Open The Dialogue

PaidContent's Rafat Ali has details on Wikisphere's venture capital funding announcement, where the firm has reportedly grabbed $5.25 million to work with. As Ali mentions, Socialtext was one of the first big names (perhaps the first, though you can never be sure) in the space to get serious backing to get the wiki into more hands, so this is still pretty big news. Just like blogging tools become a content management tool (printing press, if you prefer) for the masses, the wiki is a collaborative tool that enables everyone from large companies to you and I to create big-scale sites with some fantastic functionality - handling everything from a new encyclopedia that can be edited and read by all, to perhaps remaking the underutilized corporate Intranet.

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Scott Baradell at Media Orchard is asking about the difference in the top search result between Yahoo!'s Buzz Index (within the music category) and Technorati's Top Searches This Hour. Yahoo!, on both its "Music" category and in the "Overall" listing has "Britney Spears" as the top search right now, whereas Technorati has "Prussian Blue" as its top search (Click the image below for a larger version).

Obviously, it should be clarified here that the people who are searching Yahoo! as a whole are a completely different population than those that are using Technorati on a regular basis. Sure, there's some overlap, and they're not totally exclusive populations, but I would venture a guess that a very large percentage of Yahoo! search engine users don't use Technorati at all. Obviously this answers the topline question that Baradell poses, but it also brings up a completely different one.

What about the fact that except for Rosa Parks, there is no other overlap in the lists - and on Yahoo!, "Rosa Parks" isn't in the leaders, just in the "Movers" section, meaning there is an increase in searches for her name and associated terms. Obviously there's a scale issue here - moving the needle on Technorati, no matter how many blogs it indexes, is never not quite at the point that Yahoo! is. At the same time, does it show that the users of Technorati are not representative of "The Web" as a whole? I'd say that's more likely, at least a little bit. So if that's the case, what do we do with that fact?

If anything, I think we can say that blog readers / searchers are exactly what most who understand them from a marketing perspective realize - that those who are reading / writing them have very targeted focuses (focii?), and have different priorities. Maybe it's that blog searchers understand search tools a little more, and aren't using as "highly trafficked" topics as those who use a search engine would, (again, I'm going out on a limb here). At the very least, I would have to say that except when something exceptionally crazy happens - such as the Desperate Housewives intro debacle on ABC's "Monday Night Football" or a famous musician dies - entertainment isn't the priority for Technorati users. Sports, more "newsworthy" items, technology issues, and politics seem to rule the roost when it comes to blog searches, based on my frequent visits to Technorati's main page. That's not to say that blog readers / searchers are more cultured or anything as a whole - believe me, I'm sure that's not the case - just that entertainment and celebrity isn't necessarily a priority for those individuals.

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stephen Baker is talking about an email that's floating around this week from the folks at Bacon's Information, asking for some contact information clarification and interests for use in a directory that the company distributes. Baker is looking at it from the side that bloggers will begin receiving more and more email from public relations firms - which he's right on about - but I'm going to have to say that at the very least, this is better than Bacon's just taking all of our contact information, which most bloggers leave on their sites for all to see, and dropping it in a book without ever letting "us" know it's there.

Some will surely opt out of this, while others might see it as a solid opportunity to get more content for their blog(s). Of course, PR pros have a lot of work to do when it comes to crafting pitches to bloggers - namely knowing the audience, not going on and on (and on and on) about "my client this and that," and work to cultivate relationships with these individuals just like they would with their "top" journalist contacts that they work best with. Until PR people stop seeing blogs as "just another opportunity to send our press releases" and more of a "trusted source" for many readers, we'll be the bane of their existence. For me, I get to toe the line (and I use 'toe' specifically) leaning between both sides, which will hopefully be very helpful for my colleagues here at MWW in understanding what this whole new world is all about. It's no overnight solution, of course, but the middle ground does exist - it's just going to take some time to reach it.

In the meantime, let's just give a little credit to the team at Bacon's who is behind this effort, as at the very least they're attempting to pick out bloggers who might be interested in being considered "media" and trying to get us all engaged in a solid conversation. Baby steps, I tell you, baby steps.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow posted this morning about Revver, which is a service that lets people easily upload video for show, just like Flickr and smugmug do for images - with one hook. That hook is that the uploader/creator of the video has an opportunity to make some money off of the transaction. Obviously that's going to be a motivator for some (though not all) to utilize Revver's offerings.

All that being said, is the whole "Web 2.0" community even about the money, or is it more about the ability to share stuff, do things through a Web browser that were only pipe dreams for some a decade ago, and the connection between people? A couple of days ago, Anil Dash was wondering about the fact that users of Flickr are subjected to advertisements on photographs they're viewing - if the user doesn't have a Pro account. But that fact wasn't the primary driver behind Dash's comments - it was the fact that none of those Google AdSense dollars (or pennies, as it were) ever trickled down to the publishers of the various photos seen on Flickr. I've got to ask - is it even about gaming the system, or making a buck on every single little thing? In my eyes, these are the same things that were discussed when many a blogger began putting various advertising units on their blogs, which then evolved into BlogAds, AdSense for bloggers, inline ads, adverposts, and more.

I've gotta say that anything that helps contribute to the well being (and wallet) of those who are making content and sharing photos, news, and information with the rest of us is great. But at the same time, most people I know who are interested in Flickr and other "sharing" sites are more interesting in how the whole "economy of visits" works and community aspect than they are worried about making a dime on it.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things that will be a common thread on this blog is choice, especially regarding technology issues. Something neat I came across this morning was this item over at Fast Company, about a keyboard expected to hit the market in 2006 that will be "customizable." That is to say that each key can have whatever the user wants to have on it, from varying languages to hotkey images to, well, I won't even speculate any more. It's a pretty slick idea, and will surely cost a pretty penny, but that doesn't mean that it won't reshape how we look at the grey, tan, or black keyboards that most of us are looking at right now - or not looking at, for the most part.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:46 AM | Permalink

Mike Manuel is continuing the conversation about companies making a big mistake by not paying attention to what those on blogs are saying about their brands, products, services, or even executives on a regular basis. Obviously, a big part of this problem is education, insofar as:

• Companies don't necessarily know this is going on


• Once a PR or marketing person does find out about what is happening on blogs, where does s/he begin to monitor, measure, or respond?


• What constitutes a response - a new blog, responses to each and every comment, contacting the blogger in question?

Additionally, most marketing and PR folks believe that they can eradicate difficulties on blogs and forums. It should be made pretty clear that mitigation is more likely to happen. Putting all the facts out there and clarifying whatever the problem or difficulty was in the first place, from another perspective, could prove as a final solution - but most bloggers won't delete posts or comments that aren't defamatory or libelous. At the very least, a company recognizing that there is a problem and making the effort to reach out to those involved, or at the least the blogger managing the site in question, is worth noticing.

I agree with Mike that it's definitely not just "sticking an intern on it" and letting it fly from there. That isn't to say that our interns wouldn't be capable as anyone else to handle this problem, but as the root of this discussion seems to be in crisis monitoring and management, it is important to realize that this is a big deal, perhaps one day even mission critical, for some operations.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just heard that Bacon's Information, the media intelligence firm, has added RSS support for its own business. Right now it's Bacon's-specific feeds - one for company press releases, and another for "In the Media" items where the firm is mentioned.

This is great to see another organization adopting RSS as another distribution method for its information. Even if it's as simple as company announcements, it's yet another hand being raised in Information Revolution 101.

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the main reasons that a business might want to start a blog these days is for relevance as far as search engine optimization goes. Obviously there's nothing wrong with that, but there are some very important questions that should be asked before either creating a corporate blog or even making the "face" of your company's website a blog - such as: Who's going to write it? Does it have some "long term" viability? Are we just re-formatting content that is better placed elsewhere? Those are just a few of the questions we have to ask ourselves before helping a client make that decision.

However, there may be outside factors that come into play that could make the decision process a bit different - with a major one being whether the overall goals of the organization that is thinking of blogging need a running dialogue. Notice that I didn't say running monologue, though. Case in point: Fred Wilson wrote today over on his blog, A VC, that the venture capital firm he is a part of, Union Square Ventures, has turned its website into a blog. Union Square Ventures was looking for more than just a bunch of static pages, some opportunities for discussion outside of just email or offline chats. This serves multiple purposes for them:

1) Letting people get a peek inside the heads of the VCs, on a regular basis

2) Attracting potential investment opportunities by showing thought leadership - to everyone

3) Keeping the Union Square Ventures website more relevant to search engines that look for frequent content updates

4) Educating those potential investment opportunities as to what the principals at the firm are really looking for, perhaps adding a higher level of preparation for those who are literally "asking for money."

Sure, the firm's site was great the way it was, and it was set up properly, looked clean, and we could go on for quite a while. But here, the market factor - the need for dialogue - superseded what might be a "no" answer to the question about repurposing content into a blog. If it hadn't been thought through well enough by these obviously bright businessmen, they might have missed the boat - which Fred pretty much says they did by not doing this a year ago when the site launched.

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nick Bradbury notes one of the newest features in the latest version of FeedDemon [v 1.6 RC1], Reports. Right now, you can keep track of which feeds you visit the most, least, and even those that haven't published much at all - "Dinosaurs," as they're called. I'm a big FeedDemon user, and have upgraded to this version on one of the machines I use every day so far. At this point, no issues, and I've been following along as the Beta releases have been coming out. The whole acquisition by NewsGator has been nothing but helpful for me, as I never feel like I'm duplicating efforts or having to sort through feeds or posts I've already read - the one advantage that the Web-only-based services like Bloglines could previously hold over the head of the client-side software packages.

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Props go out to Population Statistic's Costa Tsiokos, who threw together a fancy favicon for the browser's address bar for this site. Check out the nifty little globe that I've inserted here and over at MWW CEO Michael Kempner's blog.

Thanks, Costa! (it's the small things that count, ya know...)

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

B.L. Ochman informs that Microsoft is actually looking for a "Developer Evangelist," or so the job posting says. She's wondering what will happen with Robert Scoble, but this looks like it is specific to the Channel 9 area and format, and not any more than that.

To me, this is not so much that they're attempting to usurp anything that Scoble does (they should know by now that putting someone in a Microsoft chair in Redmond and saying they have "carte blanche" isn't going to cut it), but are simply validating blogging and product/service evangelism. At the least, it's someone who is "officially" blogging on behalf of Microsoft and using video - which seems to be a core component of the role - to get the word out, and perhaps be responsible for managing the conversations that will (hopefully) erupt from this.

All that said, I can't say that the use of "evangelist" for a job title like this is probably not so congruent to what the blogging community would accept from a company looking to really enter the scene. I mean, face it, if you come out and say "we're looking for someone to post nice things about our products and services," it's just asking for trouble. A more productive move here might have been to look for a writer who could cover the ins and outs - on a daily basis - of Microsoft, and publish them on Channel 9 using video and a blog.

It's not out of the realm of possibilities that a company would look to "hire" someone to write about it or the industry it lives in, especially someone who is a huge asset as far as comments (positive or not) about the brand in question. Heck, it's probably already happened somewhere. This isn't just a transparency issue, it's about a reality issue. Having a great blog is about the good things and the bad, when you're creating a log of company happenings. That's not to say that you can't minimize the horrible stuff (no company is going to host its own "ourcompanysucks.com" blog, after all), but keep in mind that folks reading your blog are probably paying attention to your company and your issues, so mitigating any potential factors up front can be to your benefit.

Posted by Tom Biro at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve Rubel has been ruminating about working up a way to get the world of public relations up to speed with today's new media landscape. I'll definitely participate in whatever whiteboard or open-source effort we choose to go with, and I'm definitely behind Jeremy Pepper's idea about the New PR/Wiki being the spot to do this kind of thing. That site is definitely the "place to be" right now for the PR topics, and the open-ness of the wiki will provide an excellent "practice what you preach" spot to get our ideas and collaborations out there.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night, Dave was hinting at a "major" site going live sometime around midnight Eastern. Of course, I spent my late-night hours searching for something of an RSS ilk, only to find nada in that area. Turns out that the provider I was checking out was the right one, but the service was wrong. Now, Yahoo! has launched a podcast directory, one that is set up with tags - not just categories, though it has those too - and yet again a technology that might not have been as easy for the average user to get into is made available in a point-and-click manner.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, Robert Scoble responded to Dave Winer's reaction to a request from Microsoft's developers to get input on what a new and improved RSS icon should look like and carry on it. He states that Microsoft "love[s] icons," but that's not a good enough excuse. Just because he's right about having "RSS" or "XML" on a button not being the best idea - universally - doesn't mean that it's something that should be voted on for Microsoft's implementation and other people to perhaps adopt, most likely further fraying any semblance of universal usage of yet another standard.

Sure, posting it on the MSDN blog is a great way to open it up for the public's input, but what about putting this "out there" for all to chime in on? Surely there's enough non-techspeaking non-English only people that would join in the fray and share some ideas.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Costa Tsiokos is asking why Google has so many interfaces for its Blog Search tool. In actuality, it's all about comfort level and user choice. Just as you can get to this site by going to openthedialogue.org or openthedialog.net (among others), Google has set up their Blog Search function to be somewhat ubiquitous across its network, enabling users of the Blog*Spot hosting service for Blogger to easily access it while offering a Google-esque blogsearch.google.com for those who are used to heading over to the primary Google page.

This isn't about too many extensions of a brand or anything, it's just offering something to anyone who might be utilizing Google's many services, essentially those in the blog arena.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There was lots of big news in the world of RSS this week, including a report from Yahoo! about usage and trends and the soft launch of Google's web-based Reader tool. The similar vein in all of these stories and events is that the aggregators involved are all fairly easy to use, and are in some cases "invisible" to the end user. Take the My Yahoo! service, for instance. Users have been getting all of their news, sports, and stock quotes there for some time now, and are now able to put blogs and other sources in there - perhaps unbeknownst to them that RSS - Really Simple Syndication - is even behind the action.

That's not to say that "production level" users of RSS aren't also utilizing services like this, but it does raise the question as to whether the software-based readers will have any sort of long term viability. But as platform-based services like NewsGator appear to be proving, it's possible to have your cake (client side software such as NetNewsWire or FeedDemon) and eat it, too (through NewsGator Online).

Up next for toying around with is FeedLounge, which has a pretty awesome looking interface, based on the screenshots. Now, to get invited to the beta...

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As if the M&A frenzy wasn't already cruising along at the speed of light, Tuesday brought the news that Andy Baio's "side project," Upcoming.org, had been purchased by Yahoo!. The free-to-use calendar site has been super useful to me, and the ability to snag an RSS feed for any locality you choose in order to keep tabs on what is going on in your neighborhood is great.

It certainly looks like companies are seeing the light when it comes to recreation of the wheel and attempting to attract new users to their networks. I'm never one to think that these moves are bad choices on the part of the original creators/owners, but there have been varied stories in the past about how a product or service is used when it transitions to the big firm's control - let's hope that Yahoo! treads carefully with the users of Upcoming. Here's Yahoo!'s take on the move.

Congrats to Andy, Gordon Luk and Leonard Lin! Looks like yet another "acqhire" for the books (Thanks, Rex!)

[via Scoble]

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever needed to really quickly crop or edit a photo to a particular size, and didn't have the time to load your fully-functioning image software? Well, the solution is apparently here.

Check out ImageCrop.com, which allows for the upload of an image, subsequent cropping, format selection, and re-download for use. You get ten minutes to work on your graphic, after which time it's removed from the service - but that should be more than enough time for a quick crop-n-run.

[via del.icio.us / paulrd]

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, Om Malik scored a big one when he informed about NewsGator's intent to purchase RSS feed newsreader NetNewsWire, which runs on the Mac OS. This comes less than six months after the firm purchased Nick Bradbury's FeedDemon (which I use at both home and work) - and it's probably not the last move of this type. This afternoon, I read over at Scoble's that yes indeed, NewsGator has purchased Ranchero Software, the makers of NetNewsWire.

Why all the fuss? Well, NewsGator has taken the "tough noogies" out of acquisitions by opening up its existing platform to users of various software - in this case NetNewsWire and FeedDemon - adding a new level of functionality (synchronization at multiple locations, online access when software isn't available) while keeping you, the user, comfortable. So while it is a subscription service, current users of those packages have been given two years of access to NewsGator's offerings - and don't have to "change" the way they were using their RSS reader prior to this event. Additionally, this creates an excellent - and true - cross-platform integration (through NewsGator Online) of a service that's important to many blog authors, readers, and other users of RSS.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MacWorld has an item from IDG's Grant Gross about Earthlink winning the citywide WiFi deal for Philadelphia - a contract that has been discussed at great length in the past year. This news comes at the same time as plans were announced by Mountain View, California-based Google to be one of the companies providing the city of San Francisco with ubiquitous WiFi access.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)