Whatever your political persuasion — right, left, or center — the blogosphere is a great place for bloggers to share their political views and make plenty of friends and enemies. We try to follow the conservative, liberal, and everything in between of politics and political blogs/blogging — but only when it intersects with business blogging.
Have a read below of our latest entries on politics and political blogging…
A wacky look at the world of taxes from Kerry M. Kerstetter, CPA, who uses his rather irrevent blog (dispelling once and for all the stereotype of uptight, humorless tax consultants) to “help capitalists, investors & small business owners win the tax game.”
Dan Bricklin is currently president of Software Garden, a small software applications developer. Bricklin is best known for codeveloping VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet application. Until early 2004, Mr. Bricklin served as CTO of Interland, Inc., after it acquired his previous company, Trellix Corporation, maker of enterprise publishing software. As a blogger, Bricklin has distinguished himself as one of the leading strategic thinkers in the technology sector.
Israel-based flower wholeseller. The business owner is cousin to Dan Bricklin, a well-known blogger and CEO of Software Garden, a software applications developer. He tells me, as we sat next to each other at the BloggerCon II conference, that the blog is really helping drive business for this company.
Infrequently updated blog for an education association:
Working towards the revitalization of American education in the 21st century by reorganizing educators in a professional and entrepreneurial association.
Frequently updated blog that’s been around for more than a year as of this post. Here’s from the organization’s about Us page:
The mission of the International Association for Learning Alternatives is to lead, promote and support learning alternatives and choice options.
This mission signals our interest in seeing that parents and students have choices of educational programs to meet their needs, interests, learning styles and intelligences. We believe that one-size education program does not fit everyone and that education is best served by having choices for all.
Curiously, the blog publishing company Gawker Media does not have its own web site, so we link here to the personal blog of its CEO and founder, Nick Denton, who blogs there mostly about his business, anymore. A former staff reporter for the Financial Times and later founder of headline syndication service Moreover and co-founder of the social networking service First Tuesday, Denton was a pioneer in gambling that blogs could become a viable commercial publishing medium. To date, he has contracted freelance writers to write four successful blogs:
UPDATE: Since this original post, Gawker Media has released Defamer, an LA gossip blog.
Denton has announced plans for more blogs on various topics including interior design and travel. He says he draws his inspiration for topics for the companys’ blogs according to popularity of search topics on Google.
I have counseled Gawker Media periodically, primarily about advertising revenue strategies.
In March this year, Denton’s strongest rival among commercial blog publishers, Weblogs, Inc‘s Jason Calacanis, poached the original writer of Gizmodo, Pete Rojas, and launched a knock-off site, Engadget. After a month (as of this posting), a review of both sites on Alexa, suggests that Gizmodo has maintained its audience’s loyalty and Engadget has some catching up to do.
In April, Denton also launched Kinja, a kind of blog portal designed to make blog surfing easier for the masses.
Weblogs, Inc., is a blog publishing venture founded in 2003 by Jason Calacanis, founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, a popular newsletter in the NY technology venture capital market. Calacanis also maintains his own blog on the system.
Presently, Weblog Inc’s blogs are mostly focused on business sectors, including the following titles:
Weblogs, Inc. partners with bloggers to create advertising-supported nano-publishing sites. The business posts a Corporate Philosphy which reads in part:
Weblogs, Inc. is dedicated to creating trade Weblogs (a.k.a. “blogs”) across niche industries in which user participation is an essential component of the resulting product.
. . .
Traditional journalism is, in a word, broken.
The jury is out on whether or not Weblogs, Inc. will turn blogs into a real media business, but we’re eager to find out. Rumor has it that multimillionaire entrepreneur and NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has recently invested in Weblogs, Inc. Cuban also has a blog on Weblogs, Inc.
(UPDATE: Since first writing this, I spoke with Calacanis and asked him about the investment, and he was deliberately vague in answering, in one breath denying it and then suggesting might be true. I honestly don’t know what to think.)
Nick Denton’s Gawker Media is Weblogs, Inc’s closest competition as an out-and-out weblog publishing company.
Mark Cuban, multi-millionaire entrepreneur and colorful owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, has taken to blogging quite enthusiastically with this site that launched in March, 2004. From his “About Mark Cuban” page:
Prior to his purchase of the Mavericks, Cuban co-founded Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet, in 1995, selling it to Yahoo! in July of 1999. Before Broadcast.com, Cuban co-founded MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator, in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe.
So far, a month into the blog’s life, he’s writing mostly about NBA issues and matters concerning his upcoming ABC reality show, “The Benefactor,” in which he is to give away $1,000,000 to some lucky contestant.
This blog is a member of Jason Calacanis’s Weblogs, Inc. commercial blog publishing company. Rumor on the street is that Cuban may have put some serious funding into Weblogs, Inc. — a rumor we’ll follow up on here to see whether or not it pans out.
David Weinberger writes this blog, about technology, media, marketing and other topics, to wide aclaim. Weinberger is an author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. A former philosophy professor and comedy writer for Woody Allen, he makes his living primarily as a public speaker, for what I can gather, and, having had the pleasure of seeing him speak, I can attest he’s hilarious and very insightful.
Jeff Jarvis is the tireless writer of this blog, with multiple posts daily on a range of topics, but with a concentration on media, blog-related news and politics. Technically, this is a personal blog, not a business blog, but Jarvis distinguishes himself as being such an influential blogger while simultaneously holding down the job as president & creative director of Advance.net, the Internet arm of Advance Publications and Condé Nast Magazines. While his blog clearly reflects his personal opinions and not those of his employer (as the standard disclaimer goes), he has acknowledged that Advance has given his blogging its nod of approval. “I type really fast,” he once told me.
BloggerCon, celebrating its second year this year, is the premier conference of serious webloggers, organized by one of the original bloggers, Dave Winer, who blogs at Scripting News and is founder of blog software producer Userland.
The event this year is free, hosted at Harvard University, where Winer is a visiting scholar. The schedule of events includes topics such as “What Is Journalism?” “Presidential bloggers,” “Librarians,” “Blogging in Business,” “Blogging as a Business,” “Religion” and other stimulating sessions.
UPDATE:
Lilioa.com has a list here of several people who blogged the event.
Jeff Jarvis has set up this wiki (definition) to support his “Blogging as Business” session at the BloggerCon conference.
Because this site is a wiki, it means any reader can contribute to and edit the content (click the “edit” link in the left-hand menu of the site).
This January 2004 survey of 486 bloggers is principally about privacy issues, but it also includes demographic characteristics of bloggers and other findings. Highlights include:
MIT Media Lab: Blog Survey: Expectations of Privacy and Accountability
Nick Wreden writes this advice piece. In his lede, he notes that the American Marketing Association’s newsletter has a cover story about business blogs. I wish I could link to that, as I’m quoted in it, but, alas, it’s only for AMA members.
Meanwhile, Nick offers solid advice on the topic himself, including:
Along similar lines, check out Robert Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Manifesto.
MarketingProfs: 10 Rules for Corporate Blogs and Wikis
Perseus Development, a survey software maker, estimated in late 2003 that there are some 4 million blogs worldwide published using the hosted solutions of Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga. Notably, this estimate would exclude all the blogs that are run on their own domains via services such as Blogger and the most popular blog publishing platform, Movable Type.
The white paper goes on to project that there would be some 10 million worldwide by 2004.
The NY Times points out that the study finds a 66% churn rate for all blogs started. Clay Shirky, an adjunct assistant professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, puts this in persepective: “The truth is, a churn rate of less than 80 percent on a technology growing this fast is very, very good.”
Perseus Development: The Blogging Iceberg
This February 2004 study from Pew Research Center finds that, as of a summer 2003 survey, some 2% of the online U.S. population blogs. The study also notes that early data from 2004 indicates that figure may have gone up to as much as 7% of the population. According to my analysis, as laid out in greater detail in an article I wrote for iMedia, that 2% and 7% works out respectively to 2.5 million to 8.8 million people, based on Pew’s Deceber 2003 estimate of 126 million U.S. adults online.
The report looks at a range of people’s online activities, but if you prefer, you can skip right to the section on weblogs.
This is a December 2003 survey of 610 bloggers, the results of which include the following:
There’s a fair bit more to this survey, so take a look.
BlogSearchEngine.com: Survey of Bloggers
Olivier is one smart guy. A friend and colleague, he’s one of the smarter bloggers out there commenting on technology and e-business issues. This is a relatively new URL for him. Previously, he had been blogging at WebVoice.Blogspot.com, which he recently gave up in favor of this new domain, and I see the old one is already some piano blog (I’d add it to this site’s index, but it’s not clear what business, if any, it supports).
Olivier makes his living as a strategic consultant. He also blogs in almost as many places as I do. He is a the main blogger behind TheEndofFree.com, about the trend towards user-paid content online, as well as a co-founder, along with myself among others, of MarketingWonk. In addition, he blogs at Lockergnome’s RSS site, and elsewhere, no doubt.
Great article from NY Post (of all places) on the business blog phenomenon. It reads, in part:
While Microsoft says the site [Channel 9] is about “building community,” it also serves another purpose – getting the company’s point of view out without relying on the media.
“It’s using blogging to manage the message,” said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research. “It has an insider-y feel, but the fact is these guys are evangelists. It’s more of a marketing tool than anything else.”
More and more, corporations are turning to blogs as a way to reach their customers without relying on television or newspapers. Unlike news releases, blogs create a personal connection with employees, with a relaxed tone and the ability for readers to ask questions.
Macromedia, IBM and other technology companies let their employees blog about new products, the corporate environment, even hiring practices. But they also debunk rumors, counter magazine stories and promote their companies.
Thanks to Olivier Travers for the tip.
I’m delighted to see MarketingSherpa is reselling this report. I am its co-author and primary analyst, written originally for MarketingWonk, which did not do the greatest job of promoting the report. Leave it to MarketingSherpa, though, to market it right, as they are experts at report sales.
MarketingSherpa’s sales copy includes this:
Business Blogs sidesteps gee whiz hype to focus on practical realities. You’ll learn:
- How 45 companies in a wide array of industries (including both B-to-B and B-to-C) are using Blogs today for marketing, customer relationship building, PR, and corporate communications.
- Specific tactics to get readers for your Blog (with more than one million blogs out there, getting attention is your biggest challenge.) Includes 17-best online resources, and quick tips on syndication.
- How and where to advertise on third party Blogs if you want to take advantage of the Blog phenomenon without building your own. (Note: Response rates are currently more than double the average online ad click rate.)
- Basics on creating a Blog – including writing-style, best updating frequency, recommended technology, and legal advice. (Who owns copyright on comments visitors post to your Blog? Find out.)
The report costs $99 and is worth every penny, if I do say so myself!
MarketingSherpa: Business Blogs: How Successful Companies Get Real Results With Weblogs
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Business Blog Consulting is a site devoted to demonstrating how effective weblogs can be for communicating with customers and marketing to new customer prospects. You will find here lots of examples of business and corporate blogs, as well as resources to help you learn more about the topic.
Looking for a company that offers consulting on corporate and business blogging, including design, development and strategy? Consider Netconcepts.
Other stuff? Email us.
Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing
Andy Bourland of Bourland.com
Rich Brooks of Flyte
Paul Chaney of Blogging Systems Group
Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus
Josh Hallett of Hyku
Tris Hussey of Larix Consulting
Lee Odden of TopRank
Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts
Dave Taylor of Intuitive Life for Business
Jim Turner of One by One Media
Dana VanDen Heuvel of BlogSavant
Des Walsh of Thinking Home Business
Debbie Weil of WordBiz and BlogWrite
Jeremy Wright of Ensight
Rick E. Bruner is co-author and principal analyst on this report
Our own contributor Jeremy Wright is the author of this book
"The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right" with a foreword by GM's Bob Lutz..and the rest by Debbie Weil.
Produced by contributor to this site Debbie Weil. Rick E. Bruner is one of the featured experts in this report
This report is written by contributor to this site BL Ochman
I guess this was inevitable
