Debbie Weil performs liposuction on Alliconnect

You may not have noticed the new Alliconnect Blog,. Alliconnect is a place to discuss weight loss with the creators of alli, an over-the-counter weight control medication, approved for OTC sales in the USA, made by GlaxoSmithKline.

I am not quite sure how alli works.. the blog is coy on the subject, but since it discusses "oops moments" ("Good thing I was close to home so I could change my clothes!" says chief blogger Steve Burton) and "undigested fat floating in the toilet," I can only speculate that the drug blocks fat absorption. Why be coy about that? Were I seriously overweight and committed to losing weight, I am perfectly fine with learning the possible side effects. But since it's a corporate product fluff blog, we can leave that.

The problem for GlaxoSmithKline is that the alliconnect blog has attracted almost no readers and only a handful of comments -- all but one of those are from the GSK "alli" team the GSK "alli" team or prominent corporate blogging adviser Debbie Weil, who advised on the project.

Now, that would normally be a problem between GSK and Weil. But Weil has made the bad results -- the falling short of client expectations -- brutally obvious in a public way. Can things be so bad she's asking PR bloggers to "seed" comments onto the alliconnect blog?

Yes.

David Murray quotes this email from Weil on his blog:

***

Hi everyone,

This is a shameless request. I'm working with GlaxoSmithKline on the
official corporate blog for alli, the first FDA-approved, OTC weight
loss product. You may have seen the TV ads.

While traffic to the blog is growing, readers seem shy about leaving Comments.

You can help jump start the two-way conversation! Take a peek at the
blog at http://www.alliconnect.com.

If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need
to say that you know me, of course.

It really is kind of neat that a Global 100 company is doing a blog
like this. It's not easy.

- D

--
Debbie Weil
t: 202.364.5705 m: 202.255.1467
site: http://www.debbieweil.com
blog: http://www.BlogWriteForCEOs.com
book: http://www.TheCorporateBloggingBook.com

***

Weil (an IABC conference speaker, by the way) has truly wedged herself in a tight spot. I cannot believe GSK's alliconnect is going to get a sudden surge of comments from her feeble plea -- you'd have to be an obese PR blogger more than ready to shill for no pay -- and I'm certainly skeptical of her professional ethics. What I wonder is who thought this up? Weil, alone, in desperation? Or did GSK lean on her? Either way, it's another sad ethics tale for our profession.

If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need
to say that you know me, of course.

OK! Who can resist!

Technorati : GSK, OTC weight loss, PR ethics, Steve Burton, alli, alliconnect, bad corporate blogs, david murray, debbie weil, glaxosmithkline, possible drug marketing violations

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:49pm in Bizarre & Unexpected, Blogging for Benjamins, Corporate Communication, Marketing, Pharmaceutical Industry | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (12)

Chat #14 Better Desirable Roasted Communication Podcast

Drop over to Chat #14 of the Better Desirable Roasted Communication Cafe Podcast: 21 minutes of pan-global erudition.

This week, Lee and I talk about WikiBios (still a bad idea), Second Life, and how social media put the writings of John Evelyn in my hands.

But before you visit: drop by our online store to pick up a handy-dandy BDRCC podcast mug!

Technorati Tags: better desirable roasted communications cafe, comms cafe, PR podcasts

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:59pm in Blogging for Benjamins, Podcasting | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0)

DRC scraped off by Mobitype

[UPDATE: This post was first titled DRC ripped off by Mobitype, a Löic Le Meur venture. At the time of the post, Löic Le Meur was listed as the chairman of Mobitype's board. In the days after this post, both Le Meur and Mobitype denied any connection, and Le Meur was removed from the board list.

Furthermore, after talks with Mobitype's CEO, I believe the scraping is not a cynical attempt at content rip off, but simply an inept effort to bring RSS to mobile devices. ]

Brother Lee Hopkins  interrupted my first Sunday coffee with this email:

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:54pm in Bizarre & Unexpected, Blogging for Benjamins, Intellectual Property, Law, Scams | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4)

Steve Rubel lashes out at the Blogging for Benjamins crowd... about time, I’d say

If Steve Rubel isn't the most cautious person in the communication blogosphere, he's surely in the running. Over the last 18 months, 99% of whatever edginess was in Micropersuasion has ebbed away, leaving little but neutral thoughts and (invariably useful) links.

So it was with great pleasure that I read Steve's swipe at Copyblogger, a blog that purports to teach us poor slobs "how to sell with blogs and RSS."

Steve writes in part (and he's dead on target):

"Arrrgggh! Copyblogger is propagating the whole school of thought that blogging is just about getting more traffic. They have even published a how-to guide. Well, I am here to tell you, it's not."

Cheekily, he invites Copyblogger to pack up and go home:

"My suggestion is that if you're blogging solely for building Web traffic and Google Juice, go build a Web site and advertise it on Google instead. Blogs are about being part of a community. Join it, add value to it, but don't focus on the traffic."

I will give Copyblogger credit for not being as crass as that crowd at Performancing, where search engine manipulation and splogging is the order of the day. But that's the extent of my credit.

Hit 'em again, Steve!

Technorati: copyblogger, steve rubel, micropersuasion

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:21pm in Blog Management, Blogging for Benjamins, Communication | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (6)

"Performancing" skewers "blogging for benjamins"

Hat tip to Steve Rubel for pointing to Performancing, an amusing  send-up of all those "make money from your blog" scams and sites popping up all over. While it's not as funny as  the Onion, it's a cackler.

The "mission statement" strikes just the right note:

"To create a home for professional bloggers. A place where those that want to make money from their blogs can learn, and perfect the art of making a living from weblogging."

Performancing.com is a group weblog written by professional bloggers, for professional bloggers. The emphasis at Performancing is commercial blogging.

The business model will become apparent in time, but for now you can rest assured of the following:

• You'll like it
• It won't cost you anything

I'm reminded of John Belushi in Animal House: "Have a beer (belch)... don't cost nuthin!"

Don't know what to blog about? Here's some timely "advice":

When you read advice telling you to "stay focused" when blogging, doesn't it seem like the easiest thing in the world to do? It does to me, but then i start writing, and man, it is not easy.

Really, I can't think off hand of any topic that would force you to stay on track, it's something I find very hard, and im reasonably certain im not alone...

One way i've found to help me stay on topic is to define a question for that topic. With this site, it's "will this post help bloggers make money?" . If i can answer yes to that question, then the post idea is good to go...

Here's how to beat those dreaded "blogging blues" (The prose and spelling are right out of Instant Messenger and the slightly screwy optimism is right out of Up With People):

All of a sudden you feel depressed about your blog. The questions start flying in your mind: why am I not getting visitors? why is it so hard to stay on topic? how do I get my blog seen? Those question mount up to become a beast standing in your way to becoming a professional and popular blogger...

Sound familiar? I'll 'ing bet it does!

Thing is though, that this is all part of it. I feel like that several times a day some weeks, if I didn't, i'd not have much motivation to do anything I think. For me, being on edge about your blogs RSS subs, income, memberships and links is all part of the game -- it's not a matter of beating it, it's a matter of recognizing it, and embracing it as one more weapon in the aresonal.

There's plenty more. Go have fun. And don't miss the spot-on "testimonial" on the About page.

I have been looking for like-minded people, who want to, and are able to, make a profession out of the internet.
I have only just 'discovered' the computer... The thing was, I was scared of it. I thought I would break it etc. But, one day, I was given one...

Technorati Tags: performancing, parody websites, satire, humor

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:14am in Blogging for Benjamins, Humor | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

$46,000 and a cup of coffee will get you Desirable Roasted Coffee

Just kidding... we don't blog for benjamins at Desirable Roasted Coffee -- everybody knows that!

But this nifty applet believes the Coffee is worth nearly $47K. Yeah, like I can take that to the bank.

Tip of the hat to the Antipodean Wildman.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:37pm in Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Desirable Roasted Coffee | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

Hugh McLeod & Ben Metcalfe Take the Gloves Off and Begin Thrashing One Another

It's got drama, fighting words, studied insults, and an audience baying for blood. It's the Hugh McLeod vs. Ben Metcalfe knock-down, drag out. And it's playing simultaneously at Ben's and at Hugh's.

As most of the free world probably already knows, Hugh is using his blog to promote Stormhoek Wine, just as he promotes  Thomas Mahon's bespoke suits. His belief that social media can be used to launch global microbrands has many observers and -- including Desirable Roasted Coffee -- more than a few believers.

Ben thinks Hugh's promotion of Stormhoek is unseemly, even distasteful. And said so, calling the wine "crappy" and Hugh's promotion of it "pimping". Hugh fired back with one of his trademark cards -- I never want to be a target of one of those -- and called Ben an apparatchnik of "socialist media". Yikes. Let the fur fly!

The spat has generated about 40 comments between the two sites. And while the boys are grudgingly making nice again, the core issue remains. Is it seemly to use blogs to market products (especially using free samples)? Is marketing in keeping with the spirit of social media.

I'm 100% with Hugh's principles on this: what on earth is wrong with marketing using one's status in the blogosphere? It may well backfire on Hugh one day, but I see little that is unseemly or unethical about trying it. And the other side of the argument -- that the blogosphere should be non-commercial -- is just plain silly.

But opinion seems sharply divided -- and I don't think this debate will die anytime soon. The discussion continues here and here.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 05:03pm in Bizarre & Amusing, Blogging for Benjamins, Ethics, Food and Drink, In Defense of Elitism, Marketing | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4) | TrackBack (1)

On "Blogging for Benjamins"

Joseph Jaffe is confused about what Blogging for Benjamins is... Bubba, just ask: The Desirable Roasted Coffee Dictionary is an open book.

blog'ging for ben'jamins. The act of weblogging for the purpose of direct fee earning from visitors to the weblog, generally through advertising click-through or the sale of reports of dubious quality; often  characterized by excessive interest in search-engine optimization, Technorati rank, "professional" blogging and "monetizing the blog". [f. E weblogging + benjamins (US street slang for 100 dollar bill, f. image of Benjamin Franklin on bill)]

Regular readers of Desirable Roasted Coffee know exactly the type to which I refer.

Update:  Blogger for Benjamins Muffin Komando writes in today's McPaper about Blogging for Benjamins.  Hey, Steve! Sign her up for the Pro Bloggers Association. I am sure y'all could make her a licensed blogger. She doesn't blog, but her heart is in the right place.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:53am in Blog Management, Blogging for Benjamins, Intellectual Property | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (1)

Conversation Clouds vs. Blog Rankings & Page Rank

PubSub recently finished tearing up and replanting its LinkRanks service; I, for one, like the new look & the results presentation. And while I don't understand how the rankings are calculated, a few test runs on the bloggers I know indicate to me that the rankings are pretty valid.

At about the same time, the Feedster 500 was launched. Another ranking service (congratulations, Neville and Shel).

I don't want to be provocative:  But how much should rank matter?

I know the Blogging For Benjamins crowd is intensely interested, because more rank could mean more "reports" sold. The well-known political bloggers of the left and right are also intensely interested because, ironically, it gets them more coverage on MSM.

But who else cares what your PubSub rank is? If you care, should you? Should I? What does my rank have to do with standing, reputation, place in the community? Everyone in every steel town in America once knew who Andrew Carnegie was, but who had the highest standing in their community? Probably the corner grocer, who helped you at church or building a house (And, lest anyone go astray, Shel and Neville are where they are on these ranks because they help the PR  community).

Dina Mehta -- and I wish I discovered her blog long before Reboot 7.0 -- discusses in her easy, inclusive way why the idea of rankings is flawed. In her post, she's commenting on another post by Adina Levin, that argues for the idea of Conversation Clouds as a better way of understanding relative influence.

As Adina tells it:

The cloud is built from a data set over a time period; the user should be able to scale the time (conversation over a week, a month, six months) The conversation cloud would need to provide ways to navigate through conversation space. If you click on a blog, perhaps you re-center around that blog's conversations. If you click on a tag or topic, you search based on that. You'd need to experiment with several ways of allowing browsing out from the first cloud.

This type of picture would not measure rank. Instead, it would illustrate the connections within subcommunities.

Cloud-browsing represents a pattern of blogsurfing. A reader might start with

Mary Hodder's post on blog metrics, and then traverse to Dina Mehta, danah boyd, Stowe Boyd, Ross Mayfield. 

The cloud would show in graphical form what a Technorati or Blogpulse search would -- who linked to the post. And it would also illustrate the repeated links and cross-links as people reply. If you zoomed out the time horizon, you'd see some relationships become more obviously dense, with repeated patterns of links and counterlinks.

I think this sort of presentation would get more of what we're looking for -- a picture of the relationships in a community that reveals participants, both loud and quiet. The ability to browse the conversation.

And as Dina comments:

I think this would very nicely integrate values that I hold important in blog conversations - relevance, integrity and credibility, interest and empathy generated, stretch in teasing boundaries, intimacy with my audience, respect and amicability - rather than blog rankings and ratings.  Making 'invisible' conversations and clusters and communities of interest visible as a result.  I'd love to see comments at posts integrated into these clouds in some way too, as many who comment donot necessarily blog, and often the comments enrich the thought in a post much more.

I'll certainly follow this conversation. Might (don't we wish) kill the A-list meme. And describe what we know to be true: our "cloud" is far more influential than any "top-100" list.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:45pm in Bloggers, Blogging for Benjamins, Communication, Online Media, Public Relations, Social Tools, Society, Taxonomy of Cyberspace | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (1)

PR Bloggers Get Knickers in Twist Over FedEx Protecting its Mark

Update: The more I investigate this episode, the more repulsive it becomes.

Jose Avila registered the domain "fedexfurniture.com" on 22 June 2005. Four days later, Brian Oberkirch, a web consultant, who is Avila's web designer and PR representative , posts that he's been inspired by a Steve Rubel post and NPR interview that suggests FedEx should get on the blogging bandwagon.

Oberkirch (or his employee or whatever) kept up the drumbeat throughout July, practically begging FedEx to sue Avila. And they hooked Rubel, who was enticed to comment to this post within hours of it being put up.

I can smell the Fulton Fish Market from here.

Let any corporation take on the little guy and tout le blogosphere (at least the please-let-me-be a PR pundit, Manhattan section) gnashes its teeth. I'm starting to see why some PR practitioners seem to have no large clients.

This week's case is FedEx vs. Jose the Penniless Programmer. Jose used lots and lots of FedEx packing boxes, acquired free from FedEx, to furnish his crib.

No harm there, not really. Most students and new graduates have had at least one "packing case" coffee table; I know my Navy and college bookshelves were milk crates from the Bi-Lo.

But Avila couldn't stop there. He bought a domain (in June, so this was calculated in advance), bought a hosting service (apparently with the money saved through DIY furniture making), and set up a website replete with photos, donation requests and -- a design that used as much FedEx livery as one could dare to do.

FedEx asked him to take down the site. Now, note, they didn't ask him to get rid of the furniture. Or ask for their boxes back. Or ask for damages. Just take down the commercial website that uses their name, their livery and many, many photos of their stuff.

But to hear tout le blogosphere (p.l.m.b.pr.p (ms)) tell it, Jose's civil liberties are being ravaged and savaged by the mean corporate beast.

Here's an FAQ, if this comes up at cocktail parties this weekend:

1. Why, by the way, is Jose this month's darling? Why, because he's a blogger -- at least, since last month when this started happening. Bloggers are the new holy people -- They can do no wrong, no matter how wrong they are.

2. Is Jose a blogger in the meaningful sense of the word? No.

3. When did he start blogging? Last month, weeks after he registered the domain.

4. But B.L. says he's FedEx's biggest fan! Steve says Jose is "expressing his love!" Really? Utter bullshit. Doesn't say so on his website. Anywhere. I can't find a word that says he likes FedEx.

5. Why is FedEx the big bad wolf? Well, for New Yorkers, a Southern-based, non-unionized company makes a useful target. Of course, they still use FedEx; otherwise, they couldn't stay in business.

6. If FedEx had been really a beast, wouldn't they have flown him to HQ to have lunch with the CEO, and hold a press conference, and then send Jose back to stay penniless? Yes.

7. It's pretty ugly furniture. God, yes.

8. I guess tout le blogosphere won't be talking about this next week. Now you got it!

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:47am in Blogging for Benjamins, Public Relations, Rapacious Vegetation | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (12) | TrackBack (3)

IABC Blogs Conference

Warren Bickford, IABC's incoming Chairman, "gets it".

When he took over the IABC Chairman's Blog a couple of months ago, he immediately renamed it the IABC Café. And let it be known that he was just the barista at this "gathering place for professional communicators".

Since then, a stream of posts about communication and IABC: mostly thoughtful, some quirky, some both.

I'd been wondering how he would handle the upcoming IABC conference. Conference is when incoming chairmen swell up a little. Get formal. Get serious. (Actually, it's worse for incoming vice-chairmen. They really swell-up. They shouldn't; and I refer them to Cactus Jack for insight).

Warren's approach is to gather a blogging team to cover the conference on his behalf. A Press Corps.

And it should be interesting: his team ranges from Blogging-4-Benjamins pseudo-blogger Debbie "it's nifty!" Weil (that Weil is leading a panel discussion on blogging at the conference is frightening) to PR-blogger A-lister Jeremy Pepper. If he's  letting them post whatever they write, it should be a highly entertaining show.

Update: When I screw up here on the blog, I like to do so spectacularly, in a truly big way. Anything else would be the easy way which, as Dick Nixon always liked to point out, is seldom the right way.

So when I mentioned Debbie Weil in my post, I really screwed up. I did so having always ignorantly and wrongly thought she blogged here. In fact, she blogs here, and does so with great aplomb. My deepest apologies to Weil.

And now that I have fully emptied my Karma account for the day, I think I'll go mix a G&T.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:12am in Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, IABC | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4) | TrackBack (0)

More Reboot 7.0 Notes: Loïc Le Meur on the European Blogosphere

I know, I know, Reboot 7.0 has been over for three days, and few notes from me.

On Day 2, Loïc Le Meur, the European guy for SixApart (makers of my fine blogging platform), gave us a run-through on the state of the European Blogosphere.

Or, rather, tried to. Loïc is one of these super-enthused speakers who, in the flurry of thinking faster than he can speak, tends to start down one fascinating trail, only to abrubtly choose another. Five trails followed to completion would be great content; 10 trails started and abandoned is like going to a tapas bar and not being allowed to eat.

Further, he was using his wiki as both the presentation to us and speaker notes for himself, which always means a lot of cursors flying around the screen, three-four pages in quick clicking succession, only to have the wrong page show up. Followed by furious back-clicking and re-clicking. I don't know about the rest of the room, but by the end, I was a twitching bundle of nerve.

But... he had some cool notes to impart.

The best way to get at them is to visit his European Blogosphere Wiki, where you can, of course, make corrections and additions.

A few notes:

• Note the differences in the number of bloggers in different countries: 3 million in France, 600,000 in the Netherlands, and 5,000 in Denmark. He may be right (after all, he sells blog platforms), but the numbers seem hinky to me. Accepting his arguments about France, for now, it's still hard to imagine there are 120 times more bloggers in the Netherlands (or 120 times fewer in Denmark): the countries are somewhat similar in population, cultural attributes, and adaptation of technology.
• He argues France is heavy in bloggers largely because of French culture and tradition of debate. Well, I don't know if you've been in an Irish pub lately, but if tradition of debate were a criterion, Ireland should be thick with bloggers. Mystery to me.

Le Meur gave us several case studies. The one that caught my eye was that of La Fraise, the brainchild of Patrice Cassard.

Cassard likes tee-shirts. Likes odd tee-shirts. He started showing his best ones on his site... and people started asking where they could buy them. A problem, since they were custom-made.

Now, most people would rapidly come up with the idea of starting an online tee-shirt store. But Cassard goes further: he lets readers come up with designs, and lets readers vote on the ones they like best. Cassard creates the winners in limited, and pricy, editions (and a few lucky voters get theirs for free).

And who generates the buzz? The lucky tee-shirt wearers who now have begun sending Cassard photos of them in their shirts.

How quirky is that?

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 03:57pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Citizen Journalism, Reboot 7.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

B.L. Ochman Argues Full Posts in RSS Feeds Don't Make Sense; I Beg to Differ

While my back was turned at Reboot, B. L. Ochman, bless her heart, came up with five reasons she doesn't like full posts in RSS feeds.

She titles the post "Why Full Posts in RSS Feeders (sic) Don't Make Sense"

Most of you, if you are professional communicators (and, if you are not, this is how we think), will be asking "Whoa... makes sense for whom? Who's reading the communication? What's their take?"

If you're a reader, and you think B. L. is arguing your case when she prompts for truncated feeds... think again. She's thinking entirely after her own interests. Not your  interests, dear reader:.

1. She notes you can't add comments to a post on a feed reader; only if you visit the site.

Exactly... but the reader won't comment unless he (and I'm being generic here) reads the full post. So.. by giving a truncated post, you're taking your chances. You'd better hope you are compelling.

I suppose if you were a bestselling writer who had the gift of inserting a little "gem" in the lower half of your posts, you would be entitled to ask for click-through. But.... not here.
Takeaway: Don't make your audience work for your content!

2. Feed-aggregators don't allow graphics or design elements to show up.

That could be a problem for bloggers whose photographs or art are integral to the blog. And I would love to hear from them. But, B.L. your graphics are a) icons of the reports you want to sell, and b) (if I remember) some photos of some hawks or something that live on your building. You might want to show those things (and I am all for it) but you text has to argue for me to click through for that.
Takeaway: Substance, not style

3. It's ridiculous to write long posts into RSS, which is meant to speed up reading. And bloggers should write less.

Aggregation means "bringing together" not "giving you a USA Today 50-State News Bite".
Takeaway: USA Today is popular. The Economist is influential. One publishes sweet little snippets. The other doesn't.

4. Hey, I need to make a living. So I'm keeping my content free with advertising.

Not if I have to click through to see your content or, in other words, spend time getting at it. Does my time have no value?

Readers and listeners always pay a price for content. Ask for a hour of radio or TV, and you will get it, if you pay the price of watching commercials or (here in Europe) paying a license fee. Ask for the content in a newspaper and you will pay $1 for 120 pages of newpaper, of which perhaps 3 or 4 full pages actually interest you. About 90 pages will be advertising.

And you are saying "That's me, too". No offense, but it's a stretch. It's a stretch for A-list bloggers. I've listened and talked to a number of them this weekend and... I don't see a market for AdSense and "buy my updated report" sites.

Takeaway: MSM publishing is already about razor-close margins. If you want to jump in that space, be my guest. Just don't bitch about MSM anymore.

5. The blogs with the best content are the ones we'll still be reading years from now.

That's right!.
Takeaway: Even if your rhetoric and logic classes are at 8AM, don't sleep in.

I'm happy to consider short feeds when I hear one argument against for them that makes rational, economic sense. So far, I've not heard anything close to one.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 03:29am in Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Economics | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (6) | TrackBack (5)

Reboot: We Don't Have the Tools is OUT as an Excuse

Yesterday and today were given over to the Reboot, a European meet-up of the mash-up of society and communication and technology (with a fairly strong tilt to technology). Two days of bang bang bang sessions punctuated networking, getting acquainted and getting to grips (sort of) with where micromedia is leading us.

I didn't blog directly, but many others did (not all results will be about the conference but pick around). I do better waiting for the serendipity to happen.

I'll post highlights as I get my head around them. Here's the first in a series:

We don't have the tools is OUT as an excuse

Dina Mehta's presentation used as its case example the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog Dina helped organize. Incredible. The team used free (or nearly so) collaborative tools (Skype, IM, IRC) to put together a blog that attracted 1 million visits in the first week. And as the contributions and comments to the blog began (quickly) to become unwieldy, they created sub-blogs, and then a wiki to categorize the information.

The team was flat, without titles, with immense passion and, apparently little recourse to sleep. What's key here is that drive and brains and a willingness to collaborate, not expensive tools and committees, created this site.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:05pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Citizen Journalism, Communication, Copenhagen, Reboot 7.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (2)

Cover Your Ass: Who Owns Blog Comments?

Through Amy Gahran's OPML file, I ran across this gem by Charles M. Smith, an attorney and board member of Pheedo (and, no, I am not in any way endorsing Pheedo)..

"Who owns blog comments?

"The question of who owns comments has recently come up several times in conversation. This is a fairly straight-forward copyright issue.... Under copyright law, the blog comment author is the owner of the comment and his/her copyrights are triggered at the moment the comment is added to the blog."

Then, and you have to love Smith's understatement:

"The consequences of this simple analysis could be painful for blog operators."

"Why on Earth", I hear you all asking... Well, Smith lays it out (I've added snide emphasis):

"First, the author of a blog comment could request that his/her comment be removed from a blog. While it is an easy process to remove a comment, the harm to a blog could be substantial. Especially if the comment removed is central to the community discussion/dialogue around a given topic. This could severely impact the value of a blog and reduce its following/readership.

"Second, many blog operators make money by running contextual display ads on the same page as comments. The author of a comment could claim that a portion of the blog’s advertising dollars belongs to him because his comment is helping to generate the ad revenue.

"Third, in the course of performing maintenance on a blog or when a blog is moved to a new server - there is likely an additional copy of blog comments made in the transition. While this can be viewed as a trivial matter, it could technically constitute a copyright violation. This issue becomes the more problematic for companies with deep pockets. Keep in mind that authors may seek compensation from those who make unauthorized copies or reproductions of their works."

Not only do I find this instructive, I find it highly amusing. Now the Blogging for Benjamins crowd needs to worry about whether their revenue will be sucked off by some litigious commenter.

Unfortunately, (and isn't always just so?) Smith gives an out to the B4B folks by posting a Terms of Service clause for bloggers. And it's a piece of work. I can see all sorts of advantages, and I am considering its merits. Is it time for bloggers to Cover Your Ass?

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:59am in Blog Management, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Law, RSS | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0)

Blogger and Blogspot Do Not Exist for me Anymore

Blogspam -- fake blogs -- at Blogger and Blogspot has grown so rampant that one is reminded of kudzu.

From now on, Desirable Roasted Coffee will not link to blogs on free platforms.

Update: My ire was stoked when, after doing a Technorati search on a serious topic, I was directed to 3 blogs, all on Blogger, and all spam. As Lee and Stephen point out, refusing to link to Blogger blogs might be an overly-draconian measure. My point, of course, is that Blogger is becoming to blogs what Hotmail became years ago to email: the refuge of spammers.

Naturally, I am not going to delink the friends and colleagues who have Blogger blogs, but I am going to counsel them to move out of the slums. And, of course, I will link to Blogger blogs when there's reason to do so. But I will be seeing far fewer Blogger blogs, as I see no reason not to ignore them in search results

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:09am in Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, In Defense of Elitism | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (8) | TrackBack (3)

How to Use Comments to Win Friends and Influence People (in 10 Easy Lessons)

Note: I was going to link to sterling examples of both camps, but decided it would be impolitic and tacky.

I find it distressing, but instructive, to realize my blogging peer group -- the people who write about professional communication and technology -- can be divided into two groups:

Blogging-for-Benjamins & Blogging-for-the-Sheer Hell of It

The Blogging-for-Benjamins crowd is all about site traffic. These are the people who are stingy about full RSS feeds because they hope you'll click-through (and then click on the ads on their site). These are the folks who obsess about how Technorati views them (Lord knows I do).

Some of these people write great content... but that's incidental to eyeballs (and ad-clickthroughs) and getting on the "A-List" (almost better: getting an A-lister to link to them). Some were taken in by the recent Blogebrity joke.

Before blogging brought them public, these people were high-school hall monitors, active in college student government, and could always be counted on to collect the boss' bag from the baggage carousel ("No, let me get that, R.J.").

The Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It Group might also worry about site traffic and blego, but you'd never know it. They just crank out good content about our profession, eschew ads and truncated feeds, and go on their merry way. They might be deeply troubled by their Technorati standing, Lord knows I am, but you aren't going to hear about it.

They are also about community. Conversation. Cluetrain. Let's talk!

A roundabout approach to the troubling, though amusing, posts at James Farmer's Blogsavvy. James is Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It guy, which is ironic since he writes  entirely for the Blogging for Benjamins crowd. His posts "Arguments for Getting Rid of Comments" and "Arguments for Keeping Comments" will surely become well-thumbed pages in the Blogging for Benjamins playbook.

Let's take a peek at why James says you should not have comments on your blog:

Argument number 1: The more comments you have the less links you’ll get - Comments lose you ranking

I’m quite serious about this. Do you really think that Dave Winer would get so many links if he allowed comments of his site? To take this down to a smaller (and perhaps more important) level, say there’s a writer who you’re really into who posts some really interesting material but doesn’t allow comments, if you want to respond then you’ve gotta do it on your blog, which gives you more links, a wider audience and…

Well, no, actually, I think Dave Winer wouldn't get so many links if he were not Dave Winer. And, to take this down to a more important level, I sometimes comment on someone's blog, sometimes post about their blog, sometimes do both. Comment facility rarely plays a role (indeed, I'm less likely to read a blog, in the first place, that does not allow comments).

Argument number 3: You’ll look the opposite of a loser - pseudo a-listing yourself

Again, I’m quite serious here. The majority of blogs that don’t allow comments are ‘A’ listers. If you don’t allow comments you are genuinely giving out the impression that you have such a significant audience / group of people wanting to interact with you that you just don’t have the time for them or the stress that all that fame brings along. Plus (and this is a pretty big plus) you won’t have that big ol’ list of (0 comments) one the majority of your posts… not a good look!

Let's parse Farmer: a) set up a blog, a website whose only purpose is to allow you to converse with others; b) turn off the conversation function; c) presto, you appear to be so popular that you can no longer take time to converse. What am I missing here?

The idea, apparently, is that it's sufficient to appear an A-lister. But who is so easily fooled? Anyone who's moved to Washington, DC (or any other capital), single, and is in need of a social life (and self-validation), will inevitably learn of the "send your card to the embassies" trick. That is, send a polite note praising the policies of an obscure country and the playful antics of its leaders to the local embassy. About a week later, you will begin receiving invitations to its receptions. Now send the same note to 100 other embassies. You'll get about 500 invitations a year to embassy receptions. You still won't be a Washington A-lister.

Let's take a look at why Farmer says we should allow comments:

Argument number 3: I’m feeling a little emotional - the value of “Thanx :o)”

How do you feel when you get an SMS? Probably pretty subliminaly excited and contented (someone is connected with me, is taking the time to communicate with me) and almost certainly not well informed (well over 50% of SMS contain no ‘valuable’ information whatsoever). That’s because the major value SMS has given us is allowing us to send emotional messages to each other really really simply with minimum hassle (quite different to the challenges of a phone call). Comments do this to. That someone has taken time out to read what you’ve written and respond to it is an incredible emotional buzz and something that, without comments, you’ll be missing out on.

I don't know about the rest of you, but most SMS's I get a) give me no frisson whatsoever and b) generally contain valuable, even vital, information such as "I hope you did not forget my mother is coming for dinner; you should start the grill now if you did." I am, generally, also up to the challenge of a phone call, having mastered the telephone during the Johnson Administration.

Another thing. I invite comments, and am pleased that commenters were moved or irritated enough to take the time to comment. But I've never gotten an incredible emotional buzz. Clearly, my commenters lack EQ and imagination.

Argument number 5: Validity and growth - what is it that you want?

I argued yesterday that there there was nothing more likely to turn a potential reader into just another surfer than a plethora of (0 comments) tags attached to your posts. However, conversely there’s nothing that say interest / authority like a ton of (15 comments) tags. Add to that the fact that you’re missing out on the chance to develop on your posts with your comments and in doing so develop your own understanding of the area… and why on earth would you want to turn off comments on your posts?

Sign me on for validity, every time.

Frankly, I wish the Blogging for Benjamins crowd would just go away. But, failing that, I hope they continue to amuse me.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:40am in Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Is Tedious in the House? | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4) | TrackBack (0)