Kiva offers charitable micro-loans to small businesses in developing world.

Seth Godin reports on Kiva, a service connecting private lenders and enterprises in need of micro-loans, mostly in Uganda (for the moment). The site is the brainchild of Matthew (entrepreneur) and Jessica Flannery (MBA student). You can loan anything from $25 onwards and you will get it repaid by instalment over a period of time. Kiva gets its revenue from donation and keeping interests from loans, if and when interests are charged. See current businesses looking for loan.

The Grameen bank had a similar initiative in the late 90s and is still considered as the largest micro-credit organisation (besides the World Bank). Loan repayment rate is very high (apparently close to 95%). Interests rate charged on micro-credit could reach 20%.

More about micro-finance from the UN.

The Virtual Handshake

Over a month ago, David Teten emailed me and asked me to review a new book he co-wrote with Scott Allen: “The Virtual Handshake”. I usually get a dozen email requests per week, mostly press release about some obscure IT company announcing some technical breakthrough or the water conservation board of North Dakota launching a blog. I usually bin them (with all due respect), or if in a bad mood, I reply with an appropriate: “who cares?” But I was enticed by the offer of a free book and David’s email wasn’t the usual hard sell, anonymous stuff I learned to discard in my newfound blogging minor celebrity.

I accepted and received the book 2 weeks later. I felt obliged to read it.

To my relief,”The Virtual Handshake” is not another “Let’s talk about Kryptonite” story. In fact, it is not about blogging but about networking, both face-2-face and online (although the emphasis is on the latter).

It starts by explaining the values of networks and how they have been, and increasingly are instrumental to individual and group success. It then provides with a practical, step-by-step guide on how to build a credible virtual self, build-up a network and sustain it. I found that David and Scott Allen really worked hard to cover all means of connection, including instant messaging, social software, email, company alumni…and of course blogs.

Because the book tries to cover everything associated with networking, readers more familiar with the topic might find it sometimes pedantic. I also find that advice on how to use networks for marketing purpose (from a business pow) a bit light. Nonetheless, the book drives good points regarding sales (don’t sell but help other buy and value relations for their long term benefits instead of going for a quick shot). It is packed with practical advice, I enjoyed reading it, I learned a few things on the way and I plan to put some of its recommendations in practice. Good reference book for anyone interested in the “how to do it” side of networking. You can read more about the book here and make up your own mind.

Measuring Blogs ROI: Links, Comments Or Both?

Yesterday, Steve Rubel posted on the links vs. mentions debate between Doc Searls and Steve Gillmor. Steve boiled it down to how best to measure corporate blogs ROI. I will not carry-on the baseball analogy as I don’t understand baseball (it is similar to cricket except that they don’t serve Pimms during breaks I gathered). I am not sure I understand the link v. comment debate either. Surely you need both, whatever your reason for blogging is.

Using links as a measure of popularity is based on the assumptions that if readers like what you write, and have a blog, and are so inclined, they will point to your blog. On the premise that there are more blogs readers than blogs writers, that discards quite a lot of your potential audience. Having lots of links to your blog doesn’t necessarily mean having lots of readers too. I am sure that most people who kindly linked to Beyond PR sometimes over the last year and half don’t religiously turn up to my every post. They could just be reading my feed, or, heaven forbids, have forgotten about my blog. It seems to me, but I wait to be corrected that links are used as a default currency since there are no other easily available metrics to measure blogs popularity. Nonetheless, links send traffic to your blog, maximise your readership and gets you ranked higher in Technorati so others would think you are popular thus worth reading.

Mentions show that someone actually bothered to read what you wrote. It is a good way to start conversation too (isn’t it what blogs were set-up for at the first place?). However a mention without a link puts a barrier for others who would like to join the conversation as they will have to find your your post on their own. Why make their life difficult?

So how about a link + mention combo… I would go for that! But if you want to make me even happier: post a comment or send me an email.

Create your own social application with Ning

Ning is a free online service (they call it “a Playground”) for people to build and run social applications. The code is open source and there are some applications already there for others to use, clone and redevelop. In short, they allow you to create your own craiglist, your own Zagat (restaurant reviews), your own Flickr…

Via Richard MacManus

Videoblogger? Become an ad producer and earn $100.

In my post yesterday about the video iPod I mentioned that companies will bypass TV networks and produce ready commercials and short clips for podcasts. My question was who will produce these clips? Ad agencies? Interactive agencies? The newcomers in CGM?

coBRANDiT, the “world's first open-source documentary ad agency” produce such clips. I like their approach: “The use of documentary advertising is predicated on the belief that 1) Consumers are interested in seeing their peers interact with the brand or product in real life environments and situations, 2) Consumers are interested in behind-the-scenes information relating to brands and activities they care about, and 3) Consumers want to participate in the creation and marketing of great products and brands. (…) Documentary advertising can be taken one step further by soliciting consumer generated media (CGM) content-- in effect creating what might be termed open-source documentary advertising.”

They are inviting readers to submit their own clips. And will pay $100 for each acceptable submissions. Here are the guidelines: “Make a video about a brand or product you love from one of these categories: Beer, Gear, or Cars, and make it good. We don't want ad concepts--we want a slice of life. Stylized, silly, serious...it's up to you. Keep it real, and keep it clean (no smut).”

State of the Blogosphere: Technorati reports

• Technorati is now tracking 19.6 million weblogs
• The total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months
• The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, with no signs of letup in growth
• About 70,000 new weblogs are created every day
• About a new weblog is created each second
• 2% - 8% of new weblogs per day are fake or spam weblogs
• Between 700,000 and 1.3 million posts are made each day
• About 33,000 posts are created per hour, or 9.2 posts per second
• An additional 5.8% of posts (or about 50,000 posts/day) seen each day are from spam or fake blogs, on average

See Dave Sifry's post.

Video iPod to launch new fame era for podcasters, marketers and reality TV fans.

CNN is running an article on how Apple’s video iPod could kick start a wave of amateur videocasts. With the price of digital video cameras dropping, broadband usage and video editing software getting more user friendly, it will not be long before budding directors or reality TV celebrity wannabes start filling up the digital airwaves. The implications for marketers and brands will depend on the scale of this new CGM trend:

• RSS feeds will include videocasts (see ANT), search engines will index clips (see Google Video) and new service will help you tag them (see blogtelevision),
• Initially, audience will fragment further thanks to the availability of niche programs, produced by passionates for enthusiasts. Will traditional TV broadcast audience drop as a result? Yes, especially generation Y and X viewers (the former already spend more time on IM and games and the latter on the web - economist),
• Companies will be keen to trial bypassing TV networks and produce commercials or short clips ready to podcasts. Ad agency and media buyers will compete with viral marketing specialists to produce these pilots,
• News corporations will need to work in partnership with “the local guy with a camera who just happened to be there” in the networks’ battle for exclusive. Amateur reporters will start selling their footages via online auction sites (EBay?) and get news agencies to bid for the rights to broadcast their work,
• Everyone will claim her/his 15 mins of fame and that would equals to 78,840 celebrities per year! (this is serious research, based into the cognitive limits of human attention and memory, number of 15-minute fame segments per year, global median life expectancy and current world population).

AOL acquires Engadget and more

Forbes reports on AOL 's purchase of Weblogs for $25M. The transaction includes 85 blogs such as Engadget and Autoblog. AOL will integrate the blogs into its portal by linking to the best entries and create additional blogs to fit with its channels.

Interestingly, Weblogs gets more than $1 million a year through Google adwords alone.

New Kid On The Blog

I just started a new blog on Consumer Generated Marketing on Hill & Knowlton's blogging platform. Have a look. In parallel, I will continue posting on Beyond PR (more so than less) so stay tuned.

Web 2.0 v. Web 1.0

Computex and the print edition of New Media Age are running articles on P2P traffic, based on a report from Sandvine.

P2P services takes 70% of global bandwidth (BitTorrent is the main culprit). Web browsing is only 8.7% of bandwidth consumption.

I thought this was an interesting figure to add to the Web 2.0 v. Web 1.0 debate .

I read Tim O’Reilly’s seminal article and I agree: the evolution to Web 2.0, for lack of a better term is about attitude and expectation. Whether it is technology that led to a change of attitude, or that a shift in our relation to the web led to new technology is an academic debate which I will leave to the more technically endowed.

In the 90s, the web was driven by companies seeking to turn it into a giant shopping mall. Consumers are now reclaiming the web for what it was intended for: a collective space bringing people together so that they could share experience and information. Just picture this: a collection of mega websites competing to attract eyeballs v. loose networks accessible by search engines, tags and connections where you can share information, engage in conversations and co-create. I am caricaturing here but the change is quite noticeable...

This is how I understand it: Web 2.0. is a different way of looking at the web.

Blogs Make Yahoo News' Headlines

Yahoo announced that it will mix mainstream media news with blogs in its Yahoo News aggregator. The system will be tiered with top stories from mainstream news outlets first then blogs with an option to get more user-generated news, photos and links. Yahoo's General Manager said that the company "wants to fuse professional journalism with so-called citizen journalism to provide a fuller spectrum of content to its members". MSM and CGM will be clearly flagged to avoid confusion.

The BBC covers this story and thinks that "the decision could reignite the debate over what constitutes news reporting and whether blogs are as valuable a source of news as that from professional journalists."

Steve Rubel reckons that it will expose millions of consumers to blogs for news content. I could not agree more and I cannot wait to see on the same page the point/counterpoint of a story exposed by MSM and bloggers. One more thing to worry about for PR officers.

From WOMMA to Cillit Bang to Character Blogs

The WOMMA (Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Association) has launched a new blog. I picked-up on this quote from the WOMMA CEO, speaking at the Word of Mouth vs. Advertising conference in New York : "Ads will never again be free from real people providing real feedback -- and bringing to light the underlying claims of every campaign". See full post here.

There is a post on Cillit Bang too... I caught up late on the whole Cillit Bang blog story and I find it rather sad. As Tom Coates highlighted, it is the unfortunate product of a team's ignorance, incompetence and carelessness. Glad they apologised.

I still think character blogs can work if the ad or PR agency who put it together could stick to simple rules:

1. Your entertainment or information value must be well above average to compensate the fact that you are a "marketing gimmick",
2. Engage in REAL conversations with your readers, be human even if you are not,
3. Let the story and the character evolve with the interactions. Don’t get your copywriter to write 60 posts in advance!
3. Don’t comment on other blogs to build up your network. You start from a very low point on the credibility scale and the only reason you want your link there is to get traffic to your blog. Comments are for conversation, not for advertising. Instead, build up your network from directories, tagging, placements, ads, ect… Let them discover you. If bloggers like your blog, they will talk about it and link (they will talk about it if they don't like it too but it will be worst if you spam them). You need to take the time to do it properly. A bit like a grassroots campaign. If you want fast and loud: do an ad.

Blogger Survey 2005

Technorati and Edelman released an excellent survey of bloggers' habits and motivations. The full results (including the raw data for open-ended questions) are available here. Highlights:

- 1/3rd of respondent blog to be seen as an authority in their field. Less than 5% blog to generate revenues,
- Almost half have never been contacted by a company or their PR representatives yet about 70% would like to receive product samples to evaluate,
- When seeking information about a company or a product, bloggers prefer to interact with company employee who blog,
- When looking for product information, less than 5% of respondent will trust a press release and 6% will trust a corporate blog. As opposed to nearly 63% who will trust other bloggers.

80% of UK Teens Use Instant Messaging (IM)

According to a Forrester report four out of five 16-17 years old in the UK use instant messaging. This is a staggering figure. MSN is the most popular IM program by far.

Blogging in Frankfurt

Last Friday, I was invited to speak at a blogging seminar in Frankfurt. Russel Buckley, a veteran blogger living in Munich was a co-presenter. He runs the mobhappy blog.

We had interesting discussions with our audience (PR Officers, marketing directors...) about the potential of using blogs for corporate communication. Interestingly, blogs were often associated with crisis, almost seen as a threat more than a tool for consumer communication. May be it’s bad memories from the Jamba v. bloggers story? I had similar conversations while doing workshops in Italy and it seems to be the first reaction once companies realise the scale and impact of the phenomenon.

According to the Blog Herald, Germany (280K blogs) still lags behind Spain (1.5M blogs), France (3M blogs) or Poland (1.4 M blogs) when it comes to blogging. The election might give German bloggers a boost. Wahl.de is listing some political blogs.

If I match these figures with anecdotal evidence, it seems that the German blogging scene is at an early development stage. This is an opportunity for companies to experiment and lead. As I highlighted in my talk, blogs are not going to disappear anytime soon. The sooner you join the conversation, the more you will learn and the better prepared you will be.

Excel Blog

Via Micropersuasion, the Microsoft Excel team launched a blog. Would be nice to get to know the team more though.

UK consumers trust bloggers' opinions

A survey of 1,100 UK consumers by hosting company Hostway found that 77% use information from blogs to influence their purchasing decision.

Read in New Media Age, 29th of September. Link to full survey results to be updated as soon as I find it...

Firms in the dark over blog threat

The Angel blog published the results of a survey of 50 PR professionals from around the world about how they regard blogs as a business communications tool. The Guardian summarises the findings: "Firms in the dark over blog threat".

Two key facts:

- more than 60% of PR executives interviewed believed that web blogs by unhappy employees or exasperated customers can damage corporate reputations
- More than 80% of US executives admitting reading blogs "at least five times a week," a figures which fell to just 36% in Europe. (This seems quite high to me).

You will have to register to the Guardian site to view the piece.

Apple v. Bloggers: the Nano Story

It looks like a re-run of the iPOD's dirty secret saga which resulted in a class action suit settlement . According to some unlucky purchasers, the Nano screen is prone to scratches and damages. One Nano owner has set-up a website to share his story (warning: some readers may find some damaged products' pictures upsetting) and check whether other Nano customers encountered similar problems. Apple's Nano discussion forum is buzzing with such conversations.

Steve Rubel published a Blogpulse's graph illustrating the increase in blog postings mentioning the problem and The Register ran a story on it.

UPDATED: Apple's response, courtesy of an anonymous reader.

Consumer Generated: from Mayhem to Marketing

Why WOM is back on marketers’ agenda and how to make it work for their brands.

A 2004 Intelliseek study 1 (PDF) found that consumer–to-consumer recommendations—even online consumer postings to forums—carry a higher trust factor than virtually all other forms of advertising, including TV, radio and print. That did not come as a surprise to many long established businesses. In fact, one of them always understood the value of consumer recommendations; its entire sales strategy relies on turning customers into brand ambassadors and capitalising on their social networks to influence others to purchase. That company is Tupperware and it made a fortune by understanding word-of-mouth’s power 50 years ago. Since then, WOM has been reengineered as “Consumer Generated Marketing” and thanks to blogging, its persuasion power is making business media headlines again through a series of high profile customer relations disasters. Let’s review what the forces driving consumers’ propensity to whine back on marketers’ agenda are and how marketers could reclaim WOM to engage into productive conversations with consumers.

Read more at Global PR Blog Week 2.0

Google Defends Google Print And I Promote Project Gutenberg

Good post from Google defending its Google print project in the face of a lawsuit by the Authors Guild. I think that the project can only benefit authors, especially those less published by encouraging people to discover their work.

I found the post on Always On.

If you are interested in the topic, you should go to Project Gutenberg and read about their philosophy:

"The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search. This has several ramifications: The Project Gutenberg Etexts should cost so little that no one will really care how much they cost. They should be a general size that fits on the standard media of the time . The Project Gutenberg Etexts should so easily used that no one should ever have to care about how to use, read, quote and search them..."

They work with copyright free materials (copyright has expired) or with authors' consent.

Global PR Blog Week 2.0: How PR Should Change in the New Era of Blogging?

The second edition of Global PR Blog Week has officially started. This online event will be held from today till the 23rd of September and bring over 50 influential PR practitioners and bloggers in to discuss how public relations and business communications are changed by new communications technologies.

Full programme available here. Check out today’s article from Niall Cook on how Hill & Knowlton went about setting-up its own blogging platform. I contributed a piece on consumer generated marketing to be featured on the 21st.

Please join us and contribute. To paraphrase the event's welcome message: "All you need is a little bit of curiosity, an open mind, and the desire to learn new things and share your experience and knowledge with other people. Skeptics are welcome, too."

Google Search Blogs: The End Of Bloggers' Influence?

Google launched its dedicated blogs search engine. Many have reported on it and I did not feel that I had anything of value to add to the chatter. However, this morning I came across this old article from "The Register while looking for more information about Google's blog search features.

The article's premise was that a dedicated blog search could prompt Google to remove blogs from its main search index, thus "improving" the quality of its search results. This speculation was based on Google removing Usenet postings from search results after acquiring Deja.com.

A graduate interviewed for the article commented "The main problem with blogs is that, as far as Google is concerned, they masquerade as useful information when all they contain is idle chatter".

The issue: trackbacks. "The low information quality of blog-infested Google results is a consequence of bloggers' attempts to introduce community aspects to what remains a solitary activity. The auto-citation feature 'Trackback' is frequently fingered as the culprit: many search results Google returns are trackbacks."

The article ends by pre-empting bloggers reactions: "One group is likely to protest long and hard, however: and that's people who have taken advantage of this quirk to use Google as their primary promotion channel or reputation creator. "

Putting the genie back into its bottle?

I won't speculate as to whether Google will remove blogs from its main search engine or not but if it did, I suspect that it will remove a big chunk of bloggers' ability to influence others with their views and opinions. If I were Land Rover and the second highest link in a search on my latest car model was a catalogue of disasters told real-time by a desilussioned owner, I will be pressured to react as I would know that millions of prospective buyers search for infos online before purchasing. If this legitimate rant was self-contained within a "blog" section, I may think that there is less pressure to act as it is "not mainstream" and most would not come across it. Food for thoughts.

Would love to hear some views on that.

Why less blogging?

Some of you have noticed that I did not post as frequently as usual this past 2/3 weeks. Fear not, I do not suffer from blog fatigue yet. I have started some part-time studies and I am in the process of purchasing a propery abroad. That and my work commitments left me with little room to sleep, let alone blog. I am getting better organised now and I am back to help spreading good words about why we are at the start of a media revolution (way beyond PR...). I even found time to contribute an article on "consumer generated marketing" to the forthcoming Global PR Blog Week event.

Thanks to whose who kept reading!

More to come...

Yahoo Hires Blog Journalist for Conflict Coverage

Yahoo hired Kevin Sites, a seasoned multimedia journalist (text/audio/video) and blogger to provide a more personal and interactive approach to reporting on conflicts (and compete for attention with mainstream media outlets).

"Yahoo plans to create media-rich packages that put the stories in context. For example, a story about Iraq could include links to other news stories on the conflict, maps of the region and a nod toward other blogs that discuss the war. (...) such multilayered coverage will likely attract younger people to its programming."

Story on Publish.com

I think that this is a brilliant move and a significant milestone in reshaping our stale media landscape.

Blogs and Free Content Are Hurting B2B Publishers

Because of blogs and freely available content accessible through search engines, user spending on B2B content fell 15% between 2001 and 2005. This translates into less ad revenue per user for publishers since online ads command less of a premium than print ads.

See article from Information Week.

P&G: Always Success on Habbo

New Media Age (paper issue) reports on how Procter & Gamble successfuly sponsored a virtual competition Big-Brother style for its Always brand on Habbo hotel leading to 13,000 teenagers responding. P&G is now conducting focus groups to assess change in perception towards the brand. I am a strong believer in immersive branding (in game or online community environments) and I hope that the focus group's results will be made public.

PS: I am back from my short-break. Cornwall has outstanding beaches and sceneries, certainly the nicest I have seen in the UK so far. I found Penzance rather dull but highly recommend the coast road going to St-Ives.

I am on holidays...

... which means no posts for the moment. I am going down to Penzance, testing my poor driving ability to the limit. I will be back next week.

Forrester On Podcasting In Europe

New Media Age (paper version) carries an article from Forrester Research about Podcasting.
It contains interesting stats:

- 28% of 16 to 24 years old in Europe have a MP3 player,
- 20% of Europeans downloaded software or audio content last year,
- Apple says that 5M consumers subscribed to its podcasting service within 3 weeks of its launch on iTunes.

Forrester predicts that the next big thing will be videocasting thanks to MMS phones.

Blogging closer to Tim Berners-Lee's web vision

The BBC website carries an interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee where he reckons that blogging is closer to his original idea of a read/write medium.

"The idea was that anybody who used the web would have a space where they could write and so the first browser was an editor, it was a writer as well as a reader. Every person who used the web had the ability to write something. It was very easy to make a new web page and comment on what somebody else had written, which is very much what blogging is about. "

The interviews has a few cheap shots (the obsession with online porn) and at time it looks like Mark Lawson is interviewing the father of the A-Bomb. Good read from one of the true visionary of our time otherwise.

H&K launch employee blogging community

We just released an online self-assessment tool to help our colleagues worldwide decide whether a blog would be the best way to express themselves. The idea is to increase awareness about blogging internally, encourage our colleagues to blog and ensure that we cut a good compromise between quantity and quality of our company blog output.

Take the test and find out whether you should blog or not:

http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/join/

We kept it light in tone. Depending on your score, you will be offered some advice to get started on our new blogging community or more training on blogging (that is if you are an H&K employee of course).

French Town Rennes Offers Free Phones, Free Blogs

The city of Rennes, France lends free 3G mobile phones and invites its inhabitants to write about their life in 43 landmark areas through a free collective blog.

Blogs And RSS Not As Popular As Everyone Thinks

According to a Forrester Research study, only 6% of Americans read blogs and only 2% use RSS. The report recommends to leverage early adopters (i.e. bloggers and blog readers) for viral activities. Find influencers and use them to spread the word. Sounds very much like PR.

Another item mentioned on Forrester's summary page I picked up was that "Households with a laptop and home network watch three fewer hours of TV per week and read the paper an hour less per week than offline households do."

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.