Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle

Jeff Jarvis hits the bullseye again, in his post about bloggers as influencers talking to influencers (and you wondered why his blog was called Buzzmachine?):
"Forget the sniping you hear about how many or how few people are blogging -- or even how many or how few people read blogs. This isn't a numbers game. It's an influence game.
First, bloggers capture buzz.
When you see a topic bubble up in weblogs, I believe that matters because it is an indication of the topic bubbling up across the populace. It is an early indicator of public sentiment.
Second, bloggers are influencers talking to influencers."
(Via Henry Copeland's Blogads)

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Steve Yelvington : "But ... the world is changing, and newspapers have handicapped
themselves by generally not paying enough attention to new Internet competition from Ebay, et al. Instead, they're building sites that tend
to be derivative and duplicative of their print "parents," whose product characteristics come from a dead century.

Newspapers need to be building timely, useful, interactive local sites that play to the strengths of the medium and reflect how real people use the Internet -- especially real people who are under 35, who are increasingly deserting print.

Cutting and pasting yesterday's news onto the Web won't do the job."

Steve is making some very good points.

As I become more involved--or reinvolved--in the online news world, I am reminded how some editors' intense conservatism and resistance to changle is offset by the joyful experimentation and careful problem-solving of a few others.

Whether online news folks think its a good idea or not, audiences do not differentiate between Google news and their local news site's AP news feed--what sets the local site apart, besides the brand, is the credible, community-news focus and the depth of coverage that wire services and national news desks do not attempt to duolicate. The SacBee site is able to cover the local arts scene in a way that Yahoo News or Google cannot--if what's on the SacBee site is exactly what's in the paper, the site will have value to those who don't see the paper--but it will have even more value if it can offer some unique and distinct experiences--the SacBee Recall newsletter, for example, kept me wedded to SacBee.com in a way that few other thingd would have--Although I live outside their local area, the quality of coverage, the frequency of the touch, and the fact they had two interesting blogs grabbed my attention in a way that other recall sites failed to do.,

# posted by Susan : 10:12 PM

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According to several business reports, new sponsored search placements have helped once-struggling Yahoo's earnings go way up this quarter, to a record $356.8 in revenue, the highest ever. Today's story in the Merrcury News

Apparently, Yahoo saw an uptick in both banner-style online advertising,and paid search listings.
At the same time, Yahoo's base of registered users grew to 123 million at the end of the third quarter from 96 million a year ago.
The only soft spot was Hotjobs.com. where earning are rising, but at a slower pace, no doubt reflect both of the sluggish economy and the rise of alternatives such as Craig's List.
More stories here.

Great to see a once-floundering dot com company get healthy.
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The interesting twist to the question of can one make money from blogging is really not how one blogger can make money, but can multiple bloggers make money?
Or, can someone else make money off multiple bloggers?
Back in Ben Johnson's day, they passed out broadsheets at the coffeehouses, and posted them on the walls. Today individual writers are similarly limited on how to cash in as solo operators--they need a magazine, a publishers, an online vendor, for the most part, to get them those bucks. The great excitement about Google AdWords is the hope they can deliver enough cash for the solo practicioner to make all that time spent writing justifiable.

But there's another scenario that's just as likely: Individual bloggers will need to band together to package and sell their work--or smart news aggregators and editors will do it for them, and give them a remit. Many schemes of this persuasion are out there--but most of them are underfunded, under-energized, and fledgling. What is a magazine but the point of view of an editor, who pulls writers, artists, designers together to express a distinct point of view? In the blogging world, readers have the freedom to assemble their own virtual magazine through virtue of whose feeds these select to carry and read, but how far off is the day when some smart person offers us lazy types a re-aggregation of great political blogs (that would be easy), or great foodie blogs (also not hard), or the best slice of blogs for women in transition (divorced, empty nest, widowed, etc), or great life coach/personal development blogs?

Ease of use, simplicity, and convenience are what attract consumers, over and over. How far off is the day when some smart folks will try to build out some offerings--packages if you will--and offer them either as new forms of media--perhaps for a small fee--more likely for free, with some interesting marketing upsells once you register and get inside the wall.

When that day comes, I'm there--I know from all my dot com and print media experience that making money is the only way a great idea can survive--so unless it's going to remain a hobby for the under employed, the blog world will find ways to evolve more than one type of cash business--and I'll be cheering those entrepreneurs on. --And hoping they make sure to redistribute some of their cash to the creative types whose sweat equity they're building on.

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While bloggers--and journalists--discuss blogging as a new form--pragmatic business types wonder where the money is. At BloggerCon, consensus was that the dollars lay in selling software and hosting, and in paid aids, not in premium or subscription-driven blogging. Online news consultant Vin Crosbie takes a look at the current scene--and concludes--the dollars, they just ain't there yet.

Some highlights of his roundup:
Patrick Phillips, I Want Media: "I'm skeptical of the viability of paid subscription blogs, and of paid subscriptions for most online news providers. Much of the news on the Internet is still available for free, so I am doubtful that a significant number of people would be willing to pay, no matter the niche, at this point."

Rafat Ali, PaidContent: "It is a difficult game. Anyone who said it would be easy to get revenues off blogs has neither done full-time blogging nor made any revenues in their life.... The problem is you're feeding off other media sites for your material, which, by definition, isn't unique. "Within trade blogs, people may pay for a hybrid site like mine: a mix of blog and original reporting, with lots of context thrown in, and multiple (seven for my site) ways to access the content."

Rick Bruner, Marketing Wonk: "When Clay Shirky wrote his piece a couple of weeks ago condemning micropayments, I planned a response essay that was going to cite Elizabeth Spiers [of Gawker.com]. She obviously has a passionate following. Were she to charge 20 cents for access to longer pieces once a week, she could make significant money."

The full piece is here.


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"....if I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would."
---Kendel Ehrlich, wife of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich of Maryland, speaking at a domestic violence prevention conference on Friday.
More stories here.

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I''ll be back in New York the week of October 13-18 meeting with some clients and seeing friends; if you'd like to get together, send me an email, ideally this week.
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CNN.com:
"Donnie Fowler told associates he was leaving over widespread concerns that supporters who used the Internet to draft Clark into the race are not being taken seriously by top campaign advisers.

Fowler also complained that the campaign's message and methods are focused too much on Washington, not key states and the burgeoning power of the Internet, said two associates who spoke on condition of anonymity."

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AOL announced a deeper relationship with Google today, based on adding additional Google search capabilities to the AOL service. According to Silicon Valley internet.com,. better local search, more vertical search capabilities in areas like entertainment; and tools that help users refine their searches are part of the new offering.
As a part of the expansion, AOL will display Google's paid listings in both the business listings and directories of AOL Yellow Pages.

So, AOL has 23.5 million current users. The rumor is that the major of the ad revenue is currently coming from Google text ads and that AOL Interactive Marketing is not doing particularly well selling the AOL service.

We know Google just bought Kaltix, a new, high end company focused on personalized search and search datamining across very large data sets.
What kind of revenue could Google's soon-to-be deployed personalized search tools do when launched against AOL's 25.5 MM members?

Plenty, as Google's gotta know.

My prediction #1: Google deploys personalized search tools first on AOL to make the most of all this nice new targeting the new agreement enables, helping everybody make more money.

Prediction #2: Google buys a chunk of AOL, possibly the Netscape portal, maybe even the service itself. (Think about it-- Why not find a cheap and stripped down company with a nice sized user base, and then purchase it and keep all the cash? Google clearly gets that model--They're clearly trying to get into companies with expanding user bases--they tried to buy Friendster, they're in acquisition mode, and they need critical mass and great revenue splits. And only like 10 people tops work on the Netscape portal anymore, anyway, so it's gotta go for a song.)

Am I smoking crack? Maybe. But Google--like old ID monster--is clearly on the prowl these days. What do you think is next?


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Eric Meyer, Associate professor of journalism, U of Illinois, has a long post on blogging on the online news list that basically says online news sites should just forget about blogs as the fad of the moment. While Meyer raises many good points about a paper's responsibility to connect with their readers, he clearly doesn't get the flexibility and immediacy of blogs. His essay is kind of like saying, "Forget television or radio, just hang around with your readers and you will have a better paper."

A quote from Meyer's essay:
"Blogs are just another artificial mechanism to try
to address fundamental problems that cannot be resolved with such gimmickry.
They're not evil. They're just not saviors.

If you really want to improve your product, take a week off and just
hang around with the people who use it. That'll be a much better
investment that starting up some blog."

Writing off blogs is exactly the last thing I'd advise any paper, particularly a local one, to do.
It's not an either/or--the challenge is for online newspaper sites--and all existing organizations--for that matter, to learn enough about a new form or technology to determine how best to use it.
We already see two newspaper based blogs--Gillmor and Weintrab--having tremendous impact and value, and we also see independent journalists--like Josh Marshall and Glenn Reynolds--taking audience away from news sites and into their own independent operations.

The trick is to figure it out.
Dismissing it doesn't fly.



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One of the things I have been thinking about after spending 75 hours in Boston at BloggerCon with 250 or so fellow bloggers, are that we need to recognize that there are distinct categories of bloggers emerging who behave differently and want different things.
Based on input and observation at Bloggercon and a read of the Perseus data, here is my first pass at a classification at types of blog authors (as opposed to readers) for discussion by anyone who cares to respond--

Some blogger segments emerging--

1) The professional journalist. Dan Gillmor and Daniel Weintraub are great examples. So is Nicholas Kristoff. These bloggers are affiliated with a journalist/media entity and their blog is part of a larger initiative from the company.

2) The nontraditional journalist. Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Josh Marshall, and many of the Top 50 most read individual bloggers are acting as de facto journalists. Some of these folks are journalists, some want nothing more than to be accepted as journalists, some don't care either way.

3) Bloggers focused on a specific theme, movement, event, topic or interest---This blog is about my candidate, my weight loss program, my sexual adventures, the books I read, my technology toys, etc. As Mary Hodder points out, topic belongs can fit here.

4) The Education community--K-12 and University both see huge potential for blogging, though the adaptation numbers are small. This is a fast-growing and highly motivated segment.

5) The self-expression/journaling crowd: Blogs offer anyone who wants to--and teens and college students often want to the most--an opportunity to share their experiences and feelings with the universe at large, not to mention their friends. This category can also encompass daily bloggers, even an Ev Williams, as per his description.

6) The business/marketing/promotion community: Another emerging category are the businesses, particular analysts, consultants, and marketers, using blogging to advertise their wares and brand their products, Marketingwonk, JupiterResearch come to mind immediately.

7) Business blogs behind the firewall: It's more talk than action right now, but companies like Traction Software are busy selling blogtools to clients to use as part of a knowledge management program. We don't see those blogs, but this is where much of the revenue is at this early stage.

8) The experimenters & innovators--There's a small but critical segment for whom blogging is about pushing the envelope. Mobblogging, audioblogging, photoblogging, blog search are examples of new ideas powered by technologies that have been developed and enhanced by a small group of innovators and experiments who love to push the limits of the possible.


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Some thoughts on the Silence of the Blogs thread going around the Online news list:

1) Blogging offers a cheap and flexible publishing platform to both the curious, and the committed, just as web page software and desktop publishing software did in earlier years.

2) Since there are more than 2MM people blogging--and we're talking active users here, of Blogger.com, Userland, Typepad, and other hosted services that blogcount actively tracks--there are many types of bloggers.

I'd say Persus is only offering data, not interpetation, and that the sample, while interesting, is a bit squewed (as research studies often end up being.
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A new study of blogs and bloggers suggest there are about 5MM blogs out there--only thing is, roughly 2.72MM of them have been abandoned and are floating around like spare parts in space.
Does this mean bloggers try out blogs--date, let's say--before growing experienced enough to commit?
(Via Blog Count)

Mediapost's interpetation of this data--they say it means no one is paying attention. Axcording to the Mediapost writer, Perseus COO James Henning said, "The average blogger is a teen-age girl who updates her friends and classmates on her life, with words and spellings not quite as informal as instant messaging, Perseus said. Updates are done twice a month."


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In my first life, I was a poet, and Rochelle Ratner was my partner in crime.
Now, I'm a professional troublemaker, but Rochelle's still a writer, and she's just published Lady Pinball, an ebook of what we used to refer to as 'pinball' poems, because Rochelle and I were both obsessed with playing pinball in dive bars around NYC. One poem is about me--

FOR SUSAN (an excerpt)
She wants to dye
hr hair red

plays fireball
cause it looks
like her

learns it isn't
quick or noisy



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Now that the first BloggerCon conference is over, the feedback is rolling in. Scanning the wires this morning, as I have come to think of my Feedster searches,
there are two main themes--
1) The conference needs to be more representative of more types of people--too many attendees were a) white male b) full of themselves c)blog-centric, to mangle a phrase.
2) It was fantastic and I loved it.

Some random comments:
"I don't think anyone who attended can argue that the upper edges of the blogosphere is a highly intellectual, highly motivated, well-funded white male group that for better or worse is pretty full of itself ."--Web Blogg-ed, Will Robinson

"Now, yes, I loved the blog camaraderie but quite frankly I don't want to be the only black person in utopia. I was the only black person in that room, and was one of a few minorities. " Oliver Willis

"BloggerCon also proved a thought-provoking, consistently involving, fascinating day. I have never been to a conference where there was such easy intercourse between panel and audience: everyone was truly a participant, in the best sense of the word. "--Lane Knobel

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I got a note from someone this morning pointing out that when they searched for Ryze on Google, my page was the first member page that came up, and the 5th result overall. "How did this happen?" he asked.
I have no idea, I told him.

More guesses:
--My Ryze page is really my web bio/resume page, and I've used it as a link for BloggerCon and other events, which drove the page rank up.
--The Google Dance likes me.
--Pure dumb luck.

Any ideas? Please share.

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Heard that Friendster turned down a $15MM deal with Google to be acquired. Instead they went with a $15MM round of funding from solid gold VCs Kleiner Perkins. Anyone know if this is true?
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AOL Journal's Christy Gaitten will join the discussion with Dan Bricklin, Kevin Marks, Amy Wohl, , Frank Paynter, Scott Brodeur, Jeff Jarvis, and hopefully several of you in the 9 am BloggerCon Technology discussion in Pound Hall 200.
Come talk about blogging tools and technology--what annoys you, where you'd like to see development evolve, what users like yourself--and the mass market as well--should have .
This is will be an exciting and informative session with some interesting demos and discussions-- Feedster's Scott Johnson and VidiBlog's Jen Neal will also come by. Join us and share your views.
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