Ad Age Says There Is No Such Things as Blogging..But The Name Is Cool
A story in today’s Ad Age by Simon Dumenco said that there is no such thing as blogging and no such thing as a blogger…"it’s just the software, people." He says that blogging is instantaneous, "voice-y", and opinionated but says this is not different than old-school media. He says that just because there are blog specific seach engines, blog content is not different than non-blog content and as news sources blogs and traditional news sources are given equal weight. I guess he means by himself.
He goes on to say that bloggers are only bloggers because they believe in blogging as something distinct, in the mythical blogosphere, and because traditional media types think that bloggers are amateurs and that they are the professionals… professionals don’t "work way faster, interact constantly with readers..{and are} not vastly more voracious." Not sure what "vastly more voracious means exactly"
His conclusion is that "blogging software" will become the universal online publishing solution and that there will be two types of media people, fast and slow. He also thinks blogging is a cool name. Actually, I think the name is kind of stupid and I think he is really missing the point about blogging so I have to say that I disagree with most everything he wrote. Blogging is not just about writing faster and interacting with readers.
With lots of help from the not so mythical blogosphere, here is what Simon didn’t say or see:
Steve Rubel summed it up in one word: dialogue. Blogging is different than traditional media writing because blogging is a dialogue and writing for tradtional media is a monologue…comments to the former go instantaneously to the blogger, to be read by blog readers in the context of the post while in the latter, comments go to the editor long after anyone remembers what was written.
Bloggers interact with other bloggers and with readers who may or may not be bloggers. Lots of participants, no editors or refereeing. Big difference.
The Eide Neurolearning Blog say that "blogs foster conversations, interactions with other blogs and other information sources, and invite feedback from their readers. " This would include comments but also includes links, another distinctively blog attribute. Links form the structure of the blogosphere. They can be reciprocal links, explicit or implicit but links drive the speed of the information; not bloggers working "way faster". They also bring up another distinctively blogging attribute, associational thinking. They write, blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking. And yes, this is maybe about "faster" and technology driven, but it is also that faster "promotes a kind of spontaneity and ‘raw thinking’–the fleeting associations and the occasional outlandish ideas–seldom found in more formal media." How does that work? You read it, react to it, associate it, and you blog it. And of course, there is always another blogger or a blog reader right there, ready to comment, link, correct, disagree, or expand upon the thought or idea.
What else differentiates blogging from writing? Well Simon said something about amateurs and professionals….an important difference though not necessarily in the context that he was referring. Writers in traditional media are professionals in that they get paid to write, have editors, bosses, deadlines, page requirements; bloggers typically do not. We might write our blogs so that someone will hire us to DO a job…but writing the blog is not our job. They have editors, we have spell check.
OK, the summation of all of this, blogging is a social media, it is about social networks. Conversations, relationships, social capital, connections, that you don’t get from just writing or reading. Writing is about the page, staying within the lines…blogging is not about the limits of the page; it is about stepping off the page and beyond the lines and engaging rather than reading, writing and listening.
Technorati Tags: social media, blogging, neuroscience, traditional media
Alliance for Building Capacity
Hello to everyone from the blogging workshop today!
As discussed, there is a blog set up with today’s presentation and other resources for blogging. The blog address is http://www.resonancepartnership.com/workshop. User name is mariannerichmond and the password was given to you today. If you have problems accessing the blog, please email me or call me at 314-369-7764.
Technorati Tags: blogging_workshop
Typepad
Typepad has become the source of dissatisfaction for many bloggers lately…and the subject of many blog posts that express the dissatisfaction. Business Blog Consulting has three such posts which highlight the problems and offer positive suggestions including a "business class" of service and limiting new subscribers until the infrastructure can support it. I believe they are promoting with a buy one give one offer…why promote a flawed product? I think they should consider ending promotional offers and closing subscriptions and fix the issues.
This should become standard company policy and is good business sense. We all know what happens when we over commit…..things don’t get done right and no one is happy. Further, we lose the trust and confidence that our clients and customers had in us. The equity that we worked long and hard to earn is diminished…and value decreases much more quickly than it increases. Mostly no one is bashing or trashing Typepad….bloggers are asking that the issues be acknowledged, addressed and fixed. There are exceptions.
On top of the infrasctructure problems summed up by Raving Lunacy, "When it takes longer to post than it does to type"…and the lack of crisis control communication from Six Apart, there is the problem in the trenches of customer support. You state your problem and everything you know about it in an email. They respond with a request for more specifics. You give them the information that they say they need thinking that they intend to provide a solution, they then reply with a request for more information…sometimes they then refer you to the "how to" section of the instruction manual which you have all ready tried, you wonder why they asked for the additional information…you try and point this out…they then ask different questions. It is an endless loop, seemingly designed to avoid providing a solution with the illusion of support in the form of questions.
What a waste of everyone’s time. And I am not blaming the customer support staff….this too is an infrastructure problem; get more support staff, train them to own and solve issues and reward them for solving issues not writing emails. Customer satisfaction is directly related to employee satisfaction….something is not working here.
As Toby Bloomberg posted on Diva Marketing , " Growth without a plan that includes customer communications can cost you significantly in terms of good will and lost customers." Typepad needs to align people, strategy, and technology….Mihaly Csilszentmihaly, the father of Flow, wrote in Good Business that, a valuable product or service is one that customers perceive, rightly or wrongly, make them happy. No one is very happy with Typepad right now…the product or the service.
Technorati Tags: Type_Pad
Technorati Bookmarklet
Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick whose tagline "Always on the lookout for the best web tools" is so true, I will now be including Technorati tags in my posts. Marshall, who has written an explanation of tagging and podcasted about it in language that is easy to understand even for those of us who do not speak Geek fluently PLUS, has made it easy to do with his Blog Tag Bookmarklet….and there’s more (better than a Ginzu knife!): Beth Kantor has created a screencast which is available on Marshall’s Blog or on her own.
Technorati Tags: tag, bookmarklet, tags, podcasting, screencasting
No. I Don’t Have Time to Read Blogs
I was talking to my lawyer yesterday about what lawyers call my "high conflict" divorce case. Yes, we are divorced but instead of that judgment being the end of the conflict, it became the basis for my ex to escalate the conflict. This is, of course a whole other blog that is under development but this post is about people completely impervious to blogs. My lawyer started talking about the client/attorney relationship in an unusual manner for lawyers that I have actually worked with, as opposed to law professors, friends who are attorneys or those whose blogs I read…he talked in terms of client service and was pondering why, despite what their firm thought were great results in some case, the client did not express gratitude or otherwise provide positive feedback. Well, I could have given him quite a guest lecture on the topic based upon my personal experiences,and experiences of friends and family in the quagmire of the family court system; and I could filter the personal experiences with my marketer’s lens. However, I politely suggested that there was a lot being written about this topic on the web, specifically by lawyers who blawg. I suggested he might want to check out the {non} billable hour or In Search of Perfect Client Service or The Greatest American Lawyer for their insightful and innovative thinking about the practice of law.
When there was silence on the other end of the phone, I inquired as to whether or not he read blogs. His answer? No, I don’t have time to read blogs. My thought of course was: Do you really have time to not read blogs? And I know I am at one extreme with my the answer to all of life’s mysteries can be found in the blogosphere attitude….but c’mon, you want to know why, despite winning a case, your clients seem dissatisfied? Have a conversation with them…and listen; add some empathy. There you go…good start. You are in the service business….did you serve their needs? You say you "won" the case…did you have a discussion with them to define what "winning" the case was so in the end you could agree that you had won. Oh, stop billing your clients for your mistakes, especially when it is because you didn’t listen…ok, I may be going too far.
The New York Times has an article today on blawging lawyers that quotes Scott Turow, "when people think of law, you think of jails and
marshals and corporate executives. But the reality is…it’s all words, and lawyers are verbal people, both in terms of the
written stuff and the spoken stuff." The law is about words…your clients are about words.
But maybe here lies one of the problems in having conversations with clients…the same New York Times article quotes another blawger, Denise Howell, "blogs demystify the law without costing outrageous
sums; lead to more open, frequent and occasionally informed discussions
of politics, law and occasionally morality; and help forge links
between practicing lawyers, law professors, law students and the real
world.
So, one of the problems that I see in client/attorney relationships is that attorneys don’t really want to "demystify" the law for their clients…and certainly not without collecting "outrageous sums". Second of all, in the link being forged above, the client is conspicuously absent from the list.
Bill 0′Reilly Declares Blogs Garbage
"I don’t read them, I mean it’s so outrageous", O’Reilly said on his show on July 18, 2005. Then last night on the Factor he attacks blogs calling them ideological weapons and smear campaigns as reported by Think Progress and Crooks and Liars. OK, Bill so I do watch your show because I believe it is important to hear opposing viewpoints. I have not read your book for kids. I am assuming (risky I know) based on interviews you have given about your book that you advise kids to be informed. I know that is the advise I give my own kids who frequently ask me why I watch your show since I frequently don’t agree with your opinions. Although, I would also advise my kids not to settle a lawsuit if the accusations were false. Hmmmmm?
So tell me, if you don’t read blogs, please explain to everyone how you know that they are "garbage"? Not to make an extreme comparison or anything, but wasn’t this the same premise upon which the Nazi’s burned books? Let’s declare the ideas we disagree with as garbage to protect others from reading them.
So, I say to Bill 0′Reilly: Your premise is garbage. You should read blogs to designate them garbage. I watch your show and and have personally heard you rant about the uninformed who express opinions. So, I believe I must request that you please take to heart your claim to be "fair and balanced" and at least read a blog or two, or just "shut up". (I also tell my kids not to say "shut up"….)
2 Cool Sites From 2 Cool Sites
Even with RSS and aggregators, there is still too much information for me to process and use. In my email was Inter Alia Weekly Research, which always has great information to help manage the overload. This time, a site called memeorandum which takes daily news articles and links to the blogs that are talking about the the stories. Then from Seth Godins Blog came a reference to Emily Chang’s e-hub which is a constantly updated reference to everything new in blogs, social software, folksonomy, design and well, just everything.
Blame, Responsibility and Attribution Error
Yesterday’s WSJ featured an article about blame that notes among other things that "Americans are beset with blame mongering". Well, all we need to do is read the news to know that finger pointing seems to be the first step we take in coming to terms with a problem.
The WSJ, along with every other news source reported that George Bush was taking responsibility for the failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Blogs weighed in with debits and credits for Bush’s announcement. Many highlighted failures on the part of Nagin and Blanco and Margaret Carlson writes in the LA Times on the whole blame mess an article entitled, "Cashing in on the Blame". In this article, as with others, Bush is blamed for taking blame. Further, this article notes that Bush must have taken a page from JFK’s book who "subverted the blame game by admitting he had blundered at the Bay of
Pigs. He proved you can diminish blame by taking responsibility." I guess this must mean that no one has taken responsibility for much since 1961.
The WSJ article notes that blame is rooted in nature and nurture. The original finger pointers started in the Garden of Eden…so there you have nature; instructions for blaming soon followed and became nurture. So, we learned to blame so that we don’t have to accept responsibility for negative things. But then, after we attribute blame for the negative event or outcome , we are still left with something or somebody that has to change or be rectified. So we have more than one kind of /blame/responsibility really: I take the blame/responsibility for the situation and I take responsibility for fixing it/changing it versus I give you responsibility for this (blame) and you need to take responsibility and fix it/change it versus I take responsibility for the situation and I take responsibility for fixing it/changing it.
All of this seems to lead to attribution theory and the social psychologist Heider who drew a few boxes,
triangles and balls and then explained that external attribution occurs when we cognitively attribute causality to outside factors such as weather; internal attribution occurs when we assign causality to internal factors such as intelligence. We are more apt to excuse our own mistakes by "situations" beyond our control (external attribution) and blame mistakes on others because of their own ineptness (internal attribution). And no I am not making any inferences about a Hurricane and the intelligence of those trying to handle it. It’s just that attribution theory, especially fundamental attribution error theory explain a lot about the current state of blame in New Orleans which are pretty clearly split by party lines. When my ex-husband had a problem with for instance his computer it was the computer’s fault; the computer was broken; when I had a problem with my computer, it was because I had done something wrong; I broke the computer.
In Case of Emergency
As the finger pointing continues over Hurricane Katrina along with the cries for leadership a thought occured to me while listening to the Head of my youngest son’s school today welcome two families from New Orleans who had moved in with relatives here in St. Louis and had enrolled their children in school. The school had an emergency phone number and a plan developed after September 11th. I wondered how many parents sitting in the room knew what that number was or had it written down….on easily accessible, old fashioned paper. The school had sent it to us numerous times along with "the plan". But like the exit maps on the back of hotel doors and the location of emergency exits on airplanes, in movie theaters, or a fire escape plan from our own homes , it wasn’t top of mind enough to be of much use in case of an emergency. And the finger pointing and calls for leadership should really begin with ourselves.
Back in 1980, some of you may recall there was a fire in the MGM Grand Hotel early one morning. Eighty four people died and 675 people were injured. There were no sprinkler system in the hotel, there was complete chaos as people awoke to discover the inferno around them; they jumped to their deaths, doors locked preventing escape.
More Schools Help Katrina Refugees
I wrote an earlier post regarding the colleges and universities that were helping students displaced by Hurricane Katrina . From Hugh Hewitt’s blog, comes a link to a blog dedicated to the subject. Also, here is a link regarding which law schools are opening their doors. Mr. Hewitt notes that he is sorry that his Alma maters are not on the list, yet. Likewise!
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