Over the last couple of weeks, I have come across a wide array of articles that are going on and on about how terrible the new GMail service is, and stands to be. It’s amazing the wide range of public outcries that have been lobbied against this new service.

Generally, I tend to remain in the camp that if something offends, betrays, or otherwise compromises you in ways that you are not comfortable with, what danah boyd would qualify as “ickiness”, stay away. That’s right, don’t use it. Don’t respond to messages from it. Make up your own search.

It’s a hard line to draw, I know, and it most likely offends more than it really should. I’ve had a discussion with someone one night about the SparkCard. Although I definitely understood the main points, I was not, much to the dismay of the attacker, “admit” that I was intentionally taking advantage of other people.

The fact of the matter is that most things have a cost associated with them, be it emotional, intellectual, or financial. The notion of free services are always colluded, in a large part, by the secret motives of the underlying organization. For example, many, many individuals have placed orders for products via TV infomercials. They have offered up credit card information, address information, and other “unmentionables”, along with their 4.95 for shipping and handling of the otherwise “free” product. So how free was it then?

I tend to assume that the individuals that make it to consider a service long enough to part with this information, or control, as you might call it, understand enough to have commit this information, or deem it on par with the “free prize”. When was the last time you read a User Agreement from start to finish?

Does it surprise anyone that marketing guru, Seth Godin, says this in his latest book, “Free Prize Inside!”:

It’s all marketing now. The organizations that win will be the ones that realize that all they must do is create things worth talking about.

Now if I can only figure out how to convert the SNS free prize into something valuable, I would have something to talk about indeed.

Lately, there seems to be a renewed interest in the role of advertising within the blogging community. I am not sure that I’ve had enough time to really research and digest these issues with much detail, but some recent reading unearthed some controversy over the potential to generate revenue

At BloggerCon, Stowe Boyd was one of the few individuals that was clearly making money from sponsorships on his blog, to the tune of about $3,000 a month. This was indeed newsworthy to some, like Julie Haggerty of The New York Times, while being mystifying to others.

Most of the discussion seems to stem from a general disbelief in the value of marketing to specific audiences. I’m wondering if this debate needs to involve more innovators from the marketing space to assist those with less experience in contextualizing the marketplace.

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I was reading a friend’s blog the other day when I came across a post about the Business of Blogs. Naturally, my ears perked up in curiosity. Over the past couple of weeks I have been a bit immersed in the concept of Business Blogging and finding this gem on a non-business, non-social networking site was very interesting.

I’m not familar with the journal that this article was originally published in, but it seems geared towards a very business crowd, not that that’s remotely a bad thing. This doubles my belief that the business world is the crowd immediately at the edge of the blogosphere and itching to cross over.

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Many 2 Many sparks some conversation relating to Nico Macdonald’s paper on the Future of Weblogging”. The discussion is particularly interesting as it really deals with the domain the Thought Leaders.

As Seb takes note:

Macdonald’s considerations are interesting, but they reflect his conception of what blogs are about (journalism and serious thinking) and thus chiefly apply to those weblogs that aspire to public intellectual leadership. This space is actually large enough that the term itself is becoming highly ambiguous; I wouldn’t dream of asking LiveJournalers to write according to those standards - and nor should they strive to.

Some weblogs are in a fuzzy position, between the public and the personal, and I realize it is causing a tension. For instance, in my personal weblog I tend to use first names to refer to people with whom I have private exchanges and collaboration relationships - here for example. I count many of these people as friends even if I have yet to meet them.

Source: Many 2 Many, “Nico Macdonald on the Future of Weblogging”

Of course, the dilemma of dissecting the various Blog Species is somewhat more complicated and requires a bit broader analysis. I’ve only begun to arrange my thoughts on the specific issues, but I think there are some key points worth examining.

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While away at Blogger Con, I had the opportunity to speak with several different individuals about my notion of Blog Entry Archetypes and how I thought they would play into the shaping of the future of blogging.

Somewhat to my surprise, I got a lot of push-back from several people as they reacted to the notion of “Better Tools For Better Blogging”. Perhaps the one point that stuck with me most was the comment that this entry metadata that could potentially be generated was simply another cloudy taxonomy on top of an already wobbling classification system.

The other day, I had a comment from a reader that pondered if the entry archetypes weren’t really all the same thing, Personal Entries.

This has me wondering, does seeing the patterns in things serve to destroy the thing itself?

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Last, but certainly not least, in the Blog Entry universe is the second most popular entry archetype, the Thought Leadership Entry.

Summary

The Thought Leadership Entry is by far the most complex entry type in the blogging ecosystem. Although common in the academic circles, a significant number of individuals, from all walks of life, have come forward with some very interesting material.

The endeavor to spawn “original” thought is not only difficult but also risky. Authors are often required to do a great deal of research and also open themselves to review and ridicule from a relatively anonymous medium. Fortunately, this format is less subjected to the emotional rants often generated by the Opinion Entry.

Perhaps magnifying the role of comments and external feedback, the Thought Leadership Entry is designed specifically to induce thought and response.

The key difference between the Thought Leadership Entry and the Opinion Entry is the assertion. Opinion Entries tend to be shorter and more pointed at specifics whereas Thought Leadership Entries generally cast a wider net and introduce ideas and concepts to the audience.

Thought Leaders understand that failing to develop their arguments only serves to debunk their effort, and, quite possibly, the ideas themselves.

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Next in the Blog Entry spectrum is a relative newcomer to the overall blogosphere, but an increasingly important one, the Special Purpose Entry.

Summary

The Special Purpose Entry has grown in popularity as the use of blogs has expanded over time. This form of entry provides blog authors with the ability to communicate often hard-to-categorize pieces of information to their audience.

The Special Purpose Entry is in many ways a catch-all for many soon to evolve Entry Archetypes. In many ways, tracking the content makeup of the Special Purpose Entry provides insight into the edges of the blogosphere and where the next wave of content will look like. For example, Special Purpose Entries are most commonly used today to present photographs, conference and event notes, and polls or surveys.

Looking ahead, it seems very clear that the Blog Entry Archetypes will be expanded to include both an Event Archetype and a Media Archetype.

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Continuing our look at the Blog Entry Archetypes, we now take a look at one of the third most prominent entry type, the Opinion Entry.

Summary

As the old saying goes, there’s never any shortage of opinions. This is definitely the case with the Internet, and the blogosphere is certainly no exception. The highly personal nature of blogging and the extremely inter-connected, ever-expanding nature of the web provides a tremendous flow of new ideas and reactions.

Effectively, the Opinion Entry is a hybrid of both the Personal and Reference Entry Archetypes. Like a Personal Entry, the Opinion Entry provides a very private impression about a specific topic. Similar to the Reference Entry, the Opinion Entry often provides analysis and reference, be it in the form of a link or description.

Often the Opinion Entry is used to provide a pointed series of observations relating to an existing or current event or circumstance.

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Moving forward with our look at the various Blog Entry Archetypes, we now examine another quite common format, the Reference Entry.

Summary

The Reference/News Entry provides a useful pointer to relevant or important information for the user. Most commonly, the entry is used to bookmark web sites and other online material that is assumed to be useful in the future.

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Beginning our look at the various Blog Entry Archetypes, we will start with the most prevalent type of post in existence, the Personal Entry.

Summary

The Personal Entry provides the user with a quick, convenient mechanism for communicating ideas and experiences close to their lives. Everything from the latest gossip, lunch menus, and personal rants can be found in these types of entries.

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