SiliconValley.com’s star blogger Dan Gillmor has an interesting post here on an email he got from a PR “professional” promoting a service to “Manage and Monitor Digital Influencers.” Dan points out, rightly, that one doesn’t “manage” bloggers, one engages with them. A commenter calling himself “Flackboy Kevin” defends the PR guy and goes on to further slag bloggers. A long debate in the comments ensues. Via Adrants, where Steve Hall also comments on the subject.

UDPATE:
Åsk Wappling at Adland and Tig Tillinghast at MarketingVox also weigh in.

Dan Gillmor: Fear of Bloggers in Business and Journalism

This probably spells doom for blogs: Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, one of the biggest Internet hypesters of the boom ’90s, thinks the future is bright for blogs as an ad vehicle. See the full PDF report here.

MarketWatch: Meeker Sees Money in Blogs

Ellen Simonetti
Queen of the Sky

BizNetTravel reports on yet another blogger fired (or suspended, anyway) for blogging. In this case, it’s flight attendant Ellen Simonetti, aka Queen of the Sky, who was told by Delta management found some of the photos on her blog “inappropriate.” BizNet snagged this one, which Ellen presumes is the offending one, before she deleted it from her blog.

Piece about ad agencies using weblogs (not as ad vehicles but as customer communication tools). Generally skeptical in tone. Includes examples of blogs by Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners’ Influx Consulting, A Fine Kettle of Fish by Bob Cargill of Yellowfin Direct (which is a weak example of a business blog in my book, as the blog doesn’t link to the business site or vice-versa, as far as I can see), Urban Intelligence by Urban Advertising and Richard Edelman’s blog. The story also quotes our own Steve Rubel.

Aside from its stand-offish tone about blogs, I have a few nits, such as "weblog" is one word, damnit, the company’s name is Gawker Media, not Denton Media and why the hell put a story about blogs on your web site without hyperlinks to them? But, whatever.

I’m amused to see Steve Rubel had a link to the story yesterday, though it appeared in the print edition only today. That tells you something about blogs, no?

UPDATE:
Oh yeah, buddy Steve Hall is quoted, too. In fact, he has a little rant about the article on his site.

NYT: Madison Avenue Ponders the Potential of Web Logs

MarketingVox and Adrants report on yet another dub faux blog. Marketers, please, please get the point: blogs are about building trust, not spinning it.

UPDATE:
MediaPost reports that the blog has packed it in, in ignominy.

MarketingVox: Mazda’s Blog+Viral Campaign Falls Flat

Gawker Media’s publisher Nick Denton, now routinely dubbed “blog impresario” in the press, has poineered another blog revenue stream: productization. Sure, lots of other blogs use Cafe Press to hawk mugs and t-shirts, but Gawker has now launched Fleshbot Films, a line of erotica…er, excuse me: porn, to complement its porn review blog Fleshbot. First release: Necromania, the last film (and first porn film, set in a sex therapy center/funeral parlor) by weirdo director of B classics Ed Wood (most remembered for Plan 9 from Outer Space and imortalized by Johnny Depp in Tim Bourton’s film Ed Wood). Denton rather stumbled into the rights for the long-lost film but apparently thinks it’s a good opportunity for his blog’s quirky audience. Amazon is already accepting pre-orders for the item. The whole story of how the deal came to pass is in this week’s New Yorker Talk of the Town.

So, as you know, I’ve taken a full-time job and don’t really blog here anymore; I turned over the reigns to B. L. Ochman, Steve Rubel and Todd Sattersten. Why it is that I’m still doing most of the blogging here is something that confuses me, too.

Anyway, you may remember a few days ago B. L. took to task the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) for neglecting the whole subject of blogging in its international conference in NY next week. She went so far as to bluntly challenge the PRSA to change its mind and include blogging on the agenda.

Blogging 1, Old School PR 0: they caved.

For reasons I didn’t quite follow, Steve and B. L. are now having something of a spat on the topic (he said; she said). I’m not going to render any opinions because A) I don’t really give a shit, and B) I’m still hoping they’ll both still blog here and play nice (awk-ward!).

Are we having fun yet?

Garrison Keillor

For better or worse, I’m a major National Public Radio nerd, to the extent that most Saturday evenings you can find me (if you’re a stalker) at home listening to A Prairie Home Companion, the folksie, olde-timey radio show hosted by the inimitable national treasure Garrison Keillor. What can I say — although I grew up in New Jersey (God’s country), my folks are originally from Minnesota, so it’s my long-time ritual way of keeping in touch with my ancestral homeland.

On the subway ride to work today, I was browsing my new PHC catalog (the print edition), and because multi-channel marketing really does work, I called up the catalog and show’s web site, where I discovered Keillor’s “blog.” Granted, on the blog homepage itself, it calls itself a “travel diary,” but on the Stuff page, the link that caught my eye says “GK’s Travel Blog.” True, it hasn’t been updated since March, but judging by the archives, he did update it frequently in spurts; maybe he just hasn’t been on the road much since then. Worth keeping an eye on.

The site also blog-like musings from Russ Ringsak the show’s “resident writer and truck driver.”

Link

Questions and answers with Gawker Media’s Nick Denton, whom the WSJ calls a blog “impresario,” discussing specifically the advertising opportunities for weblogs. He discusses why Audi’s interested in being the sole sponsor of Gawker’s car new blog Jalopnik, as well as the mistakes Dr. Pepper made with the infamous Raging Cow blog, among other things.

The link to this article is set to expire in seven days (WSJ.com is a paid subscription site, in case you’re new to this planet), so get it while you can.

WSJ: Questions for…Nick Denton

Passes the Bruner sniff test: it must be a good article, because it quotes me.

General examination of some fake blogging efforts by various marketing agencies, with mixed results. One thing it neglects to note about the central blog in the article, Beta-7: this stunt is more than a year old. Also notes the blatant gaffe by Warner Bros. in having someone from PR litter a blog’s comments section with praise for a new MP3 preview of a band Warner Bros. was backing (d’oh!).

It also quotes Jason McCabe Calacanis with his favorite peeve, that a blog isn’t really a blog if it doesn’t have comments turned on (which is just a transparent attempt to differentiate his Weblogs, Inc. publishing empire from his rival Gawker Media, which doesn’t turn on comments on their blog; my response to which is, so InstaPundit and Boing Boing aren’t really blogs?)

Chicago Trib: Fake Blogs, True Buzz

Nice article about business blogging, not least of which because it features a quote for me. Basically it’s business blogging 101, but it has a few decent insights, including close attention to one of my favorite business blogs, Stonyfield Farm’s, as well as this great comment from Sun Microsystems’ director of web technologies, Tim Bray: “[We’ve] become better at hearing what the market is saying” thanks to blogs.

CFO: Blogging for Dollars

I love this blog! I actually wrote an email today to my buddy Nick Denton of Gawker Media saying that I was talking with some colleagues today about the ways people shop online differently than offline. I wrote to Nick in part:

I think people shop online when they know what they want, but it’s harder to browse online. With Xmas coming up, if I have a specific idea for a present for someone, I’ll get it online for the convenience. But just knowing that I have to buy *something*, I’m more likely to go to some physcial stores where I can just wander around and see what catches my eye.
One exception is when I’m tipped off to fun things through blogs. Often, blogs are great at turning up weird, offbeat products I wouldn’t have seen elsewhere, from some specialty shop or whatever. I can think off the top of my head of at least 3-4 products like that I’ve bought thanks to blogs. So what about a blog specifically about shopping? A personal shopping assistant?

He replied, “have you seen mightygoods.com?” No, I had not, but it’s exactly what I had in mind. Written by Margaret Mason, who writes the wonderful Mighty Girl and is a contributor to The Morning News, the site explains its mission thusly (you know how I love blog mission statements!):

Mighty Goods is a shopping blog that’s updated five days a week. We spend a great deal of time finding and posting things we love. These aren’t just any old things, these are exactly the right things. They will brighten your eyes, match your couch, and fix the annoying problem that’s been bothering you. They will make you want to fortify the economy with your purchasing power.

I love the tagline, too: “Hooray for stuff!”

Link

Three new blogs from Gawker Media: Jalopnik, about cars, Kataku, about computer games, and Screenhead, about “funny shit” (think Fark or Everlasting Blort). More details on Denton’s site, per the link in the headline.

NickDenton.org: Gawker’s testosterone trio

Richard Edelman

Reader David of ContentCentricBlog points out this new blog by CEO and founder of Edelman PR. The blog is titled 6AM. Edelman explains in his first post:

Why 6 AM?–because I wake up early and hope to get you some useful insights as you come in to work. I plan to post weekly, and by calling it 6am, rather than say, Every Monday, so I’ll have a little wiggle room in terms of when I post!

He’s got the jump on Aaron Bailey by one minute.

Link

I’m not sure who Jeff Kang is (he sent me a note via Orkut, indicating we were Orkut buddies, although I don’t recognize his name and Orkut apparently isn’t feeling well tonight so I can’t look him up there at the moment). It’s apparently a PHP-based, server-side blogging tool. The site is thin on details about the product or installation (I haven’t bothered trying to upload it myself yet), not to mention About Us stuff. The G-name would lead one to believe Google has a role, though it’s far from clear whether that’s the case. There is also an accompanying blog, not surprisingly, and a forum, but niether shed much light (okay, I just barely scanned them, but nothing caught my eye). If anyone knows more or has observed more than I have, I trust you’ll point it out.

Link