I’m on a half-day today, so I’m going to do the quick links thing.
- BlogWorld: Becoming a Professional Blogger (Video)
- BlogWorld: Social Media And Steve Rubel (Video)
- Five Ways to Handle Negative Comments
- North X East – Weekly Articles for Bloggers
- Which is More Important: Comments or Traffic?
Hope you enjoy them! I’ll be back tomorrow.
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So Technorati has released its annual “State of the Blogosphere” report, and I have to say, the “state” isn’t too bad. I’m not going to get into all the stats here. You can just look at the report.
One thing that I find interesting though, is that according to the report, nearly half of active blogs have some authority. This is really a testament to how blogs have become news sources, despite the old argument of journalism vs “citizen journalism.”
To quote my colleague Jason Miller: “An industry that once scoffed at and discounted blogs has noticeably changed its tune at the direction of lost subscribers. Ninety-five percent of US newspapers have reporter blogs…The Revolution’s fun, huh?”
Much like popular bloggers Robert Scoble and Doc Searls maintained at BlogWorld, citizen journalism should get the credit it deserves, when compared to “journalism”, because journalists misrepresent interviews anyway. For example, they might represent a two-hour interview with a 10 second clip.
Personally, what I like about blogs (for news-related content) is that you’re not just getting relevant info, but your’e getting a human element that is often lacked in hard news articles. Of course this leaves plenty of room for spin, but spin is always present in journalism anyway, and at least with blogs, the spin is not hidden. You know you’re getting “some guy’s (or gal’s)” take on a matter, and not just “the facts” like we would often like to believe we are getting from “the news.”
The blogosphere is bigger than any news network, and it is representative of all sides of the story. That is another thing that I think is appealing about blogs as news sources. Blogs are constantly linking to each other, giving the reader plenty of different takes on any given subject. When you get down to it, you’re simply apt to obtain more information.
The blogosphere is a network of “reporters” working together. Granted, they don’t all like each other, and in some cases may not even approve of the idea of working together, but the ‘sphere is connected for better or worse. And the readers get to reap the benefits…and decide for themselves what info to deem credible.
The line between “journalism” and “citizen journalism” has become somewhat blurry when it comes to online news content, but I don’t think this a bad thing. It does emphasize the concept that you should not always believe what you read, but perhaps that is good too. You SHOULDN’T always believe what you read, but with more and more people blogging and covering stories, it is easier to determine the fact from fiction because you just have that many more sources.
Thoughts?
Ok, here are a few stats on global bloggers in graphical form:
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Since I am still relatively new to this blog, and many of you have likely been here for a while, I want to get to know my readers a little better.
I’m starting a series of posts (not sure about the schedule of this series yet) about my favorite blogs about particular subjects. I will share three blogs that I like in a particular category, and then you can tell me some that you like (doesn’t have to be 3) in the comments.
This will help me get to know the tastes of my readers, and in turn will help you get to know mine.
So here we go. Three Blogs I like about blogging.
1. Problogger.net – This is probably an obvious choice, and is probably on many people’s lists, but there’s a good reason for that.
2. Blogsessive – I linked to a post from this blog yesterday, and admittedly I was not previously familiar with this blog, but having looked through it now, there’s a lot of good content there, and it is a good one to subscribe to.
3. WhoIsAndrewWee – Who is Andrew Wee? He’s a blogger that’s been one of our iEntry blog partners for a while, which is the main reason I have becom familiar with his work. He doesn’t write about blogging only, but a lot of his posts are blogging-related. Reading his blog you are bound to pick up tons of other great marketing information as well.
Later on, I’ll do different categories like marketing, search, music, movies, sports, etc.
So what are your favorite blogging blogs? I won’t hold it against you if you don’t say PureBlogging 
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I stumbled upon this post by Alex Cristache at Blogsessive today called “Top 5 Reasons Why Blogging Rocked Our World”. His top five reasons are:
- Blogging gave us back “reading”
- Blogging gave us back “writing”
- Blogging gave us back “thinking”
- Blogging gave us back “evolution”
- Blogging gave us back “empathy”
It’s a good post and I suggest reading it, but I think one big thing was left out. Blogging has given us a way to connect with like-minded (and not so like-minded) people in a way that was not really available before (at least not in such a convenient and engaging format).
Consider what it was like before blogs. Communicating with people online was limited to what, email, IMs, forums, chatrooms, and newsgroups? As posted on Wikipedia, “Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with ‘threads.’”
Those were all fine, but blogs opened up a door for any average person to write about whatever they wanted to and most importantly have it read by others (feeds have played an important role in this as well). Subjects can be as broad as possible or as niche as the blogger dictates. And not only does that person get to have their thoughts read by others, they get to communicate with those people, and often as a result, relationships are born. Could this stuff have been done with other tools before? Sure, but not in such an appealing way.
So I don’t know if blogging gave us back communication and networking, but it made it better. Of course social networks have helped too.
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Writing with your own voice is a good strategy to use when blogging because you are giving personality to your blog, and hopefully separating it from all the other ones at least to some extent.
When you write for more than one blog, however, it can help to adjust that voice so that it better fits the target audience of each particular blog. For example, I’m writing this for an audience that is interested in blogging, but on my own personal MySpace blog (which is set to private), I’m writing with my close friends and family in mind.
Here I can talk about RSS feeds, Technorati, WordPress, Movable Type, etc. But on My MySpace blog, not all of my audience will know what I’m talking about, because many of my friends do not work online or share the enthusiasm about blogging that PureBlogging.com readers do. Just the same, I may have inside jokes that my MySpace friends will get, but if I referenced them here, they would fall completely flat (although I do try to inject my own sense of humor into other writing projects from time to time).
When I write for SmallBusinessNewz, I’m not going to throw in a bunch of technical security terms like I might at SecurityProNews, without explaining what they mean.
That’s really the point I’m trying to make. It is easy to forget that not everybody knows about everything you do, and will not understand what you’re talking about if you don’t give them a little help. It’s not that they’re stupid. They may just be well versed in different areas. Sure they can look up things you say that they don’t understand, but why make them? If the core of your audience should “get” what you’re talking about then that’s one thing, but it pays to consider who is reading your blog. Otherwise, you just might risk alienating them.
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It’s interesting to see the wide range of sub-topics being blogged about today as the United States mourns the loss of the victims from the attacks on September 11th, 2001.
Some are simply mourning. Even the outspoken Perez Hilton simply posted one word. “Remembering.”
Some are criticizing the media portrayals of subjects related to the events, going so far as to attack specific anchors (or technically attack specific anchors who are attacking specific political affiliations).
Some are talking about an article written by the sister of one of the people who died in the plane that hit the Pentagon (a particularly heart-wrenching story by the way).
Some are just blogging about 9/11-related news.
I am just taking stock of everybody close to me that I love.
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