Elise Bauer has released an in-depth analysis of the blogging world and attempted to prop up a meter stick along side things to see just how big this “blogging thing” really is. The background information is well-written and thought out, but the rankings require more digging, which she openly acknowledges.

Elise’s approach to evaluating market dominance relies on Google’s indexing to count the number of sites linking back to it. As she describes:

One way to look at it may be to consider which tools have the most influence, or are getting the most use. To try to get an answer to this question I’ve turned to Google. By typing in the domain name of a tool you can find the number of web pages that link to the domain name and the number of pages that contain the search term of that domain name.

[…]

Since actual share numbers are impossible to come by, I have combined the Google Link To and Contain URL numbers to come up with what I am calling the Weblog Use Index, an index of market influence based solely on Google results. Clearly a problem with this approach is that it weighs more heavily the hosted services where each weblog created contains the URL of the service. Weblogs that use the standalone tools may not cite the tool used and therefore would not get counted with this method. However, when we look at the overall results, they seem to fit what we would expect in general. Blogger, Google’s free service, has the lion’s share, followed by Live Journal, the most active weblog online community.

Source: elise.com, “An Overview of the Weblog Tools Market” via Strategic Public Relations

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Mark Glaser writes in the Online Journalism Review about some of the changes in use and attitudes towards blogging from many different parts of the professional world. Especially appropriate to the recent discussion of Gonzo Media is this tidbit:

Grueskin starts with the assumption that bloggers have the privilege of linking to WSJ.com stories, whether it’s to criticize or praise them. And he doesn’t believe journalists must have an adversarial relationship with blogs.

“Many traditional journalists have come to see blogging as an either-or proposition — you’re either a blogger or you’re a conventional reporter or columnist,” Grueskin told me via e-mail. “I see blogging as a nascent phenomenon that is a threat to journalism only to editors who treat it as such. I think the key is finding ways in which we can each do what we’re best at, and look for ways to cooperate. Truth is, bloggers depend a great deal on traditional media. But, I’m coming to find, we can depend on them.”

If you think it’s all about love and kindness, think again. Grueskin says traffic generated from blogs to the free features has been “substantial” for compelling stories. While he couldn’t be specific about numbers, Grueskin said the links from blogs sometimes rivaled the traffic generated by links in Yahoo Finance.

Source: Online Journalism Review, “Dear Bloggers: Media Discover Promotional Potential of Blogosphere”

For now, the little line skirmishes are interesting, almost entertaining. In the long run, however, Big Media will be pushed over the this side and a significant re-calibration of attitudes/aptitudes will occur.

One last gripe in this little struggle - all readers of RSS are not Bloggers. Seems many have taken to forcefully attach the use of RSS to the blogosphere and it just isn’t (completely) so.

via JDB

As most readers may know, I have been working on developing Archetypes that describe not only the types of content that surface through blogs but also for the different types of blogs themselves. Certainly, I am not the only one pursuing this line of thinking.

Previously, I’ve noted that one method to look at Blog Archetypes was a dissection of the Editorial Goals of the author(s) and the composition of the Entry Archetypes (see “Introduction to Blog Archetypes”). These two simple constructs provide a very broad base to move forward from in that they get at both the conversational nature of blogs as well as the underlying motivations.

A couple of weeks after that initial post, I came across some interesting thoughts from Jon Lessing, a decidedly more “business” approach to understanding blogging (see “A Different Take on Blog Archetypes”). Specifically, Jon was investigating the various business models that could prove to dominate in the long run.

Most recently, Suw Charman, recent addition to the Corante Team, has provided another high-level categorization worthy of note:

1. Marketing blogs - external, B2C blog, used to promote either the company or a product/service.

2. External blogs - used to communicate with the public, but not for sales purposes, for instance, in a consultation process.

3. Insider blogs - employee blogs, sanctioned but not controlled by the company they work for. (Sometimes disclaimed by the company they work for.)

4. Internal blogs - blogs used within a company to share knowledge, build communities, disseminate news.

5. Content blogs - public-facing blogs reliant on content to bring in either subscription or, more likely, advertising revenue.

Source: Strange Attractor, “Lumpers and Splitters”

I’ll try to incorporate these classifications as I further my versions of the Blog Archetypes.

A couple of days ago I lamented my experiences (see “Blogging Needs Better Stewards”) bringing a large group of people from diverse backgrounds into the world of blogging. Though there was great interest and hype around the industry at whole, we collectively dropped the ball when trying to re-create the foundations and to paint a complete picture.

Taking my complaint to task, the Jester himself has offered a nice write up on what blogging is, what it does, and how it’s done.

To quote just the most basic definition:

A blog, web log, or online journal consists of a online journal, diary, or writing of things that interest you. Goals can range from wanting a forum to exchange ideas, gain feedback, judge reactions, share your knowledge & experience, showcase your weekly comic strip, showcase and share your photos/art/pictures, bookmark your favorite topics and hyperlinks, and/or to be a part of an online community with people who have similar interests… or just the opposite, and merely to lurk and absorb and read one or all of the above with or without partaking in responding and feedback.

Source: JesterXL, “What is a blog?”

I’d love to see more of these. If anyone else wants to submit their definition of a blog and what it means to them, please do and I will aggregate them all into the right column.

I attended the BlogOn Bootcamp yesterday which was intended to be a hands-on workshop on blogging for those attendees that are interested in the blogging phenomena. Unfortunately, that was a mission that was doomed to fail.

The speakers did a good job with the material they were assigned. The issue was really twofold:

• Complexity - Blogging is such a complex industry that it’s often hard to remember the number of bean bags being juggled at the same time. As a result, trying to cram the entirety of the blogosphere as well as demonstrating how to use these technologies into a few hours is a near impossible task.

  It would have been more beneficial to do a high level and then dig into the few most important topics than to try and broach the entire space.

• Presentation - It’s sad to say, but we’re terrible at explaining what we do in this blogging business. To really sell the notion of anything, really, requires a good deal of practice and refactoring. It takes time to learn what works and what doesn’t, what people like and what they don’t.

  Most important, it’s about creating a picture, sometimes literally, that leaves people with a mental model that persists once they walk out the door. For the most part, the Bootcamp failed to create that image and it was easy to tell from the audience.

If we want to make this move, we need to sell it.

I will be attending the BlogOn Conference on The Business of Social Media. The event will be held over the next two days in UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

The event has recently sold out, but there is still a live webcast available if memory serves me correctly. If anyone will be attending and wants to meet up, please, comment here. I’ll be posting some notes once the event is completed.

Understanding blogging seems to be on quite a few minds lately. From this end, I’ve been trying to digest the different blog formats that are out there with hopes of finding potential patterns (Blog Archetypes). Though my focus is compositional, it is certainly not the only vantage point worth considering.

The other day I came across a link on BusinessLogs that pointed to a very different point of view on how to catalog blogs. As the author, Jon Lesser, describes, the only true measure is the revenue model.

Here’s a summary of the “archetypes” he sees:

• The Promotional Business Model
• The Advertising Business Model
• The Subscription Business Model
• The Anti-Business Model

Source: JonLessing.org, “The Business of Blogging”

I think this type of categorization leaves out a lot of what blogging is about, but it’s still an interesting one to consider. Particularly, I’m curious how the various Blog Archetypes I am developing might map to Jon’s and if there’s any clustering that can be observed.

So the question remains. When you blog, do you do it for the love or the money?

The guys over at Business Logs have a very interesting stream of thoughts as they relate to the Business of Blogging. Picking up on my earlier post regarding the lack of respect the traditional corporation has for blogging, they provide some relevant benefits. Here are the 4 areas they discuss:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Stay Fresh In Mind of Customers
• Sense of Community
• Instant Feedback

For me, the community and feedback aspects ring true the most. For many people, the process of developing anything is complicated and intentionally obscured from consumers. By utilizing blogging and open feedback systems, customers get to not only see the process and effort that goes into bringing something to life, they also get to help shape the final product.

Once a customer’s invested in something on that level, it’s hard to turn your back on it. That kind of loyalty can’t be bought.

Though everyone reading this has a relative level of comfort and trust in the power and relevance of blogging as a communication tool, we’re still a fairly isolated group. The rise of blogging through academic circles was a foregone conclusion. The ascent up the consumer mountain, is slowly, but surely, quickening in pace. But what about the business space?

Driven by the bottom line and tight schedules, winning the hearts of businesses and their marketing dollars will certainly pose a far more formidable challenge. To win that support, we will have to come forward with a great deal of compelling reasons to invest both time and money into this space.

From time to time, and more so in the future, we will find out about the clashes in very public ways. Yesterday I came across a link on flex-mx.com that pointed to just one of these incidents. The site, HackingNetFlix.com was making an innocent attempt to connect its readers with the PR department of NetFlix when they were preemptively shut down.

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Marketing Sherpa, “Software Company President Blog Proves a Publicity & Search Optimization Bonanza”
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2742

via

What’s Your Brand Mantra?, “Corporate blogging case study”
http://brand.blogs.com/mantra/2004/06/corporate_blogg.html

He also decided the blog should not be too personal.

“I might put up little anecdotes to illustrate a point, but this isn’t my diary. I don’t write about what I had for dinner. That’s no great loss to the world of online literature. There are plenty more interesting people out there who make better reading.”

[…]

But he fretted over what his investors and customers might think. When you’re selling security software to people like the US military, you don’t want them to think you take it lightly. “It’s a very serious, straightlaced market.”

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