Written on January 23rd, 2005 at 10:01 am by Darren Rowse
Podcasting Consultants
Last night I fell asleep thinking of Podcasting - ok I know that is a twisted and screwed up thing to admit but its true. I was pondering the podcasting business model question and starting wondering what business applications podcasting could have. When it comes to blogging the business blog is said to be the ‘next big thing’ - as a result blogging consultants are popping up everywhere - so in what ways might the humble podcast be used in business and when will we see the first pod consultant?
That is about as far as my pondering got - I’d been out with some friends at the pub and it was late and I was slurring my thoughts a little. Anyway - this morning I start running through my morning RSS rounds and find Cameron might just have answered the question about podconstultants - it could be him. He’s just written a post titled - My first podcasting client?
‘I don’t want to say too much at this stage, but over the last couple of days I’ve been having a VERY interesting conversation with a senior manager from a tier one US company who is interested in engaging my services to help produce an internal podcast for a certain segment of their staff around the world.
The idea is something like this:
This company has thousands of people around the world all doing the same job. It’s a difficult job and one not really appreciated by other members of the team. So this person has been appointed to bring these staff from around the world into a community. Get them talking, listening, sharing, debating.’
Very interesting.
Just saw this one also. Its an official podcast of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists . We’ll see more of this I guess.
Written on January 23rd, 2005 at 10:01 am by Darren Rowse
Pro-Bloggers Website
The Professional Bloggers Association has just put up their website. Great name - they’ve chosen Pro-Bloggers.
Written on January 23rd, 2005 at 03:01 am by Darren Rowse
PicturePhone.com For Sale - $1 Million Start Bid
Do you want to buy a domain name? Got a spare $1million dollars? Then PicturePhone.com might interest you! It isn’t a blog and therefore isn’t quite relevant here but I couldn’t resist linking up.
You see PicturePhone.com will be auctioned off to the highest bigger on January 31 to the highest bigger and the bids will start at $1million. Check out their terms for the auction at PicturePhone Domain Name Auction.
Written on January 22nd, 2005 at 06:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Seeking a Podcasting Business Model
Listening to a good interview with Mick and Cameron from G’day World on a Podcast with the Blog Herald. Of particular interest to me was their comments about finding a business model for podcasting. I won’t quote them directly here (editing out the ‘vulgarities’ that some complain of..hehe) but they suggest that they’d like to look at doing a similar thing to the guys at Weblogs Inc with podcasting - ie provide the infrastructure for a stable of podcasters who each produce quality podcasts on their own areas of expertise.
Sounds like a great idea - I am fast coming to see the benefits of the podcast both as an addition to a blog but also as a medium in its own right.
The challenge is to find ways of paying for it (it has a lot more overheads than the average blog) but I suspect that this wouldn’t be too hard once they become a little more widely listened to.
Mick and Cameron talk about how their latest interview with Scoble was downloading 2000+ times in a couple of days. Sounds to me like their product is getting to a level where some smart advertiser should jump on board and test the effectiveness of promoting their product or service through their next big name interview.
Written on January 22nd, 2005 at 12:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Weighing Up the “nofollow” Attack on Comment Spam
Is Google’s latest attack on Comment Spam going to hurt Bloggers as much or even more than the Spammers themselves?
As I mentioned a few days ago, Google have announced a strategy for eliminating comment spam on blogs by implementing a ‘rel=”nofollow”’ tag which would cause links using the attribute to not be given any credit in their rankings.
Google already have the support of some pretty major bloggers and blogging tools including.
- Brad Fitzpatrick - LiveJournal
- Dave Winer - Scripting News
- Anil Dash - Six Apart
- Steve Jenson - Blogger
- Matt Mullenweg - WordPress
- Stewart Butterfield - Flickr
- Anthony Batt - Buzznet
- David Czarnecki - blojsom
- Rael Dornfest - Blosxom
MSN and Yahoo have also agreed to the system making it a pretty big deal.
A number of people have asked for my opinion of this new development. I’ve written some initial reaction here previously before it was announced and have similar feelings now.
Whilst I applaud the efforts to eradicate comment spam I’m not convinced that this is the way forward and worry that whilst it MAY help to combat the problem, it will not stamp it out and in the process it will be bloggers themselves who are penalized. Let me reiterate what I’ve already written on the topic….
1. Yes some bloggers will use this system (some like TypePad users will have no choice). I’m considering implementing it for the good of all but am not rushing to do so immediately.
2. I’m not convinced this will stop spammers. I suspect that there are thousands of blogs already out there that will not update their software and therefore will not implement this sytem. Spammers will continue to spam blogs because it is so easy to do with automated bot programs - they will do so in the hope that a certain percentage will still end up on blogs without the rel=”nofollow” tag.
3. Legitimate commenter will lose the value previously gained by leaving comments on others blogs. I do not and have not ever left comments on others blogs for the gain of my own blog in Search Engine rankings - however I have no doubt that my comments have been beneficial to my ranking. My concern is that with the introduction of this system that my backlinks will tumble in the Search Engines (along with any other bloggers that take the time and energy to comment on others sites for genuine reasons).
One of the things that attracted me to blogging in the first place was that it was so interActive. Bloggers actually gained so much not only by writing a blog but interacting with others. This system takes a little bit of that interactivity and mutual benefit of commenting away.
As I’ve written previously - I leave around 10 legitimate comments per day on others blogs (I think I’m pretty average in this way). I’ve been blogging 2 years - thats over 6000 links to my blogs that potentially could disappear from Google. You do the math and work out the cost to your blog. I know this is a selfish way to look at things and I do hold it in tension with the benefits of decreasing the links to spammers sites - but I wonder why legit sites that work to build up the blogosphere should be the one’s to suffer because a few abuse the system.
Whilst I understand the motivation for Google and other SEs and the big blogging software producers to put this system in place I wonder what the cost will be to the blogosphere and what the gains will be?
Will it kill off spammers? Maybe, but probably not. Will it decrease the profile in search engines of legit bloggers? I fear it will.
All in all I’m torn by this latest development and wonder if there might be another way?
Update: John in This is Not a Solution to Comment Spam points me to a good post with similar sentiments over at TheMiddle’s The Spammers have Won
Update 2: Six Apart have announced their plans to roll out plugins for the rel=”nofollow” strategy. Typepad users will not have to do anything it will all be automatic (looks like they don’t get a choice whether they want to use it or not), MT users can download a plug in here. WordPress users can download a rel=”nofollow” plug in here.
Figby also has a good report on the new anti-spam links making some good points. I especially like:
‘Dishonest webmasters will use this attribute to game the system. I’m not quite sure how, but they’ll find a way. One obvious way is to set the nofollow attribute on all external links, to prevent precious PageRank from leaking out of their sites. Whether this does any good or not is debatable, but they’ll do it anyway, and it’s bound to confuse the already-strained algorithms that produce PageRank.’
askDaveTaylor has a good explanation of the new system and writes:
‘And, finally, is it going to work? I dunno. There are some definite problems with this strategy, not the least of which is that it means that if my friends and colleagues pop by and post an erudite comment - or write their own article that trackbacks to mine - I would like to give them some of my PageRank goodness, but now I can’t. You’re all throw into the ’spammer scum’ box, like it or not. Also, having it as an add-on is like Microsoft solving security problems with a system patch: it only works if every single person installs it and in this case, I’m sure that even three months from now there’ll be a statistically significant percentage of MT, WordPress and other self-hosted Weblogs that will not support “nofollow”, and as we’ve learned in the last few years, spammers are happy to send out a million messages for a handful of positive responses.’
Arstechnica writes - ‘Publishers online now have the ability to point to websites and companies they don’t particularly like without artificially inflating their Page Rank, simply by inserting this special attribute into the link. As with any sort of change like this, 20% of people might initially take advantage of this paradigm shift, leaving 80% “unprotected.” Fortunately, many companies responsible for hosting a majority of online blogs are involved and may push the number of initial participants well above 50%. Only time will tell if Google.com has done irreparable harm to how we think of searching and linking or if they’re heralding a new era of cooperation and online publishing.’
Update 3: Buzz Marketing weighs into the debate writing - ‘links are links, and if spammers spam, people will still click. Page rank won’t grow as much for the destination URLs, but they’ll still get traffic. And for spammers who are trying to simply deface or plaster their message around, this does nothing.’
See the Link Condom for a funny commentary on the NoFollow system
Jeremy writes - ‘it’s not going to “stop” comment spam. It just changes the economics and metrics. The reality is that one of the apps I’ve seen can spam 1 million wordpress and / or movabletype blogs in 5 minutes. At those economics levels, only one person needs to click, only 10 blogs need to not be using the “nofollow” for it to be worthwhile. This solution is akin to saying “net identity solutions will solve email spam”, which is false. Knowing who people are is step one. Knowing that their intent is malicious is step 2. Being able to do something about it is step 3. Having a central authority is step 4. This little piece of Google’s doesn’t actually solve any of those, and it treats all commenters with equal disdain, which is sad (if understandable).’
Anil from MT posts an interesting post answering some of the negative feedback that has been leveled at this new system.
Danny Sullivan gives an extended response to Anil’s response (last link) responding to the Link Condom (link about last link… phew). He writes - ‘What is clear is that nofollow will NOT stop blog comment spam. Not at all. Don’t believe it? Then right now, all bloggers can stop making use of blacklists, registration schemes and other tactics used before nofollow emerged. Sit back and see if the spam goes away. It won’t. Nofollow is a nice new tool that we can use, one that as I’ve said many times before is welcomed for giving us choice and more options, but it’s not a magic bullet. Well, it’s a magic bullet for one thing. It now lets the search engines say to bloggers, we gave you want you wanted, stop blaming us for the problem!’
This post originally was posted at my Blogathon site.
Update 23433 - (I lost count) - A number of bloggers have developed little buttons to put on your site to let your readers know if you use NoFollow or not. Some are in other languages but you’ll get the gist. Check them out at:
- No NoFollow
- Contra el No Follow
- ¿ Todos los buscadores contra el spam ?
- nofollow, nofollow free and follow buttons
Written on January 22nd, 2005 at 11:01 am by Darren Rowse
Why Topical Feeds Are The Future of RSS
Read/Write Web has an interesting post predicting that the killer application for RSS will be to track Topic/Tag/Remix Feeds rather than to track individual blogs or news sources.
‘One of the reasons I think this may eventuate is that blogging is and always will be a minority sport (as I’ve referred to it in the past). The killer app for RSS probably won’t be geared towards the current ranks of bloggers and geeks. When RSS hits it big, it’ll be because ‘normal’ people start using it - your Mom and Dad, Frank from Marketing, Jessie from Payroll, Dave from the local dairy. They won’t be bloggers. They won’t be interested in writing or podcasting or anything like that. All they’ll want to do is track news and trends that are relevant to them.
Tools will evolve to let people easily set-up personalized searches for information relevant to them and subscribe to the results - using, you guessed it, RSS! Google will probably be the front-runner (see this video for a hint to the future - thanks twdanny for the reminder), PubSub will be another, current players like Bloglines and Technorati will be in amongst it, and who knows who else.’
If my own personal use of RSS feeds is anything to go by I think Richard is onto something here. You see I use Bloglines as much for tracking topics as I do to track specific news sources. For instance I have a search feed for ‘digital camera review’ which points me to numerous relevant articles each day. I also track a variety of Topix categories using RSS. Of course this is partly because I’m sourcing information for my blogs - but when I tell non blogging friends (and I do have a couple who do not blog) about RSS and how they could track news on their personal interests they are generally fascinated. They have no interest in tracking blogs (even mine!) but if they could find the latest information on their passions they will get themselves a news aggregator as quick as.
I suspect that RSS will always be used to track individual news sources (I’ll always do it) but topical tracking is certainly an area that will boom.
Written on January 22nd, 2005 at 10:01 am by Darren Rowse
The Importance of Good Headlines for RSS
Poynter Online has a great post about the importance of having a good headline in your RSS feed.
‘But what do I do with headlines like “Dramatic change” (which turned out to be about a change in the government’s attitude toward immigrants) or “An unfinished story” (this deals with the U.S. inauguration). And these are just a couple of random picks from a Norwegian feed I read last night. Both those headlines belong in a newspaper or on a website, where there is room for a picture and a blurb. They have no place in my RSS reader. Or in my mobile phone’s WAP reader. Because I can’t even make up my mind if I’m interested.
With RSS and WAP, more and more journalism relies on headlines alone. So they better be good. And they better be informative.’
This is so true. I’ve actually done some tracking of the most popular posts on this site for those reading my RSS feeds and have noticed that it is usually the simple, clear and informatively titled posts that get the most hits. Yes occasionally I’ll get a little clever, humorous and cryptic and come up with a title that tries to be intriguing, witty or mysterious - but more often than not the simple ones do much better.
Of course I show the first few sentences in my RSS feeds also (not that everyone chooses to view them) so your opening line is also vitally important to getting people to read on.
I’ve touched on this topic previously in a number of posts includeing:
- Titles are Everything
- Get to the Point
- Blogging for Change - Rejection to Attention
Written on January 22nd, 2005 at 10:01 am by Darren Rowse
Google to Revamp Adsense and Adwords Program
Silicon Valley Watcher writes that Google are getting ready to announce some big changes to their Adsense/Adwords program which will be of interest to many bloggers using the system.
‘As this is being writtten, about 1800 Google marketing people from its offices around the world are at an internal sales conference at a secret location in San Francisco, being briefed on a completely revamped Google Adwords/Adsense program and other new features.
The text ads business is crucial to maintaining Google’s pace of growth and its share price, which reflects high expectations for the dominant search giant. But Google offers few tools to advertisers to let them control where their ads appear and on which web sites. Similarly, web site publishers have virtually no control over what types of ads Google sends their way. This has caused some shifting to competitors such as Kanoodle that offer such controls.
That’s why the revamped Adwords/Adsense will provide a suite of tools that provide greater control, management and monitoring data to advertisers, to better target their sales messages.’
I’ll be watching any announced changes carefully as Adsense has been a major part of my earning strategy on my blogs - hopefully the changes not only benefit the advertisers but also are worthwhile for publishers.
Update: Silicon Valley Watcher has just announced more details of the ‘revamp’ writing:
‘For the first time, the search giant will provide its advertisers with an application programming interface (API), which will enable them to link their computer systems with Google and control parts of the mammoth Google ad delivery system. The API will allow advertisers to self-administer the delivery, the timing and the price they will pay for their text ads.’
The API will not be available to publishers.
Written on January 22nd, 2005 at 10:01 am by Darren Rowse
How AdSense Premium Publishers Boost their CTR by 500%
Have you ever wondered what the benefits of being a premium publisher on the Google Adsense program are? Google don’t say to much about it on their website. You have to achieve ‘5 million search queries or 20 million content page views a month’ to qualify, which puts most of us out of the race but we can dream can’t we? Anyway - the official line is that the benefits of being a Premium Publisher are:
- Google sales representative and account manager
- Flexible ad formats
- Advanced filtering
- Optimization assistance
- Additional monetization options
- Enhanced technical support
It all sounds pretty general and I’ve often wondered what the specifics are. Today I spotted a short post by Gary Stein who shed a little light on what one premium publisher (Topix) is doing to boost their earnings on their home page by 500%. The long and short of it is that they are able to track your movements across the site’s different channels and serve up ads that relate to where you’ve spent the most time. So instead of their Home Page (which is a collation page of loads of general news) showing up ‘general’ type ads it shows up ads which they have a pretty good idea that you’ll be interested in because you’ve previously searched for it.
So in a sense the ads are not contextual in the strictest sense (ie they are not relevant to that page’s content but are reliant upon your surfing history - Behavioral targeting advertising. I wonder if this is the type of feature that Google would consider making available down the track to its average user? Obviously it would be in their best interests, and those of their publishers and advertisers, to see click through rates go up by 500% across the board. However I guess they also have to balance it with the reaction of the end user who may not appreciate having their surfing tracked in this way.
Source of original information: AdSense Premium Publisher: Boost CTR
Written on January 22nd, 2005 at 12:01 am by Darren Rowse
Professional Blogger Association - Some Observations
I’m really happy to see the caliber of Professional Bloggers Association’s Founding Team Members - whilst some have critiqued having such an association I’m pleased that it seems to be moving ahead. They’ve named a board and voted on office bearers which is a good first step and now have a lot of work to do to get it up and running.
This might seem like I’m having a go at them, I’m not in fact I’ve offered my full support and assistance in any way I can a couple of times now. I believe in the ideas of pro bloggers coming together - however I would give one initial observation of the group that have kicked this thing off.
Whilst Paul mentions that they are international in their scope I’m left wondering whether this is really just a north american association. Yes they have Hans on the team (and there could be another European or two in there that doesn’t say so on their bio) but the vast majority of those on the founding membership list are from the US with a few from Canada.
Ok - let me critique my own observation.
- Of course this is only a founding membership list and it would make sense to have the initial group clustered together to help with the logistics of setting up the process.
- Yes the majority of pro-bloggers probably do live in the US.
- The founding membership needs to be of a high caliber/profile - again the US and Canada has a lot of pro bloggers that fit this bill
- Yes it would make good business sense that pro bloggers in a region would want to network together…..
I understand and affirm all these things - however would suggest that blogging is a medium (and pro blogging as a subset of it) that crosses all borders, genders, ethnicities, skin colors and ages. I’d guess I’d like to hope that a group that seeks to represent, support and advocate for such a diverse group of people will take some steps to reflect its diversity from the ground up.
Anyway - its early days for the PBA and I honestly am looking forward to how it unfolds. I’m still interested to know how they will define ‘professional blogger’ (which will probably answer my pondering of whether I will join or not).
Like I’ve said before ‘Pro blogging’ is a pretty wide term and is being used to talk about everyone from ‘business blogs’ to ‘blog consultants’ to ‘bloggers who make money from their blogs directly’ to ‘those who provide blog tools/services’ for blogging.’
I personally have a pretty wide definition of Professional Blogger - anyone who earns (or attempts to earn) a significant part of their income from their blogging, whether that be directly from their readership, from their consulting clients, from their advertisers, from their business (ie it is a job or part of their job), from the sales of books that came about out of their blogging etc….
I qualify the statement with ‘attempts to earn’ because everyone starts somewhere. I think Problogging is partly about a state of mind. I also say ’significant part of their income’ because I don’t think it includes the many hobby bloggers who have an ad or affiliate button or two on their blogs and make a few dollars every now and again.
One of their first tasks I guess will be giving some scope and boundaries to the group. I’ll be watching on with interest.
Update: Have been pondering this a little more this morning and wondered if another addition to the core team might be a Pro Blogger who makes money directly from their blogs. I guess I’m thinking about Nick or Jason type or one of their offsiders. The spread of people on the initial team covers everything from consultants, to PR bloggers, to marketers, to bloggers associated with businesses that blog, to blog tool/service people - but not seeing too many actually doing the magazine style thing….just another thought….
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