Category Archives: Blogging

That political bloggers’ convention

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If there is an emerging consensus among much of the Democratic Party establishment, it is that blogs are an important, potentially crucial emerging power in American politics, as reflected by the turnout of Democratic leaders here this weekend. What is less clear is how mainstream politicians like Mr. Warner — or the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who was scheduled to address them Saturday night — will grapple with an audience that has defined itself in part by its dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians.

Indeed, there was evidence of a gulf in the way the two sides view their relationship. For the 1,000 or so bloggers at the YearlyKos Convention here, the mission is nothing short of trying to transform the way politics are done. For some of the political leaders who stopped off for a quick panel or reception, the visits seemed more along the lines of another constituent box to be checked on the campaign circuit, whose value does not extend beyond its checkbook or voter turnout operations.

Steve Soto, who writes The Left Coaster blog, said that the Democratic leaders running the campaigns to win the House and Senate “are still treating the blogs and some of the advice from them about message and focus as unwanted solicitations from crazy relatives.”

From the NYT report of the convention.

The Observer also has a report by Paul Harris on the convention.

Serendipity and the Web

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Thoughtful essay by Bill Thompson. It was prompted by a column by William McKeen arguing that online reading precluded the serendipity that one experiences in reading offline newspapers.

Perhaps the best argument in favour of the argument that today’s richly interlinked web is as much a promoter of serendipity as the library, the bookstore or the radio is simply that the discussion is happening at all.

I came across Steven Johnson’s first post, a response to McKeen’s article, because I subscribe to the feed from Johnson’s blog through the Bloglines service. I can see whenever he writes something new, and because I like his style I generally read his stuff.

He linked to the original article so I read that, but there were also a range of comments already posted on Johnson’s website, so I followed them up too.

My serendipitous discovery of McKeen’s piece demonstrates clearly not only that he is wrong but that the potential for accidental discovery is greatly enhanced by the net and the web. The chance of me stumbling across the St Petersburg Times in my local library is rather small, since it doesn’t actually keep copies of it.

Once I came across the argument about serendipity I focused on it, searched specifically for people engaged in the debate, and ignored many interesting sidelines – like an old post from Jason Kottke about why Macs used to be rubbish – as a result….

Dangerous to ignore bloggers, survey claims

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Hmmm…

Bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a “disproportionately large influence” on society, according to a report by a technology research company. Its study suggests that although “active” web users make up only a small proportion of Europe’s online population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends.
More than half of the internet users on the continent are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, while a further 23% only respond when prompted. But the remainder who do engage with the net – through messageboards, websites and blogs – are helping change the national conversation, say researchers.

“We’re seeing this growing,” said Julian Smith, an online advertising analyst with Jupiter Research and author of the report. “The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters.”

[Link]

Blogged arteries

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Robert Scoble’s Mum has had a stroke. He wrote about it on his Blog.

I’m off to Wikipedia to learn more about stroke and what the future for my mom holds. Anyone have good information and/or suggestions of things to ask the doctors?

When I last looked, he has 118 comments, some offering good advice and leads to info sources.

When’s the best time to blog?

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Apparently it’s 9am on Friday.

If there is an important article that you have been holding back on releasing, posting it on Friday morning at 9am should reach the most readers out of the entire week…

This conclusion was based on an analysis of the logs of the 200,000 visits to the author’s website. The data show that Friday is consistently the day on which most visits are registered. Interesting — but not much good if you’re based in Europe and have readers in other time-zones.

Corporate blogging

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This morning’s Observer column…

There was an interesting spat recently at Amazon HQ in Seattle that has been reverberating around cyberspace ever since. What happened was this: the authors of a fast-selling new book advocating business blogging were invited to give a talk to a lunch-time meeting of Amazon employees. Werner Vogels, the chief technology officer of Amazon, asked some direct – some say rude – questions, demanding empirical evidence that business blogging was a good investment rather than just a cool idea.

The visitors appeared to be miffed by his iconoclastic, sceptical tone. Up to that point on their book-promotion travels they had been listened to in reverential silence. So the meeting ended on a sour note and the participants went their separate ways – but the argument continued in, well, blogs…

Podcasts are huge; it’s just the audience that’s tiny

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Who’s listening to podcasts? Apparently no one. According to a new report from Forrester,  only 1 percent of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts.  “Podcasts have hit the mainstream consciousness but have not yet seen widespread use,” Forrester analyst Charlene Li explains. “One-quarter of online consumers express interest in podcasts, with most interested in time-shifting existing radio and Internet radio channels. Companies that are interested in using podcasts for their audio should focus not only on downloads but also on streaming audio as a means to get their content and ads to consumers.”

So podcasting, for the moment at least, is not only a bare trickle in the media stream, but one whose appeal is limited to those who use it to time-shift broadcast radio.  Now to be fair, we’re only 18 months or so into the podcasting phenom, and Li predicts that  it will grow to reach 12.3 million households in the U.S. by 2010.  So there’s a chance yet that it will someday become a mainstream medium. But right now it seems there’s little evidence to merit all the bloviating we’ve been hearing from podcast evangelists.

Dave Winer bows out

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Yep. One of the Founding Fathers of the Blogging movement has decided to quit…

So there’s the first part of my reason. Blogging doesn’t need me anymore. It’ll go on just as well, maybe even better, with some new space opened up for some new things. But more important to me, there will be new space for me. Blogging not only takes a lot of time (which I don’t begrudge it, I love writing) but it also limits what I can do, because it’s made me a public figure. I want some privacy, I want to matter less, so I can retool, and matter more, in different ways. What those ways are, however, are things I won’t be talking about here. That’s the point. That’s the big reason why.

I will miss him. Dave is a good sort. He was also the person who led me to start my Blog (in 1997/8: It was a private notebook for a few years). I used his Userland Radio software for years.

The empire fights back

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Instructive New York Times piece about how corporate PR is finding its way — unacknowledged — into Blogs.

Brian Pickrell, a blogger, recently posted a note on his Web site attacking state legislation that would force Wal-Mart Stores to spend more on employee health insurance. “All across the country, newspaper editorial boards — no great friends of business — are ripping the bills,” he wrote.

It was the kind of pro-Wal-Mart comment the giant retailer might write itself. And, in fact, it did.

Several sentences in Mr. Pickrell’s Jan. 20 posting — and others from different days — are identical to those written by an employee at one of Wal-Mart’s public relations firms and distributed by e-mail to bloggers.

Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters.

But the strategy raises questions about what bloggers, who pride themselves on independence, should disclose to readers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, has been forthright with bloggers about the origins of its communications, and the company and its public relations firm, Edelman, say they do not compensate the bloggers.

But some bloggers have posted information from Wal-Mart, at times word for word, without revealing where it came from.

Glenn Reynolds, the founder of Instapundit.com, one of the oldest blogs on the Web, said that even in the blogosphere, which is renowned for its lack of rules, a basic tenet applies: “If I reprint something, I say where it came from. A blog is about your voice, it seems to me, not somebody else’s.”

Quite. Caveat lector.

Real courage

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Amid all the posturing cant about ‘freedom’ and ‘standing up to fanatics’ triggered by the Danish cartoon controversy, here’s an example of real courage.

Oblivious to the bowl of day-old pasta resting among the exposed wires of his home-built computer, 16-year-old Laurie Pycroft, a floppy-haired sixth form dropout from Swindon, flicks between three screens to keep up with his emails, blog and website. Empty Coke cans, juice bottles and fried chicken boxes litter his bedroom floor.

This is the unlikely nerve centre of a new pro-vivisection campaign which has attracted the backing of some of the most respected scientists in the country. In Oxford today, Pycroft’s group, Pro-Test, will launch the fightback against the city’s army of vocal and sometimes aggressive anti-vivisectionists.

At noon, the teenager will stand up in front of as many as 1,000 vivisection supporters and introduce the most eminent supporters of his campaign, consultant neurosurgeon Professor Tipu Aziz and neurophysiologist Professor John Stein.

I’m delighted to see that the Oxford rally went ahead.