The "two-way web" goes mainstream Full Post View | List View
seeing "two-way web" tools become mainstream, including "journalistic blogs," online communities
- Why you can't ignore blogs any longer
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Interesting article by Frank Barnako of MarketWatch:
- WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The new issue of Business Week, arriving on newsstands Friday, includes eight pages about Web logs and how they will change your business.
The cover story is written in a blog fashion, with numerous items in a chronological ordering and individual sections describing the phenomenon's parts. "Call it Blogs 101 for businesses," the magazine said. "You cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself."
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- With an estimated 9 million blogs on the Web now and 40,000 new ones each day, there's a lot of bad with the good. But even if 99.9% are worthless, that leaves maybe 40 a day "that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush," the article added.
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- And it's no bubble, indicated BW. Venture firms financed $60 million in blog startups last year, according to VentureOne -- chump change compared with the $19.9 billion that poured into dot-coms in 1999.
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- The story identifies blog-related trends such as Podcasts, subject tracking services and consultants who show businesses how to use blogs.
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- "Blogs could end up providing the perfect response to mass media's core concern: the splintering of its audience," the article concluded. (See item below about exploding TV.) "By piggybacking on blogs, [advertisers] can start working the vast blogcafe, table by table."
Monday April 25, 2005 - 01:26pm (PDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The new issue of Business Week, arriving on newsstands Friday, includes eight pages about Web logs and how they will change your business.
- Blogs Will Change Your Business
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Business Week has an 8-page cover story on blogs in its current edition, dated May 2, 2005, titled "Blogs Will Change Your Business":
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- How big are blogs? Try Johannes Gutenberg out for size. His printing press, unveiled in 1440, sparked a publishing boom and an information revolution. Some say it led to the Protestant Reformation and Western democracy. Along the way, societies established the rights and rules of the game for the privileged few who could afford to buy printing presses and grind forests into paper.
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- The printing press set the model for mass media. A lucky handful owns the publishing machinery and controls the information. Whether at newspapers or global manufacturing giants, they decide what the masses will learn. This elite still holds sway at most companies. You know them. They generally park in sheltered spaces, have longer rides on elevators, and avoid the cafeteria. They keep the secrets safe and coif the company's message. Then they distribute it -- usually on a need-to-know basis -- to customers, employees, investors, and the press.
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- That's the world of mass media, and the blogs are turning it on its head. Set up a free account at Blogger or other blog services, and you see right away that the cost of publishing has fallen practically to zero. Any dolt with a working computer and an Internet connection can become a blog publisher in the 10 minutes it takes to sign up.
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- Sure, most blogs are painfully primitive. That's not the point. They represent power. Look at it this way: In the age of mass media, publications like ours print the news. Sources try to get quoted, but the decision is ours. Ditto with letters to the editor. Now instead of just speaking through us, they can blog. And if they master the ins and outs of this new art -- like how to get other bloggers to link to them -- they reach a huge audience.
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- This is just the beginning. Many of the same folks who developed blogs are busy adding features so that bloggers can start up music and video channels and team up on editorial projects. The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses.
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- How does business change when everyone is a potential publisher? A vast new stretch of the information world opens up. For now, it's a digital hinterland. The laws and norms covering fairness, advertising, and libel? They don't exist, not yet anyway. But one thing is clear: Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they're losing control of it.
- So, 42% said they believe that blogging has forced mainstream media to do a better job of reporting. And 62% of those polled believe that bloggers should not be held to the same standards of accuracy and ethics as journalists.
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- It's this last bit that I found intriguing. I get that there is plenty of debate about whether traditional journalistic ethics should apply to bloggers.
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- But I thought that accuracy was fundamental to blogging. After all, if bloggers don't strive to be accurate or aren't upfront about what they don't know, don't they lose credibility? And isn't credibility what people's reputations are based on online? Just a question.
Monday April 25, 2005 - 01:20pm (PDT) Permanent Link | 1 Comment -
- mobile blogging available NOW
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Why wait until April, when Yahoo Mobile already offers blog writing from cell phones -- at least for Yahoo 360
Thursday March 31, 2005 - 10:54am (PST) Permanent Link | 2 Comments - Rabble to enable mobile phones as blogging tools
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The San Jose Mercury news reports that Rabble is expected to launch in April, introducing blogging capabilities to cell phones:
They report that it works with Blogger and Live Journal. I wonder whether it will also work with Yahoo 360.The application, called ``Rabble,'' streamlines the now-cumbersome process for publishing text or images from a cell phone to a Weblog. It also creates a way to search mobile blogs for items of interest -- from homes for sale in a particular neighborhood to updated tour information for a favorite band.
``This is a personal publishing platform,'' said Shawn Conahan, chief executive of Intercasting, the San Diego start-up that created Rabble.
The creators of Rabble see the software as more than a mere mobile blogging tool. It combines the social-networking aspects of a Friendster with the enhanced search capabilities of a Google. A major national wireless phone carrier is expected to offer Rabble next month for a monthly fee.
Thursday March 31, 2005 - 09:04am (PST) Permanent Link | 1 Comment - Hello Yahoo 360°
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Welcome,
Yahoo.
Seriously.
Since Yahoo is now offering blogs in the United States, I suppose blogs must have really arrived! Seriously, blogs have been around more or less for about 10 years, though only in the last couple of years have large numbers of people outside of the technology world started using blog technology for consumer applications. Initially, blogs were used to "share" your personal life (as in "web log" or personal diary). Some of that was interesting, though much of it was not. However, instead of just having search engines tell us about interesting things, blogs shared pointers to interesting things on the web or news stories in "mainstream media." Then there was traction and the "blogosphere" provided eye witness reporting, personal commentary (Gee mom, I'm published), and personal interests. Now the kinds of applications that people use this technology for are all over the map (e.g., job searching - see http://www.profconnect.org for a quick way to get professional visibility). What Yahoo! has cleverly done with the new Yahoo 360° service is to combine blogs with social networking to allow individuals to integrate their personal relationships with their "web lifestyle." This means that using the Yahoo 360° permissions-based access, people can share different parts of their life with only those people with whom it is appropriate.
Oh, and by the way, various Yahoo properties will be directly and indirectly used in building these relationships and the content that gets shared. The next generation term for "stickiness" is "engaging the user." Score one for Yahoo over Google and Microsoft in learning how to leverage the synergy of their assorted businesses.
Tuesday March 29, 2005 - 09:45am (PST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
