PureBlogging

Wired has posted an article by Paul Boutin, which talks about blogs not being the useful medium they once were, and how networks like Twitter and Facebook are taking their place. I disagree. That’s not to say that such networks don’t have their place, but taking the place of blogs? I don’t think so. A quote from the article:

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

It may take some effort and some content worth reading to get notices, but if anything, it just pushes bloggers to strive for excellence, which in my opinion is not a bad thing. In response to that article, Dwight Silverman at chron.com in a post called “Are Blogs Obsolete?” writes:

This type of nonsense surfaces every few months from folks who think that, just because blogging is no longer the latest shiny-shiny, it’s no longer relevant. That’s shallow and silly.

Like any other publishing medium, blogging is a tool for getting information to other people. The fact that other ways of doing it have come along doesn’t mean blogging doesn’t belong in your toolbox. It’s still an effective way to communicate ideas, news, images, video, audio. It remains a simple and powerful way to not only share your thoughts, but point others to valuable info and insights elsewhere on the Web.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Blogs are not obsolete. You know why? Because I still read them everyday. I still write for them nearly everyday. And so do countless others (that probably includes you). If you ask me, blogs are more relevant than they’ve ever been, because they are more mainstream than they have ever been.  Thoughts?

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Flock is a web browser, which is built on Mozilla Firefox, and it has just left beta. The draw to Flock as opposed to other browsers is its social integration, which includes that for MySpace, Facebook, Digg, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and Twitter. Mike Sachoff talks a bit about it here.

what’s probably most intersting to bloggers though, is that Flock also includes a built-in blog editor, which is compatible with TypePad, Blogger, WordPress, Blogsome, LiveJournal, and Xanga (Flock recommends WordPress, TypePad or Blogger).

According to Flock:

Once configured, Flock remembers your username and password for one or more blog accounts. To confirm that your account information has been saved, open the accounts and services menu by clicking on the Display Accounts and Services button in the top bar. The button is represented by a picture of a key. If the account was added successfully, the account will appear in the My Accounts section of the Accounts and Services sidebar.

Your browser can also automatically publish blog posts to a notification service, such as Technorati. A notification service alerts people when you post a new blog.

I haven’t used Flock yet, but I have to admit it sounds kind of cool. They have more details about the blogging capabilities here.

What are your thoughts on Flock? Anybody used it for blogging?

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Read Write Web posted some fascinating findings from a survey it conducted recently, in which they asked 20 bloggers and social media consultants how much they make. An intrusive and personal question perhaps, but that’s why half of them agreed to give out that information on an anonymous basis.

Rather than write it all again, I’m going to use my coverage for WPN liberally:

It looks like the average rate on a per-post basis is $25, though some reported to make as little as $10 and as much as $80. “Let’s say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post, writing 3 posts per day,” Kirkpatrick [of RRW] says. “That’s $75 per half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750 per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once, do it for a year, and you’ll make about $40k.”

You could do worse, but in-house bloggers seem to be doing better. According to Kirkpatrick, respondents reported annual salaries ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. “We’re tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were,” he says. Now that’s interesting. Critics of blogs as news sources (like the one discussed in this article) ought to love that little nugget.

Those in-house bloggers still didn’t make as much as the participating social media consultants who make as little as $150 an hour, and most commonly about $300 an hour. That’s fascinating considering the amount of sponsored content infiltrating social networks. I have to wonder how the pay rates of these consultants reflect their practices in terms of white hat/black hat.

These numbers (while it should be kept in mind that there were only 20 anonymous participants) might make you jealous or provide you with motivation to reach that point (unless you’re already in the same range or are doing better). What do you think?

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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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The BlogWorld Expo has come to an end, and you can see our coverage of it via these articles:

- Using Social Media To Drive Traffic

- Dave Taylor Explains How We Got Here

- How to Seduce Your Tribe and Create Raving Fans

- How to Build You, Inc.

- Advice From a Wine Expert and Video Blogger

- New Media 101

- Keynote Luncheon with Rubel and Kawasaki

- Both Sides Of The Pro Blogging Coin

- State of the Blogosphere Address

- Microjournalism

- The Best Ways To Approach Bloggers

- Putting Social Media Into the Newsroom

I believe there will be a few more articles posted in the near future, but the juicy stuff should surface on the WebProNews Video Blog before long – the exclusive interviews.  Oh yeah, I did sort of a round-up type article for SmallBusinessNewz as well.

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