03/14/08

Guy Kawasaki launched a new site this week called Alltop, which makes the boastful statement that “We’ve Got All the Top Stories Covered All the Time.” It’s a news and blog aggregator site for those who either can’t or don’t want to bother with setting up their own RSS readers or start pages—which is a large percentage of what I’d call mainstream web users. RSS remains very geeky and has low penetration beyond the tech-literate crowd. Mainstream users, Kawasaki and his partners reason, just want to go know, quickly, what’s going on related to their favorite topic or field of interest.  And I put experienced users like me in the category of people who will like Alltop, too. The site launched with pages covering 40 broad-interest topics.

Guess what, friends?  One of those topics is Social Media!  And I heartily recommend you bookmark that page now—socialmedia.alltop.com—because I think it’s a fantastic collection of sites and blogs in this burgeoning field, which can be a real challenge to keep up with. [Okay, so NewMediaWise is one of the sites listed—what can I say? These people are brilliant… :-) ]

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03/10/08

Some interesting information popped up today about blog influence—actually, I saw two studies cited, within minutes of each other, that seem on first blush to be opposing. But, in reality, I determined they’re complementary, and certainly of interest to anyone involved in blogging or social media. The first was noted in a story called New Media An Important Place To Be Seen. In this piece, The Center for Media Research reports that, according to the most recent BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey, “many new media options are showing double digit growth.” In particular, blogging experienced 21.5% year-over-year growth for purchase influence—the second highest of any new media type, and well ahead of any traditional media class (many of which declined). Granted, this study was just for a single category of products (electronics), but other recent studies have show an increasing influence for blogs in general.

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03/05/08

Great piece today by Cathy Taylor on one of the Mediapost blogs, Social Insider. In it, she points out that many agencies aren’t walking the talk about social media, particularly when it comes to blogging. And the first commenter makes the interesting point that social media may go against the whole culture or M.O. of agencies—implying not to look for much improvement anytime soon. 

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03/01/08

Blogging, the wonder child of the Web 2.0 juggernaut, seems to be changing. And the biggest reason for that, as I see it, is the new kid on the block: microblogging. And by that I’m mainly talking about that quick-post, sound-bite, here’s-what-I’m-thinking-or-doing-right-now phenomenon called Twitter.  (There are others of this ilk, too, like Jaiku and Pownce, but Twitter seems to have sucked most of the oxygen away from them since it launched only a year ago.) I blogged about the momentum of Twitter recently on my other blog, here. Then I also did this post about a new site with a lot of buzz that drafts off of Twitter’s popularity to a large extent, called Friendfeed.

The best blog post I’ve read on Twitter is this one from Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine. Read the comments, too—the impact of microblogging on PR is something you may be surprised to learn.  And I just caught an interesting post on how a blogger, having only discovered FriendFeed, is now longing to understand how it can help him manage his time—specifically, his blog. (That’s because the fuel of blogs is time. Like oil, there’s a finite amount of it.  Ever think about that?) Here’s his post: Wish I could run my blog with FriendFeed.

So, just what is microblogging doing to blogging? That’s what I’m wondering. What do you think?  Are bloggers now moving away from doing longer posts— where thinking, writing, maybe some research is actually a requirement—as opposed to just blurting something out?  I mean, how much time can a blogger spend, even if he/she tries, in planning a measly 140-character “Tweet,” as Twitter posts are so playfully called. (Yes, “Tweet” is already to “microblog post” what Levi’s is to jeans, Kleenex is to tissues, and Xerox is to copies.) I hardly know a blogger who isn’t Twittering like a maniac these days.

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02/24/08

A few weeks ago, the popular Web 2.0 blog Mashable started a poll with the question, “Are you suffering from social networking fatigue?” Get this: last I checked, 73% have replied yes. And this is a site essentially devoted to the social networking movement! In fact, it was the first major blog I know of that tried to morph itself into a social network. (Yes, it’s one of many networks I’ve joined in the past year.) Well, I guess I admire Mashable’s honesty, anyway, for seemingly bringing into question its own future by running such a poll.... :-)

Yes, a bit of the bloom seems off the rose lately. The media began giving us an almost continuous barrage during January about how social networking was losing some of its luster—which of course those same media had built up, incessantly, in the first place.  Okay, that’s what the media seems to do....maybe you’ve noticed?

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