Dr. Del Dhanoa posted an interesting article called The Implosion of the Blogosphere.

In it, he’s not predicting the end of blogging, or really even the blogosphere, but rather the way some bloggers make a living.

He uses the history of the video game networks, i.e., Gamespy, as a way of extrapolating what may happen to blogging networks such as WeblogsInc.com, Gawker Media and the like.

In short, he’s concerned that like video game networks, blogging
networks will accelerate the boom/bust cycle, paying bloggers more and
more money to jump ship, driving up ad rates, until the bottom drops
out. Basically, he’s warning against speculation.

It’s an interesting idea, and the article is well written. I’m currently reading "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister,"
which is told from the perspective of Cinderella’s sister, and takes
place during the tulip bust that destroyed many fortunes in Holland and
beyond. I think it’s safe to say that whatever the market is,
speculation is a risky business that ends in a zero sum game, or worse.

For me, personally, and for most of the business bloggers out there,
we’re blogging for our business, not for a network. Whether blogging
networks succeed or fail in the long run, the blogosphere and blogging
should continue as long as businesses are interested in connecting with
their prospects and clients.

Don’t think you need to publish full-text RSS feeds? Think again.

Looking at the Search Engine Watch review of Google Blog Search:

Google’s blog search indexes all of the content it finds in feeds, but does not attempt to access and index the full content available on a publisher’s web server.

One more reason why you should consider publishing full-text feeds.

No surprise here – only wondering what took them so long.

The interface is typically Google and the results are a bit odd but hey, it’s Google.

Google Blog Search

TechCrunch has posted an excellent list of the "Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged" giving guidelines on how to get coverage on their blog. I think it’s usefulness extends beyond that though.

Build a kick ass company
Approach Bloggers Directly
Be Persistent
Start a Blog
Be humble
Be confident
Be descriptive
Tell a Story
Don’t hide information
Don’t be a Jerk

This a great list for PR professionals as well as marketers reaching out to blogs.  In fact, it provides some compelling reasons why people in public relations doing the pithcing should have their own blog.

For bloggers that have problems with an abundance of crappy pitching by PR firms, why not publish a guideline like TechCrunch has?  It could lead to a more productive interaction for both the blogger and the person making the request.

Last Friday, Duncan Riley from The Blog Herald posted a short item about another blog stealing his content. Today, Duncan follows-up with his case against WebProNews. In a lengthy post, Duncan provides a number of examples of how he feels that WebProNews has stolen his content without proper attribution.

Sure, a lot of bloggers are ametuers and don’t know any better, or if you dug through the archives of the Blog Herald I’ve probably done it by accident once or twice as well, but when your a paid writer for a leading internet portal you shouldn’t just know better, you do know better, and when you don’t play by the rules its not an accident, its a concious decision.

Duncan also provides examples of quotes taken from other publications without credit being given to the original source.

Update: Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews has provided a well-written response in the comments.

If you’re looking for an entry-level/introductory article on search engines for blogs, check out the Personal Journal section of today’s Wall St. Journal (9/7/05). Alternatively–for the next seven days–you can follow this link to read New Search Engines Help Users Find Blogs online.

The article focuses its attention on blog search engines such as Technorati, IceRocket, Feedster, DayPop and Bloglines. It looks at how they differ from traditional search engines like Google and Yahoo, and how they differ from each other.

Since this article appears in the Personal section of the WSJ,
its focus is on how this affects you…personally. It’s not an in depth
look at the marketing strategies of these companies, their business
plans, or target audiences.

There are, however, some good
examples how current event searches–such as "William Rehnquist" and
"video music awards" pull better results at the blog search engines
than at Google.

One thing that does seem to be overlooked is the
impending entry into this arena of Google, Yahoo and MSN. Once these
three giants jump in, it’s hard to know if there will be room in the
pool for some of these upstarts. More likely, some or all of these
companies will be acquired as these new media giants look for new areas
for expansion.

While battling reliability and scaling issues Technorati is forging ahead with new services. David Sifry announced the launch of their Blog Finder service. The basic premise is to rank blogs by category or technically speaking, by tags. David says in his blog that new service answers the question, “How can you find authoritative blogs on a subject?” This is what Robert Scoble was asking for on Monday.

I took a quick look around at the new service this evening and here are my initial impressions.

The initial version of the listings was built by using category and tag data that blogs had already submitted. Right out of the box, the lists are very BETA. For example, some bloggers use the category ‘PR’ instead of ‘Public Relations’. As such, Neville Hobson’s blog is listed as the Most Authorative blog on ‘PR’ but is nowhere to be found on the list for ‘Public Relations’ blogs. Fellow Business Blog Consulting contributor BL Ochman is listed as the Most Authorative blog for ‘Public Relations’.

My blog is listed as the Most Authorative blog for ‘Orlando’ even though I rarely write about Orlando. Why? I guess becuase I have tagged more posts Orlando than other bloggers.

There are other issues as well. In the ‘PR’ search, Neville’s blog is listed in three places, under three different URLs. (nevon.net/nevon/, nevon.typepad.com and nevon.typepad.com/nevon/) This is due to the fracturing of data within Technorati’s index. If you remember Neville discovered this when he was having problems with Technorati’s search tool.

In addition, Steve Rubel is not listed under ‘PR’ or ‘Public Relations’, but he is second for ‘Podcasting’ behind Dave Winer.

If you have a Technorati account and have claimed your blog, you can specify the tags you want associated with your blog. I looked at this option and it does allow you to specify up to 20 tags for your blog. One problem I noticed though was it didn’t always save my changes. I removed a few generic tags such as ‘Stuff’ (one of my categories) and replaced it with something else. A few minutes later I returned to the entry screen and a number of tags were repeated and some of my original tags were no longer there. Hopefully they’ll fix this.

Overall this should be a very talked about feature. The initial bugs I noticed should be able to be cleaned up. We’ll see how the rest of the blogosphere reacts in the coming days. And unfortunately, we’ll also see how soon the spammers begin to manipulate the results.

Update 9.2.05 I have posted some futher analysis of Blog Finder.

Deutsche Welle International is running its BOBS (Best Of the Blogs) 2005 Awards, commencing September 1. This is the second year running and the winners from last year are listed here.

The site says there are thirteen categories, although it looks to me more like five categories, one of which has nine language sub-categories. Categories are: Best weblog, Best multimedia weblog, Best podcasting site, Special award from Reporters without Borders, Best journalistic site in one of the following languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.

Interesting that there is no category for business blogs, let alone corporate, small business etc sub-categories. Can we take from that omission that this very well established European media company does not see business blogging as having a sufficiently distinctive place yet? The jury composition looks strongly weighted to a journalist’s view of the blogosphere and is interestingly international. And there appears to be only one non-media sponsor, a hotel, in among the Sponsors and Media Partners.

One reason I’m very interested in this is that I’ve been communicating with some other Australian bloggers about the idea of a business blogging conference in our part of the world. I guess we all see the blogosphere, as we do the world generally, from our own vantage points, but the BOBS categories suggest to me that the idea of business blogging as a significant sector of the blogosphere, with its own characteristics and issues, might not not have achieved a high level of recognition outside the USA.

Gartner released yesterday its 2005 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. The research firm has pegged Corporate Blogging and RSS as being two years away from mainstream adoption. For now, both are tumbling into Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment (along with wikis and desktop search) as a result of too much media buzz. If you believe Gartner, Corporate Blogging is already sooo… last year (2004).

They’ve got a point. The media rumble about Corporate Blogging is almost deafening by now. It’s not a “new” story anymore. Which is not to say that blogging isn’t still a “new” thing to many companies.

At any rate, the five stages of hype make a lot of sense. It works something like this: new technologies get overhyped in the beginning; then they go out of favor; eventually they mature and are adopted by the mainstream but by that time they’re no longer news.

The five stages are: Technology Trigger, Peak of Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Oh, and podcasting is on the upswing, according to Gartner. It’s sliding up the Peak of Expectations. That sounds about right, doesn’t it?

The way I understand it, the hype cycle is measuring the buzz as well as the adoption rate. It
doesn’t necessarily correspond to the long-term utility – or success –
of a phenomenon like Corporate Blogging. Only time will tell.

Read more about Corporate Blogging’s downward slide into the Trough of Disillusionment…

With the trend of using blogs for business/marketing purposes now in full swing, the numbers game is going to get more and more important. While tools like BlogPulse shows us what’s going on at the meta level, analytics apps are needed that are configured specifically for blog purposes.

A new player is Blogbeat. Rubel says it "offers a simple way to get your hands on data such as your most popular
posts, links/refers, RSS clicks and more." For the moment (and I do mean for the moment) it’s free, but the offer is limited to a specific number of users and that number is dwindling fast. (There’s a counter on the site showing how many spots are left.) It’s also free of ads too!

I was really hoping to make it to the Blog Business Summit in San Fran but, alas and forsooth, it was not to be. Nevertheless, it kicks off today with a Pre-Conference Business Blogging 101workshop. In fact, our very own Dave Taylor will be the presenter.

Several of the contributors to this site will be attending the conference and should be blogging about it here as well as their own sites. Me, I’ll just watch from the sidelines.

In addition to my other volunteer efforts to help Global PR Blog Week 2.0 be a valuable discussion and event for both public relations professionals and anyone else interested in the present and future of business blogging and PR blogging, I’m also contributing two articles of note:

Why CEO’s Shouldn’t Blog

Fake Blogs: New Marketing Channel or Really Bad Idea?

I have some thoughtful opinions on both topics, and have already started to draft up notes and some specific points I want to make, but in the spirit of an open dialog, I would like to invite you, my faithful readers, to add your own thoughts on these two topics too!

You are welcome to agree with my position, disagree vehemently, or even just point to weblogs that you think are fascinating or wicked cool examples of the specific topic.

In a week or two I’ll begin pulling my articles together and will hope that I can quote at least a few of you therein (with links to your own sites, if you’d like: indicate as such in your comment if that’s something that appeals to you) either supporting my position CEO blog-wise, or offering a smart perspective on so-called fake blogs.

So…. what do you think about CEO blogs and fake blogs?

Note: to keep things organized and coherent, I’m requesting that you add your comments here: CEO Blogs and Fake Blogs: an open discussion at The Intuitive Life Business Blog. Thanks!

Technorati’s David Sifry has an excellent piece on spam and fake blogs that gives as thorough an explanation of the subject that I’ve seen. If those things get your goat like they do mine it’s a post you’ll want to read.

Yahoo’s new blended blogging/social network tool, Yahoo 360, is in beta. So far, I haven’t seen the backend of the system. It’s invite-only; I was invited to open an account as part of a private email discussion community, but it turned out the invitee didn’t realize that so far blanket invites couldn’t be processed outside of Yahoo. I’ll update when I know more.

Meanwhile, more coverage from Steve Rubel, AP, CNET, Forrester’s Charlene Li, WSJ, Marc Canter (who has actually tried it) and others.

Wow. I just read business and blog consultant Jeremy Wright’s harrowing account of being turned away at Canada’s border to the U.S. after a two-hour interogation basically because the border guard didn’t grok  blogs. Solidarity, brother.

3/22/05 UPDATE:

The numbers discussed in the original post below are based on Alexa data, which are notoriously questionable (Alexa’s numbers come from users of its browser toolbar, so by definition it’s a self-selected audience, which in this case probably skews heavily towards bloggers). Tig Tillinghast of MarketingVox read my post and sanity-checked it with Hitwise; those numbers say that NYT’s audience is still larger than Blogspots, but the trend of the data would suggest that Blogspot is soon set to overtake NYTimes.com.

ORIGINAL POST:

Wonking around Saturday night, I found something interesting: collectively, the blogs hosted on Blogspot get more visitors than NYTimes.com, according to Alexa.

Meanwhile, Technorati’s David Sifry reports on various recent trends among blogs with cool graphs, including the rapid growth of the blogosphere, spikes in blog posts based on mapped to news events, and in-bound links to top-blogs vs. mainstream media sources. Good stuff.

UPDATE:

Xanga.com crushes NYTimes.com:

Particularly informative is to look at the two-year trend: Xanga and Blogspot.