State of the Blogosphere/State of the Hubbasphere
Dave Sifry issued his State of the Blogosphere this morning and suffice it to say its bigger than it was last report (57million blogs tracked world wide, 2ﾃつ blogs created each second of every day, 1.6 million posts per day, 55% of blogs are defined as active which means that they have been updated at least once, in 3 months). English and Chinese remain the top two languages but Farsai is now in the top ten languages. Well okay then….
Now the question that we really care about…..influence. Here is the way the Technorati sees it:ﾃつ Low Authority (3-9 blogs linking), Middle Authority (10-99 blogs linking), High Authority(100-499 blogs linking) and Very high Authority (500+ blogs linking). As explained by Dave, any authority designation is still authority because there are 1.5MM blogs with 10 or more links (versus 57 million total) and authority is directly related to time blogging and frequency of posting.
OK, so I have many issues with the manner in which links are counted but since I don’t really have the expertise to talk spiders and parsing and what is really behind the curtain at Oz,ﾃつ I will not take that on; however, I do have a few comments on the numbers as related to influence, the privilege of rank andﾃつ "blogger relations" issue between Michael Arrington at TechCrunch and Mothers Click that is making the rounds.
It relates back to a post by Clay Shirky called Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality and the fact that the power law curve is heavily weighted towards those with the highest ranking. The rich get richer and so it is Technorati ranking terms. According to Shirky, the "size of the system increases the gap between the #1 spot and the median" and the highest ranked blogs (based upon links) are part of a self perpetuating, exponentially growing network of influence.
ﾃつ In the words of Fred Stutzman at Unit Structures, the top ranked bloggers are the hubs who receive a disproportionate amount of in-bound links, that are flowing in a mostly non-reciprocal, low to high, ranked manner like airline hubs; the hubs then feed a significantly lesser number of links downward to the spokes. It is a kind of social multiplier model of influencers and influencer followers.
So, this leads to what Steve Rubel called the Underground Blogosphere: "The Underground Blogosphere is an intricate web of hundreds of thousands of emails that bloggers send to each other every day. In essence, they are "pitching" their latest posts in hopes of getting a link. Sometimes, bloggers are genuinely looking for good feedback, but more often than not all they are just looking for traffic." Steve gets pitched a lot and would prefer not to be emailed requests for links.Use del.ici.ous, please.
According to the PR firm for MothersClick, here is what happened: We have a client who was obsessed with getting their new 2.0-style company featured in TechCrunch. We approached it the right way, through the right channels, with respect for the people and processes at Arrington’s gig.ﾃつ We tried.ﾃつ We failed.ﾃつ It happens.ﾃつ Otherwise, the early reception in other media has been good. But the client was obsessed with TechCrunch.ﾃつ Without consulting their SHIFT team, the company’s founder left a critical comment at TechCrunch.ﾃつ The client basically questioned Arrington’s integrity.ﾃつ This comment got picked up by ValleyWag.ﾃつ Which got picked up by Digg.ﾃつ Which led to Mr. Arrington posting at-length in defense of his integrity.
Robert Scoble, in a post titled,ﾃつ "A-list bloggers keeping the little guy down?" weighs in an agreement with Steve Rubel: don’t email me, post a comment to my blog.
Tara Hunt says,ﾃつ "Now…for Mother’s Click…wtf are they thinking? Why even target Mike and TC? Huh? The majority of your audience isn’t even there - you want to go to BlogHer and Dooce and individually talk to all of the mommy bloggers you can about giving it a try. TechCrunch? I don’t know if Mike has stats, but I’d imagine that his audience is largely male. Not that being on TC isn’t still valuable…but putting all of your energy in that direction is ridiculous." She advices that using a PR firm to send a "Dear Blogger" is not the right approach to getting a link, anyway.
So….the State of the Blogosphere? Its big, still growing, driven by an inequitable model of influence as measured and perpetuated by Technorati, that makes it challenging to rise above; but study the model, learn the culture, target your efforts, and like Strumpette,ﾃつ fight for your links.
Tags: Technorati, MothersClick, Tara Hunt, Michael Arrington, Blogher, Dooce, Techcrunch, ValleyWag, Marianne Richmond, Links, Steve Rubel, influence, Dave Sifry,ﾃつ Digg, Strumpette,ﾃつ Fred Stutzman,ﾃつ Clay Shirky
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Blogging Irony: We Encourage Corporations to Blog as our Business but Discourage Them by our Behavior
As part of my consulting business I promote blogging to businesses, service professionals, and non-profits. Many consultants, Advertising and PR bloggers do the same thing. We tell them it is an easy, inexpensive way to build businesses and brands; we say, blogs build relationships and join the conversation.And we say the best way to learn about blogs is to read blogs.
Well, I believe all those statements are true…the problem is you hope that they are not reading blogs the week that a number of bloggers are pulverizing a brand blog and asking that the marketing department be fired, or having a too personal slugfest over Wal-Mart and Edelman and who should have said what ,or a lower moment, the Strumpette dumpathon.
John Wagner at On Message from Wagner Communication writes, "There is a lesson to be learned from Strumpette and I hope all you blogists, Kool-Aid drinkers and social media consultants were paying attention." The lesson he is teaching is an old one really, public displays of engagement with an adversary seldom accomplish much. Although he makes some good points and the comments to his post represent the spectrum of opinions, I think his perhaps off hand reference to why corporate America is cautious about blogging is just as important.
He references a blog post on Scatterbox that is critical of hypocricies noted about McDonald’s social repsonisibility blog in light his opinions that their menu is less than responsible, as an example of the kind of criticism a corporation might face in the blogosphere. Again, it’s a valid point. If a corporation has a blog it can and probably will be examined for evidence of inconsistencies with stated corporate policies, product or service offerings, or even political contributions. Any public communication by a corporation is subject to this. And really in my opinion, corporations, just like the rest of us should be held accountable for consistency.
What I think is another important point is that when a company launches a blog and bloggers write things like, "Last wednesday, February 15th Guinness (a generally forward thinking
and creative marketer) launched a blog. As opposed to the usual puffery
and inauthenticity that can be associated with some of the ﾃ｢竄ｬﾅ鼎orporate Brand Jobsﾃ｢竄ｬﾂ that pass for blogs, " does it really encourage the brand manager reading the post to feel like adding it to the old marketing plan? And that was pretty tame next to what Juicey Fruit got. McDonald’s blog was not exactly welcomed with open arms, even before the first post went up.
Final comment…it seems that for all the instructions we receive about how to build traffic the way to really build traffic fast is sex, scandal, innuendo, and other forms of negative attention. Thank you Strumpette, building traffic on a blog has now been shown to be the same as building traffic anywhere. Well corporate America, you know all those new things we told you about that will help you build readership and join the conversation…links, pings, comments, tags? Well, the more things change the more they stay the same. Sex sells so come on in…there just isn’t a life guard on duty everyday.
Technorati Tags: blogs, bloggers, McDonalds, marketing PR, advertising, branding, Wal-Mart, corporate blogs, strumpette
I’ve Been Tagged
Josh Hallett tagged me this morning…but since Saturdays are a constant series of drop offs, pick ups, in and outs, scheduled and unscheduled activities, I started but didn’t finish the tag; factor in the mysteries of saving in Performancing and the mysterious shut downs in Firefox and now you have Saturday night. So, here goes again…
Four Jobs I’ve Had
Camp Counselor
Caseworker
Assistant Buyer
Full Time Mom
Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over
As Good As It Gets
Cinema Paradiso
The Conformist
Office Space
Four TV Shows I Love to Watch
House
SNL
Boston Legal
Conan O’Brien
Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
Sea Island, Georgia
Grand Canyon
Italy
Greece
Four Favorite Dishes
Calamari and Spinach Fritto Misto, Trattoria Marcella
French fries, King Louie’s
Banana Concrete, Ted Drewes
Polo e Spinac, Bar Italia
Four Websites I Visit Daily
Wall Street Journal
New York Times
Bloglines
Sitemeter
Four Places I’d Rather Be
A beach
Italy
Santa Fe
Institute of Design, Stanford
Four Bloggers I’m Tagging
George Lenard
Matt Homann
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Sean Glass
Technorati Tags: blogs, I’ve Been Tagged, social networking, tags,
Performancing
I have not had much success using any of the available blog posting tools such as ecto…I can acccept everyone elses rave reviews, but for me one of my biggest frustrations with Typepad is working on a post and then for one reason or another having it vanish before I hit "save" or "publish". The very first time I tried to use ecto I watched in complete horror as the very same thing happened. Even having Technorati tags is not worth losing a post.
So, having read about Performancing for Firefox at Blog Herald the other day I downloaded it and then oddly enough, actually read the step-by-step instructions. One slight problem…I could not find the little notepad icon anywhere; the icon that starts the whole process.
Now, strange behavior is no stranger to my computer. Last week, all of the bookmarklets on my toolbar stopped working…no explanation or intentional act on my part. After some trial and error I discovered that they now worked in a sidebar that I didn’t know I had….since no one could explain the demise of the toolbar except to mumble that one-size-fits-all phrase "virus", I decided that the path of least resistance was just to use the sidebar and hope that the funcionality would return to my toolbar just as spontaneously as it left.
When the icon for Performancing could not be found…I decided it must be part of the Toolbar Effect. Tonight, when I thought I would investigate a little further I clicked on something that said toolbar and miraculously the little notepad icon appeared, and here I am testing Performancing. The toolbar is still not functional.
So, without further delay I am going to give Performancing for Firefox the option to publish and tag for me.
Technorati Tags: Performancing, tags, Firefox, Technorati
Update from the Tag Patrol
Technorati has announced a new ping page which allows one-click pinging for signed-in members with claimed blogs. The page lets you know that Technorati your pings are getting through and that Technorati has visited your blog. This is helpful. But as A Consuming Experience points out and I will quote, there is still that maddening little tag problem:
"And while it’s good that they are regularly indexing, I wish they would fix the problems with their tag pages (or maybe tags indexing or tags database), which clearly people arestill experiencing - I’ve found myself that my post on how to offer different lengths of feed to your subscribers
isn’t showing up on their tag pages though it’s clearly on their index.
I don’t know if it’s because I included code in that post, but some
guidance as to what can break their system would be helpful so we know
what to avoid."
Del.icio.us Tags:
pings, tags, Technorati Ping Page
Technorati Tags:
pings, tags, Technorati Ping Page
Words, Buzzwords, Tags, and Buzztags
Have You Updated your Buzzwords? That is the question being asked by Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users….one of the blogs I would absolutely want to have access to should I find myself on the proverbial desert Island. She says that we are on Internet time, baby and last month’s buzzwords quickly become like email, "so 5 minutes ago".
Her point about the latest (as of 5 minutes ago) Web 2.0x buzzwords (ok what’s with the "x"? Oh, yeah..we’re on internet time, baby) is that they are not user focused but technology/business model focused….she says that the buzzwords should be written in terms of users…the buzzwords should convey what the benefit of the innovation is to users not as be an explanation of the technology. As she explicitly states, "A buzz-phrase should explicitly state how it directly benefits the user." To paraphrase, it should capture, not the technology but the this rocks/I rock when I use it user experience.
OK..so that explains how Web 2.0x buzz words should explain the benefit of the "thing" that they are buzzing about. What then is the benefit of the buzzwords themselves? It occurs to me that there is a relationship between buzzwords and tagging.
Are buzzwords in fact a kind of user directed information organizational tool, like a tag? Tag being itself a Web 2.0 buzzword…as Web 2.0 is in fact a buzzword itself. Actually, Web 2.0 is a kind of enormous buzz cloud filled with all kinds if buzz words: Just take Edge Perspectives with John Hagel’s definition: ﾃ｢竄ｬﾅ殿n emerging network-centric platform to support distributed, collaborative and cumulative creation by its users.ﾃ｢竄ｬﾂ Take the "an" the "to" the "and" the "by its" out of the preceeding sentence and all that is left are buzzwords.
So, are buzzwords in fact, tags without their soft navigational link side? Or, since buzzwords came before tags…are tags buzzwords with function?
As we struggle to categorize the onslaught of information constantly hurling our way into something meaningful to us and to others like us by tagging, so do buzzwords organize a process, a procedure, a movement, an event into a word or two, that is understood and "says it all" to us and to others like us.
I know that Kathy Sierra was talking about the problem with buzzwords being tech driven, not user driven; and that it would be more meaningful if the buzzwords conveyed "how this thing helps the user kick ass" however, when users start using the buzzwords, they are then driving the usage. Collaborative creation is a just buzzword on a presentation slide until the user feels collaborative creation….then they are driving. Turnabout is fair play…especially in a game of tag.
So the #1 benefit of buzzwords is in essence, social..,we are speaking a common language; we see things the same way: we are "in the know" together, united in our conversant buzzwords. Using buzzwords in a conversation is like a secret code…I hear you use a buzzword and know that you "get it" and I let you know
that I "get it, too" and the seat belt sign is off and I am free to
move around your cabin. Our use of buzzwords says something about us…we get "it" or we don’t get "it" as evidenced by our buzzwords.
As Mark Twain wrote long back when tag was a child’s game,"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug." The difference between a buzzword and a word is the difference between an IPod and an MP3 player. You can check the Technorati, del.icio.us, and Furl tags to see.
So, we now turn words into tags and if we are joined by others tagging the same word, the word becomes a buzzword? And if lots of other like tagging people, tag the same buzzword then the buzzword becomes a buzztag? In the mad, mad, mad world of Web 2.0 that is what it’s all about! And you thought it was the Hokey Pokey?
And of course there is a site dedicated to improving our Buzzword intelligence, BQ. I am not certain there is one yet for improving our Tag Intelligence, TI.
Technorati Tags:
tags, tagging, buzzwords, Technorati, buzztags
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