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July 31, 2006

Home from BlogHer, safe and sound

Laurie and I just returned home from BlogHer yesterday. We had a great time and have some posts with some of the wonderful discussions we heard coming soon. We learned about some cool blogs we hadn't read before and got to meet some of our favorite authors. Check back soon for some posts but until then, take a look at some photos from the weekend on our Flickr page.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 12:44 PM
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July 27, 2006

Getting ready for BlogHer

Laurie Mayers and I are getting ready for the second annual BlogHer, the blogging conference dedicated to women. We'll be taking in discussions, lectures, and the opportunity to meet some of the bloggers we enjoy reading. Make sure to check back to BlogWorks for updates from San Jose.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 05:20 PM
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July 26, 2006

NewAssignment.Net takes shape

With its long description of what this unique, journalism community is all about, NewAssignment.Net can best be summed up in one short sentence:

In simplest terms, a way to fund high-quality, original reporting, in any medium, through donations to a non-profit called NewAssignment.Net.

Jay Rosen, of PressThink, announced the concept yesterday to generate buzz and get great minds to start thinking.

"Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn’t, couldn’t or didn’t," Rosen states on the web site. "They raise the money too. Q and A explains. There's $10,000 to test it, courtesy of Craig Newmark."

While NewAssignment is still just an idea, the blogosphere is already buzzing about it.

"I think this is an important experiment in pro-am, publicly supported, open journalism," said Jeff Jarvis in a recent post. " We must explore new business models to support coverage of news and this is one of them. I’m an enthusiastic supporter of NewAssignment and I look forward to working with Jay and you on it and learning a lot along the way."

I'm also excited to see where this idea goes. Bloggers are an important, and almost always, unrecognized group. By giving them the power and the tools to get the important stories out to the greater public, I can see only good things for the future of "the press." I'll be looking forward to see where these stories end up and how traditional media outlets embrace them.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 05:02 PM
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July 25, 2006

Rock stars make for lousy passwords

When readers checked in on music blog Stereogum last week, they saw a message claiming the blog had been hacked. The dialogue between the hacker and Scott, Stereogum host, claimed the blog's server had been exploited and that the password SUFJAN, for indie music hero Sufjan Stevens, was a poor choice for a password.

Naturally, Scott's loyal blog followers were concerned. His Myspace page filled with comments wondering what was going on. So what exactly happened? It was a hoax. Kind of.

Turns out Scott wrote the dialogue himself in response to his server being compromised. In a post on July 22, Scott explained what really happened.

"The truth is our server was "compromised." Whatever the f*$% that means. That's what our hosting company said. Almost certainly the work of a bot leeching on our RAM. Or the person sending nasty missives from Firecrotch's CrackBerry. Or someone who hates indie rock a cappella.

The sorta-hack even grabbed the attention of the folks over at Gawker, with the headline of, "Corporate Websites Too Irrelevant to Hack."

With the hack behind Stereogum, it didn't take long for readers to start requesting "PERHAPS SUFJAN WAS A POOR PASSWORD" T-shirts.

• definitely would buy a Sufjan/Password shirt.
  
• I'll third-or-so on that Sufjan/password shirt. Glad you're back.
  
• i also require a sufjan/password shirt. to the printers with you!
  
• sufjan tees all around

And just as soon as the T-shirt requests went out, the Flickr photo prototypes came in.

As Blogebrity discussed, the true signs of a hip blogging superstar are a T-shirt and personalized Flickr photo set. Who knows what kind of merchandise is in store for Stereogum the next time the server is compromised...

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 03:50 PM
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July 21, 2006

Who's out there in the blogosphere?

Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of their telephone-based blogger survey this week and Jack Shafer of Slate has an interesting review of the results and his thoughts on what they mean to the bigger picture, or in this case, bigger blogosphere.

According to the report, bloggers are primarily looking to the blogosphere as a way to express themselves as opposed to strictly reporting on news or current events. The report stated:

"A national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers and that only a small proportion focus their coverage on politics, media, government, or technology."

Researchers found that 12 million Americans now keep a blog, which represents 8 percent of all Internet users. Compared to that figure, 57 million Americans just read blogs instead of keeping their own, a large increase from fall 2005.

As Shafer believes, most bloggers post because they're looking for a creative outlet. As he sees it, most aren't trying to become Internet reporters or "citizen journalists." Not yet, at least.

"But this study shows that at this early point in the blog era, the great mass of bloggers aren't set on replacing reporters," Shafer said. "The top 100 or top 1,000 may consider themselves 'citizen journalists' of one sort or another, but the survey finds that 65 percent of bloggers don't consider their output journalism at all. They're just expressing themselves in a leisurely fashion, inspired by a personal experience (78 percent, says the survey), and their blogs are a 'hobby' or 'something I do, but not something I spend a lot of time on' (84 percent),"

From a public relations perspective, I find the results very interesting because it appears that, for the most part, the blogosphere is more of a social outlet than anything else for these individuals. Bloggers are talking to one another and encouraging friends and family to see what they've been writing. This word-of-mouth atmosphere is an important one that we'll continue to learn from and see how to successfully work with.

Report PDF
Questionnaire PDF

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 01:42 PM
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July 20, 2006

The importance of research

There's been a lot said recently about the launch of Dell's new blog and its approach to content, but what I've been reading up on is how the blog's name seems to be all too close to the name of a pornography "live chat" site, one2one.com. (Feel free to visit the site at your own risk...)

This immediately reminded me of the infamous whitehouse.com/whitehouse.gov mix-up from a few years back that also lead unsuspecting visitors to a pornography site.

This just reinforces the importance of doing some research, such as checking domain names, when starting a blog, web site, etc.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:40 PM
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An invasion abated

By Charlie Kondek

I had an interesting experience the other day that I think is random but revealing.

I've been reading a novel — I'm not going to give the title — and I really haven't been enjoying it. In fact, I'm more than halfway through it and I've disliked it so much that for the first time in a long time I really felt like savaging it to someone. I'm not an Amazon user, but I cruised over to Amazon to check out the other reviews of this novel and contribute my own, a little surprised at myself that it would take this to actually propel me to register with Amazon and use it in this fashion. I just felt the urge to tell someone how ripped off I felt; the book was something I should have been enjoying due to the subject matter, but the prose was so flat and unmoving I couldn't enjoy myself.

When I got to Amazon, though, I was surprised at what I found. The author himself was there, warmly greeting me. In fact, he wanted me to know about his upcoming book tour, wanted me to come on down and say hello. Then I read the reviews. To a person, they were gushingly, ravingly positive — each one was five stars or four-out-of-five stars. It was an online love fest for this author and his work.

This stopped me cold. As angry as I was, I did not feel like creating an account at Amazon just to try to rain all over these people's parade or get drawn into a protracted message board melee. They can have their flat-prosed novel, I thought, and left it at that.

I'm still turning over in my head what the significance of my encounter was. It certainly illustrates how people react with products and brands online. In this case, the positive word of mouth around this particular novel was entrenched at Amazon and I didn't feel like invading it. Maybe if I had been really, REALLY mad, I would have, but in this case, I simply didn't like the book, wanted to tell someone, and shut my mouth instead.

“What can I learn from that?” I asked myself.

• First, it reinforces the idea of doing this kind of outreach, of empowering people to express themselves about the brands they like.
  
• Second, it shows that when something like a review is put online, it doesn't go away.
  
• Third, Amazon didn't come to me, I came to Amazon — I went looking for info on this book, looking with one intention, and was persuaded by its counter-message instead; that's powerful.

I'm now almost done with the book — a friend loaned it to me, and I try never to give back books unread — and what's even more unnerving is that it has gotten better, even enjoyable, and I'm not sure why that is. Is it because the action in the story has picked up? Or is it because my encounter with its followers at Amazon convinced me, even on a subconscious level, to give it another try?

Either way I think it lends credence to the kind of work we do, once again reminding us all of the sustained power of online communication and how that can benefit our clients.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 12:31 PM
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July 19, 2006

Wal-Mart tries to "school your way"

In an attempt to jump into the social media world AND boost sales, Wal-Mart has launched The HUB, a limited-feature site aimed at teens ages 13-18 with the slogan "school you way." Advertising Age has an interesting, dead-on review, by Mya Frazier, of the new site that I couldn't agree with more: it's pretty boring.

"It just seemed kind of corny to me," Pete Hughes, 18, told the publication.

By registering on the site and creating a profile page, teens are eligible to win prizes or even appear in a Wal-Mart commercial if their submitted video on school fashion is a hit.

Unlike Myspace, which is now the No.1 U.S. web site over Google and Yahoo, The Hub has strict limitations on what kind of material and quotes kids are allowed to post on their profile page. All kids are left with are a headline, a song, and a photo. Once the profile is created, parents are notified (mom or dad's e-mail is required to make a page) electronically that their kids are on the site and have the option to take them out of The Hub.

"The second you try to create boundaries and draw a line around content and put a box around content, it becomes something else. Teens aren't searching for what a company deems relevant, but what they deem relevant," Tim Stock, a researcher with New York-based Scenario DNA, told Advertising Age. "You can't own it. When anyone tries to own it too much, then it becomes a problem. That's the impression I get on this site."

After spending a few minutes watching the all-too-fake sample videos on The Hub's homepage, I created a profile for myself. Using my real age, I wasn't allowed to create my profile page or participate in the contest because I was "too old." By creating another profile and saying I was born in 1991, I was allowed to pick my favorite outfit and state how I "school my way."

I found the site lacked a lot of excitement. Besides choosing from a few selected pieces of clothing for the "fashion quiz," the pages are very bland, which is funny considering it's all about "expressing your style." The extent of my personalization was limited to background and font colors that I noticed didn't even display properly on my monitor after I picked them. While reading the terms of use, I came across this:

"We have made every effort to display the colors of our products that appear on the Site as accurately as possible. However, as the actual colors you see will depend on your monitor, we cannot guarantee that your monitor's display of any color will be accurate."

I had problems loading the site and picking out my fashion quiz results. When you combine the lack of options and tech troubles, I can't imagine too many teens sticking around long enough to see their finished results. I understand why Wal-Mart feels the need to launch The Hub, but perhaps a site like this isn't the right platform for the discount-store giant to reach new consumers and retain the ones they're losing to other department store-like retailers, such as Target.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:57 PM
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July 12, 2006

Office Pirates lend a hand to Rocketboom

The folks over at Office Pirates are working hard to help Rocketboom find a replacement for the recently departed Amanda Congdon, host of the daily vlog. Here's their suggestion:

(When not auditioning new Rocketboom hosts, Office Pirates offers daily blog updates and video clips on life inside the office cubicle.)

While Congdon is no longer with Rocketboom, she's keeping fans updated on her own blog, complete with her side of what happened between her and former business partner Andrew Baron. Congdon left the show last week after a dispute with Baron over control of the popular video site.

Joanne Colan, a former VJ on MTV Europe, is currently filling in as the show's temporary host.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:26 PM
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July 11, 2006

bLaugh wants to make the blogosphere a funnier place

Everyone can use a good laugh now and then, and bloggers are no exception. At least that's the philosophy behind bLaugh, the "(un)Official Comic of the Blogosphere."

"bLaugh is already being called a… 'MAD Magazine for the Blogosphere,'" the web site states. "But since our moms are the ones who said that, it doesn’t really count. What us, worry?"

With Chris Pirillo serving as writer and Brad Fitzpatrick as artist, the blogosphere's A-list stars and sites are subject to attack. So far comics have featured Steve Rubel, TechCrunch and Jeff Jarvis.

Launched at the end of June, GoDaddy-sponsored bLaugh allows readers to share the comics by providing HTML code with every cartoon for reposting. RSS feeds keep fans in the loop.

So bloggers, beware.

"If you blog, or your name (brand) is getting tossed around in the blogosphere, you’re on our radar."

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:47 PM
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July 10, 2006

YouTube introduces ads on video site

MediaPost reported last week that YouTube launched its first ad from a national marketer on the site ever with the debut of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" on July 7.

The banner ad featured a "countdown" clock to the movie's launch and lasted only 24 hours. Julie Supan, YouTube's director of marketing, told MediaPost that the promotion marked the first time the site not only ran ads from a national brand, but were graphic as well.

The "Pirates" ad marks a new direction for marketing on YouTube as more advertising on the site is in the works. Supan told MediaPost that a new ad team is working across the country to recruit national advertisers.

"Lots of advertisers are contacting YouTube now, because they better recognize the opportunity it presents," Supan said to MediaPost.

I'm curious to see where YouTube is headed with advertising on the site and how some users will react to the new component.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:54 PM
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