Steve Rubel shares some stats today regarding the growing prevalence of spam blogs, otherwise known as splogs. Citing a UMBC eBiquity Research Group study it appears that up to 75% of pings to blog ping servers are from these thorns in the blogosphere’s flesh.

Steve addresses the issue head on with the question, "Does anyone care…?" I’m sure people do, but if so, where’s the outcry? Other than Mark Cuban that is. Perhaps splogs have not sullied the reputation of the blogosphere to the degree that something obviously has to be done. But, from a marketing standpoint, I don’t know of any other tactic that could turn marketers off to using blogs than splogs and I challenge us to take a proactive approach. And I’d really like to know what other BBC contributors think.

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?

With the blogosphere abuzz with the announcement that Yahoo has acquired
del.icio.us, I predict tagging is going to get a lot more coverage in
the press now. Along with that will come a validation to their readers
of the importance and benefits of tagging with business people. In
anticipation of that, all us business bloggers need to get serious about
incorporating tagging into our blogs.

One thing I haven’t seen enough of on blogs — but I predict will be
up-and-coming — is the appearance of tag clouds, where certain keywords
are larger in font size than others, all of them clickable, leading to
various category pages, tag pages, or search results pages.

One of my favorite implementations of a tag cloud on a blog is on O’Reilly Radar

My second most favorite is a new approach to “auto-tagging” on Eurekster’s blog.

The latter is actually what Eurekster calls a “BuzzCloud” and any
blogger or webmaster can get one for free by signing up for a Swicki. A
swicki is a personalized search engine of the web that is targeted and
relevant to you and your blog audience. The buzzcloud contains a set of
search terms that you have suggested along with ones that Eurekster
auto-tags by noting which searches are popular with your audience. When
one of your readers clicks on the links, they are taken to a search
results page in Eurekster for that search term, and the results popular
with you and your audience are promoted to the top of results and marked
with an icon — in essence, tagging the results as well as the search
term.

I believe tagging that requires manual intervention such as del.icio.us
and technorati are primarily for web-intensive users; the combination of
manual control and auto-tagging offered by Eurekster with swickis can
potentially lead to mass-use.

You can sign up for a swicki for your blog or website here.

Just about every company has a bad day, an inferior product and some disgruntled customers. It’s inevitable, whether you’re running a restaurant or building million-dollar homes. What’s new is that unhappy customers now have a greater reach than they ever did in the past, and companies can no longer easily ignore these grumblers, but have to actively address their public comments.

I’ve been asked to help one company with just this challenge, to help them come up with a response to critical reviews of their service on some well-known blogs. The company knows it’s losing sales because of these critiques (the power of blogs!) but how to respond?

Here’s my article on the subject:

    Building a blog damage control strategy

Even the most rabid anti-business folk must agree that it’s best to have both sides of a situation presented, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Please, read what I suggest and add your own ideas on this topic.

This is a nice way to end 2005.  To give you some personal context, this is biggest blogad buy ever — 800 blogs.  This is more ads than Blogads.com sold in the entirety of 2003.  (The previous record was held by Audi, which ordered ads on 286 blogs last spring.)  I’ll leave it to the media mavens among you to figure out the larger ramifications, but for me this is just a darn pleasant way to end a good year.

 

Finally, I’m fuzzy on the details of this, but there may be some opportunity for bloggers to interact with one of the NBCites (Keith Obermann on online viral weirdness, Rita Cosby on porn and Joe Scarborough on internet addiction) as they pull together the shows. If you are interested, write me and I’ll try to put you in touch with the NBC person who floated this idea.

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?

AWeber is a company/service that I usually associate with autoresponders and email newsletters. We use them to deliver our 7 Days to Success e-courses. (The last "s" may be superfluous; I’ve yet to write a second one.)

That’s why I was surprised and excited to receive an email from them announcing their newest service: AWeber Feed Broadcaster. This new service allows you to:

• generate HTML/plain text emails from your RSS feed,
• choose from several attractive templates (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) or create your own,
• decide how many posts will appear in each newsletter,
• add specific marketing messages to your email newsletters, and
• add the signup box to your blog.

Why would you want an email newsletter generated from your RSS feed?

Well, most people still don’t "get" RSS feeds, but everyone "gets"
email and email newsletters. Plus, there’s no real downside. Current belief is to deliver your message in as many ways possible to
reach the customer in a way they want. (Blogs, podcasts, TiVo, etc.) If people want to read your blog
delivered via email, why not let them?

Perhaps in a couple of years (or months) this will seem superfluous,
but for right now it can greatly extend your marketing reach.

While there are certainly other services that generate emails based on your blog posts (currently flyte’s web marketing blog uses Bloglet), I’ve yet to see one that looks so sophisticated.

I haven’t yet trialed the product, so this isn’t a review, just a
head’s up. The service is included in your regular paid AWeber account,
so if you don’t use AWeber yet, you’ll need to sign up.

If you’re looking for additional information there’s a great video tutorial here, and an F.A.Q.

When I’ve had a few weeks of experience with AWeber Feed Broadcaster I’ll post a review.

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.

Like it or not … corporate guidelines for blogging are becoming SOP (standard operating procedures). Next up podcasting guidelines?  Yup and IBM is the first company, I know of, to draft guidelines for podcasts. Can vlogging guidelines be far behind?

IBM’s blogging guidelines
were used as a basis and then a few extra podcast/medium specific
guidelines were added.  Most are common sense and reflect a standard of
professionalism that should not be a big deal within a business
environment.

IBM’s Podcasting Guidelines

–Do not podcast IBM Confidential material.
Currently there
is no way to protect/encrypt audio files in a manner that meets IBM’s
security guidelines. Files can be easily shared outside of IBM. Don’t
disclose anything you wouldn’t disclose outside the company.

–Be mindful not only of what you say, but how you say it.
Sometimes
the way you say something — the tone of your voice, such as a hint of
sarcasm — can be as revealing as what you say.

–Protect your privacy and the privacy of others.
Make sure
you don’t record any person without his or her consent and awareness.
Surrepitiously recording and distributing conversations is a breach of
other’s privacy and can have severe consequences for you. Start each
audio recording by identifying all the individuals participating.

–Set the bar as high as you can for audio production and content quality.
External
podcasts that present topics or points of view relevant to IBM’s
business or broader corporate interests inevitably reflect on the
company’s brand. To put it bluntly, if it does not sound good, even the
greatest ideas may not be enough to hold a listener’s attention.
 
–There may be some invitations to participate in non-IBM podcasts that warrant IBM Communication’s involvement.
You
should treat these the same way you would treat an interview request
from a reporter. If you’re in doubt, be sure to talk to your local
Communications people to discuss the opportunity before agreeing to
participate.

 –Identify your podcast as the voice of an individual or small group within the company, not the “official” voice of the company.
This
is similar to the standard disclaimer in IBM blogging guidelines — but
in the case of a podcast, it’s necessary to make such a declaration
verbally.

 –Before you initiate a podcast, ask yourself if it is the most appropriate method to communicate with your audience.
Before
creating a podcast, listen to some. Experience what podcasting is like
from the audience’s perspective. Go out and listen to some podcasts.
What do you think works well? What do you dislike? What is it that you
have to say — and is this the right medium in which to say it?

IBM also reminds its folks that MP3 files (like blog posts) can remain accessible for a very long time. Aint that the truth!

Read More: Corporate Blogging Guidelines

Heard it from: Christopher Hannegan’s Blog Employee Engagement

I’ve been doing some personal musing for a while now over exactly at what point bloggers stopped using the dotorg domain extension and started using the dotcom one. Let me explain.

It seems to me at least some of the more longstanding blogs (or blog-related sites) used org. Case-in-point, Jeremy Wright’s Ensight blog, the Threadwatch blog, and Movable Type’s site. Now, I realize this might be a silly thing to think about, and that it might have been due to nothing more than the dotcom domain was already taken. If so, stop reading. But, I think there is a deeper question here and the BBC site is an appropriate one to discuss it.

It is this: At what point did the paradign shift take place from when blogs were viewed as a purist medium for self expression and become used for commercial purposes? It’s stating the obvious to suggest such a shift has taken place. Perhaps it was gradual, a Gladwellian tipping point sort of thing. But, was there a seismic shift and, if so, when did it occur? If there are any blog historians or anthropologists reading this, I’d enjoy your answer to the question.

With all the newbie bloggers there are out there, it seems to me there might be a need for a book (an essay at least) on the history of blogging. Though blogging has morphed, in that it is being used for a number of purposes now, the essence of it remains the same and we don’t, in my view, need to lose touch with the past just because we are embracing the future.

Weblogs Inc founder Jason Calacanis is taking BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis to task over something he said in a recent post about blog networks. Jeff argues that the internet "kills networks," particularly what he refers to as "permanent, closed networks" (though he doesn’t go into detail about what those are). Calacanis literally bites his head off in rebuttal. I love a good blogosphere fight! We haven’t had one in a while.

Shankar Gupta at MediaPost Publications reports of  PriceRitePhoto.com, a Brooklyn, N.Y camera e-retailer, that recently found that if you make angry the wrong blogger, life can be turned upside down pretty quickly and with a dangerous outcome.

Due to a terrible experience with the company, a blogger, Thomas Hawk, at Digital Connection blogged about the terrible ordeal.

Continue reading the outcome of his post.

I have a close friend and fellow business blogger who lost her jewelry store to a fire on November 1st, just at the start of the holiday selling season. Her name is Patti Thompson.

Here’s the cool thing, Patti has blogged the entire incident, along with the story of her rebuilding process, on her blog at DiamondDivaOnline.

There are a number of remarks I could make about her willingness to do this, not the least of which is that it represents a vital way blogs can be used to communicate with customers and others — blogging during times of crisis, chronicling the entire process on a blog for all the world to see. She’s done it with genuine openness and transparency too, which in my estimation represents the highest ideals to which we bloggers aspire.

Let me make a simple request. If you’re a business blogger, why not write a post retelling Patti’s story. It is indeed one worth telling. Oh, and don’t pity her. She’s a real trooper, both stalwart and optimistic, determined to "rise from the ashes" and rebuild her business better than before. Knowing her, I have no doubt she’ll do just that. You’ll know too, because she will blog it all.

Just received Frank Barnako’s Internet Daily enewsletter. In it he mentioned Scoble has pared down his blogroll to about 800 feeds. I checked to see if I made the cut. I didn’t, but maybe you did, so you might want to take a look.

If you’re coming to the Syndicate conference this December 12-14 in San Francisco and you work in the "RSS industry", we’d like to invite you to drop in for some lively discussion on the future of our industry. 

In conjunction with the event, Pheedo is informally hosting an off-conference RSS Industry Night (full disclosure: I work for Pheedo) Roundtable, Rok Hrastnik will be moderating the evening as a neutral party. Essentially, we are aiming to focus the event on our industry and not on any company in particular.

Event Summary:
Coinciding with the RSS industry conference, Syndicate, the RSS Industry Night Roundtable aims to assemble a group of the top thought leaders in the RSS industry to discuss key topics that challenge all of us in this space. This group will span the disciplines of RSS advertising, RSS manufacture, RSS aggregators and readers, and RSS purveyors and luminaries.

The intent of this meeting is to discuss a number of key issues facing our industry and it’s chances for continued success. This meeting will also serve as a vehicle for our key industry partners to discuss mutual challenges and viable solutions, as well as come to a mutual understanding of goals and objectives that we all have for the RSS space. Lastly, we will have an opportunity to collaborate, as leaders in the industry, on how we can increase the rate of RSS adoption among information consumers.

When:

Time: 6:30PM

Date: December 12th

Timing: In conjunction with the first day of Syndicate Conference on December 12th, 2005 in San Francisco.

Moderator:
Rok Hrastnik, a noted RSS authority and author of the book Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS has agreed to moderate the event as a neutral party.

Topics:
There are so many topics that we can collectively address as an industry, however, it’s critical that we focus on the important few that address issues of RSS growth and adoption.

We will focus on key industry issues that are preventing business adoption of RSS. Below are the high-level issues that we’ll cover on the 12th. At the end of the document are additional topics that can be discussed if there is additional time.

–> Lack of standardized RSS metrics

–> Lack of presentable case studies and best practices

–> IRSS mass syndication

–> Actual RSS penetration

–> Rich-media advertising

Attendees:
Ideally, the event will attract around 20 high level leaders from within the RSS industry from the following disciplines.

RSS Manufacture
RSS Advertising
RSS Readers
RSS Services
RSS Convergence
RSS Research

Participation:
If you wish to participate, please contact Rok Hrastnik as soon as possible for additional event information. The audience will be targeted to RSS service providers.

It appears that the world was just waiting for Scott Adams to start a dilbert-esque blog. Well, in fact, he did just that with the Dilbert Blog.  The number of comments that he’s attracted for each post in just two short months of blogging is just mad – a recent post on "why [Scott Adams] is stupid" has almost 200 comments alone, and it was posted on the 22nd of November.

A few days ago I invited the readers of my blog to tell me why I’m stupid. The results are in.  If you are new to the Internet, allow me to explain how to debate in this
medium. When one person makes any kind of statement, all you need to do
is apply one of these methods to make it sound stupid. Then go on the
offensive.

Who says that no one reads blogs?  It looks like those folks that are reading blogs are the same ones  who’ve long since left the fairytale world where corporations are good and ethical and our bosses are right and reasonable.  (mine is, don’t know much about yours…)  I guess that puts the blog numbers
‘way up there’ considering that just about every disengaged worker in America is at least a passive Dilbert fan (there, take that generality and turn it into and absolute).

Most corporate blogs are pretty cheery places, with their message almost perpetually positive and the tone reflecting some of the best copywriting on the entire network. General Motor’s FastLane Blog has been an example of this, with interesting and engaging articles from various members of the massive GM team talking about auto design, car shows, features of specific models, and so on. But now that GM the company is facing extraordinarily tough times on the business side, it appears that its weblog is descending into cranky defensiveness, a tactic sure to backfire.

Read all about it at:

    GM FastLane Blog Gets Defensive

Even if you aren’t interested in the automotive industry ,it’s still an excellent chance to learn about how a business blog can backfire if not managed properly.