PureBlogging

OK, yes, this is the third post in a row about Johns Wu and his $15 million Bankaholic blog. I keep bringing it up because not only is this a wildly inspirational story for all bloggers aspiring to achieve success at the hands of their blogs, but I keep getting more info.

I talked to Wu a second time and came away with some more insight into his deal, which I wrote about in yet another follow-up piece at WebProNews.

Since we’re all about blogging here, I didn’t want this nugget to float by off the radar, so you can read that here.

From the little I’ve communicated with Wu, he seems like a pretty cool guy with some personality. He likes BBQ and making his own beer (not to mention Subway at drinking on the weekends [I wonder if he's checked out Google's latest Google Labs project - the drunken email filter aka: Mail Goggles]).

Anyhow, Wu said taht user engagement was a huge part of why his blog was bought by Bankrate.

He also noted in a comment on WPN that Shoemoney is the reason he got into web publishing. Not a bad endorsement for Shoemoney huh?

It just goes to show that you can learn a lot from other bloggers, and translate that knowledge into a ridiculous amount of money for yourself.

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You may recall my post from a week or two ago when I talked about blogs as credible news sources.  I consider  blogs and social media to be in the same ballpark, because after all, blogs are social and community driven as well.

After posting an article about CareerBuilder gaming Twitter at WebProNews, and talking about how social media legitimacy was deteriorating as a result of social sites not better policing their sites, I got into something of a debate with one of the commenters, who claims that there never has been or ever will be any legitimacy to social media as a news source. Obviously, that is a notion I disagree with.

Of course , seemingly right on cue, someone upset the “Apple” cart today on iReport.com falsely reporting Steve Jobs having a heart attack that temporarily sent Apple’s stock plummeting. I also talked about this at WebProNews.

That story would seem to favor the point of the guy I was debating with, but the community factor is what led to it being disproved, which kind of illustrates my own point.  To quote myself,

Where the legitimacy shines through is in the communities themselves. There are always others to call something out as BS in new media formats where discussion is the key to coming away with useful information.

When all is said and done, it is up to readers to use their heads and think about where they are getting their info. Just as has always been the case, (even long before social media, blogs, and citizen journalism were ever heard of) you shouldn’t believe everything you read. But damning an entire medium because some abuse it is just ridiculous.

Your thoughts?

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Big news from StumbleUpon today!

Not only has the social bookmarking site (or “personalized recommendation engine” as they call it) announced a new partnership program that will see sites implement internal stumblability, but they are rolling out a new design that will no longer require users to install the toolbar into their browsers.

What does this mean besides added convenience for users?

It means that many more people are likely to start using it, and that means a whole lot more content. It also means a whole lot more potential fuel for bloggers (as I mentioned, it’s one of my favorite tools for overcoming writer’s block).

I think both of these announcements are going to turn into something really big for StumbleUpon, and they are announcements that are long overdue (particularly the non-toolbar one).

For more about it, I wrote a piece on it for WebProNews this morning.

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Google has yet another tool in the works that could potentially benefit bloggers greatly. Currently in Google Labs (aka: the experimental stage), Google In Quotes is a feature that lets you search for quotes taken from stories that are linked to in Google News.

Currently, there is only a limited number of people whose quotes you can peruse, and they’re all politicians. In fact, the site at this point defaults to an Obama vs. McCain format, allowing you to compare quotes from both guys on the same issues. You choose the topic, and Google In Quotes finds quotes from both.

What the tool does is separates actual quotes from articles, removing opinions and bias from the articles. While it is in such an early development stage, there are plenty of flaws so far, such as misquotes and paraphrased quotes, but maybe these problems will get worked out at least to some extent as the project moves further along.

What I’m thinking though, as this tool eventually (hopefully) turns into a regular Google News feature, is that you will be able to search for both the quote and the person, which will be great for those blogging (particularly on newsy items) and want to quotes from people they are writing about.

Combine a feature like this with Google’s proposed indexing of newspaper archives, and Google News will be an even more important tool for bloggers than it already is.

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I’m just going to do the Monday links thing today and highlight a few noteworthy blog-related news items:

- First off, to cap off the week in the National Football League (save for tonight’s game between the Cowboys and the Eagles), Washington Redskins Tight End Chris Cooley exposed himself by posting a picture of his private parts on his popular blog.  I can’t imagine why he would do this. (Don’t worry, the link doesn’t show the pic )

- Keeping in the football spirit, here is a look at how live blogging helps people keep up with games.

- Blogging Tool Zemanta gets backing from Union Square Ventures.  They tout it as “AdWords for content creators”

- JK On the Run has an interesting “Blogging Ike” series.

- And last but not least, THE authority on politics – Lindsay Lohan slams Sarah Palin on her blog.

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Here I go again rehashing something I’ve already written about, but so be it…it’s relevant

As I talked about recently, many blog platforms seem to be making a bigger jump into social media, and today Google (who already owns Blogger by the way) has acquired another blogging platform – TNC. TNC claims that they’ve been doing the social media thing longer than most of the other blogging services.

TNC is out of Korea, and many are speculating that this will be the beginning of Google trying to capture more market share in Asia where it is not nearly as dominant as it is here in the U.S.  This might be the case, but I have to wonder if TNC has some back-end things going on that Google is interested in as well. Perhaps things that it will incorporate with Blogger.

Admittedly, I am not really familiar with TNC’s product(s).  I know they have a social tool called TextCube. Usually when Google makes an acquisition, it is something interesting, so we’ll have to see what becomes of this one.

For more on TNC from the horse’s mouth…

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