Google has launched a Google China Blog. Yes, it’s in Chinese so I can’t read it. But clearly it’s an attempt to answer critics of the company’s decision to cooperate with the Chinese government in censoring search results. Here’s the story in ChinaTechNews. And a less charitable spin on it here at P2Pnet.

Included are a few links in English in the right-hand column including John Battelle’s Searchblog. Kinda cool. That’s what you might call “getting exposure.” What’s the population of China? I forget… but probably growing exponentially along with the blogosphere.

Oh, and what’s my stance on the doing-business-with-a-repressive-government thing? It’s complicated. I lean towards the view that Google’s being available to Chinese Internet users – even in a limited way – is better than not being available at all to them as a resource. And your take on it is… ? Click that Comments link above!

UPDATE

But this reaction may be rather simple-minded of me. Read NYTimes write-up of yesterday’s House Subcommittee hearing on human rights with testimony from top execs at Cisco, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. And another thoughtful account of the heated debate from BlogBusinessSummit.

And finally, details from Rebecca MacKinnon on the proposed Global Online Freedom Act of 2006.

This is one of those great “some companies really ‘get it'” stories, the kind of thing I love to hear about as someone riding the very tip of the technology rocketship (think Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove and you’ll have my mental image exactly). Prentice-Hall Business Publishers have the same challenges that any company today faces, including motivating the sales force, identifying the key message or messages for marketing and making sure that the team stays on message rather than wandering off into pointless information that isn’t going to close any sort of deal.

But unlike most companies, PH decided to tackle the problem with blogs, podcasts and simulation games. It’s darn interesting:

  Blogs, Podcasts and Simulations Improve Sales at Prentice-Hall

What have you done to help your sales team succeed today?

Just got a nice, semi-personal email from Jeff Veen at Adaptive Path stating that their newest project, Measure Map, the great blog analytics tool, has been acquired by Google.

So I said there was news, and here it is: I’m writing you to announce that Measure Map has been acquired by Google, effective today. For the near term, you will see no difference in its operations. In the not so distant future, you can expect great things from this acquisition. We couldn’t be happier to find such an ideal home for Measure Map, and are thrilled at the possibilities.

Read more on the Google blog.

The obsessive compulsive blog stats person might be interested in a free service called MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog logs the clicking activity of your blog visitors and graphically displays which links are the most popular with your visitors by hovering over the link. This can fall under the heading of “stupid blog tricks,” but the service also allows you to post a sidebar widget that lists your most popular links.

This tool does add to the richness of your content.

Blogging events are appearing everywhere. As a result, more and more information is being exchanged about the power of business, marketing, public relations, and SEO blogs than ever before. The only problem is attending all of the functions. Not all bloggers have the necessary funds to share in the knowledge available.

Because of money shortages, many bloggers simply don’t go to any or all of the blogging conferences they might enjoy. Instead of mentioning their financial situations, the cash strapped blogger quietly avoids the issue, and stays at home. As a result, more people than the non-attending blogger are the losers.

The bloggers who elect to remain silent about their financial status miss an opportunity to learn more about the strength of blogging. Ideas that the stay at home bloggers possess about starting, building, and enhancing an online business are not shared with others. Everyone loses as some golden information sharing opportunites are lost.

Not only are ideas not shared with everyone, none are returned. After all, blogging concepts are more than a two way street. They are a multi-lane…yes…I know, I’ll say it…superhighway. Instead of free flowing traffic, there are only a few vehicles on the road. Many new entrants are left on the shoulders.

are lost chances to meet and network with peers. Other blog owners are your peers, and also potential business partners, customers, or vendors. Contacts lost by the few are boundless possibilities lost to the entire entire economy. We’re talking big picture stuff here.

Let’s not let any opportunites pass any bloggers left in the slow lane. Instead, share the wealth and sponsor a blogger to a blogging conference.

Find out which bloggers should be attending a blogging event, and offer to sponsor their trip in some way. Airline, train, or bus tickets are helpful for transportation to and from the event. Perhaps, you are driving to the conference. An extra blogging passenger, and incidently spare driver, could make for some pleasant company, and a much more enjoyable journey.

At the event city itself, offering a room or couch to a blogger eases the financial burden of paid accomodation. Sharing a home cooked meal with a hungry blogger can cement a friendship for life.

Businesses can get into the sponsorship act as well. In return for services such as transportation, food, and lodging, a blogger can offer some prominent advertising space on the blog. A mention in posts before, during, and after the event is powerful public relations for the company. If the business also has a business blog (as they should), their bloggers can mention the blogger sponsorship and the event as well.

How about a Sponsor A Blogger campaign, complete with clickable link buttons and a blog. The sponsor and the blogger would become an instant partnership, and share it with the world. Potential business relationships are even likely to follow.

As you can see, the possibilities are limited only by everyone’s imaginations.

Speak out if you want a sponsorship to an event. Potential sponsors should seek out bloggers who have something unique to offer.

Everyone wins in the end.

Interesting post from Heather Green at Business Week regarding advertising in RSS feeds. She interviews Feedburner’s Dick Costello who is discovering that contextual ads in RSS feeds don’t do as well as ads simply focused on the demographic of the reader.

This turns the typical ad model (blog about cameras gets ads about camera gear) on its ear a bit, but I think may make ads in RSS feeds a little more intersting.

It does make sense when you think about it. A blog viewer who comes to blog by way of search is, at the moment, focused on finding very specific information, including ads that relate to that information.

An RSS reader or subscriber may read the feed out of habit and be more open to reading and responding to an ad that hits other subjects.

The Economist published an article this week on the threats and opportunities of blogs and bloggers, “Corporate reputations – The blog in the corporate machine“.

The Threat:

“The spread of “social mediaâ€? across the internet—such as online discussion groups, e-mailing lists and blogs—has brought forth a new breed of brand assassin, who can materialise from nowhere and savage a firm’s reputation.”

The Opportunity:

“Many big companies have been looking eagerly for ways to tailor their advertising to specific groups of consumers. They have found that web logs and internet discussion groups, which bring together people of similar interests, can help them turn hot links into cold cash. But besides trying to get out their message, companies are also learning that blogs can provide early warning signs of potential problems.”

Steve Rubel was also quoted in the article giving tips on how to use a blog for crisis communications, suggesting the creation of a “lockbox blog”.

Despite the attempt at describing pros and cons of consumer generated media and blogs in particular, the article doesn’t do justice to the many positive marketing, PR and branding benefits. Reputation management is not the only reason companies should pay attention to the blogosphere. Regardless, the article does draw more attention to blogging with an influential audience and that’s a good thing.

A new service set to launch next week called 3Bubbles allows bloggers to add a chat function to each post as a way to extend the conversation with readers. This looks like an interesting way to really make blogs conversations.

This is the newest wrinkle in corporate blogging. It’s brilliant and it’s simple. Coke has found six smart university students (from China, the U.S., Austria, Germany, Canada and Italy) to blog the Torino Winter Olympic Games for them. Torino Conversations features the photos – and corresponding country flags – of the students along with snippets of their most recent entries. Click the one for Du Wei from China and you’ll see her latest entry. It includes a link to a podcast. She writes:

“Finally, we are getting started. Katie and I spent 2 hours walking around within the sponsor village and into the streets of Torino, grasping people to talk to and pose for photos. It was also good to have opportunity to walk around and look at Torino from a non-Olympic angle.

The Chairman of Coca-Cola, Neville Isdell came to award the first Coca-Cola Live Olympic Award to the very first employee of TOROC, Giovanna Locci, and we got a chance to talk to the chairman before the ceremony. Check it out here [link to podcast] and we will come up with more interviews with PIN TRADERS and perhaps the Opening Ceremony tomorrow.”

According to MarketingVox the students have agreed to keep their blog entries positive and upbeat. Travel and accommodations are being paid for by Coke. How cool is that…

I’d be interested in knowing more about how Coca-Cola identified the students and vetted their blogging skills and common sense quotient. (Gotta be some good parties in Torino… )

Oh and just noticed this. Scroll down on Torino Conversations and you’ll see photos they’ve uploaded along with comments from (no doubt envious) friends. This fits right in with Pew Internet’s recent survey that said 57% of teens create content for the Web. It’s as natural as talking on a cell phone for them.

Useful Link

Light the Torch is another twist on Olympics blogging. It was just launched by blogging network b5media and is inviting guest contributors. All proceeds from Google AdSense revenues on the blog will go to athletic organizations supporting athletes (not sure what those are exactly, but sounds good).

Revlon now has a new line of products that middle-aged and older women – you know, the ones with all the money – will embrace. If the buzz continues and if Revlon can amplify the word of mouth, they are going to have a great success.

Months ago, Crabby Old Lady wrote in Glitter and Gloss

“…Max, Estee, Christian, Elizabeth, Helena, Germaine, Pierre and all the rest who served her so well in her youth have forsaken Crabby in her dotage. Where is the foundation that covers nature’s errors but doesn’t cake in the lines? Eye shadow in matte colors of brown and gray without sparklies? Blusher and lip gloss that are brighter than Crabby’s skin color, but not by much, and certainly not iridescent?

In the Radiant Elder Women , Crabby Old Lady raves about Vital Radiance in words that will make Revlon executives whoop and holler.

For the past week, Crabby Old Lady has been playing with this new line of cosmetics with as much enthusiasm as when she was a teenager experimenting with makeup for the first time. It’s the best girlie fun she’s had in ages.

What did they do right?

They listened. They made apparently great products that meet real needs. They didn’t patronize with false promises. They marketed well.

And because of Crabby’s endorsement and because I trust her, I’m going to buy me some. I probably would have ignored the magazine ads.

I’m thinking this is just the beginning of whole new ways of marketing to that sweetest of sweet spots, the middle-aged women. Could it be that the Beauty Market has grown up? This is just Lipsticking good and smart marketing to women online when women who use and love the products are talking themselves and to each other.

It’s customers evangelizing what they see as awesome new product.

If Revlon takes the advice of Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba at Church of the Customer they will be tracking blogs so they can take the best advantage of such word of mouth.

If they are really smart, they will set up a blog to talk about their new line of Vital Radiance. Why not talk more about the research for their product? Why not capture what women customers are saying about their product? Why not extend and amplify that word of mouth? Why not create an online community of women who want to look better without a lot of gloss and glitter? Why not have a place where women can exchange tips and have fun with the girls?

That’s what blogs in the beauty biz should do.

Many blogs offer email subscriptions to their blog, usually via Feedblitz or Bloglet. As I mentioned in a previous post, now AWeber, more well-known for its autoresponder service, is also offering an email broadcasts of RSS feeds.

What I like about service is how customizable it is; you can create an HTML template that complements your blog design. AWeber also offers a series of predesigned templates for you to choose from. HTML and plain text versions are automatically generated. Confirmed opt-in is required, so you’ll only be sending these emails to people who really want them, keeping you safe from charges of spamming.

There’s no additional fee for this service for people who are already AWeber members, but membership is $20/mo. (AWeber memberships also offer powerful autoresponders and the ability to publish email newsletters.)

I especially like the flexibilty you have with the layout and the ability to add messages to outgoing emails. In the example above, you can see that I created links to articles on my Web site. Through the admin system these messages are easy to change, even if you’re not comfortable with HTML. There is also the ability to track clickthrus and view other reports. You can also choose how many posts will appear in a single email broadcast.
Two things I don’t like about the current AWeber offering, however:

1. You can’t choose between full text and excerpt; the system automatically limits your email with a “Read more…” link.
2. Images and links you may have created in your feed do not carry into the email version.

Tom Kulzer, the CEO and Founder of AWeber says both these features are being considered for a future release.

One other thing that may work against AWeber is the fact that Feedblitz now offers many if not all of these feed related services, plus others, for just $4.95/mo. Although I haven’t yet tested Feedblitz, it appears to offer a compelling alternative.

I happen to have a different POV on faux blogs than a lot of folks. I think that in theory they’re not a bad idea, just the execution sucks most of the time. The wost of faux blogs are those that purport to the be real, dupe readers into thinking that some fan of the product is writing the blog. But I’ve always contended that a blog by a marketing character might not be a bad thing if done well, e.g. (my staple example), the M&M characters writing a truly funny Fark.com (PG) blog.

Anyway, tonight I was watching the ABC show Invasion (which I’ve only done 2-3 times before), and I heard one character reference another’s “stupid blog.” So I Googled Invasion+blog and found didyouseethelights.com

To be honest, I’m tired and have had a couple of drinks and just can’t be bothered to do thorough due diligence on this, but I’m sure you’ll do so for me. Anyway, I like the idea: a TV character blogging on the Net with comments open.

I await your informed ass-kicking on why this sucks and is evil.

I hear from a lot of different bloggers who are part of the Google AdSense program about their results, and it’s surprising to me how many say that they’re dissatisfied. Some even tell me “I earned $18 last month, so I’ve decided to just remove all ads from my blog and drop out of the program”. It’s their decision, but I have to say that a little bit of effort put into customizing your AdSense ad blocks and learning about how to fine tune your use of the AdSense system can really pay big benefits in terms of you truly understanding what is and isn’t working on your site.

A great example of this is Google’s “Channels” with AdSense. By using these channels intelligently, you can quickly differentiate between ad block layouts on your pages, different areas of your site, and even different domains if you’re running AdSense on more than a single site. And y’know what? It’s pretty darn easy to do, as detailed here:

    Maximize your AdSense Income with AdSense Channels

It’s well worth reading if you’re an AdSense participant, and if you’re not, well, maybe the figures in my example report could motivate you to sign up? Yes, it’s quite possible to earn some supplemental income – or more – as a blogger…

Thanks to Rick for posting to the BBC mailing list how to get some invite keys to coComment.  Of course, by replying I also volunteered to review it (doh!).

So … I’ve signed up (very easy, only a little bit of info required).  I put the bookmarklet on my toolbar.  I added my person comment RSS feed to my aggregator. And then I left my first comment.  It happened that Scoble had a post on another comment tracking service I just couldn’t resist!

First impressions … easy sign up.  Easy to use.  The comment I registered was immediately reflected in my account.

I’ll also throw my two cents in on this whole topic.  While blogs are all about the conversation, I know personally I haven’t left as many comments on blog posts for the very simple reason that it’s been way, way too hard to keep track of them.  Not all platforms offer comment feeds, and who really wants to have to keep adding and culling those feeds.  E-mails … well good sometimes, bad other times.

I’m pretty hopeful about this new service and am certainly going to kick up my commenting a notch to give it a good, solid try

Tags: coComment, blog comments

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Dave Sifry of Technorati has issued an updated “State of the Blogosphere”. Here are some interesting factoids:

• Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
• Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
• Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day
• Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers

The growth rates are amazing. It is also interesting to see the percentage of splogs that are machine generated. Plus some new vernacular, (at least to me) “Spings”. You can read the whole thing at Sifry’s Alerts.

Although I’m not much of a yachtsman myself, living on the coast of Maine I have a lot of friends who own boats, and I’ve learned a lot through osmosis.

One thing I’ve learned is that they can’t get enough of pictures of boats; they refer to it as “boat porn.” It takes an especially tight hold of them when they’re ready to buy their next boat.

Which is why I think it’s such a great idea that Sabre Yachts, (a client of mine,) is telling the story of the construction of a yacht in the Sabre Yachts Blog.

Bentley Collins, their resident blogger, has been taking photos from the factory floor and telling the story of one Sabreline 34 Hard Top Express. (Unlike humans, boat builders usually know the type of boat beforehand.) It’s only two posts in, but Bentley says he’ll blog this until the boat leaves the factory. (Maybe we can then track the boat to its eventual owner and convince him/her to continue blogging!)
Having taken a factory tour, I have to say it’s quite a cool adventure.

Google AdSense is the cornerstone of the Google empire in many ways and so it’s no surprise that lots of other companies, from Yahoo to Microsoft, are trying to hone in on the business with their own contextually sensitive text ad blocks. But Amazon? Who would have thought that the Seattle book company was busy building a sophisticated program of its own, called the Amazon Associates Sponsored Links Program. Never heard of it? You will:

    The Amazon Associates Sponsored Links Program

The information I share is all directly from Amazon. It’s a must read if you pay attention to the world of online advertising.

Fred Wilson nails it. The reason? Because RSS still isn’t “brain dead simple.” For non-geeks it’s still too confusing to set up an RSS newsreader, to find – or aggregate – all the feeds you’re interested in, to subscribe, etc.

The RSS vs. email debate has erupted once again in response to the announcement several days ago that Yahoo and AOL will start charging senders 1/4 of a cent to a penny per message delivered. The idea is that the email or e-newsletter marketers who pay this premium will be guaranteed that their messages will reach intended recipients.

Read Tris Hussey and Steve Rubel on the topic of the end of cost-effective email marketing. Read Dave Winer on why RSS is hard to use and Stowe Boyd on Reads, Not Feeds.

Oh, and don’t misunderstand. RSS is in many ways a better solution for dispensing and receiving information online. But despite the proposed postage for email marketers, email isn’t dead yet.

Google never stops experimenting and adding new features to its software systems, so it’s no surprise when major applications change without any notification or comment from Google. The latest? Google’s Gmail application now includes a convenient mechanism for you to browse and search through your Google Talk chat transcripts.

But are you comfortable with Google having an archive of not just your email and searches, but of your instant message transcripts too? I think there’s yet another privacy problem that’ll arise once people find that contextually-sensitive ads are displayed while reviewing chat transcripts:

  Google Gmail Chats Feature?

I’m less paranoid than some of my colleagues, but still, what’s next? A Gmail interface to comments you leave on weblogs throughout the blogosphere?

If your blog isn’t linkworthy, it’s not going to get very far in the blogosphere. Indeed, links are the currency of the Web, at least as far as search engines are concerned. No links = no rankings, and lousy links = lousy rankings.

One might even go so far as to valuate a business blog on its links (at least in part). For fun you might try out the free tool at the Business Opportunities Weblog and see how much your blog is worth. The computation is based on the link-to-dollar ratio of the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal. According to the tool, this blog is worth $200,000. Anyone want to buy it from Rick? 😉

So how do you make linkworthy posts? In The Art of Linkbaiting, Nick Wilson and commenters offer some great suggestions:

• Offer a niche-specific blogroll, tool, How-To, or compilation of news stories.
• Post a scoop.
• Expose a story as flawed or a fraud
• Be a contrarian about a story, product, or prominent blogger’s opinion.
• Be humorous. Good topics include a bizzare pic of your subject, “10 things I hate about…”, and “You know you’re a when…”
• Publish or commission some original research
• Creative-Commons-license photos you made of an event you’re blogging about
• Make available for free a theme, plugin or piece of software
• Start a meme that others can replicate and that links back to you (e.g. buttons/stickers/tools for bloggers/webmasters to post on their sites, contests, quizzes, surveys, etc.)

Building links is both art and science. It requires a great toolkit as well as loads of creative ideas.

MarketingProfs is holding a webinar on Feb. 16 on the topic: “Inside Secrets to Building Links for Online Publicity, Buzz and Search Engine Optimization”. The undisputed link guru Eric Ward and I (Stephan Spencer) are both presenting. Sign up here.