can affect your organisation or brand." The article reports that Factiva will monitor 4 millions of the most active blogs and message boards.

UK MSM embrace citizen journalists

The BBC reports on how the traditional media establishment is embracing citizen journalists, with the media treatment of the London bombings beeing the centre piece of the article. It raises valid questions (but doesn't answer them): "(...) about privacy - if you're a victim do you want your picture plastered over the front pages? authenticity - how can you tell the images are genuine? and possible interference in the course of justice ". Conclusion? the mobile phone genie won't return to its bottle.

Yahoo takes on Google with blog ads network

Yahoo will display contextual ads on websites and blogs and the model will be pay-per-click (like Google). Yahoo's service will differ from Google in that it will add human editorial judgment to the selection of ads for content pages while Google is fully automated. See story on CNET.

One in every 200 web visits are to blogs

According to a research from Hitwise. It represents a 130% increase over the last year. See article on Revolution.

Email Is For Old People

A Pew Internet and American Life Project study found US teenagers prefer instant messaging rather than e-mail to stay in touch with each other. 75% of US teens have used IM.

This survey echoes a post from engadget (dated 29 Nov. 2004) commenting that "over two-thirds of students there rarely or never use email" and young people "think of email as something overly formal that you use only for business purposes or to communicate with your less tech savvy parents or grandparents who are still stuck in the Nineties".

Meegos rule!

Measuring blogs popularity: Yahoo v. Technorati v. Google

I picked up from Steve Rubel that Yahoo was preparing a "Technorati Killer". Steve is referencing another blog confirming that rumour.

While looking for more information about that, I came across that stunning post from Tristan Louis, a French expat to the US who is studying how Technorati ranks blogs. He evaluated a selection of blogs and looked at their number of links (now recognised as indicator of a blog popularity) in Google, Technorati and Yahoo. He then benchmarked the results against one another: Technorati v. Google , Technorati V. Yahoo and Google v. Yahoo (scroll down on that page).

The conclusions so far: Technorati is getting a fourth of links Google can locate. Yahoo does a better job at indexing the blogosphere than Google. "Smaller blogs seem to have a better chance of being recognised by Yahoo! than they do of being recognized by Google".

Tristan is looking at benchmarking all of that with MSN now...

Forbes lists best blogs

As the blogosphere matures, I think that it will consolidate (the 80/20 rules when it comes to traffic and popularity). Forbes magazine released its "Best blogs hall of fame". Many familiar names here.

Hat tip to El Blogador who sent me this link.

Cats can't taste sweets, vampires threaten impregnation

My friend Richard recently launched the work avoidance blog, originally a newsletter. It is a selection of weird and funny stories, tech and geek news (all interchangeable).

Godin On Publishing

Many bloggers are aspiring journalists and many journalists are aspiring authors.... I am stretching it a little here… but if you fancy yourself as the next Dan Brown of the e-book world, best selling author and master self-publicist Seth Godin gives some practical advices worth reading before you leave your day job.

"Open source" radio uses blogs

Marketing Vox carries this story about a radio station using a blog to co-create its programs.

Listeners can talk to the producers, input on programs, suggest a show, comment live, ect.. See how this works and look at their blog.

You can hear it stream here or subscribe to their podcast.

Brilliant.

ET Blog Home

Mindcomet offer to broadcast your blog musing to space via a commercial satellite. Register for free at Bloginspace.

The site comes with a handy disclaimer:

"Bloggers who use this site are urged to keep their blogs devoid of any language, comments or content that might offend, taunt or provoke alien life forms in any way. Let's not start an intergalactic war :) "

See original article on Vnunet.

Vores Ø: First Open Source Beer

Students from the IT University of Copenhagen have created the first open source beer. Christened "Vores Øl", meaning "Our Beer", it is available for everyone to brew and profit from thanks to a recipe published online under the Creative Commons License.

Original idea to apply the open source model beyond the tech industry. Vores Øl may be remembered as the Linux of the beer market. Cheers.

Is France ready for a new revolution?

Apologies but this is not related to blogs or online PR at all. It is Bastille Day and the Guardian is probing why France is in no mood to celebrate.

I could not help myself post this article as a reference for all my friends who don't understand why I, like many young French people left the country and why an increasing number of us has no intention to come back.

The Sun Takes Tabloid Format To Online TV

The print version of UK magazine “New Media Age” reports on the Sun becoming the first newspaper in the UK to offer an online video news service. The self titled “TV news bulletin” will provide breaking news and weekly entertainment. The paper plan to generate additional revenue through TV style ads on its site.

With broadband becoming commonplace, we should see more newspapers, magazines, radio stations or consumer brands launching their own online TV channels. I can see FCUK being one of the first movers here (they already have a radio station). B&Q could make a great DIY/interior design TV channel. All of these shows could be repackaged for mobile videos and streamed to subscribers. Talk about media fragmentation…

Citizen reporters: the tipping point?

The Guardian is carrying an article on the media coverage about the London bombings. Most of the pictures and video footages screened on TV or printed in newspapers originated from commuters' mobile phones, including the harrowing clip inside the tube carriage or the pictures of the “minute after” the bus bomb. The article talks about a tipping point for citizen journalism. News directors from ITV, Sky and the BBC are in agreement.

London Unbowed.

Yesterday was testing for all Londoners. We had no idea of what was happening as our journey to work became more chaotic. I was stuck in a tunnel for 15 mins on the Piccadilly line, before the station was evacuated. The news was that of a power outage in King’s cross station bringing the tube network down. I caught a bus in Gloucester Road among hundreds of passengers who thought London underground was failing them again. The bus didn’t go very far and we were told to leave. While walking in South Kensington, I heard that all buses to Central London were suspended. I saw a mass of people looking at a TV screen in a shop. It wasn’t a power outage. I was amazed by how calm people remained. I couldn’t call my wife nor my office as the mobile network was down so I decided to walk to Soho where I work. The day went on eerily, checking if friends were fine, reassuring families and friends abroad. We were all upset. The emergency services did an amazing job. Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone made thoughtful and defiant speeches yesterday. They are right all the way. Any blow that doesn't kill us makes us stronger. My thoughts are with those who suffered most from this senseless tragedy.

Korean Dog Poop And Blogs Power To Shame

My colleague Ted sent me this amazing story about online vigilantism published in the Washington Post.

A woman in South Korea let her dog relieved itself in the subway. She didn't bother to clean up and a row started with her fellow passengers. Someone took pictures of the incident with a camera phone. Within hours, accounts of the incident and the incriminating pictures were online. New information about her identity, her life and her past were added in real-time as acquaintances got involved and others started to play detectives. The dog poop story even made it into the national news. She is now known as "Dog Poop Girl" and is said to have quit her university in shame.

Jeffrey Sachs Blogs The End of Poverty

Jeffrey Sachs (economist, author and UN advisor) started a blog yesterday on the FT website. I love the content (I have always been interested in economy and geopolitics - even if I don't understand a lot of it) but the format is typical of a journalist's first grip with blogs: no comments, no trackbacks and a very long article that will not be out of place in the Economist but somehow looks a bit too "written" for a more intimate media like a blog. Worth subscribing to the feed anyway... Well.. I am sure they will put one in place soon ;-)

Blogging Policies Needed For Schools, Universities?

Liberation (in French only) runs an article today about a high school student facing expulsion for defaming her French teacher on her blog.

“E” (the anonymous student from a small town high school) posted a nasty comment about her French teacher in her blog - roughly translated as “I hate this crap teacher” - on the 29th of May. A week later, a lecturer in the same school, who was curious to find out if his school was mentioned on the blogosphere came across the infuriating post. He forwarded it to E’s French teacher, who complained to the school principal. The matter escalated to the regional academy who advised the school to take a firm stance. Despite E’s apologies, she will face a disciplinary hearing that could result in permanent expulsion. The student and her family are said to be devastated.

The regional academy is now working on a leaflet to be distributed in all its schools next year to give guidelines on acceptable blog usage in line with schools’ code of conducts.

I suspect that this is not an isolated case. Many see blogs as a personal diary and forget that there are publicly accessible. I can only see the number of such incidents increasing in conjunction with the increase of self-publishing tools.

Blinkx search podcasts, video blogs

Blinkx now allows search queries on podcasts and video blogs. See article on Yahoo. A natural evolution for search engines in an increasingly rich media online environment.

Talking of which, Blogger finally included an image upload facility in its blog post template. I always found uploading pictures via Picasa's Hello then sending them to my blog to be a real headache at best. I started to become envious of my more pictorially enabled colleagues (who use TypePad) and mocked my austere text only blog. Blogger: it's about time! But thank you anyway.

Beyond PR featured in PR Week

Beyond PR has been featured in an article about blogs in the UK edition of PR Week. The article, titled "Blogs cast a shadow" provides an overview of blogging and its impact on PR and compare companies who have embraced blogging with those who shy away from it. Not available online I am affraid but I thought I should mention it out of pure self-promotional interest.

10 years on, Internet transforms modern life, my car.

CNN Technology carries a special feature to celebrate 10 years on the web. The lead article, "The Internet transforms modern life" reflects on how much our society has changed since the time people needed to lick a stamp to send a mail. It is worth emphasising how the Internet empowered a new generation of consumer and citizens by giving all an access to knowledge previously controlled by the privileged few.

That brings me to a personal anecdote: my beloved car (an old Daihatsu Sportrak - a best seller in Indonesia and the Philippines) needs a new radiator and my local garage took a month talking to his preferred supplier to tell me he couldn't find what he needed. Last week I learned that my initial quote of £150 would have to shoot to £350 (at least) as their only recourse was to get their part from the official Daihatsu supplier. Within 10 mins of online research, I found a supplier of Japanese 4x4 spare parts in Manchester who sold me a new radiator for £75 only.

I called my garage to let them know. They were surprised. 10 years ago I would have been ripped-off…

Hollywood Recruit On Instant Messaging

Production companies use instant messaging (IM) to quickly recruit teams for their projects. Freelancers looking for work are customising their IM status from "away from my computer" to "need work" or"wrapping up shoot". See article from Wired.

If you want to be noticed, forget the adress book, you need to be on the right "buddy list". I am sure that an entrepreneur somewhere will soon offer to tailor your CV or portfolio for IM...

BBC Newsnight starts Gleneagles G8 Blog

Newsnight, the thinking man news program just announced tonight that they are commissionning Paul Mason to blog the G8 summit. The blog is available at www.newsnig8t.com

That one goes straight to my blogroll. Way to go!

Journalists read blogs, don't trust blogs, corporations and each other...

According to a survey by Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University:

• 51% of journalists use blogs regularly and 28% read them daily (compared to 11% of the US population reading blogs),
• 70% of journalists read blogs for their job, mostly for story ideas or researching,
• 33% read blogs to uncover scandals or breaking news.

The survey points to a trust crisis among journalists and between journalists and corporations:

• 49% of journalists have lost trust in corporations over the last year,
• 76% said that corporate candidness is poor in time of crisis and 66% said the same about transparency,
• 45% are less trusting of their colleagues' professsional behaviours,
• 93% are less trusting of colleagues who are paid to act as spokespeople.

And the beauty of all of that: only 1% of journalists believe blogs are credible... (So why do they read them, use them for their work and all that... duh!)

The survey is not publicly available yet but Yahoo carries the press release.

Thanks to Anton-Jan who pointed me to this study.

First French Blogger In Defamation Suit

Christophe Grebert becomes the first blogger in France to be sued for defamation. His blog, Monputeaux.com (a small town in Paris' suburbs) is keeping Puteaux' city council accountable for the town's management and its related expenses. Not to the liking of the town mayor though. See article in Liberation (in French). There is a mention of the case in this BBC article about blogs censorship.

That follows from the Singaporean blogger case I was mentioning in April.

Wimbledon blog

BBC sport service announced a Wimbledon tennis tournament blog to bring gossips and live comments to fans and office workers across the world. You can contribute via the “Five live message board” or via text message. I must say I am bit confused as to whether the link to the official blog brings you to the official blog (and I searched…). I saw Dot Rees blog on Wimbledon but the officially titled Live Wimbledon blog fell short of my expectations. Where are the live pictures? the facilities for comments? the blogs writers’ backgrounds?… I hope that it is early days and that the action will really kick in later as it is a great idea.

On a personal note, I am back in London after an eye-opening training course organised by WPP in sunny Connecticut. I feel all pumped-up now and probably gained 2 Kgs (I blame the snacking culture and the blaming culture for blaming the snacking culture). It feels good to be back blogging.

No updates... are you bored?

No updates lately and none for next week as I will be away, locked up in a training workshop. I have been busy preparing for that these past few days and missed up on blogging.

While waiting for my return and if you are bored you could:

- Phone someone in the office you barely know, leave your name and say "Just called to say I can't talk right now. Bye"
- Leave your zipper open for one hour. If anyone points it out, say, "Sorry, I really prefer it this way"
- Walk into a very busy person's office and while they watch you with growing irritation, turn the light switch on/off 10 times.
- Play the same CD on every stereo in the house at once. Try to synchronize them.
- Sit on the front porch with a bottle of scotch. Yell abuse at pedestrians. Say nonsense. Wave your arms. Yell. For bonus points, colour a tooth black beforehand.
- SCARE YOUR PETS!!! Then cuddle them. THEN SCARE THEM AGAIN!!! Then cuddle them. Ahh, a nice, quiet cuddle--SCARE!!! No baby, it's okay... SCARE!!! If they run away, they'll be back, for food; make sure you're ready for action when they return.


If you want to read more of these, go to Blotsort.com. It made my day.

And don't forget to vote for BeyondPR for the Marketing Sherpa's blog awards at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=333931095143

If you would prefer another PR blog to win, think of a different way than voting to show your appreciation. Maybe you could just post a "well done!" note on their blogs instead?

China Bloggers Must Register with Government

Bloggers have until the 30th of June to provide their full identity to the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry or be declared illegal. Story on BBC and BusinessWeek.

Young web users turn up the heat on MSM

The Sunday Times is carrying a great article today on how mainstream media is increasingly under threat from the online news revolution of late.

This is especially true with younger Internet users. Two interesting quotes:

• The Carnegie Corporation of New York reports that 44% of Americans aged 18 to 36 access their daily news online but only 19% read newspapers.
  
• A forthcoming survey from the Oxford Internet Institute found that 28% of Internet users watch less television.
  

The article sees a double whammy attack on established media by:

• The popularity of news aggregation services (a logical consequence of information fragmentation). Traffic to Google News increased 90% over the last year while traffic to the New York Times website fell 23%.
  
• The rise of “non-mainstream” news sources (think blogs or independent online news outlets like the memory hole).
  

The article concludes by noting that while we are entering a potential information minefield online, the man in the street will need to sharpen his critical judgment to weight stories accuracy.

It is an interesting era where the success of self-published news is driven by an increased distrust in established media – i.e. a quest for unbiased news and paradoxically by the increased popularity of opinionated news sources.

GSK Launch Blog

Niall pointed to me this morning that GSK recently launched a blog titled "Avenir de la Sante" (Future of Health) in France. I too applaud the initiative. The blog is run by Véronique Delvolvé, Public Affairs Director for GlaxoSmithKline (in France). It aims to stimulate constructive discussions about the understanding and acceptance of risks/benefits of medicine in today's society and about how the pharmaceutical industry should evolve to respond to these complex challenges. I like the fact that it allows comments and that rules for postings and discussions are clearly laid-out. That sets a precedent.

Dukes of Hazzard blog, it's fun but is it transparent?

CNN Money reports that Country Music Television hired its own blogger to promote the "Dukes of Hazzard" weeknights at a cost of US$100,000...

It is said that more than half of the jobs our children will do have not been invented yet. Looks like Corporate Blogger will be added to that list (it's an imaginary list as it hasn't been invented yet). Salary package is not bad either... It won't be long before blogging courses tout punters with claims like "tired with your job? feel undervalued? yearning for the lifestyle you truely deserve? Become a blogger and earn over US$100,000! No experience necessary. All training provided."

Steve Rubel thinks that CMT pulled a clever PR stunt but raised questions about transparency.

He is right. I have no moral dilemna about bloggers getting paid to blog, as long as they reveal their cards. It is up to the informed readers to decide what amount of credibility they would give to paid bloggers. The keyword here is "informed". Would you ask a LandRover salesman for advice on what 4WD make you should spend your money on? Probably not. But that is because you saw the LandRover logo hanging above its desk. Things are not that clear cut in the blogosphere.

You wouldn't expect anything too controversial in Hazzard county anyway. It is designed by fans for fans. Pure entertainment. But I would hope that Christopher Nelson (that's the chosen CMT blogger name) will state upfront that he is paid by CMT.

I leave you with the Dukes of Hazzard theme song, courtesy of Dukesonline.com :

Just two good old boys, never meanin' no harm...Beats all you never saw, been in trouble with the lawSince the day they was born.Straightenin' the curves, flattenin' the hills...Someday the mountain might get 'em but the law never will.Makin' their way, the only way they know how...That's just a little bit more than the law will allow.Just two good ol' boys, wouldn't change if they could,Fightin' the system like two modern-day Robin Hoods...

Boeing Launch Worldliner Blog

Lifted from NevOn: Boeing got its engineers and test pilots to write about the new 777 Worldliner in a brand new dedicated blog: Flight Test Journal.

Are Online Shoppers Naive?

64% of American adults do not know that it is legal for online stores to charge different people different prices at the same time of day for the same product. More than two-thirds of people surveyed said they believe online travel sites are required by law to offer the lowest airline prices possible.

The PDF report is available for download on the Annenberg Public Policy Centre website. CNN ran an article on it.

For the least price aware among us, Kelkoo is a good first step towards finding the best online deals and epinions is another step towards finding out what others think of these deals.

Yahoo! releases employees blogging guidelines

Jeremy Zawodny gives access to the PDF version on his very own blog. Does your company provides blogging guidelines to its employees?

Chain stores killing UK high streets? Shoppers love it.

Sorry for this off topic post but I had to get it out of my chest. The Evening Standard is featuring this report saying that 8 out of 10 shoppers in the UK believe that chain stores and supermarkets are turning high streets into bland, carbon copy of each other. The report found that 87 per cent feel locally-owned shops offer greater diversity...

Interestingly enough, a local Tesco has opened in my street a few months ago. As a result, business to the "treasured" local corner shops has more than halved. One of them will certainly close down before the end of the year. Where are all the wishful thinkers, complaining about boring high streets, invading franchises and the demise of the local butchers and fishmongers? Not in my local corner shops anymore.

There is a great saying in English: put your money where your mouth is!

60 million blogs... counting Germany?

I am lifting this interesting link from Micropersuasion. This is an attempt by "the Blog Herald" to estimate the number of bloggers per country. The stats come from various sources but it ads up to over 60 million blogs worldwide.

In Europe, we have figures from France (thanks to Skyblog - see article there) but nothing much elsewhere.

I just came back from beautiful Berlin (where I ran a workshop on new communication trends) and I am now curious to find out how many bloggers are there in Germany. I found this page stating 14,500 bloggers as of June 2004 and this one counting 42,000 German bloggers in 2005. Seems pretty understated. Or may be not?

On the same page, David (?) gives us the 10 reasons why Germans don't blog. These are my favourites, mostly pearls from the comments section:

- Humour
- The 42,000 German blogs fill the Web's hard-coded "umlaut" quota
- The would-be bloggers are too busy translating Wikipedia articles into German (apparently not a joke)
- On the internet, no one cares about someone's Dipl-X or Doktor

French reject EU constitution

Preliminary results from Lemonde.fr. 85% votes counted and 55.18% said no (at midnight). I am ashamed to be French tonight...

MSNBC Seeks Citizen Journalists

Steve Rubel reports on a forum organised by PR Newswire on journalists' relationships with bloggers. (see Steve's post on MicroPersuasion). Interesting but all the panellists are either bloggers or pro-bloggging, which makes the conclusions quite predictable.

The question as to whether blogs are a threat to MSM is still in the open. My opinion is that blogs will continue to rock established media and keep them accountable. However I do not see the mainstream media disappearing anytime soon. They will however integrate a more collaborative approach to news reporting and distribution and are already transforming in that direction.

Look at MSNBC’s citizen journalist’s initiative.

Beyond PR Nominated For Marketing Sherpa Blog Awards

Gosh... I should put a bit more effort into it then....

Thank you for the nomination and thank you for reading my rants. I'll make sure to up the quality and frequency of my posts. As the weather gets warmer in London, I thought I would suffer from a bout of blog fatigue but that gives me a good reason to carry on.

If you want to vote for me:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=333931095143

If you don't, no hard feelings. There are 6 great blogs entered in the PR category. Being nominated is already a great honour. From now on, I pledge that I won't delete these Marketing Sherpa's e-newsletter anymore and will make sure I click on all the links they care to offer.

Find Your Experts Online

www.punditpal.com is an online directory of experts, available for comments on a wide range of issues. The service is accessible via a free registration, but limited to PR professionals and journalists (there is a vetting process).

Hill & Knowlton releases blogging guidelines

We released our blogging guidelines yesterday to encourage both our staff and our clients to make better use of the medium. See the post on our guidelines on my colleague Niall's blog.We already had some coverage on Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion blog.

Below are the key points of our guidelines:

In connection with any blogging, please be mindful of the following:

• Most weblogs publish RSS feeds that others can subscribe to, so remember that others, including your colleagues, may be actively reading what you write.
• Think of what you say in your weblog in the same way as statements you might make to the media, or emails you might send to people you don’t know. If you wouldn’t include it in those, don’t post it on your weblog.
• Never disclose any information – including textual or visual material – that is confidential or proprietary to Hill & Knowlton, or any third party that has disclosed information to us (e.g. clients, journalists, suppliers, etc.). Your existing contract in any case prohibits this.
• There are many things that we cannot mention as a publicly-owned company. Talking about our revenue, future plans, or the WPP share price will get you and Hill & Knowlton in legal trouble, even if it is just your own personal view, and whether or not you directly identify yourself as an employee of Hill & Knowlton.
• You should make it clear that the views you express are yours alone. You may want to use the following form of words on your weblog, weblog posting, or website: The views expressed on this [blog; website] are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

In addition, we included some tips on how to write for and promote blogs.

Looks like I will need more space for my blogroll :-)

How to order food in a restaurant?

Jason Kottke compare tips from bestselling social trends gurus (think Blink or the "wisdom of crowds"). Sent to me by Guy. It reminds of an article I saw in a French satirical magazine ages ago that compiled various dieticians advices into one ultimate, easy-to-follow, guaranteed to slim you down diet. Eat only eggs. But don't eat the yolk, it's full of cholesterol. Don't eat the white either as it contains too much albumin. The shell should be fine though, it is full of calcium. Bon appetit.

Italian blogs scene growing since Calipari

Last Friday, I went to Milan for the second edition of our blogging workshop. I had the pleasure to meet again with Luca De Biase, an Italian journalist and blogger and Paolo Valdemarin, CEO of e-vectors (and blogger too).

From a previous post, you know that I am collecting European blog stories. Well, it seems that bloggers came to the forefront of the Italian media scene during the Calipari tragedy. When the official US report on the circumstances of his death was released, it was heavility censored. A blogger, Macchianera managed to reveal the missing/hidden text, to the delight of the mainstream media and bloggers alike. More infos on this from Blogs of War.

Needless to say that the Italian blog scene is burgeoning.

Top 20 Singapore blogs

From Singapore's first and finest satyrical website. Your blog may fit under several of these categories.

Blogger template update

Thank you to Anton who solved the problem with my template. One of my post contained too long a word (a spoof URL) and Blogger couldn't break it so pushed the sidebar at the bottom to give space to the post. Problem solved.

What's wrong with Blogger again?

Im a struggling with the Blogger.com template again. This time, my profile and all the links on the right hand sidebar are automatically pushed to the bottom of the page. It happened overnight and I cannot find anything wrong with the template I use... I republished several times to no effect, then raised a help ticket. It is a free service so I shouldn't complain too much. Have you come across similar issue? I couldn't find anything related in their help section.

Dutch blogging scene

It's very alive and kicking according to my colleague Anton. I am including a link to his blog in my blogroll.

Google offline for 15 mins!

and there are 78 articles indexed by Google news on that earth shattering news.

Gizzoogle brings work to a standstill

My friend Tristan (no blog so no link) sent me this new version of Google which has the amazing ability to bring work to a standstill for an average of 5 mins while inducing uncontrolled giggles.

Blog revolution? “Give me a break” says Nick Denton

A pretty controversial but thoroughly enjoyable interview with Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media is being widely reported because of his blog hype bashing. See the article on CNET.

Let's add more oil to the fire by commenting on some of these statements:

Nick says that a blog is "much better at tearing things down--people, careers, brands--than it is at building them up".

While I agree with the subversive impact of blogging and the fact that blogs, more often than not make the headlines by getting people fired or landing companies in reputational limbos, one has to look at how successfully companies like GM or Monster.com have integrated blogs as part of their communication drive. This is hardly about bringing a brand down. Instead, blogs act as a catalyst to foster better and more open relations between a brand and its stakeholders. Scobleizer is a perfect example on how blogs have helped put a human face on an otherwise often decried corporation and gave another dimension (positive) to a brand. But this doesn’t get the same amount of coverage that the scare stories of course.

Nick says that "The hype comes from unemployed or partially employed marketing professionals and people who never made it as journalists wanting to believe (…) They want to believe there's going to be this new revolution and their lives are going to be changed." (…) "If you take the amount of attention that has been devoted in the last year to Web logs as a business and something that's going to change business and compare that with the real effect and the real money, it's totally disproportionate."

Blogs reflect fundamental changes in the way we consume media and the way we engage with society at large. Too much attention is better than none if it put pressure on companies to understand that. Yet, I too think that there is too much hype over blogs and that could be damaging.

First, the flipside of overplaying blogs’ potential as reputation breakers leads to many companies have difficulties seeing how they could use blogs in a constructive manner.

Second, adding a blog to the mix could creates more damages than good if communication strategy, guidelines and infrastructure is not reviewed in accordance beforehand. HP David Gee's story on the vanishing comment is a good example. Anyone who sees blog as the only answer to all communication problems has way too much vested interest in the industry.

Finally, the share of attention vs. share of wallet brings the welcome issue of blogs ROI. While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence I think that the real metrics are still in the making. It’s easy to measure popularity but much harder to measure influence.

Nick says "There are too many people looking at blogs as being some magic bullet for every company's marketing problem, and they're not," (…) "It's Internet media. It's just the latest iteration of Internet media."

It’s Internet and there is no denying that a media ( r ) evolution is happening. The hype could contribute to make it a self fulfilling prophecy and that wouldn’t be a bad thing after all. What strikes me is that it took so long for it to materialise.

The most boring blog in the world

I am a great fan of the self titled "dullest blog in the world" and noticed that they resumed posting after a 6 months break. An extract: "I was in a room carrying out some routine activities. I began to consider playing some music on the stereo system. I looked at some compact discs for a while, but didn't put one on. "

Vespa takes the fastlane

Vespa is launching two lifestyle blogs in the US. The program will be managed by Steve Rubel following CopperKatz's appointment to manage US PR for the brand.

More details on the program: http://www.vespablogs.com/

See Steve's announcement.

Hats off.

Google to rank sources reputation?

My friend Niall sent me this article from the New Scientist highlighting Google’s plan to rank its news search results according to the credibility of the sources.

At present, results are ranked according to a complex formula including relevance, popularity, date and keyword occurrence. In the future, Google plans to fact in the number of stories issued by news sources as well as “average story length, number with bylines, and number of the bureaux cited, along with how long they have been in business. Google's database will also keep track of the number of staff a news source employs, the volume of internet traffic to its website and the number of countries accessing the site”.

From ZDNET India: “The company goes on to describe how content published by news outlets such as CNN and BBC, or companies that are "widely regarded as high quality sources of accuracy of reporting, professionalism in writing," may be of greater interest to its customers, and therefore should top news search results.”

And that could be extended to search results too:

“The patent also reveals that the same system could be roped in to rank other search results, not simply news.”

It is good news for companies who struggle to protect their online reputation (the likelihood of bumping into www.boycottdelta.org will be more remote). EBay does use sellers’ reputation successfully and it forces everyone to behave. It’s about transparency and it’s an increasingly valuable currency.

But I am not too sure if I like this idea…

It will prevent newcomers and start-ups to compete on an equal footing with large established business. On the blogs side, it means consolidation where established blogs will take most of the visibility, making it harder for new bloggers to be seen and heard. It also means that established media will keep their stronghold on news and information and that whistleblowers and independent media will be pushed down the rankings.

At least this is my initial reaction, pending further information on what the formula to measure authority and credibility entails.

Singaporean student shuts blog after libel threat

Reporters Without Borders says a student in Singapore was forced to shut down his blog this week for fear of a libel action by the head of a government body. Article on the New Zealand herald.

See the official apology from Singaporean bloggers Acid Flask.

10 million Blogs!

Blogpulse now references 10 million blogs. An interesting fact I lifted from their announcement is that only 51% of them are active (someone posted something in the last 90 days).
Congratulations as well to their marcomm department for sending a pre-announcement to bloggers.

UK Election Blogs

The UK election is in full swing and although I am not allow to vote, I enjoy following the campaigns and debating issues with my friends and colleagues. The 3 majour parties haven't made a clever use of the web so far but there are some attempts to win voters through some straight blog talking:

Labour Party
Conservative
Liberal Democrats

I could not write a better review of these blogs than Brian Wheeler on the BBC site.

Blogs Will Change Your Business

Business Week is running a cover story on blogs. You will not learn anything knew but the article is well written and contains all the usual tales of the blogosphere (from Captain Morgan, Dan Rather, GM, Netflix to the "Queen of the sky" and the tsunami).

The fact that the magazine is pushing it on its front page will hopefully act as a wake-up call for businesses and "communication professionals" who still think that what happens on a computer screen only matters to geeks. The authors are introducing their new blog as well, which will be about: blogs.

On another note, I just came back from Brussels (where I did a presentation on blogs to some of my European colleagues) and it struck me that all these blogs scare and success stories are US based. Where are the juicy European bloggers stories?

Online UK Election Predictor

My UK colleagues created this neat application, in collaboration with our Public Affairs practice to help visualise how percentage gains for each political parties at the election will impact the number of seats they hold in the House of Commons. If you are interested in UK politics, you can run simulations and get daily campaign coverage updates.

What exactly is Blogpulse counting?

I am a casual user of Blogpulse for trends graphs and while preparing for a presentation, I suddenly wondered what Blogpulse was actually measuring on its "Trend Search" charting tool.

For example, see that dummy graph I created (I was hungry). The X axis is time, and I guess the unit is a day. But what is the Y axis?

It says "Percent of all Blogs". What does that mean? Does Blogpulse counts the number of blogs mentioning my keywords or the number of occurence of these keywords across all blogs for a particular day?

I looked on the site and on the FAQs but no mention of the methodology.

I talked to a few people I know who use Blogpulse and no one knew.

A picture is worth a thousand links

Buzztracker is a software that visualizes frequencies and relationships between locations mentioned in articles from the Google world news directory.

Newsmap provides a visual layer, similar to some stock markets movements visualisation tools, over Google news and graphically shows the stories with the largest volume of coverage. You can even narrow down headlines per countries (covered by Google News only).

Both services are free.

Breakfast Bytes

My Australian colleagues run regular seminars called "Breakfast Bytes" on blogs and new communication technologies. I love the format, the energy and the fun.

Carat launches blogs service

"The agency is giving advertisers the opportunity to extend their online ads by placing ads on blogs or blog networks. It will also offer clients a service where it will create a blog to encourage communication between the brand and customer and understand what is being said about a brand within the blogging community." Story on Digital Bulletin.

Oh dear... looks like Captain Morgan will have many siblings soon.

Are we seeing the last days of blogs without pop-ups, sponsored links, banners and "near missed" contextual ads?

This is my opinion. Sponsored by...

Journalists support Apple bloggers

Eight US newspapers and the Associated Press agency have thrown their support behind three bloggers sued by Apple. Full story on the BBC.

The blogger with no name.

Blogs are getting increasingly popular and it is now safe to assume that if you dish about your boss or colleagues on a blog, you will be found out.

Fortunately, the EEF is giving away tips on how to blog anonymously. A quick summary here:

1. Use a Pseudonym and Don't Give Away Any Identifying Details
2. Use Anonymising Technologies
3. Limit Your Audience
4. Don't Be Googleable

I wanted to find out if blogs were the ultimate catharsis for abused employees:

No.

Google to Start Video Blog

Google has announced that it will soon start a video blogging service, where users can archive their video clips.

Trust MEdia: Edelman and Intelliseek categorise bloggers

Edelman and Intelliseek released a white paper on the impact of blogs.

Titled: “Trust MEdia: How Real People Are Finally Being Heard” , the paper is available in PDF for download from Intelliseek (you must register first) or from Edelman.

One of the highlight is a catalog of popular blogs organised by categories. The classification methodology is described but I would be curious to see the difference in popularity between bloggers within a same category. For example, if you use number of links as a criteria for "popularity" and check out some blogs using technorati, then rank them, you will find huge gaps in the number of links between them.

In consumer tech, Engadget has 10,534 links and is most linked blog. Using this technique, I found that the 3rd most popular is Doc Searls with 5,240 links (half the links within 3 ranks only). PDC bloggers would be the 7th most popular but has 170 links only. What a drop! It goes downhill from there.

I am curious to see whether this is a pattern across all categories where you will only have 3 to 4 star bloggers with loads of links then a huge drop in number of links for the others.

Overall, I must say that the report is a good read and provides compelling arguments for marketers to warm up to blogs.

Should Captain Morgan Walk The Plank?

My friend Guy sent me this link to Captain Morgan Rum’s blog. I don’t know the brand (I don’t think they sell in Europe) but it looks like an easy sell for an ad agency: the brand has character, speaks its mind and a blog would be the perfect setting to “create a community of interest around the brand values to generate positive WOM”.

What amused me most is not the blog per say, it’s pretty dull but the string of conversations about this blog complaining how lame it is.

I think it is less bad that the Mazda experiment as at least it allows for comments, and there are regular postings. Although there are some speculations on how such new blog got so many comments so quickly. Gus thinks that Captain Morgan should thank the agency’s “assistants, interns, secretaries, college students, elance or maybe just one guy/gal with a strong pot of coffee and a really wild imagination.” I would agree with that.

Noah Brier comments that it’s not a blog as it has no RSS feed. It’s an interesting point. I read this survey from Blogads who polled over 30,000 bloggers and found that 72% of respondents never read blogs through RSS.

The lack of RSS didn’t bother me too much but I was irritated by three things:

- The Captain do not reply to comments on his blog. This is hardly surprising. Ad agencies are so used to shout loud about products that they became death and as such can’t hear what customers say anymore. I would think that DM and PR agencies do a better job at sustaining dialogs.
- To post a comment, you have to register and provide too many details. It’s like opening the floodgate to a tide of unwanted junk mails. The incentive to provide my home address needs to be stronger than a post on a blog.
- When you post a comment, you get a nice message saying: “Comment Posted! Since I'm busy with the Blog AND maintaining a full-time party schedule, your posting might not show up right away. So, cut me some slack and have a little patience... - The Captain”. That’s a nice way to say: wait until our moderator wakes up and he will see whether your comments are flattering enough to be included”. That’s lame.

So should Captain Morgan walk the plank? If you take it as a commercial blog and therefore have very low expectations, it is not too bad in its category. But ultimately time will decide. When the ad agency’s interns will cease to be incentivised to keep it alive, it will be up to the good decent Internet people to judge. The ones who don’t bother giving up their home address so they can have a discussion with a bottle of rum.

Who Blogs? Bloggers Demographic Survey

A really interesting suvey from BlogAds who polled over 30,000 bloggers. Quite a few surprises:

• 75% of bloggers are male, over 30 years old.
• 43% have household revenue of over US$90,000.
• Only 4.7% of bloggers are under 20 years old…. That shoots down a marketing myth: “blogs, oh yeah… I heard about that… we’ll definitely look into it for our youth offer…”
• 1 out of 4 respondents claim to dedicate 20% of “media time » to blogs.
• Finally, only 27.6% of respondents use RSS… most will read blogs as they do websites.

More politicians write blogs to bypass mainstream media

Great although not very deep article on how politicians use blogs to reach their current/future constituents. Blogs convey a feeling of intimacy (like reading someone's diary) and politicians know that they can leverage blogs better than traditional websites or newspapers when it comes to make their views and opinions more likeable.

IBM, Spam and Spammers

IBM is set to unveil a service Tuesday that will send unwanted e-mails back to the spammers who send them. It is reminiscent of the Lycos Europe initiative, albeit the latter was more of a PR stunt than a serious attempt to address the problem. As usual, the arguments against such approach are the added load to the network. The service is said to return the spam directly back to the computer, not just the e-mail account, that sent it. I guess that would have been handy to Mark Mumma, a web designer/hosting provider who is beeing sued by Cruise.com after he asked them to stop spamming him... read his account of the story here.

EuroDisney Blog University Postponed

The New Communications Forum scheduled for the 5th/6th of April at Eurodisney has been postponed.

No reasons why on the official website. I was interested to attend and maybe contribute to the forum but unfortunately my email and phone calls to the organisers were left unanswered... could it be a communication problem?

Yahoo jumps on the blogwagon

Yahoo is launching its blogging offer: Yahoo 360 on March 29 by invitation only. The service is expected to integrate existing products such as instant messenger and groups. Users will have the option to restrict viewership of their blogs.

Blog, un’opportunità o una minaccia?

I just came back from a conference on blogging organised by our Italian colleagues of Digital PR in Milan. The event was well attended which shows that blogging is definitely top of mind for communication professional across Europe.

Program was as follow:

1. Alberto Mari, the author of “Blog e Wiki” spoke about blogs, how they work and how they differ from websites or newsgroups.
2. Vincenzo De Tommaso from Digital PR gave us an overview of blogging in the Italian market.
3. I presented on corporate blogs, starting from why blogs are so successful to how corporations could use them. I will upload a copy of the presentation soon so stay tuned…
4. Luca De Biase, a journalist and lecturer at the University of Padova talked about blogs impact in the media landscape.

Or at least, this is what I understood :-)

During the event, I also had the pleasure to meet with Paolo Valdemarin from evectors. They sell RSS feeds solutions, notably to the BBC.

There is a blog on the event but it is only available in Italian. See comments from one attendee (there is an automatic English translation available).

Apple 1, Bloggers 0.

Apple has won its legal fight to make three bloggers reveal who told them about unreleased products. Full story on EFF website.

How do people read search engine results?

A joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of web surfers viewing Google search result pages.

They found that the first 3 listings get 100% attention, sites ranked 6th gets 50% attention while sites ranked 8th get only 30% attention. Anything below that is almost ignored.

The sponsored links ranked 1st and 2nd get 50% and 40% attention respectively while anything after 4th is almost not seen by the user.

A screenshot of viewing patterns can be seen here.

RSS Ads

Morever and Kanoodle recently launched FeedDirect RSS Ads. The service insert contextual ads into RSS feeds (like Google AdSense) and feed owners get paid by clicks. More details about the service here.

Bloggers are not journalists (at least in the US)

The preliminary ruling of the Apple Vs. Bloggers states that bloggers should not have the same protection afforded to journalists under US law. See BBC article and CNet article.

Is Blogging Good For The Brain?

Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide, physicians with a national referral practice for children with learning difficulties look at how blogging promotes creative, analogical and analytical thinking.

I feel a lot better now.

Chicken or Egg?

Neville Hobson commented on my posting on content & network following Blogging Planet’s launch (and gave me a great tip on how to set-up trackbacks on blogger with haloscan on the way).

My argument is that while it is difficult to have popular content without a network, it is even more difficult to build and sustain a network without popular content. I refer to “content” as articles, services, links or ongoing conversations. This extensive definition as opposed to articles alone could be the reason why our opinions appear to differ.

Blogging Planet uses the term “ecosystem” when referring to bloggers network. It is absolutely spot-on. One of the reason bloggers form networks is because they can extract value from their interactions. Members of such ecosystem play different roles and feed on each others. Some produce content, some comment upon others, some aggregate and relay information. The ecosystem works because they all contribute and benefit from it (traffic, recognition, dissemination of ideas, etc…).

I, like many others list NevOn in my blogroll because I think Neville writes thought provoking articles and because his blog often reference materials I like to read, thus saving me the hassle to find them elsewhere. On top of this, the comments I make on his articles allow me to get noticed, thus growing my own network and benefiting from the traffic to his blog. If the quality or frequency of NevOn’s articles were to drop, or if he suddenly shifted his focus to 15th century Norwegian poetry, I, like other members of his network could have less incentive to link to his blog as the interaction value will diminish. By loosing content he would loose his network too.

I therefore think that a content strategy is central to help reach the influencers and relays you need to build a network designed to fulfil your communication objectives. Content is what fuel your network and allows it to live and grow.

It’s an interesting academic discussion anyway: what comes first? Content or Network?

Harvard Business Review on Blogs

The February edition of the Harvard Business Review endorses business blogs in its list of 2005 breakthrough with an article from technology marketing guru Mohanbir Sawhney.

7 Rules for Highly Effective PR Blogs

The Blog Herald has a useful and insightful article on how PROs should deal with bloggers. I would add that bloggers are very marketing aware (I dare to say cynics) so it's best to be very open about your motives and not to expect them to react the same way your journalists do. They do not have an editorial line to follow or advertisers to pamper. That’s why their opinions are so popular!

Blogging Planet: show me the content!

Elizabeth Albrycht, co-producer of the New Communications Forum, Christophe Ducamp – Founder of Elanceur, Guillaume du Gardier, founder of the CEO Bloggers Club and Neville Hobson, a communication practitioner who blogs daily at NevOn have launched Blogging Planet.

Blogging Planet offers consulting and training for corporations interested in using blogs, wiki or podcast to support their communication.

While I love their concept of "ecosystem", I was stuck by the following comment: “it is the medium -- the network you build -- that matters, not the message -- the content.”

While they may purposely downplay the value of network over content to emphasize their point, I would argue that good content is still key to create a good network.

Making corporations aware of the ecosystem surrounding them is an excellent thing and many executives will be fascinated to see how messages are relayed and amplified in the blogosphere. The question is what role these corporations want to play in this ecosystem? It obviously depends on their communication needs but most companies are looking to benefit from the thought leadership deriving from authoring or aggregating content.

Increased links to a company websites or blogs will certainly increase search engine ranking but why should someone link to a website at the first place if there is no interesting content there to be found?

I am on vacation...

... for 2 weeks to celebrate the Chinese new year so I won't be posting on this blog till the 18th of February. In the meantime, while not browse past articles?

Gong Xi Fa Cai.

Corporate blogs: the rise of the CEO blogger

It seems that there is some peer pressure to join the CEO bloggers club going on among our captain of industries. The senior executives of Jupiter Media, Sun or HP have all taken to blogging and the trend is moving to other industry sectors.

Last month, General Motors became the first large scale, non-technology company to get senior executives blogging, thanks to Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and other GM corporate management. See FastLane

Last week, Randy Baseler, VP of Marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, has started Randy's Blog. His latest post, commenting on the launch of the A380 ends up with an open question: how do you want to fly?

Unfortunately, this is a question that will be left unanswered, as there are no options to post any comments on his blog. There are no links to outside sources either.

Monologues (or monoblogs?) are a common trait amongst corporate blogs as PR departments face a real dilemma when senior execs decide to open their own communication line.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

First, there is so much limitation as to what the highest custodian of a public limited company’s interests can write on, both from a legal and competitive point of view that CEO blogs make for some rather dull reading. They tend to turn into another version of the monthly motivational email or echo corporate brochures.

If you don’t invite comments, people will think that you are afraid to hear what your stakeholders really think and many will accuse you of mistaking a blog with a letter to your shareholders. If you invite readers’ comments, you could fall into a minefield and spend too much time defending your positions to inquisitive bloggers. Some could accuse you of devoting too much time away from the business. If you get someone else to write your blog, sooner or later someone will find out, it will leak to the media and it will backfire.

Finally if you don’t blog, or at least announce that you plan to, you will be unfavourably compared to your more technology conversant and customer centric competitors.

To blog or not to blog?

Blogs offer up-to-the minute opinionated comments and information. Do it only if you have a genuine motivation, can commit the time and if you can fit within a blog format and tone. A CEO is a company’s ultimate salesman and there are plenty of interesting topics to comment on such as products innovations or where you see your industry heading to. In that respect, both GM and Boeing are doing a good job.
The press and industry analysts will be among the keenest readers, which mean that your blog will be one of the first points of contact in time of crisis. This is where you can use blogs’ personal feel and speed of publishing to your advantage.

As to inviting comments, one option is to warn your readers that for obvious reasons, you cannot reply to every enquiries and comments. Unless you have the resources, the stamina and it is done in close collaboration with your communication department, readers postings on a CEO blog are not essential. But I would recommend leaving a communication channel open and clearly state how these comments or queries are handled if not by you.

You are now one step closer to the CEO bloggers club.

The bootstrapper's bible

If like me you are frantically looking for a free copy of Seth Godin's latest book, "The bootstrapper's bible", you can still find it on Chris Busch's blog. Buy a hard-copy as well!

Google launches TV search

Google has launched a beta version of a new search application allowing users to search US TV shows via keywords. It displays the script and a still frame of the TV moment when the keyword was mentioned. Great application for media monitoring.

Gmail invitation

I have 2 spare Gmail invitations to give away. First come first served basis. Besides altruistic motives, I am keen to see how much traffic such a prized incentive will drive to this blog :-) If you are interested to check Gmail before everyone else does, such invitations are available as well on ebay or on newsgroups (search with today’s date as they are snapped quickly).

Charting the blogosphere

I am looking for some applications to monitor and analyze issues and trends discussed in blogs and provide a graphical representation (share of voice, trends over time, most popular topics etc…). So far I came across Blogpulse , which allow easy creation of trend graphs across 3.5 millions blogs and Waypath offering something similar although their application is down at the moment. Have you come across something similar?

On a totally unrelated subject and because I love travelling, World66 has a neat application allowing you to generate a map of all the countries you have visited.

Blinkx searches video content online

Search engine Blinkx, who shot to fame with its clustering technology recently unveiled Blinkx.tv, a video search engine allowing you to retrieve footages broadcasted on some major TV channels via keywords. Blinkx claims that it can pinpoint the results of the search to the exact video segment. I wonder if Netflix or Blockbuster would be considering selling movie segments in the future... Broadband penetration is gathering pace and if TV programs are “googled” and no longer watched, the traditional broadcasting-advertising model will need some serious rethinking.

Marketing to Online Communities

A common misconception in the PR industry is that marketing to online communities can be effectively summarised by: going into a group remotely related to your target audience, pretending to be a satisfied customer who cannot resist sharing his love for brand X with the world, posting a “too good to be missed” offer and disappearing, never to be seen again.

This “hit and run” tactic does achieve something: your brand wasn’t mentioned in a newsgroup, now it is. We should therefore assume a level of positive and targeted exposure and if we are lucky, some click-through.

Unfortunately, these “satisfied customers” often get found out as “genuine fakes” and because it is a deceptive technique, it often backfires. Remember that posting a promotional offer in a newsgroup outside the context of a discussion in which you are involved in is considered spam. Community users hate that since it parasite their conversation. They will scrutinise your promotion and tear it apart, then discourage others to join. Community managers hate that too as it deteriorates the quality of their discussion environment and may ban you from the group. Your brand will certainly be mentioned, along a host of criticisms, sneers and negative comments. You may achieve a small spike in traffic but you will suffer a bid drop in reputation.

It is often preferable to work with the community administrator or webmaster as your first point of contact for advice on how to make the best of your interaction with the group. If no webmaster or administrator is available, you should identify opinion leaders within the group. Opinion leaders are the most prolific and referred to community members. Engaging them is usually done by creating an “ambassador” program and incentivising them with exclusive previews, goodies or VIP passes in return for their opinions and help in promoting to the group. If they buy into your program, they will endorse and relay messages for you.

As you would expect, many will take the opportunity of your presence to vent their anger against your company and products. You must be prepared for negative feedback. Whatever you do, always ensure that all your actions embody the brand you represent.

As a rule of thumb, try to get productively involved with the group before, during and after you start your campaign. You will gather valuable insights as to what people say about your brand, uncover the discussion dynamics, identify the influencers and the followers and find a good way to contribute to the group while following your own agenda. Building a lasting network of supporters is more likely to bear fruits over the long term than pushing your brand name to an unwilling and unreceptive audience. The latter is akin to setting a haystack in fire. It creates a spectacular ball of fire and lots of smokes but doesn’t last very long… and if the wind suddenly blows in your direction, you’ll end up badly burnt.

Advertisers not sold to blogs

Blogs are making headlines again today. According to a survey by the venerable Pew Internet and American Life Project, blog readership jumped 58% in the last year.

The mediapost has an interesting article where advertising executives were asked to comment on this report. In a nutshell, they are left unimpressed and give a catalogue of reasons ranging from "clients are too cautious" to "who is interested in lifestyle blogs?". The most striking comment comes from Carat Insight: "It's yet to be seen whether blogs keep up the momentum now that the political season is beyond us"…

It reads like the final nail in the coffin for bloggers :-)

Remember, ad executives were the very people who dismissed the Internet in the mid nineties only to wake up when they realised that their clients weren't spending millions of dollars on online campaigns with them.

But they raise an interesting point: are blogs a good advertising medium?

My take on that is no. Not in the traditional way we see (and ad executives see) advertising. Blogs are probably better at influencing opinions than shifting boxes on the short term.

But they can help not to sell. Just look at the number of blogs complaining about product defects, poor customer services or shedding light on some shady business practices. 58% more people are reading them compared to last year. That must account for some “attitudinal shift”.

Blogs are part of a changing environment, where thanks to the Internet and increasingly marketing savvy consumers, a more intricate web of relations, advices, information, messages, opinions and influences is formed during the purchasing process.

They contribute to what Don Tapscott in his book “The Naked Corporation” calls the age of transparency, where customers, journalists and stakeholders are gaining unprecedented access to information and scrutinise corporations’ behaviours. Blogs allow them to share that information quickly and widely, bypassing traditional media. While I may be impressed by the might of an ad campaign, I, like most internet users will be exposed to enough counter information to balance my judgement.

Blogs don't help sell but they help buy.

Blogs aid disaster recovery

A moving article from the BBC online on how survivors and witnesses of the horrific tsunami that devasted Asia used blogs to keep their friends and the world informed.

Parasitic Blogs?

Wired released its 2005 wish list, with plenty of insightful suggestions. One which particularly struck me was that bloggers shouldn't just rehash news from other media, but instead create their own news.

It makes a lot of sense.

While it could be helpful to provide a thematic aggregator service and point to articles that readers may have missed on other publications, a copy-and-paste authoring style adds little value to a topic one would like to promote or share.

As a New Year resolution, I am pledging to publish here as much original content as possible.

Better luck next life

For whose of you who feel too old to roam Habbo hotel’s corridors, why not subscribe to Second Life instead? Second life, dubbed the new generation of online community allows its members to create their own characters, build their homes and live the virtual life of their dreams, be it as a rock star, a real estate tycoon or just a nice neighbour.

If you couldn't make it in this life, build yourself another life! and you even don't have to pay for a backstreet plastic surgeon and a Panamanian passport. More seriously, I find the concept of Second Life fascinating, despite that it reminds me of the Matrix so much.

I you are interested in branding/marketing within online communities and virtual worlds, I would be very keen to hear from you to exchange best practice.

In Care of the Community

I just came back from my annual lecture on e-marketing at the University of Metz.

Apart from increasing my cholesterol level with local fatty delicacies, this yearly pilgrimage is the opportunity to shut off from the pressure of the real world and to re-enter the more benign alter reality of the academia.

I have been doing these lectures since 1999 and I find it interesting to see how motivation, interests and the “buzz” evolve among new generations of Internet professionals. This year was particularly inspiring as my students came from very diverse backgrounds (an army submariner, a Cisco engineer, some advertising new business chaps…). They had a lecture on online journalism and were all switched on by blogs and online marketing.

We talked about the media landscape evolving from “mass media” to “we media”, contextual marketing (think Google Adsense, geo-localisation…) and online communities. On the latter, they were particularly interested in how brands were trying to “infiltrate” online communities.

Sulake’s Habbo hotel is one of my favourite examples of successful online community. Providing a safe virtual environment for teenagers to socialise, it opened in January 2001 and now counts over 2.5 millions members across Europe, Canada, US and Japan.

Some forward thinking companies have already tapped into this captive audience to create an “immersive branding” experience for promotional purposes:

Clearasil created a “Face of the Future” model competition and promoted it via the hotel’s cinema room and through pre-programmed Habbo characters talking about the event. As a result, the clickthrough to the Clearasil website was 22 per cent higher than parallel campaigns using “regular online promotion”. Over half of a sample of 5,200 Habbo members said their opinion of the brand had improved.

Momentum Pictures promoted Britney’s Crossroads movie through online billboards, internal messages via the Habbo mail console and exclusive posters for sale to adorn the walls of virtual apartments. In addition, it created a Karaoke event and staff on the site encouraged Habbo users to take to the stage and talk about the movie’s release.

Habbo’s immersive branding has seen higher response rates than traditional banners and pop-ups, with click-through rates of more than 20 per cent through its billboards.

Marketing to online communities is about providing user value, abiding by the community rules and understanding groups and online discussion dynamics. In short, it’s not easy, time consuming but increasingly indispensable to connect with otherwise fragmented and hard to reach audiences. And as the results from Habbo’s campaigns can testify: it works.

As Steve Outing, a senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies sums up: “Kids today expect to interact with their media". Community marketing is definitely a growing trend and when today’s kids will grow up, it will be part of every marketer’s toolbox.

Lycos Europe: stay tuned

Lycos Europe "make love not spam" has been rather shortlived (a quicky?).

Apparently, the chorus of negative comments from the industry and the threat of litigation brought the iniative to an halt.

Another speculation, from a security company is that one of the website on Lycos' blacklist redirected traffic to www.makelovenotspam.com . Lycos Europe could have unintentionally affected its own website...

Spammers may have won the battle but could Lycos have won a PR war to position itself as THE consumer champion?

Spammers: redeem or perish!

Lycos Europe released a screensaver which when installed on your computer, bombard a list of known spammer's servers with data to overload them.

Apparently, Lycos' tactics are dividing the web community, with many saying that it sets a dangerous precedent and could incite vigilantism. Others question the legality of the process as well.

Posting on a geek.com forum:

"All the significant spammers are in the USA. The US government passed the "You CAN spam" `law' a year ago, and has done absolutely nothing useful about it in all that time. The internet parasite spammers have destroyed e-mail as an efficient means of communication, and anything which might help to reverse this state of affairs can only be good. Are we internet users supposed to sit back and let the spammers rule the internet without even a whimper?"

Steve Linford, director of non-profit anti-spam organisation Spamhaus:

"It's irresponsible of Lycos to put its name to it because it lends legitimacy to [DDoS] attacks," "You can't break into a thief's house just because he breaks into yours. We don't support this or recommend this practice. Directing traffic is part of the degradation of the Internet we are trying to stop."

In the war against spam, I don't know if Lycos’ tactics are effective, ethical or even legal. But I am sure it must feel good.

2004: the year of the blog

According to Merriam-Webster, the dictionary publisher, "blog" headed the list of most looked-up terms on its site during the last twelve months. The word will appear in the 2005 edition.

Official definition:

BLOG noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

Talking about hyperlinks, here is their announcement.

In Blog We Trust: the art of micro persuasion

I wrote a short article to help blog virgin companies learn why and how they should integrate blogs in their communication plan.

See the article here

The "how to" can be summarised as:

1. Know your audience
Include blogs in your communication mix, if only to listen to what consumers say about you and your competitors.

2. Breach the trust gap
Bloggers will be naturally suspicious of any sales pitch. If you want to work with established blogs, make sure you are open and honest about who you are, why you are contacting them, what relationship you are looking for and why you value their opinion. Do not take bloggers for granted. Heavy handed or sneaky tactics will backfire and you will turn an advocate into a fiery opponent.

3. Engage in genuine partnership
If your brand is fortunate enough to have bloggers praising its merits, treat them like you would journalists. After all, your devoted blogger may have a bigger following than your favourite daily paper. Be lavish on exclusive product reviews, invitations, exclusive communication programs… But make sure you have been through tip 2 first.

4. DIY with caution
Creating your own blog might be an option provided that your brand has a following, a strong personality and plenty of interesting or fun things to say on a regular basis. As in all good communication, providing user value is key if you want consumers to engage with you. A blog updated every 2 months is a dead end and will damage your brand.

A blog could help give a personal dimension to some activities your company is engaged in. Think CSR for example with a diary of your teams’ efforts in a developing country or generating buzz around product release with your engineers reporting their progress and sharing some insights with aficionados (Microsoft’ employees write more than 700 blogs on these topics).
Equally, blogs can be effective in strengthening or raising an executive’s profile (http://prplanet.typepad.com/ceobloggers/) or helping assess authority in a sector.

Finally, whatever routes you take, encourage audience participation: blogs are collaborative efforts. If you would like to stimulate positive discussion about your brand, you must be prepared to open a two way communication channel.