October 2007

Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner and blogger, will give the closing keynote speech at BlogWorld Expo Nov. 9. Cuban, a recent participant in ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ was described as “one of the most influential bloggers in the world,” by the conference promoter.

Cuban’s talk will follow those by other blog luminaries, including Tech Crunch’s Michael Arrington, WorPress.com’s Matt Mullenweg and Om Malik.

(Photo: jdlasica/Flickr)

WordPress was named the Best Open Source CMS for Social Networking of 2007, according to Packt Publishing. The award includes a $2,000 prize. Drupal and Elgg.

B5 Media, the Canada-based Blogging network, has unveiled members of an advisory board, according to Rick Segal, of venture capitalist firm J.L. Albright Venture Partners. (Albright was part of the $2 million in funding for B5.) The board members are paid an undisclosed amount and will serve 1-year terms. The advisory board includes:

• Robert Scoble, tech blogger and video entrepreneur. Jeremy Wright, B5 Media’s CEO and decision-maker, wrote Scoble offers knowledge about something the company would like to explore: video.

• Stow Boyd, blogging consultant.
• Renee Blodgett, media and marketing consultant. “As the PR person for companies that have been wildly successful and others that have flamed out spectacularly, I believe she has an innate sense for things that work and things that don’t,” Wright said. Let’s hope one of the items Blodgett helps improve is B5’s dusty press announcements, the latest dating back to July.
• Hugh McLeod, London, UK-based cartoonist and owner of GapingVoid.com blog.
• Doc Searls, writer, university researcher and advisor (including Technorati).

Wright, who for the past three years has held tight reign on B5 and its decision-making process, said “building the habit of communicating with them regularly will likely be my biggest challenge.”The upcoming CES will host the first meeting of the advisory board.

After we prompted Wright for details of the advisory board, we did learn a few things about the usually tight-lipped operation:

• B5 has 15 employees, up from its initial two.
• Traffic is “more than 30MM/month now.”
• Revenue is more than $100K/month.

Robert Scoble Sunday bemoaned the current state of blogging: it’s become downright pedestrian.

“Blogs have lost their humanity. Their weirdness. Instead we’ve become vehicles to announce new products and initiatives on.” Um, isn’t that what all innovation becomes, even strive for?

Yeah, blogs can stay weird and scare the bejeebers out of people, ensuring blogs are only read by the in-crowd, the technocracy, the people who don’t have dates — but is that what we want? I didn’t think so. Face it, people blog because they want people to read (and/or care) what they have to say. Additionally, some of us (dare we say among them Robert?) would like blogs to become a new medium, a profit-making medium.

I don’t think we should worry too much about blogs suddenly putting on the pinstripes and spouting the Wall Street Journal editorial stance. Marketers love blogs because they position/promote their products in a slightly “illegal” atmosphere, but a safe one. Sort of like Dennis Hopper and the Ameriprise investment spots: boomers (such as myself) identify with the ‘outlaw’ past of Hopper, but he’s not so wild as to scare off the Wall Street crowd.

Scoble also “discovers” something else that has been happening for some time: things are happening off the blogs.

“We’re bored,” he wrote.

Yes, blogs are not the end-all and be-all of social communications, anymore. There is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — even real life, as Scoble is discovering.

In a recent interview, TechCrunch mogul Michael Arrington said his blogs ‘disrupt’ traditional media because they lack editorial control. That missing component viewed as necessary in news operations is seen as an advantage for blogs - even more than the freedom of online versus print.

“I think the much more important fact is the fact that it usually doesn’t go through an editorial process so it’s a more authentic voice,” Arrington told Ziff Davis interviewers.

In a seeming departure from moves to become a media company, including hiring a former Fox exec as its CEO and established journalists, Arrington also relished explaining how there is minimal editorial oversight of what’s published on the popular Internet company blog.

“Every once in awhile, I’ll go on when there’s a typo and change it, but there’s no editorial process for all but one writer,” Arrington said. He admitted he’s paid for inaccuracies and mistakes, but said its balanced by the two-way interaction from reader comments.

Arrington admitted he’s not a journalist and said attribution, such as “according to a source” is done in large part “to cover your *ss.” An editorial process would confine the tech titan from trashing companies, which Arrington explained “adds a little bit of flavor and color.”

How long can media giants grow, depending singly on readers to balance their lack of oversight? Yes, by voting with their feet, blog readers can institute a sort of self-correcting process, but what other medium counts on their audience to be their governor? Sure, both print and electronic media rely on ratings and subscribers to a point, but they are after-the-fact.

The quandry blogs have is adopting a standard for basic news-gathering (beit it from a press release, a tip or a Twitter) that covers how to source news, how to inform readers and your role as an impartial news source, rather than fan or detractor.

(photo: jdlasica/flickr)

Friday is the best day to get a sense of the most important topics blogs are debating, according to the slide-rule folks at Carnegie Mellon University. The finding centers on the dual phenomenons of a slowdown in posting by the week’s end and more informative articles appearing on Friday blogs.

But here’s how the study group explains it, in language only an academic’s mother would love:

We performed the following experiment: given a budget of 1000 posts, what is the best day of the week to read posts (optimizing PA)? We found that Friday is the best day to read blogs. The value of PA for Friday is 0.20, while it is 0.13 for the rest of the week.

The study confirms what bloggers have know by studying their visitor stats. Visits begin climbing on Monday and reach a peak on Friday, matching broadband availability at the workplace. It’s also a bit of trivia marketers have know for years: a great deal of e-commerce occurs on lunch breaks or at other times.

Carnegie Mellon also released the 100 most informative (notice not most trafficked) blogs, in a sort of what blog would I want if I were trapped on a desert island question. Here are the top 10:

1. Instapundit
2. Don Surber
3. Science & Politics
4. Watcher of Weasesls
5. Michelle Malkin
6. National Journal’s Blogometer
7. The Modulator
8. BloggersBlog.com
9. Boing Boing
10. Atrios

This is far different from the usual top blog lists. For instance, at Technorati, which ranks sites by the number of “favorite” votes, tech blogs Engadget, Gizmodo, Boing Boing and TechCrunch led the list.

Just as blogs were starting to recover from the slacker image, sites are lending credibility to news coming from a writer behind the infamous ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ blog. Yes, fake blogs becoming real news sources. While you haven’t stepped into the Twilight Zone, that flushing sound may well be blogging’s credibility circling the drain.

A number of well-known blogs, including tech rumor site Valleywag and Web 2.0 news blog TechCrunch printed the un-sourced speculation of ‘Fake Steve Jobs,’ the infamous blogger who in reality is Forbes’ editor Daniel Lyons. Lyons as FSJ said Facebook will get $500 million in hedge fund money, as well as writing PodTech, a company with ties to uber tech blogger Robert Scoble, is ready to go under.

Lyons didn’t make the claims as a tech reporter, but a fake blogger. To their credit some blogs raised eyebrows over the fake as real incongruity. As Read/Write Web headlined the story: “When Did A Fake Blogger Become A Reliable Source?”

Scoble, after denying the rumor, pointed out: “Interesting that not a single blogger called me this evening. My phone number is on my blog for a reason. 425-205-1921.” Although calling for comment is one of the most basic steps in journalism, w hen we called, voice mail kicked in and Scoble directed us to his Hotmail account.

Update: “I have no current plans to leave [PodTech] and am contracted to be there by my sponsor
until at least February 1, 2008,” Robert Scoble tells Professional Blogging News.

We wonder how many bloggers will follow-up on a curious statement from Scoble. After denying the speculation he will leave PodTech, the blogger says this: “I’m not leaving PodTech. When, er if, I am you’ll read it here on my blog.” Was that a slip of the key or an insight? Was Scoble only upset that a ‘fake’ blogger scooped him?

Did Arianna Huffington drop a scheduled talk in front of bloggers in favor of a big-money gab-fest? That’s the impression left following Huffington backing out of an opening day appearance at Blog World Expo.

Huffington, who helped create the Huffington Post blogging site, canceled her opening day appearance at BlogWorld Expo, a blogging convention to be held in Las Vegas.

According to Rick Calvert, the CEO of the convention, a Huffington representative had asked if her Nov. 8 keynote talk could be rescheduled, then later canceled her appearance. So far, Professional Blogging has received no comment from the site explaining why Huffington won’t be appearing at the event slated for Nov. 8-9.

In a post, Calvert said he changed a panel discussion with Jeremy Wright, Roger L. Simon, and Jim Lanzone to Nov. 9. However, “her office told us she was going to cancel her appearance completely.”

Huffington will appear Nov. 7 at the Media and Money conference in New York City. The price tag: $2,100 to just get in the door.

(photo: Flickr/jdlasica )

In just the latest sign that blogs are being seen as a real news source, Wired’s Danger Room was named “best online beat reporting” by the Online Journalism Association. Danger Room, which reports on technology in the military and national security, was the first winner in a new OJA awards category.

If you’re not familiar with Danger Room, here’s a selection of recent headines:

• Iraq Sniper Attacks Quadruple: A Danger Room reader found the item buried in the Pentagon’s $42 billion Iraq/Afghanistan funding request.
• Giant Bomb, Bio-Defense…for Iraq?: The blog also found funding for bio-defense in the two wars, despite no reports of biological or chemical threats in the military theaters. The new funding bill also seeks $300 million for the Massive Ordinance Penetrator, prompting Noah Shachtman to ask whether the U.S. intends to MOP up insurgents.
• Care Bear Body Army: Yes, quirkiness is Wired’s forte and Danger Room doesn’t disappoint. Along with body army with cute Care Bears, the blog points out such fashionable killing gear as the Hello Kitty AK-47, the My Little Pony carbine and Martha Stewart-inspired mines.

Along with editor-in-chief Noah Schachtman, the Danger Room blog is written by Sharon Weinberger, David Axe, David Hambling, Jeffrey Lewis, Jason Sigger, Nicholas Thompson and Kris Alexander.