Steve Rubel has made the big leap from CooperKatz to public relations giant Edelman:

“After five years at CooperKatz, I felt it was time for me to take the next step in my evolution. So I am excited to announce that I will be joining Rick Murray’s team at Edelman (the world’s largest independent PR firm) on February 27 as a Senior Vice President. I will be working out of their New York office.”

He humbly says he’ll be doing pretty much the same thing, just a bigger organization. One big question is, what happens to Micropersuasion? Apparently CooperKatz will rename their blog practice to Cogence and Edelman will not use the Micropersuasion name in any of their service offerings. Steve will be able to continue using the micropersuasion.com domain name. Further details can be found on the Micropersuasion blog.

Congratulations Steve!

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.

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…

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?

I admit it, most bloggers seem to really like the blogosphere tracking site Memeorandum, but don’t count me as one of that group. I admit that the concept is interesting, in the same way that Google offers interesting results based upon its academic reference citation model, but there are some fundamental problems with any site that’s built around popularity.

The site’s referenced in a lot of weblog postings – indeed, I’ve linked to it once or twice myself – but the more I look at it and the more I think about the implications of its core premise, the less comfortable I am with it:

    Why I don’t like Memeorandum

Maybe I’m clueless about how it really works or misunderstand the implications of popularity based on relevance, but I don’t like it. Do you?

Chris Hoyt, president, Hoyt & Company wrote a compelling article on the HUB magazine website about mining the blogosphere for comments and content on your company.

According to a November 2005 Reveries.com survey, over 60% of companies surveyed weren’t monitoring the blogosphere.

On the heels of the WOMMA WOMBAT conference, the emergence of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and the venture funding flowing into the word-of-mouth marketing space, its never been more apparent that monitoring the consumer media (blogosphere) is an essential function in every marketing department.

So, what might you listen for on the blogosphere?

1. General consumer understanding
2. Find your evangelists & vigilantes
3. Early warning signs on issues
4. Consumer specifics – likes and dislikes
5. Competitive intelligence
6. Product/service improvement ideas
7. Campaign tracking
8. WOM tracking

What would your company listen for?

Lots of buzz. Lots of folks.

Word-of-mouth-marketing (WOMM), Florida warmth & sun and a bunch of online experts… including our very own Toby Bloomberg, Josh Hallett and Dana VanDen Heuvel who are live blogging the Word of Mouth Marketing Association‘s conference in Orlando. (Dana is one of the lead bloggers.) What more could you ask for?

Check out the WOMBAT (Word of Mouth Basic Training) conference blog. Day 1 here. Day 2 here. They’ve got a full crowd of international attendees and speakers. 400 people according to conference organizer and WOMMA ceo Andy Sernovitz. Wish I were there…

Note: there are lots of posts on the WOMBAT blog. You’ll have to poke around. A sampling: Women and WOMM; B2B and WOMM; WOMM and ethics; WOM and blogging.

Also see Technorati.

Bottom line: WOMM has come into its own as a separate and defined marketing niche. The notion that this form of marketing can be codified and measured is fascinating. Stay tuned…

The Boston Globe reports on a new service called Gather that plans on organizing content from all types of writers into a coherent collection online. Plus, they’re going to pay writers based on advertising that appears with the content. (Back to the eyeballs = profitability model?)
Although similar sites exist (About, Technorati, Bloglines, Topix, Squidoo, and Digg are listed by the Globe in varying degrees of correctness), the site does have the backing of Jim Manzi, former chief executive of Lotus Development Corp. and Bill Bradley, who played basketball for the Knicks before moving to Washington, D.C.

Only time will tell whether Gather becomes a venue for bloggers to “go pro”, but it is establishing its Web 2.0 cred by wearing its “beta” tag proudly by its logo.

Announced during MacWorld earlier this week was the release of iWeb, a new part of iLife ’06.

iWeb includes blogging software and integrates seemlessly into the rest of iLife, which includes iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes, among iOthers. By using the rest of the suite, bloggers will have drag-and-drop options, such as dragging an iTunes playlist into the blog. Of course, links will be automatically created to the iTunes music store where visitors can purchase said songs.

Although the software seems to be targeted to personal bloggers rather than business bloggers, a lot of creative types such as ad agencies are likely to give this platform a try, giving it a certain inevitable buzz.

Will iWeb impact the blogosphere? I don’t know…did the iPod change the way we listen to music?

I got this through Wired, which had an opportunity to put iWeb through its paces.

Us bloggers have been debating whether we should get the same rights and be held to the same standards as professional journalists for at least a few years now, and it seems like whenever we’re about to end the discussion something else comes along to add oil to the proverbial fire.

This time the incident is the well-respected Toronto Star ripping off content from a friend of mine, writer Randy Cassingham, and publishing it in the newspaper without either fact-checking or any sort of attribution. Perhaps this isn’t an uncommon incident, but this time they were caught out by a blogger who tracks newspaper gaffes and that article was picked up by industry publication Editor & Publisher.

Read the article:

    Of Lazy Journalists and Wanton Plagiarism

The Toronto Star? No word from them yet, but I’d like to think they’ll publish some sort of retraction or apology. And journalists? Are you really going to claim that you’re the professionals in this situation?

I don’t really get it. The Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 development team, on their Team RSS Blog, announce that they’re going to use the same “RSS available” logo as the Firefox web browser (read their article). Okay, so I suppose that Apple will have to knuckle under and change the “RSS” icon it uses in Safari to match.

But here’s what I don’t get: why do people care what icon is chosen? I mean, go on to the “RSS blog” and you’ll see dozen and dozens of comments about this. Is it a harbinger of a kinder, gentler Microsoft that’s more willing to work with the open source community? I don’t think so. I mean, it’s an icon, for goodness sake. Just a little 50×50 graphic.

And yet, a quick Technorati search reveals that lots of people are talking about this, including the inevitable entry from Robert Scoble, along with his prediction that it would be hot news (e.g. appearing on Memeorandum), Neville Hobson, Alex Barnett, Asa Dotzler, Heiko Hebig and even publications have jumped on this invisible wagon: Gadgetopia and The Guardian.

What am I missing here? I just don’t have a clue why everyone cares about a single icon. There are plenty of bigger issues for us to wrestle with as a group of blogging thought leaders, why waste the energy on a tiny orange icon?

There seem to be two major camps in the blogging world, one that believes strongly in the value and utility of “tagging”, whether through a third-party service like De.licio.us or directly on a blog through applications like Technorati, and a separate camp that believes that the lack of standardization in the keywording / tagging community dooms it to inevitable failure and that it’s a waste of time and effort.

Figuring out which side is correct might well be something that can only be accomplished from a distance, however, and that distance might well be in time, not geography.

But there are a few interesting data points that I’ve seen in the last few weeks…

    Is Tagging Growing in Importance?

Just about everyone who reads or writes for blogs has an opinion on this subject. What’s yours?

Welcome, internet, to The Consumerist, the latest title from Gawker Media. The Consumerist loves to shop, and is reconciled to utilities, but hates paying for shoddy products, inhumane customer support, and half-assed service.

Each week The Consumerist will guide you through the delinquencies of retail and service organizations. The Consumerist will highlight the persistent, shameless boners of modern consumerism — and the latest hot deals, discounts, and freebies around.

Build your bomb shelters now, the world has gone completely fucking insane. CNN Money attributes (in an ephemeral link) a spike in Yahoo’s stock today to its distribution deal with Gawker Media:

The Internet portal signed a distribution deal with Gawker blogs in its
efforts to get more original writing content on its site.

According to the Wall St. Journal and Paid Content, Gawker’s Nick Denton has signed a partnering arrangement to distribute content to Yahoo that will be featured on their news site.

I’m of the mind that partnering is smarter than acquisition at this point in the blogosphere.  Let’s see how this one plays out.

Update (2 days later): SixApart’s CEO Barak Berkowitz provides more details. He posted his Message from the CEO to the TypePad blog and also sent it in an HTML email to customers:

Dear Debbie,  

As you might know, some of our users have been experiencing slow performance with the TypePad service over the past few weeks…

Pretty nice. To back up a minute… we (meaning a bunch of contributors to this blog) are taking partial credit for these blogged
responses from SixApart. We started complaining vociferously on
Wednesday Oct. 26th (first me and then Tris Hussey, Rich Brooks, Toby Bloomberg and Paul Chaney) about the recent slowness and outages with TypePad, SixApart’s popular hosted blogging service.

The result? SixApart co-founders Mena and Ben Trott posted a reponse,
the first real explanation we’ve gotten from the company after several
weeks of problems with TypePad. The number of TypePad blogs and the
activity on them (the good news) has outstripped their server capacity
(the bad news), they tell us. They’re working to move TypePad to a new
data center (which hasn’t been going smoothly).

Moral of the story? The blogosphere works. You kvetch enough. You get everybody’s attention. (Addendum: we’re quite pleased with the effect of our buzz campaign.) Now let’s  hope they can fix the problems…

Backstory
I sent Anil Dash
(a SixApart VP) several emails yesterday begging him to "listen up" and
to make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. Anil is a friend and
colleague. I suggested he get the top dogs at 6A to acknowledge the
recent problems and address them more transparently than the cryptic
messages we get on 6A’s Status Weblog about "temporary service degradation."

He listened.

Another
takeaway… there are many channels of communication. You need to use a
combination of public and private ones. The blogosphere is a very very
public place. It’s not right for everything.

As many active bloggers out there know, TypePad has been paaaaaaaainfully slow lately. If you have a TypePad account, posting has been somewhere between difficult and impossible.

Here at Business Blog Consulting
(the other BBC), behind the locked doors of our Yahoo Group, there’s
been a lot of chatter about leaving TypePad for greener pastures. 

Debbie Weil, over at BlogWrite for CEO’s and a fellow BBC blogger, takes TypePad to task with her post Listen Up SixApart: some of your TypePad customers may switch. Because Debbie’s, well Debbie Weil, Anil Dash from Six Apart actually responded on her blog.

I know that other BBC contributors plan on posting their own
thoughts both to BBC and to their own blogs in the next 24 hours, and
as I get a list of those posts I’ll update this post.

For me, this reminds me of the mid-90’s when AOL’s email went down for about two days.
People lost it. Businesses claimed they were being ruined. Congress
held hearings on what could be done. And Steve Case said something to
the effect that it showed how important AOL was to American Business.
(At least that’s how I remember it.)

I believe the lesson business owners learned from that is that
whatever your communication medium is, it needs to be rock-solid.
Piggy-backing your communications on a consumer product like AOL is no
way to run a real business.

Until recently I recommended TypePad as a platform for business bloggers…especially compared to Blogger,
which doesn’t have half the bells and whistles TypePad offers. However,
as more businesses turn to blogging as a legitimate marketing tool they
are going to expect enterprise-level solutions…not “waiting on
TypePad.com” messages.

The recent problems with TypePad and slowdowns at Technorati
show that blogging is growing at a mind-boggling rate; businesses will
continue to flock to it, and so will dollars. Whether TypePad is going
to be part of the solution for business bloggers or an also-ran will be
determined by how they respond to their current problems.