Why Google Will Merge Orkut and Blogger

Veronis and Suhler Stevenson (VSS) sees a day fast approaching when we will be over-saturated in media, according to this TelevisionWeek report. I believe it. If there's one thing problematic with the Information Age it is that there's just too much to take in!

Currently I subscribe to about 350 "real" news and blog feeds using FeedDemon and Bloglines. Many of these, particularly the blogs, are filled with thousands of pearls of wisdom. Despite these powerful aggregation tools, I find it impossible to read all these feeds and end up scanning probably about half (at most) on a daily basis. The problem is going to only escalate as online publishing becomes cheaper and easier. I find new blogs to read almost every day.

Thankfully, despite the gloomy VSS predictions, Google will again free us from information clutter, just as they have done time and again. They will eventually merge their Orkut social networking site and Blogger Web publishing system to establish communities of "trusted bloggers." A unified Blogger/Orkut platform will make it easier for us to identify the most credible/valuable bloggers who write about the subjects that matter to us. The system will be even better than the tools we use now to measure influence, such as Technorati. Some are already experimenting with such a model, but Google will prevail.

You can already see the early beginnings of this in Blogger's recent relaunch. Google is grouping bloggers into discrete communities. Orkut has an eerily similar community system. I can easily envision a day when Google will realize the tremendous power of merging these platforms into a single entity that facilitates information publishing/sharing and retrieval -- if they haven't already.

IMHO, this will all make our job - reaching online influencers - just a little bit easier.

Northwestern Using Blogs to Solicit Public Opinions

The Northwestern University Associated Student Government is using Weblogs to solicit student suggestions and ideas. This is a great example of dis-intermediated public relations - using Weblogs to solicit direct public opinion and ideas.

Since appearing online, the virtual sounding board has received hundreds of hits its first three days -- with discussion ranging from an open invitation for a poker tournament to concerns about diversity in the student body.

Online Ads in Forums

iMedia Connection reports that a Long Beach, CA-based company is testing a graphics-based branding tool marketers can use to promote themselves in online communities.

Esther Schindler on the Care and Feeding of Bloggers

Esther Schindler has been writing about software development tools and trends since the mid-90s, and about the effect of technology on our lives for far longer. These days, she is a content editor at InformIT.com and site editor for Ziff Davis' DevSource.

To PR old-timers, however, Schindler is best known as the author of the Internet Press Guild's Care and Feeding of the Press, a popular guide for working with the technology press. I caught up with Esther via email for a Bloggerside Chat to help us understand how to care and feed bloggers and what role they play in the media ecosystem.

MP: PR is changing as some citizens become "journalists" and bloggers. Do you plan to refresh the Care and Feeding of the Press?

SCHINDLER: I always plan on refreshing Care and Feeding. But since it's a labor of love (and a *big* labor, at that), it's the sort of project that I can only do when I have free time. I'm in the happy position of being too busy to find the time for it... even though I do see that it needs a new coat of paint. (And not just in regard to blogging. I wrote that document when I was primarily a product reviewer and tech-feature writer, so it doesn't address a lot of News issues that deserve to be covered.)

MP: What's the journalists view of blogging/personal journalism? They appear to welcome it rather than fear it.

SCHINDLER: Fear isn't an issue, at least not among the journalists I know. (They're tech press, though; for all I know it's different among the general media.) Some of those journalists are bloggers themselves, after all. (I don't have one of my own, but I do contribute irregularly to vowe.net.)

Nobody has the sense that blogging is going to put us out of business. What we have discussed, on and off, is the credibility of Joe Random Blogger. The consensus is that blogging is not journalism; it's something different. Lots of bloggers write about the world as they see it -- which can sometimes be more accurate than a jaded journalist, but just as easily can be a naive view from a "reporter" who has his own agenda, a lack of context, or incorrect assumptions. Not to mention fact checking and bad grammar.

But overall, I think most journalists who're aware of blogging think it's a good thing -- the way that pro photographers have no objection to amateurs clicking photos with snapshot cameras. Some of those amateurs are, after all, good enough to be professional.

In searching through my notes, I found this useful quote:

PUNDIT, BLOG THYSELF
"Without editors to correct syntax, tidy up the story structure or check facts, it is generally impossible to rely on anything one finds in a blog without verifying it somewhere else -- often the much-maligned mainstream media." --British television commentator Bill Thompson, decrying bloggers' factual inaccuracies in a piece where he misspells the name of the company he's writing about and ignores the fact that many people are, in fact, editing blogs for pay today, BBC News, 21 February 2003

My own (personal) view of blogging is that it's a good thing -- rather like people who kept journals, a hundred years ago, giving the individual and those who read the blog a map of their perceptions over time. It's going to be interesting to see how they evolve.

For instance, I know people employed by big companies who don't want their coworkers to know about their blog. Not because they write "I hate my boss" but because they don't care to share their politics (or other very personal opinions) with the folks they work with. Eventually, there's bound to be a flap over what someone posts on a blog, even "anonymously."

Another effect is the impact that bloggers have on search engine results. If a thousand bloggers point to an article posted on my site, then suddenly it's going to have thousands more hits and it'll come up faster on Google. That makes me, as a journalist, much more anxious for my articles to get noticed by the blogging community. I want my sites to be discovered. (And I'm sure that, if my article's about a vendor, the vendor's PR person will be even more anxious for that article to be popular.) What'll I do to encourage it? ...So far, not much. But that situation may change.

MP: What do's and don'ts from your document apply to pitching bloggers? What else should PR people keep in mind?

SCHINDLER: I suppose it depends on the nature of the blog, the nature of the pitch, and the agenda of the blogger. Frankly, it hadn't occurred to me that PR people might pitch bloggers, though I suppose it makes sense that they'd consider doing so.

If the blog is about products or services (such as a "here's news that can help librarians," which I think lii.org runs or used to run), then I would expect the rules to be the same as in Care & Feeding. Only with a bit more gentleness, because a lot of bloggers don't know what to expect from a PR person; maybe it'd help to put extra effort into being clear what you're asking for or offering. Some may be naive (a fact I'm a little nervous to point out to ruthless PR people) and thus be a bit too responsive to shady PR offers ("we'll fly you to Bermuda for a personal demo...") -- which goes back to that issue of credibility.

And I suppose that you should think more about the nature of that offer; I can't imagine that an individual blogger would care about "an interview with a company executive" because -- if nothing else -- these folks don't know how to do an interview. As with any other publication you pitch, you need to spend some time looking at the stuff they do: is it "vendor announces something that sounds cool, here's a photo"? "here's my personal opinion after trying it"? I certainly wouldn't

assume they're open to loaners (or even know that loaned hardware is expected to be returned).

Plus, I think that any PR contact might piss off some bloggers. If they're doing this because they love ANYthing to do with movies (or astronomy, or mobile computing gizmos), and are flattered for the attention, the contact will work to your favor. But if they'd blogging because they want to be "independent, dammit!" they may be offended that someone is trying to suck up to them.

But you can't make assumptions, because a site like egullet.com (which may or may not be a blog, depending on your definition) has so many top food industry people contributing to it that it's considered a legitimate news source and ought to be approached with exactly the same professionalism applied to the top print pubs.

I suppose the summary of all that is: don't make assumptions.

MP: Is it taboo to call a blogger?

SCHINDLER: I think it'd be a little weird. Certainly unexpected. I suppose it depends on the circumstances, but I would find it surprising in a negative sense -- the way I'd be both freaked and impressed if a PR person called me at home on a Saturday. Anybody who's good at blogging (enough so to attract the attention of a PR person) is inherently going to be an "online" person rather than a phone person, so I doubt it's as effective as an e-mail message.

MP: You write about reviewers in Care and Feeding. Is there a chance that well-read bloggers like Scoble will become the next Walter Mossberg? He doesn't seem to think so (neither do I).

SCHINDLER: There's always someone new working her way up the ranks, and often they're taking advantage of a new and untapped technology. (You could certainly find similarities in the rise of FM radio, for instance.)

It's entirely possible that the Next Walter Mossberg is blogging today. On the other hand, few bloggers are making a living at it (at least that I'm aware of -- I don't pretend to cover this area) and the Next Walter Mossberg is likely to be snapped up by a (probably online) computer news/etc. site with a Next Walter Mossberg salary.

I think you want me to say that bloggers are the next big thing, that'll change the whole notion of media. I think they have an effect -- and if it means that PR people recognize that it's no longer a matter of "call the usual suspects at the big publications and ignore the little guys" that's one of the better effects! But blogging won't replace traditional journalism.

eWeek Running RSS Ads via Doubleclick

Good Technology has started running ads on the eWeek RSS feed that redirect via Doubleclick. The ads are clearly delineated from editorial with an ADV tag. The first item links to this Good Technology Webex event.