everwas

a blog by Ian Kennedy

Year: 2005

  • New Communications Forum

    Just got back from two days at the New Communications Forum which was an interesting mix of old hand bloggers meeting with PR professionals to talk about the impact of blogging on the art of Public Relations. Lots of interest as everyone understands the potential of this new medium but we all realize that we’re grasping for a way to measure it in a way that it maps to the usual methods of getting the word out.

    Some highlights:

    • The Kryptonite/Bic pen scandal cost the company $10 million in just 10 days because they had to replace over 100,000 locks. That’s almost half of their $25 million annual sales.
    • Yahoo’s Searchblog went from 0 to 500 subscribers to it’s RSS feed in just 60 days.
    • “Email disseminates information, Blogs discuss information.” Neville Hobson
    • “RSS is like TiVo for the web.” Andy Lark
    • the blogosphere loves Bob Lutz as a CEO who “get’s it”
    • there’s money to be made in “blogsaulting”
    • the difference between a message board and a blog
    • stripes and checks don’t mix (inside joke with Stowe Boyd)
    • “blogerrific” – an new adjective coined by Tom Foremski to describe something that’s been improved with either RSS or blogging technology, i.e. the new, improved C|Net that now accepts Trackbacks.
    • “The days when you could control the message are over. Now the best you can hope to do is influence the conversation,” says Shel Holtz. I would add, this is why companies need to participate in the blogosphere with an active blog. If a person runs into a room at a party going full tilt, they are not going to have a hard time getting anyone to listen to them if they just stand at the transom shouting. They need to mingle and get to know people first.
    • the concept of “darkspots” on corporate websites. FedEx has one – it’s a blank area reserved on their top page for where they might put a tab to announce updates on a labor dispute that might impact shipping schedules. The area is kept free so that the tab can be put in place at a moments notice without disrupting the layout and design of the page.
    • it’s always great to see your company’s product being used in realtime to update the conference’s web site

    My favorite take away from the two days is Elizabeth Albrycht’s snappy answer to the “What’s the ROI on blogging,” question. Nail down and measure the “Investment” so that you can properly frame and measure the “Return.” If someone is investing time into posting a company blog, think of the time they are saving by not having to call or email everyone individually to maintain that a connection. Think also of all the new conversations that get started as a result of that post.

    ROI is going to be a hot topic as blogging gets evaluated as a tool for the corporation. What the industry needs is a new metric by which influence can be measured over time as corporate blogs are launched – it’s not page views, it’s not quite RSS subscribers either – we need a way to measure topic “buzz” and site “authority” – there’s a business opportunity there for someone.

  • Taquitos.net

    yahoorss_1.JPGNo lie here, click the screen shot on the left – the 12th most popular RSS feed on My Yahoo is Taquitos.net

    Let’s see, Techbargins.com. . . check, CNET News.com, ok, that seems right. Wired News, yes, I’ll take that. Braingle brain teasers – yep that might be fun . . . and – Taquitos.net? It’s even more popular than the NYT Business section! Either the geeks or the MyYahoo readers are eating way too many Doritos!

  • Krap Dance

    dsc02708.jpg

    I consider myself pretty culturally sensitive but this one’s too good to pass up. At a local Cambodian restaurant which we frequent I spotted this poster up on the wall. This is absolutely no comment on the quality of their food nor what it may do to you as you digest it but one has to wonder the reaction of English-speaking tourists in Cambodia when asked if they want to view the “Krap Dance”

  • GM Blogs

    I’m here at the New Communications Forum conference up in Napa, now in the second session on "Corporate Blogging" and so far Bob Lutz’s General Motors Blog, Fast Lane has been mentioned at least five times as a blog that’s been done right and an example to study and follow.

        – it has an authoritative yet human voice. Bob Lutz is the Vice Chairman of General Motors speaking directly to his customers.
        – comments and trackbacks are enabled.
        – it has an RSS feed
        – it runs on Movable Type

  • Bloggers vs. Journalists, it’s Over says Jay Rosen

    NYU’s Jay Rosen declares the “war” between New and Old Media over in a long keynote at the recent Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference at Harvard. Pulling together quotes from key posts over the past few years he says that we really need to stop staring each other in the eyes waiting for the other to blink and realize that the opinionated bloggers and objective journalists need each other. One is not better than the other, they are both different sides of the story and both necessary to paint a complete picture. To a certain extent, the popularity of blogs is a result of the audience (and the working journalist) wanting to pull back some of the powers they’ve ceded to mainstream media.

    The price of professionalizing journalism was the de-voicing of the
    journalist. The price for having mass media was the atomization of the
    audience, who in the broadcasting model were connected “up” to the
    center but not “across” to each other. Well, blogging is a re-voicing
    tool in journalism, and the Net’s strengths in horizontal communication
    mean that audience atomization is being overcome.

  • Higher Relevance = Lower Ad Sales

    Kind of obvious when you think about it but if the industry were to continue down the path of developing the perfect search engine that could find you exactly what you were looking for, would you even bother clicking on a context sensitive advertisement?

  • Ukrainian man hasn’t slept in 20 years

    I tend to be a bit of a night owl but I can’t see how this is humanly possible.

    I used to read boring scientific periodicals in the hope they would send me to sleep. But as soon as I felt my eyes getting droopy and put the magazine down, I would find myself wide awake again. I thought it would just be a phase but its gone on for over 20 years now and I’ve simply had to get used to it.

    If you figure he’s had 8 hours more a day than the rest of us mortals than over 20 years that works out to 2,433 days or six and a half years! One wonders why he isn’t a whole heck of a lot more productive than the rest of us, he should have a few Nobel prizes under his belt by now – what gives?

    Thanks to Kottke for the pointer.

  • Blog University, Napa

    I’ll be up in Napa tomorrow for the New Communications Forum Blog University. If any of you kind readers are going to be there, look me up.

  • Google Video Search

    Google Labs just announced that they are now providing a video search engine. Details in a BBC article here. This is slightly different than the video search announced by Yahoo earlier in that is indexes the closed caption content provided with television shows and returns results that show where in television segment the search terms were spoken and then shows a screen capture from that segment.

    For an example, here’s a persistent search showing mentions of the word blogs.

    It’s still in the labs so the actual video footage is not available but if they do point to when the show aired and when you might be able to catch the segment again. If Google delivers on what they are writing about, this could be a version of Google acting as a gigantic, internet-enabled TiVo for the rest of us.

    More detail with screenshots here on the about page.

    UPDATE: According to CNet, Yahoo has been working on a similar index of closed caption video text of Bloomberg and BBC programs in their partnership with TVeyes. The article also mentions Blinkx but I couldn’t get it to pull up any meaningful results.