EU official: Blogs may "considerably pollute cyberspace"

From our "oh, please, spare us" department comes word of EU hand-wringing about user-generated content.

Says Estonian Socialist (believe it or not; you'd have thought Estonians were tired of Soviet socialist overlords) Marianne Mikko:

"[Blogs]are in position...to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace."

Mikko's solution is chilling -- she's happy to compel bloggers and podcasters to register with the authorities.

"I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why."

We already have a word for this. It's China.

Don't assume these are the views of one lefty nutter. Ignorance and misunderstanding of social media and user-generated media seems equally widespread on the right. German Liberal MEP Jorgo Chatzimarakis says:

"imagine pressure groups, professional interests or any other groups using blogs to pass on their message. Blogs are powerful tools, they can represent an advance form of lobbyism, which in turn can be seen as a threat."

A threat like News Corporation and Disney, you mean? Surely not.

Fortunately, the Mikko/Chatzimarakis report is unlikely to affect EU policy. But you have to wonder Estonia and Germany send such ninnies/nannies to EU Parliament.

Read more here.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 05:06pm in Citizen Journalism, Is Tedious in the House?, Online Media, Social Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

EMI spends $50 million a year destroying CDs..but is waking up

Marc Andreesssen points to today's FT and says:

"EMI, the big music company, spends 25 million pounds a year "to scrap unsold CDs...

"To destroy unsold physical inventory in a world of ubiquitous digital distribution.

"Oh my."

I agree. It's stupid, stupid, stupid to spend money destroying CDs (because no one wants to buy them), then turn around and sue down-loaders (because you can't bring yourself to accept a digital world).

But the Financial Times article is a far more interesting read. Guy Hands, the Terra Firma buyout guy who will be leading EMI, is quoted:

He identifies three characteristics of today's music business: "The industry is based still on the phenomenon of the 1990s and the CD. It is based on the belief that if you have hits you'll make sufficient money to cover everything else.

"It's based on the belief [that] if you have conglomerates of labels they can benefit from economies of scale through manufacturing and distribution sufficiently to make enough money.

"It is based on the belief that individuals who know a particular type of music in a multicultural and multi-demographic society can push a product to the consumer.

"All three of those, in my view, are complete fallacies," declares Mr Hands, who first studied a bid for EMI in 1995 when he left Goldman Sachs to join Nomura (spun off in 2002 to form Terra Firma).

At times Mr Hands sounds despairing: "Can you imagine what would happen if most consumer industries over-shipped by 20 per cent? Can you imagine any consumer industry having 10 per cent of employees as middle management? Can you imagine only 6 per cent of staff in production?"

The record business - in which 85 per cent of artists are lossmaking and EMI pays £25m a year to scrap unsold CDs - "is stuck with a model designed for a world that has changed and gone forever", he says.

His solution is to switch from pushing CDs to pulling consumers towards music in different forms. One element will be focus groups. "People say the music industry is more creative and the customer doesn't know, only the creatives do.

"When you look at which car companies are succeeding it's the ones which work with their customers. Are clothes not creative? Is fashion not creative? Is food not creative? The only real difference is these industries have learnt to work with the customer and not force-feed them," he argues.

Surprisingly, he says that Radiohead, the band that ditched EMI last year to launch their latest album online, made the right choice. "Radiohead had the right idea. They understand their fans. They realise some of them want the premium box set. I'm one who bought one, and paid the full price. What Radiohead showed the industry was that it isn't one answer for all artists or indeed for every customer."

If it takes investment bankers buying out record companies to get them to wake up to the 21st century, then bring them on!

Technorati : EMI, Guy Hands, Marc Andreessen, Terra Firma, corporate efficiency, recording industry

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:08pm in Corporate Management, Music, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Social media: now depressingly mainstream

You know social media is depressingly mainstream when a) you outsource your social media self

"Imagine a man whose entire life revolves around social networking. It occupies all his business and personal time and keeps him so busy that he struggles to keep up with the constant messages, blog posts and photos. So busy, in fact, that he now pays someone to be him online."

and b) your university uses Facebook to nab you.

"IT has become as much a part of student life as hangovers and essay crises. But now Facebook, the social networking website, is being used as a disciplinary tool by university authorities. Staff at Oxford University are searching the website, collecting photographs of students who they say have broken rules on post-examination celebrations, and handing down fines."

Or am I just being retro? Well, I write my own stuff, albeit badly, and my Facebook profile is squeaky clean. No rock wallabies in my life.

Technorati : digital biographer, facebook, ghost blogging, oxford

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:49am in Bizarre but Expected, Is Tedious in the House?, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4) | TrackBack (0)

Pandora locks out European listeners. RIAA wins, artists and listeners lose

Another "victory" for the intellectual property fascists. I've bought at least 20 CDs, or iTunes CDs, in the last nine months because of what I've heard on Pandora. No more, though.

Today we have some extremely disappointing news to share with you. Due to international licensing constraints, we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora's streaming service for most countries outside of the U.S.

It is difficult to convey just how disappointing this is for us. Our vision remains to eventually make Pandora a truly global service, but for the time being, we can no longer continue as we have been. As a small company, the best chance we have of realizing our dream of Pandora all around the world is to grow as the licensing landscape allows.

We show your IP address is '62.xx.xxx.xxx, which indicates you are listening from Denmark. If you believe you are seeing this by mistake, we offer our sincere apologies and ask that you please reply to this email.

Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the people who created the music - we have always believed in honoring the guidelines as determined by legislators and regulators, artists and songwriters, and the labels and publishers they work with. In the U.S. there is a federal statute that provides this license for all the music streamed on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S. and there is no global licensing organization to enable us to legitimately offer Pandora around the world. Other than in the U.K., we have not yet been able to make significant progress in our efforts to obtain a sufficient number of international licenses at terms that would enable us to run a viable business. The volume of listening on Pandora makes it a very expensive service to run. Streaming costs are very high, and since our inception, we have been making publishing and performance royalty payments for every song we play.

I guess my problem is that I don't buy Madonna or Shakira.

Technorati : Pandora, RIAA

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:48am in Intellectual Property, Music, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0)

Jaffe says the portal is dead

Joseph Jaffe says the portal is dead and makes a strong case.

"As a context setter for this post, I suggest you read this Ad Age article which reflects Yahoo's Chief Sales Officer, Wenda Harris-Millard's self-serving bearish comments on "user" generated content, as well as the del.icio.us Peanut Butter memo, calling for reduced headcount at Y! by 15-20% amidst a "radical reorganization"

"I'll come back to Yahoo! shortly.

"I've been mulling over this idea for a while now and thought it would be an opportune time (as all the pundits begin making their predictions for the New Year) to offer up a thought of my own: I don't think anyone doubts that there is a massive realignment of the media powers that be in the overall integrated space. Within interactive however, this couldn't be more true when you look at the rise of the "new" portals such as MySpace, YouTube and/or Google and the subsequent demise - or metamorphosis - of the "traditional" portals.

"My belief is that the days of the "portal" as we knew it are coming to an end. Yahoo!'s dominance is over. AOL's opportunity is over. Perhaps only MSN has a shot left.

"Let me explain..."

Technorati : ad age, joseph jaffe, portals, wenda harris-millard, yahoo

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:57am in Advertising, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2)

But now some good news: Campaigns Wikia

Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has a new project: the Campaigns Wikia. Let Jimbo explain it:

One hallmark of the blog and wiki world is that we do not wait for permission before making things happen. If something needs to be done, we do it. Well, campaigns need to sit up and take notice of the Internet, take notice of bloggers, take notice of wikis, and engage with us in a constructive way.

The candidates who will win elections in the future will be the candidates who build genuinely participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine communities of engaged citizens.

I am launching today a new Wikia website aimed at being a central meeting ground for people on all sides of the political spectrum who think that it is time for politics to become more participatory, and more intelligent.

This website, Campaigns Wikia, has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.

Together, we will start to work on educating and engaging the political campaigns about how to stop being broadcast politicians, and how to start being community and participatory politicians.

Ok, I'm skeptical. But I'm signing on. I've worked in partisan politics, and I know party politics align with citizen wishes only coincidentally, temporarily and when it makes sense for the party.

Technorati Tags: campaigns wikia, jimbo wales, online politics

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:50pm in Online Media, Politics | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0)

How to use blogs

Elizabeth Albrycht brings us a coolio slide by Ansgar Zerfass. My first sense is that it needs tweaking -- crisis blogs might help solve some conflicts, but not complex ones -- but I like the idea of mapping this.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:45am in Blog Management, Communication Skills, Corporate Communication, Knowledge Management, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1)

Recovery 2.0 Fiddles While Kashmir Burns: "We Don't Have the Tools" is OUT as an Excuse (Reprise)

Friend Neville Hobson urges us to Help Victims of Pakistan Earthquake. With a death toll climbing north of 20,000, the October 2005 Kashmir Earthquake knocks the entire Atlantic Hurricane season into the corner.

After the earthquake & tsunami last year, the SEA-EAT blog/wiki project -- an entirely grassroots effort --  organized and swung into action within hours. After hearing Dina Mehta describe the effort at Reboot, I wrote about it, saying "We Don't Have the Tools is NOT an Excuse".

Just as they did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (my post here), many of the same team spontaneously assembled behind the South Asia Quake Help effort within hours of the quake:  ("News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts after the South Asia Earthquake of October 8th, 2005.")

And are doing an outstanding job. You can volunteer, by the way.

These three efforts in nine months point, unfortunately, to the sluggishness and bureaucracy already clogging the arteries of Jeff Jarvis' Recovery 2.0 effort, which is aimed at doing what the SEA-EAT team already does far better.  After weeks of talking about it, Jarvis managed to convene a meeting to talk about the project. The results of this meeting?

* We need to work on standards and APIs for the tools and data bases people create to help in disasters. The peoplefinder standard is already underway and some of the folks from Yahoo at the meeting — who had experience on the ground in Houston and also at the Red Cross network operations center — are working on improvements. At a minimum, we need to do a better job harnessing the internet to help people find each other.

* We need to meet face-to-face with government, NGOs, and business to offer help and coordinate. There is a meeting in Washington on Oct. 17 about just that.

In the meantime, the Kashmir was being leveled by an earthquake, and the South Asia Quake Help team organized itself and got to work. No meetings, no discussions of software options, no meetings in Washington.

Jeff Jarvis: You have great influence; the members of your group have great influence. Instead of reinventing the wheel, why not use your influence to push funds and volunteers into the group behind SEA-EAT, Katrina Help, and South Asia Quake Help? The money your group has spent on travel alone -- just on the BART -- could fund any of these efforts.

How about it?

Technorati tags: Recovery 2.0Recovery2.0 pakistan+earthquake

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:52am in Citizen Journalism, Current Affairs, Katrina, Online Media, Pakistan Earthquake, Smart Communities, Society, Tsunami | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (5) | TrackBack (2)

ConvergeSouth Notes by Kevin Howarth

Josh Hallett helpfully passes on a link to Kevin Howarth's notes from ConvergeSouth, last weekend's  "new media, journalism, and web creativity" conference in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA.

I liked this quote from the Duncan Black (atrios, blogger at Eschaton):

"The media rarely admits its mistakes. You should love mistakes - in the sense that mistakes should be analyzed and part of the conversation."

Isn't that the start of many conversations? While a desire to exchange information is behind most conversations, the richest conversations spring from disagreement, difference of opinion, or the correction of mistakes.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:49am in Citizen Journalism, Journalism, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0)

Attention Saudi Dawn & Drew Fans: this Book is for you

My September paper copy of Wired has a spread on "countries that censor Web content  -- and what really offends them (oddly, the article does not appear in the online edition).

The list of offenders isn't surprising, but what scares them can be. Saudi Arabia blocks 100% of porn, for example, but also takes a hard line on humor, making it doubly hard for Saudi fans of Dawn & Drew, I suppose. Uzbekistan doesn't like porn either, and bans gmail. China is soft on porn, but bans Wikipedia. The criminals that run Burma really hate email -- and don't even think about eBay.

With so much thuggish cybercopping out there, it's a relief to see that Reporters sans Frontières has published the Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents (free pdf download, 1.6MB) to help citizen journalists in benighted countries to get around Big Brother.

"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation."

It's available in English, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Persian.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 04:42pm in Books, Citizen Journalism, Civil Liberty, Journalism, Law, Online Media, Society | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

PRblogs.org: Free Blogs for Practitioners, Educators, and Students

Robert French, who teaches PR at Auburn University in Alabama, USA,  has enough ideas for two people. His latest is PRblogs.org, a free ..  I love that word  .. free .. blog hosting setup for PR students, educators and practitioners.

How inspired is that?

After we spoke earlier today, Robert sent me some background on the idea.

"It is a free blog hosting service aimed at PR practitioners, educators and students.  Free blogs.  Non-profit.  Ad free.  Very niche. 

"This project now allows anyone to sign up with ease.  Just fill in three simple boxes and click one button. Automatic blog.  It uses WordPress Multiuser 1.6 (version 1.6-ALPHA-2).  That is, by the way, the same thing recently launched at WordPress.com

"I am very grateful to James Farmer of Melbourne, Australia. James, through BlogSavvy.net, is our partner in this  project.  James is an innovative advocate for CMS in education.  Please visit his site and blog at:  http://blogsavvy.net  and http://edublogs.org"

I love the idea, and I hope it blossoms and booms (note to IABC/ PRSA/ AAF members: take notes; your new hires are going to know all about social media, and they are going to eat old  media, cold media.. and old agencies for  lunch. It'll take awhile -- You haven't hit the iceberg, yet.)

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:03pm in Advertising, Blogging, Communication, Education, IABC, Marketing, Online Media, PRSA, Public Relations | 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)

Media Law Blog for Journalists and Bloggers

As they more and more often bump up against the law, (US) bloggers might do well to subscribe to the Media Law blog ("A Blog About Freedom of the Press"). Written by journalist/attorney Robert J. Ambrogi, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association & clearly a guy who asked "why be a member of one derided profession when I can choose two?"

Sample post:

The single-best resource on shield laws    

Yesterday's jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to disclose her sources heightens national attention on reporters' shield laws. For anyone wanting to learn more about reporters, subpoenas and shield laws, there is no better resource on the Web than The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Its special section, Reporters and Federal Subpoenas, provides in-depth and frequently updated coverage of efforts to enact a federal shield law as well as of ongoing legal controversies involving reporters' subpoenas. A separate section, The Reporter's Privilege, is a detailed examination, written in 2002, of the law regarding the reporter's privilege in every state and federal circuit. It provides statutes and cases and discusses both substantive and procedural issues.

Hat tip to Cyberjournalist.net.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:37pm in Citizen Journalism, Journalism, Law, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Becker-Posner See No Need for Blogger Ethics Codes, but Argue for Sales-Tax on E-Commerce

Desirable Roasted Coffee's Code of Blogging Ethics is voluntary (and applies to this site only). I wrote it partly in response to Nick Denton's call for a formal blog ethics committee (seconded by Jason Calacanis), a call that I considered and consider naive and unworkable.

This week on the Becker-Posner Blog, US Circuit Judge Richard Posner and Nobel-prize winning economist Gary Becker argue that exempting bloggers from formal and voluntary ethics rules makes sound economic sense.

Posner notes:

"...the argument is that since the mainstream media have adopted ethical standards concerning such matters as reliance on anonymous sources and retraction of errors (with electronic media such as television stations subject to formal regulation), so should bloggers.

"Nevertheless I think this “exemption” of blogging from the ethical standards applicable to the mainstream media makes good economic sense because of economic and technological differences between those media and the 'blogosphere'."

I paraphrase his reasons:

1. The large number of blogs, the speed of transmission, and the fact that most serious bloggers are highly specialized mean that the blogosphere pools information quickly and completely.
2. The rapid and complete pooling of information quickly marginalizes bloggers whose lack of ethics affects the public interest.
3. The self-correcting nature of the blogosphere is far more efficient than the fact-checking procedures of mainstream media (MSM).
4. The ire and finger-pointing raised by egregiously incorrect or unethical blogging is far more public and instant than the retractions printed by MSM days after an error.

In short, no "cost" is borne by society by the lack of a common code of blogging ethics.

Posner does argue, though, that the law banning sales-tax imposts on e-commerce distorts the market and imposes a externality on society. Becker agrees on both counts.

The posts are the sort of 2000+ word full-feeds that may drive you to distraction if you are in a fast-food frame of mind. But if you want some mind-candy to noodle over this weekend, I highly recommend Posner's post and Becker's reply.

What do you all think? Do we need a blogging code of ethics? Do we want sales-tax on e-commerce?

Link: The Becker-Posner Blog: Blogging, Spam, and the Taxation of Internet Transactions—Posner.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:35pm in Citizen Journalism, Economics, Ethics, Journalism, Law, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Should We Pony Up for New York Times Op-Ed Columns?

I missed the New York Times' recent announcement of its plan to charge US$ 49.95 a year for on-line access Op-Ed columnists. While I am full of sympathy for the business managers of the Times -- surely it cannot be easy watching lucrative classified ads being sucked away by Craigslist and eBay -- I suspect they overestimate the willingness of many online readers (such as me) to pony up.

Virginia Postrel takes the same view on her Dynamist Blog noting that much of the content will remain free in other places because of syndication:

"...it seems likely that the Times is underestimating online readers' elasticity of demand and is risking its status as the most-talked-about (and blogged-about) newspaper in the world. Besides, as various blog commenters have pointed out, (examples here and here), since the columns are syndicated you can find many of them on other newspapers' sites."

The sweetener that the Times is almost surely betting on -- and it nearly catches me -- is that the service also gives access to the Times archives back to 1851. Moreover, the service is free for dead-tree version subscribers, giving many Americans an incentive to subscribe for home delivery.

Still, if the major political bloggers are no longer able to link to the NYT Op-Ed columnists, will it reduce those columnists' influence? Every one (well, except the President)  who matters in politics already reads the Times, so maybe columnist influence won't take much of a hit.

All in all, a gamble for the NYT. I'll lose out, of course, because I live in Copenhagen. If I lived in the States, I probably wouldn't notice.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:02pm in Corporate Management, Journalism, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Gahran Says Bag Blog Stereotypes; Hobson Tells How to Make the Most of RSS

Friend Shel Holtz often points out blogs are nothing but websites supported by an easy and lightweight CMS program that lets authors post easily and readers comment and trackback easily. I've been using that explanation with clients and, if they have a website or use the web often, they immediately understand. And we can go from there.

Going from there is made easier by Contentious Amy Gahran's article What's a Blog? Bag the Stereotypes:

"Over the past year weblogs have become a popular topic of conversation – both in private discussion and at conferences and other events. Understandably, a lot of people who are talking about blogs have little or no experience with weblogs. For a variety of reasons, these weblog neophytes often are the ones who start or lead high-profile discussions about blogging, especially within organizations and at conferences.

"While it’s good that weblog neophytes are considering and talking about blogs at all, they often fall prey to, and perpetuate, a fair amount of misinformation – especially stereotypes. Here are some clarifications on how to understand and discuss weblogs, in order to avoid those pitfalls…"

And in inimitable Amy style, she goes on to clarify what's a blog, what isn't a blog, and weblog myths to avoid.

One of the myths Amy advises to avoid is "There are too many blogs to follow." Friend Neville Hobson positively skewers that myth in his post Getting More From Your RSS Feed:

"Whether web-based or installed on your own computer, [RSS readers] enable you to receive information from many different websites and blogs all in one place.

"What this means is that it's increasingly likely that more people will read what you write via subscribing to your RSS feed than through visiting your blog. This is especially true if people like what you write on your blog and so want to read more of it, and read it regularly.

"Look at it this way. If you want to read what 20 different bloggers or websites write about, you could go and visit each of those blogs or websites. So that's 20 different places to visit. Or, you could sign up to get each of these RSS feeds and automatically receive what they write, every time they publish something, in your RSS reader."

Neville goes on to quote Robert Scoble:

"If you don't have an RSS feed, your site is lame because you've told the connectors (er, superusers, er influentials) that they don't matter. When I see a site that doesn't have an RSS feed I see a site that says "Mr. Scoble you aren't welcome here and we don't ever want you to come back again."

I heartily agree. No RSS feed is the kiss of death if you want me to be a reader.

But truncated, or summary feeds (a post on feed that reads: "As I noted yesterday... (read on)") also send me around the bend. As Neville points out, bloggers issue truncated feeds in an attempt to force me to come to their blog (usually because of the Google ads, I believe).

I've simply dropped some blogs entirely because I cannot be bothered to figure out what the cryptic headlines and opening lines mean. Others, such as Amy Gahran and B.L. Ochman, get a look in from time to time because they know how to write an informative headline and lead.

Hobson goes on to explain how to make the most of FeedBurner.

Good reads from Amy Gahran and Neville Hobson; a tip of the boater to them both.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:16am in Blog Management, Blogging, Communication, Online Media, RSS | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

PubSub LinkRanks Back Online; Very Buggy (But They're Working on it!)

Update: Even before I managed to send a copy of this post to the PubSub people, Pubsub's Bob Wyman and Mark Wagner had both posted comments explaining why I got odd results. That sort of fast, useful feedback is a great way to make friends. Thanks, guys!

Original post: PubSub's LinkRanks service is back online, after being down some months. The new version does not, so far, have the old "ranking" feature that gratified my blego when I was feeling blue and lonely, but it does have some interesting factoids (updated daily):

Top 100 Sites By Inlinking Sites for May 9th, 2005

•         249,827 sites created         716,886 new blog entries       
• 1,170,798 outlinks were created to 149,717 other sites
• 94,076 (38% of those with new entries) created outlinks.
• 6,310 sites       (3% of those with new entries) had both inlinks and outlinks.
• 260,629 syndication feeds had new entries.
• 5% of the 5,390,292 recently active feeds monitored by PubSub had new entries.
• 3% of the 9,968,379 feeds monitored by PubSub had new entries.

You can type in the URL of any blog and see a 30-day day-by-day review of how many incoming and outgoing links the blog had. Here is Desirable Roasted Coffee's summary.

For the fun of it, I checked up on friends Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Eric Eggertson, and Warren Bickford. And noticed right away that the service is wildly buggy.

For example, Neville gets credit for an average of 18 outlinks a day, with an astounding 127 outgoing links to 99 sites on April 28. Nevon readers will instantly realize that the program notes from For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report play a role here: the HH Report program notes link to anyone mentioned during the podcast.

So you'd expect to see similar stats from Shel's blog. But no... he's credited with zero outgoing links the last 30 days.

Moreover, the URLs are a problem. PubSub doesn't recognize Warren Bickford's blog address http://blogs.iabc.com/chair/. Tweaked to look for http://blogs.iabc.com, PubSub finds the results.

So while it's nice to see PubSub's LinkStats back on line, it's still in need of major debugging to be useful. To their credit, they admit that, and ask for feedback. I'll be sending this along to them.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:55am in Blog Management, Blogging, Gadgets & Toys, Online Media, Taxonomy of Cyberspace | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

NYT's Adam Cohen Calls for Better Code of Blogging Ethics

Adam Cohen's editorial in Sunday's New York Times will almost certainly cause writhing and gnashing of teeth in the blogosphere. But the offended, when they calm down, should re-read the piece closely. Cohen is sometimes off-base. But his point is sound: bloggers, in attacking mainstream media (IMSM) -- must keep ethical standards that at least meet MSM's ethical standards.

(Yes, I am aware that the New York Times, CBS, Washington Post, etc, have had ethics lapses, but another's failings are no excuse for one's own).

Most -- let us say 95% -- bloggers could have the ethics of an alley-cat without anyone knowing the difference. But the most-read 5% have influence, however minor, in their profession, hobby, political party. And those at the very top? If Ana Marie Cox, Duncan Black and Josh Marshall don't have huge readership on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, who does?

Cohen writes:

"The thing about influence is that, as bloggers well know, it is only a matter of time before people start trying to hold you accountable. Bloggers are so used to thinking of themselves as outsiders, and watchdogs of the LSM (that's Lame Stream Media), that many have given little thought to what ethical rules should apply in their online world. Some insist that they do not need journalistic ethics because they are not journalists, but rather activists, or humorists, or something else entirely. But more bloggers, and blog readers, are starting to ask whether at least the most prominent blogs with the highest traffic shouldn't hold themselves to the same high standards to which they hold other media."

He concludes:

"Bloggers may need to institutionalize ethics policies to avoid charges of hypocrisy. But the real reason for an ethical upgrade is that it is the right way to do journalism, online or offline. As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves."

Cohen's piece goes  to the heart of the "Are Bloggers Journalists?" discussion, since bloggers can't have it both ways. Courts are unlikely to allow "But I'm a reporter" claims when the blogger, on cross-examination, admits to not getting two or more sources, checking facts, revealing payments, etc. These bloggers will quickly learn that being a "reporter" has, in fact, little to do with a title, but much to do with adhering to standards.

Cohen calls for bloggers to publish ethics codes. Why not? It's easy to do. I published the Desirable Roasted Coffee Code of Blogging Ethics -- a contract with readers -- because I believe to have a readership is a privilege, and a trust. Influential bloggers are far more privileged -- and the trust is greater. Pledging to a code of ethics wouldn't be a bad move for them.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:31am in Bloggers, Citizen Journalism, Desirable Roasted Coffee, Ethics, Journalism, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

What Should Stephen Baker Ask Arianna Huffington About Celebrity Blogs?

Stephen Baker, co-auther of BusinessWeek's Blogspotting has an interview with Arianna Huffington tomorrow. What should he ask her? Well, he's asking for advice.

I believe Huffington should commit to a Code of Blogging Ethics. That might satisfy skeptics who suspect Huffington's Celebrity Blog will be a swell place for shills.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:11pm in Bloggers, Communication, Journalism, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

BusinessWeek Gets Goo-goo Eyed Over Blogs

BusinessWeek's May 2 cover story is Blogs Will Change Your Business. Business bloggers will find it old stuff, but I hope businesspeople who are not blogging will have their eyes opened by the article.

Contains a nice sidebar interviewing Stonyfield Farm's CEO Hirshburg and Chief Blogger Halverson.

Another sidebar gives CEOs 6 Blogging Tips, including strong warnings about "fake" blogs. It also floats an odd view of the future of communicators: If bloggers become part of a company's communications effort, what does the old PR department do? Increasingly, it'll train and coordinate the bloggers.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 05:53pm in Blogging, Communication, Online Media, Public Relations | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Allan Jenkins Declares Blogging Agnosticism

Blog, flog, smog.... what church did I stumble into?

Steve Rubel keelhauled Captain Morgan over the weekend, calling Morgan "infamous", a "waste", and an "insult to bloggers everywhere". (Friend Neville Hobson hurrumphed and (sort of) came down against the Cap'n on the Hobson-Holtz Report, too.)

Rubel also implied Morgan cannot play basketball, which is a damned lie that I won't get into right now.

Why this disdain for a guy whose only joy in life is bringing us not-very-good rum? Because, Rubel says, the Cap'n is a "character." Well, yeah, and? I grew up in South Carolina, where you can't throw a brick down Main Street without braining a "character"; hell, we send them to Congress just for fun.

Being raised in South Carolina taught me something else... how to sniff out True Believerism when it's being ladled out. You know, "folks can believe what ever they want, but there's only One True Path."

About nine years ago, I was a True Believer. I was the truest of the True Believers. <Center> tags on websites? Forget about it. Colors? Not on my watch. Headlines in images instead of pure text? Heresy! A website for commercial purposes? Unspeakably vulgar and against the whole concept of the Internet.

Until a client offered me a cartload of cash to create a commercial website with center tags, color, and headlines in images. And you know what? He made money, I made money, and I've been an agnostic ever since.

I'm keeping myself out of that doctrinal trap this decade. So here's the Desirable Roasted Coffee Declaration of Blogging Agnosticism:

1) I don't care what people do with the CMS software used by bloggers.

2) If using it, however they use it, puts their message across better, sells their products better, extends their brand, pleases their staff or pleases their mother-in-law, I say more power to them.

3) If they want to call it a blog, fine. The Cancer Blog isn't "really" a blog, but we let that pass because to call it a "blog-like news feed edited by a paid writer" is too clumsy. So let the Captain have his day, too.

4) If people want to use that CMS software to willfully deceive the public, that's their lookout. I'm sure some will try, and find the public no more naive or less vengeful than it's ever been.

5) I'm confident I and most people can readily discern the different purposes of the Captain's blog and the Lawrence Lessig's blog, just as most can readily discern the inherant differences between Arts & Letters Daily and The Onion. If they can't, that's not the Captain's fault.

6) If Homer Simpson and Bugs Bunny start blogging tomorrow, there's room on my blogroll (especially if they do a team blog like Becker-Posner).

OK? 'Nuff said. Gotta go talk to the Cap'n.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 05:21pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Communication, Desirable Roasted Coffee, Marketing, Online Media, Public Relations | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Vatican Used SMS & EMail to Announce Pope's Death

Interesting story via Reuters about the Vatican's use of online communication to pass the word of the Pope's death.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - It took just minutes for the Vatican to alert the world's media of Pope John Paul's death -- using text messages and email so the 2,000-year-old Church could meet the new demands of real-time news.

Just a quarter of an hour after the Pope was pronounced dead Saturday at 9:37 p.m., the Vatican sent journalists an SMS message alerting them to a pending statement.

Television networks across the globe were already on standby a minute later when the email communique was beamed to a sea of state-of-the-art handheld computers, purchased by journalists at the suggestion of the Vatican.

This caught my eye:

TV spectators across the globe learned of the Pope's death even before the thousands of faithful gathered in prayer below the Pope's window in St. Peter's Square.

More evidence of how online, individual communication is permeating our business and news life.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:35pm in Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Halley Suitt's Touching Request to Diversify the Blogosphere

I'm a white guy who writes in a blog, so I hope you will excuse me while I sit here and dominate the blogosphere. Yes, apparently that's what I (well, not me, but other white guys, those guys on the blogger A list) do, according to MSNBC's Steven Levy and blogger Halley Suitt.

Halley Suitt thinks it's time to fix that. Here's Halley's touching request -- that